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Aesthetic Activism: Bullets Into Bells and Social Justice

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The day I started writing this essay, two students were killed in yet another high school shooting in the United States. This time it was in New Mexico. The day I came back to revise, a policeman had shot and killed a 6-year old boy in San Antonio. Today, as I go back over this a third time, there was a school shooting in Kentucky. Two students were killed; 18 injured. Every day I have returned to work on this piece, there has been a shooting in this country—two were school shootings. I will type that again: Every day I have returned to work on this piece, there has been a shooting in this country—two were school shootings.

On Monday, December 5, 2017, the nation paid remembrance to the Sandy Hook school shooting, a massacre of 26 people, including 20 elementary school children, which happened five years ago. That same day, a book I’ve been working on for close to two years was published to commemorate and honor those who survived.

And those who did not.

That book, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence, is an attempt to address what public health experts are calling an epidemic in contemporary America. Bullets into Bells pairs 50 poems by a range of American poets with responses from survivors of shootings, community leaders, and activists in the anti-gun violence movement. For example, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jody Williams responds to “Dancing,” an incredible poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, that traces the history of ammunition, beginning with Prometheus stealing fire and ending with an indictment of colonial violence and the American propensity for mass killing, most recently at the Pulse Night Club:

They were dancing in Orlando, in a club. Spring night.
Gay Pride. The relation of the total casualties to the history
Of the weapon that sent exploded metal into their bodies—
30 rounds a minute, or 40, is a beautifully made instrument,
And in America you can buy it anywhere—and into the history
Of the shaming culture that produced the idea of Gay Pride—
They were mostly young men, they were dancing in a club,
A spring night. The radio clicks on. Green fire. Blue fire.

About this poem, Williams writes, “I love the myth of Prometheus stealing fire—stealing some of the god Zeus’s power—for the benefit of humans. I’d like to rewrite it for our times. In my version, Prometheus would steal gunpowder, nuclear weapons, and the makings of killer robots and bury them deep in a cave on Mt. Olympus. To save human beings from ourselves.”

In another heartbreaking collaboration, Samira Rice, Tamir Rice’s mother, responds to Reginald Dwayne Betts’ unforgettable poem, “When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving.” Betts’ poem begins:

My two young sons play
in the backseat while the video of Tamir dying
plays in my head, & for everything I do know, the thing
I don’t say is that this should not be the brick and mortar
of poetry.

Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, begins with a heartbreaking confession:

“When I think of Tamir as his mother, the woman who gave birth to him, I wonder why my son had to lose his life in such a horrific way in this great place we call America.” Toward the end of her response, she directs her anger, appropriately trenchant, at larger forces that continue to threaten the marginalized and disenfranchised: “Injustice in this country is pitiful and pathetic. The injustice starts with economics, education, and politicians.”

Samaria Rice’s voice joins a chorus of others – the Emergency Room doctor on call during and after the Sandy Hook shooting; DeAndra Yates, the mother of thirteen-year old Dre Yates, who was killed by a stray bullet fired from outside the birthday party he was attending; Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action Against Gun Violence, and Abbey Clements, the second-grade teacher at Sandy Hook who saved two children. Their words and those of some of America’s most celebrated poets—like former U.S. Poet Laureates Natasha Trethewey, Billy Collins, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Rita Dove—create a chorus that evokes both elegy and action.

None of us involved with the book know if it can have any short or long-term impact in regard to gun violence in the U.S. In truth, probably very little. But, Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro read Abbey Clements’ statement from Bullets into Bells on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The book has received a great deal of attention from the mainstream press, including features in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and PBS. So, people are listening. People are reading.

But, are people changing? Are ideas galvanizing? I am not an optimist, but I am not a pessimist either. Somewhere between those poles is a belief that the right series of actions can’t, forever, do nothing.

The West Coast launch of Bullets into Bells will take place on February 22, 2018 at the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco. It will feature poets Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirschfield, and editors Alexandra Teague and Dean Rader. Respondents include Rev. Michael McBride, Catherine Stefani from Moms Demand Action, and George Garvis, Executive Director Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.

Global Manifestos Workshop

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Organized by:
Pedro Lange-Churion, Modern and Classical Languages
Tanu Sankalia, Art + Architecture
Sumer Seiki, Teacher Education
John Zarobell,  International Studies

FTC Panelists
Panelists at Global Manifestos. Photo by John Zarobell.

Global Manifestos was an innovative workshop for students, faculty and the public that encouraged individuals to share their experiences and reactions to the changes in the art community wrought by globalization. This event was part of the Forum for Transnational Collaboration that occurred on November 17th-18th, 2017, which brought scholars from around the world to voice their perspectives on how globalization has affected the art world in their own domains. The workshop provided an opportunity to elaborate on these vocalizations by giving all participants an opportunity to express their own views on globalization in the form of a manifesto that can be articulated in 60 seconds or less. Further, the organizers of the event (all members of the CRASE Art and Globalization Faculty Research Circle) brought camera equipment out to Oakland’s First Friday Arts Walk on October 6th and to the Minnesota Street gallery complex on October 14th to film public participation outside of the academy. We encouraged all participants to speak impromptu, but we also worked with USF students, faculty, and staff to script manifestos during the first day of the Forum that they could read or designate for others to read at the recording on November 18th. All of the participants of the forum were asked to draft or improvise a manifesto on globalization to ensure that many different global perspectives were represented.


