Many costumes portray culture and lifestyle in an insensitive manner
Humboldt State students hurry last minute to piece their Halloween costumes together but find no comfort in commercial Halloween stores as the stores will often have sections full of costumes that are ignorant or insensitive.
Sierra Cosper, a forestry major, expressed her discontent in the commercial Halloween store, Spirit Halloween.
“I went through Spirit Halloween and they had a whole aisle of Pocahontas and it’s not cool,” Cosper said. “It’s 2019, can we move on from that now?”
Students agreed that Pocahontas and Native American themed costumes were disrespectful and unacceptable to wear. Haley Fedalizo, a liberal studies elementary education major, found another commercial Halloween store, Party City, to be disrespectful toward culture and body weight.
“Obviously the [costumes] that are in your face like the Native American one is not okay,” Fedalizo said. “I was literally at Party City yesterday and I saw a “fat costume” and that’s not cool.”
Jose Moreno, a social work major, also found fault in the commercial chain Party City. Moreno practices an ironically ‘fun’ tradition at the store every year. Often losing count of the inappropriate costumes.
“I went through Spirit Halloween and they had a whole aisle of Pocahontas and it’s not cool. It’s 2019, can we move on from that now?”
Sierra Cosper
“When I go to Party City or anything like that, I count how many cultural appropriation outfits there are,” Moreno said. “I’m like ‘there’s one right there, and right there! I lost track.”
Beyond the recognizable commercial chains, the internet continues to advertise culturally insensitive and inappropriate Halloween costumes and accessories.
HSU student Gabrielle Sturm, an environmental studies major, went online to browse for the Halloween season and couldn’t believe what was advertised.
“I was looking up costumes online and I was a little surprised to see how many [inappropriate costumes] there still are,” Sturm says. “I think they’re bad but a lot of people still do it.”
While cultural appropriation continues to popularize social media with cultural awareness movements, HSU promotes a safe and respectful Halloween season. Of course, the message on campus has no influence on commercial chains.
Largest intentional blackout in California history keeps millions without power while the state burns
Over two million people across Northern California were without power on Sunday. Pacific Gas & Electric is working to restore power, but the company has scheduled another Public Power Safety Shutoff, this time for Tuesday morning.
Despite the shutoffs, fires are burning across the state. The Kincade Fire, a 66,000 acre fire in northern Sonoma County, was only 5% contained as of Monday at 3 p.m. Located just northwest of Santa Rosa, the Kincade Fire has forced more than 180,000 people to evacuate, including the towns of Windsor and Healdsburg.
There are no casualties or missing persons reported as of yet, but 80,000 structures are at risk. Firefighters from as far south as Pasadena and as far north as Oregon have reported to the scene to try and stop the fire from pushing west across Highway 101.
PG&E’s shutoff is an unprecedented intentional blackout, and is the largest intentional blackout in history, according to theLos Angeles Times. The utility’s goal is to prevent high winds—which have reached upwards of 100 miles per hour in some parts of Sonoma County—from sparking wildfires.
In a PG&E press conference on Saturday, CEO and President of the utility company—but not the entire corporation—Andy Vesey said the company’s goal is safety.
“Right now we have a big, historic event coming at us,” Vesey said. “We have two and a half million customers being impacted. There’s a real threat to public safety and that’s why we’re doing this.”
Yet, across the nation, media outlets are questioning PG&E’s shutoffs.
Articles from Time, The Nation and ProPublicahave claimed that PG&E’s shutoffs may not actually reduce wildfire risk. The shutoffs could prevent debris from sparking fires from electrical wires, but that is not the only cause of wildfires. Abraham Lustgarten for ProPublicapoints to cigarettes, barbecues, generators (which are used extensively during shutoffs) and cars as other common fire starters.
“The blackouts solved nothing, of course,” Lustgarten wrote. “De-energizing the electrical grid is a bludgeon: imprecise, with enormous potential for collateral damage as people deal with a darkened world. It doesn’t even eliminate fire risk.”
