` The Queer Foundation Scholar

Joe Dial, Ph.D.Executive Director, Ravensdale WA

Ray Verzasconi, Ph.D.Editor, Portland OR

Winter 2018

From the Desk of the Executive Director

Queer Scholars

are out, proud, and activist,

have a social conscience,

will fight discrimination against queers,

are committed to social change,

believe in organization,

are of good will.

Welcome to 2018, in Which We Celebrate Fourteen Years of The QF Volunteers!

At this time we celebrate the more than fifty members of our amazing team of volunteers, almost all ofwhom have been at it year in and year out since our beginnings in 2004. As many readers of The QueerFoundation Scholar know, The QF, as we affectionally refer to our organization, has no paid staff. Allwork—from setting up the legal structure as a nonprofit corporation to running the annual essaycontest, awarding the scholarships, and guiding and encouraging students to continue writing—is doneby The QF volunteers, for zero compensation other than the opportunity to be a part of this good work,helping the many students whose lives they have touched and who have in turn touched theirs.

Volunteers devote untold hours of their personal time each year to The QF’s essay contest givingacademically talented LGBTQA students another means and reason to be out and proud members oftheir communities—small or large—and to recognize that sexual minority status is seen as a plus.Essays are read by a team of volunteers consisting of six members of the Genders and SexualitiesEquality Alliance (an Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English) and by eight publishedLGBTQA authors.

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Fifteen other individuals donate freely and generously the funds for the actual scholarship awards andfor additional expenses such as travel to conferences and office supplies. Secretary-Treasurer KennethShulman makes sure that the funds are properly accounted for.

The Queer Foundation Scholar editor Ray Verzasconi works who knows how many hours with studentswho continue writing and wish to have their pieces published in the newsletter. Six additionalindividuals, including former QF Scholars, serve as the editorial board that recommends whichsubmissions are selected for Publication Awards. Ray also coordinates the activities of the mentoringteam and is himself the model of a conscientious mentor to many.

The nine members of the Advisory Board function as our conscience, reminding us all of theimportance of The QF’s work and guiding us back onto track when we might otherwise have goneastray: Catherine Ryan Hyde, Kevin Jennings, Carolyn Laub, Robyn Ochs, Rachel Pepper, ChandanReddy, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Ritch Savin-Williams, and Judy Shepard.

To the more than fifty QF Volunteers, we express our heartfelt gratitude for your wonderful energy,amazing creativity, self-sacrificing generosity, and just plain hard work without which none of thiswould happen. I extend to you our best wishes for continued success in this, our fourteenth year.

Joseph Dial

Joseph Dial, Ph.D.

Queer Foundation Executive Director

jdial@queerfoundation.org

P.S. Please write me with any suggestions or to find out how you can be a part of The QF Volunteers.

Also in this issue .....

! Elijah Punzal, sophomore at the University of California, Irvine, interviews torrin a. greathouse, transgender woman poeton the same campus. As significant as torrin’s comments are regarding the treatment of transgender women on the UC,Irvine, campus, is Punzal’s own introspective as he prepares for and then embarks on the interview.

! Zoe Bauer, sophomore at Pomona College, delves into the issue of language and gender, relevant as they are to heracademic and career interests: French and linguistics.

! From the editor’s desk.

Forthcoming in the spring issue ...

! Pieces by three recipients of QF Publication Awards from the Upper-midwest. Transgender and genderqueer. ! Excerptsfrom Out & About with Winsor French (Kent State University Press) by James M. Wood.

Ray Verzasconi, Ph.D., editorPortland OR rverzasconi@msn.com

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“An Interview with a Poet”

By Elijah Punzal

University of California, Irvine

I amble along a carpeted hallway I traverse through almost every day. I stare at the

reflection of myself in the window, growing larger and larger until I swerve right into an

opening through a propped door. Evening creeps in and the windows are dim though the white

lights illuminate the space as if darkness is kept at bay. Laughter reverberates through the walls

of the back room, and while curious, I make my way inside a smaller, quieter room. The space is

familiar; inventory boxes piled behind pride flags sit directly across from the wall painted to

match. I only take a step in before I invite my interviewee into the space, and together we walk

into the room. I make adjustments to the space, moving tables and chairs and that one movable

seat to accommodate my interviewee. She leans her cane on the side of her chair, and she does

not prop her feet. I end up sitting on the moveable seat. The room is cold. Well, temperate for

some, but I find it a tad chilly. My interviewee sits comfortably, almost poised, in her floral

dress.

