Laker Sentinel Magazine: Vol. 1, Issue 2

FEBRUA

RY 22, 2013

2 THE LAKER SENTINEL FEBRUARY 2013

The UNDERGROUND PRESS in

GRAND RAPIDS:

I n order to fill the media gap, an in-dependent biweekly publication

entitled The Root was created. The Root’s founders were convinced that citizens would act sincerely and pos-itively if they knew about the con-ditions of welfare, the confusion in schools, and the misuse of law. The publication was not the first of its kind, though. Underground newspa-pers exploded across the nation fol-lowing the New Left youth counter-cultural movement of the 1960s. As a community media source targeting the countercultural audience, The Root reflected the liberal, anti-government ideologies and themes that surfaced throughout the national underground press movement. Grand Rapids, among other West Michigan cities, has tradition-ally been considered politically con-servative, or “right-wing.” The Dutch Calvinist tradition has contributed to the social and political landscape of

the region. Despite the general con-servatism, Grand Rapids was not ex-empt from the effects of the 1960s liberal countercultural movement. Newspapers that were not sanctioned through schools or existing publica-tions began to appear in Grand Rap-ids during the early 1970s. Other West Michigan underground newspapers included Grand Valley State College’s Babylon Free Press, The Muskegon Free Press, The Salt, and Sound of the Watchman’s Trumpet. These newspa-pers reached a common audience, cov-ered similar stories, and were created to serve the purpose of providing news that mainstream media overlooked. The purpose that The Root, as well as the other underground news-papers, served was to provide the Greater Grand Rapids area with in-formation and perspectives not readi-ly available through other local media. The news that traditional sources of media failed to report was considered

The Rootby Ian Post

In November 1971, roughly 10 concerned college students and working class people began to question the availability of news in the Grand Rap-ids area. These individuals found it difficult to discern rumors from facts in television news and the dominant newspaper, the Grand Rapids Press.

ISSUE 2 LAKERSENTINEL.COM 3

valuable information for increasing public awareness. In order to open-ly express their opinions, The Root staff maintained a commitment to the First Amendment. Their commitment to the First Amendment provided the foundation for their editorial policy. The publication’s editors believed that free speech was essential to an open and democratic community, a belief that underground newspapers nation-wide also held. The Root aimed to “…educate public opinion towards an af-firmation of human liberation, and towards action against those forces which are oppressive and dehumanizing.” This state-ment grounded the un-derground newspaper in a countercultural effort that opposed “the establish-ment,” middle-class working values, and the political conservatism Rich-ard Nixon represented. Underground newspapers implicitly, and oftentimes explicitly, envisioned a social revo-lution on the horizon. The only thing that needed to be done was to spread the word. Underground newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s direct-ly competed with existing news sourc-es that already had a firm customer base. Although underground news-papers had a vastly different audi-ence from existing newspapers, they were both selling the news to citizens of Grand Rapids. The Root was unable to employ neighborhood delivery per-sons, but began to offer door delivery

for a small fee in April 1971. Instead of door-to-door delivery, the newspaper was sold in local retail stores. In near-ly every issue, retail outlets where the newspaper could be found were list-ed. Record stores, bookstores, head shops, cigar stores, the Y.W.C.A., and many other local stores carried cur-rent issues of the newspaper. Selling the publication proved difficult for The Root, which forced them to sell, or “hawk” as it was commonly called, on the street in the same fashion as their contemporary underground newspa-per providers. Suppression and ha-

rassment accompanied the street sale of underground newspapers, though, mak-ing the distribution process even more difficult. The most common sup-

pression of The Root targeted their method and areas of distribution. In the December 9-23 issue, an article ti-tled “Root Harassment” explained the troubles they confronted while dis-tributing the paper. Security guards at Roger’s, Eastbrook, and Woodland malls chased away the hawkers, while North Kent Mall security looked the other way. They claimed that distrib-uting outside of bars on busy nights proved most successful. Although The Root successfully distributed its news-papers on the streets, hawkers were continually cited for trivial civil in-fractions like panhandling and jay-walking. According to U.S. law, every person has the right to distribute liter-ature on public property. Despite what the law stated, high school students

- ThE RooT -

“The most common suppression of The Root targeted their

method and areas of distribution”


faced intimidation, some even receiv-ing suspensions from their school, for selling the underground newspaper. The sixth issue described the distri-bution status in various communities. Both the community of Caledonia and Woodland Mall considered The Root a “commie paper” and consequently prohibited the newspaper’s sale. Al-though there was nothing illegal about it, some people thought that the news-paper was too subversive and coun-tercultural for their community. The nation’s worst harassment of under-ground newspapers occurred in the South where the publications faced le-gal and illegal suppression. The opposition that The Root faced while selling their newspaper on the street was minimal in propor-tion to the harassment of other under-ground newspapers. A group of Emo-ry University activists began working on Atlanta’s own underground news-paper in 1968 titled The Great Speck-led Bird, commonly referred to as The Bird, intended “to bitch and badge, carp and cry, and perhaps give At-lanta… a bit of honest and interesting and, we trust, even readable journal-ism.” Although their mission to pro-vide such a newspaper was bold, their intent was to solidify a ‘hip’ culture in the predominately conservative Geor-gia. Race relations in the South were tense as the Civil Rights movement threatened the white power structure, and those who supported the move-ment were apart of the minority. Sup-pression of The Bird, which supported

