2(ish):

While we don't yet have personal beach chairs, we have begun to claim the farty store's beach chairs as our own. Total vibes. Number 2 on our list has yet to truly be completed but this felt noteworthy regardless.

This was the day we found the chairs. Some guy took a photo of us.

This was another time that we sat on the chairs. This day we made cannolis. We were also offered a free beer in exchange for a cannoli. We did not receive the beer in the end but were happy to give our cannoli up to the farty man anyways. Much love 🫶💖

8a:

first leg

💅💅👔👔ዌ👀👀☝👷

 

second leg

third leg
💅💅👔👔ዌ👀👀☝👷

fourth leg

home sweet home

💅💅👔👔ዌ👀👀☝👷💅💅👔👔ዌ👀👀☝👷

💅💅👔👔ዌ👀👀☝👷

The Present directed by Farah Nabulsi Film Review 1492 Final

Film Review: The Present, directed by Farah Nabulsi

The 2020 film, The Present, directed by Farah Nabulsi, is a twenty-four minute long piece about the reality of struggle and domination for Palistineans living in Israel. The film's title is the first experience of the film that truly introduces you into this reality. The title has a dual meaning of the literal objective that the main character, Yusuf Khalidi, is trying to achieve by gifting a new refrigerator to his wife for their anniversary. The second meaning is the alternative definition of the word, present, being the current moment, as Nabulsi is clearly stating that the film’s content is simultaneously occurring to the viewer in real life. The film opens with Yusuf waking up from sleeping outside next to a wall on a piece of cardboard and checking his watch.  He then is immediately in a caged tunnel with thousands of other people, and the chaos in this moment creates an uneasy atmosphere. There is a stark cut from the anxious and claustrophobic shot into Yusuf's room while he is peacefully laying in bed with a completely broken expression on his face. The melancholic confusion leaves his eyes and turns into blissful joy when his daughter, Yasmine, walks into the room saying, “Dad, come on, let's go!”, jumping into her fathers arms. Soon after Yusufs’ wife, Noor, comes in, and she says to him in a concerned tone, “How was yesterday? You got home so late. How is your back?” To which he responds completely nonchalantly, “Like always.” Noor has no response other than with her eyes, showing understanding for a struggle that is the reality of all three of their daily lives. The two words “like always” lasted in her mind, understanding that those two words mean that her husband just endured a terrible amount of injustice trying to lead a regular life. She then says “Happy anniversary!” The idea of living under oppression is a key theme throughout the film, Nabulsi provides an accurate depiction of trying to live life when the life you live is through the societal domination of a group of people because of the physical nature made up of the individual. Nabulsi demonstrates this reality through the seemingly impossible task of running an errand as a Palestinian that comes with not being recognized as a citizen where you live. In Palestine, there is everyday oppression based on who you are. In The Present, Nabulsi conveys a day in the life of Palestinians in Israel.  

Yusuf leaves the bed and takes a pain killer before going to breakfast. Noor is slightly struggling with the refrigerator door and then she throws out expired milk when Yusuf walks in. She tells him to sit and eat, but he can not because he is in a rush to pick up a gift for Noor. He tells her he will be back in time for a “delicious dinner.” The film then follows Yusuf and Yasmine’s journey to go grocery shopping and pick up Yusuf's anniversary gift. Immediately after the two leave the kitchen, Noor closes the refrigerator door again exclaiming, “God damn thing” to the broken fridge with the screen cutting to black. Nabulsi then cuts to Yusuf and Yasmine waiting in a line that is surrounded by concrete and metal wires, reminiscent of a cage, to cross an Israeli checkpoint. Yusuf watches Yasmine observing an Israeli family drive through the checkpoint with ease. The road that they are driving on is not a possibility for Palisteinans to drive on. Yasmine is watching her own oppression while actively experiencing it. When the two finally get to the front of the line, one of the guards begins to give Yusuf a hard time, asking “Why are you here?” Yusuf responds, “I live here.” He then explains why he is leaving and reads off the list that Yasime made for him. After reading some items of the list to the officer, Yusuf is told to take off everything but his shirt and pants, and to go into the cage. He questions this and asks, “But why?” The Israeli army member states “Do as you are told.” Yusfus kindly asks that he not because his daughter is with him. The request is met with the officer raising his voice and pointing his machine gun at Yusuf. Yusuf then goes into the cage and they both wait for what seems like hours. While in the cage, Yusuf is pacing back and forth looking angry, humiliated, and confused. He was put in the cage on the basis of being Palestinian while simultaneously living in the Israeli state, a country where he is not recognized as a citizen. Through this example in the film, the viewer now is able to see why going out to run an errand can be an all day event. 