Elijah: Hi.

torrin: Hello.

My nervousness expresses itself in the clutter I create; papers, forms, a laptop, and my

phone consume the table before me. I shuffle through the papers, rambling my way the rules and

regulations of the interview. I push up my glasses, and so does my interviewee. Her smile is

warm; wise, even. Yet intimidation creeps upon me. Or is it anxiety, or shame? Who knows. My

pen twirls in my right hand, phone heavy in my left. I contemplate the abstracts of this

interview: Where will it go? What will become of this? Will my questions be too vague? Are

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they too complex? Or are they too simplistic?

Elijah: Given the subject of queer poetry, do you have any thoughts on the subject before

the interview?

torrin: No, I’d just like to see what kind of questions you have, and see what thoughts

those spur.

I shuffle through more and more papers. My tongue feels foreign in my mouth, my

words too formal for this casual interaction. Suddenly the room feels chaffy, and I remove my

jacket. My interviewee still sits poised, leaning forward in anticipation. I try to remind myself of

all of my acting training, but alas, I ooze out awkwardness as much as I smile to move past it.

We do a round of introductions.

torrin: I’m torrin a. greathouse. And I am a trans poet—a trans disabled poet—living in

Southern California.

I’m taken aback, just a bit. I have known her for a decent amount of time already yet

unfiltered thoughts bombard me and I don’t really know what to feel. Abstract realities of the

next thirty minutes of my life flow in and out and I feel like I have already done something

wrong.

My interviewee looks at me dead on. She can tell I am nervous, though she’s not sure

why. The slight singe of ghastly embers stings my chest as I formulate something to say,

something to do. I breathe. What will these questions do? What will they reveal?

Will I hurt her?

I try to relax. The thoughts are not quelled but I move

along anyways.

Elijah: In a sense, what do you write about?

torrin: Gender identity, sexual identity, trauma, sex, and sort

of what it is to live in a trans body in a nation that has

essentially made that almost tantamount to crime...

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Elijah: Hmm.

torrin: When, to live in America means that if you are killed, particularly as a trans

feminine person, it is possible for your death to be excused by your own body.

I nod throughout this account, these words not unfamiliar to me. My interviewee speaks

almost casually, though I know that this is a formality. Her face is composed; not necessarily

hardened, but controlled. I know her enough to know the impact of these words, though I can

never know what these words truly mean to her. The word “killed” sits upon the tip of my pen

as I jot down notes. The fact that roughly eight or ten trans women of color have already

died—rather, have been murdered—flashes briefly in my mind. A heaviness hampers down on

the room and I find it hard to concentrate. I look to my interviewee, her face still composed yet

eyes engaged as if they were seeing into me. Our gaze holds a feeling of solidarity, though in

her eyes I sense something else within—they hold a pain I may never know.

Elijah: Would you agree that there is an element of pain within your poetry?

torrin: I think… it ties into the idea of universality in poetry… But the idea of universality

is an extremely sort of cishetero patriarchal ableist idea which is really focused on very

small set of identities.

If I could snap encouragingly in my mind, I would have in that very moment. Quick shift

in feeling, I know. Interviews are like that sometimes.

My interviewee catches the drift and we share that moment with a quick smile,

acknowledging that we share that mutual understanding. While our stories are different, our

history is intertwined. We share pain, we share triumph, and we share criticism of the society

around us. Curiously, my interviewee suddenly weaves into our discussion a collective of many,

many poems written by many individuals. It’s quite endearing, and I smile alongside her.

The space envelops us, comforts us, and suddenly I’m aware that the room has become

almost temperate. Then we resume track of the discussion.

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torrin: Why should we write towards a version of reality that we don’t get to belong in?

Why should we write poems that don’t have our own faces?

I nod, resonating with her words as if I am hearing my own thoughts said back to me.

torrin: I believe it was Frederick Douglass that said, “The act of writing as a black man in

America is inherently political.” And by that, he meant the ways in which his identity was

placed at odds with his abilities to be a well spoken, intelligent person who could express

ideas. It became inherently political for him to write because he was opposing everything

that the world said he could be.

