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A Gadfly, A New Year: Notes on Politics and our Next Print Issue

Dear Friends,

This semester has been a slow one for the GADFLY. Please don't fret- we have many fine articles from our contributors on their way. Expect a hardcover print (Issue 2.1) to be out in the first half of J-term, which should include extensive commentary on OWS, Wikileaks, campus politics, college propaganda, and the ongoing discussions over Money at Midd. We are lucky to have a range of students who send us some outstanding material, however many students tend to be 'activists' in their own right, and this semester has (quite surprisingly) provided a load of distraction to this end. In the meantime, please note that past print issues are always available in PDF format (look to the blog's masthead) or a physical copy can be found in The Gamut Room.

Overall, we still maintain a belief in the necessity for continuing our printed medium, keeping materials and cost at an absolute minimum, while maintaining an accessible format which will (in theory) remain for perpetuity. Also, we know you love our dope graphic designers; shout-out to our fans in the Department of Public Safety (any likeness is entirely unintentional). 

Dean Collado may feel it necessary to remind us that there are people working in 'Old Chapel,' but here at the GADFLY we know (that you know?) that indeed, people also inhabit Foucault's panopticon, even if in the metaphorical sense. Such is Old Chapel's inclination- to "observe and normalize." A recent example is the new personal key-code entry on the Bike Shop? 

The administration likes to talk as if we don't all have a web-tracker installed on our laptops from the day we arrive here... how silly of them. We'll keep to our commentary on making this college a more just and unbiased placed to learn. It should go without saying that to achieve such ends, very little escapes critique!

Lastly, one cannot avoid addressing the controversy the GADFLY found itself at the heart of last week, which concerns quite serious accusations of racism and the behavior of armed police officers on campus. Thanks to a guest post on this blog, and persistent instigation of The Middlebury Campus editors, the controversy has been widely disseminated and is expected to appear in next Thursday's paper. While new details and counter-accusations have come to light, one shudders to think that the entire controversy could easily have remained undisclosed. That would have truly been a shame, regardless of one's perspective. 

We encourage you to visit a new blog setup in support of Barrett Smith '13, who was recently fired from his position as FYC of Stewart Hall over alleged misconduct in connection to the controversy. It truly is heartwarming to see students rally together when they perceive injustice- no matter how big or small. You can find the blog through our link here:
                                                                     http://blogs.middlebury.edu/keepbarretthere/

More updates to come later on this week. In the meantime, good luck with finals, work, or the celebration of false idols (Pleasant Saturnalia, Pagans). 


Keep fighting the good fight.

In Solidarity,

the GADFLY

Institutional Racism: Alive and Well at Middlebury College

The author has been fired for judgment, conduct and views unbecoming an FYC.

While there are details not present about Luaay's case in this article, it still presents an important perspective on the events that transpired. For better or worse, I chose to focus on Luaay’s removal and the openness of our community. For a more full account of Luaay’s visit check out the Midd-Blog article.

The dialogue surrounding this post has been beautiful. Luaay's case is not the only instance where race and class are implicated in very real ways on campus and in our society. We attend a college whose function is to reproduce the ruling class in an imperialist, white supremacist, patriarchal society. Given the society in which we find ourselves, together we must confront issues of race, class, gender, ability, et cetera to work toward a more just and inclusive community. Share your stories, listen to everyone, engage in dialogue, challenge and grow.

This article was removed between December 1st and 14th, while the my position in the Stewart community was being discussed. Here is the letter that was posted for some of that time. Because it was never my intention to permanently remove this article, here is the original text, returned again to its rightful place in the public forum:

Xenia. 

      

      And I don’t mean the social house. Xenia is Greek for the concept of guest-friendship. The idea is that you welcome all guests into your home, you feed and house them, and you build lifelong bonds of friendship and connection with them. Xenia is about creating an inclusive community.

