Illustration by Louise Leong.

The right to assemble is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution for a reason: liberty depends upon it.

This week, the Santa Cruz County Superior Court is moving forward with the trial of six people accused of illegally camping outside government buildings in the summer of 2010. Five men and one woman rolled out their sleeping bags over the summer with dozens of others who protested a city ordinance that bans sleeping outside at night in public places.

Peace Camp 2010, as it became known, began July 4 on the county courthouse steps and continued to Santa Cruz City Hall, where it ended in October. Many demonstrators were cited and arrested, but judges dismissed nearly all violations except for those of the six defendants in this week’s case.

Eliot “Bob” Anderson, Arthur Bishoff, Collette Connolly, Christopher Doyon, Gary Johnson and Ed Frey stand accused of breaking a state lodging law by participating in the protest against the anti-camping policy. If sentenced, the group could face jail time, exorbitant fines or community service.

On Tuesday, four defendants were found guilty, Anderson was dismissed because of a hung jury, and Doyon did not show up to court. He is now facing a warrant for arrest. Sentencing is expected on May 10.

The protest was intended to scrutinize the constitutionality of a policy with questionable implications. While thousands of homeless people reside in Santa Cruz County, there are only a couple hundred beds in county shelters to accommodate them.

Demonstrators argued that local governments’ insistence on presenting a wholesome image is infringing on the basic rights to life and liberty, including the very personal decision of where to sleep at night.

Because the camping ordinance criminalizes sleeping outside of a private residence, thousands of people need to “get on their feet” or “get out of town.” Unfortunately, both of these clichés are easier said than done.

Unemployment has made even the most qualified job seekers desperate for minimum wage employment. People without residences are often excluded from jobs, and while there are a few exceptions, most find the transition from street life to mainstream society painful and ultimately unsuccessful.

To top it off, state and local governments across the country actively expel the homeless with strictly enforced anti-camping policies. In more extreme cases, the homeless are bussed to other places.

Ordinances like the one in Santa Cruz exist across the country. The logic for many cities is that if sleeping outside is allowed in one town (especially a beautiful one with a mild climate), then the homeless will come flocking to sleep on the streets.

This may be true. However, the exclusion of residence-less persons from a community is both elitist and immoral. Santa Cruz should be concerned with maximizing liberty, not avoiding a population of people who sleep on the streets.

There is no point in targeting these six demonstrators, especially in light of charges being dropped against all other protesters. It is a way for the city to show that it is tough on crime. Yet, shouldn’t we be congratulating these protesters for recognizing a potentially unconstitutional policy and taking action against it?

Beyond the questionable ethics of the policy itself, there is no reasonable explanation for why these six people specifically are facing court charges.

The right to assemble is a clear and non-negotiable right in this country. It has been essential to important social movements throughout U.S. history: abolition after the Civil War, women’s suffrage after that, progressive reform in the 1930s, and most present in the recent consciousness, the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

For Santa Cruz to claim that the assembly of those six protesters was illegal because they were in sleeping bags is appalling. Peace Camp 2010 was a peaceful demonstration and, as such, it is protected under the First Amendment.

Basic rights are not contingent on a person’s residential status. Each of us has the right and the responsibility to protest unfair and discriminatory laws.

Illustration by Muriel Gordon.

The world is rapidly developing. Everything from microwaves to iPads has been developed within the last 50 years. New gadgets have appeared, including new methods for dealing with crime. Police now have the potential to curb crime by shooting a GPS tracker at any suspicious car via laser-guided handgun, and track a person’s whereabouts for days or even weeks, something that would have been unimaginable even twenty years ago.

As of April 28, a three-judge panel upheld in the Seventh Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals — comprising the states of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin — that this practice is legal, and it is unnecessary for police to obtain a warrant in this situation.

Disregarding the ill-fitting notion of using James Bond tactics to curb real-life crime, the most upsetting thing about this case is the secrecy of the tracking or “search,” and the idea that it is unnecessary for police to produce a warrant or inform the suspicious person of their audit.

This case’s legality means that it is up to police to decide what is suspicious. One wonders, what factors do the police weigh before they choose to track a car?

It sounds oddly reminiscent of Arizona’s SB1070 bill, which would have allowed police to ask drivers they suspected to be illegal immigrants to produce documentation papers and proof of residency or citizenship, all without a warrant.

But the resounding difference between these two cases is that a federal judge blocked some controversial provisions of SB1070 from ever taking effect, arguing the potential for broad misuse, whereas the majority of judges of the Seventh Circuit panel upheld the GPS tracking decision in U.S. v. Juan Cuevas-Perez.

The U.S. v. Juan Cuevas-Perez case was upheld because ultimately, the judges decided that information gathered from this GPS tracking device, which was used on Cuevas-Perez’s car for 28 days, could also be gathered by police who simply follow what they consider a suspicious car.

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Diane P. Wood said, “The technological devices available for such monitoring have rapidly attained a degree of accuracy that would have been unimaginable to an earlier generation. They make the system that George Orwell depicted in his famous novel, “1984,” seem clumsy and easily avoidable by comparison.”

Judge Wood maintains that as new technologies like the GPS tracking device appear, the margin for error disappears. Police following a suspicious car cannot be as accurate as the GPS devices that are now going to replace them. And by comparing the device to the mass surveillance depicted in “1984,” Wood suggests the new GPS tracking represents a serious invasion of privacy.

And where are Fourth Amendment protections in all of this? Instead of new world uses of the Fourth Amendment that would address new technologies like the GPS tracker, old world applications of it and strict interpretation lead to decisions like U.S. v. Juan Cuevas-Perez, and to the lessening of Fourth Amendment protections for citizens in the United States.

The Fourth Amendment must not remain stagnant, unable to face rising challenges of the modern world.

It is now up to the Supreme Court to invalidate this decision, and broaden protections of the Fourth Amendment to address new technologies in the modern world.

In addition to teaching two sections for a class called U.S. History After WWII, UC Santa Cruz history graduate student Sara Smith is running for UAW Local 2865 Executive Board’s northern vice president as a member of Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU).

“This is the biggest crisis our union’s ever had,” Smith said.

AWDU is one of the two competing caucuses, similar to political parties, and was founded in 2009 when they felt UAW Local 2865 leadership wasn’t doing enough to combat budget cuts.

Smith said the 10-person UAW Executive Board currently makes decisions for 12,000 members. AWDU wants to increase democratic participation in decision-making among union members by spreading out the power concentrated in this board.

In response to rise of AWDU, the United for Social and Economic Justice (USEJ) caucus was born and is comprised of many incumbents.

“Current leadership [in UAW 2865] gave themselves a name to run against us,” Smith said of the formation of the USEJ.

She said USEJ has no presence at UCSC.

Daraka Larimore-Hall, executive board president, UC Santa Barbara sociology graduate student and TA, is running for re-election as a USEJ member. He said USEJ is responsible for bring 20,000 laborers into UAW.

“Our group was instrumental in making this happen,” Larimore-Hall said.

Adam Hefty, a UCSC election committee representative and graduate student, said that during Saturday’s ballot count, three of the six present election committee members voted to stop the count and adjourned the meeting, leaving the votes from UC Berkeley and UCLA uncounted.

“The election committee felt they couldn’t continue [to count the ballots] because of the atmosphere of hostility at the vote count,” Larimore-Hall said.

Hefty did not agree with the three election committee members who decided to stop counting.

“There was no pause for me to be able to vote or understand the motion that was going on,” Hefty said. “Three of six doesn’t constitute a majority.”

Smith said AWDU won at UC Davis, UC Irvine and UCSC, and received 95 percent of the votes at UCSC.

Even though USEJ won at UC Riverside, UCSB and UC San Diego, she said AWDU had a good chance of winning once UCLA and UC Berkeley’s votes were counted.

Both parties wanted the count to resume but didn’t agree upon terms under which the voting would continue.

On Tuesday the election committee decided counting would resume on the morning of May 5, supervised by a neutral mediator. Candidates and their supporters won’t be allowed in the room.

Smith said two ballot boxes from UCLA and UCSD were spoiled because they contained votes that weren’t concealed in the two appropriate identification envelopes. This caused Smith to fear voters were trying to vote twice or were stuffing the ballots.

Candidates from both parties said they were personally attacked during the campaign and the counting deadlock.