Dialogue In Between from Pedro Lange on Vimeo.

The goal of the Global Manifestos Workshop was to present an alternative to the model of economic globalization by providing a platform for multiple and diverse articulations on globalization. The voices of artists, curators, and critics who do not operate in the United States and Europe have been considered marginal but scholars and professionals need to rethink these norms. Further, the sense the public has about the effects of globalization on their daily lives has not been explored in this context. Thus, the focus was to explore the developments of artists and institutions from the (former) periphery that diffuse their own innovations into global culture and, in so doing, transform the meaning of the visual arts, social dynamics and market processes of the art world. We believe that alternative geographies result from new cultural and economic patterns and these develop unprecedented networks of engagement and participation that this forum was able to capitalize on. The resulting film not only presents the global participants, but also local voices from various communities throughout the city who were encouraged to record their own views. We found locals—old and young, with a variety of professional experiences, ethnic backgrounds, and perspectives on the impact of globalization in their lives—to speak on camera. In this way, we have sought to maximize the variety of voices that contribute to the fabric of the completed film.

Jose Luis Aranda, a graduate student from USF, worked with Director Pedro Lange-Churion to edit the final version of the film so none of the manifestos are viewed in complete form. This intentional approach contributes to a kaleidoscopic whole that reflects a wide array of voices that exemplify diversity and demonstrate the many perspectives on preservation in the midst of change.

Enemy Alien: Uncovering Family History

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Sherise Kimura reflects on an artifact as part of 10 x 10: Ten Objects, Ten Stories presented in conjunction with the Thacher Gallery exhibition Something from Nothing: Art and Handcrafted Objects from America’s Concentration Camps, August 21 – November 15, 2017.

Artist unknown. Cane. Circa 1942-1943
Artist unknown. Cane. Circa 1942-1943, National Japanese American Historical Society, San Francisco, California.

On this beautiful wooden cane, the inscription reads in English, “In enemy alien camp, North America, New Mexico, Lordsburg.” The cane is a work of art, but it also served a useful purpose. I heard that many canes were made by older Issei, first generation Japanese immigrant men, to help with walking on the uneven terrain in the camps.

The “enemy alien” camp at Lordsburg has a special meaning to my family and me because my paternal grandfather, whom I never met, was among the Issei held at Lordsburg. Lordsburg was the U.S. Army camp that held the largest number of Issei, who at the time were not allowed to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Later my grandfather was transferred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Santa Fe Camp and finally returned home to Hawai‘i in November 1945 after nearly three and a half years.

I only learned about this story of my grandfather about two years ago from a book my cousin, Colleen Kimura, wrote about her father. Because my father could offer very little information, I started doing my own research. I was surprised to find records for my grandfather in the National Archives WWII Alien Enemy Detention and Internment case files, which document the detainment and internment of suspected alien enemies under the Enemy Alien Control Program. In his files were his Alien Registration Form, a warrant for his arrest, camp behavior reports, and various administrative and procedural documents including correspondence about his possible parole to the War Relocation Authority (WRA) camp in Jerome, Arkansas, given that his two sons were U.S. soldiers in combat. Most revealing was the transcript of his hearing shortly after his arrest. I learned that his home had been searched as part of the raids after the attack on Pearl Harbor when martial law was imposed in Hawai‘i. Based on some spurious charges, he was declared an alien enemy and recommended for internment for the duration of the war. His family was not told when or where he was being sent.

My grandfather was 54 at the time and had lived in Hawai‘i for 35 years. He was a blacksmith for a living, worked on a pineapple plantation camp with his family, and was active in the local community.

Growing up in Hawai‘i, I heard few personal stories of internment or incarceration, most likely because Hawai‘i did not experience the same mass incarceration of Japanese Americans that had transpired on the mainland. Fewer than 2,000 people, or 1% of the Japanese population in Hawai‘i at that time, were incarcerated. This was largely due to the fact that the Japanese comprised over one third of the population of the Territory of Hawai‘i and their labor was essential to the economy. Interestingly, the memory of internment in Hawai‘i is finding greater public awareness in recent years, with the uncovering of the Hono‘uli‘uli internment camp, the largest of 17 camps in Hawai‘i.

Late in his life, my uncle reflected on his father’s internment and acknowledged the sorrow my grandfather must have felt when he returned to Hawai‘i at the end of the war while the nation celebrated. In 1956 my grandfather eventually left Hawai‘i and his family and returned to Japan, where he passed away two years later. According to my uncle, although he never spoke it, my grandfather felt he had no place in this country anymore–where he had lived most of life, where he had raised his family, where all five of his sons had served in the military⎯but where he had been treated like a criminal.