     So my friend Luaay has been staying with me for the past week. As I was informed this afternoon, that is in violation of public safety’s guest policy: “A guest of a student may stay in a dormitory no more than three days in any one term.” Surely, Luaay is not the only one to have violated this policy.

      But Luaay’s case is unique in that public safety, without ever having contacted with him, deemed Luaay a "threat to the community" at which point the middlebury police department was called to apprehend him, issuing a No Trespass Order. Some of y’all may have seen him being detained Monday night by five officers in the lobby of davis library. The behavior of middlebury police and the department of public safety officers was consistently condescending and disrespectful towards both Luaay and myself. This appalling behavior continued and was aimed towards other students who subsequently became involved. public safety was not interested in hearing his side of the story; they simply wanted him gone.

      One officer remarked that my friendship with Luaay was “disturbing.” Back in my dorm, gathering Luaay's belongings, middlebury police officers threatened to arrest myself along with three other students, also for trespassing, if we did not "remove Luaay" more expediently.

I have a broken foot. 

I can only move so quickly down four flights of stairs.

     Yet too much attention to my own condition distracts from the larger context. What one needs to be conscious of is how race and class play into this. Is Luaay, a large, dark-skinned, dreadlocked male, who is "unvetted" by our admissions committee, somehow outside our community norms enough to draw such an aggressive response? How secure are the members of our community who also fit into one, two, or three of Luaay's descriptors? Would he have been so forcibly evicted if he were a wealthy or white friend of mine? Can you imagine a situation in which such a friend might be considered “a danger” to the community? I certainly cannot. 

Whom do we welcome into our community and whom do we call the police on? 

This is surely a question that must be addressed. 

This is not the way we treat members of our community. 

This is not the way we treat our guests.

-So-crates

Occupy Wall Street... On Acid!

http://www.vice.com/read/occupy-wall-street-on-acid

fuck yeah

A Brief Response to "Why Occupy Wall Street Will Not Succeed"

The name calling that we are perpetuating in this forum attests to just how widespread capitalist cultural control extends and how it fragments our society into subgroups till the point when we loose our collective power.

What is interesting about Occupy Wall Street? It is a call for an open dialogue, and not just one centered on petty quips and debates over the best forms of political reform, but about asking ourselves what has capitalism culturally instilled in us as “proper dialogue” and “acceptable activism”.

It is first and foremost about inclusivity. Capitalist society assures that those in power stay in power by fragmenting knowledge and society into sub-disciplines and subcultures. This “movement”, as no other term has arisen to name it, is about breaking down the walls of our public rhetoric, of what we accept as “rational” thought so that we can benefit from the extensive wealth of knowledge that humanity has generated, but, since the rise of the post-renaissance, modern era, has been subjugated into culturally reproduced and therefore legitimized knowledge, and culturally marginalized and therefore illegitimate or “radical” knowledge.

        Allowing the cultural controls of capitalist society to exclude necessary fields in human knowledge from public conversation is as much of a tool of oppression as militarism or economic exploitation. In fact, it may be even more dangerous as it is not readily evident to most people who are the most effected by it. Disciplines of philosophy, idealism, utopianism, original Marxism, anarchism, communalism, syndicalism, primitivism, modernism, quantum theory, psychology, evolutionary theory, eastern thought, to touch only on the surface level, have all been excluded from the discourse by those who turn the wheels of our globalizing world, and the reaffirmation that these fields of knowledge are somehow separate. They have been excluded from the conversation so that classical economics and the rationalization of irrationalites become the dominant tools of rhetoric; anyone not versed in this conversation is immediately excluded as a radical (another example of a term that has been used to illegitimate large sects of our society), or not holding the institutionally certified credentials to be a validated participant. The point is that these are not “radical thoughts” (in the negative definition that is connoted by that label).

There have been systemic changes in history, collapses of empires, experiments with other systems that have failed, and there is something to be learned from them all. It may seem like an impossibility standing up against such a large web of systemic control, but that is another mechanism that is intrinsic to capitalist cultural control that prevents any challenge to the system from generating any momentum. Just because capitalist society has perpetuated itself to a state of dominance does not validate it, and what we are learning is that there are other, natural systems that are not compatible with this system and if things don’t drastically change shit will hit the fan. 

