Two of our grandchildren were with my wife and me at The Game this past Saturday. They got their first real lessons in civil disobedience and bigotry during the Harvard-Yale students’ Climate Change Emergency protest. I can only imagine what they might have learned about leadership and respect for the freedom of expression had President Salovey taken the public address system 20 minutes into the protest and said something to the effect of: “I know you students sitting on our 50-yard-line feel deeply about the issue you protest. You’ve made your point, and we are committed to continuing the discussion, but in another time and place. Your classmates, their families, and thousands of others deserve the chance to participate in this important experience in their lives — many, for the last time. Please leave peacefully and we will talk on Monday, and your classmates and friends will get to see through what they have accomplished so far today.” Instead, dozens were arrested.
The second lesson came in the form of bigotry on and off the field. Some Yale football players turned to the Yale crowd giving thumbs-down and offering throat-slitting gestures. Then, shouts from behind us: “Security!”…“Cuff the commies!”…“Tear Gas would work!”…“Where are the dogs?”…“Transfer to Berkeley!” (my wife Marsha’s favorite). A man behind me asked, “So, what’s the emergency?” I replied, “The students are deeply upset that so few people are listening to the fact that we’ve got about a decade to turn this around, or their grandchildren aren’t going to have any place to live. They want Yale and Harvard to divest from fossil fuels now before it’s too late. Not so unreasonable.” “Oh,” he said.
The gut-wrenching similarity to videos of Trump’s political rallies were searing. Indeed, what are we becoming? Maybe we’ll find out as we watch Yale and Harvard deal with this “disturbance.” There were, of course, tens of thousands of people at The Game who were not bigots but, in the face of the ugly chants, stayed silent for fear of what opposition might ignite. Sound familiar? The poet Martin Niemöller, writing in the aftermath of World War II about silence in the face of bigotry and extremism, wrote these opening lines: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”
We can all do better, and time is no longer on our side.
Kyle D. Pruett, M.D. ’65
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine
Last Saturday, Nov. 23, dozens of our fellow students sat at the 50-yard line of the Yale Bowl, risking arrest to demand that the administrations of both universities divest from the fossil fuel industry and predatory Puerto Rican debt and instead use its endowment as a force against climate change. The editorial board of the Yale Herald extends our support for the organizers from the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, Fossil Free Yale, and Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard. We call on both Yale and Harvard to divest from fossil fuels.
Yale and Harvard are two of the richest and most powerful universities in the world, managing a collective $70 billion. Both universities are invested in fossil fuels, Puerto Rican debt, and private prisons. We stand in agreement with the divestment activists that these investments are simply and unequivocally unacceptable. It’s time for Yale and Harvard to stop investing in industries that have actively misled the public on and continue to contribute to climate change. Our liberal arts education cannot prepare us to live in a world where climate collapse is a reality. While our universities continue business as usual in the face of global crisis, nobody wins.
We thank our peers at both universities for organizing and executing this action. Your work has brought the fight for climate justice where it belongs: at the forefront of all of our minds. To quote a Tweet from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), “Activism disrupts the present to change the future.” Our peers are changing the future. Now, the world is watching. What will Harvard and Yale do?
We also want to bring attention to the legal repercussions students face as a result of their actions. Forty-eight students were fined for disorderly conduct, with another student arrested on multiple charges. A fundraiser (linked below) has been started to support the activists in paying their potential fines. Yale students benefit from a unique position of privilege, one that permits — and necessitates — that we act against injustices around us. Over 400,000 Americans are behind bars without conviction simply because they cannot afford to pay bail, and our legal system is one that preys on and criminalizes poverty. None of the fifty students fined or arrested are still behind bars. This is not the norm.
As a student publication, our job is to report on and reflect the university and world around us. But our responsibilities as journalists are second to our responsibilities as students, as members of communities at Yale and beyond. We believe that proactive, necessary work towards a more sustainable world is everyone’s ultimate responsibility. Divestment is a critical — and entirely possible — place to start.
This editorial represents the majority view of the Yale Herald Editorial Board.
For alumni who wish to join student organizers in climate justice, sign the pledge.
This week, the Herald talked to painting student Krysal DiFronzo, ART ’20, about how she navigates her process, research, and imagery.
Yale Herald: When we spoke earlier you pretty readily identified the occult as a key theme in your work. I also know that before coming to Yale you published a comic about your experiences as a young cancer patient. To start us off, I was wondering if you could share a bit about how you see those two sources of content relating to one another?
