my letter to howard stern

helloeveryone.

this is a letter i sent to howard stern. he hasn't responded. maybe if we start a letter writing/call in campaign...you can write a letter to him yourself here --> http://www.howardstern.com/contact.hs

i really really really want him to come to our school and raise awareness about how TERRIBLE it is that powell is in charge of the future of our school. while stern might seem a little out there, he knows first hand how ruthless powell is in keeping to his conservative agenda. I also think more students should know that YES powell is the guy from the fcc that got into a beef with stern. we have such wonderful, open-minded and kind students at this school...this is the image we should be pushing, not one of conservatism or censorship. 

here is the lettterrrr:

hey howard.

my name is annie brown. I'm a hot lady attending The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. As a hot lady, i have a favor to ask of you. Not only because you are a man who appreciates hot ladies, but also because i heard through the grapevine that you don't like Michael Powell very much. Neither do I.

Sadly, our wonderful school has been cursed by his existence. He is the Rector on our Board of Visitors. In other words, he runs our school. Last spring, he forced our beloved president Gene Nichol to resign because Nichol "upset conservative donors". Specifically, Nichol upset Powell and donors because he tried to remove a cross from a place of study and allow students to bring the popular Sex Worker's Art Show to campus. He was just being supportive of his students and promoting free speech, but he was asked to leave his position because of it.

Powell's evil shenanigans don't stop there. Today, Powell notified us that the students, faculty and staff of W&M will have NO SAY in the next president. Instead, Powell took the matter into his own hands and appointed the man that he wanted to be president when Nichol took the job.

So, Howard, PLEASE help me and my school. Powell can't get away with this shit anymore. He resigned from the FCC because he is a ignorant censorship tyrant, and now hes taking out all his power hunger, greed and self hate out on us. I stood up to him and asked him to resign when he came to visit, and his soullessness and disrespect towards me and my classmates brought me to tears. I can't stand this man. I know how much he disturbed your life, and now he has moved on to disturb the lives of others.

Please don't let him get away with this. Would you come speak at our school? Would you discuss this matter on your show? I know you care about free speech and what is right. Don't let him take those things away from a college campus where we should be free to be ourselves and be in control of a place we love.

Thanks for your time! You can contact me via e-mail. Also, if you want to know more about what went down, check out this blog: http://wrengateblog.com/

with love,

Annie Brown

Let's talk about Privilege

Ok.  Its been awhile, and I apologize.  Lets get this blog back into the groove with a little discussion about privilege.

I've had many frustrating encounters with a huge variety of very privileged people:  males, females, whites, people of color, gender-queers, americans, europeans.  A majority of these people simply do not acknowledge their status, and even those who do say things like this:

"I know we [white people] have done a lot of bad shit to black people, but its time for them to take responsibility for their actions"

-W&M student

Let's ignore for a second the treatment of a cultural group as a "them," thus dissociating the speaker from any interaction with the problem and think instead about what else is wrong:

1.  explicit privilege, while acknowledged here, is limited to "a lot of bad shit," most probably indicating an inability on the part of the speaker to identify with any of the actions included in this statement. 

2.  the privilege acknowledged is 100% negated by the "take responsibility" vibe of the 2nd half.  So we blow up your house and you pick up the pieces?  I know its now becoming common practice to take risks and then expect no repercussions for them, but this is ridiculous.  Just because you weren't a part of the explicit racism and discrimination of the last 300 years of American history doesn't mean you're not perpetuating its legacy.

3.  There is NO mention of implicit privilege, invisible privilege, or the sort of things that keep white convicted criminals off the air and black males getting the most, or the privilege of being able to assume you will make as much money as your colleagues, not be followed by security in retail stores, or asked to speak for your entire race.

So:  what the hell IS privilege?

Privilege is seeing isolated acts of racism rather than a system that supports it.  Privilege is being white, male, and heterosexual and thinking that the nation is doing pretty well.  Privilege is having to work to imagine living in a neighborhood where the police don't come when you call.  Privilege is assuming that when you walk in to rent a house you will be approved right away. 

 Privilege is the invisible set of unearned advantages you have as a person that are usually described as "the way things are."  There are race privileges, gender privileges, education privileges, nationalistic privileges, sexuality privileges, and economic privileges, to name a few.

Privilege is something that you have and you can be sure someone else does not, simply because of who they are and what they look like.

Not recognizing your privilege infurates the hell out of me.  How in the world can you blame another group for existing in a society that constantly reminds them that they are inferior to you?

It's simple, really.  Not recognizing your privilege means that you are not accountable as a part of this society for the inequality of power that we perpetuate every day as individuals.  