Encountering the City and the Self in Khary Lazarre-White’s Passage

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On October 18, 2017, CRASE hosted writer, social justice advocate, attorney, and activist Khary Lazarre-White. Lazarre-White discussed his work as co-founder of the Brotherhood/Sister Sol (Bro/Sis) and his debut novel Passage (Seven Stories Press). Brotherhood/Sister Sol is a nationally renowned, Harlem based, comprehensive youth development and educational organization that provides rites of passage programming, arts and enrichment based after school care, counseling, summer camps, job training, college preparation and scholarship, and month long international studies programs to Africa and Latin American. In this post, assistant professor of English Samira Abdur-Rahman, moderator of the event, reflects on the themes of Passage.

In “New York State of Mind,” a track on his debut album Illmatic, twenty-year-old Nas raps “I never sleep cause sleep is the cousin of death.” In Passage, we are told that the protagonist Warrior does not shut his eyes when he sleeps, that this is a trait passed down through the generations: “Even when he really slept, and when he was most relaxed, in his deepest dreams, Warrior’s eyes were open.”  In the magical, Afro-surrealist world of Passage, we are encouraged to understand these open eyes both figuratively and literally. Open eyes are a metaphor for Warrior’s consciousness, for his acuity as a reader of both the surfaces and deeper implications of his experiences and self.

At the same time, Nas and Warrior are describing the reality of their vulnerability in the tones of a guarded masculinity. Sleeping is dangerous and not being on guard could possibly risk your life and/or the lives of your loved ones. The lyrics to “New York State of Mind” are gritty, yet they also operate at a level of myth making and imagination defying the simplistic designation of gangsta rap or pure street documentary. Nas’s Illmatic was released in 1994 and narrated his life growing up in the Queensbridge Projects. Passage is set in 1993, in the boroughs of Harlem and Brooklyn, but its prose embodies the deep and complex knowledges emblematic of what we now identify as the golden era of hip hop, an era that put New York City’s boroughs on the map.  Nas speaks of project living, yet the figurative and literal interiors of his life defy stereotype. So, too, do the interiors of Warrior’s life.

Passage is a novel of the hip hop generation but speaks to the late geographer’s Clyde Wood sense of the symbiotic relationship between blues and hip hop geography. As Lazarre-White stated during his talk, New York City is not simply a geography; it is a character in the novel. Blues tropes are our entry into the world of Passage—they construct a language for Warrior’s encounters with the city, with his ancestors and with his self. In his eloquent study of hip hop aesthetics, Jelani Cobb describes the blue’s bad man figure. Characteristically braggadocious, fearless and mythically strong, the bad man figure was an attempt to resist the very real vulnerabilities that black men faced in the oppressive, racial caste system of Jim Crow.

In the place of myths of badness and heroic strength, the opening scene of Passage describes Warrior’s anger: “It had been the same for years now. Warrior woke angry. Just plain old surly mean. Angry at existence…He knew he was tired…and angry.” The book highlights spaces that produce but also potentially untangle the knot of anger, which allows us to see beyond the misunderstood postures of Warrior’s teen masculinity and takes us deeper into the circles of Warrior’s thoughts, fears and his loves.

Warrior loves his two best friends, one a teenage girl who lives in a house of three generations of Caribbean women. He receives letters from his other best friend, the incarcerated brotherman, a victim of police brutality and the criminal justice system. Warrior’s teacher mother and musician father are loving parents. They respect and understand their son enough to impart on him diasporic lessons, instructions in black history and aesthetics. They respect him enough to listen to him, to let him argue with them, to understand that Warrior is dealing with new terrains of both violence and identity. They love Warrior, yet they cannot offer him complete protection as he navigates the realities of the outside, of the brutal winter, of the blue soldiers who torture and disfigure young black bodies. Still they are committed to helping him through his passage.

At the event, Lazarre-White commented on the significance of the word “passage”—its allusion to the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade and noted it as indicative of the rites of passage needed by Warrior to transition into a new phase. In articulating the hauntings of the past and the possibilities of Warrior’s passage, the novel’s characters speak in folkloric syntax, through riddles, aphorisms and paradoxes, through the language of the everyday, the magical and the sublime. The novel speaks this way because it acknowledges the complex ways that young people feel, experience and narrate their worlds.

Samira Abdur-Rahman’s current book project is Sites of Instruction: The Geography of Black Childhood.

Return to Topaz

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Ken Yoshioka reflects on a trip to Topaz, Utah in response to the Thacher Gallery exhibition Something from Nothing: Art and Handcrafted Objects from America’s Concentration Camps, August 21 – November 15, 2017.