Larimore-Hall said he received strings of texts from AWDU supporters telling him he was going to jail because of what USEJ is doing.

“It’s absolutely disgusting the way AWDU’s been acting [since before] the election started,” he said.

Yuting Huang, UCLA graduate student and AWDU candidate for head steward at the UCLA campus level, said she was frustrated at times during the campaign and even cried.

She said she couldn’t always talk to voters after USEJ campaigners because they physically blocked her by walking voters to the polls.

“Many people will vote with very little information,” she said. “I felt people wanted to listen to both sides. Elections shouldn’t be run like that.”

UC Davis graduate student Xochitl Perez is running for the Executive Board’s northern vice president position with USEJ against Smith, and disagreed with aspects of AWDU’s campaign.

“We [in USEJ] attempted to focus on our record, while AWDU focused a lot on harassing our candidates by urging them to step down,” Perez said.

Perez said she was verbally insulted by two male AWDU candidates during the three days of voting and nobody stopped them.

“This conduct is not consistent with AWDU’s message,” she said. “This is not just running on issues. This is running a campaign of intimidation.”

During the counting stalemate, AWDU members sat in at the UCLA and Berkeley UAW offices and held a rally at UC Berkeley.

After teaching her Monday discussion, Smith returned to Berkeley. She said they will stay there until the ballot counting finishes.

Photo by Prescott Watson.

Nate Bennett naturally smiles a lot. That’s probably for the best because being a food service manager at the College Nine and Ten dining hall during a budget crisis may not provide too many reasons to smile.

Although he’s currently dealing with the school’s financial woes, Bennett’s 20-year career has been widely varied.

“I’ve fed people at four-star resorts and I’ve fed people for 7 cents a meal,” he said. “I came in from managing the Homeless [Services] Center of Santa Cruz for many years, and I’ve made friends with the public I serve. I feel I’m pretty well-liked, as long as you don’t steal food.”

Despite his optimistic disposition, Bennett has experienced his share of tribulations. The fact that food service employees are both union and non-union has caused some complications.

“From this level down [below managers], you’re part of the union. From this level up [managers and above], you’re not,” he said.

Bennett was prepared for the role, however. He even took a class called “Managing in a Union Environment.”

Bennett is a problem solver, and this system put his skills to the test.

“Last year, during the [union] protests, we — the management — got behind the picket lines, climbed the hill, and we made food,” he said. “People still had to eat. It wasn’t our disdain for the union that did that, it was our commitment to our customer. I like challenges like that: Get your skills and logistics together with other people and make something happen before your eyes.”

Though this complicated system may allow Bennett to display his commitment and skill, it tends to cause conflict.

“There has been a natural mechanism that when somebody goes, [we] don’t replace them. We’re out of money,” Bennett said. “That isn’t necessarily the case for the union folks, that’s the case for the management. If our kitchen is one cook short, we’re required by contract to find somebody.”

Bennett said the budget crisis is something that impacts everyone.

“People see what naturally hits their pocketbook,” he said. “As a state, we haven’t paid our bills for some time, and I know that’s trickled down in part to me — that’s my part in that.”

Though budget cuts are making for a tumultuous and sometimes conflicting atmosphere, Bennett said the challenges he faces demand compromise and understanding.

“I’ve learned to be sympathetic with my superiors for facing that pressure,” he said. “We were told at the start of the year that we’d take furloughs.”

Still, Bennett is aware that things are changing.

“As the managers, we’re trying to be as efficient as possible,” he said. “We’re not complaining, but you have to change your priorities. It’s something you have to deal with.”

In the face of these difficulties, Bennett feels the student body may not be aware of the complexities of the situation.

“What the student body doesn’t understand is the division between represented staff [union] and management,” he said. “That tension between the two worlds is something we’re caught in the middle of as managers. We know we need to give them room to get together and do their thing, but it’s not [management’s] fault, and we both know that. We’re a team.”

(from left to right)

“I know that several of my friends were among the students who were recently mugged, so that has had an impact. But honestly, I’m going to be an RA next year, so I’m not going to be directly affected because campus is a safe place.”
Mariah Babin
First-year, Kresge
Linguistics

“Not really — I guess there are crimes but they’re not as bad as other places I’ve seen. So I’m not worried about it. I wouldn’t pay money to live in a safer place here because it doesn’t make that big of a difference to me.”
Julian Laguisma
First-year, Stevenson
Business management economics

“It hasn’t had that big of an effect on me. Honestly, it’s more about price to me. Price and convenience to campus is bigger to me. I get alerts when crime happens on campus, but it hasn’t deterred me from living anywhere on campus.”
Tadao Koyama
Fourth-year, Kresge
History

“I was hesitant about living on the Eastside, but I ended up living there anyway. And it’s not so bad.”
Christian Calderon
Fifth-year, College Eight
Film/politics

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein

On a balmy Wednesday night, all was quiet on Ocean Street as members of neighborhood watch groups, including Ocean’s 11 and Take Back Santa Cruz, met with the Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) at the Sierra Room in the University Inn. The group talked about their most pertinent subject — preventing and addressing crime. About 30 people attended the event.

Take Back Santa Cruz is a neighborhood watch organization that deals with crime in Santa Cruz. Group leaders help the community get more involved with issues like drug control, gangs and prostitution. Ocean’s 11 is also a neighborhood watch group, named after the 11-block area from Ocean Street to the Westside of Santa Cruz.

Crime in Santa Cruz is a rising issue. SCPD recorded 53 burglary arrests in March alone, and the city faces ongoing problems with robbery, gang relations, trespassing and prostitution. Robbery in Santa Cruz increased by 32 percent from 2009 to 2010, while burglary has also risen 6 percent.

This has been particularly alarming to community watch groups. SCPD held a meeting on April 27 so the community could get more connected to its police officers. Police Lt. Larry Richard led the presentations.

“We’re a community police department,” he said. “This meeting today provides an opportunity for us to come out and bring a voice to our community.”

Richard emphasized the importance of contacting local authorities in the face of a threatening situation in the city.

“If you see something that doesn’t feel right, it probably is not,” Richard said. “Get out there and give us a call.”

Regina Henderson, organizer of Ocean’s 11, said robberies often occur in her neighborhood, and that community response is currently insufficient.

“I was one of eight people who were robbed in my area in the last few months,” Henderson said. “When I first started Ocean’s 11, no one in the neighborhood knew how often robbery occurred.”

Noting a lack of communication between neighbors, Henderson founded Ocean’s 11 with a few of her neighbors as a way to monitor neighborhood crime.

“Communication is key,” Henderson said. “Now we have a much better idea about [robbery] because of our communication.”

For Take Back Santa Cruz, being part of a neighborhood watch group allows members to get more active in watching out for crime.

“We’re sick and tired of complaining about crime,” said Analicia Cube, founder of Take Back Santa Cruz.

Take Back Santa Cruz sometimes takes action against crime in their community. Cube is especially fond of confronting drug dealers standing on a street corner, a tactic the group refers to as “positive loitering.”

“Positive loitering is when we get a group of people to come up to someone and ask them to leave politely,” she said. “We want them to know that if they stick around, we’re going to call the cops.”

The meeting emphasized safety and spotlighted areas in Santa Cruz that have inordinate amounts of crime. Some residents say the Eastside to Westside bridge is particularly crime-laden.

“I call that bridge ‘crackpipe bridge,’” said Regina Henderson, member of Ocean’s 11 in Santa Cruz, “because the first time I walked on it I saw someone smoking crack on it.”

City employee Marilyn Demartini expressed her safety concerns as a resident living on Broadway Street, and commended the Santa Cruz Police Department for their responsiveness to her issues.

“I always take an opportunity to attend events like these,” Demartini said. “The Santa Cruz Police Department has made a big improvement throughout the years. I’ve gotten to know a few police officers on a first name basis, and they remain very responsive to my issues. I like the idea that I can sit comfortably on my porch and have a cup of coffee with no worries about drug dealers or prostitutes walking by.”

Mayor Ryan Coonerty discusses what Santa Cruz is doing well and what citizens can do better during his first “Mayor’s Academy,” a class aimed at educating citizens on how the government works. Photo by Toby Silverman

When UC Santa Cruz lecturer Ryan Coonerty teaches on campus, he usually faces students in classrooms. But last Wednesday night, Santa Cruz mayor Coonerty stood before community members in the Council Chambers, lecturing on the way City Hall works.

