Post #10: Northeastern for all! Northeastern forever!

Obama made waves early this year when he proposed a plan to give community college to all Americans:

Obama: Community college should be ‘as free and universal in America as high school’

The proposal would allow "tuition-free classes for students going to school at least half time who maintain a GPA of 2.5 or higher and are making steady progress toward a degree or transferring to a four-year institution."

Northeastern is a four year school and not strictly a community college, but it's a wonderful model of public higher education for working people, the disenfranchised, and those unable to follow a conventional trajectory in pursuing career and life goals.

Northeastern, and colleges in general, not only draw on taxpayer funds, but encourage rational, diverse viewpoints, and foster cooperative collaborations between people of all stripes, colors, and creeds.  Of course it's thus antithetical to conservative priorities in this country.

It's great to see so much political action on this and other campuses, outside of exemplary and challenging classroom experiences.

How can being in community college influence people towards more inclusive views?  How can campuses be even more effective forums for political discussion and action?

Post #9: Let's party like it's 1999

Looking at modern-day protests in the US, much has been discussed about the 2009 Tea Party and 2011 Occupy Wall Street actions.  Other situations that come to mind are the 2003 Iraq War protests, the ongoing Ferguson protests, and the particularly intense 1999 Seattle WTO protests.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/WTO-riots-in-Seattle-15-years-ago-5915088.php
These protests were large-scale, occasionally violent, and brought together a number of groups under the general auspices of protesting the international status quo, as represented by the World Trade Organization.

The 2012 NATO protests in Chicago were downright tame compared to these, but it didn't help that Chicago mobilized over 10,000 troops in full chemical warfare gear:

Once again, these protests were serious, intense, and crossed over into violent confrontation.  I agree that the need for protesting the status quo is great, and that intensity is warranted.  But this class has taught that subtlety, humor, and artfulness can be more effective in making a point than simply yelling with a sign, or charging a line of riot cops who are looking for a fight.

What kind of theatrical actions would work well in a protest setting?  Is there a way to get artists more engaged in protest actions?

Post #8: Diamond Joe: Bubba's viral successor

Along with SNL, (see my post #5) The Onion is one of the few mainstream outlets for satire in the national US media stream.  It has weathered the transition to the online age well, since its humor has almost always been easily boiled down to a headline and an image (the full articles are redundant and overlong, which I suppose is part of the joke).

In recent years, echoing SNL's early take on Bill Clinton, The Onion has seized on Joe Biden's blue-collar appeal and crafted an alternate, caricatured version.  Where the Hartman Clinton was simply exaggerated, the Onion "Diamond Joe" Biden has become an all-purpose sleaze ball, a 1970s drug dealer, hustler and car enthusiast who essentially never grew up.  The articles started shortly after Obama and Biden's 2008 election and gained their essential form with Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway from May 2009.

The Onion has an entire channel dedicated to Joe Biden articles, which are varied and uniformly hilarious.

Once again, I am drawn to satire that seizes on the characterization and personae that have become so essential to political campaigning.  While most political theatre sticks close to the issues and the real urgency around them, actual politicians and campaigns stray far from those lines, making their arguments on appeals to emotion and portrayals of themselves as a certain kind of character.  Usually the kind of guy you'd want to have a cold one with as he washes his Trans Am.

Post #7: Discriminating freely in the light of God

The concept of "religious freedom" has been invoked by US lawmakers in ever more spurious fashion.  It came to national attention early last year in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case,when the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, sided with corporations seeking exemption from providing birth control coverage for their employees due to "conscientious objection" to birth control on religious grounds.

CNN: Supreme Court rules against Obama in contraception case

Bullshit!

It's not ideal that employers are tangled up in providing healthcare for their workers - essentially, for-profit companies pay other for-profit companies to pay doctors to provide care for everyday people.  It's a convoluted system ripe with corruption, profit zeal, and ethical paradoxes. 

But, it is what it is.  People depend on their jobs for health care, and the government has simply attempted to define what aspects of health coverage should be universally granted by insurers. 

If conservatives are so pro-individual, why not leave it up to individuals who do not agree with birth control, to simply not take birth control?  No one is being forced to actually abort babies or use contraception who is not electing to do so out of free will.  So the idea that anyone's "freedom" is being trounced upon is just infuriating.

Obviously, the Indiana "religious freedom" bill has brought these questions to the fore again, granting business owners the right to legally refuse service to people on "religious grounds".  The stink of moral backwardsness was enough to light up national attention, thankfully, but the legislative and judicial underpinning for this kind of thinking remains firmly entrenched.

It would be great to have a performance where the lead character is obsessed with "religious freedom" and makes all kinds of absurd demands of everyone around him on these grounds - I'm not paying my bills, I'm not doing my homework, I'm not waiting in line....  it's a slippery slope when you believe God has your back and turn off that nagging thing we call empathy!!!