In my parent’s house sat two wooden root stands that we used for potted plants.  I had never given them much thought until I saw a wood stand carved from the trunk of a small tree in the exhibit Something from Nothing: Art and Handcrafted Objects from America’s Concentration Camps at the University of San Francisco Thacher Gallery.  To see something so beautifully created out of ordinary tree parts reminded me of a time when I took my family on a national park road trip through Utah.  When we were planning the trip back across Highway 50, my wife related that we would be passing through Delta, where the Topaz relocation camp was located.  On an impulse, I decided we should go and see the site.

Driving out to what seemed to be nowhere and seeing the desolate landscape brought me to tears as I thought of the years spent in such a place by my mom’s family.  I actually called my mom from Topaz and found out which block her family resided in during their time there.  As I remember standing in the hot sun in the place my mom was incarcerated, I am reminded of the objects of beauty in the form of arts and crafts that were created, essentially, something from nothing.  I had read that many took up a craft to deal with the “nothingness” of the camps.  My parents never really talked about the camps and it was only after researching accounts of what life was like did I realize the enormity of those years. When I spoke to my mom from Topaz, she spoke of the difficulties but also about making the best of the situation.  I actually interviewed my dad regarding his remembrances in the camp his family was incarcerated in Tule Lake.  I related that the information would be invaluable for a paper I was writing but he was insistent that those interviews were to stay private.  Two voices, one of resignation and one of bitterness, sadness and shame.

Now I look at those beautiful wood stands and I am reminded of the resilience of those who endured the camps, who endured with Gaman, meaning: “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.”

 

 

Is Development on San Francisco’s Treasure Island Viable?

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Professor Tanu Sankalia discusses the history of Treasure Island and how earthquake risk, toxic contamination, and sea-level rise still imperil plans for large-scale, capital intensive, development on the island.

The man-made, low-lying, Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Photo copyright Barrie Rokeach 2017.

Few Bay Area residents are entirely aware of Treasure Island’s presence, and fewer still know its history: when it was built, how it has been used over the past decades, and what are plans for its future. Despite its very central location in the San Francisco Bay, this flat, low-lying, man-made island has remained at the periphery of most people’s local and geographical consciousness.

As an architect and urban planner, Treasure Island first caught my attention when plans for its redevelopment were unveiled in 2005. The project was promoted as a cutting-edge sustainable development, especially at a time in the early 2000s when sustainability had caught on rapidly among architecture and planning firms. Yet I was intrigued as to how a multi-billion dollar development that consumed great resources, required massive new infrastructure, and was proposed on what appeared to be a risky site (more about this later), could actually be sustainable.

Over the last eight years, my research on the planning and design history of the redevelopment project, together with contributions from a group of excellent scholars on a range of historic and contemporary issues concerning the island, has recently culminated in a co-edited book, Lynne Horiuchi and Tanu Sankalia, Eds., Urban Reinventions: San Francisco’s Treasure Island published by the University of Hawaii Press. While our work focuses on a single site and underscores its local significance, it also reaches out to topics of global importance such as the Pacific Rim, New Deal, world’s fairs, World War II, Cold War military industrial complex, nuclear contamination, sustainability, and eco-cities, among others. This research has also informed my teaching as I have been able to use Treasure Island as a case study in the urban planning and design course I teach in the Masters of Science in Environmental Management (MSEM) program at USF.

The Army Corps of Engineers built Treasure Island between 1936-1937 with New Deal money. It was constructed concurrently with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, to serve as San Francisco’s airport, at a time of major transportation infrastructure expansion. Between 1939-1940 the island hosted the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE), which shifted the focus of world’s fairs as venues of science and industry to representations of international unity exemplified in the idea of a Pacific Rim interconnected through commerce and trade. World War II scuttled this utopian imagination, and in early 1942 Treasure Island was converted into an active naval base that cycled 4.5 million US soldiers on their way to and back from the Pacific theater of war. After World War II, Naval Station Treasure Island focused on training and distribution activities until it was officially closed in 1997. In 2011, the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a redevelopment project for a new sustainable city of 19,000 residents, which critics and commentators see as an example of twenty-first century, “ecotopian” urbanism.

Underlying Treasure Island’s historical narrative, our research found that since its conception, the island has remained a contested site with federal and local agencies vying for its control. These agencies have recurrently shaped the physical character of the island (what we call urban reinventions) through ambitious projects like the airport, world’s fair, military base and now, eco-city. But despite these important historical lessons, which are crucial in understanding how cities and communities conceive projects, the material risks—earthquakes, toxic soil and rising seas—surrounding its latest grand vision are rather pressing.

Treasure Island was built on the shoals of the natural Yerba Buena Island from dredged bay mud filled into a trough enclosed by a sea wall made of large boulders. The shoals, which function as bedrock into which tall buildings must pierce their foundations, are deeper away from the island. Although most buildings in the proposed plan are clustered where the shoals are shallower, there is considerable infrastructure on parts of the island that geotechnical reports (produced in the first reuse plan of 1996) indicate to be unstable. Given the island’s proximity to some of the Bay Area’s largest earthquake faults, a significant tremor can cause the landfill to function like jelly.