Stunning. I can’t take my attention away from her.

torrin: I believe that identity based work often creates resistance in that exact way. Uh, I

like to call it “the activism of empathy.”

Her hands become more animated, weaving in and out as if conducting her argument

with eloquence and passion. Her breath almost trembles as her dictation, her liturgy, becomes a

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wellspring of thoughts and ideas. I hear the words just fine, yet what the words mean carry so

much more.

I continue to nod.

torrin: The idea that even when my work does not directly engage with politics, it is

political in that if a person who does not share my identity reads my work and can take

something away from that and can understand what I was feeling and can understand the

ways that I have suffered or experienced pain or experienced discomfort in a society that

creates those things, if my fear of death becomes palpable to a cis person when they read

my poem, I have caused them to empathize, and you create enough empathy in people

unlike you—that will create change.

There is a brief yet comfortable silence only broken by my pen furiously writing down

fragments and ideas onto my now blue ink-stained sheet of paper. When it’s my turn to speak, I

find that I am still at a loss for words. My tongue urges the thoughts in my brain to flow out yet

wisdom radiates from my interviewee and I surrender to her presence. My growing curiosity for

what my interviewee has to say inspires me; I forget that poets speak so well. The next set of

questions situate themselves upon the impact of empire on poetry, and I eagerly listen in on her

response.

torrin: I think particularly in current political climates…suddenly we’re developing much

stronger, very conservative governments that are obsessed with strong governmental

power that is not serving the people, and in that way, it mirrors the idea of ancient empire

where all of the riches go to the rich, go the royalty.

Well, we don’t have royalty, but what we do have is a

system of democracy highly inflected by oligarchy.

Suddenly, her eyes lock in on me with an

intenseness I haven’t seen before. Her voice is clearer as

if demanding; her tambor is warmer as if emboldened.

She’s stating fact.

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torrin: Where in the rich will always maintain power and because systematically, queer

folks, trans folks, folks of color, disabled people, people with mental illness are pushed out

of position where we can obtain monetary power and wealth, we are systematically

marginalized in a financial sense meaning that we can never obtain power to adjust the

system. If we can never adjust the system from a position of power, we’ll never be able to

free ourselves.

Liberation.

It is word not unfamiliar to me; I have read it and studied it and practiced it and wished

for it and prayed for it and loved it.

And then it hits me.

torrin: I think it’s difficult to believe in progress.

I take in the tattoos decorating the arms and legs of my interviewee,

how each is so saliently different

yet

weave together almost like battle armor or

protective wards against evil.

torrin: Particularly, when you exist as someone in one of the identities that Zoe Leonard

brought up there1 when you are disenfranchised, when you are—You know, I can list off

the things.

I take in how her glasses are large and

round

in a sense where her gaze is a gaze that has seen

too much but

is still constantly looking.

1 “Mykki Blanco Recites ‘I Want A Dyke For President’ - a film by Adinah Dancyger.” Youtube,uploaded 4 October 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6DgawQdSlQ

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torrin: I’ve been held in solitary confinement, in jail. I am disabled. I’m queer. I’m trans.

I’m all of these things that makes a person like that repulsive to the mainstream of

America.

I take in the cane that leans to her left that acts

not as a crutch but as a

tool for cultivating life,

for cultivating humanity

and poise

and elegance

where society deems it shouldn’t exist.

torrin: My politics as a disabled person are less, my politics as a trans person are less, your

politics as a person of color: less.

I take in her dress and I take in her makeup.

I take in what is supposed to be different,

what is supposed to be wrong or

irrational or

not normal.

torrin: Yeah, I mean, it can literally move from the level of…The phrase “identity

politics.” Which is to say the politics of anyone who is not a straight, white, cis, male can be

systematically lessened by the fact that they are connected to our identity.

I take in the femininity

she wields against the world that deems that

she cannot have it, for it is different,

it is other,

torrin: And it can get that subtle down to that small linguistic level upon which simply

because we differ from those in power, our voices are less important.

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it is weird,

it is strange,

torrin: And then it can go all the way up to the level of the unchecked murder of black

men and women across America by the police.

it is not normal,

torrin: It can go to the level of Flint still not having clean water.