To Lustgarten’s point, a structure fire on the east side of the Arcata Plaza erupted Sunday afternoon, likely caused by a generator at the Big Blue Cafe, according to reporting by the Times Standard. While firefighters contained the blaze and no injuries were reported, initial estimates for the damages are as high as $2 million.
“It’s more than just climate change. It’s about the failure of capitalism to address climate change. It’s about decades of mismanagement. It’s a story about greed.”
Gavin Newsom, California Governor
In some instances, it seems the shut offs weren’t implemented in time to prevent electrical lines from sparking fires. PG&E admitted that it registered a failed jumper cable at one of its transmission towers near the possible ignition point of the Kincade Fire right before the fire began. The area of the fire was set for a Public Safety Power Shutoff, but it didn’t begin until 28 minutes after the fire started.
The outages have pressed some government officials to speak out against the corporation and its tactics. California Governor Gavin Newsom called out PG&E for greed and mismanagement in a press conference on Thursday.
“It’s more than just climate change,” Newsom said. “It’s about the failure of capitalism to address climate change. It’s about decades of mismanagement. It’s a story about greed.”
Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted that it was time to think about public ownership of utilities.
Amidst the outages, PG&E’s stock has plummeted to all-time lows. On Saturday, Governor Newsom encouraged Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway to buy PG&E.
In the Saturday press conference, Vesey declined to entertain questions about PG&E’s tainted image. Vesey said those discussions can come later as they will focus on the public’s safety for now.
“No matter how much we focus on the past, it will not help us at all today or tomorrow,” Vesey said. “We take lessons learned, we take actions, we put in our programs and we work responsibly.”
For now, California is under a statewide declaration of emergency by Governor Newsom, who has promised to hold PG&E accountable.
“We will hold them to an account that they’ve never been held to in the past,” Newsom said in a press conference. “We will do everything in our power to restructure PG&E so it is a completely different entity when they get out of bankruptcy by June 30th of next year.”
Workshops on permaculture, public banking systems and the opposition of big corporations gave students optimism for the future after attending the Post Capitalism Solidarity Economy Conference, held in Humboldt State’s Kate Buchanan Room last weekend.
More than 250 people including students, professors, activists and community leaders attended a range of workshops sponsored by Cooperation Humboldt on the nuts and bolts of building a more just, sustainable society.
Presentations displayed work that is currently going on in Humboldt, like building a public bank, using permaculture to turn lawns into gardens, cooperative housing solutions and more.
HSU student Oscar Mogollon said people were openly optimistic and happy they attended, because they could see a transition in Humboldt that’s already happening. Mogollon said the conference enabled him to see the pieces of the puzzle coming together.
“It is very powerful to know that there is support for the change to happen,” Mogollon said. “We need that change now because climate breakdown will be on our soil, on our coastline, in the next 12 to 15 years.”
Political science and philosophy double major Johnny Ferdon was always interested in developing community outside of capitalism. He got more than he expected from the conference.
“I found tons of people making a world outside of capitalism, more than I expected to meet at the conference,” Ferdon said. “The Plenary Session was super awesome. It laid the general framework for the workshops.”
Ferdon was personally excited about the Permaculture workshop with local expert Marlon Gil, and Own Yourself: Worker-Owned Co-ops, led by Cooperation Humboldt Member Caroline Griffith and Edge Caliber Owner Danny Kelley.
Ferdon reserved words of deep praise for the workshop led by Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson, a deep dive into building a solidarity economy in Mississippi.
“It is possible to become paralyzed by having a government not favorable to what we want to do,” Ferdon said. “Akuno shared the experience of building Cooperation Jackson while being surrounded by hostile forces. He gave us examples of how much work can be done and examples that teach us not to rely on the state.”
HSU student Emily Mossman Smiley was also happy that she attended the workshops. She was especially inspired by the idea of a public bank.
