This Massacre Was a Hate Crime - UCSB, Isla Vista, Feminism and One Alumnus's Thoughts

An abandoned shoe in Isla Vista in 2008

Friday night there was a stabbing and shooting in my alma mater, UC Santa Barbara. I heard the news via facebook mere minutes after a young man drove through the center of Isla Vista in a black BMW shooting.

For those unfamiliar with the community, UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) is adjacent to an area call Isla Vista which has just shy of 2 square miles of unincorporated county land with no clear governance. In this small beachside community 23 thousand students live – most are UCSB students but there are also community college students from Santa Barbara and other youth also live in the area. As an area with almost entirely student residents and extremely high real-estate prices most houses have 6-8 residents. Isla Vista is known for it’s party life as students have much more freedom there than other universities where there are more individuals living in dorms.

The Beach

But returning to Friday night – as I sat watching facebook and more facts emerged it was clear this wasn’t just random carnage – yet the media has been slow to name this attack as what I see it as: a hate crime against all women.

In a disturbing video that was on You Tube and since taken down the killer, Elliot Rodger, states his intent clearly:

“If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you. [laughs] You denied me a happy life and in turn I will deny all of you life, it’s only fair. I hate all of you.

—All you girls who rejected me, looked down upon me, you know, treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men. And all of you men for living a better life than me, all of you sexually active men. I hate you. I hate all of you. I can’t wait to give you exactly what you deserve, annihilation.”

This is not a standard crime. This clearly wasn’t just about one girl – it was about every member of the community. It was meant to instill fear in all. A hate crime is a usually violent, prejudice motivated crime and this fits the bill.

As the killer’s sexism was called out, online Men’s Rights Activists rushed to say #NotAllMen are like this. However this took the focus away from the fact that even if not all men are killers, all women have experienced sexism, gendered bias and violent attacks like this are common, and the hashtag #YesAllWomen began to trend.

Statements like:

#YesAllWomen bc every single woman I know has a story about a man feeling entitled to access to her body. Every. Single. One.

#YesAllWomen bc “Text me and let me know you got home safe” is standard, necessary and normal.

#YesAllWomen “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” – Margaret Atwood

As a national and international media jumped into the coverage, as an alumni, I instead watched Facebook. I graduated from the Film & Media Studies program and the annual Reel Loud Film Festival meant I could expect many alumni friends were visiting for the weekend. And while there was a gut wrenching shock and fear to think of bullets flying through my community combined with the fear that perhaps I knew a victim – I can’t say I was totally surprised that it could happen there.

As a student at UCSB, my first week was colored with fear. Not of change or being in a new place, but of hate crimes. The first time I picked up the campus newspaper I discovered there had been a hate crime against gay male students. It wasn’t the last time I’d learn of instances of hate on campus.

My first protest at UCSB in the aftermath of hate crimes in 2008 against gay students

As a student organizer I spent a lot of time engaging with uncomfortable dialogs. Whether it was to address homophobia, racism, sexism, sexual assaults, environmental issues or more – UC Santa Barbara provided a space where students voices had many outlets. While many did not engage as much in politics preferring to enjoy the beaches, the party life, focus on academia or other pursuits… those worlds often meshed in odd ways.

Local law enforcement at the “Deltopia” street party in Isla Vista

Students embracing the local party life

Election Day showcases the engagement many students have even though the community is unincorporated

Student organizers working to address racism on campus

 

While the community was generally friendly and almost any individual was a beer away from being a casual friend, it also wasn’t uncommon that I’d hear slurs like “faggot” directed at gays or “slut” directed at women. When I walked home I’d often call friends to “talk me home” if I didn’t have a friend to walk with.

During the Take Back the Night Protest in which women marched to reclaim the night as safe – several male students yelled rape threats. The very act proved our actions we needed and as much as we craved safety it was by no means present already.

Take Back the Night Protest

Janelle Monae performing prior to the Take Back the Night Protest

 

In an article for the campus newspaper my senior year I wrote the following:

“The tragedy of the situation is that in I.V., we’ve accepted the norms that allow our streets to be unsafe and our fellow students to be targeted. Even during our celebrations within their designated safe space, we are never fully safe. Often times the problems of Isla Vista are brushed off as some excuse the hate speech as drunken antics and taunts not meant to offend or be taken seriously. However, the reality is the same slurs that are used by drunken folks in aggressive outbursts are occasionally heard in classrooms and on campus, and the oppression from ignoring the severity of the problem contributes to the lack of safe spaces for the queer community attending our school.

Whether spoken in ignorance or malice, hate speech hits a nerve. It makes for unsafe spaces, and verbal harassment leads to the same degradation that enables other types of harassment and assault. In Isla Vista, I often observe the contrasting dichotomy of the sun-soaked ideal paradise and the very real problems that constantly plague the queer community and other minorities. As tempting as it is to ignore reality and enjoy the beachside bubble, we have to address these problems.”

