Jacobs: A Proposal

I was wary and anxious to write this Wespeak because I did not want the writer of last Friday’s feature article on myself (“Adam Jacobs ’10: He Can’t Get Enough of Activism,” Apr. 10, 2009, Vol. CXLV, No. 14) to feel that I was criticizing hir (this concern for a friend is one reason why, I believe, oppressed people can act in solidarity and why powerful people tend to act with other powerful people. That’s whom they’re friends with. After the Eclectic ban Michael Roth assured the public that “I am confident that the SJB and Dean Backer acted in accordance with our procedures” and Mike Whaley concurred that “the SJB functioned properly and without bias in this case and that Mr. Backer acted appropriately as an advisor to the SJB.” Both Michael and Mike felt a certain pressure—a pressure intertwined integrally with whatever conclusions they sought after through, of course, hard-thinking analysis—a pressure from Scott Backer not to hurt Scott Backer through a public condemnation of him or his SJB: because all three are friends and respect each other. It is also how Roth can get away with asserting that “we certainly did not say we’re not going to have more fire inspections because the president of the WSA doesn’t want us to do them.” With certain ingrained hierarchies, Roth can offhandedly disrespect Mike Pernick. That’s also why I can write these criticisms of Roth, Whaley, and Backer and not feel too worried—they’re not really in my circle of acquaintances. And it’s precisely these different “spheres of peers” that allow for a feature to be done on me in the Argus and how my friend Mytheos Holt can be invited onto a radio show and then invite me. Yes, of course, it’s not solely nepotism, but the pool of possible interviewees or interlocutors is circumscribed by who knows whom and has heard of whom.  And I ENJOYED being on the radio show with my friend Mytheos; I am GRATEFUL for that experience; I am HONORED that the Argus and a friend, with hir time and care, wrote an article on me; and, I am EXCITED for this opportunity it created for me to write this Wespeak, truly not only directed at these aforementioned groups and friends but many groups and many friends and myself—and I’ll stop beating round the bush—and how being white, being louder, being more gender-normal, being “known by the throne,” gives certain peeps access to certain medias. And yes, in myriad ways, the radio show was excellent [we discussed prisons and mountain top removal and capitalism] and so was the article [though I did not recently take over Fisk Hall and my home-city is predominately not white but Asian, Arab, and Middle-Eastern].  But there is a discomfort as to how media can lend people and their opinions the sturdiness of insight, and why to me? Who am I [mis]representing? Who speaks for what and what is spoken by who? There are many exciting possibilities still hidden because we only water certain flowers, only call certain flowers up to the sun. And in the big scheme of the universe or CNN these are smaller medias not even read or listened to by all of Middletown or Wesleyan … but they’re still here [and I have faith in you, Argus and radio show!], and here is a community that matters because if it didn’t matter no one would be dropping out but the lack-of-community does matter because people are dropping out and people are crying and people feel burdened and blemished and burnt and angry and someone once told me it’s activism just to get hirself and hir friends through this crucible and, I am guessing, guessing, just sharing a guess about our progress that maybe the reason a handful or more of us are feeling so confused is because power seems everywhere and nowhere or because we’re overwhelmed or underwhelmed or maybe we’re feeling divided and denied it, IT, that kith and kin in the nick and thick of IT… but, HELL, we are sifting it out and coalescing it and boom! I still expound, sorry, and boom! our petals push through the ground, and boom! we’re still grounded, and boom! the bounded rounded spheres are going to shake and slide, and boom! the dance has always been booming, we’re still continuing, here’s a mis-step, off the beat but still in the street, so Boom!) especially since when all is written it was I, myself, who originally agreed to do it.