liberal social and political ideologies, was performed both legally and illegal-ly. Street sellers, similar to The Root’s newspaper distributors, were fre-quently arrested for trivial civil in-fractions such as jaywalking and pan-handling. The police also rejected the legitimacy of The Bird’s press badges, which limited their journalistic prac-tices. In 1969, the First Amendment right to freedom of the press protect-ed The Bird in a lengthy legal battle in federal court that claimed the newspa-per’s content was obscene. The worst harassment of The Bird came on the morning of May 6, 1972 when their newly purchased headquarters was firebombed with a Molotov cocktail. Although the First Amendment legal-ly protected underground newspapers, the fact that they voiced the opinions of “left-wing” radicals and revolu-tionaries forced them underground to avoid conservative extremists. Reporting news that many Amer-icans considered subversive or ob-scene may have forced the newspapers underground, but cooperative services were founded to ensure that the news they found important was disseminat-ed. A loose confederation of under-ground newspapers formed the Un-derground Press Syndicate in 1966. The UPS worked to create a network of underground newspapers that could communicate with each other na-tionwide. Opinions and articles were shared in order to expand the journal-istic movement and solidify connec-tions within the counterculture. The

- ThE RooT -


Root published at least one article that the UPS distributed concerning the Rock Liberation Front’s occupation of the Rolling Stone’s magazine offic-es. In the book Smoking Typewriters, John McMillian discusses how, simi-lar to the UPS, former members of the New Left’s formal organization, the Student Democratic Society, created the Liberation News Service in 1967. The LNS served as a radical Associated Press distributing twice-weekly pack-ets of news regarding domestic pro-tests, radical activi-ty, and Third World guerrilla struggles. These packets, sent to more than 300 pub-lications nationwide, included photos, car-toons, articles and ed-itorials with the pur-pose of centralizing the underground press. Scattered throughout The Root were, in particular, political cartoons that the LNS distributed. Through co-operative services like the UPS and LNS, as well as smaller organizations such as the High School Independent Press Service, the New Left movement was able to centralize its voice in un-derground newspapers. However, the national distribution of LNS packets did not compromise the importance underground newspapers played in their specific region. Grand Rapids was not the only city in Michigan with an underground press that reflected the nationwide movement. Detroit’s most significant

underground newspaper, The Fifth Es-tate, began in 1965 and is now consid-ered the oldest continually publishing, English language, North American an-archist paper in American history. An FBI report claimed, “The Fifth Estate supports the cause of revolution ev-erywhere.” FBI investigations and in-filtrations into the activity of under-ground newspapers were not only conducted on The Fifth Estate, but on underground newspapers nation-wide. West of Detroit, a few students

at Michigan State Univer-sity found that the school-sanctioned State News was merely a promotional out-let for the university. Con-sequently, they formed The Paper in 1965 and started an underground newspa-per tradition in the state’s

capitol. After The Paper discontin-ued in 1969, multiple Lansing news-papers sprung up to bring news to the university and city’s counterculture. The most notable of these new un-derground newspapers was Joint Is-sue, which saw itself as a tool in the struggle for a collective community. Ken Wachsberger says in his article A Tradition Continues, “We were all young middle-class people who were becoming aware of our own oppres-sion and of the need for our own rev-olution.” Joint Issue became the voice of Lansing’s underground youth, car-rying on the tradition that The Pa-per began well into the 1970s. The is-sues these newspapers discussed were

- ThE RooT -

“ FBI investigations and infiltrations into the activity of underground

newspapers were not only conducted on The Fifth

Estate, but on underground newspapers nationwide”


countercultural at the time, but are now the values and concerns found common today. Underground newspapers of the late 1960s and early 1970s cov-ered specific recurring topics, perhaps unknowingly. These recurring topics formed a singular theme to help con-vey their liberal ideologies. As dis-cussed in “An Examination of Latent Threads and Themes in The Catalyst,” similar themes could be found in Lub-bock, Texas’s underground newspaper The Catalyst. The major themes were societal values and their perception of a corrupt government, with cover-age focusing primarily on the Vietnam War, government and politics, and civil rights and race relations. Despite their focus on news in Grand Rapids, the concerns and values addressed in The Root were consistent with those covered in underground newspapers across the nation. The four main topics that The Root reported were: international and national news; students, youth culture and new lifestyles; poor and minor-ity groups; and local domestic items. International news centered on Third World struggles and U.S. foreign rela-tions. The focus of international news was the criticism of America’s involve-ment in the Vietnam War. The war was generally considered capitalistic imperialism that the Establishment disguised with the threat of commu-nism spreading to America. National news covered the anti-government ac-tivities and trials of political prisoners