Although this was written specifically to address the hate crime against LGBT students – those words feel far too fitting an applicable for women today in Isla Vista. 

As an alumni I have so many fond memories, strong friendships, experiences that helped me learn and grow. The streets the shooter drove down I’ve walked, biked, and stumbled down many times. I’ve gone to parties at places where I’ve now seen twitter photos of body bags resting. It’s shocking to see the violence but the root cause isn’t shocking. There was always violence against women. There was objectification. There were very real problems regarding rape. The sense of entitlement to others bodies didn’t start in Santa Barbara and is by no means limited to there.

But as the national debate goes on and CNN loops the killer’s video my heart is heavy as I think of the place that was my home.

Last time I visited UCSB was to celebrate the graduation of some of the individuals I was lucky to mentor and share time with. In the Student Resource Building while I was there someone wrote on the wall of the women’s restroom a cry for help. And the community responded with words of encouragement, resources they could go to, reminders that the original writer was not alone. When I think of UCSB I think back to that space often, and two years after graduating the wall was even more crowded with messages of support. The community has never been perfect, but there is support for those in need and a community willing to work to improve itself. Let’s hope that helps the families of the slain and injured in healing.

The notes on the wall of the girls bathroom in the Student Resource Building

 

Further Reading:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-transcript-ucsb-shootings-video-20140524-story.html

http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/05/lets-call-isla-vista-killings-what-they-were-misogynist-extremism

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/node/014194/isla-vista-shootings

https://twitter.com/hashtag/YesAllWomen

http://dailynexus.com/2010-05-06/hate-speech-creates-unsafe-environment-iv/

http://time.com/114043/yesallwomen-hashtag-santa-barbara-shooting/

Belated #RightsCon Reflection Post (Written the day after, though not posted till now.)

The second day of the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference felt very different to me. It began the same way – professionals in the hallway grabbing coffee and fruit before listening to speeches, watching critiques on the on stage content from the peanut gallery on twitter and then I remembered something… I’m sometimes an activist.

I was making a point on twitter which based on ReTweets and +1-ing from fellow conference attendees I saw had resonated, and rather than looking to find those people physically I raised my hand for the mic when the Q & A portion began and asked the panelists to respond to the elephant in the room.

(In this case it was Google’s attitude to YouTube as being a press, and yet their role as content screeners also making them the editor in chief around the issues)

Just as the day before, professional roles meant I didn’t get to get a true answer or dialog around it – however what I did get was the knowledge my point had been heard, added to a public dialog and live streamed for the general conference, and a few people I would have probably sought out later- found me to initiate the conversations. The ball was rolling in a direction I could engage with it, and I remembered how much the audience matters.

During far too many panels and hallway conversations people love to speak of how the internet is like a megaphone amplifying voices, however in looking for a productive dialog you don’t always need more voices, you also need more people willing to listen. It’s easy for me to find out what techies think – interviews with them amplify their voices, the code on their projects favors their perspectives and the dynamics are built around their visions. But the question I kept returning to was how do those same techies go from a perspective of designing for their user to designing for people in general?

You can assume that by my presence as a user on twitter, on facebook, through gmail and my phone’s apps – I like *something* about the service, trust the provider enough to put my content or ideas there, and will either learn to deal with their world view or remove myself from their sites as a user. But I for example I never consented to being on WhitePages but you can find a listing for me there. Do I have rights there? Or on a graver scale - for the manufacturers of the servers of the tech companies – the environmental toll of those materials is not just limited to the company, it affects the community around it- so do the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have rights regarding my internet usage when it effects them? It’s easy to when talking to representatives of social media and information sites to fall into a pattern of thinking of Human Rights as being just Privacy and Free Speech concerns – but the issues are bigger, the stakes are higher and sadly the companies not in the room have a bigger impact (security firms doing surveillance, those who designed the kill switches, manufacturers, etc… ).

So if the bigger concern is the people not in the room, you might ask why grill the companies who are already trying, concerned enough to sponsor such an event, and who send representatives to be present? They’re already ahead of the curve and it is precisely for that reason I’m concerned when the voices in their dialogs are limited. While I love Google & Facebook’s services and respect the people I know working at Google & Facebook I also want more. If they are going to shape the communications of the future, the new cultural norms for generations coming of age during the Information Age – I want there to be a social dialog around the issues, not just a team meeting or a corporate strategy.