“I want to make sure that [community members’] questions or concerns about the city are answered,” Coonerty said. “I want to give them a good sense about how accessible government is.”

The class, known as the Mayor’s Academy, will take place three more times, once a month until July. Classes are open to the public and will run from 7 to 9 p.m.

Coonerty said the class is the first of its kind. Mayor’s Academy aims to educate the public, Coonerty said, and it is not going to be a place for him to share his personal political views. Rather, through a better understanding of the way city government works, the community can partake in a more informed discussion.

“I believe in the idea of sitting down and having a longer, deeper conversation and providing the context and complexities of an issue,” Coonerty said. “It’s not always clear to the average person what the issues are or how to get engaged, and the more outreach we can do, the better.”

Approximately a dozen people attended the first meeting last week. Coonerty said he was “extremely happy” with the turnout.

“The tone of the conversation was much better than it often is around public debates,” Coonerty said. “It was very gratifying.”

Topics discussed included the budget and tax systems, crime and the desalination plant.

David Sweet, a retired UCSC faculty member who attended the event, said he was satisfied with the lecture overall.

“The whole idea that the mayor would take time to invite people to come and have a civil, informative talk on how the city works is beneficial,” Sweet said. “Just imagine if the president were doing this. If we were in the habit [as a country] of having this ongoing civics lesson, I think we’d be much better off as people.”

Before the mayor’s presentation, Sweet said he was unaware of some of the programs the city had, like the Chronic Inebriates Program, which aims to prioritize rehabilitation over jail time.

To improve future Mayor’s Academy lectures, Coonerty plans on incorporating evaluations and suggestions taken during the event.

Vivian Vargas, Latino Affairs Commission member, suggested at the meeting future events be televised for accessibility. She also suggested televised lectures be dubbed in Spanish. Coonerty said this sounded like a “good idea” and it would “be worth it to have the [county’s Spanish] translator” attend.

“There was a [county] survey done to better reach the Latino community and they found that the best way to reach them was through television,” Vargas said. “That worked more than newspapers.”

The tone of the lecture was informal, and Coonerty joked about his day-to-day experiences, from campaigning to making citizen’s arrests.

Coonerty has extended his outreach to high schools in the Santa Cruz area. Mayors nationwide partnered with Harvard University to speak at local schools about city government. Coonerty has visited nine schools and said he intends to go to four more before the end of the year.

“I enjoyed going and talking to students so I’ve continued doing it,” Coonerty said. “I’ve really found their insights into the city to be extremely valuable.”

There is a gray cat with a pop tart for a body on the computer screen.

Its pixilated body is flying through animated space, leaving a rainbow trail in its wake. A grating but catchy tune plays over and over.

“Nyan, nyan nyan nyan, nyan nyan nyan nyan, nyan nyan.”

“The appeal is that it’s just nonsense,” said Joel Johnston, a sophomore broadcasting major at San Francisco State University. “There are some people who like the song.”

This is Nyan Cat, a recent example of an Internet meme, which is an image, video, or saying that spreads virally over the World Wide Web.

The word “meme” first appeared in Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins defined a meme as being any sort of idea that spreads from person to person within a culture and catches fire. It played on the notion of a gene, as both genes and memes multiply with human-to-human contact.

As UC Santa Cruz computer science professor Gerald Moulds put it, “Every idea that manages to self-replicate is a meme.”

Internet memes are much the same thing. They spread from website to website, from community to community, from user to user across the Web, mutating and bonding together, and taking on different meanings along the way.

Moulds says he has “been plugged in to the Internet before most people knew there was an Internet.” He was online during the days of purely text-based message boards, called USENET newsgroups, where he says he experienced his first meme: a message board with the address “Alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork.” The name references the Swedish Chef, a character on the Muppets.

“That was the first really well-known, completely whimsical thing [on the Internet],” Moulds said.

As often happens with memes, the message board spurred imitators and variations, such as “Alt.wesley.crusher.must.die.die.die,” this time poking fun at Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This was happening in the mid-1980s, but most of the memes Moulds can remember are from the last decade. Today, the Internet is much more sophisticated, though memes operate mostly the same way: an absurd or relatable concept takes form, usually in an image, and is released onto the Web, where just about anything can happen. They can remain in obscurity, or they can take over an entire section of the Internet — at least for a couple of days.

The last huge medium to take hold before the Internet was television, which brought mass culture into the home in a way it had never been before. The “Idiot Box” had the potential to be a voice for and of the people, but commercial interests outweighed realistic representations and varying viewpoints.

It’s widely acknowledged that the Internet is in some ways replacing television, and thus memes are poised to rival television as a form of mass entertainment. The popular meme database website Know Your Meme currently has 5,525 memes catalogued total, and that doesn’t count all the variations that come about within each meme.

Compare that to the 70-something channels that come with most cable packages for television. Some would say that you can’t look at TV shows and viral Internet images the same way, but what it all boils down to is the influence of ideas, and in numbers, memes have a lot more ideas, and a growing influence. Johnston spoke about the inevitability of encountering memes in today’s world.

“It eventually just happens,” he said. “If you’re on the Internet, you’re eventually just going to get exposed to memes. My mom isn’t really into the Internet — she just uses it for email, but even she knows about some of them.”

The Internet currently has less corporate control than other mediums. Because of this, memes are a form of entertainment that is actual popular culture in the purest terms: a culture of the people. They imitate TV’s instant-gratification format, but project a voice that is really from the masses, for the masses. Advertisers are constantly trying to produce an inauthentic copy of this, and many criticize meme culture for its anonymous, anything-goes approach. But the populist entertainment ventures on — for better or worse.

“Friday,” that infamous Rebecca Black music video, was inescapable for two weeks in March of this year, and even surpassed Lady Gaga’s single “Born This Way” in hits on YouTube. The song was originally produced and promoted by label Ark Music Factory, but what made the fervor so intense was the work of millions of people on their computers, posting links wherever they could.

And it wasn’t just the video itself that caught on. Different memes dissecting and analyzing small parts of the video, and comparing it to other parts of popular culture, were all over different sites.

One popular image had two panels: in the first, Rebecca Black is smiling, with a caption that reads “Which seat should I take?” a line from the popular song. In the next, the character Gretchen from the popular teen movie “Mean Girls” grimaces, and the caption is a line from the movie: “You can’t sit with us!”

There were hundreds more like it, and thousands of other memes take the Internet by storm every single day. It is a mass medium that, thanks to the omniscience of the Internet, is constantly evolving, an ever changing and growing set of inside jokes and references upon references upon references.

By taking apart Rebecca Black’s cheesy, generic pop song, the masses used humor to reject the disintegration of the music industry. Memes aren’t important because they make stars out of 13-year-old girls — they’re important because they allow the public to speak, and to decide what’s valuable. They are, in a way, a re-appropriation of American popular culture.

And this re-appropriation has concrete results. On April Fool’s Day of 2008, YouTube linked all featured videos on its front page to the music video for Rick Astley’s 1987 song “Never Gonna Give You Up,” copying a popular practice from Internet pranksters known as “Rickrolling.” The song shot to number 77 on Amazon’s online store.

The meme site ICanHazCheezburger, which bought Know Your Meme in March for an undisclosed seven-figure amount, receives around 2000 submissions a day alone. The site focuses on LOLCats, a type of meme that takes humorous images of cats and imposes absurd text laden with purposefully poor spelling and grammar.

For much of the 2000s and still today, LOLCats were and are inescapable. Their signature “I can haz [insert thing here]?” has become an acceptable way to request something, and people are expected to know what is being referenced. Emily Huh, editor-in-chief of ICanHazCheezburger, explained why she thinks certain memes take off so much.

“It has to have some entertainment value, whether it’s funny or whether it’s so horrible that it is funny,” she said. “Like Rebecca Black. It was so horrible that you just had to laugh at it. You don’t necessarily have to relate to it, but just understand it.”

San Francisco State student Johnston, who can spend an hour or two going through different memes in one sitting, echoes Huh’s opinion.

“I think the absurd nature of a lot of [memes] definitely make them entertaining because you just can’t really expect them,” Johnston said. “They’re all very accessible. A lot of people can see them and understand them, and a lot of people can use them in their own way.”