or anti-war protestors who had been arrested. Many of the articles attacked the established government with open dissent, often using sarcasm to rep-resent their frustration. The people who operated underground newspa-pers felt that their voice was not being heard. No matter how anti-govern-ment the articles were, The Root did not advocate anarchy as a solution to America’s political problems. The stu-dent and youth culture news appeared in nearly every issue, with a special section devoted to local high school and university events. One article in 1971 covered a student strike at Grand Valley, where roughly 100 students dispersed themselves across campus and went into each classroom to rally other students and professors. The Root’s objective to strength-en the Grand Rapids community was especially seen in their coverage of poor and minority groups. Home rent-er and prisoner’s rights were pub-lished in order to thwart discrimina-tory practices from occurring in the area. The Root provided an outlet for the opinions and events of the Latino and African-American communities that were not available in mainstream media outlets. Their belief in an open and democratic society led them to place an importance on the proletari-at peoples of Grand Rapids who were not offered a voice in the Press or tele-vision news. The coverage of poor and minority groups also existed within the fourth primary focus of local do-mestic items. Community gatherings

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that supported peaceful race relations and public awareness were promoted in The Root. A special section in The Root entitled “What’s In The Bag” aimed to make the public aware of harmful drugs with a bulletin notifying read-ers of harmful drugs being distribut-ed in the area. The user’s choice to use drugs, free from government prohibi-tion, was a recurring perspective that appeared in many articles. The Root constructed a countercultural ideol-ogy that reflected the radical liber-al beliefs that the New Left founded through the four main topics it cov-ered. These issues and opinions were believed to strengthen public aware-ness within the community of Grand Rapids. The final step to achieve com-munity awareness was to get the com-munity involved, but operating an un-derground newspaper was not easy business. Funding for The Root was almost entirely out of the pockets of those who conducted the operation. The mon-ey earned from selling the newspaper was close to breaking even, but a busi-ness without profits dies quickly. The Root staff was able to purchase a head-quarters at 449 Jefferson Ave. SE, now a concrete cutting facility, to print and produce their underground newspa-per. Other underground newspapers, like The Bird, were more unfortunate as regional businesses refused to print the radical publication, which forced them to print out of state. Despite hav-ing their own printing press, The Root

frequently asked for donations to help continue publication. In order to ease their troubles with distribution, they also asked for drivers who could de-liver issues to retail outlets and sub-scribers at home. An article in the May 1971 is-sue outlined the underground news-paper’s operation. Around 30 people were involved in the process with six to 10 individuals who worked on the final layout. An editorial board over-saw the newspaper, but their goal was to maintain a democratic and decen-tralized process. The belief in a purely democratic society was important to the 1960s liberal counterculture, but informal leadership eventually formed in the organizations that held this be-lief. The struggle to prevent authori-tative leadership was common in the New Left movement and underground newspapers, and even brought some newspapers to an end. It is uncer-tain why The Root ceased publication, but their frequent request for dona-tions and trouble distributing reveal that the lack of profits caused a great deal of concern for the individuals in-volved. Independent forms of media in America did not die with under-ground newspapers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, though. The alterna-tive press boomed with the invention of the Internet, where online publica-tions and blogs have provided an out-let for anyone seeking to express their opinions and promote particular is-sues they believe are important.

- ThE RooT -


M ichigan is of critical importance in the future of horizontal hydraulic

fracturing, or fracking, due to its abun-dance of both natural gas and water re-sources. Among those eager to augment the domestic energy industry and envi-ronmental and public health protection groups, fracking has moved to the cen-ter of the energy debate. Currently there are 1,460 Class II, or “gas and oil related injection” wells, operating in Michigan, and 12 of these are hori-zontal hydraulic fracking wells. That number could be on the rise. Oil and gas lease auctions took place throughout Michigan in May and October 2012, al-lowing 500,000 acres of state land, including game areas and public parks, to be used for fracking exploration. The influx of natural gas companies seeking permits for frack-ing are raising questions about poten-tial underground water contamination, environmental implications and health issues. The components of fracking flu-id are about 90 percent water, 9 per-cent sand and 1 percent chemical mix-ture. In order to protect industry secrets, companies are not required to release lists of the chemicals they use.

However, released lists show the use of carcinogens and toxins such as formal-dehyde and hydrochloric acid. Opera-tors are also not required to report or test the chemical mixture before inject-ing it into the well. Stephanie Lynn, 24, is a mem-ber of Kent County Water Conserva-tion and currently is testing Rockford-area water for methane and benzene, two chemicals associated with frack-

ing. Other residents have said that they are unable to more precisely monitor air, land, or water condi-tions because they do not know for which chemicals to test. “Most people don’t know what to look for. It’s not publicized and the in-

formation is hard to find,” she said about the other chemicals. Frack fluid, or flowback, can be disposed of by injecting it back into the ground after being used. Chemicals ex-cept diesel fuel are exempt from follow-ing the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act. Instances of water contamination have never been reported in Michigan but environmental groups claim that flow-back or faulty well structure could leak into underground water sources. Another concern is air pollution due to gases released from drilling.