Krystal DiFronzo: Right now, I’m being a lot more explicit about going back to my experiences with chemotherapy and treatment, thinking about moments when boundaries of the body and the environment get broken down. With superstition, I think a lot about the relationship of illness to psychosis and hysteria in history. When I first came here, I was doing a lot of work researching histories of possession in relation to mental and physical illness. Susan Sontag has a great quote where she talks about tumors as demonic pregnancies. I’m interested in looking at sickness in this way — the body growing out of control, without the ability to resolve itself. What does it mean to have or to be this thing that’s of you and not at the same time, taking over your bodily control and health?
Poisoned River.
YH: Do you believe in “irrational” practices as meaningful to your personal life outside of the work?
KDF: When I first moved to New Haven, I lived in this apartment which I thought — and I’ve never had this experience before — was truly haunted. Like truly, completely haunted. I grew up in Chicago. It’s not a young city, but it’s not as old as here. The apartment had the worst energy I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t hear noises or anything, you know, other than the sounds from the heater, but it just had a bad vibe. I guess I do kind of believe in energies. It’s kinda woo-woo [laughs]. In my work, maybe it manifests in the transparency of the paintings on silk. I’ve been looking at a lot of spiritualist-era photography of people performing seances and producing ectoplasm. In these photos, the photographer tried to capture this moment: both to show it happening, and to debunk it. That liminal space of the photo is important to me, how it relates to the ghostly, the superstitious. It’s like alchemy, you know, chemicals and light becoming image.
From the artist’s studio.
YH: There’s a kind of irony in that — to preserve the mystical while also maintaining your own sense of “rationality” or scientific logic. It’s interesting to hear you laugh as you describe the energies in your apartment; a kind of necessary contradiction at play in the representation of magic or so called “other-worldliness,” something which the photograph symbolizes so clearly. Representation, at least as we think of it today, can’t really be separated from the technological. Do you think of these paintings as sincere identifications with a mystical way of thinking, as trying to break that scientific logic of meaning?
KDF: They’re mostly sincere. I’m a strong believer that women have been placed as witches because of their relationship with death, healing, and birth, their ability to create healing substances that can also be poisonous. I like the idea of this feared status. Though still I’m unsure where I lie on that spectrum of ironic distance. If the work is reclaiming an identity, a way of thinking, it’s definitely complicated to do so within this specific historical frame. I do link myself strongly to that history, but in the end I’m not sure of the extent that the work can do the same.
YH: You talked about a kind of dominion over the natural and this power to convert nature into something that can be healing or harming. There’s an obvious relationship between that kind of conversion and what you’ve been working on materially — using these natural dyes and these complex pseudo-alchemical processes. I guess they’re actually just kind of chemical [laughs]. But I’m wondering how the metaphor of material translates into the image, the movement between them.
KDF: The chemical has a similarly ironic relation to the occult, to the alchemical. There are places where the historical evolution of drug-therapy has hinged on the apparently sinister. Obviously some Western medicine is also a poison. I’ve been thinking a lot about chemotherapy drugs — the way in which a poison can become medically beneficial. Looking into the histories of these drugs and figuring out the origins, I could clearly see that some had been derived from the production of mustard gas, [and] other highly toxic, weaponized substances. Almost all of these things are derived from natural sources, different types of molds and plants — it’s almost as if the scientific interest in these sources relied on a leap of faith, a superstitious interest in paradoxical effects, to make them into something beneficial. The metaphor here I take to be integral to my work — the way in which dyes become image, the natural supplanted into the realm of the delirious or the occult.
This week, the Herald asked writers to embark on a day of purposefully breaking superstitions and recording what transpired. Though no one convinced a bird to poop on them or rubbed their face against a rabbit’s foot, things still got a little freaky.
Illustration by Annie Yan, ES '23
On Nov. 1, Spooky Season officially ended. But try as I might, I wasn’t ready to give it up. With all of America ready to summon Mariah Carey for the approaching Christmas holidays, it was up to me to find the creepy crawly kick I was still craving. And so, in an effort to relive the Halloween high, I decided to face some superstitions head on, hoping for the best. Or maybe the worst? If the worst meant spooky, then that’s what I was after.
Walking Under a Ladder
As I passed under the ladder, I stopped. I was struck, suddenly, by the beauty of the form that I found myself in. It’s not often enough that we think about an isosceles triangle. Like, two sides of equal length and the third of a different length? Literally stunning. And to disrespect that? To disrespect that ladder, which was putting in serious work standing there to form such an exquisite triangular form, but merely walking under it — I couldn’t do it. Spooky? I am. Sacrilegious? I am not.
