lpahomov

Kaepernick Creates Space for All to Protest

November 15, 2016 by lpahomov 1 Comment

13-colin-kaepernick-w600-h315-2x — Colin Kaepernick, right, kneels during National Anthem.

Benjamin Simon

Sports Editor

I have never put my hand over my heart during the National Anthem.

I grew up with a father who consistently expressed his distaste for America. He fantasized about living somewhere else and always balked at any forms of patriotism. For him, that included putting your hand over your heart.

As I grew up and began to form my own opinions, I thought about whether or not I should place my own hand over my heart during the National Anthem. Everyone else around me put their arms over their heart. The athletes I revered put their hands over the chests. Why shouldn’t I?

But I also noticed that America was not the best country in the world. It did not deserve to be praised and put on a pedestal all of the time. To me, refusing to put my hand over my heart felt like a small act of defiance. Even though no one ever noticed, it was a way of expressing that I did not love America. It did not have my heart.

Now, the same method that I grappled with for much of my childhood, is making its way into the limelight.

On Saturday September 27th, the players of Philadelphia’s high school football team, Overbrook and Mastery North, took a knee during the National Anthem. That happened a month and thirteen days after Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the team’s week one preseason game in protest of the treatment of African Americans in America.

His actions, which skyrocketed on August 26th when Jennifer Lee Chan of Niners Nation snapped a picture of the 49ers national anthem, have erupted within sports and the world.

Countless numbers of professional football players have followed suit, raising their first during the anthem and/or taking a knee. Some had locked arms, trying to show unity in the presence of a flag.

Now, high school athletes are doing the same. And there isn’t a better way to go attack the issue and spark conversation.

Throughout the last couple years, supporters of the Black Lives Matters Movement have tried to stir the conversation through almost any method. But without a doubt, Kaepernick’s acts have to be one of the most influential. It has not only captured the black community, but captured the entire sports community, encouraging healthy debate.

Kaepernick, in specific, has handled the entire situation with such grace. When he received backlash for being too harsh with his protest, Kaepernick lightened up his stance, opting to kneel in the face of the flag instead of sitting on the bench. He clarified his stance and eloquently explained why he was sitting so the average American could understand his goal.

“The media painted this as I’m anti-American, anti-men-and-women of the military and that’s not the case at all,’’ Kaepernick said to the USA Today earlier this season. “I realize that men and women of the military go out and sacrifice their lives and put themselves in harm’s way for my freedom of speech and my freedoms in this country and my freedom to take a seat or take a knee so I have the utmost respect for them.”

Kaepernick has done everything right and others have followed suit. Cornerback Jeremy Lane of the Seattle Seahawks was the first player not on the 49ers to join Kaepernick. Denver Broncos’ linebacker Brandon Marshall decided to take a knee in the season opener, risking tons of his endorsements and his own livelihood. Marcus Peters of the Kansas City Chiefs followed soon after, but this time, raised his fist during the anthem. And so many others have done the same. The wave of interest has been abundant from fellow football players.

This is all great and it has sparked so much appropriate discussion. But it needs to stretch a little further.

A white male athlete in a major sport needs to do the same.

imrs — Megan Rapinoe, second to the right from far left, kneels in US Women’s National Team soccer game.

Megan Rapinoe, a white, U.S. national women’s soccer player, kneeled for the National Anthem before a game against the Netherlands. Two other WNBA players, Jeanette Pohlen and Maggie Lucas, also did the same.

While their actions were wholesome, the support of a prominent white male athlete in a major sport would be gigantic. Too often, that responsibility falls on black athletes. A white athlete needs to take a stand and speak up for their coworkers, friends, and fellow Americans.

“You need a white guy to join the fight,” Seattle Seahawks’ Michael Bennett, a large part of the Black Lives Matter movement in the NFL, said to the Seattle Times. “The white guy is super important to the fight.”

There are many distinguished white athletes in sports today that have the option to speak out. The Manning brothers, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Kevin Love, and Clayton Kershaw are all examples of athletes who have the platform to make a difference. Saying something as simple as, “black lives do matter,” would help advance the fight that much further. Kaepernick has given them the space to make to stand up for what’s right. White athletes need to take advantage of that for the better of our country.

As a white high school student athlete on interracial teams, I see myself in the position of athletes on both sides. I am a person, regardless of race, who is upset with the way country is ran. I do not feel the need to praise it.

What Colin Kaepernick has done is given Americans the opportunity to feel comfortable speaking out in the face of oppression in the country: from football players to high school students to people of all races. Everyone should use it.

First photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Second photo: Kyle Robertson/The Columbus Dispatch via Associated Press

Column: What People Don’t Know About Me

November 15, 2016 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Maddi Etxebeste

Staff Writer

I am Maddi Etxebeste. As some people will know, I am a Spaniard, from Basque Country . I arrived here at the end of August. These are my first two months in the United States and the Americas in general. Because of this, I often have trouble with English. Something my classmates surely notice!

It is easy to just blend in in class and with the rest of the students. But there are some parts of me that might stay invisible if I don’t share them. So I’d like to share some with you.

I am 14 years old. I skipped first grade, so technically I should be in 9th grade. I had the opportunity to attend school in France and learn French from a young age because I lived in a city which was located at the border. I went to school there for almost 11 years, so I am fluent in Spanish, Basque, and French. At school I also learned English and German, and I know how to read and pronounce Russian and Italian.

MY “WEIRD” NAMES

I’m sure that my first name causes problems with pronunciation because it is not a common name in English. However in Basque–my region’s language– it is quite a popular name. My last name is even harder to say than my first name , and harder to understand why is it pronounced that way if it’s written in a completely different way.