FRACTURING MICHIGANChemiCals, PolitiCs and the environment

by Katie Torkelson

“Companies are not required to list all of the chemicals used due to

protecting industry secrets, but released lists include carcinogens and toxins

such as formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid”


Lynn’s opinion on the natural gas ob-tained from the wells “has the potential to be worse due to the methane” that is discharged. Methane has been proven to be more potent than carbon dioxide in changing atmospheric and climate conditions; researchers have found methane concentration to be around 17 percent higher around frack wells than normal wells. Insecurity over water is an impor-tant factor in the question of horizontal hydraulic fracking, considering the amount need-ed to inject into the wells is in the millions of gallons. Mich-igan signed the Great Lakes Compact, a series of agree-ments promoting fair use of in-terstate resources, but exempts fracking wells from large wa-ter withdrawal limits. Well op-erators are required, however, to monitor large bodied water levels when drilling nearby and are not allowed to operate near or under any of the Great Lakes. These legal exemptions are of-ten the cause for protest. Ban Michigan Fracking, along with concerned land-owners, has appealed to sue the De-partment of Environmental Quality in Gladwin County after the dismissal of a petition to have frack wells follow the same laws as other injection wells. El-lis Boal, the attorney representing Ban Michigan Fracking, said the case is still pending in the Court of Appeals. Michigan Land Air Water De-fense, a Barry County-based organiza-tion headed by Steve Losher, has sued

the DNR for the oil and gas leases be-cause they are on state land; MiLAWD believes the leases do not represent the best interest of residents. Governor Rick Snyder has repeat-edly stated his support for fracking. His crusade for secure intrastate energy is led by a desire to decrease constituents’ energy costs, which are the highest in the region. In November 2012, Synder praised the management and regula-

tions of natural gas wells. He also stressed the importance of making “protect(tion of) the environment... one of the pil-lars on which we make our de-cisions in the future.” Currently, the University of Michigan is conducting a study analyzing the effects of frack-ing in the state, specifically on the environment and local communities. The comprehen-sive study will have input from professionals in areas such as economic development, energy

and public health. Studies like this are essential for communities and citizens to make their own decisions on fracking. Lynn said, “The ball is rolling, other counties are starting to hold (community) forums... I feel like it is an educational issue.” The conversations, and battles, over fracking will continue in the com-ing months as Michigan prepares for another state land auction in May, and as energy policies evolve to accommo-date questions about the changing cli-mate and international energy dis-putes.

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On January 11, Zero Dark Thirty, a movie about the Navy Seals’ man-

hunt for Osama Bin Laden was released to the American public. Hours later, so-cial networking sites were flooded with comments such as “If you’re a wom-an you need to see this film. If you’re an American you need to see this film. If you’re Muslim, not so much” and “Zero Dark Thirty makes me hate Mus-lims.” A movie surrounding the sensi-tive topic of the United States Army’s

decade-long involvement in the Middle East was bound to generate some social commentary concerning the relation-ship between the Middle East and the United States. However, the commen-tary produced in the wake of Zero Dark Thirty contained no basis in reality and startled Arab-Americans by how lit-tle their fellow countrymen understood their culture. Major generalizations have been made between the terror of 9/11 and

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT ISLAMhate Crimes on the rise

by Katie Nix


the religion of Islam, or simply peo-ple who look Middle Eastern. The hate mongering that resulted from the re-lease of Zero Dark Thirty was not re-ported and dismissed merely as the un-intelligent people of Twitter exercising their freedom of speech in 160 charac-ters or less. A week before the release of Zero Dark Thirty, an Indian immigrant to America, Sunando Sen, was pushed onto the tracks of a New York Subway station and was killed moments later. Sen was pushed by a woman who stat-ed, “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Mus-lims…. Ever since 2001 when they put down the Twin Towers, I’ve been beating them up.” Sen was not Muslim, nor did he have any as-sociation with the attack on the Twin Towers. Hate crimes against Muslims is at an all-time high and continues to climb according to recent New York Po-lice Department reports. The association between the reli-gion of Islam and Arabs seems almost automatic for some Americans. Accord-ing to The Pew Research Center’s Mus-lim mapping project that took place in 2009, Indonesia has 202,867,000 peo-ple who follow Islam, making it the larg-est population of Muslims in the world. Indonesia is not in the Middle East and the vast majority of people living there are not of Arab descent. It is dif-ficult to look at someone and tell if they are Muslim or not, in the same manner one cannot distinguish an Atheist from

a Christian based simply on a person’s appearance. In a Zero Dark Thirty response via Twitter one person stated, “If you’re a woman you need to see this film. If you’re an American you need to see this film. If you’re Muslim, not so much.” This tweet demonstrates a ma-jor misconception concerning Mus-lim-Americans. The statement divides being American, being female, and be-ing Muslim into separate categories, therefore asserting that being Muslim and truly American are mutually ex-clusive possibilities. “Being a Muslim in America is one of the most Ameri-can concepts I can think of,” said Nat-