I'll admit it.  I'm privileged.  I'm white, I'm male, I'm heterosexual, and I come from an affluent, middle-class, educated family.  And don't worry, I have a LOT of guilt about it.  Its a guilt that drives me to acknowledge that I don't deserve any of it, that I can own it and use it to do good things and to bring some of it to those who do not have nearly as much.

I am reminded of Kanye West's furious speech with Mike Myers in which he exclaims that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  Hmm.  I'll take it one step further, Kanye, and say that for the most part, very few Americans care about anyone besides themselves.  This is possibly the most dissapointing and depressing concept that I could postulate, but I do believe its true.  We are so easily socialized, so easily roped into situations in which we see the actions of one racial group as legitimate but the very same actions by another as being criminal.  

How can we overcome this?  How can we see a situation in which we can treat a cause instead of a symptom?  Listen carefully, I'm only going to say this once:

ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR FUCKING PRIVILEGE, AND STAND ACCOUNTABLE FOR IT.

phew.

More to come later.

Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton

"In conclusion, I'd like to invite the media to grow a pair, and if you can't, I'll let you mine"
-Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton on SNL, 9/13/08

This skit was amazing. Both Tina and Amy (and Hillary) make me as happy as a feminist clam.

Dealing with authority and the media

Wow.  Its been a little while since this blogger hopped online.  I guess its been a little busy around here, and as anyone on a campus knows, there's this thing called "work" that starts to accumulate at this point in the semester.

So I've run into a wall, an edifice, an institution.  My open letter that I wrote about Rector Powell was rejected from the William and Mary student newspaper, the Flat Hat.  Most of the time, that wouldn't bother me.  Given the inflammatory nature of the article, it seemed a bit suspicious.  Upon talking to the Editor of the paper, it seems that the piece was given the axe because it focused on Powell himself rather than treating the Board of Visitors as a single unit.  

Something about that really bothers me, and it has to do with the way the power structure responds to criticism.  In my experience, institutions do not see individual criticisms as having "standing," to use a judicial term.  On the contrary, institutions like the Board of Visitors typically answer only to broad organizations that use similar language and ways of organizing information.

But if you break institutions down into their constituent individuals, the game changes completely.  No longer do you have a governing body of a large public University, but rather several separate packets of bone and blood whose purpose in the world is much broader and whose psyche is much more fragile and reactive than the institution they are a part of.  A great example:  Michael Powell defends attacks against him.

So you see, my article was intended to elicit a response.  I am no longer interested, as is dictated by media sources--and budding media moguls--like the Flat Hat, in addressing the "appropriate" facade of order and authority associated with my college.  Its time to deconstruct this power structure and get to the heart of it:  these are people we are dealing with, not machines, so lets bring it to them where it matters most.

Lets show them why they can't do this to us.

Feminism in Politics

So...Palin is a feminist?

*sounds of 200 years worth of research and theory and struggle being flushed down the drain*

Ugh. I don't even think I'm going to touch this one. If you supremely believe that Sarah Palin:

a) is a candidate in support of womens'/womyns' rights or affiliated with feminist ideology

b) has even READ anything by Butler or Fausto-Sterling

c) is what a feminist looks like

then this blog can't help you find your sanity. WAKE UP! She's anti-choice, has voted multiple times against giving money to single or teenage mothers in need (and has a teenage pregnant daughter), supports abstinence-only education (and has a teenage pregnant daughter), and even charged rape victims for medical care. Her primary concern is rewarding those with financial privilege. She is no woman's friend.

But its at this junction that I'd to point out a GLARING disparity in the coverage of Palin's nomination as the GOP VP candidate and Senator Hillary Clinton's bid in the presidential race.

Palin is being hailed by many major news sources as an appropriate feminist in politics (for which there is no evidence), whereas Hillary was goaded, criticized, and objectified by the very same news networks. How is it that Palin, a woman whose political experience includes hemmorhaging money from the town of which she was elected mayor is considered more qualified to be in the White House while Hillary, who wrote policy during Bill's 8-year stint in Washington and has since been re-elected as senator is seen as a less-than-human object whose place is to be criticized for showing cleavage during a Senate session?

Hypocrisy, yes. But also, lets remember that these news moguls get pretty upset when someone speaking real change comes knocking on their door saying "The days of the patriarchy are numbered." I for one, believe that neither Clinton nor Obama holds the keys to a progressive future, but if all that is learned from this election is that Sarah Palin is a feminist, I'm leaving the country for good.