2. Spilling Salt
I was minding my own business, eating my Yale Dining chana masala, when disaster struck — salt spilled, and right into my plate! Excited at the prospect of impending spookiness, I hurried to finish my meal. But my next bite stopped me in my tracks. It was really good. Like really frickin’ good.
3. Breaking a Mirror
Anyone who knows me knows that I love to craft. Breaking the mirror didn’t bring anything scary into my life, but it did provide the ultimate crafting opportunity. Mirror mosaic is looking good!
4. Opening an Umbrella Inside
Opening an umbrella felt like a fool-proof way to find the superstitious blowback I was looking for. At the very worst, I figured that I would at least look weird to the passersby. And things were going well. Nothing spooky happened, and I definitely looked crazy. But then, the fire alarm went off, and the sprinklers rained water down, soaking the hallway. Everyone and everything got wet, except me.
5. Seeing a Black Cat
The night after I saw the black cat on the street, I had a dream that I was in Cats. I was looking for spooky, not terrifying.
My hunt for a little October fun in November was, resoundingly, a failure. No matter how much I tried, everything even remotely scary — but like, in a fun way — just wasn’t having it. Perhaps Mariah is already too powerful, and I should be spending my time listening to “All I Want for Christmas is You” instead.
— Griffin Berlin, JE ’21
I believe in superstitions when convenient. Part of me thinks they’re silly. Part of me thinks Co-Star is omniscient. Does that make me superstitious or a little stitious? Does it make for good journalism? Let’s find out.
This Wednesday (Nov. 6), I broke as many superstitions as I could in one day to see what would happen.
Pre-Day Luck:
It was a casual Tuesday, with luck levels starting at a solid ★★★★. I did some reading in Book Trader — a classic move. Everything was cool until mid-study I reached for a sip of water, and noticed something fluttering. It was a wasp! A fully grown wasp. Inside. I got up in shock and looked around. The whole time I was doing this, nobody looked over. Still unclear whether I imagined this. My luck dropped by, like, three stars.
Eventually the wasp disappeared. But then another girl with a shaved head (I have a shaved head) sat next to me. It was upsetting. I’m gonna say I ended the day with ★★★ luck.
Day-of Luck:
Starting the day still at a solid ★★★. I made a list of everything Wikipedia could tell me about superstitions in the morning before going out, and wrote down what happened every time I found/did something unlucky. I tried to go for a-religious signs of bad luck I already knew about. Here’s what transpired, aided by the Notes app:
Stepping on cracks: I stepped on so many cracks. My mother’s back is no worse than it was yesterday. Though I did trip a couple times.
2. Walking under ladders: Couldn’t find any ladders. I walked under one of those construction scaffolds. I survived.
3. Black cats: Saw no black cats. I did sneak a cup of black coffee into Haas. It was a poor choice. Nobody said anything, but I know I’m a dirty, dirty person for doing it. My luck probably dropped to ★★, because that’s what I deserve.
4. Breaking mirrors: I have pieces of broken mirror all over my wall already. I broke another piece. There’s now glass dust all over my room. Pretty glass dust. Luck’s back up, baby: ★★★.
5. Shoes on tables: I did it, but this one is just plain rude.
6. Spilling salt/pepper: This one is also rude. I don’t deserve my luck stars.
7. Opening umbrellas inside: I lost my umbrella soon after this. If you find her… Luck was deffo at a ★.
8. Ladybugs: A sign of good luck. I saw one hanging on the frame of a photo. I went to pick her up. She was dead. I think the luck angels took their leave at this point.
9. Seeing fish: Didn’t know this was a superstition, but Wikipedia says it is. Tonight I discovered [REDACTED] has pet shrimp in the [REDACTED] basement. They are terrifyingly large. I agree with Wikipedia. It was bad.
10. Losing a wishbone break: I hate losing. It was a bummer.
11. Cutting fingernails after dark: I forgot to cut my pinky nail. Embarrassing or fashionable? I’m going to say I gained a luck ★ here. Rewarding myself for being bold. Luck level: ★★
12. Picking up pennies: Saw one outside of Book Trader (I need to stop going there. Too much baggage). I didn’t pick it up. I really wanted to, but I didn’t.
13. The number 13: I wrote it on my hand. All day people kept asking why. Good or bad source of attention? Giving myself another star for brave stylistic choices. My day ended with, like, ★★ luck.
Post-Day Luck:
I did some more research on omens, and apparently, seeing your doppelgänger is considered to be bad luck. It did make me feel less secure. Don’t know if insecurity has to do with luck, though. I have yet to feel any remarkable effects from yesterday, though a couple spooky things happened:
I tried to get the Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich. The line was too long. I left and ate Dunkin instead. My plebeian stomach can never handle Dunkin.