Why does Occupy Wall Street deserve attention? In many ways it is a hope that there can be a new form of revolution. I’m not arguing that Occupy Wall Street is a revolution waiting to happen, rather that it is merely an instance in what we need to envision as a multitude of smaller global revolutions that are interconnected. It doesn’t matter how small one individual explosion of discontent is, but instead how globalization can be used as a tool to fight. We can pat ourselves on the back for the end of slavery, the civil rights movement, womens' rights movement, public discourse on gender, and all the other “victories” within the system, but within all these the tiniest bit of liberty is won -- just enough so that a real revolution doesn’t take place.
Capitalism is complex. It involves intricate systems of cultural control that are often imperceptible, but to anthropomorphize it for a moment, it knows what it’s doing. It will keep handing us tiny advances to placate our temporal frustration as we bicker with one another about who has a right to speak out against it. Rights aside, we all need to put aside our narcissistic viewpoint and realize we are making one another into enemies.

            Here is my take away message for this Internet forum in a few more than a few sentences. This argument, this polarization, this antagonism, this subjugation, this fragmentation, this selfish want to be the one to bring about change is exactly what capitalism utilizes as a tool to keep itself alive. We are all guilty of it, but we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. It is part of an oppressive system. As easy as it is to throw mud at each other, pick and choose who has a right to speak out against an exploitative system, who really and truly is the most marginalized, who has slept a night in the gutter, we have to fight against this tendency because that is exactly what leads to paralysis. It’s hard and it takes the will of every individual to push against the selfish tendency to want to BE the bearer of real change, when really we should ALLOW for change to happen regardless of an individual hand ushering it in. Life is circumstantial and we shouldn’t ostracize one another for that, but rather recognize that our anger stems from the same focal point.
            Let’s allow ourselves to learn from one another and not just speak so we can feel better about asserting our viewpoint as right. Students perpetuated this conversation, and let’s remember that we have knowledge that is constructive and we can educate one another outside of institutions, not because we are Students (or those who are legitimized by the system as the holders of knowledge), but because we are questioning our systems and ourselves. It’s not about being the first to recognize it, or the most vocal, or the right one, but about not working with capitalist control to smother any attempt at real, systemic change.

Peter

Why Occupy Wall Street Will Not Succeed

The Occupy Wall Street movement seeks to protest the greed of the one percent. In the words of Professor Cornel West (one of the protestors), “We are tired of seeing Wall Street’s greed getting rewarded…anytime they make any profits they are privatized, and when losses come up the government decides to socialize them (through the bailouts)…Obama has failed working class America.”

We believe that the Occupy Wall Street is a movement that has grown due to the crème de la crème of the United States. It is rumored that George Soros, Forbes richest man having made his money from Wall Street, funded Occupy Wall Street in its preliminary stages. Most protestors, namely the ones ‘in it for the long haul,’ are direct beneficiaries of the corporate forces that Occupy Wall Street condemns. The Movement is thus hypocritical because they are protesting against the hand that feeds them; it goes without saying that most of these protestors going to Occupy Wall Street, much like Occupy Middlebury, are ‘trustafarians’ who have little to no first hand experience of what they preach. Rather, it is merely a call for solidarity that is fun and exciting to attend and worth experiencing.

The truly overlooked by corporate forces should to be the protesters. Where are they? They are most likely working their nine to five jobs, making ends meet and, unless they sacrifice their vacation time used for loved ones, family and friends, they will have no time for around the clock protesting. A recent article comparing the Slutwalk to Occupy Wall Street put it perfectly, “To get people to join your movement, they need to see themselves reflected in it.” This idea brings us to our main argument: The movement is taking away agency from the people who really need to be protesting and as a result, perpetuating marginalization and powerlessness. Mahatma Gandhi was once asked by a well-meaning British citizen what he could do to help the Indian independence movement. Gandhi asserted, “Nothing!” He understood for independence to be realized for the Indian people they needed to do it for themselves. This same critique is applied to the “in it for the long haul” protesters who are benefactors of the system they criticize.