There are great minds working on the problem – but the issues existed before the digital age. Questions of privacy existed before the internet. So did the issue of free speech. Problems with environmentally degrading manufacturing and waste aren’t new. But Google isn’t just search and advertizing – it’s also become my newspaper headline, my post office, my secretary organizing documents and mapping out the places I will go. Facebook is more than a rolodex of friends & contacts; it is live chats, photo albums, blogging, and more. Twitter isn’t just a way to mass text, it’s changing how I meet people at events, it’s how I get breaking news, and determines if after a piece on the nightly news if I can follow up to continue listening to the subject. We’re living in an era where I see Netflix more than my local theater, iTunes has replaced my record store, Amazon replaced the book stores, eBay replaced garage sales, etc… The old questions need to be reinterpreted, discussed, and decided again.

As an activist a lot of times you approach a situation and precedent is the reason for something being wrong. Whether an offensively named street, an unjust law on the books, the status quo of “this is always how business has been done” that dynamic remains. Looking towards the future of human rights, it’s important to ask as we design the tools, services, and environments for engagement in the digital world – will we design a world that places respect for people, both as users and non-users at the front? Will we build a world of commerce that sees human rights as a PR issue? Will it be centralized to the giants of tech or will the freedom of self-publishing be decentralized to allow individuals greater agency? How do individuals represent themselves to governments, businesses, each other and what are the social rules for these spaces?

When I leave my home I can wear a suit, or jeans & a tee shirt and know the rules of social negotiating that come with those presentations. I know how to research the laws of governance, what rights I can expect, and how to not participate with businesses or how to support them depending on my needs and their actions – the question that remains is how we can make a digital world that respects that diversity. Can I have a facebook profile of punk-kid-me for browsing at home and professional me for when I’m logged on at work to design targeted ads for a business? I can’t pay in cash for services – so how can I trust you to not track a purchase the way I could if I bought a book in real life? As manufacturing goes abroad I can’t rely on knowledge of my local space to know I’m living my values consistently.

With local businesses accountability is much easier. I can ask to speak to the manager – but online I can’t just ask to speak to the manager of Google to know what I am supporting by supporting the business. The inside versus outside voice distinction is much harder to make. The places I tweet most often from are at conferences and in bed.

On the first day I came to a conference more as a standard conference attendee hoping to listen and learn. However on the second morning with the news lingering of #OccupyOakland and the attacks on protesters I remembered my own role as a college activist organizing people online. For a brief moment I had the opportunity to take a microphone knowing people who have the ability to change the services I use are in the room. With their ears, it was more important to remember my voice. And ironically the collection of contacts made and business cards received following then was much greater than the first day.

Random Thoughts

I need to post about #OccupyOakland’s events from yesterday. But that would take a lot more mental energy than I currently have due to being out for so many hours yesterday, getting home late, watching the livestream deteriorate as things turned violent, waking up early for the first day of working at a new temp job with UPS and I think this deserves a much more nuanced analysis than what I’m seeing in written, broadcast, and grassroots citizen journalist coverage.

Earlier on Facebook I posted:

“There are agitators at #OccupyOakland. And the vast majority find them very frustrating. But as long as we're showing photos of some protesters breaking things, can we also share the photos of some protesters fixing things? Just to be you know... fair and balanced and all that jazz?”

Accompanying this is a link to the following photo (Originally posted by Susan Quinlan)

And I think that sums up a lot of my attitude without going into the 11 hours I photographed yesterday… Which I will do later. Though I can’t promise when as I’m also trying to upload and organize my photos from the event.

But the scale of the problem was revealed to me not only in Port of Oakland, but today at my UPS training for the season job as a driver helper. In the room we had a law student, recent business graduate, army reservist and veteran, retired postal worker of 27 years, laid off postal employee of 6 years, and a few others I didn’t get a chance to speak to in depth long enough to learn their backgrounds. This is for a manual labor job that starts at minimum wage, is seasonal, and only a pretty qualified pool of people was able to access. What does that mean for those who are not in the 30% of Americans who went to college?  

The Value of Photography

I recently read a post on a fellow Shutterchancer’s blog ranting about “Free is Killing Me”

And I must say- I do agree with the majority of it.

One of the things about photography is it (like most arts) is very expensive and pays very little. And yes, I have succumbed to the pressures of the internet age and I went digital, so I no longer must pay for film every time I want to take the camera out- but it’s by no means a cheap hobby.

To give you a rough idea
My first entry level DSLR was a thousand with a kit lens, and no memory when I bought it in 2005. The 2 Gb I bought then was another two-fifty. The first external hard drive was another few hundred. The next hard drive which died was another six hundred, the two bought to replace it and be backups of each other so I could prevent data loss in the future were five hundred apiece. I now have over a dozen CF cards which depending on when they were bought were between forty and a hundred dollars. The first camera I had died and so I bought another used DSLR for another five hundred. My tripod was eighty. The zoom lens I bought used for two hundred. The camera bag was forty. And that’s all just for my digital stuff. I also still shoot film which averages four bucks a roll, the developing of a black an white roll with prints is another fifteen bucks with color it’s seven. If I want scanned copies of the film add on another 10. And of course there was the cost of those cameras and lens and so forth...

