I have come to find that creativity offers a place of solace, reprieve, and resilience as much as it provides a space for innovative politics centered on the beauty, resilience, and reality of human experiences. In challenging the worlds most wicked problems, we need all of the creativity that we can possibly muster.
Creativity has been a feature of my Honors Education, as I was asked to collaborate and innovate with colleagues from drastically different life experiences and disciplines. Creativity has been a major source of resilience for me through music, art, and visual activism.
Creativity has been a feature of my Honors Education, as I was asked to collaborate and innovate with colleagues from drastically different life experiences and disciplines. Creativity has been a major source of resilience for me through music, art, and visual activism.
VISUAL POVERTY POLITICS:
Portraits for change
winter 2020
The Portraits for Change project comes from a lengthy collaboration between Real Change News and the UW Honors Program, particularly the leadership of Professor Vicky Lawson and Professor Sarah Elwood.
Real Change News is Seattle’s Street Newspaper. Real Change is a multi-faceted organization that provides a job for vendors through the selling of newspapers, offers a space for community and dignity, and organizes advocacy efforts. Notably, they are engaged in all sorts of politics around the issue of inequality and unaffordability in this city, Seattle, which has the third highest homeless population of all major US cities. They have vendors in the University District who sell the papers.
Throughout this past quarter, students in our Interdisciplinary Honors Course entitled Citizenship Acts to Challenge Poverty have been asked to engage deeply with homelessness and activism around the politics of unaffordability and injustice in our city. In this class, students are unlearning and refusing toxic definitions of poverty (as a personal failing, poor choice or worse). Instead, we are focused on the enduring problem of inequality. We focus on 3 things:
Not only are they learning this in the classroom, but also in deep collaboration with an organization already doing this work. So, in an effort to amplify the impact of Real Change News’ portrait project, which has already been shown throughout the Seattle area, we brought this exhibit to campus. Students dove into the planning, execution, and marketing of this exhibit, Portraits for Change, and its launch event.
The portraits take a particularly privileged art form (one that was reserved for nobility) and instead centers the vibrancy, joy, and humanity of the people who have been immortalized. These portraits challenge and disrupt commonly held understandings of unsheltered or low-income individuals. We hope that these individual stories help you to unlearn some of the assumptions that you might carry, often by no fault of your own.
It is no secret that homelessness is a massive political issue in the city of Seattle. We declared homelessness a state of emergency in 2012, yet we still have incredibly high numbers of folks who are unstably housed and remain unsheltered. When I talk to people about this issue, many are both overwhelmed and confused by the myriad of issues at play in ameliorating the lives of our unsheltered neighbors. I do not mean to address or suggest any policy interventions in this moment. Rather, I hope to bring to attention the ways that homelessness has become a problem for the city, rather than a demonstration of dire need of our neighbors.
It sometimes comes as a surprise that homelessness has been a relatively stable feature of Seattle. You will see that in the central case of the exhibit, where we compare historical photos of nickelsvilles and hoovervilles, tiny homes with their current locations. I invite you to take some time to look at this and to think through the ways that homelessness, and poverty generally, have evolved in Seattle.
We think it is important to host this exhibit on the UW Campus because this is public education through art. At its heart, this exhibit invites you to think about people living outside in our city and King County. The art in this exhibit invites you to see the beauty, complexity and humanity of Real Change Vendors who are portrayed. Biographies tell personal stories of their lives – and teach us that the only way to know about someone’s circumstances is to learn their story.
We hope this exhibit challenges commonly held negative stereotypes about people living outside by inviting you to pause and really see people that you might not have come to know. I highly encourage everyone to visit the exhibit. Spend some time at just a few of the portraits, reading and learning about the individuals depicted.
Real Change News is Seattle’s Street Newspaper. Real Change is a multi-faceted organization that provides a job for vendors through the selling of newspapers, offers a space for community and dignity, and organizes advocacy efforts. Notably, they are engaged in all sorts of politics around the issue of inequality and unaffordability in this city, Seattle, which has the third highest homeless population of all major US cities. They have vendors in the University District who sell the papers.