alie Gallagher, a Grand Valley Student and recent convert to Islam. Gallagh-er added, “The freedom of religion is what this coun-try was founded on, so be-ing Muslim and expressing

your faith is extremely American.” The disassociation of American values and Islam may stem from the misunderstood concept of women in Is-lam, the most-discussed topic being the hijab, or headscarf, sometimes worn by Muslim women. “It is funny that the hijab has become a symbol of oppres-sion in America,” said Grand Valley Student Nargilya Gasanova, who grew up in Turkmenistan, adding “draw-ing a veil over women’s chest is men-tioned in the Qur’an, but to really un-derstand that verse you must crack open history books. In pre-Islamic Ara-bia clothes were a representation of sta-tus. Therefore women who were free

“ The amount of Muslims that interpret jihad in this

manner is proportionate to the number of Christians in The Westboro Baptist

Church”

- MISCoNCEPTIoNS -


and could afford to cover themselves did so and it was a honorable and lib-erating act.” The act of covering wom-en’s bodies with a cloth is mentioned in one Qur’anic verse and in transla-tion states “O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to bring down over them-selves [part] of their outer garments. That is more suitable that they will be known and not be abused. And ever is Allah Forgiving and Mer-ciful.” Tawakul Karman, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner from Yemen replied to a journalist’s negative statements about her hijab replying, “Man in the early times was al-most naked, and as his intellect evolved he started wearing clothes. What I am today and what I’m wearing represents the highest level of thought and civiliza-tion that man has achieved, and is not regressive. It’s the removal of clothes again that is regressive back to ancient times.” Despite these clear connections between America’s idea of freedom and core values of Islam, there remain many Americans who cannot seem to disentangle terror attacks and the re-ligion of Islam. Words such as “jihad” being tossed carelessly around by po-litical and social figures only escalates misunderstandings. Jihad is translat-ed into English as “to strive” or some-times “a struggle.” In Islam this term is used for any act a person takes to bring himself closer to God. Mona Eltahawy, an American-Egyptian journalist, was

“ If you’re a woman you need to see this film. If

you’re an American you need to see this film. If you’re Muslim, not so

much”

arrested in New York in September of last year after she defaced an advertise-ment that read, “In any war between civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. De-feat Jihad.” Pamela Geller, founder of Stop the Islamization of America, fund-ed the ad. Gasanova said, “No situation is exactly alike. This is not a perfect comparison, but the “jihad” militants of Islam are similar to the Crusaders

of Christianity.” The jihad militant groups that are of-ten depicted in American media are the equivalent of radicals in any religion throughout time that be-lieve the act of a person not believing in their religion

is by itself an act against that religion. The amount of Muslims that interpret jihad in this manner is proportionate to the number of Christians in the West-boro Baptist Church. Anti-Muslim hate crimes soared by 50 percent in 2011, skyrocketing over 2009 levels. Internal relation-ships between the differing cultural components of the United States is at an all-time low; it is the sad reality that comments like the ones produced in re-sponse to Zero Dark Thirty will most likely continue without pause. In addi-tion, Sunando Sen will likely not be the last victim of the escalating hate crimes in the U.S. The only question is how much more violence must occur before Americans choose to educate them-selves instead of blindly hating a large portion of their own fellow civilians, who have been made into scapegoats.

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H U M A N I T I E S


Well, is he hungry?

Yeah, i guess so.

Well, yeah.

dad, where are you going with this? What, do you think i steal music or something?

no, of course not. i totally respect musicians and think they, like, deserve to make a living like anyone else, you know?

I’m not a thief, Dad.

Dad, I get it, I won’t steal music. Can i go do my homework now?

ELECTRONIC PIRATESby Graham Liddell

When it comes to internet piracy, there is an anecdote, a question-and-answer fable spreading from living room to living room in suburbs across the country:

When a man walks into a grocery store and walks out with a box of cereal that he didn’t pay for, is he a thief?

It doesn’t matter. Is he a thief?

okay, and if he walks into Best Buy and shoves a pile of

Cds and dvds into his trench coat, is he a thief?

right. so scotty nogood is smoking pot with his friends in the basement, and one of them asks, hey, have you

heard the new Crack Head Metal album? It’s totally the bomb. and scotty says, no, but what if i told you i could

get it in thirty seconds, and we can listen to it right now? and the friends say, what? how? and scotty says,

easy, i can pirate it right this second on my parents’ computer. and his friends say, rad! and he does it and

they rock on down there and all blaze happily ever after. so tell me, honey, is scotty a thief?

Well, do you?

Okay, well, just checking. It’s been all over the news that that’s what you kids have all been doing these

days. I just wanted to make sure I haven’t been raising a thief without knowing it.

sorry. You can’t be too careful these days, you know? ‘Cause if the government catches you—smack—millions of dollars. I’m not kidding. I saw it on Fox last night.