“People come to our sites because they get to connect and share with people what they have made or seen,” Huh said. “People get a few minutes of fame. They get really excited when they make a submission and it gets to the home page.”

An example of a relatable meme is Rage Comics, four-panel comics that always end the same way: with a stick-figure man looking upwards, his face contorted, mouth agape, with the text “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU.” The situations leading up to the almost-expletive are always everyday annoyances — the sort of things that happen to everyone at some point, but that are so mundane that most people never talk about them, like being too lazy to tie your shoelaces and then tripping over them.

The “fffuuu” guy is one of a cast of characters in the meme-verse. Also present are Forever Alone and the Troll, different unattractive faces that have their own comics and followings.

These memes, like many others, originated on 4chan, an anything-goes message board site which grants users complete anonymity. Wade Hastings, a student at Cabrillo College, has been using the site for about five years now. He first looked at it after he repeated a joke he had heard someone else tell, only to be told that the joke originated on 4chan.

“I read that thread [rage comics] when it first happened,” said Hastings. “It was just some guy, he made a four-panel comic, and it ended with the ‘fffuuu’ guy.”

4chan is known for having no boundaries or limits for what is acceptable to post. That means a lot of awful stuff, like child pornography and extremely racist, sexist, and homophobic posts, pop up. This is the price that is paid for a democratic, populist form of entertainment — all democracies depend on free speech.

“I do think the anonymity of the Internet has inspired creativity without traditional boundaries, and much of what’s been created seems like a response to the those traditional boundaries,” said UCSC professor Moulds in an email. “Some of what is created is small-minded or mean, and maybe much of it wouldn’t be out there if every creation were clearly linked to its author. But it would also chill free expression immensely if people thought that every off-color joke or juvenile Photoshop could be tied to their real names forever.”

And alongside the offensive material, memes that later take hold of the entire Internet start on 4chan. For Hastings, the limitless atmosphere is key for creativity free from judgment.

“It’s almost completely anonymous, which is a huge helper, because people aren’t afraid to post a word,” he said.

After a meme pops up on 4chan, it takes a while to spread to other sites, like Reddit, a more policed message board, and Tumblr, a popular micro-blogging site. Once there, in the mainstream, the memes can blend together with each other to create a sort of pop cultural society and language. Christopher Price, editorial director of Tumblr, spoke about this phenomenon.

“I think that the graphical Internet memes are almost like hieroglyphics [because] you couldn’t express that sentiment any simpler than that,” Price said. “And so it’s just a guy saying ‘fuuuuuck,’ you know, that’s a pretty clear, basic sentiment. We all get that. We all have been there before.”

Price also talked about a recent trend on Tumblr, which has been to essentially tell stories using different memes to express emotions. In a world that is becoming more and more wired, things like body language and facial expressions are being replaced by animated images called Graphics Interchange Formats, or GIFs.

“They have their GIF folder on their computer, and they pick the best animated GIF from Harry Potter or something to express how they feel. And that’s rather an amazing way to communicate. It’s bizarre,” he said. “There are so many references, so there’s really a lot to be communicated there, but the person doesn’t necessarily do any of the communicating.”

Because memes are a form of entertainment that is easily manipulated and created by anyone, the potential for cross-sectional references are infinite. GIFs depicting the movie “Inception” and the show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” can be placed right next to each other, creating a completely new hybrid. In yet another Rebecca Black meme, 50 Cent and Elmo can ride in the same car, both of them laughing at the tween singer. It’s a pop culture junkie’s dream come true.

But entertainment isn’t the only world memes can comment on. Almost immediately after Osama Bin Laden’s death was announced, images were circulating with the text “America! Fuck Yeah!” and pictures of Bin Laden made to look like the lead character in “Black Swan” saying “I was perfect” also made the rounds. The nation wanted to celebrate the death of a man widely regarded as evil, and they turned to GIFs and Photoshop to do so.

But there are still drawbacks. Because memes rely on catchphrases and single images, patience for anything longer is running low. A UCSF study released in April showed that extreme multitasking associated with the Internet can limit the brain’s attention span.

“There’s very much simplicity, and short is important. And sometimes I get a little scared about that,” UCSC professor Moulds said.

He tells a story of receiving an email with a link to a video, and after seeing how long it is, thinking to himself, “A minute and a half, that’s forever!”

But perhaps more threatening than length is the possibility of being monetized. Viral marketing tries to synthesize the organic way memes can spread, creating ads with the goal of having amused Internet users doing the publicity for them.

“I think it doesn’t become a meme, usually, for money,” Moulds said. “In terms of the memes becoming popular, that seems to happen purely by accident. There are attempts to replicate that, of course. ‘Snakes on a Plane’ was introduced as viral marketing.”

Movies like “Snakes on a Plane” and “Cloverfield” are famous for viral marketing campaigns, as are brands like Skittles and Burger King.

Wade Hastings remembers seeing a supposed feud between Lady Gaga and Weird Al played out on the pages of Reddit surrounding Al covering one of Gaga’s songs. He suspects it was really all viral marketing.

“All of a sudden, these two people had huge bursts of publicity. Hundreds of thousands of people saw that on the front page of Reddit,” he said. “It’s viral PR firms. I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but it’s kind of like mind control in a way. It’s manipulation.”

But despite these worries, Christopher Price from Tumblr has an optimistic outlook for the future of memes.

“I think there will always be an element of Wild West, anything-goes, because it’s just the nature of the Internet,” he said. “It’s a platform that encourages you to use it and create your own stuff for it. There are always going to be these people in their basements making really weird stuff that nobody understands. And I think that’s great, because it’s that weird stuff that gets refined and refined and refined, and then it somehow makes sense to people.”

For Hastings, memes have nowhere to go but up. He waved his hands around and opened his eyes wide as he spoke about their future.

“I think it’s going to be like the next Beatles. I mean, that’s kind of a weird reference, but the Beatles were huge,” he said. “Meme culture is going to explode. I’m really excited. Ten years from now there’s going to be an Internet culture class at prestigious universities.”

Maybe that will happen someday. But for now, memes are still in their own world, what San Francisco State student Johnston calls the “subconscious” of the people. And maybe the people don’t want to turn over their own mass medium to the established media just yet. Maybe they want to keep memes weird.

After all, that pop tart cat is still on the screen, reblogged on Tumblr by Topherchris, also know as Christopher Price, a day after we spoke. And the caption underneath is as follows:

“I almost attempted to describe Nyan Cat to a reporter yesterday, but decided against it because I didn’t want to sound batshit crazy.”

Situated on a coastal bluff overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean, the industrial landscape of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant forms a sharp contrast with the natural beauty of its surroundings. Lush rolling hills with scattered trees level out to the flat concrete surface of the plant’s compound. Two large dome structures which house the plant’s nuclear reactors tower over the rest of the complex like sentries standing guard over California’s central coast. The juxtaposition of natural beauty with the concrete of the plant’s structures is simultaneously wondrous and confounding — one could not imagine a more beautiful site for a nuclear power plant, nor a worse eyesore on this gorgeous coastal stretch just north of Avila Beach.

Diablo Canyon’s secluded location also keeps it largely isolated from the public psyche. While tensions have existed for years between the plant and environmental activists of the San Luis Obispo area, many in California are not even aware of the plant’s existence. Despite being one of only two currently operating nuclear power plants in the state of California, Diablo Canyon has enjoyed minimal exposure in mainstream media for the past 20 years.

However, all that changed when the 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan led to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Almost instantly, media attention was focused on Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo, and the San Onofre nuclear power plant in San Clemente because of their similarities to the Fukushima Daiichi plant. All three are located on the coast along earthquake fault lines, and in the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, many are becoming concerned about the safety of nuclear power plants in areas of high seismic risk.

Diablo Canyon has received a disproportionately larger percentage of this media attention because Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the plant’s operator, is currently applying for an extension on the operator’s licenses for its two nuclear reactors until the years 2024 and 2045, respectively.