Back in 2005 I was looking at the cost of hosting a show, I went so far as to organize a series of photos, meet wine bar owners look at venues etc... And doing cost benefit analysis it was very easy to see there was no value in doing it. If was going to do film the cost of paper, printing various copies in the lab, the time investment etc... would be more costly than digital. But looking at digital each print would cost $4 initially per shot, add on about $8-20 per shot in test prints to make sure they were accurately color corrected to your monitor, $15 per shot for matt boards (assuming you want archival boards which most people want.), and assume you want to have about 2 dozen photos hanging in the show, plus some box prints to show off and make sales easier. Add in buying wine and snacks for a reception, the cost of sending out mass invites and promotional flyers and when you do get to the show... most people expect the prints to be popcorn buys if they don’t recognize your name. So you can sell them between $25 and $50 but more than that and no one will buy. By the time all the math was done (these are guesses based on what I remember- we actually worked it out properly at the time) it basically worked out that I’d be paying someone $10 per shot if they bought it, simply due to the materials cost going in. Assuming every shot was sold, I’d still not break even and I’d have put a lot of labor in to have mainly friends show up and nod at the walls before leaving. Obviously I didn’t bother doing such a show.

I enjoy shooting events. I take my camera and recreationally shoot them all the time. But I honestly am not a fan of shooting events for other people. Because generally people look at your shots say, we like what you do with candids etc... and then try to outline exactly what they want. Nothing wrong with knowing what you want, but if you’re hiring me because you like what I do on my own then don’t try to micro-manage me because the results will be pathetic.

The other thing which irks me is when I’m asked to volunteer my time and I find the project interesting so agree only to have them suddenly demand, “When can I see the pictures? When will you have CD for me? Why are they taking so long?” I have a huge backlog of photos. Huge. Literally thousands of shots. And if you’re paying me you have the right to ask for them sooner. But most wedding photographers takes weeks and months for a reason: it takes time to do good work. And I try- and going through the images takes time. But even if you don’t want them post processed, it takes generally and hour or two to upload. An hour to back up. If you want CDs each of those will take an hour. And in case you forgot- you’re not paying me for my time and I still have a full course load, my own projects and I’d really also like to have a life. Occasionally people also say they’d like to pay me for the service after having asked me to volunteer and they’ll propose a minute sum. At which point I must admit, I feel cheapened. While one part of me rejoices at the idea of more gas money and a cup of coffee- the other half says ‘Why are you selling yourself so cheaply?’ At least if I am not paid I’m going in with the expectation of volunteering purely out of my interest in the project and that is the value I gain for my labors. If I’m paid a small amount it feels like I’m not in it for the project I’m in it for the money, and if that’s the case I’d rather be paid fairly. Oh the other thing which irks me is when the same people who can’t wait to see the photos can wait to reimburse me for gas, film expenses etc...

And I know some days the quality of my photographs is not worth paying for. Some events I go to and my head is in the clouds and my mind and eye are just not connecting the way they should and the work is not really worth anything. But when left to my own devices I’d like to think I’ve got a half decent eye for photography. I’d like to think some of my shots are original and noteworthy. Obviously I still have a lot to learn, but I’d like to think that’s worth something to have my photos. And even if I’m not a professional, don’t act like one, don’t have a studio or proper portfolio to share, don’t own my own lighting equipment etc... I think there is a lot which goes into getting a good image which can get taken for granted.

I also believe in the perks of a creative commons copyright. If you like my photos and want to use them for your facebook photo, myspace, blog, computer background, print a low res copy to post on your dorm wall, use for class, send to your family, save to your hard drive so you can remember it, use for creative inspiration or a photo-montage - go for it! You have my full blessing. But if there’s a place to credit, then please credit me. I’ve seen my photos used without giving me credit and that somewhat irks me. And I hate seeing my photos somewhere and thinking, I don’t remember them ever even saying they liked that shot. There’s someone who used one of my photos on a myspace as I later discovered and got over 20 comments praising it and I appreciated the feedback of the comments, but I would have liked it if prior to the photo being used I would have at least known and been credited underneath the photo. Nothing fancy, just a comment on the photo “Hey, I like this and I’m making it my facebook pic.” or “this is on my wall” whatever... It might sound vain, but If you’re getting the positive feedback I’d like to hear it too. If I’m not being paid I’d at least like to know which shots are being appreciated. If you want to use an image as a desktop I’d rather you tell me and I can recrop from the original so anyone who sees it, sees it as I intended rather than disproportionately stretched.

I know this rant went long, but there have been a lot of days in the last quarter where I felt like what I was doing was being taken for granted and thus when I read the post it struck a nerve.