They’re suing these kids big. a hundred fifty K per song. And guess who’s responsible? The parents!

FATHERDAUGHTER


We’ve all seen the PSA:

YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR / YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A HANDBAG /

YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A TELEVISION / YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A MOVIE /

DOWNLOADING PIRATED FILMS IS STEALING / STEALING IS AGAINST THE

LAW / PIRACY. IT’S A CRIME.

“

“

What are we supposed to do with this? Can internet piracy really be equat-ed with stealing a car? When we pirate music, we obtain access to songs that we might have heard in various oth-er ways: Youtube, the radio, a friend’s living room. When the file lands in our Downloads folder, it hasn’t been tak-en away from anyone else. We do not profit financially—it’s not like we’re try-ing to sell the downloaded music. Is this really the same as theft? The mo-ment we steal a car, someone lacks a car. Possession is shifted from one in-dividual to another. The offense is per-sonal. The car companies don’t care. The manufacturers don’t care. It’s an individual attack. This is theft. What’s the big difference here? For us, both cars and music are com-modities, but don’t we agree that cars fit that label more comfortably? Can art, abstract as its function is, ever be

fully commodified? In Capital: Cri-tique of Political Economy, Karl Marx says,

Therefore, it seems that the modern fi-nancial understanding of music-mak-ing has clouded our understanding of it as an essence. Aside from whatever class privi-lege with which we’re endowed, art is all we have, is it not? It can’t be eas-ily taken away. Music, graffiti, liter-ature, dance, drama: these are poor-man’s tools, methods of escape from

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But when she goes downstairs to the basement, she doesn’t do homework. She logs in to the family computer, does a search for Crack Head Metal, finds out

that the band does not, in fact, exist, and proceeds to download the new Dodos al-bum instead. In fact, she has illegally procured over three thousand songs, all saved conveniently in a folder entitled “The Sims.” She doesn’t talk about this. It’s not that she feels guilty—she wouldn’t put it that way. It feels more like she’s getting away with something she’s not supposed to do, like sneaking out in the middle of the night when she’s supposed to be grounded. It’s more like, gotcha!

...It was the common expres-sion of all commodities in mon-ey that alone led to the estab-lishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just this ultimate money form of the world of commodities that actu-ally conceals, instead of disclos-ing, the social character of pri-vate labor....


the pressures pushing down from above. They are used to celebrate the good, mourn the bad; in protest they serve as weapons, unstoppable, ever-spreading, morphing mediums, pene-trating the palace walls into the king’s bedroom, settling as an unscratch-able itch on in impossible crevice of his back, torturing him while he tries to sleep. Music, flawed as its industry has become, on the surface has nothing to do with money. Music is thought to have originated in the paleolithic era, whereas money has only exist-ed for approximately five thou-sand years. Music seems embedded in some of us. We are born with it in our bones as if by natural selection (Here, Na-ture says, take the gift of mu-sic. It will help you survive, it will grant you many sons and daughters). In this mind-set, the words “music” and “business” seem mutually exclusive. Marx continues: “The whole mystery of commodities, all the mag-ic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes [as] soon as we come to other forms of pro-duction.” Isn’t there a distinction to be made between the production of physical products and MP3 “produc-tion”? It follows, then, that there is a distinction between physical theft and MP3 “theft.” I understand how steal-ing a pair of pants is stealing. Or a cof-fee mug. Or even a physical copy of an album, whether on vinyl, tape, or

CD. That’s because the product itself has been manufactured. Because of the physical cost of the materials used to make each product, those involved with its production deserve to be com-pensated. But jeans, mugs, and vinyl records can’t be cloned at the click of a button. Audio files, however, can. ⌘C, ⌘V. That’s all it takes to copy an MP3. It takes nearly no energy. It costs noth-ing. The new file has no physical aes-thetic value. You can’t hold it in your hand. It makes noises in your ears that

have a varied effect depend-ing on who you are. Some may ask: “If musi-cians don’t sell MP3s, how will they make money? Are you saying that being a musi-cian can no longer be a legiti-mate trade?” Certainly not! The fact is, musicians, even successful musicians, are making a rel-

atively tiny amount of money on MP3 sales. According to an excellent info-graphic by Information is Beautiful, a solo artist would have to sell 1,229 al-bums on iTunes each month to earn U.S. minimum wage. For a four-per-son band to earn minimum wage this way, they’d have to sell 4,916 albums each month. That means that each minute, they’d have to sell an average of 3.41 copies. On top of all this, it is impor-tant to remember that selling music is a recent phenomenon on the whole. Since sound recording technology was invented in the late 19th Century, only then rendering the sale of music

- PIRATES -


- PIRATES -possible, are we to assume that musi-cians made no money before then? Of course not. We need look no further than Beethoven or Handel to see that musicians can be (and often are) suc-cessful without selling music. Today, musicians find other ways of making money than selling MP3s. The Future of Music Coalition con-ducted research on musicians’ revenue streams and found that the following were more profitable than music sales:

There has been, and always will be, a way for musicians to make money—our society values music too much for it not to be so.