SG

Open Letter to Michael Powell

Michael Powell is the Rector of the Board of Visitors, the highest governing body of my public university, the College of William and Mary.  Last spring, he led the BoV to the decision to dismiss President Gene Nichol based on reasons that the Board enumerated as being economic in nature.  Nichol was a great--if brusque and unapologetic--leader, and neither the student body nor the faculty were involved in the decision.  In fact, the meeting was held in silence.

This week, Taylor Reveley III was sworn in as president.  The BoV notified the student body two days before the decision was made that they would be searching for a new president in a "special meeting" to which no one was invited.  Two days later, he was sworn in.  Needless to say, I was furious.  This act of censorship will not go unnoticed, although apathy has once again set in as the primary source of reaction amongst students, leading our local newspaper to release this article:

Students and faculty react to Reveley’s appointment.  Bullshit.  I'm not going down without a fight.

Here is a form letter that I wrote, to be submitted to the newspaper and emailed directly to Powell.  I thought my fellow radicals might want to read it first:

Michael Powell:  Despicable.
    Michael Powell refuses to answer my emails.  I asked him to point me in the right direction of the "special meeting" whereby the Board of Visitors would subsequently confirming Taylor Reveley as the next President of the College, but he neglected to respond.  After the announcement that Reveley had been chosen, I emailed him again.  No dice.  So here we go, I'm back at the keyboard, addressing Michael Powell open-letter style:

    Mr. Powell,        

I would like to inquire as to the nature of the search for the new president.  How did you reach your conclusion, where are the documents regarding the proceedings, and why were visitors not allowed to the special meeting in which the decision was made?  The decision to confirm him in just two days reeks of SOMETHING, and you owe it to us, the students who you claim to represent, to make your decision clear.          

When the first email was sent, I thought my email was broken and listing your messages from last spring when President Nichol's contract was not renewed.  Your decision to ignore the requests for proper justification were as inappropriate then as now.  In what phase of your life did you learn that clandestine decision-making was acceptable or could possibly garner positive reactions from those most affected by the decision?          

Don't get me wrong, President Reveley will probably do a great job.  He weathered the storm last spring and managed to come out on top, so he is clearly resilient, but this isn't about him.  This is about you.  This is about a man who during his tenure at the FCC decided it would be appropriate to censor content that you personally disagreed with, completely disregarding the rights of free speech for those broadcasting material as well as the right of listeners to consume media they wish to hear.          

So.  What have you done?  You've given us a President under the guise of representation of our interests who we had no part in confirming.  You refused to search the country or to give us enough time to respond to your initial notice of inquiry.  You ignored us.  You took away our voice.  Michael "Censorship" Powell, you are despicable.

Signed,
SG

Technical troubles, the direction of the blog, ruminations

So:  we may have made a mistake.  blogspot (or blogger.com as it is now called) gives fewer and less useful options than tumblr, so we may simply move the blog.  We'll see. 

Anyway.  Where do we want to take this?  Aren't there already enough sites that simply re-post news and give short blurbs about why or why not the authors agree with it?  But original content is extremely difficult to come up with on a daily, hourly, time-unityly basis, so I think that the format will of course come out as a combination of both.

Semantics aside:  how radical are we?  We don't exist on any continuum, so it will of course be difficult to decide how best to describe the content of this blog in any simple blurb.  What we ARE, though, is a radical outlet for those people on college campuses worldwide who feel that there isn't enough expression of these ideals and these issues.

I go to a southern public university, the College of William and Mary.  While most of the students here pride themselves on attending the "second oldest American university" or the "Hottest Small State School" according to Newsweek 2005 (...and we do happen to be battling an intense heat-wave at the moment), I tend to identify my own place here by the number of groups I am NOT a part of rather than those I am.  This stems from the fact that besides the usual suspects (GLBT Alliance, Women's Studies 'Zines, VOX, and FMLA chapters) there is very little radical action or thought occurring in these parts.  Chalk it up to the conservative bent of the administration, the very religious demographic of those who live around the school, or any number of other factors (for instance, Fraternities and Sororities attract MUCH less radical matriculants to the school than say a Vassar which recognizes the problematic nature of Greek Life) but the Radical sphere at my school is severely lacking.

So:  Does that in any way describe your experience?  There are plenty of radical undertones and overtones to all of my experience at my College, but I would love to bring them to the forefront.  I would love to post tips and links to great ways to organize on campus, great events and conventions and gatherings and orgies (really, whatever you're into).  I'm into posting reactions to political events or pieces of theory or great media applications of theory (or great outrages), but only as much as you, the reader, wants to hear.

And most importantly:  We. Want. You. To. Contribute. Shoot me an email or send me a private message if you're interested and give me like 100 words (as in, not much) as to why you'd like to author pieces.  No structure.  Just do it.

Peace Out, Radicals

SG