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it is disgusting,

torrin: Of people having their skin blasted off by water cannons defending the ground that

the Dakota Access Pipeline is supposed to cross…

it is shameful,

torrin: Empire is: I walk from my apartment to class, I get dirty looks from everyone I

pass, and I wonder how many people, if I were passed through a dark alley and they and I

were the only person there, wouldn’t go for it.

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it is wrong.

torrin: Empire is the fact that it’s dangerous, some days, for people like us to walk outside

our front door.

When our tattoos, our glasses,

our canes, our dresses,

our femininity

are wrong.

How can we be anyone

except who we are?

When we strive to live authentically,

they strike us down.

How can we be free

when all we hear is

wrong?

When we try to breathe

they wish for us to drown.

How can we make them know

we are

anything

but

wrong?

Or rather

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How can we make them know

we are

everything

that’s

right?

[Photographs and poetry reprinted with permission of torrin a. greathouse. Editor’s note.]

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I am a man/woman who: Gender and identity in language

By Zoe Bauer

Pomona College

When my friend Alex was eighteen,

he suddenly started feeling more confident.

He spoke up more in conversations, he

asserted his opinions, and he even stood up

straighter. This wasn’t because he had

ingested a magic potion or had some sort of

divine inspiration; instead, he started using

male pronouns to describe himself. Alex is

transgender, and at eighteen he declared his

gender identity and started speaking as his

true self. Now, he uses language—both

pronouns and patterns of speech—to

perform his identity as a man. Using the

language that feels most comfortable to him

has given him a glow, and he seems to be

more comfortable in his own skin. By

speaking “like a man” and using male

pronouns, he’s able to construct an identity

for himself in his community as a man,

which people can react to by responding to

him and speaking about him as a man.

Gender, the social construct of male and

female identity, is performative, and

according to Butler (1990), “the various

acts of gender create the idea of gender” (p.

190). These “acts of gender” are behaviors

that people exhibit which combine to

project an image that aligns, to a certain

extent, with societal ideas about specific

genders; this behavior includes language.

Language is a way that Alex, and most of

us, perform our genders in the context of all

of our other identities.

Speakers use language to assert their

gender identities, either by purposefully

sending a statement about their gender, as

is the case with Alex, or by using language

that society thinks of as belonging to a

certain gender and letting that suffice.

When Alex introduces himself, he always

gives his pronouns. He goes to a women’s

college, where students are usually

assumed to be female, so his

announcement of his pronouns is a way for

him to explicitly assert his identity and

make sure that his interlocutors know to

think of him and refer to him as a man.

Many speakers whose genders can

reasonably be assumed, on the other hand,

can play more passively into their gendered

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roles by using language styles that

correspond with societal norms for their

gender. Such is the case with the

predominantly male subjects that Keisling

(2004) studies in his article “Dude.” The

men in his article use the term “dude” to

index cool masculinity, helping them

perform their identities by using this

commonplace term that lets hearers know

that they’re projecting a male identity (p.

291). Their performance of their gender

isn’t made of explicit statements about their

identities, instead using a term that is

generally associated with male speakers.

Their statements about being men are

implicit and are indexed in their language

use.

However, while gender might be a

contributing factor leading to how people

speak, it isn’t the only reason why people

speak in the ways that they do. Tannen

(1990) is a culprit of this sort of simplistic

analysis when she states that men and

women exist on “different planets” and that

they communicate differently because of

how they were socialized and because of

their differing roles in society (p. 43). Her

idea, that men use a competitive speaking

style and women use a cooperative

speaking style, reduces speakers to their

gender and nothing more, using their

genders to explain away any differences

between them. However, as Cameron

(2009) asserts, there is more variation

among speakers of one gender than there is

difference between speakers of different

genders (p. 44). There’s not a singular

“male way to communicate” and a “female

way to communicate,” as Tannen believes.

One reason why gender isn’t the

only reason why speakers speak in a certain

way is because gender isn’t their only

identity. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s

interwoven with other facets of identity,

and speakers therefore use language to

project their gender as well as other

identities in styles that feel right for them.

A better way to describe language and

gender would be that speakers are gendered

beings who (and then one would fill in an

identity trait here). Such is the case with

Kiesling’s men who use “dude,” since the

term indexes coolness and male

homosociality in addition to masculinity.

