Lessons in Solidarity

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In 1984, members of the gay and lesbian community in England banded together to support the miners’ strike happening in the country in response to Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. Despite the cultural differences and the often contentious relationship between the two groups, a commitment to solidarity and support brought these people together.

PRIDE (2014) photo from The Guardian

In the summer of 1985, after the strike ended, after nearly a year of fighting, and not with the outcome the strikers had hoped for, the miners lead the Gay Pride march in a show of solidarity with the community that had worked with them.

This is the story of the movie Pride which came out this year, where it one the Queer Palm award to Cannes.

Over the long weekend, here at UMass Amherst, three incidents of hate speech were written on the doors of students of color. This has not only shaken the community, for obvious reasons, but also brought with it an outpouring of emotion relating to the way the campus community treats students of color, the retention rate among students of color and the consistent failure of the community to address concerns regarding race on campus.

More often than not I have heard the words, “I am not surprised.” And that’s it. There is no further examination of that statement, there is no outrage, there is no anger or fear or sadness. There is a tacit acceptance of the fact that racism is alive and well on our campus.

Ben Schnetzer, as Mark Ashton, says in Pride, “I don’t understand how people can be for one thing and not another. How can you be for labor rights and not women’s right?” [badly paraphrased]. And as I look at this campus, I ask myself the same thing. How can we hope to make progress, together, if we won’t stand together? 

Schnetzer’s character is met halfway by one of the miners, Dai Donovan, played by Paddy Considine who refers to a banner his town has, of two hands clasped, where he explains that the way he sees it, the banner shows, “If you support me, I’ll support you.” And indeed, the National Union of Mineworkers voted to enshrine gay rights in the Labour Party’s platform, as well as leading the parade in ’85.

This is what we need; the solidarity, the community, and the will to fight the darkness of hatred and racism wherever it is hiding. Our black students should not be facing this alone, our hispanic students should not be facing this alone, students of color should not be facing this alone. We should take our cue from stories like that of the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. But we should also remember the miners, and our organized labor groups, all forms of organized peoples should be working to end this kind of behavior on our campus and in our community.

We are fighting for all of us.

WMUA: Famous Economist Thomas Piketty visits UMass

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Persistence pays off. By being the most annoying reporter at the annual Phillip L Gamble memorial lecture at UMass, where French economist Thomas Piketty spoke on his book Capital in the Twenty First Century, I got to ask the first question at the press gaggle, post-talk. I had prepped about five questions, in the hopes of getting to ask more of them, but a small mob formed around the man (who looked quite tired, he had flown in the day of, and was leaving the next day at 7AM), and I didn’t manage it. But I have to say, first question for a world famous economist is not bad for student media, especially given the reception we usually get.

Mr. Piketty’s book is quite substantial, it is nearly 700 pages, including the Notes, index, and other appendices. I did not manage to read the whole thing before the lecture, but I supplemented what reading I had done with every single review and criticism and adulation of the book I could find.

It’s rare for an economics book to make the kind of splash Piketty’s made. Many people have, rightfully I believe, attributed the source of some of his success to the fact that the decade of research of his book were prescient for the current curiosity and frustration with the distribution of capital.

Bragging rights. Photo cred: Dan Moreno.

Bragging rights. Photo cred: Dan Moreno.

But Piketty’s book, unlike much of the conversation surrounding the “1%” at the moment, focusses less on income inequality, or the difference between what the top is earning versus what everyone else is earning in the same interval, and focusses instead on wealth inequality. The main thrust of his argument (r > g) is that the rate of wealth accumulation is greater than the rate of growth, and so capital will move towards the top of society over time, because their money is growing faster than anyone else can save theirs.

His book has gotten a lot of heat, particularly from more traditional schools of economic thought. The most vicious was one in the Financial Times, which one can only read with an FT.com subscription, which Piketty responded to on the Huffington Post.

What stuck out to me most, however, in his talk was his focus on the lack of real data on wealth. Because we do not tax it, the way we do income, we don’t have a solid understanding of how much money or value (not all wealth is money, some of it is resources, such as land, oil, etc) is actually there. There is no national or international collection of that data. He joked more than once during the lecture, that part of the reason for his suggestion of a global wealth tax is to help create that data.