Toxic soil remains a major concern on Treasure Island. The US Navy established a Damage Control School in 1947 during its tenure on the island to train naval personnel in decontamination procedures in the event of an atomic, chemical or biological attack. For training purposes they built a mock training ship—the USS Pandemonium—from scrap metal, which was periodically contaminated with cesium-137 and a diluted solution of radioactive bromine-82. In 1971, they dragged this mock ship from the northwest to the southeast of the island further spreading radioactive substances across the island. According to the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the state agency charged with monitoring toxic cleanup at Treasure Island, the island’s soils contain a long list of toxic chemical substances harmful to humans including plutonium and radium. Furthermore, the current Historical Radiological Assessment report that the Navy must produce to guide management and remediation of toxic soils states that the island’s soils simply cannot return to their pre-military state.

Almost twenty years after the redevelopment process for the island was initiated, we have greater awareness about climate change, global warming, and one of its major effects—sea level rise. Maps produced by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and the San Francisco Public Press show Treasure Island and the edges of San Francisco Bay under threat from rising seas and storm surges. There are plans to raise the entire island and build a higher, stronger seawall to protect against this danger. Still there is little evidence—especially considering the example of Miami Beach, which is constantly inundated despite its massive seawalls and giant pumps—that such measures will actually succeed.

The Bay Area indeed needs more housing, which Treasure Island’s development could well deliver. There are also many good ideas such as manmade wetlands, urban agriculture and energy efficient buildings, in the redevelopment plans. But they well may be great ideas in the wrong place. Why jeopardize billions of dollars in development and risk the lives of almost twenty thousand residents on an unstable, contaminated, low-lying island site?

Looking back to the very construction of Treasure Island and its recurrent urban reinventions, I am reminded of the German writer W.G. Sebald’s prescient observation that “it is often our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the degree of our insecurity.” It is in moments of vulnerability that governments, cities, and communities take on ambitious and, often, risky projects. In recognizing this risk, it still may not be too late to rethink the viability of development on Treasure Island.

Activism through Art and Design

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The Implications of the Trump Presidential Administration: CRASE-sponsored symposium and workshop

Activism Through Art & Design Panel discussion with (L to R) Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Alicia Escott, and Katina Papson-Rigby of 100 Days Action with Malaquais Montoya.

The day after President Trump’s inauguration, millions gathered all over the nation to protest in organized Women’s Marches. During these marches, many participants donned knitted pink hats with cat-like ears — dubbed the “pussyhat”— as a home-made, crafted statement of protest against Trump’s “Make America Great Again” cap and his platform more broadly. Others carried signs and wore messages on their shirts as a visual display of voice.

As professors in Design and Teacher Education, we see these protest objects drawing from a long tradition of art, craft, and design made for activist purposes. Now, more than ever, the urgent issue we face as citizens is: how can we make our voices seen and heard?

As designers, we think about how visual and artistic tools can amplify our voices and to take action. At a time in which the Trump administration is actively threatening the core values of our USF community, what is the potential significance and power of art, craft, design, and visual symbolism in resistance? How can design be social protest?

Inspired by other groups that encourage both dialogue and political action, we held a symposium discussion and workshop event on activism through art and design. This event took place on April 4, 2017, and included an hour-long panel discussion with artist Malaquais Montoya and three members of the art activist group 100 Days Action – Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Alicia Escott, and Katina Papson-Rigby.

Directly following the panel, faculty, speakers and students alike took part in an hour-long workshop in which students identified issues of concern and created their own visual activist messages in the form of buttons, post cards and other visual works. Students had an opportunity to explore the ways they too could make their own voices seen and heard with a mentor activist artist. Throughout the hour, our community grew stronger through conversation, which was as important to the works created. The journey as individuals and as a community continues, the work is not done.

Students, professors and presenters dialogue together about issues of concern and create visual messages of protest.

Symposium Panelists

Malaquais Montoya

Art is Malaquias Montoya’s strongest voice. He has used silkscreening, poster making, and mural painting, for decades to communicate the silent and often ignored experiences of Chicano, Mexican and Central American working class, and other disenfranchised people of the world. Art also allows him to awaken his own consciousness, to reveal a diverse reality and to actively work to transform it. What better function for art at this time? A voice for the voiceless. Montoya is credited by historians as one of the founders of the social serigraphy movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960’s. Montoya’s unique visual expression is an art of protest, depicting the resistance and strength of humanity in the face of injustice and the necessity to unite behind that struggle.

Montoya has lectured and taught at numerous colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area including Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1989 Montoya has held a professorship at the University of California, Davis, teaching both in the department of Art and the department of Chicana/o Studies.