My photography professor showed us her work. In one of the photos, a man had a shirt with “666” on it. It was terrifying.
Otherwise, everything was supernatural as always. I don’t like going around tempting fate. Although, I wonder if I would’ve thought twice about today’s indigestion had I not been looking out for bad signs. I think what the universe tells me is more or less up to me. If I hate my shaved head, the universe is gonna encourage me to hate my shaved head.
Final luck level: ??? I have no idea how many stars I get for that realization.
— Caramia Putman, BF ’22
**Disclaimer: events recorded might have happened…or maybe they didn’t…or maybe they did…things really are freaky at the Herald this week.
Superstition Mission was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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This week, the Opinion section asked the Yale Herald staff one hard hitting question: when should we start celebrating Christmas?
Marina Albanese: Christmas starts on December 1. You must respect Christmas’s boundaries. Christmas is, after all, a candy cane. She must be savored. If you bite into her too early, your teeth will fall out! That’s what happens when you start celebrating Christmas before December 1.
Eric Krebs: The day after Thanksgiving. Santa is the final appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and thus he heralds the celebration of Christmas.
Kat Corfman: On Christmas, silly!!!
Laurie Roark: I hate Christmas. We shouldn’t celebrate it at all. Stop talking about it.
Marc Boudreaux: When I email Santa my Christmas list (and BCC my Mom). I make it in Excel, with a column for name, rank, price, size, color, and a hyperlink (usually to Amazon, Patagonia, or Nordstrom Rack). On Christmas day, I print out the sheet and check off each item with a X-tra Wide Sharpie. If something is missing, I scream. Then Christmas is over.
Mom talking to her son on the phone: What do you want for Christmas honey?
Son talking to his mom on the phone, in Ezra Stiles Courtyard: Uhhh, the new airpods?
Corporate America: Christmas starts the day after Halloween. Or August! Whichever you prefer.
The Joker: My opinion on this, as the Joker, is that Christmas should be celebrated every day!
Hamzah Jhaveri: My opinions about this, as a Muslim, are that it should be celebrated for a month, usually in the summer, dependent on the lunar calendar, where we fast each day from sunrise to sunset in honor of the revelation of the Holy Qur’an, and end the month with a day of food and celebration. That and the 24 to 25 of December, when we eat chocolate out of a calendar.
Spencer Hagaman: Show Thanksgiving some damn respect! December 1 or bust!
Will Wegner: Christmas celebrations commence with the first snowfall of winter and conclude on January 1. Good luck, California. Better luck, southern hemisphere.
Paige Davis: Well, I started singing Christmas songs yesterday. They just popped into my head. In a way, I’ve been singing Christmas songs for a while. I started humming “Jingle Bells” in the elevator, and someone got mad at me. I’m also excited to hear Mariah Carey. I love her. I want it to be Christmas right now. I also want it to snow.
This week, the Yale Herald sat down with Claire Kalikman, MS ’21, Ale Aguirre, ES ’21, and Atarah Anbar, SY ’23, of the Yale Fashion House to discuss the bankruptcy of Forever 21 and the fate of fast fashion.
Illustration by Paige Davis
Yale Herald: So let’s get started, shall we? On Oct. 1, Forever 21 announced its bankruptcy and that it was closing an eighth of its stores. Now, is this the end of fast fashion as we know it? Ale, let’s start with you.
Aguirre: I think that it’s not quite the end of fast fashion. There are brands like ASOS and Boohoo and Daraz Online that have kind of been having a steady rise I guess in terms of revenues and sales. And I think brands like Forever 21, I don’t know how to separate it from like in a store like Zara… it’s too much.
Anbar: I don’t think fast fashion can ever die because if the death of fast fashion comes, then most of the world is out of an expression. The majority of people can’t afford to be part of the high fashion. So in fast fashion… If that were to disappear… People would just be dressing sterile[ly] because there wouldn’t be any options.
Kalikman: But I don’t know if that’s entirely true, because what we love about fast fashion is its ability to give us the trends we want to own as fast as possible, but there’s also a whole range of middle brands that are more sustainable than fast fashion that people can still buy. I think that more than “is this the end of fast fashion,” to some extent this should be the end of fast fashion because fast fashion is absolutely polluting our environment. Fashion is the second most toxic industry to our environment and billions of pounds of clothing are thrown away every year and a huge portion that’s coming from stores like Forever 21 and H&M. So I think that if fast fashion is going to continue, it has to find a way to do it sustainably because otherwise it’s going to wreck the planet.