“Dude” suggests that they are men who are

casual, men who are cool, men who are

straight. This idea of language presenting

myriad other facets of speakers’ identities,

in addition to their genders, is also present

in the straight men that Cameron (1997)

studies. They use language to express

themselves as men, but more importantly

as men who are interested in displaying

their group identity as straight. When one

of the speakers states that a person in his

class is “the antithesis of man,” he isn’t

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only commenting on another person’s

appearance (p. 54). He is performing his

identity as a man who conforms to the usual

image of a straight man, as a man who is

knowledgeable about what makes a man

“manly” enough, as a man who is part of a

group of straight male friends. He performs

his gender through his speech, but it also

performs his gender in the context of all of

his other identities. Similarly, in Barrett’s

(1999) study of drag queens, he finds that

they use language to assert their genders

along with other aspects of their identity.

They insert words and statements into their

drag performances that are incongruous

with the flawless, hyper-feminine drag

queen persona, thereby reinforcing their

identities as gay men who are performing

femininity, not actually being women (p.

327). They are making sure that the

audience is aware of their identities as men,

even as they perform as women. Their

identities as men are the base of their

performances, no matter how flawless they

are, and they make sure to refer to that.

One speaker whose language (in the

form of lyrics) illuminates many facets of

personality in the context of gender is Nicki

Minaj. A female rap artist, she has made a

name for herself in the male-dominated,

often-sexist rap world. In her song

“Anaconda” (2014), she states “Boy toy

named Troy… / Bought me Alexander

McQueen, he was keeping me stylish /

now that’s real, real, real / gun in my

purse, bitch, I came dressed to kill / Who

wanna go first? I had ‘em pushing

daffodils” (0:08-0:32). In her lyrics, she

describes actions that are based in being a

powerful, straight-acting woman: first, she

mentions her “boy toy,” insinuating that

she is the dominant party in a sexual

relationship with a man who buys her fancy

designer clothes (i.e. Alexander McQueen).

Then, she describes her dominance over

others, mentioning her “gun in [her]

purse,” which is an item that symbolizes

power (a gun) literally encased in a symbol

of women and femininity (a purse). Her

lyrics portray her identity as a woman, but

they also do so as a woman who is proud of

herself, as a woman who is interested in sex,

as a woman who isn’t interested in being

nice. She layers her ideas about identity on

top of one another, all seen through the

lens of gender, in order to create a story of

confidence and dominance which would be

commonplace for a male rapper but is rare

coming from a female one. She is an

empowered woman who embraces her

gender, performing as a woman who has

desires and agency and adding elements of

material wealth and confidence to her

language. Her language shows that she is

not just a woman; she is a woman who.

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Gender is closely intertwined with

language, but it’s not some all-

encompassing identity that absolutely

determines how people speak. Gender is

one of many central identities, with others

building on top of it and layering to create

unique personalities for each speaker. My

friend Alex uses language to assert himself

as a man, but also as a man who loves

music, as a man who does theater, as a man

who cares about other people. Our language

encompasses our gender, but also so many

other identities, including race, socio-

economic status, hometown, and more.

Language is a tool that lets us both

explicitly and implicitly express ourselves,

based in gender and building out to all parts

of identity.

References:

Barrett, R. (1999). Indexing polyphonousidentity in the speech of African-American Drag Queens. In M.Bucholtz, A. C. Liang, & L. A.Sutton (Eds.), Reinventing Identities(pp. 313-331). Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. NewYork: Routledge.

Cameron, D. (2009). The Myth of Mars andVenus: Do Men and Women ReallySpeak Different Languages? Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Cameron, D. (1997). Performing genderidentity: Young men’s talk and theconstruction of heterosexualmasculinity. In S. Johnson & U. H.Meinhof (Eds.), Language andMasculinity (pp. 47-64). New York:Routledge.

Kiesling, S. F. (2004). Dude. AmericanSpeech, 79(3), 281-305.

Maraj, O. (2014). Anaconda [Recorded byNicki Minaj]. On The Pinkprint[Electronic recording] . NewOrleans, LA: Young MoneyEntertainment.