Is internet piracy theft? Some of us will recall making mix-tapes in years past, hovering over our combination CD and tape players, finding a track on the CD, pressing re-cord, waiting. Or laying on our beds with the radio blasting, reading some

1. Playing live—on average musicians earned 30.5% of their income from live performances, as opposed to a measly 3.5% from online record sales.

2. Salary from regular gigs—many musicians are members of orchestras and other ensembles.

3. Teaching—many musicians give music lessons.

4. “Knowledge of Craft”—this involves producing, sound engineering, and the like.

5. Publishing/Royalties (music in commercials, films, podcasts, etc).

now-forgotten comic book, putting off cleaning our rooms as Mother de-manded, and then the song came on—the one we’d been obsessed with but hadn’t been able to afford the CD. We popped in the tape, missing only sec-onds of the intro, and pressed record, excited to hand the cassette up to Dad during the car ride to Aunt and Uncle’s house in a few days. Were we thieves back then? Were we thieves when we grew up a bit, and tapes had become obsolete, and iTunes was only an infantile program recent-ly installed on the family computer, and we burned a CD of our favorite love songs for our high school girl-friend or boyfriend? Were we thieves when we drew the artwork on the CD and our hand-crafted paper-bag jew-el case? Sharing music in this way is termed lovely, sensual, and associat-ed with good feelings, not the guilt and shame and sneakiness associated with internet piracy. Today, the internet has made sharing music easier than ever before, and has also depersonalized it. What-ever our understanding of the morality of all this, we can’t stop it. The inter-net lives and breathes, and our phi-losophies, our relationships, our daily lives both affect and are affected by it.

If internet piracy is theft — ...then who are we stealing from? In the breakdown above, we’ll now re-alize that we’re not taking much from the artists themselves. We’re most-ly “taking” money from the distrib-uters such as iTunes, and the record


- PIRATES -

companies such as Warner. The Do-It-Yourself/indie music phenomenon has taught us, if nothing else, that many musicians see record companies more as a hindrance than a help. Thus, mu-sicians have begun to work around major record labels altogether, creat-ing their own publishing companies instead. By signing with major labels, bands legitimize them. They trade personal control and individual over-sight of their projects for breadth of influence and sales. But when record companies do not fulfill their end of the bargain—maybe the band’s intend-ed audience can’t afford their albums, or is no longer interested in the al-bums due to studio decisions that have rendered the band’s music less desir-able than before the band was signed—bands drop their record deals and thus delegitimize the record company, stamping them with red ink: “not good for our music.” I would go so far as to say that internet piracy is another important aspect in delegitimizing record la-bels. Just as more and more inde-pendent films are gaining credibility in pop culture, so is independent mu-sic. How much do we really need Hol-lywood? How much do we really need Sony? The idea that music and film would somehow be less prevalent in society without these entities is, to me, misguided.

If internet piracy isn’t theft — ...then what does this mean? As I’ve said, it would be far from the end of

the world for musicians. A world with-out the sale of MP3s will mean a change for the music industry (it has already begun changing in this way). Here are some differences between the old model and the post-online-music-sales model:

1) For record sales, a return to vinyl, a physical luxury that music enthusiasts will not likely stop investing in

2) For musicians, an emphasis on per-formance over recording

3) For listeners, free access to all MP3 music

4) And thus, popular awareness of mu-sic beyond that of major labels and ra-dio hits

5) And therefore, hopefully, a culture that is more intrinsically connected with music than ever before.

The Takeaway This has been an exploration of the effects of a free internet on the mu-sic industry, but “piracy” has sway in other art forms as well. What would a world of free digital files mean for liter-ature? For film? It’s all still to be ex-plored, and at this point, speculation is purely hypothetical. We can imagine all we want. But for now, us “pirates”? We are thieves. Each one of us thieves.


WHEN TRAGEDY AND COMEDY COLLIDE

aCt oneby Andrea Kooiker

If all of the known ancient Greek plays had high school lunch together,

Euripides’s Alcestis would be the awk-ward non-conformist who hid in the bathroom to eat. It wouldn’t fit in with any of the clichés: tragedy, comedy, satyr, etc. Alcestis, Euripides’s oldest

surviving play, was performed as the fourth play in a set of four, the custom-ary position for a satyr play. Howev-er, as the chorus is clearly not made up of satyrs and there is not much salient comedy in the play, it cannot be cate-gorized as true satyr drama. Likewise,


