The C word

“May you live all the days of your life”

Allow yourself the freedom to feel, to hurt, to smile

Disengage from the idea that things or even love gives you permission to be happy.

I saw my mom for the first time in months. Standing at 5’ 2 she still manages to make me feel small. Her long, dark curls billowing over her tan skin darkens her stoic features. Her small frame and sharp, mature eyes startle me as always. Her cold demeanor melts away as I hear the sweet warmth of her voice drawing me in for a hug.  We speak quietly, as if every word is a secret, discussing her 50th birthday approaching right around the corner. We laugh as we move in closer and closer hanging onto each other every word until we bump heads and knock a glass of water off of the table. 

Every time I make a mistake it’s as if I am meeting my mother for the first time all over again. We get quiet, as silence is her favorite punishment, and continue eating our meal. The air gets colder as I watch her eyes harden and her thin frame seems to grow tenfold and I feel like a child again. For the first time in months I think about how similar my mother and I truly are.

The moment passes and as we speak I can hear the pain resting comfortably on her tongue, lacing her words. We sit in silence and I watch her fiddle with her slender hands, I pretend not to notice the yellowing of her nails as she shoves her hands into her lap out of embarrassment. Impulsively she runs her hand through her long, silky hair. Methodically hiding the chunks in her palms, again I pretend not to notice.

As we depart I think of all the secrets my mother holds on to, I think of the day she will tell me she is sick. I wonder if she knows that I know, until then I will pretend not to notice.

Jasmine Crowe literally killed her Ted-Talk. She emphasized that world hunger is not just a problem we can address later, it is a CRISIS. People are starving all over the world, in our backyards, and oceans away. Corporations everywhere turn a blind eye to the issues and push it away as someone else’s issue and it will get dealt with eventually. World hunger needs to be addressed period. We have the power to make a change and we choose to ignore it, this has to stop now.

Darren Pieh (also known as Alyssas dad) was our guess speaker during this transition to distance learning as a result of Covid-19. Mr. Pieh outlined the industry of broadcasting and media. Mr. Pieh has found a career in monitoring advertisements and ensuring they meet a predetermined standard. I feel like his appearance was necessary because as a Mass Communications major he has experience in the fields many of us hope to become involved in one day. His current job is not one many of us would traditionally choose or even think about as somewhere we would be in the next 10-20 years. Yet as Mr. Pieh described the demand for younger people to enter the industry is high, not many young faces are coming in and is causing the field of media industry to become increasingly lucrative.

Growing up my parents were huge basketball fans and I remember seeing this huge man on my tv screen doing interviews and speaking about his experience being one of the “greats” in basketball. As I’ve gotten older I realize that Shaq is a role model on and off the court. He used his athleticism to his advantage and was smart not to blow his riches as fast as they came. Shaq became an example of smart spending, he invested in several companies and is building an extreme amount of capitol year by year. Even though he was a professional basketball player he understands the insurmountable advantage an education can give you.

After watching Vida Williams Ted Talk, I was enamored by the intense detail in which she described privacy. She analyzed and explained citizen data in such a way that for a second you forget shes talking about us. Prior to this presentation I knew little of what citizen data was and how important it is to protect. Outside of needing to use identification measures like an Id, social security number, or birth certificates I never really dedicated much thought into what these numbers and documents truly meant. She spoke of HIPPA and the limits to privacy we truly have, outside of HIPPA nothing protects our data. Everyday these numbers are used to track our purchases, downloads, logins and we leave a digital trail. We are extremely vulnerable to all kinds of internet crime and we pay it no mind, we continue to agree to terms and conditions without reading it, we store credit cards and passwords on our phone, and live in this ignorant oblivion of the digital age.

Coming home for a 2-week long break sounded nice at first. Then it was a month, then it was 2 months, and somehow it has manifested itself to a 6month shelter in place shut down. This virus, this pandemic has incited a unique fear across the world. It seems the world out there is becoming worse and worse with no hopes of anything getting even remotely better. Americans are preparing for the end of the world, gun sales have gone up, toilet paper is obsolete, and it is impossible to move freely outside of your home.

My day to day life had been disrupted by a mandated curfew, anxious society, and piles of online schoolwork. It honestly feels like the end of the world and Im just ready for everything to be over

I learned that history is not monolithic, I was presented with the idea at a young age that the black panther party was violent and radical. This is how I defined the beauty of their influence. I had a picture painted in my mind of the beautiful afros and leather jackets. I fell in love with their spirit of rebellion. Although all of these aspects are true they are not the sole reflection of their purpose. The black panther party was strategic, analytical, and media savvy.

Using the media they were able to challenge the prejudice propaganda presented against them, their radicalism provided them with the agency to make their voices heard. Their influence was so widespread it affected the way black men and women dressed. There was a rise in confidence and love for black hair, black skin, and black people throughout the community.
Understanding their influence can be as simple as researching COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was a series of covert and, at times, illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations. The Black Panther Party was specifically targeted and bore the brunt of the most damage.

According to FBI documents, one of the purposes of the COINTELPRO program was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of the Black nationalists”. They wanted to prevent the rise of a black “messiah” and Martin Luther King Jr. had been among the candidates until his assassination in 1968 when the attention shifted to Huey P. Newton.

My first memory of my hair has to be around 6th grade. Clear as day I remember walking from the busstop in the rain, my bestfriend at the time was so excited. Due to the rain and it being the middle of the week, she knew her mom was not going to press her hair. She would get the opportunity to show off her beautiful curls and begged me to do the same.

See my mother always told me my hair was beautiful, that it was strong, and full of personality. But before this I never actually knew what my hair looked like, it was always in twists or pressed out. I excitedly ran inside the house and told my mom of my plans to show off my beautiful curls at school the next day.

I sat as she washed my hair, excitedly playing with the curls that fell in my face. Hours later I looked in the mirror and cried my eyes out. I felt unbelievably ugly. I looked at my mothers long wavy hair and was dismayed as why mine was not as “beautiful” as my hers. That same sentiment was reflected by friends, classmates, and teachers the next day. Everyone was wondering what happened to my hair .

After this my mother refused to straighten my hair ever again. She wanted me to feel beautiful in my coils. To this day I associate a majority of my beauty with my hair. It is my largest insecurity and I still struggle fighting the desire to compare my texture to others.

I enjoy being able to see what goes on behind the scenes of my favorite artists or pieces of media. Although the show felt like there was no centralized theme.

Out of the interview clips the one on Johnny Nunez was my favorite. I liked hearing about the difficulties and approaches to getting the perfect shot, which included jumping off a landing into a crowd at a club. It showed how much work truly goes into the finalized 3 second production we see.

I believe the show could be extremely successful with proper editing and application.