Tannen, D. (1990/2007). You Just Don’tUnderstand: Women and Men inConversation. New York: WilliamMorrow. (pp. 23-95)

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From the editor’s desk .... THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLYFOR LGBTQ IN 2017

! An essay by Michelangelo Signorili https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2017-queer-political-moments_us_5a3e8b4be4b0b0e5a7a27bdf?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

! If you wonder why roughly 80% of evangelicalsstill support Trump, this video by FrancescaFiorentini may help you understand. https://www.facebook.com/newsbroke/videos/174779376269704/

! More serious and more powerful is this piece byBaptist minister Miguel de la Torre.

https://baptistnews.com/article/death-christianity-u-s/#.Wm-MCuRy6J1

De la Torre’s piece won’t change the mindsof many of the people he addresses, but it mighthelp other people in the faith community who arestruggling to reconcile their beliefs with politicalreality. I encourage you to share de la Torre’s essaywith family and friends in the faith community.

! A recent study by GLSEN reveals that sevenstates have “No homo promo” laws: Alabama,Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina,Tennessee, and Texas. In varying degrees, theselaws prevent public school employees from sayinganything positive about LGBTQA people or fromproviding students with useful LGBTQA resources.

Unless they have supportive parents orfriends, queer youth from these states are at a realdisadvantage. Middle and high school librariesrarely can carry even resource materials for LGBTQyouth. Yes, we’ve had QF Scholars from Arizona,Oklahoma, and Texas. Two of them hadsupportive parents; the third had an after-school and

weekend job in a public library and found asupportive librarian. ! The Anti-Defamation League reports that thedistribution of hate literature on college anduniversities during fall term 2017 increased overfall term 2016 by 258 percent. The literatureconsisted of posters and flyers bv various alt-right facist groups, some of which couch theirhatred of Jews, Blacks, immigrants of color,and LBGTQ individuals by focusing on the“preservation” of white culture and the white“race,” while others are blatant in their hatredof those they consider “undesireables.”

One of the latter is the AtomwaffenDivision whose members worship Hitler andCharles Manson and who make no bones abouttheir desire to start a race war and to overthrowthe U.S. government. Along the way they hopeto destroy American colleges and universitieswhich they consider responsible for thedestruction of the white “race.” Using racistlanguage, they openly threaten to kill all theirenemies.

Members of the Atomwaffen Division,young white men who see themselves asalienated and disaffected, are also allegedlyresponsible for five murders in the past eightmonths. In investigating one of the murders,police uncovered evidence that anotherAtomwaffen member planned to blow upsynagogues and an electric power plant. In thelatest case, Blaze Bernstein, a 19-year–oldstudent at Penn State, visiting his parents inOrange County, California, was found buriedin a shallow grave in a park. Bernstein wasgay, Jewish, and further hampered by beingvery short in stature. Samuel Woodward, whoknew Bernstein, has been charged with stabbingBernstein some 20 times. It’s not yet known ifWoodward lured Bernstein to his death, or ifBernstein first made contact with Woodward. The two may have been outliers in high school,and it’s not unusual for youth to get drawn into

18

right-wing hate groups after they graduate. Woodward claims that Bernstein tried to kiss himwhen they were sitting together in a car, but friendshave told ProPublica that Woodward very muchhated Jews.

A lesson here to our young readers. Forgiveme if I sound like a concerned father. If you aremeeting someone you knew in high school and theywere an outlier, see if you can find out somethingabout them since they graduated. Your generationknows about social media. Yes, many of themembers of the alt-right were outliers in school, buteven if they secretly knew of hate groups and visitedtheir websites and blogs, they often kept that tothemselves, and it wasn’t until after they graduatedthat they became full-fledged members.

Then keep a few rules of dating anyone metonline in mind: (1) meet only in a public place,preferably in the daytime, and do so until you areabsolutely certain about the person and you reallylike them; (2) keep the first meeting short, no morethan an hour, and have a definite reason for leaving;and (3) provide your own transportation and don’tget into a car with the person.

In terms of human relationships, two thingscan cloud our judgment no matter how young orold we are. One is lust; the other, loneliness. Yes,many other things can cloud our judgment, but noteveryone is given to greed or envy and so on and soforth.

Caution is not paranoia. We live infrightening times. Blaze Bernstein no doubtconsidered Samuel Woodward a friend from highschool days. Why else would he meet with him andget in his car where they allegedly sat and talked? As yet, we don’t know if Woodward first contractedBernstein and lured him to his death, or if Bernstein,home for winter break, contacted Woodward whohe thought was a friend.