Aguirre: Yeah, and I do think there’s also the increase in resale websites and rental websites that are also like cheaper options for people that you’re still getting new clothes and whatever. So I think that could also be detrimental to fast fashion which I agree I think is, again, detrimental to the world. And I don’t support it very much, to be honest.
YH: Atarah, I want to jump back to you here really quickly. What do you think that fashion brands and designers can learn from for Forever 21’s bankruptcy?
Anbar: I think that a big issue that Forever 21 has been having is the quality of their clothes have remained the same, so still falling apart in the same way that all fast fashion brand clothes do fall apart. After like five washes, you see discoloration and weird colors coming out of it, but they’re marking up their products to be the price of a mid-fashion brand. And the people that go to places like Forever 21 are looking for not only something inexpensive but it could be something that’s for a single time use. So when they’re charging the price of an item that should last at least a year, I think that’s becoming a huge issue. So if it’s going to be a place for fast fashion it should remain the price of fast fashion while they’re creating prices that you’d see at a Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s.
Kalikman: Definitely. I think that a lesson to be learned is that Forever 21 expanded too quickly. They were in, I think, half the countries of the world within just a few years opening up, and it’s clear they weren’t able to maintain that quality that you were talking about while trying for this rapid expansion.
Aguirre: And their storefronts, some of them are rolling over 20,000 square feet. Like that was like the average size of a Forever 21 storefront, which is humongous. You guys always remember like going to a mall and it’s like three floors of Forever 21 and it’s like… [pause].
Anbar: Well, I remember 10 years ago just going to the same mall that I go to now. Forever 21 was just a small normal store that you walk into. And now it’s a department store. It’s under the department store category when only 10 years ago, in my short lifetime, I saw it as just a normal boutique size store.
Aguirre:Yeah, that’s true. I think it did also come out with a XXI [collection, which was] kind of better design slash more pricey.
Kalikman: And there was Forever 21 Red, which was the basic line. I think they were just they were trying to do too many things at once.
Aguirre: I agree.
Kalikman: And, also, I think that the essential complaint about Forever 21 has always been [about] customer service — that there basically is none. And that’s one of the first things to go when you try to expand quickly. I think that’s another lesson brands can learn, that you can’t sacrifice customer service completely in the name of profit-saving.
Anbar: Exactly. And a big issue is, with a store that they expanded to be that large, they also have zero organization. If you want to find a piece, employees don’t know where to go for it.
Aguirre: Because it’s too big.
Anbar: It’s too big, and a lot of them are separated by color, not by product. So you’ll see one shirt not in your size, and there’s zero chance [you’ll find it], if you’re not willing to spend at least half an hour looking for it, that you’re gonna find that. It’s all the luck of the draw.
Kalikman: I think one problem is that we all need to buy less. I think that with the rise of the digital age there’s this mentality of “we want what we want right now,” and people are okay spending five dollars on a shirt and buying ten of them instead of spending 50 dollars on one shirt. The size of these stores speaks to that — that there’s so much buying because people want so much volume, but we cannot continue at this pace. It’s just unsustainable.
Ephemeral 21 was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Alex Muñoz is a Yale World Fellow and activist whose work has ranged from human rights law to ocean conservation. Muñoz is the Latin American director for Pristine Seas, a branch of National Geographic that combines art with activism, and partners with governments and communities to protect marine life. His omnivorous career has seen the rolling back of national media bans in Chile and the formation of the 12 largest marine reserves in Latin America. Just three weeks after touching down in the U.S., Muñoz led a Climate Strike at Yale along with other World Fellows. We sit down to discuss the strike movement, forbidden film, and the role of Yale and America in responding to the climate crisis.
Yale Herald: You started your career as a human rights lawyer working with victims of domestic violence and later transitioned into marine conservation. What motivated that transition?
Alex Muñoz: Since I was very young, I wanted to fight injustice. That is what has moved me all my life. For years, I focused on human rights. I wanted to help people that were living in more disadvantaged conditions [than I was]. My first job was defending women that suffered domestic violence. That was my first experience as an attorney and it really changed my life. I became a feminist and I also experienced what it is to be side by side fighting with someone — not only for someone, but actually being on a team with someone. Later in life, I was offered a job by an ocean conservation organization called Oceana, and I became an environmentalist. I fell in love with the oceans, and I found a lot of common elements between human rights work and environmentalism. Basically, when you have an environmental conflict, usually you have a powerful party and a weaker party. I’ve tried not only to achieve environmental protections, but also to help the communities that were suffering the impacts of environmental problems. I found the perfect combination that stayed with me.
YH: How would you describe the relationship between human rights issues and environmental concerns like climate change?