100 Days Action

100 Days Action is a counter-narrative to the Trump administration’s one hundred day plan. 100 Days Action is a San-Francisco-based calendar of activist and artistic strategy, and a call to thinkers, artists, and writers to propose gestures that can be carried out either at home or in the world. It’s partnering with many important arts organizations, such as Southern Exposure Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and KQED Arts. 100 Days Action will be represented by three of its organizing artists:

Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born in Bogotá, Colombia. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Guernica, and anthologized in Guernica Annual (Haymarket Books), Wise Latinas (Nebraska U. Press) and American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans (Dalkey Archive Press). She is the 2014 recipient of the San Francisco Foundation’s Mary Tanenbaum award for non-fiction. She has received scholarships and support from Hedgebrook, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, The Camargo Foundation, Djerassi Artist Residency Program, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. She writes the Book Spine column for KQED. Her debut novel, The Fruit of the Drunken Tree, is forthcoming from Doubleday in 2018.

Alicia Escott is an artist based in San Francisco whose work has dealt with issues of environmental degradation for over 15 years. Her work addresses issues of species-loss, the processes of commercial mediation in late-capitalist society, as well as the individual and collective experience of loss, heartbreak and longing. Her thinking focuses on grappling with what it is to live a human life amid a moment that is profoundly rare in the geologic history of the planet. She is interested in how we each are negotiating our immediate day-to-day realities and responsibilities amid an awareness of the overarching specter of climate change, mass-extinction and other Anthropocenic events. She approaches these issues with an interstitial practice that encompasses writing, drawing, painting, photography, video, sculpture, social-practice and activism with a focus on tailoring the medium to the issue. Escott holds an MFA from CCA, where she received the Richard K. Price Scholarship and a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. Escott has been a fellow at Djerassi, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the JB Blunk Artist Residency. Her work has been shown in over 75 art institutions, galleries and alternative spaces, and included in exhibitions at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Berkeley Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and in the San Francisco Maritime Museum.

Katina Papson-Rigby is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in San Francisco, CA. She employs the tools of progressive education, time-based media, and poetry in her performances and videos. Inquiry, dialogue and storytelling are a through line in much of her work. Katina holds two Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, one in Computer Design & Photography and the other in K-12 Art Education. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Media Arts from the California College of the Arts in 2007. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in San Francisco, CA at SOMArts, Southern Exposure, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Whitney Museum in New York. She has devoted much of her professional life to advocating for equity and inclusion, has published with multicultural education scholar Sonia Nieto through Teachers College Press, and sits on the board of People of Color In Independent Schools of Northern California (POCIS). The pronouns Katina uses are she/her/hers, she identifies as mixed, and is a proud Bronx, New York native.

Traveling Green

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School of Management Associate Professor Michelle Millar discusses sustainability in the hospitality industry and what it means to be a responsible traveler.

Image credit: sloth by henryalien, via flickr. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 2.0.

In 2005, my life changed when I took a trip to Costa Rica, a country well known for its natural beauty, wildlife, and commitment to sustainability and ecotourism. During my adventure, I found my way into the jungle and ended up in a small ecolodge (but that’s a story for another time!).

It was at this lodge, that my eyes were opened to the minimal impact that one business can have on the environment. For example, lunch and dinner orders were taken in the morning so that the only food ingredients purchased that day were for our meals that day, which eliminated waste from unused ingredients.

Prior to that trip, my concept of ecotourism was traveling to Oklahoma every year in a ‘67 Country Squire Station wagon– with no air conditioning, staying on a farm with my family, and taking a bath in a washtub with my sister because there was no running water.

I have learned quite a bit since then.

In 2015, just over one billion people traveled the world. That number is expected to increase to 1.7 billion by 2025. That is a lot of people moving around the world, which will no doubt have a major impact on our planet. While some of those travelers might consider themselves environmentally conscious travelers, their behavior while traveling often says otherwise.

How about you?

Are you a responsible traveler? Do you practice the same behavior when traveling as you do at home? Do you turn that water off when brushing your teeth in a hotel? Re-use your bath towels in your hotel? Or, do you “conveniently” forget all of that behavior because it’s easier when on vacation? These are the kinds of questions I like to answer with my research in the hospitality and tourism industry.

When I started researching this topic about 10 years ago, existing work focused on sustainable tourism, but no one was studying it operationally for hotels. This was at a time when the term “greening” was creating quite a buzz for hoteliers who scrambled to make their hotels environmentally friendly, but no one was talking to the guests.

Did guests even care about a green hotel? Did they even know what that meant? The hospitality industry revolves around providing quality service and exceptional experiences for its guests, but no one was even talking with them to see if staying at a green hotel was something they wanted.

Well, it turns out that guests are interested in staying in a green hotel, but they have their limits.

  • They do not mind recycling, linen-reuse programs, or efficient lighting.
  • Low-flow fixtures are okay, as long as the shower pressure is good.
  • Soap and shampoo dispensers save hugely on waste, yet guests do not want them because they are reminded too much of going to a gym.
  • They also do not want to be inconvenienced in any way to participate in a hotel’s environmentally friendly programs.
  • Recycling bins in the room are good, but bins only in the hallways or hotel lobby are an inconvenience.

It turns out travelers are picky– and despite the fact that they may say they are environmentally conscious travelers, their behaviors often do not support their attitudes. It seems that many travelers become different people when they travel.