Have you actually explored the site we are the 99 percent? Those who have been subject to the greed of the few, upload a picture of themselves, with a hand-written statement about what they have suffered and must make sure they write, “I am the 99 percent.” The protestors are perpetuating what Zizek refers to as ‘cultural capitalism,’ explained with a brief story, “in the morning he grabs the money and in the afternoon he gives half of the money back to charity.” In the case of the protesters, they have “grabbed” the leisure of time and money that in turn they put towards a protest. Occupy Wall Street is a pat on the back for those attending and supporting.

This façade of a people’s movement might actually hinder the potential for a successful movement consisting of the proletariat toppling the corporate greed that is controlling their immediate lives. The Declaration of Occupy Wall Street cites, “We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.” Occupy Wall Street protesters are indeed allies and are not all people. Banality of evil can help us explain where to go from here. We are all accountable. We have all used the oppression of marginalized groups in order to achieve success. We must acknowledge our role in the white noise we created and use our privileges accordingly. 

Co-written by Janet Rodrigues ’12 and Mugo Mutothori ‘12

One Dean's View

Thought this was worth sharing. Read the blog post then take a look through the comments. I think you will find that Ms. Rodrigues does in fact get a little help from her friends.

http://blogs.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/2011/10/11/with-a-little-help-from-my-friends/

This Week On Campus

The following is a list of scheduled events on the Middlebury College campus this week.

As of this posting, we at the The Gadfly do not explicitly endorse any of these events, but encourage our readers, contributors and fellow inquisitives to attend, in order to better inform one's own position and perspective. All events engage with issues that are of major concern to The Gadfly collective, and are ordered strictly by chronology.

Enjoy your week- perhaps "the bubble" could be in trouble!

- The Gadfly

Wednesday Oct 12th

• "Black Male Incarceration."
  Prof Keith Reeves (Swarthmore)
  @ 4:30pm in the Robert A. Jones House (RAJ conference room)
  
  
• Corporate Exploitation Film:
  "Crude: The Real Price of Oil"
  @ 7:15pm in Bihall 104
  
  

Thursday Oct 13th

• ES Colloquium Series "The Problem of Proximity: Black Male Incarceration and the Urban Environment."
  Prof Keith Reeves (Swarthmore)
  @ 12:30pm in The Orchard at Hillcrest
  
  
• VT Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project:
  Danillo Lopez visit
  @ 4:30pm in The Orchard at Hillcrest
  
  
• Student Solidarity March
  in Support of Occupy Wall Street
  @ 4:30pm outside the Davis Library
  (march to be followed by a "General Assembly" at the Gifford Amphitheater)
  
  

Friday Oct 14th

• Occupy Wall Street Panel (Professors and Students followed by an open forum) @ 12:00pm in the Robert A Jones House (RAJ conference room)
  
  

Saturday Oct 15th

• ***Careers on Wall Street Parent's Weekend Panel***
  
  Come one, come all.
  We know you have many questions to ask!
  
  We are required to ask that everyone behave in a "civilized manner." (read as you wish)
  
  @ 9:30-10:30 am in the Robert A Jones House (RAJ conference room)

Video: CBC's Kevin O'Leary gets schooled on #Occupy Wall Street movement by Chris Hedges

http://rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2011/10/best-net/cbcs-kevin-oleary-gets-schooled-occupy-movement-chris-hedges

this gave us a good laugh.

Video: FOX News Meets Intelligent Wall Street Protestor And Doesn't Air It - Instead hilariously objectifies topless protesters

http://gothamist.com/2011/10/03/video_fox_news_meets_intelligent_wa.php

Enjoy