AM: Well, the ones who have a harder time in the world are usually the same ones. They are the poor, the women, the ones who are not white. There are certain patterns that repeat; and when we deal with global problems with the environment, it’s the same. When you see the coal-fired power plants affecting so many communities, they are never in the neighborhoods where the rich people live. They are always around towns where the most vulnerable people are located, people that cannot defend themselves because they don’t have the resources or the connections. So that pattern is the same in human rights violations and environmental degradation. Environmental problems don’t affect everybody the same way.
YH: You work for National Geographic, an organization that’s famous for making the natural world accessible through various art forms. How does Pristine Seas use art in conservation work, and what do you think the role of storytelling is in environmentalism?
AM: National Geographic has existed for over 130 years, and for a long time it used to describe what was happening in the world. Pristine Seas was the first project in National Geographic that aimed at changing the world and not just describing it. So we decided that instead of just telling the story of the dying oceans, we wanted governments to repair the damage and protect it. This has been so successful that now National Geographic has shifted to this approach and wants to influence the world, instead of just telling the story of a planet that is suffering. Today’s National Geographic’s tagline is “a planet in balance,” which means National Geographic is using its whole capacity to influence decisions, inform the public and change the agenda on key areas such as pollution, human rights violations and others.
YH: You helped to lead the Yale World Fellows climate strike on Sept. 20. What is your perspective on the climate strike movement as a means of combating climate change?
AM: I believe that everybody should get involved in this global movement because all together we will be more effective in changing the agenda. We can have all the technical knowledge, but if we don’t open the door to these ideas, then nothing will happen. So we could be the best engineers or lawyers or biologists in the world, but if the political power isn’t listening, then nothing will happen. So that’s why it’s important [for me] to be both advising professionally and taking part in these environmental strikes. That’s why only three weeks after I became a World Fellow, I decided to organize this climate strike. With the help of the other World Fellows, we had around 200 people demonstrating in front of the Sterling Laboratory which was a great feeling. I barely knew anybody, but there was a lot of excitement and satisfaction. Everybody could feel that something good was happening. And then we went altogether to join the demonstrations with the New Haven community. So, yeah, you can be in any position, but in the end, we are all citizens and we have to be part of this movement to help move the needle and open the doors for better discussion.
YH: Going back to your human rights work, you won a landmark case in Chile that resulted in the first ruling on freedom of expression in South America. How did you get involved, and what have been the consequences of that ruling?
AM: Yeah, well, Chile had a dictatorship for 17 years. And even after that, some of the laws that had been approved by that dictator were still in place. I was studying in law school when a movie by Martin Scorsese, called The Last Temptation of Christ, was banned. The church was very influential back then in Chile, and they got the Supreme Court to ban this movie. I was really upset and outraged by this decision, and I was taking my first steps in human rights, so I decided to explore the mechanisms for international court complaints. I filed a complaint against Chile for violating my freedom of expression, for banning these movies. After six years, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in my favor and declared that Chile had violated mine and every other Chilean’s liberty through our freedom of expression and made Chile change its constitution to eliminate censorship in movies and guarantee our freedom of expression. So, that was an important milestone in my life. After that, more than 1000 movies that were banned were then released. And now the Chilean government cannot ban any movie but only rate them to protect minors and children, in general.
YH: How do you view the relationship between governments and communities when it comes to environmental conservation, and how have you experienced this in your work?
AM: I’ve often been asking whether we should work with governments or communities to establish marine reserves. Actually we have to work with both at the same time, combining a top-down and a bottom-up approach. Our role is to catalyze change by doing scientific studies and making recommendations, but also by listening to groups or institutions and incorporating their perspectives. We will always push for the broader protection of the oceans, but we are very respectful of local communities… we usually adopt their vision, especially if they are indigenous communities. And once we have a clear idea for the area to be protected, we go to the governments and propose for them to be the “hero of the story.” In my experience, the governments usually don’t have ocean protection in their agenda, but they have learned that if they do this, they can improve their reputation and then they can be acknowledged internationally. So far it has worked very well. So yes, I really enjoy this combination between science, artists and policy experts. And that’s the choreography that’s been effective; Pristine Seas has helped create 22 of the largest marine reserves in the world.
YH: As an international living in the U.S., how do you view America’s economic influence and its relation to Latin America?