The Israeli state enforces a form of everyday life oppression, aiming to make Palestinians feel unwelcome in the land they seek to retain for a fully Zionist state. In 1948, the Zionist movement declared the establishment of Israel, redefining Zionist militia groups as the Israeli army. This marked the beginning of a process to drive Palestinians out of their land. Around 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave when Israel was declared, resulting in a map of Israel today, which closely resembles the borders from the 1967 ceasefire between Israel and the Arab nations. Although some Palestinian populations remain in cities like Haifa and Jaifa, the areas within the 48 borders have predominantly Jewish majorities. From 1948 to 1967, Palestinians were considered foreign nationals under martial law, devoid of Israeli citizenship. However, in 1967 their status changed to citizens; two million Palestinians who would have unequal freedom of movement and speech. Those Palestinians who left Israel are not recognized as citizens. This led to a situation where there are five million Israeli citizens, and another five million Palestinians who lack citizenship, voting rights, and require Israeli permission to leave. Consequently, since Israel's inception, the state governs over those deprived of citizenship, perpetuating systematic oppression. This history leads to the present moment that Nabulsi is illustrating to the viewer. A man can be in his home with his wife and child, living what appears to be regular life, and then the second he leaves his home, his reality immediately shifts to surviving in a state that is actively trying to ethnically cleanse your ethnicity. Nabulsi effectively shows human existence as suffering for Palestinians under Zionist rule. 

Over the course of this class we learned about the impact of ruling through nationalism. Nabulsi effectively conveys this message by illustrating present day nationalism in an extremely heightened form. The film explores Israel's nationalistic tendencies to force the people of different nationalities that together comprise Israel to exist as if they are different species of animals, creating differences for the people who have distinct Israeliness and those who don't. The Israeli state was formed as a result of the damage that the Nazi’s inflicted on the European Jews. Nazi Facism was comprised of anti democratic, intensely racialized nationalists, who deployed considerable thuggerry in pursuit of state power in alliance with heavy state backing from financial corporations, thus leading to the pursuit of profit growth. These conditions created the Israeli state, which has specific and intensified forms of imperialist, nationalist, capitalist patriarchy against the Palestinians. The film  presents this very complex and painful situation to the viewer. A quote by Bell Hooks from her book The Will to Change comes to mind with the issues that this movie is addressing. When providing her definition of patriarchy, Hooks states, “Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” In the case of the Israeli state portrayed through Nabulsi’s, The Present, the Palestinians face “forms of psychological terrorism and violence” in everyday life. 

Final Essay 1492

Plantation - Essay 

One of the most significant changes between the world of 1500 and the present is the development and proliferation of plantations as a highly successful form of capitalist production. Plantations, unlike other forms of sedentary agriculture, were not only places of production, but also served as living spaces for people. They resembled the structure of industrial factories or medieval Latin Christendom, where people lived and worked. Initially emerging in the Mediterranean and North Africa, plantations were later transported to regions like Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Carolinas. Over the next four centuries, they transformed from relatively small operations to large-scale enterprises, becoming a dominant force in capitalist production from the mid-1600s to the late 1800s. The expansion and success of plantations marked a significant shift in the global economic landscape during this period and up until now. The plantation truly shaped the way that work and life is conducted under a capitalist system.

