[The Legacies Team]

This photo is found in the NPR article by Rebecca Hersher regarding the Key Moments In The Dakota Access Pipeline Fight. Taken by Cassi Alexandra, the photos captures the people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and their demonstration at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota on Thanksgiving Day 2016. I chose this photo because, like many other photos, it represents the strength and courage that these water protectors had in standing against the pipeline. The cold weather is visible and so are their very young faces. It’s incredible to see what we discussed in class be applied because it is true, social movements are headed by the young. Supported by older people, yes, but the daring attitude and intensity of the movement is by the young people.

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[The Legacies Team]

The photo I wanted to share was actually part of a video from Times Magazine’s piece on the #MeToo movement in Asia back in October (her portrait.) Seo Ji-hyun was a top level prosecutor in 2010 when she was harassed and then promptly demoted for reporting it. Spending years blaming herself, Seo Ji-hyun saw the wave of accusations coming from top actresses and decided on publicly speaking out. She was credited with launching the movement in Korea. China began using the same hashtag for the movement but other places like Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines began creating their own. They stood in solidarity in the face of issues like workplace harassment, slut shaming, and sexism.

The impact of Hollywood, the globalization of mass entertainment, managed to reach all across the world. This Western originated movement managed to give many women of color voices in a society that strikes out at them for speaking out.  The #metoo movement has failed in many ways—acknowledging POC in America, lack of harsher legal repercussions, and allowing the victims to be thrust under the strictest scrutiny.

But it also has done good. It made ripples all across the world, forced people to look up and see what women go through every single day of their lives. This movement, like all others, is not perfect and it falls prey to helping only people of a certain privileged standing. Still, this hashtag that spawned a movement does tell us something.

It tells women, “you are not alone.”  #WithYou

[The Legacies Team]

This picture is of Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and fellow activists and it was taken by Kristin Little.

Alicia Garza helped spawned the movement back in 2013 and its spread all across platforms has been an incredible feat. She and others have joined together under the #blacklivesmatter with millions eventually rallying behind them and though it may seem disorganized and disjointed to some, in reality their structure can be summed up as a complex and multifaceted movement. To speak about its impact is to bring to the forefront the issues of how systemic racism has devalued and dehumanised black lives. These wonderful women of color have thrust themselves into the spotlight in order to become leaders, organizers, and inspirations.

I have to admit that I did not know who began the hashtag that sparked the movement. But now I do, and it’s so important to realize that we can’t afford to forget the people have been willing to fight for the rights of others. It’s also to important to remember them as they are—see that the movement was not a loose set of tweets about a hashtag, but a living and breathing activist organization helmed by one of the most oppressed groups in America: women of color.

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[The Legacies Team]

This picture was taken by Roberto Robotico Livar, a parent at a San Antonio charter school, last year. It’s an image of a worksheet that requested a student to fill out the “positive and negative” aspects of slavery. Thankfully, the student refused to participate in the activity but it demonstrates the horrifying reality of what we call “historical negationism.” The erasure or re-writing history has always been a problem but now, the distortion has become more and more problematic as digital technology grows.

The Ethnic Studies department, the birth of it and the fight for many of it by students, is important because we need to undo the damage done by things like these. It’s essential that we seek out ways to repair it.

But we need to start from the ground up. We need to start young because that’s where it begins. Fighting for the ethnic studies department in college is just the tip of the iceberg, a useful and powerful method, but it can’t be the ultimate goal.

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[The Legacies Team]

The picture I chose was a snapshot of the Youtube music video that accompanies the song “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done.)” The “Hamilton Mixtape” was produced in 2016, a compilation of songs from the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” but re mixed with a 21st century take. “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” is a song that features hard hitting lyrics on the diverse experience of being immigrants in America and how we have not achieved full freedom as a society because of our treatment of them.

The concept behind the song was said by Lin Manuel Miranda to be the opposition to the hateful year that consumed American regarding immigration.

“This election cycle has brought xenophobia and vilification of immigrants back to the forefront of US politics. This is a musical counterweight.