Throughout this past quarter, students in our Interdisciplinary Honors Course entitled Citizenship Acts to Challenge Poverty have been asked to engage deeply with homelessness and activism around the politics of unaffordability and injustice in our city. In this class, students are unlearning and refusing toxic definitions of poverty (as a personal failing, poor choice or worse). Instead, we are focused on the enduring problem of inequality. We focus on 3 things:
- The power of challenging toxic and ignorant narratives about people who are living outside
- The root causes of lack of shelter and of inequality -- rooted in racism, classism, homo and transphobia & ableism
- The work that Real Change does to build a just, caring and inclusive community, where people are no longer marginalized by these root causes and have the means to live with dignity
Not only are they learning this in the classroom, but also in deep collaboration with an organization already doing this work. So, in an effort to amplify the impact of Real Change News’ portrait project, which has already been shown throughout the Seattle area, we brought this exhibit to campus. Students dove into the planning, execution, and marketing of this exhibit, Portraits for Change, and its launch event.
The portraits take a particularly privileged art form (one that was reserved for nobility) and instead centers the vibrancy, joy, and humanity of the people who have been immortalized. These portraits challenge and disrupt commonly held understandings of unsheltered or low-income individuals. We hope that these individual stories help you to unlearn some of the assumptions that you might carry, often by no fault of your own.
It is no secret that homelessness is a massive political issue in the city of Seattle. We declared homelessness a state of emergency in 2012, yet we still have incredibly high numbers of folks who are unstably housed and remain unsheltered. When I talk to people about this issue, many are both overwhelmed and confused by the myriad of issues at play in ameliorating the lives of our unsheltered neighbors. I do not mean to address or suggest any policy interventions in this moment. Rather, I hope to bring to attention the ways that homelessness has become a problem for the city, rather than a demonstration of dire need of our neighbors.
It sometimes comes as a surprise that homelessness has been a relatively stable feature of Seattle. You will see that in the central case of the exhibit, where we compare historical photos of nickelsvilles and hoovervilles, tiny homes with their current locations. I invite you to take some time to look at this and to think through the ways that homelessness, and poverty generally, have evolved in Seattle.
We think it is important to host this exhibit on the UW Campus because this is public education through art. At its heart, this exhibit invites you to think about people living outside in our city and King County. The art in this exhibit invites you to see the beauty, complexity and humanity of Real Change Vendors who are portrayed. Biographies tell personal stories of their lives – and teach us that the only way to know about someone’s circumstances is to learn their story.
We hope this exhibit challenges commonly held negative stereotypes about people living outside by inviting you to pause and really see people that you might not have come to know. I highly encourage everyone to visit the exhibit. Spend some time at just a few of the portraits, reading and learning about the individuals depicted.
INTERDISCIPLINARY HONORS:
CREATIVITY & COLLABORATION IN PROBLEM SOLVING
At its core, the Honors Program asks its students to collaborate along a spectrum of understanding in the pursuit of creative, innovative, and nuanced answers to the worlds most difficult questions.
I have been actively engaged with the Honors Program throughout my time at the University. I was initially recruited out of vanity, but have remained because I am deeply committed to the ethics of an Honors Education. The Honors Program asks us to think about all issues as ones that are interdisciplinarily created and solved. It asks us to think as general citizens, not proclaimed experts in specific fields. While I believe that this has made be a better academic, I also think that it has made me a better citizen. I am more equipped for critical thought and activism.
During Fall 2018, I had the extreme privilege of introducing a small cohort to the Honors Program. I was supported throughout the entire process by my fellow peer educators and mentors. After preparing for months, we welcomed our students into the program. While it was challenging at times (improvisation only gets you so far and authenticity requires confidence), I felt incredibly supported and welcomed by my students. They were kind, forgiving, funny, and sweet. They wrote heartfelt, meaningful responses to the questions we asked, and shocked me with their intentionality and thoughtfulness. It was an absolute joy to be with them. This experience with my cohort and in my learning the values of the Honors program affirmed my belief in the need for interdisciplinary answers and collaborations to answer the world's wicked questions.