AM: Yes. I guess I’m not the only one for whom the U.S., generates contradictions in his mind. On the one hand, I work for a U.S.-based organization — National Geographic — and a U.S. university — Yale — has very generously given me the opportunity to spend a semester here. There are great things that have been born in this country and there are many leaders that we admire. But on the other hand, some of the biggest problems in the world have originated here, such as wars and tensions all over the world — even my country. The dictatorship that started in 1973 overthrew the democratically elected president with the assistance of the U.S. government, so I’m very aware of that. I like to think that the U.S. is a very diverse country and that good or bad, we can have the freedom to acknowledge the good and criticize the bad.
YH: You’re a Yale World Fellow, a role that involves advising students on campus. As students, we have limited economic power, are not able to enact policy, and can feel powerless in the face of documents like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What do you think is the role of students and young people in addressing climate change?
AM: I remember when I was a kid, students from universities were the ones that started the end of the dictatorship. They would go out and protest. And they were beaten up every time by the police. But then people started to lose fear and realized that this could be done. After a few years, that dictatorship ended because of those protests. So, for me, the younger generations have the energy and power to get together and be fearless and demonstrate without measuring every step that they take. Many people just have in their minds the costs and benefits of what they’re doing. What I’ve seen in Chile, in the U.S. and many other countries where people are demonstrating for climate change, is that the only thing they have in mind is solving the problem, no matter what the cost is. I see people missing classes. Some people being arrested. But that’s not as important as the act of protesting to change the agenda. And that gives me enormous hope. I just hope that students keep doing that… they are doing the right thing, they are putting in a light on the world’s problems.
For this week’s issue, the Herald asked writers to send in pieces about their favorite moments with their bodies.
A lot of people ask me why I scoot. Often, they don’t ask so much with their words as they do with their incredulous stares. Other times, they do ask me with their words, but not in literal terms. When raucous strangers shout “Do a kickflip!” at me outside of Soads at one a.m., I’m not too prideful to miss their subtext — they think scooting is uncool. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to such a display of foolishness?
The scooter is a monument to compromise. My wheels occasionally struggle with their basic function — they’re too small to propel like a bike, but too rubbery to be feet. The scars on my right hand and elbow can attest to at least two of the cases when especially uneven pavement caused my scooter to cease scooting at the worst moment imaginable.
But each morning I climb out of bed onto my scooter, and each evening I step off it back into bed, and I lull myself to sleep in satisfaction for having scote the whole day through. Why? Because it feels good. The pulsing pressure on my left calf kicking back against the ground. The invigorating current of air rushing past my face and whipping up my hair. The visceral jolt beginning in my arms and ricocheting though my whole body as I pass between sections of pavement. It’s fun. So what if I can’t “do a kickflip”? Scooting — and the resulting marriage of the human and mechanical — is an art unto itself.
— Will Wegner, MY ’22, YH Staff
I’ve never been a very sporty person. I’m athletic, sure, because I dance, but I lack a certain competitive instinct. When my mom/coach screamed “Be aggressive” during basketball clinic, nine-year-old me got anxious, not motivated. When it comes to sports, I’ve always felt uncomfortable in my body; compared to my L.A. soccer-star cousins, I’m weak, pale, pathetic. By and large, I like myself, but sports have always sucked the positive energy out of me.
This summer, I went to a rock climbing gym with my boyfriend for the first time. After many falls, I finally completed a route and, for once, was pleasantly surprised with what my body could do. I could already see new muscles in my forearms, ones I’d never had the chance to activate before. The strength in my legs and shoulders from years of dancing was relevant in a way I hadn’t imagined it could be. I loved the challenge of each new route — loved knowing that I could work hard and actually become good at climbing. When I left the gym for the first time, sweat running down my face, arms and abs aching, I felt truly present in my body. Graceful and strong, beautiful and powerful.
— Edie Abraham-Macht, BR ’22
I’ll never forget the day I truly felt free. It wasn’t from the tyranny of parents, nor the confines of school walls, but something deeper, more personal.
Only nine months had elapsed since I completely ripped through a vital ligament in my right knee, though I felt I’d aged a lifetime since. My subsequent surgery left me with dull pain hammering everywhere beneath my skin, sharp pain echoing within; with a wheelchair, then crutches, and finally with two bulky knee braces I wore every moment of the day. Just like that, my senior year soccer season evaporated into thin air.
That day, it was just my bike and me, unstoppable in the crowded, beautiful streets I call home.
Anyone familiar with Upper Manhattan knows the hills there are no joke. But as I lurched my body over the pedals of my soul-powered machine, thrusting my legs downward with all the human strength within me, as I climbed slowly, painstakingly, yet steadily, up those massive slopes, I laughed.
I reached the island’s northernmost point, and my beaming smile was unmistakable. Oh, how good it felt to be free again! I stopped to enjoy the stillness of that peaceful Saturday, preparing myself to race down the West Side into the afternoon sun.