Post #6: Going off the rails on the Crazy Train

Chicago Tribune; CTA chief: Rauner's proposed cuts worse than first thought

Governor Bruce Rauner's proposed budget has made waves on the NEIU campus as it proposes to cut a full third of funding, which would (do the math) drive tuition up by 50% or more. 

Even more worrying to me are the cuts to CTA, Metra, and Pace, agencies that perpetually struggled since the economic downturn of 2001 and have already endured nearly catastrophic cuts in bus and train service, despite large portions of the metro area being underserved to begin with.  Repairs have continued on the decaying and unsafe traintracks, and the bus fleet has been upgraded, and these feats are certainly a testament to the fiscal ingenuity of RTA management, and a direct argument against those who say government agencies can't help but be bloated, wasteful, and ineffecient.

Now we see that the estimated cuts to the RTA are not $105,000,000 annually as first reported, but closer to $130 million, which is a substantial 7 percent of the operating budget. 

As a CTA rider I am adamant that the CTA needs more, not less funding, and that finding budgetary savings in this area is in effect a tax on poor and underprivileged urban populations.

I would love to see CTA riders protest directly.  CTA train cars and platforms, in particular, already function as ad hoc performance spaces, so why not engage there?

A number of my friends got involved in a massive "train takeover" in December to protest the deaths of Eric Garner and Mike Brown:

Train Takeover by Activists, Artists is New Take on Recent Protests

Isn't it appropriate to use this venue to stage bold political theatre that takes direct aims at Rauner and his plutocratic agenda?

Post #5: SNL, Bubba, and the role of character in political satire

In the modern US arena of politics, one of our key outlets for political theatre is the television program "Saturday Night Live".  Because it's a weekly show broadcast live, it's by nature incredibly up-to-date and timely with issues.  Its live nature means it has a lot in common with theatrical presentation - edits are not possible except for cutting between different camera views, sets are simple and partial, and audience response is a crucial element.  Finally, because it is an institution in American comedy, it is allowed to engage in satirical material far more subversive and edgy than what is seen in other national mainstream contexts.

A particularly apt political performance was the role of Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton during his first national campaign in 1992.  Clinton was a relative newcomer to the field, and the combination of stumbles in his primary opponents' campaigns with the vote splitting towards third party candidate Ross Perot enabled him to carry the electoral college without a majority of the popular vote.  As his campaign initially gained momentum, unfamiliar voters were influenced by the well-received Hartman skits, which simultaneously mocked and underscored Clinton's folksy appeal.  Although he was a Rhodes scholar, a former governor, and a Yale Law school graduate, he was able to capitalize on the widespread impression that he was a man of the people with noticeable, but likeable, flaws - noticeably, his appetite for fast food and women.

The Hartman performances helped Clinton thread this needle, which he perpetuated by playing the saxophone on the then-hip Arsenio Hall show.

I'm fascinated at the way characterization defined these skits, and how a satiric presentation of a political persona can actually cement that persona in the public mind.

Post #4: The Pope is still hanging out in your bedroom, and here's what he thinks...

The current Pope, Francis, has made waves for statements such as the above, which appear to be rather radical shifts in official Catholic policy towards LGBT persons. 

A recent Vatican report further clarified, or muddied, their stance on LGBT "lifestyles" and same-sex marriage:
Newsweek: What Did the Vatican Really Say About Gay Marriage Yesterday? Catholics Disagree

The report says, among other things, that homosexuals “need to be welcomed and accompanied with patience and delicacy” and that “[homosexuals] have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community.”

Even acknowledging the existence of committed same-sex partnerships is apparently unprecedented for the Catholic Church.  The report went a step further “Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions, it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners,” the report reads. 

The bottom line is apparent in further reading, though.  Pope Francis has also been quoted as saying that being gay is essentially falling prey to "the machinations of the Father of Lies", or Satan.  To me, this suggests that the essential backwards qualities of the 21st century Vatican are not surface level, but speak to a deeper problem in orienting humankind within the context of the universe.  

Christians who believe that our souls are being literally fought over to be claimed for either the forces of God or Satan will naturally extend that dualistic approach to other issues and ideas.  In such a world, there is a right way to act and a wrong way to act, and shades of grey are colored over.  This is a helpful heuristic in understanding the Catholic Church's silence and even cooperation in the face of Nazi and Fascist aggression during the 1930s and 40s. 

It's also helpful in understanding why, despite these overdue advances in the Church's ability to recognize LGBT individuals as children of God, the Church is still incredibly far from truly accepting "unconventional" forms of love, family, and lifestyle. 

I am very interested in seeing political theatre that takes on the Catholic Church and other massive religious bodies that engage in political action (see also: the fundamentalist theologies at work in the Middle East and elsewhere).  It would be particularly exciting to see a performance take place in a Church that was respectful of the sacred environment while also pursuing a subversive and challenging orientation.  We can still love our authority bodies as we gently tell them to grow the fuck up.