What is most frightening to me is knowingthat Hitler used alienated and disengaged youth asthe base of the National Socialist Party. Most weremiddle class males who, in the worsening economyof post WW I Germany, saw themselves with fewopportunities for employment or advancement.

Their scapegoats became Jews, homosexuals,Roma, and Pentecostles: people who wereeconomically successful or simply different. The Social Democrats ignored them, just asDemocrats ignored white, lowerclass youthafter 1964 and those youth became fodder forrightwing hate groups.

Hitler did not personally create thescapegoats for the alienated and disengagedGerman youth in the 1920s, but he officiallyvalidated their discontent and their hate, whichis exactly what Trump has done for the alt-right, and with similar results. Individual actsof violence in Germany against Jews,homosexuals, Roma, and Pentecostlesincreased sharply after 1925; individual acts ofviolence against Jews, LGBTQ individuals,Blacks, and immigrants of color have soared in2017 in comparison to 2016, and they willcontinue to do so as long as a Republican is inthe White House.

What’s different now is that manymembers of the alt-right are college students orcollege graduates. We’re no longer dealingwith unemployed or underemployed highschool dropouts. We’re dealng with white,middle class men faced with daunting studentloans and, like all millennials, decreasedprospects of meaningful employment. It’seasier for them to believe that Jews, blacks,queers, and immigrants of color are the sourceof their problems, and not corporate Americathat has gained control of the political system.

For a century or more, public collegesand universities in 14 Western states pridedthemselves in providing free higher educationto the sons and daughters of the middle class. As the child of peasant immigrants, I attendedUC, Berkeley, for four years, and theUniversity of Washington for three and a halfwhen there were no tuition or fees. Even my$100 scholarship at Berkeley (about $916 today)more than covered a semester’s room andboard, and a minimum-wage summer job morethan covered the rest of the year’s expenses. Even parents earning $40-$50K in 2018 dollarscould provide their children with modest

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financial support without going into debt. That’s nolonger true.

The “new” Republicans first appeared inCalifornia, in the state that had produced HiramJohnson and Earl Warren (who today’s Republicansdespise). To thwart the Civil Rights Act of 1964,they invented “user fees,” an idea that spreadrapidly throughout the U.S. If segregation wasillegal under federal law, user fees could keep blacksand other minorities (the majority of whom werepoor) from using the local public library, the localmunicipal swimming pool, and the public college oruniversity system. It also kept the children of manypoor and lower middle-class whites from accessingthese public services, but the new Republicans werealready out among poorer whites explaining thatliberals and Jews and people of color were thecause. And liberals were dismissive of poorerwhites. Is there any wonder that many whiteworking-class Democrats voted for Reagan andTrump? Exactly what happened in the WeimarRepublic.

Ronald Reagan became governor ofCalifornia in 1964, and he hastened the spread ofuser fees. The student revolt at UC, Berkeley, and toa lesser extent at the other UC system campuses,gave him the excuse to decimate the budgets of bothCalifornia public university systems, forcing both toimpose tuition. Few people noticed (or cared) thatthe imposition of tuition and fees made itincreasingly difficult for their own children to attenduniversity, regardless of the color of their skin. Itdidn’t matter. Those rebellious students at Berkeleyneeded to be punished. Nothing much haschanged. College and university students have beenat the forefront of most protest movements since the1950s.

As I write this, students at Oregon StateUniversity are facing a recall effort. A doctoralcandidate in chemistry, elected to the StudentCouncil last spring, has been exposed as a memberof the alt-right. He’s been charged, among otherthings, with distributing hate literature in Corvallis,violating both the city’s and the county’s hate crimelaws. He’s currently in jail with a $250,000 bail. Two months ago, he was just another conservativeOSU student on a campus whose students are

generally conservative (with a predominantlyliberal faculty and staff, in a predominantlyliberal community and county). Apparently noone suspected the depth of his hatred for Jews,blacks, immigrants of color, and queers.

All of which suggests we all need to bevigilant, but not paranoid. And if you findyourself fighting depression, let your friendsknow, connect with a local communityLGBTQ organization, or find help online.

Stay healthy. Stay strong.

Ray Verzasconi, editorrverzasconi@msn.com

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