Fortunately, hoteliers are moving forward and forging change in the industry, and as a result, traveler behavior. It saves hoteliers money and saves the environment, and at the same time, it gives them the opportunity to educate guests about environmental impact. As my research has shown, this education and change is carrying over into other sectors of hospitality. They are “training” us to be better travelers, even if it may not be top-of-mind initially. Education, education, education is what it’s all about; but then, of course I would say that!

So—the next time you travel, I challenge you to think about the type of traveler you are. Is the environment “top-of-mind” just as it might be at home? Do you elect to stay in green hotels? If so, what would you expect when staying in one?

Announcing the Fall 2017 Interdisciplinary Action Group Grant Award Recipients

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CRASE will fund three proposals for the Fall 2017 Interdisciplinary Action Groups: Preservation in the Midst of Change.

Flint’s Legacy: Trusting Science and Pursuing Justice
Rachel Brahinsky, Urban and Public Affairs, College of Arts and Sciences
David Donahue, McCarthy Center for Public Service and The Common Good
Alice Kaswan, School of Law
Jack Lendvay, Environmental Science, College of Arts and Sciences
Thomas MacDonald, Environmental Science, College of Arts and Sciences
Teresa Moore, Media Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
Peter Novak, Performing Arts, College of Arts and Sciences, Lead
Jeffrey Paris, Environmental Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
J Michael Robertson, Media Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
David Silver, Environmental Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
Rebecca Seeman, Performing Arts, College of Arts and Sciences
Carol Spector, Gleeson Library | Geschke Center

We propose a series of events centered around the themes of environmental justice, water safety as a human right, and belief in science. Through a theatrical production, an educational symposium, and exhibits, we will educate the USF community about the realities of the water our community drinks, the water issues in greater California, and the water issues in towns like Flint, MI across the country.

Forum for Transnational Collaboration in the Arts
John Zarobell, International Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
Pedro Lange-Churion, Modern and Classical Languages, College of Arts and Sciences
Tanu Sankalia, Art and Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences
Sumer Seiki, Teacher Education, School of Education

The goal of the “Forum for Transnational Collaboration” is to bring together emerging voices from previously marginalized countries that are poised to become an essential part of the global conversation in contemporary art today. The relationship between art and globalization is seen by many experts as a one-way street in which powerful countries, their art institutions, and their artists, dominate a broadening sphere of cultural production. There is more than a grain of truth in that analysis, but this Forum aims to provide a platform for the development of a countervailing narrative.

The Preservation of the Human Dignity and Rights of the Trans Community
Daniela Domínguez, Counseling Psychology, School of Education
Jane Bleasdale, Leadership Studies, School of Education
Amie Dowling, Performing Arts, College of Arts and Sciences

Through the use of advocacy, activism, and a social justice framework, we will create an experiential, and creative space that will promote the idea that our society functions best when celebratory spaces and initiatives are inclusive of Trans individuals. Our exhibit will be grounded in intersectional practice, an appreciation for the preservation of Trans rights, and it will reflect a spirit of resistance to the reversal of progress. Our project, consisting of a photo exhibit and dramatic performance, aims to demonstrate that students, educators, administrators, and members of the San Francisco community, will not sit quietly when discrimination takes place against the Trans community. Through photography and staged readings, we will demonstrate the unique advantages of committing to the notion that all Trans individuals deserve equal rights, protection, and a satisfactory academic/professional/military career.

Faculty Spotlight: Mary Donnelly

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School of Nursing and Health Professions Mary Donnelly lived all of the world before she started working at the University of San Francisco. During our conversation, we discussed how working and living abroad informed her nursing and practice and how she approaches collaboration in research.

Mary Donnelly

How did you first start in the field of nursing?

When I was in high school and beginning to think about college and talked about my goals with my parents who were both public school educators, and they gave me a choice—this was back in the ‘60s—I could be a nurse or I could be a teacher. Trying as a teenager to find my own unique way, I chose to study nursing, in Villanova, Philadelphia, where I completed my undergraduate degree in nursing. While an undergraduate student, I became aware of the social factors, which created barriers to access to care. From that moment, I became aware of health disparities I wanted to be part of the solutions to increase access to healthcare.  I worked with the Panthers and the Medical Committee for Human Rights. We provided sickle cell testing at health fairs in Philadelphia, PA and provided acute care and health promotion interventions to antiwar and anti-segregation demonstrators along the East Coast.   I wanted to learn how health care could be utilized and provided beyond the walls of hospitals and clinics and I wanted to respond to the health concerns and needs of social activists working in urban areas.

I moved back to upstate New York soon after graduating from Villanova to work at a Community Health Center in Lackawanna. I worked with community health workers and made home visits to a unique population of Bethlehem Steel workers from around the world. Our Health Center treated people from Yemen, Puerto Rico, Mexico as well as Southern African Americans who had all come for the hope of better wages. I went back to school, attending State University of New York at Rochester while working. I graduated as an adult nurse practitioner, and became the first adult nurse practitioner in Erie County. I was still on a quest to learn how best to provide community health so I entered the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University to get my Masters of Public Health. My life has provided opportunities that were often unexpected.  After marrying a Navy officer, I had the opportunity to learn about health care in Europe and Asia. I worked in Japan and Italy, and with the National Health Service in London. When my husband retired, we came back to the United States in 2005, and I continued my nurse practitioner practice and teaching at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing.