We can’t hope to talk about that which we know nothing about. Things that haven’t been measured, can’t be truly debated or discussed. (This is a question I will be returning to in the future.)

I think if I could go back and ask one more question, I would like to know how he feels being compared to Karl Marx.

Short Stop: the Ethics of the Promotional Interview

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Another year, another set of thorny ethical questions to contend with.

Specifically, at what point does journalism turn into semi-independent PR?

One of the staples of any news-source relationship, be it the politician, the special-interest group, or the business, is the interview. Interviews rarely happen unless someone is trying to sell something. That something could be a new product, a new policy direction, or an event. When trying to avoid the tacit support of a particular view or party or product or person that comes with hosting them on your website/podcast/radio show/newspaper/op-ed page, is it the number of questions one asks? The kinds of questions? Do you need to treat polarized situations differently from more apolitical ones?

This year we’ve seen an increase in the number of people approaching us to come on to our news show and talk about their events.
On the one hand, I’m gratified, because if people are approaching us to come on our show, it must mean that we’ve started making an impact in terms of visibility. We’ve become a place you actually seek out to get a message to the people out in the world.
On the other hand, I’m perturbed by the notion that we are simply a platform to promote yourself on. Intellectually, I understand that that is what many people, when representing an organization or a specific interest, view the media as. Emotionally, I end up feeling cornered by the idea that our good name can be sullied and our ethical bearing compromised by people who are looking to promote their own interests.

The ethics of the situation are particularly clear, on the untried and somewhat microscopic level of the University because my fellow students have not yet become PR masters. They are clever enough to approach us to get pre-event coverage. But they are not clever enough to phrase their desire for publicity as an opportunity for my organization to get a scoop, or break a story.

They ask me, “Can we come on to your show and give a short blurb about our event tomorrow.” To which I am forced to reply, “No, you cannot. But you may come onto my show and have my anchors ask you questions, at which point we will allow you to inform our listeners about your up-coming event.”

So I’ve taken to phrasing that last bit, where they get to talk about their own stuff in terms of, “You approached us…” carefully wording it to allow our listeners the knowledge that this is, in a sense, a contrived media moment. We didn’t get paid, we are not endorsing them, but we will allow them airtime.

So far, I haven’t said a flat-out no to anyone. I think the really thorny ethical question will appear if ever I am approached by a group whose position I believe to be lacking in some kind of merit and am forced to ask should I air these people at all?.

Starting with the Bechdel Test

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Let’s start a conversation with the Bechdel Test. Now I might be beating a dead horse here, but I’ve recently realized that knowledge of the Bechdel Test is not as widespread as I thought it was. I’ll drop it into conversation and people will suddenly look confused and I’ll have to backtrack and explain what it is.

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test, alternately called the Bechdel/Wallace Test, the Bechdel Rule, Bechdel’s Law, or the Mo Movie Measure, is a simple set of rules that creates a rudimentary set of standards for female representation in movies (personally, I apply it to television as well). It made it’s appearance in 1985 in Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

Dykes to Watch Out For, 1985.

It has three rules:

1. A movie must have 2 female characters

2. They must have a conversation.

3. About something other than a man.

In theory this shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve. I would like to invite you now to take a moment and think back on the last five movies you saw and see if they pass the Bechdel Test. Continue reading →

Lessons from the X-Men

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I look at what’s happened, and still happening in Ferguson, the attention we’re currently paying to the senseless, needless deaths of young black people in this country, but I think also of the tallying every year of the deaths of trans* folks, the numbers of deaths and violations for native, black, and latina women, I think of the challenges women face daily. And somehow I end up at the X-Men.

Now, you probably think, “what the hell does a comic series/Marvel superheroes/beloved movie series and/or acclaimed series reboot have to do with all this serious political stuff?” or you might have just stopped reading.

But there is something very important lurking in the X-Men, and in that something is the reason why the X-Men are both so successful and often the only superhero comic non-superhero comic reading people have fallen for (Watchemn excluded, that is a discussion for another time). Continue reading →