This has raised concerns about the Nuclear Regulator Commission’s (NRC) ability to serve as an effective watchdog for the nuclear industry. The NRC has so far failed to heed Rep. Lois Capps (D-San Luis Obispo) and Sen. Sam Blakeslee’s (R-San Luis Obispo) request that they halt processing of PG&E’s application until 3D seismic studies can be conducted on the Shoreline Fault discovered in 2008 by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Jeanne Hardebeck. Little is known about the Shoreline Fault other than that it is much closer to the reactor than the larger Hosgri Fault located five kilometers offshore. The NRC maintains that ongoing safety oversight is adequate to consider any seismic issues that arise from the results of the study, but many contend the NRC is ignoring the significance of the Fukushima disaster by proceeding with business as usual.

Jane Swanson, spokesperson for the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, the legal intervener between the San Luis Obispo community and the NRC, says the events at Fukushima warrant a departure from the status quo.

“If not now, when are we going to decide nuclear power is not worth the risk?” Swanson said. “PG&E says the probability of a bad deal happening at Diablo is so low you don’t need to worry about it. The NRC says that too. Guess what they were saying at Fukushima seven weeks ago?”

Shoreline Uncertainties

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Diablo Canyon is marred by a troubling history of downplaying seismic hazards. PG&E initially denied the existence of a fault line near Diablo Canyon while applying for a construction permit in the mid-1960s, but the Hosgri Fault was discovered in 1969 after the construction was approved.

Then, in 1976, the NRC adopted figures from a seismic study conducted by the USGS that stated Diablo Canyon’s current design would not withstand the largest possible earthquake generated by the Hosgri Fault. PG&E protested, but eventually retrofitted their structures to withstand these new thresholds.

In 2006, the California legislature directed PG&E to conduct 3D seismic studies to address uncertainty about seismic hazards offshore from Diablo Canyon. PG&E denied this uncertainty, but in 2008 USGS seismologist Jeanne Hardebeck discovered the Shoreline Fault while working in collaboration with PG&E’s own long-term seismic study team. While the exact location of the Shoreline Fault is still undetermined, estimates place it less than a mile from the reactor.

PG&E spokesman Paul Flake said Diablo Canyon remains committed to seismic safety.

“PG&E has always been focused on safety, and at Diablo Canyon, seismic safety has always been priority number one,” Flake said. “That’s why we are continuing to conduct seismic studies, including 3D studies, to make sure that we have all the data that we need to keep the plant and our community safe.”

The Shoreline Fault is smaller than the Hosgri Fault, and projections made by PG&E seismologists place the greatest earthquake it is capable of producing at a magnitude of 6.5. By comparison, the Hosgri Fault is rated to produce a magnitude 7.5 earthquake.

Sen. Blakeslee, who grew up in the Central Coast area and holds a Ph.D. in earthquake studies from UC Santa Barbara, calls the seismic studies conducted by PG&E “woefully inadequate.” He authored the 2006 bill that called for PG&E to conduct offshore 3D studies prior to the discovery of the Shoreline Fault. He explains that while the Shoreline Fault is capable of producing a smaller earthquake than the Hosgri Fault, it is actually ground acceleration that matters for seismic safety.

“You might think of it in terms of ‘how loud is a thunder clap?’” Sen. Blakeslee said. “It’s due in part to how close you are to the lightning. You may have a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, but if you are 100 miles away versus two miles away, you will experience a dramatically different ground acceleration.”

Sen. Blakeslee says the Shoreline Fault is now understood to be the more threatening of the two.

“Because this newly discovered Shoreline Fault is closer to the facility than the Hosgri … it has the potential to create greater strong motion [for Diablo Canyon] even though it may produce a smaller earthquake,” Sen. Blakeslee said.

The 8.9 earthquake that Japan experienced on March 10 was four times greater than the 8.6 projected by Japanese seismologists. USGS seismologist Hardebeck said the reason projections indicated such a smaller earthquake was Japanese seismologists did not believe multiple segments of the fault line would rupture at the same time. Hardebeck said a much larger earthquake than is projected could occur at the Diablo Canyon site if a rupture starting on either the Shoreline or Hosgri Faults spread to the other.

“It seems entirely plausible that an earthquake could start along one of these faults [and] jump to the other and create a much larger earthquake,” she said.

PG&E said that the real issue for the Fukushima Daiichi plant was not the earthquake, but the tsunami that followed.

“A lot of people are understandably concerned because of what happened in Japan,” Flake said. “But there are major differences between Diablo and Fukushima. Diablo Canyon is located on a bluff 80 feet above sea level. The Fukushima plant is located less than 30 feet above sea level. I think not too many people are aware that the Fukushima plant was able to withstand the earthquake. What caused the problems for their cooling system was the tsunami, because it knocked out their emergency generators.”

Flake said that the threat of a wave large enough to knock out power to Diablo’s generators is very slim.

“At Diablo Canyon, both the power plant as well as our back-up generators are at about 80 feet above sea level, so they are very high.”

Sen. Blakeslee said, however, that the potential for increased ground motion as well as the possibility that an earthquake could jump from one fault to the next creates considerable concern.

“Such an earthquake would not only be larger than forecast, but much closer to the facility, which is really a deadly combination,” Sen. Blakeslee said.

“A Bad Idea”

Tensions have existed between Diablo Canyon and the residents of San Luis Obispo County since the mid 1960s, when PG&E announced it would begin construction of a nuclear power plant at the Diablo Canyon site. Between the early 1970s and mid 1980s, thousands were arrested for civil disobedience protesting the development and licensing of the Diablo Canyon plant.

The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace was one of the first organized groups to take on the plant. Recognizing a need for legal opposition to Diablo Canyon, Mothers For Peace has been the legal intervener between the NRC and the residents of San Luis Obispo since 1973.

“When we first read that PG&E was going to build a nuclear power plant, we didn’t know what that was,” spokesperson Swanson said. “After we learned that there was no solution to nuclear waste and that the utility wasn’t responsible for it because the federal government agreed to take it off their hands, it didn’t take us too many Mothers for Peace meetings to decide [Diablo Canyon] was a bad idea.”

Since the Fukushima disaster, support for The Mothers For Peace has grown due to concerns about Diablo Canyon’s location along two fault lines, the Hosgri and Shoreline Faults, the latter of which very little is known. Swanson says that the day after the disaster in Japan, the group received many requests for more information about getting involved.

“As soon as the horror of Fukushima began to hit the news, the Mothers for Peace website and my personal email and phone were just flooded with people saying things like this: ‘I’ve watched you Mothers For Peace for years and I always thought you were a bunch of crazy ladies but now I see you’re right. How can I help?’ Literally thousands like that,” Swanson said, her eyes growing wide.

With so many people asking what they could do, The Mothers For Peace decided a public display of concern was in order. On April 16, approximately 300 people showed up at the Avila Beach Pier to call for a halt in the licensing process for all nuclear power plants under review by the NRC, and the decommission of Diablo Canyon.

“People came to us looking for leadership [and] in response, we organized the April 16 rally,” Swanson said.

Calling for a direct decommission of the plant is something that The Mothers for Peace has not done in years, Swanson said. However, the disaster in Japan has reignited their desire to see the plant closed down for good. Taking the microphone at the rally, Swanson led the protesters in an impassioned chant of “Shut it down! Shut it down!”

Swanson said this kind of public statement was a new experience.

“I am a retired fifth grade teacher,” she said, her face flushing. “I’ve never spoken that way in my life, but I am mad!”

Business As Usual

Because of safety concerns about the Shoreline fault, Sen. Blakeslee and Rep. Capps have been requesting the NRC halt its processing of PG&E’s license renewal application until offshore 3D seismic studies can be completed.

Congresswoman Capps’ press secretary Ashley Schapitl pointed out that Diablo Canyon’s current licenses won’t expire for over 10 years, while 3D studies will be completed within five.

“San Onofre nuclear power plant’s license expires sooner than Diablo Canyon’s and they haven’t even applied for re-licensing yet,” Schapitl said. “In [Congresswoman Capps’] view there is certainly enough time to pause the process until these studies are completed.”

The NRC contends that this is unnecessary.

“Seismic issues are not considered as a part of the license review process,” said NRC spokesperson Victor Dricks. “Seismic issues are looked at constantly as a condition of PG&E’s operating license … seismic concerns are too important to wait until license renewal.”

In response to public concern, PG&E sent a letter to the NRC on April 10 requesting that final decision be withheld on their license application until 3D seismic studies can be completed.

“PG&E heard the concerns of our community about what happened in Japan, and we are trying to be responsible in these times,” Flake said. “So far we haven’t received a response. I don’t know how they will respond, but that is our request.”