On the lineup we have K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC and Residente: Each MC culturally represents from a different place on the map. These are my favorite MCs from all over the world. They can speak to this theme from their brilliant perspectives.” (Taken from Genius lyrics, verified)

The entire song is a critique on society as a whole on how immigrants are treated–how the world has villainized and reduced them to a single story. Each MC takes a verse pointendly and powerfully perspective on coming to a place that rejects their presence. The music video, or rather mini film, contains harrowing scenes of immigrants and the harsh reality they face, of being America’s “ghost writers,” of being undocumented, and of being vilified. Stories like these told through rap show how this form of music has become an incredibly global platform that hasn’t yet lost its ability to shed light on issues that society needs to pay attention to.

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[The Legacies Team]

On Friday, we were left with the question of “What does it mean to be a good ally?”

The photo (no owner, licenced under Creative Commons) I have attached is of Heda Margolius Kovaly, an Holocaust survivor from the former nation of Czechoslovakia. She witnessed the rise of communism and how it eventually tore apart her country. Her book, Under a Cruel Star, is an autobiography of her life in the camps, her starvation in postwar, and her husband’s execution during the Stalin era. She realized that nothing could be separated from her life as politics when it had ruined her nation.

To be a good ally is to, as the Professor said, starts with “decolonizing our own mind” and understanding that our own biases. But then we have to move by talking about what some consider “just politics.”

Kovaly mentioned in her book how,  during meetings she kept quite, not bothering to contribute because she felt like she knew nothing. “Usually, I sat in a corner and just listened. I knew nothing about politics and less than nothing about economics. But I began to understand that life had become politics and politics had become life. It would not do anymore to say, ‘I don’t care. I just want to be left in peace.'”

In order to be a good ally, we need to reject the notion that things need not be “political.” Life is. Kovaly lived through the rise of the Nazi regime, built on hatred and prejudice, that found its home in politics. We can’t ignore the fact that these politics determine the life and well being of the people around us. We shouldn’t ignore it and we won’t. “A good ally” means understanding the circumstances that make people “political.” It’s their, or rather “our”, fight for their right to live.

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[The Legacies Team]

The picture I picked might seem like an odd choice but I like to parallel it with other experiences that are similar to other marginalized groups. In WWII, there was infantry regiment of the United States, the 442nd, and it was comprised of entirely Japanese American soldiers. Either drafted or volunteered, this unit became the most highly decorated one in history of the US military.

When I think of beyond the civil rights movement, I think of the ways people attempt to establish their place in society. Some do so through the courts, others by making art, but some find their place in the military. It’s the last one that is a little more flawed than the others.

The picture below is of the E Company, 2nd Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, in formation. Camp Shelby, Mississippi. May 13, 1943. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Like many others, they achieved some semblance of equality though their actions. But while they fought bravely and showed fierce loyalty, their country refused to treat them with the respect they believed could be granted by risking their lives. It’s interesting concept–how nation and military are intertwined enough to give the illusion of equality. No matter how much they sacrificed in any war, Japanese Americans were still treated as a class lower to the whites in America. It echoes the treatment that marginalized groups suffer despite the prospect of equality that the military offer.

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[The Legacies Team]

The image I chose was of Rosa Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Ala., in 1956 from the Underwood Archives / Getty Images. To hear the name Rosa Parks is to associate her with the Civil Rights Movement at its peak and to bring the image of integration to the forefront. Refusing to give up her seat in a bus that gave priority to a white only section, she was arrested, leading to a movement that had the entire black community boycotting the bus system. In the span of a year, she became a powerful icon whose actions sent a ripple the country and rallied others to stand behind her.

In some schools, there’s this pervasive narrative that Rosa Parks was “tired” from a long day at work and how that was the reason why she didn’t move from the sitting in front of the bus. It’s untrue. Rosa Parks knew what she was doing and she understood what it meant to not move from the re-designated white only section. The way she was taught in some classrooms, the idea that she was weary after a long day, essentially defanged her and pushed aside her involvement in the NAACP. This move is echoed in many classrooms that seek to push an agenda of repainting social movements for some strange reason and it’s something we should seek to stand against.

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[The Legacies Team]

Regarding the conference idea, it would be amazing if we did a panel or a presentation on KNIT R&D for the Arts and Humanities conference. I’m aware that the conference is still being planned for this year and this is probably premature, but I just wanted to put this out there as possibility. It was fun to have it last year and I think it would be a good platform for KNIT to be introduced.

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