“The only state-owned public bank in the country, the Bank of North Dakota, was the only bank during the 2008 crash that was able to maintain stability while the rest of the banks needed to be bailed out,” Mossman said.
Mossman said the presentation was so informative, “It was enough to light a fire under my ass to push for public banking in California.”
“While public banking is not a silver bullet, it will enable the citizens of California to keep capital within their communities and make it serve the community as opposed to serving the big corporations that are crushing us,” Mossman said.
Cooperation Humboldt Co-founder David Cobb said the conference brought together movement through leaders who shared best practices for creating a new world within the exterior of the old.
I am grateful for them, and for the members of the community who came together to learn from and inspire each other to actually build that world,” Cobb said.
“To be truly liberated, capitalism and the patriarchy must be eradicated.”
A thunder of knocking agreement filled Founders Hall 118 on Wednesday by a crowd consisting of mostly students who were eager to hear a debate focused on the incompatibility of capitalism and feminism.
Women from HSU’s debate team presented their speeches in front of a crowded room using the British Parliamentary debate format that consists of four teams where each person is given seven minute to present.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”Leslie Rossman” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”18″]“[We] cannot fight the system if we are always fighting just to survive.”[/perfectpullquote]
Kimberly Nguyen, the prime minister, opened the debate by defining the motion and proposing a radical change by feminists, suggesting they should avoid teaching for profit, working with conglomerate media, and selling bestselling books with publishing conglomerates.
“We will not try to solve for capitalism in this debate,” Nguyen said. “Instead, we are only having a conversation about how the two are incompatible.”
After a heated discussion professor Leslie Rossman, who identifies as a socialist feminist, recapped the event reminding the audience that capitalism is an inherently exploitative system and it will continue to sell social movements like feminism for a profit. Rossman continued to describe how capitalism will constantly reproduce scarcity and leave citizens in a state of insecurity.
“[We] cannot fight the system if we are always fighting just to survive,” Rossman said.
Debate coach and professor, Aaron Donaldson was delighted by the crowd turnout and how well the women debated the topic.
“I think they did a great job of showing why our team is so respected in the circuit,” Donaldson said.
Debate coach Dr. Aaron Donaldson and Dr. Leslie Rossman pose for a picture after the Womxn’s Debate that took place in Founder’s Hall 118 on March 6. | Photo by Christina Samoy
This debate prepared the team for Nationals that will take place at Clemson University in South Carolina in mid-April, where they will compete against teams like Harvard and Yale. Sydney Verga, an environmental studies major, highlighted the struggles of competing at tournaments due to budget cuts.
“Last year we got lucky because nationals was closeby at Stanford,” Verga said. “We normally cannot fly to these tournaments because it’s too expensive.”
Many suggest bake sales to raise money for these tournaments, but the biggest struggle they face is reaching out to debate program alumni who they’ve lost contact with over the years. Recently the clubs office recognized them as a club so they are able to fundraise, although the team is finding it hard to raise money.
The Womxn’s Debate was opened by Blue Baldwin who thanked everyone for attending on March 6. | Photo by Christina Samoy
The team spent weeks preparing their arguments, making sure they were charitable to both sides, making sure none of the arguments were off topic. A goal for this debate was to demasculinize the space and make it as diverse and inclusive as possible.
“Capitalism and feminism are really dense topics,” Nguyen said. “We don’t want to mischaracterize anything.”
Typically the debate team finds themselves presenting in small rooms with an even smaller crowd, but the turnout at the event prepared them for larger spaces and skills to become better public speakers.
A crowd of students gather in Founders Hall 118 to support the Womxn’s Debate team held on March 6. | Photo by Christina Samoy
Donaldson was thankful to have the team present in front of peers, friends, and teachers because, it meant that their hard work wasn’t limited to invisible corners of campus and people are caring about the amount of work and research that goes into preparing for events like this.
“It brings a lot of excitement [for] the chance to give a speech,” Donaldson said.
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