Dricks said the NRC currently has no intention of halting its review of Diablo Canyon. He maintains that any pressing seismic threats uncovered by the study can be taken care of by the existing safety procedures.

“If necessary, the plant would be required to make changes to ensure it could continue to operate safely,” Dricks said.

Katcho Achadjian, California assemblyman for San Luis Obispo, supports the NRC’s decision not to halt the re-licensing process.

“Moving forward [with re-licensing] doesn’t stop the 3D studies,” Assemblyman Achadjian said. “If the license is approved and the results of the study are not in [PG&E’s] favor, it will be dealt with.”

Despite expressing concerns about the plant’s safety, Assemblyman Achadjian said he is confident the NRC will protect the interests of the public.

“You’ve got to have faith in the higher authority,” Achadjian said.

Sen. Blakeslee does not share this faith in the NRC. On the contrary, he feels the NRC has proven time and time again they are willing to put the interests of the nuclear industry before the safety of the American public.

“I’ve become increasingly concerned the NRC is more interested in keeping reactors running than keeping the public safe,” Sen. Blakeslee said.

He also criticized the policy of the NRC to accept results from studies performed by the utility itself.

“When a regulator relies almost exclusively on information from the regulated entity it makes it difficult for the regulator to get independent, objective analysis, and that is what is needed on safety issues of this importance,” he said.

The Mothers for Peace are similarly dissatisfied with the actions of the NRC. Swanson said the NRC is not doing enough to learn from the Fukushima disaster and instead moving forward with re-licensing nuclear power plants across the nation before information from Japan can be collected and studied.

“We’re not asking for this out of the blue,” she said. “The NRC itself in 1979 self-proclaimed after Three Mile Island that they wouldn’t process any licenses for 18 months until they learned what the hey happened there.”

A Moral Obligation

Jane Swanson, spokesperson for the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, helped organize the rally at Avila Beach Pier. Photo by Morgan Grana.

Sitting on a bench after the April 16 rally on the Avila Beach Pier, Swanson is looking tired. The sun has been shining over San Luis Obispo, and she wipes a thin layer of perspiration off her forehead before continuing.

“Look at this grey hair,” she says, holding out a lock for inspection. “I started this work when I was in my 20s. Now I have [eight] grandchildren. I didn’t know it would take over my life, but it has.”

Some might say Swanson is fighting a losing battle. Despite the public concern surrounding seismic safety at Diablo Canyon, the NRC has made it clear they have no intention of delaying the re-licensing process. Instead, all statements made by the NRC in relation to Diablo Canyon confirm her accusations that they are conducting “business as usual.” The NRC has said many times they are confident in the ability of their oversight programs to protect against any currently unknown safety issues related to the Shoreline Fault.

The executive director for NRC operations said phase one of the agency’s post-Fukushima investigation into the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants has not identified “anything that requires immediate action,” in a statement made on April 28 at the agency’s headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.

Despite all this, Swanson refuses to give up.

“I’ve had people ask me, ‘If you don’t like Diablo so much why don’t you move away?” Swanson says, her face hardening as though preparing to take on an unseen foe.

“Because we are the only ones doing this work,” she continues. “If we move away, then PG&E and the NRC can do whatever they want. Without a legal intervener there would be no one to hold them accountable to federal law. It would be immoral to leave.”

(from left to right)

“They are all annoying because they are all repetitive”
Ian Glish
First-year, Kresge
Undeclared

“I’m all about the Cyanide & Happiness stuff because they are short”
Jason Good
Third-year, Kresge
World literature

“That ‘fffuu…’ one is funny because there’s one for anything. They are very versatile and relatable.”
Tatiana Puente
Fourth-year, Porter
Linguistics

“Capsa art, because of the endless possibilities and all the random comics that come out of it.”
Mari Minjoe
First-year, Kresge
Psychology

THURSDAY, MAY 5

Lecture: Shoot the Core: An Overview of 2D Space Shooter Games by Jim Whitehead. Current Periodicals Room, Science & Engineering Library. 3 to 4 p.m. Free.

Lecture: Tuning Baghdad by Regine Basha. Room 210, Humanities 1. 4 to 5:30 p.m. Free.

Strawberries & Justice. Event includes live music, fresh organic berry tasting, a social justice self-guided tour, an art and mural expression zone on justice and agriculture. UCSC Farm, CSA pickup area. 4 to 7 p.m. Free.

Ramen and Beer: The Santa Cruz Film Festival presents the 2011 Film and Digital Media Student Showcase. Del Mar Theatre. 5 to 7 p.m. $5 students w/ID, $10 general admission, $8 seniors and non-UCSC students.

2011 UCSC Digital Arts and New Media MFA Exhibition: “Permutations.” Digital Arts Research Center. Thursday: Exhibition. 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Free.

FRIDAY, MAY 6

Sports: Juggling Festival. West Field House. 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Event repeats on Saturday and Sunday at different times. Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.

7th Annual Graduate Research Symposium: Research displayed in different media. University Center: Second floor. 1 to 3 p.m. Free.

2011 UCSC Digital Arts and New Media MFA Exhibition: “Permutations.” Digital Arts Research Center. Steve Dietz Reception. 4 to 7 p.m. free.

SATURDAY, MAY 7

Sports: Juggling Festival. West Field House. 9 a.m. to 11:45 p.m.

Sports: Cardiac Pacer 5 Mile Run. East Field Center. 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. $5.

UCSC Alumni Art Exhibition: Feedback. Porter College faculty gallery. 12 to 5 p.m. Free.

Tangroupe presents: Tango Prohibido! Porter/Kresge Dining Hall. 2 p.m. & 9 p.m. $5 students, $8 general admission.

MONDAY, MAY 9

Event: A Californian’s Guide to Trees Among Us. Arboretum. Talk and book signing 7: 30 p.m. Free.

TUESDAY, MAY 10

Lecture: A Talk with Manlio Argueta and Jorge Argueta. Location undetermined at press time. 4 to 5 p.m. Free.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11

CAMPUS ELECTIONS: VOTING BEGINS. Vote at elections.ucsc.edu. 8 a.m. Voting ends 5/18 at 7:59 a.m.

Humanities Spring Awards. Room 210, Humanities 1. 4 to 5:30 p.m. Free.

City

THURSDAY, MAY 5

Concert: Jesse Cook. Kuumbwa Jazz Center.  7 p.m & 9 p.m. $25 in advance, $28 at door.

Film: The Grateful Dead Movie Event Encore. Regal Cinemas 9. $12.50.

Concert: Sour Grass, Cowboy and Indian. The Crêpe Place. 9 p.m. $12.

FRIDAY, MAY 6

Performance: Santa Cruz Theatre of Marvels. 418 Project. 8 p.m. $15-25.

Performance: “The Imagine-a-nation of Lalachild.” Pacific Cultural Center. 8 p.m. $7.50-15. Event repeats 5/7 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Documentary: “The Catalyst.” The Catalyst. 8:30 p.m. $30 in advance, $35 at door.

Concert: Maestros in Concert feat. Pandit Shivkumar Sharma & Zakir Hussain. The Rio Theatre. 8 p.m. $35 for Gold Circle, $25 for general admission.

Film: “The Goonies.” Del Mar Theatre. 11:59 p.m. $6.50. Event repeats 5/7.

SATURDAY, MAY 7

Competition: The Green Big Day. Seabright Beach. 7 a.m.

Environment: Habitat Restoration Volunteer Field Day. Soquel Creek, meet at 836 Bay Ave. in Capitola. 9 a.m to 12 p.m.

Concert: SOJA. The Catalyst. 9 p.m. $15.

Concert: Professor Burns & The Lilac Field, Quinn DeVeaux. The Crêpe Place. 9 p.m. $8.

Concert: Throwing Stones. The Rio Theatre. 7:30 p.m. $20 in advance, $25 at door.

Sports: 2011 Human Race Fun Run and Walk-a-thon in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz Human Race Route. 7:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

Food: Fourth annual Art & Chocolate Tour. Artist Studio. 11 a.m. Free.

Performance: Bellydance Community Showcase. The Crêpe Place. 1:30 p.m. Free.

Sports: Capitola Kite Classic. Capitola Beach. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free.