I have been actively engaged with the Honors Program throughout my time at the University. I was initially recruited out of vanity, but have remained because I am deeply committed to the ethics of an Honors Education. The Honors Program asks us to think about all issues as ones that are interdisciplinarily created and solved. It asks us to think as general citizens, not proclaimed experts in specific fields. While I believe that this has made be a better academic, I also think that it has made me a better citizen. I am more equipped for critical thought and activism.
During Fall 2018, I had the extreme privilege of introducing a small cohort to the Honors Program. I was supported throughout the entire process by my fellow peer educators and mentors. After preparing for months, we welcomed our students into the program. While it was challenging at times (improvisation only gets you so far and authenticity requires confidence), I felt incredibly supported and welcomed by my students. They were kind, forgiving, funny, and sweet. They wrote heartfelt, meaningful responses to the questions we asked, and shocked me with their intentionality and thoughtfulness. It was an absolute joy to be with them. This experience with my cohort and in my learning the values of the Honors program affirmed my belief in the need for interdisciplinary answers and collaborations to answer the world's wicked questions.
CHOIR:
for COMMUNICATING EMOTIONS when there are no words
I have been an active member in the choral community at the University since entering. I am a member of the University Chorale, the auditioned undergraduate non-major choir (I performed atrociously at the callbacks for the graduate level choir, but that's a story for another time).
It has been a serious commitment to devote four hours a week purely to singing in community. But, it has been a constant priority for me. Choir is the place where I am most at peace because I am able to communicate without words. In our songs, I can feel the support of the rest of my choir as we communicate about joy, beauty, and pain through our music.
One of the best examples of the power of song was our recent tour to Estonia & Latvia (Summer 2019). We joined nearly 100,000 other singers in a traditional song festival, starting during the Estonian revolution, where singers joined and sang songs that were banned under Soviet Rule as an initial act of resistance. It has come to be known as the Song Revolution.
It has been a serious commitment to devote four hours a week purely to singing in community. But, it has been a constant priority for me. Choir is the place where I am most at peace because I am able to communicate without words. In our songs, I can feel the support of the rest of my choir as we communicate about joy, beauty, and pain through our music.
One of the best examples of the power of song was our recent tour to Estonia & Latvia (Summer 2019). We joined nearly 100,000 other singers in a traditional song festival, starting during the Estonian revolution, where singers joined and sang songs that were banned under Soviet Rule as an initial act of resistance. It has come to be known as the Song Revolution.
BUBBLES:
ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE AND COLLECTIVE ACTIVISM
Fall 2019
At the ripe age of 22, I was asked to grapple with my death. I had signed myself up for it by intentionally taking a course related to death. I started drawing in each class to distract myself from difficult course material and found joy in the things I was making.
I clung strongly to the idea that creativity offers an outlet for approaching extremely difficult topics with grace.
So, when we were then asked to come up with an Action Project that addressed an important part of the current political and ecological moment. I said "BUBBLES. CARBON BUBBLES." And my classmates looked at me with confusion until I explained that blowing bubbles would serve as a means to make the topic approachable in a way that we might not be able to otherwise.
It worked. We blew bubbles in the quad & collected signatures urging UW to divest from Fossil Fuels. We collected over 300 signatures in four days.
It was an absolute delight to watch the ways that peoples eyes lit up at the sight of giant bubbles, only to be slightly downed when we starting talking about the environment. Alas.
I clung strongly to the idea that creativity offers an outlet for approaching extremely difficult topics with grace.
So, when we were then asked to come up with an Action Project that addressed an important part of the current political and ecological moment. I said "BUBBLES. CARBON BUBBLES." And my classmates looked at me with confusion until I explained that blowing bubbles would serve as a means to make the topic approachable in a way that we might not be able to otherwise.
