Loomio
Mon 29 Sep 2014 6:04PM

ARTICLE: CSU Dominguez Hills publishes interview with openly racist administrator; Refuses to publish student criticism of said article

EAK Edmund Alexander Keenan Public Seen by 12

The CSUDH BULLETIN, our campus' official paper here at CSU Dominguez Hills, has published an interview with a recently-promoted campus administrator, in which said administrator openly advocates for racist, imperialist foreign policy. The article can be viewed here http://imgur.com/a/TNTW8.

Of course, as someone who hates imperialism and racism, I was outraged to read this in my school's student newspaper. So I decided that my best course of action would be to write a well thought out letter to the editor of the paper, describing why the article was problematic, and presenting the issue from a different perspective. Unfortunately, the CSUDH BULLETIN is appearantly not willing to publish letters from students that go against the papers' official editorial line.

In fact, the CSUDH BULLETIN does not even allow comments on it's Facebook page.

So, I am proud to publish my letter to the editor of the CSUDH BULLETIN here, in YOUR inaugural issue of California's only fully-independent, statewide, student-run newspaper, the CSU UNDERGROUND.

Here is what i sent to the editor, in it's entirety:

This is in response to Roxanna Martinez' front page profile of Gus Martin: 'Bad guys are not going to win' that appeared in the sept 10 edition of the Bulletin.

I am utterly disgusted and disappointed that this article was published in our student run newspaper. Islamophobic scaremongering has no place at this University. Martin's assertion that domestic homegrown 'terrorists' linked to groups in Syria and Iraq can be stopped with a "Security Environment" (Martinez should have called it what it is, a Security State / Police State) is utterly ridiculous and has been proven wrong by DHS' utter and complete failure to stop the Boston marathon bombing.

But more important than Martin's obvious incoherence is his blatant racism. Did the author of the article bother to ask Martin how we define the word "terrorist" in today's America-dominated world? No. And I think this is a failure not at all on Martinez' part but on the part of her journalism instructors. Are we teaching stenography or journalism here at CSUDH? There seems to be little differentiation between the two today. I will go ahead and give a definition for The Bulletin's readers: "Terrorist" Is a racist code word that is used to discriminate against Muslims.

When White people commit acts of terror, it is labelled as a "bombing" (Tim McVeigh OKC bombing) or a "mass shooting" (Elliott Rogers UCSB, Adam Lanza Sandy Hook). When western states commit acts of terror, it is referred to as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" or "shock and awe". On 9/11/01 a the World Trade Center was attacked in New York and many innocent people died. This is commonly referred to as an act of terrorism. On 9/11/73 the United States government bombed many buildings, killed many people, and installed a puppet government in Chile. This coup de tat led to the dictatorship of Pinochet, who replaced a popular democracy with a brutal regime of martial law. The 1973 event is not considered to be terrorism, while the 2001 event is. The only reason for this is that the 2001 event was carried out by "other" people.

Presedents Bush and Obama operate(d) an ongoing global terror campaign on a scale that would make any rinky-dink terrorist organization jealous: drone bombings in yemen, pakistan and elsewhere that do not in fact target individuals, but target sim cards, cell phones, and patterns of behavior. Several wedding parties with children present have already been obliterated with a surprise visit from one of Obama's drone bombs, but I guess this doesn't qualify as "terrorism" to our in house "terrorism expert" Gus Martin. It appears that mass violence is only called "terrorism" if "they" do it.

Martin claims that terrorists are motivated to violence by a desire for Justice. This is ridiculous considering the massively greater violence that Martin supports, motivated by a desire for the fascist concept known as "homeland security". ("Homeland" is the english equivalent of "Lebensraum") He openly states that "We could be fighting this same war in 2060". (!) Once again I am shocked at how this ridiculous assertion goes totally unquestioned by the BULLETIN. It is plainly obvious to even a casual observer that the "war on terror" has claimed exponentially more lives than the terror it fails to prevent. We ought to be ashamed of our school for hailing this man as a "terrorism expert" when he supports policies that do absolutely nothing to stop "terrorism" and likely exacerbate the problem. I hope that America can recognize this and quit the failed "war on terror", instead of wasting another 50 years on a war that even president Bush, in an unguarded moment, admitted was unwinable. Perhaps some war money can be put to the schools instead of to defense contractors. More specifically, funds should go towards providing more classes and teachers, not the bloated salaries of racist administrators.

Let me explain an obvious fact that seems to elude our school's vaunted "terrorism expert": Terrorism is not actually an entity that war can be waged against. It is a tactic, usually used by the whichever fighters in a war have less funding. It will be around as long as humans continue to fight wars. War itself is terrorism.

If the BULLETIN wants to profile a real terrorism expert, they should interview victims of the US invasion of Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan. (SYRIA COMING SOON!) Or perhaps interview a Gazan and ask how he feels about being called a "terrorist" for resisting the brutal US funded occupation and aggressive bombing campaign against the city in which he is trapped. Perhaps if the BULLETIN wants to interview a terrorism expert, they should ask Mike Brown's family, or any other of the countless Afro-American families who have been unjustly targeted by our Police forces. We can be sure that Gus Martin has never had experiences even remotely as terrifying as these. And for this reason he is no "Terrorism Expert".

-Ed Keenan
[email protected]

JB

Jacob Bloom Fri 3 Oct 2014 6:46AM

I could be persuaded to agree again. just need to have this spelt out extra clear for me how to have it flow with the paper. I am nervous because it is the only csudh article (and article that I didnt write... lol). Maybe even have this be a section on "when school papers do it wrong" or administration gone wrong

JB

Jacob Bloom Fri 3 Oct 2014 7:43AM

the blurb
Why Students should care:

Students are getting charged more and more money for a worse and worse education, and there are no jobs for them after they graduate. If students want to relinquish their debts and not enter indentured servitude, they need to start organizing and base building. They must be wary of student government, for it is an arm of the student affairs administration and the chancellor’s office, serving as one of the main catalysts for the neo-liberal privatization of our universities. Administrations create programs and organizations to organize students, where they engineer social circles, scope students out, and introduce rhetoric. They claim these organizations are student led causes, but are usually ran by a paid position that answers directly to an administrator. Fueled by the narrative of hierarchy and neo-liberal homogenization from the administrations, these organizations dominate student governments; dictate the usage of student fees, directly undermine the efforts of grassroots student organizers, and kill any potential for student movement building.