Free Comic Book Day. Atlantis Fantasyworld. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Free.

SUNDAY, MAY 8

Mother’s Day Brunch. Cocoanut Grove. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Event: Mother’s Day Jazz Auction. Kuumbwa Jazz Center. 1 p.m. $18.

MONDAY, MAY 9

Concert: New York Voices. Kuumbwa Jazz Center. 7 p.m. $23 in advance, $26 at door.

TUESDAY, MAY 10

Concert: 7 Come 11. The Crêpe Place. 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. Free.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11

Food: Downtown Weekly Farmer’s Market. Between Cedar Street & Lincoln Street. 2:30 to 6:30 p.m.

What’s Next Lecture Series: The Future of Food from Plow to Plate. Kuumbwa Jazz Center. 7 to 9 p.m. $12 in advance, $15 at door, $3 for students of all ages.

Contact us at events@cityonahillpress.com.

Haluan dancers perform Saturday at the Womyn of Color Conference. Photo by Michael Mott

“I am mixed, I am beautiful and I am proud,” said UC Santa Cruz student Alana Duvernay in a spoken-word poem at this year’s Womyn of Color Conference.

Delegates from UCSC, San Diego State, UCLA and other schools met on Saturday at the UCSC’s Oakes lower lawn to empower women of Latino, African, Native American, mixed-race and Asian roots.

The first keynote speaker, Dylcia Pagan, spoke on her experience as an activist in the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence. At the event, stories like Pagan’s were celebrated, as well as other struggles women have overcome.

Sponsored by the Student Union Assembly (SUA) and several other campus groups, the Womyn of Color Conference is an annual event that is normally held at a different UC campus every year. Before last year, it hadn’t been held for four years. After the hiatus, the event was brought back at UC Santa Barbara in 2010.

The UC Student Association (UCSA) decides when and where the conference will occur. The UCSA is a coalition of the individual UC student governments, such as UCSC’s SUA.

Omar Villa, the SUA commisioner of diversity, said the theme of this year’s Womyn of Color Conference was “Celebrating our Stories.”

“It’s a two-day conference. We did it because it didn’t look like the other UCs were going to,” he said. “By talking about our struggles, we’re trying to empower women and focus on their achievements.”

With workshops, keynote speakers, caucus spaces, spoken word and dance troupes, the conference was an all-day event. Chairs were filled by students and faculty of all ethnicities, men and women.

UCSC’s African American Theatre Arts Troupe performed, as did the Haluan Hip-Hop Dance Troupe, Grupo Folklórico Los Mejicas and Sabrosura Dance Troupe.

Villa said men were encouraged to attend. He led a workshop with a friend.

“It’s called ‘Letting Your Inner Vagina Out,’” he said. “Mine’s all about actively speaking out about sex without barriers and degradation. It’s a healing workshop, and it’s important to have men here as allies. They’re important to this space, and it’s one way we can all participate.”

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a Brooklyn-based spoken word artist, also attended and led a workshop called “Living Poetry Outloud! Writing & Performing Spoken Word.”

“I’ve really enjoyed talking and learning about all the different communities here,” she said.

In a spoken word performance called “Real Women I Know,” she commented on gender equality and the struggles of women.

“Real women I know aren’t women at all, but are tranny boys, gender queer, gender fluid, with short hair and button-down shirts — genitalia are only one tiny part of the puzzle when the world offers so much more,” she said. “Real women I know are driven into the ground eternally, never given rest, take on everybody else’s problems, never allow ourselves to give up.”

Three workshop sessions were held, with 26 different workshops to choose from. One workshop was held by Shannon Gleeson, a UCSC assistant professor of Latin American and Latino studies. She got involved with the event because she wanted to learn more about different student groups, she said in an email.

“I do think that it is important for faculty to participate in student programming,” she said. “However, especially in a tight budget climate with decreasing resources and increasing demands on faculty, it is not always possible to do so.”

Maya Wagoner, a UCSC student of mixed race, said it is important for these events to happen so people come together and have an open dialogue.

“It’s more open here,” she said. “There’s a wall up in the white community where people don’t often talk about racial issues. [This event] is a safe space to discuss issues of race in our communities.”

Photo by Michael Mott

In this week’s Community Chest, City on a Hill Press sat down with Shelby Donaldson, a UCSC student who performed at this year’s Queer Fashion Show (QFS).

CHP: How was Queer Fashion Show? Good crowd?

Donaldson: It was really fun! I danced all three nights — Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. I’ve been in shows before for dancing, and a lot of times the directors think they’re the shit and aren’t very personable to each person, but [in QFS] they were. They enjoyed putting it on, and that transfers to everyone else.

There were a lot of people there. We actually sold an extra 86 tickets. People really look forward to it. Everybody was super loud and they really liked everything. Lots of screaming, pretty sure I heard my name a few times, it was great.

CHP: Were you nervous? You guys do some pretty daring stuff up there.

Donaldson: Yeah I know, we have to strip onstage! I wasn’t nervous at all though, as a performer, just because everybody was so welcoming. We were all there to have fun, so it wasn’t like you’re going onstage [thinking], “Oh I have to be super good.” Everybody is super nice.

CHP: Can anybody participate? Was it empowering?

Donaldson: Anybody can participate. And I’d say it is empowering for everybody, just because the atmosphere is so loud and fun. I think people feel really comfortable there, whatever your color, race or sexual preference. I would think that if you’ve never been onstage, Queer Fashion Show would probably be the first place you should go to. You would definitely open yourself up there, of all shows, if you’re not comfortable onstage. And the girls in my jazz class who had never been onstage before really enjoyed it.

CHP: Would you recommend participating in Queer Fashion Show to others?

Donaldson: I would encourage anyone who is outgoing and has a sense of humor to get involved with QFS. Even if performing isn’t your thing, there are opportunities to help the directors or be a part of the light and tech team.

Illustration by Louise Leong

The Santa Cruz Film Festival will present “Ramen and Beer,” the 2011 UCSC student showcase tonight, May 5, at the Del Mar Theatre. Compiled of 12 short films from selected student filmmakers of the film and digital media department, the film festival will share the talent of the next generation of filmmakers with the Santa Cruz community.

The showcase covers a broad range of narrative works, autobiographical pieces, documentaries and experimental films originally started as class projects in the film and digital media department. A few pieces were selected from each class and submitted into a year-long selection process by a showcase selection committee of students and faculty.

“These students are essentially the up-and-coming filmmakers of our day and age,” said fourth-year Nicolas Richard Kerr, a student on the showcase selection committee. “There is no pressure like commercial incentive, and it’s … a critical work that is much more thought-provoking [in comparison to major production films]. It’s interesting to see the potential that our department is producing.”

The title of the showcase, “Ramen and Beer,” was chosen to characterize the unique profile of a student filmmaker — a student who maintains a questionable diet, but harbors immense creative potential.

“As students, we’re living on the edge as far as financial means goes, and sort of have to struggle to create well-made work with constraints,” said Sarah Jaffe, maker of “Wikipedia to Pure Reason,” a film that explores the experience of surfing the internet. “Part of being a student filmmaker is learning the limits of getting your project financed and doing whatever you can to make it work with what you have.”

“I think a lot of the cool part is that there is no studio saying ‘yes’ and ‘no,’” said Christopher “Kip” Radt, a student filmmaker. “Your creativity can run wild.”

Radt made the autobiographical narrative, “Kip,” a story that involves literally going inside his head.

This film class assignment not only offered a spot in the limelight for selected students, but also provided a fun and experimental experience. Student filmmaker Douglas Smith had been planning his film, “Rise and Shine,” even before his 10-week class and has spent close to 100 hours working on it.

“I really just made the film for fun,” Smith said.

The comical plot follows a student who oversleeps and rushes to get ready for class while objects around her house come to life to help her get ready.

“It also happened to be the film I submitted for my film production class at UCSC, but I mainly wanted to try out a new style of filmmaking [stop-frame with live actors],” Smith said.

Student filmmaker Zak Lambert also enjoyed making his film, “O, Abby,” a love story between two young kids.

“I had a blast. I think of Robert Altman’s quote that filmmaking is similar to building sandcastles with your closest people … No matter how stressful the intermittent rainstorm, the rising tides, my non-functional homemade camera tools, or the cast of children with their on-set parents might have made things, that day was perfect. I’ll be the luckiest person alive if I can do this for the rest of my life,” he said.