How did working and living abroad inform your nursing and your practice?

Japan was so different, and I had to learn the language and culture to be successful. I was providing occupational health services through the Department of Defense, and many of my patients were Japanese. One of my patients did not pass the hearing test, so I could no longer qualify him to drive a forklift in the shipyard. A hearing deficit could be potentially harmful when driving. Soon after, all of his co-workers came to my office and said, “He’s got to work; what can we do?” I said that he needed a hearing aid, and while wearing the hearing aid, if he passed the hearing test, he could work. His work team bought him a hearing aid and brought him back to take the hearing test. It was a group effort. They cared for each other, worked together, and supported each other. This incident was crucial to my understanding of Japanese culture. Keeping the team together was important to achieve work goals.  Each individual of that group was supported by the group’s efforts.

How do you approach interdisciplinary research?

Healthcare is so complex that we cannot live and work in silos, and we really need to reach out to all stakeholders involved in the provision of high- performing systems. Microsystem analysis utilizes a failure mode effect and analysis (FMEA) for potential risk analysis. I see FMEA as a reasonable and evidence-based approach to teach our students and to identify areas of research. We owe a debt a gratitude to W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician who is credited with the rise of Japan as a manufacturing nation, and with the invention of Total Quality Management (TQM). Deming went to Japan just after the War to help set up a census of the Japanese population. While he was there, he taught ‘statistical process control’ to Japanese engineers – a set of techniques, which allowed them to manufacture high-quality goods without expensive machinery. Deming insisted that we create a work culture, which would create a constancy of purpose towards improvement. This means we do not wait for failure or an error but analyze where potential benefits or efficiencies could occur.  I believe this campus is unique because it fosters partnerships across disciplines. Here, I have the opportunity to work with someone in the School of Education, and we are able to collaborate on research.

What brought you to USF?

The USF is a perfect place for collaboration. For example, I needed help looking at reliability, so I approached a colleague and asked, “Will you help me with those statistics?” I also like to work in groups. Writing group members may motivate each other while providing various skills and qualities. Personally, I am not terribly interested in writing alone. I might have a good statistician or I might know a person who is a good editor and we can learn from one another, at least that is what I am trying to establish here. We can continually help each other to produce research.

When I came to interview, there was a discussion on the similarities between Malcolm X philosophy and Jesuit philosophy, so I knew this was the place for me. I was also concerned about diversity, and my daughter-in-law’s aunt went to school here. She’s from Afghanistan, and they left because of the Taliban. I asked, “How were you treated? How did you feel when you were accepted?” She gave me good answers and she highly recommended coming to USF.

What are your different research interests?

I look at primary care topics, which are of interest to primary care providers, and provide up to date standards and case studies for application. I published a few articles last year on hyperparathyroidism—and one on the use of certain antibiotics and the relationship to Achilles tendon ruptures. Fluoroquinolone is a very common class of antibiotics and with certain populations there’s an increased risk of Achilles tendon ruptures.

I’ve been commissioned by the American Journal of Nursing to write about hypertension and to discuss the best approaches to treatment of hypertension. One of the newer items we need to consider is motivational interviewing because hypertension can be addressed by motivating people to change their lifestyles, which are associated with risk factors. I talk about treatment standards, which are pretty well established, and how are we approach the patient and how we can help patients toward better outcomes. Motivational interviewing is evidence-based and there’s a lot of research indicating that this is an effective communication technique has the potential to effect changes in patients’ behaviors.

How do you bring your research into your teaching?

Teaching, writing, and working with our nursing clinical groups keeps us on our toes, and healthcare as a profession continues to change. Our population changes, and in primary care, we’re at the front line treating anything that our patients come in with. I try to teach my students that we need to look at our practices and at the evidence to support them. Motivational interviewing is supported by research. It takes a lot of time to learn it, and it’s hard in a busy primary care practice to develop those skills when you might only be given fifteen minutes to interview a patient and provide some intervention.

What are you thinking about with your research interests now?

I did my doctoral work on decision-making. One of my interests is looking at how we communicate whether it’s with a student, patient, peer, or other professionals. I’m looking at better ways to engage students in learning. I recently had an article published about the use of VoiceThread in graduate education, which uses audio or video to engage students with each other’s work. This method can help our profession because as a provider of care, you need to discuss cases in front of people. You need to be able to analyze and be clear and succinct. Our graduate students come from a variety of backgrounds—they can be in management, they might have been in the Arts and Sciences—so they bring a range of gifts. We’ve seen that these videotaped discussions increases engagement and the desire to learn, and also, it brings more confidence.