The plantation can be looked at through Marx’s terms of capitalism and class while exemplifying the intensified nature of racialization, which took  form in the way that we know it today by the exploitation of human beings. The way of life on plantations was shaped by rigid capitalist values. The members of the bourgeoisie who owned the plantations created a society that was distinctly more capitalistic than the others in the time period. These values came through by the exploitive ways that the bourgie gained commodities. For example, most of the work on plantations was performed by human beings who were bought and sold on a profit basis. The legal conditions allowed for unfree people to be seen as commodities, meaning that a person was equivalent to their labor. Plantations were extremely capitalist in nature, as the activities of plantations were geared for maximizing profit on an ongoing basis. The very purpose of the plantation was to produce goods that would be traded and/or sold for profit, creating commodities while actively exploiting human beings for the purpose of profit. This form of capitalism is also reflected in the way that agriculture was conducted, as a monocrop system that is similar to how the majority of crops are still planted today. As a capitalist enterprise, the plantation did not support its own community. Rather, it was geared to maximizing profit with the main driver of producing the most profitable crop possible. Monocrop agriculture on plantations primarily produced tobacco, sugar, and cotton, which also do not contribute to supporting a healthy life or diet.   

Class systems were heavily in effect when looking at the make up of plantations. The plantation was always a capitalist tool with distinct classes. One position was owner, manager, or overseer who made sure that the work was getting done, and the other was the worker. In addition to these two distinct classes, one's class position was also extremely correlated with two distinct legal positions; those who are free and those who are not, which contributed to racialization. This form of racialization reflected the owner class who were Europeans, and the unfree who were African and black. Racialization of unfree people became universal across the work and life of plantations. 

The racialization that took place in the US was binary; white and black, even though there was everything in between. This established the one drop concept, where if you had one drop of non white blood, you could not be a part of the free ruling class. Yet, the Caribbean was more of a tripartite, which was a social construct, instead of some sort of reality. Unfree laborers in that specific class distinction did not originally have a set race. The technical differences in the law was that being unfree resulted in being sold to plantation owners as an indentured servant versus being sold as unfree, a slave. The legal distinction was based on the actual type of transaction that determined whether a person was an indentured servant who would work a specific amount of time to earn their freedom, or a slave who would remain permanently unfree. This was not based on race specifically, yet there was a correlation with the country of origin. The basis of this type of racialization in 1600 had no mention of race, because that wasn't a social category. However, there still was not a significant difference between the level of freedom. Only twenty percent of the indentured servants actually became free, so the concept was more of an abstraction than a reality. In the 1600 to 1620s, if you were unfree, whether that be indentured servant or slave, it was basically the same condition. After the 1670s, when indentured servants began to be phased out of plantations, slaves became a greater market with the vast majority of them being black people. The three class positions corresponded with human legal status, so the owners and managers were legally free and the workers were almost all legally unfree. These conditions created intense racialization of those individuals who were of African descent by those who were of European descent. Class status became intertwined with race and unfreedom on the plantation, and was one of the most horrific forms of human suffering and exploitation in human history. 

The history of the plantation completely shaped the class distinction where race is closely tied with class. In 1700 and 1800s after the abolishment of slavery, preconceived positions became imagined for the extreme fabrication and linking of racial distinction. These values that were created on the plantation follow us in everyday life today, as we continue to live in a systemically capitalist world. The plantation is capitalism at its highest form, so therefore, capitalism continues to spread and thrive the plantation's values. For example, within the capitalism of the plantation, racialized groups and race laws were created to divide the solidarity of the working class. The systems rooted in the work of a plantation seem to continue to play out through capitalism and racism in our society today, as the development of laws were intentionally made to prevent the working class from thriving. If the working class were to thrive, the capitalist would lose money and would need to rely on the state to provide a fair amount of money to succeed. Yet, that would go against capitalist ideological claims that there should be no state intervention, even though capitalists use the state to benefit themselves and hurt the working class. The capitalist class speaks endlessly about a free market while constantly using the state to help themselves, and they are opposed to allowing the state to help the working class. Ultimately, it is my opinion that the plantation has shaped the very foundation of our societal makeup for a capitalistic way of life that hugely benefits capitalist and disadvantages the working class today. 

Given that the systems of racism and capitalism are so complex, clearly there were other major contributing factors beyond the proliferation of plantations and our course work between the world of 1500 and the present. A significant gap in my knowledge that I uncovered and gained a new understanding of is that the capitalist production of goods when functioning most efficiently relies on exploitation of workers, racialization, and classist identities. The insight and understanding of the true nature of capitalism that our society is based on provides important context as to why people are systematically oppressed in our nation. The plantation created true social division among people based on race and class that served as a catalyst for the exploitation and racialization of people in our nation today.  

Occupying Stolen Space