That day, I reconquered — the engine of my soul, the body that had pumped out passion and happiness since the day I was born.
That day, I biked 31 miles all throughout Manhattan.
— Sebastian Baez, BF ’23
Bodies in Motion was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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This week, the Herald interviewed sculpture student Peyton Peyton, ART ’20, about her performance piece worms in my mouth again. We discussed the body as a source of inspiration and the kinesthetic knowledge which object-based performance facilitates.
Still from worms in my mouth.
The Yale Herald: Maybe we could start by talking about this piece worms in my mouth again, since it seems like you’ve been working on it for almost your entire time here [at Yale].
PP: The semester before I started, I was thinking a lot about states of the body: “fight or flight” and “rest and digest.” I was thinking about how when you’re stressed out you cannot digest food, and you conserve energy to deal with whatever you’re dealing with. I noticed that in my studio I kept starting things without finishing them, which I think was part of coming here and having so many studio visits, so many people constantly looking at my work — it froze me up. I was having no actual output, and I was like, “What am I doing here? I’m taking in all this information and moving my hands around but nothing’s getting done.” This might be T.M.I., but last semester I got really sick. I was having a lot of abdominal pain and ended up in the hospital for a week with a bowel obstruction and a torsed ovary — literally turned up inside. It was the embodiment of what was happening in my studio: my studio was having a bowel obstruction.
YH: And that’s exactly what ended up happening with this piece.
PP: Yeah, I think it became about the intestines, the process of getting twisted up. After I came back from the hospital, I started making this big tube, this worm thing. The fans on either end of the tube are so loud. When you’re inside the tube, it would seem like the fans would be scary, but that’s actually the best time to be in it; you can move in ways that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. I had performed in it once and when I got out I remember talking to my partner about how I’d never seen [the tube] behave like it did. It was really tumultuous. He said, “The only thing that changes every time you get in it is you.” I get a totally different performance every time. It moves differently every time. But that was when I realized: I’m digesting myself.
YH: It’s a sort of inverse, as opposed to you digesting the work, having the work consume you in some sort of way… Did you end up conceiving of this piece as a result of your experience in the hospital?
PP: Yeah, going to the hospital was first. In my crit before that, I had [made] this crocheted tube, on the end of which was basically underwear that snap close, like a diaper. There was another one on the other end, so two people could get in it. After making that I knew I wanted to crawl through a tube, maybe for a video. I wasn’t really thinking about it being a performance at first. Then I got the fans, and became really interested in what could happen between the two fans. Even then, I wasn’t thinking about me being between the two fans.
Still from worms in my mouth.
YH: Have you ever considered using performers who are not you to manipulate and use the objects?
PP: Now that I’ve performed in it several times, I do think I can explain to someone how to be in the tube and how to perform in it. But at first I had to spend so much time in the tube to understand how to move in it. I’ve done so many performances in the wrong room, or with too many people, or where I couldn’t get to the wall and write on it or where I didn’t want to write on it. I’ve done it so many times I think I’ve encountered every type of problem I can have. Now I understand the language enough where I can communicate that to someone. I mean, I hesitate because I don’t think that it’s important that it’s me or my body, but I think that the relationship between the body and the object has to be established in a way that I can’t really ask somebody else to do. So I can build that relationship and then explain it to someone, if they want to do it. But you know, it’s something like a language in a relationship that has to be built. And it’s hard. It’s hard to do. It’s not an easy ask.
YH: Do feel like you’ve maintained a certain level of experimentation when you’re performing with the worm?
PP: Well, I’m pretty comfortable with the worm now. I don’t really get as nervous anymore unless it’s a weird room that I didn’t see before doing the performance. But I feel comfortable because I’ve gone through it enough that I know how to handle it when it gets twisted. When I’m in it, I can’t really orient myself within the room, and I’m moving so much that the colors don’t matter, you know? If the fan at my feet turns on but the air doesn’t get to me, I know it’s twisted somewhere between my feet and that fan. So I have to go that way and then find the twists, get in the twist and then roll over. If it’s really twisted I have to see which way it’s twisted and then put my hand in it to see how far it’s gone. So I’m at the point now where I know what to do if things go wrong.
YH: I wonder how you think about the knowledge you’re accumulating from all of this experimentation. You clearly have a really, really intricate and detailed understanding of the ways that one should navigate this tube. But where does that accumulated knowledge or understanding go?
PP: That’s a good question. I mean, I really believe that nothing is true, everything is just kind of permitted. My truth is that I think going through the worm did inform me in my body on some level. My hope is that it fixed my intestines.