It worked. We blew bubbles in the quad & collected signatures urging UW to divest from Fossil Fuels. We collected over 300 signatures in four days.
It was an absolute delight to watch the ways that peoples eyes lit up at the sight of giant bubbles, only to be slightly downed when we starting talking about the environment. Alas.
If we don’t address the unsustainability of our carbon consumption practices, we are headed for both environmental destruction and economic collapse. As such, the death of the carbon economy is an essential part of planetary sustainability. Yet, the carbon economy is maintained through social, political, and economic investment in unattainable ideals of continuous growth and hopefulness that we can continue to move forward with our current practices. As a means of contributing to and continuing broader divestment campaigns, my action group elected to use bubbles to highlight the complicity of the University of Washington in the Carbon Bubble and encourage UW to fully divest from fossil fuels. We were ultimately successful in garnering support through our petition, which received 344 signatures.
Throughout the creative process, the blowing of the bubbles, and our hopes for continuity, our group of four built practiced the interdependence necessary to our visions of a “life sustaining society committed to the recovery of our world” (Macy & Johnstone. 26). “For a complex system to self-organize and function well, it requires both the integration and differentiation of its parts” (May & Johnstone. 93). This interdependence is true of global, local, and proximate forces. For our action group, this meant finding interdependence amongst ourselves and coalition-building with other activist groups. Acknowledging and practicing interdependence is a crucial aspect of moving towards a life-sustaining world. Broadly, acknowledging the interdependence of the planet and humans is a foundational step to sustainability. We must see the planet’s health as a component of our own, we must see ourselves as a component of the planet. This ontology of interdependence also understands our activism as if we were a part acting for its whole, where we draw upon a “sense of fellowship, belonging, and connection… as if we are remembering our root system” (Macy & Johnstone 119). This allyship with greater divestment movements was practice in coalition building. The success of this project depended on us practicing interdependence as we decided on our collective mission, objectives, and practices. Through regular and honest communication, we were able to agree on core goals, specific actions, and responsibility-sharing. Esaac, Anika, Brooke, and I come from radically different backgrounds. We split the labor and creativity required to complete this project based on our unique skills and interests. We were all responsible for the execution of the project and relied upon and supported each other to ensure its success. |
COMICS & THE WORM:
MAKING COMICS TO ADDRESS MY OWN DEATH
Yes, you read right about. I was in a class on Death during the Autumn of 2019. Its official title was the Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene. I started drawing in each class to distract myself from difficult course material and found joy in the things I was making. Here's that comic & also a bit of context for you curious people out there :)
When we begin to ponder our death, we inevitably begin to ponder our life. We strive to know how to make life meaningful, yet we struggle to define what meaningful even means. The prospect of a lifetime of meaning making, of forging community, of defining identity, of determining values, and of loving is too much to imagine. The threat of the loss of it is almost too much to bear. Researchers have found that when we begin to think about death, we become more attached to and defensive of our cultural worldview; the way that we imagine this world and our place in it. We coddle our fragile self esteems, aiming to feel love, belonging, meaning, and value. They refer to this as terror management: the ways that we address our fears with actions and thoughts and illusions. This existential crisis is complicated within the context of the Anthropocene. This is the first time we have the power to prevent or to accelerate our own mass extinction. Our responses mimic those of terror management theory: as this threat becomes more real, the more people will cling to their views and the way that it allows them to feel productive and meaningful, regardless of the consequences. We have to find ways to cope with the prospect of death and the life that ends with it.For me, that’s through humor. This past week in class, I began making sketches in the middle of an intense debate about terror management theory and the ways that we prepare for the threat of mass extinctions and apocalyptic conditions. Sketching it made me giggle and I hope it makes you too. Humor helps us remember things. And our tendencies as a species are not something we ought to forget.
SUPER EPIC NERD STATUS
I knew coming into college that I wanted to be a physician (and still do, despite the Physics programs’ best efforts to deter me). In each course I have taken to prepare me for medical school, I have made elaborate study guides... See some of them below.