- TRAGEDY AND CoMEDY -

Alcestis doesn’t quite fit the mold of the average Greek tragedy. These tragedies are typically riddled with betrayal, re-venge, and death. Alcestis, though riv-eting and at times highly distressing, does not include much of any of these qualities. Lust for revenge does not influ-ence the circumstances of the play. Ad-metus is not forced to let his wife die in his place; he begs any and every one to die for him, and does not seem hesitant to let Alcestis take the job. Since no force but his own greed kills her, there is no one for Admetus to take vengeance upon. It is a sort of betrayal to ask her to take his place in Tartarus, but she ac-cepts it willingly. Adme-tus does blame his father Pheres for not sacrificing himself and “making” a young woman from out-side the family take the fall instead, but threats of neglecting his father in old age aren’t quite up to the same stan-dards of revenge as tragedies such as Medea or Antigone. Not even Alcestis’s death is tragic when compared to Me-dea murdering four people, including her own children, or Antigone’s death as a martyr. Sure, it sounds pretty trag-ic at first: Alcestis sacrifices herself, leaving her children behind and will-ingly going to Tartarus out of love for her husband. If the story stopped there, Alcestis might not have been eating its lunch in a bathroom stall. Euripides had other ideas, how-ever. Maybe he was in a particularly good mood the day he finished writing

the play, or maybe he was just sick of killing his characters off. Regardless of the reason, Euripides ruined any chance that Alcestis had at an undis-puted classification when Heracles res-cues Alcestis from Tartarus and returns her to Admetus right when he is final-ly beginning to realize how cowardly he acted. A tragedy with a happy ending is an oxymoron. By the end of the play, no one actually dies (and stays dead); Admetus isn’t properly punished for his hubris; no gods intervene (though

Apollo does make a weak attempt to politely ask Death to postpone Al-cestis’s fate); there is no seeking of revenge, and everyone lives happily ever after. Even Disney wouldn’t change a thing. Though the play lacks some of the most basic

traits of tragedy, Alcestis has something that few or no other tragedies have: a comedic undertone. It is not laugh-out-loud funny to read, but there is under-lying humor in the borderline ridicu-lous behavior of Heracles. Because of this and the happy ending, some clas-sicists categorize the play as tragicome-dy. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, tragicomedy is a “literary genre consisting of dramas that com-bine the elements of tragedy and com-edy.” So, by definition, Alcestis may have found a home. But, how blatant does humor have to be to be considered comedy, and how tragic does a story need to be to earn the title of a tragedy? If the rather vague dictionary definition


of tragicomedy was all that there is to the genre, the classification of Euripid-es’s earliest surviving play would be old news. When Alcestis was performed in 438 BCE, the Dionysia would have been packed with citizens of Athens and the surrounding areas. The festi-val was one of the biggest communal events in Greece at this period, making the performances extremely influential on Greek culture. There is nothing like this in modern American society, no one event that an entire population at-tends. Hence, today’s drama has an en-tirely different impact on society; even the most famous Broadway dramas have only been seen by a fraction of the population. In ancient Greece, drama was a means for making political statements, raising questions, starting important conversations, and uniting the commu-nity. In the modern-day U.S., however, drama is a medium through which the monotony of everyday lives is fictional-ized. It still has a sense of community, but it is far more exclusive. The exclu-sivity of modern drama extends to the way statements are made by the per-formances. Today, the events in dra-ma tend to focus more on interpersonal

issues than communal issues, though they still make statements (or, try to) about society as a whole. When Greek drama is performed in contemporary society, certain ele-ments are often altered or omitted. Not necessarily because the director choos-es to leave them out, but because they are not always understood. The de-mands of culture from any type of en-tertainment are constantly changing. If Alcestis were performed tomorrow in New York City, it would be seen as an entertaining story about a misogy-nistic husband and his obliviously de-voted wife. It no longer has the context to be powerful to the public. People can no longer relate to the idea of hav-ing someone die in their place or going to the underworld to save a loved one, as they did when these types of stories were a prominent part of culture. Euripides is known for his plot twists. There is usually a pivoting point in the action, and the direction of the play is suddenly flipped. In Alcestis, it is when Heracles rescues her from Death, at which point the play is no longer a tragedy. It happens in Medea when she kills her children, after which she is no longer the pitiable victim.

We aspire to provide a professional and accurate product. Journalists are to reveal, inform, and even

anger their readers. We, as students of Grand valley, aim to better lives of our fellow lakers through public

discourse and awareness.

visit our forums at lakersentinel.com This week’s topic is the First Amendment

read. register. respond.

If you’re interested in being a part of the Laker Sentinel contact us at [email protected].

INFO

RMAT

ION INFORMATION

The Root, 2-7Ian Post

Fracturing Michigan, 8-9Katie Torkelson

Misconceptions About Islam, 10-12

Katie Nix

When Tragedy and Comedy Collide, 19-21Andrea Kooiker

Electronic Pirates, 14-18Graham Liddell

aCKnoWledGmentsIllustrations....................................Grace CarpenterDesign & Layout......................................Dave LeinsResearch.....................................................Ian PostEditing.......Joel Campbell, G. Liddell, Andrea Kooiker

Contents

Laker Sentinel Magazine: Vol. 1, Issue 2

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Transcript of Laker Sentinel Magazine: Vol. 1, Issue 2