The festival creates opportunities for the student filmmakers to make connections with more experienced filmmakers through pre-reception parties and meet and greets, and ultimately gives independent films the limelight.

“Apart from television addiction, mass media is often problematic due to the limited ideology that’s represented and provided to the people watching,” Lambert said. “So it’s a win for everybody when more storytellers are thrown into the mix. Independent films, as long as they’re daring, offer the satisfaction that sometimes other voices get heard.”

Photo by Molly Solomon

The Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) workshop is cluttered with stacks of wood, dismantled computers, multi-colored wires, prosthetic limbs, empty cans of Mountain Dew and couches manned by fitfully sleeping graduate students.

For DANM’s ten participants, this represents two years of work coming to fruition. This year’s Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) new media exhibition, entitled “Permutations,” will be open to the public this Thursday through Sunday.

Those in the DANM program study digital media and the cultures they have created. According to the program’s website, faculty and students from a variety of backgrounds “pursue interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly research and production in the context of a broad examination of digital arts and cultures.”

“This is a very non-traditional program,” DANM student Andrew Pascoe said. “It crosses the boundaries of art by employing different types of technology.”

The yearly MFA presentation began in 2006, but has only been able to move onto campus since the completion of the new digital arts facility. Ten projects will be on exhibit, each with their own twist on DANM’s inventive sensibilities.

Pascoe composed a musical piece for “Permutations” entitled “God: The Opera,” which will be performed in the Digital Arts Media Center on Friday at 8 p.m. UCSC alumnus Jacob Cribbs wrote the libretto for the piece.

“I avoid spectacle. I avoid the dramatic. But my opera involves a wide variety of things,” Pascoe said. “Instrumentalists and singers will be reading the opera. I have a soprano, alto, baritone and bass all performing. I also have an oboe, string quartet and a piano playing. Then I employ computer electronics along with those.”

Exploring the relationship between art and technology can create varying theories, as the DANM participants illustrate through their unique works. Pascoe’s research has led him to a conclusion that might be inflammatory to some involved in the musical world.

“Music has no meaning,” he said. “My opera is based on the Book of Job. The piece parallels Job’s search for meaning in suffering by examining the search for meaning in music. Job doesn’t find any answers, and there are no answers in music.”

Pascoe said this doesn’t undermine the value of music.

“Music is still a worthwhile pursuit,” he said. “Stripping it of its meaning does not strip it of its beauty.”

Other DANM students chose to express their research through similarly unconventional means. Phoenix Toews wrote a programming language entitled “Palimpsest,” which he has used to create an augmented reality presentation for both iPhones and iPads.

“The type of program I’ve created places virtual objects at real GPS locations,” Toews said. “We’ll be loaning out iPads, and when you look at the screen you’ll see the camera’s view of the real world. But when you approach my virtual objects, they’ll appear as if they’re actually there.”

Toews’ augmented reality scavenger hunt may seem like a video game fanatic’s dream come true, but there are other elements as well.

“With this particular piece I’m talking about memory and place,” Toews said. “I’m collapsing space into the moment, taking a single space and making it a multiplicity. This is a way to tell many stories about a single location.”

Levi Goldman, another DANM student, created an interactive exhibit entitled “Completion Inc.”

“My piece represents a fictitious corporate entity,” Goldman said. “I have a fantastical collection of human parts, presumably ready for sale.”

Cameras will sense the movement of viewers and a variety of different body parts will move and shift accordingly.

“Subtle movements and heartbeats represent the life within the objects we consume,” Goldman said. “Commodity items try to fit the average body, but when people use those products, their identities meld and become average. It produces homogeneity, or monoculture.”

But monoculture is nowhere to be found in “Permutations.” These ten demonstrations of creativity are made all the more impressive when compared to the unorganized and chaotic corner of the digital arts building in which they were produced.

Photo by Nick Paris

The fire pit mirrored the circle created by the witches. Fire dancers enclosed the group while the beating of the drum echoed the witches’ chants as they sang praises to their god and goddess, welcoming them into the circle.

A chalice was passed around, symbolizing the Triple Goddess, the female deity in the religion’s duotheistic system. Inside the chalice was a razor blade representing the Horned God, the male deity. The witches in the circle took turns drinking from the chalice while a witchcraft community teacher, Birch Tree, stood in the center, beating the drum and singing along.

Beltane, one of the four fire festivals of Wicca, happens in the wake of spring, six months from Samhain, which occurs on October 31. Witches celebrated the two-day event April 30 and May 1.

The first day emphasizes fire and fertility, and the second day consists of more rituals and feasts.

About 40 Wiccans were present at the rituals held at Seabright Beach for the first day of Beltane. The second day’s rituals were held at Tree’s Sacred Grove Witch Store, located in Soquel.

“This is a big crowd,” said Ginger Fox, an initiate of the Shamanic Feri Tradition of the witchcraft strand of Wicca, and employee of the Sacred Grove Witch Store. “Lately [the events] have been getting bigger because we have been throwing all of the [Wicca Sabbat] celebrations. We know there is a need for them.”

Santa Cruz now has a large witch community, some of which can be found on the UC Santa Cruz campus.

“Eleven years ago there was an active on campus club, [called] Coven Willow Wind,” Tree said. “It came and went several times in my time here, and sometimes it was a really large club.”

This club and the Sacred Grove Witch Store provide outlets for the UCSC students and the rest of the Santa Cruz community to learn more about Wicca.

In the Wicca religion, the Triple Goddess is symbolized by the moon, the Horned God by the sun, and the Earth is considered to be the Wicca mother. During Beltane, witches celebrate by giving back to the mother with fertility.

“The fertile process is sacred in our religion,” Tree said. “Everything is about the plants growing, animals mating, about the god and goddess chasing each other around to mate. We take our fertile energies and give them back to the planet.”

Tree said this fertility does not just consist of reproduction, but of many different aspects as well. In the contemporary world, its definition has evolved to include the growth of plants, animals and even bank accounts.

“It’s all eclectic now,” said Pearl, who did not wish to disclose her full name. “It is all about creation and fertility and how you translate that into the modern world. It’s usually how you manifest fertility into your life as either prosperity with your money or your energy.”

Pearl, another initiated member of the Shamanic Feri tradition of witchcraft under Wicca, emphasized her tradition’s differences from other strands of Wicca. Feri tradition stresses personal responsibility within the spiritual and personal life of its followers who must take responsibility for their rituals, spells and anything that may happen in their personal lives.

Pearl said she did not want to disclose her name because she is not comfortable depicting her beliefs, even in the modern world. This is true for many members of the Wicca community. A few witches at the event were not comfortable being interviewed, nor did they allow their pictures to be taken.

Tree learned the effects of the lack of understanding of his community at a very young age.

“I was [brought] into Catholicism but I was born a witch,” Tree said. “Around nine years old I started to figure stuff out. From nine to 13 I thought that I had invented my own spiritual path, and then at 13 years old I met people who happened to be practicing my religion.”

During his spiritual journey at the age of nine, Tree had a revelation. The declaration of this revelation to his Catholic parents proved unsuccessful.

“The revelation was, ‘I am God, you are God, we are God, here — manifest in human flesh to have an earthly experience,’” Tree said. “Needless to say I barely got the words ‘I am God’ out of my mouth before I got slapped.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, religious persecution led many witches to move from the eastern United States to the west.

“All Witches historically learned to shut up,” Tree said. “There are people that are going to understand, and as soon as they don’t, you can’t make them understand it.”

Tree said that the community began moving to California. Many migrated to San Francisco and Santa Cruz.

Although he preferred not to speak much on the private subject, Tree said that Santa Cruz Wiccans do not have a place of worship due to lack of funding. Because of this fact, the Wicca community of Santa Cruz mostly gathers at rituals, or at their store.

The Sacred Grove Witch Store therefore serves as a haven for the community. This is where Tree provides a learning experience for witches with classes, such as Witch 101, and workshops.

“Our people have organized out of the back of witch stores,” Tree said.

The witches that attended the Beltane event give back to the Santa Cruz community by donating food to a local organization, Second Harvest. In the past few months they have donated three barrels of canned foods.

“We just live lives of quality,” Fox said. “We make sure we are happy, fulfilled and whole.”