My first name is pronounced like Ma and the sound of letter e. (Ma-yee) The difficulty of saying my first name is knowing how to pronounce the “dd”. It’s kind of like they aren’t pronounced. In English, it sounds closest to the “y” of the word “yes”.

My last name is Etxebeste. Yes, it is very weird to the American ear. The “e”s are pronounced like the “e” in Spanish. The “tx” is like “ch” in the word “chair” or “chess”. After that comes another “e” pronounced like I said before. And then “beste” like the word “best” in English and that Spanish “e” again. (Ehchehbesteh)

I don’t get bothered if someone doesn’t pronounce my name right, because in some way I understand. For example, at school in France, most of the teachers didn’t pronounce it well. So I got used to hearing the teacher not pronounce my name correctly. Many people here in the U.S. will pronounce my name as “Maddie”(which is quite logical). In France they said it in a similar way. Ms. Pahomov and Mr. Todd pronounce my first name in the correctly. But some of them don’t know how to say it yet. As for my last name, any teacher except Ms. Pahomov asked me about its pronunciation, and she pronounces it quite well!

COMING TO SLA

If someone else who is reading this article is new at SLA and came from another country without a fluent English background, I would tell them to be patient, that little by little, as the weeks pass, I am getting more and more used to this language. When I came here I came with the level of English that I learned in an extra class outside of school, because the school’s one was quite low. I learned British English and I could notice the difference when I arrived here. First, the spelling is sometimes a bit different in both languages. I learned to spell “color” like “colour” or “center” like “centre”!

But those are just little details. The biggest difference between British English and American English is the pronunciation. That’s one of the reasons why I had and I have problems understanding some things.

CHALLENGES

I feel that people here were very welcoming. I have very nice classmates in my stream, when I don’t understand something someone explains it to me. Moreover, there is a student in my stream, called Jacobo, which is from Spain too and sometimes is my translator and my Spaniard peer at SLA!

One of the hardest things is to get “integrated” when they all have their preset “groups” and when you don’t speak their language fluently. The language, at the beginning, was a big problem in class, I couldn’t understand many things or talk quite fluently. Now I can talk and understand a bit more easily than before. Another hard thing is to go to a totally new school, to a totally new city, bigger than my original one, and with a school system and rules that are totally different than my old one. For example, the first day at SLA I went into the wrong class! And all the things that I am used to doing at school are not done here or are totally different. That’s one big thing that makes things more difficult: that all is new and all is different to what I knew before. Moreover one of the hardest things was saying goodbye to my friends, because I didn’t live in a small village, it was a big town and I knew a lot of people Before I left they organized a surprise farewell-party for me, which had been very fun, emotional, and unforgettable!

Column: What Happens Now?

November 9, 2016 by lpahomov 2 Comments

Chiara Nemati

Opinion Editor

Last night I went to bed with the knowledge that the man that is against everything I am had just been elected President of the United States. What happens now? Where do we go from here?

I am the daughter of immigrants. My father is an Iranian immigrant, my mother an Italian immigrant. I am a citizen of three vastly different and ever changing countries. I am a women. I represent everything Donald Trump believes is wrong with this nation.

This morning my brother woke up to knowledge that the man that hates who he is is his new President. My brother like many other U.S. citizens holds a place in this country that is between worlds. He sees his father, a man who has worked so hard to come and prosper in this country, a man who has sacrificed living close to his own family for the benefit of his own, he sees a man who may lose it all. He is left to wonder, is my father’s citizenship to this country enough?

This morning my brother asked my father, “What happens now?”

My father said, “We hope…”

So America, now we hope. We hope that the man who has just been elected President of the United States will run this country for the people and not just for the elite and his voters.

We must hope that a man who was not trusted to speak freely on his own, a man who needed his Twitter account to be taken away from him, to run this country. But I ask you, how long will this man need his training wheels? Because that’s what they are. His entire campaign staff are his training wheels. They have held him on his course. Steered him back when he went way over the line. This man, who cannot even control himself from more than half an hour, will enter the White House expected to be the Commander in Chief.

In Donald Trump’s victory speech, he made a call to unite all Americans. As I sit here and write, I wonder to myself how this is possible. Donald Trump a man who has run his campaign through hatred, racist and sexist remarks, now wishes to unite all Americans. Trump does not speak for me. Donald Trump does not speak for women. Donald Trump does not and has not spoken for the African Americans of this country. For the immigrants of this country. How can he unite us now?

As I woke up in the morning I thought to myself, it’s so much more than just who I am and who my family is. This is about all of the leaps and bounds this country has made in the last century. Human rights. Equal rights. Women’s Rights. Does it all just go away? I sit here and write and wonder what will happen to planned parenthood? What will happen to the legislation that has been written in favor of the LGBTQ community? What will happen to ObamaCare?

No one saw this Trump Presidency coming. So now I ask you, how can someone who will not publicly support their candidate support their candidate? If you cannot be proud of who you are supporting then why are you supporting them? If you are not proud to be supporting who you are then look at the flaws of the person you are supporting and reconsider the choice you’ve made. We live in a country of freedom so anyone can support who they want and should not be ashamed of their choice.

Republicans hold majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is hard to see light at the end of this tunnel. All that I believe in is now on the table, ready to be thrown out. I am now going to be living with a President who flip flops on important issues. A President who refuses to reach out to other nations. Who explicitly said in his victory speech that he would only ally with willing nations. Usually we look to the Vice President for a slim shot at hope. But Pence might scare me more. An extremely conservative and intelligent man who will not have much trouble swaying the other Republicans to his side.

I wonder about my future. Where do I go from here? Many students at SLA have voiced their concern. Is college still something that is on the radar? Do they continue with their intended majors or paths? I will continue my education. I will not let this election be the decision maker in my life. I will continue to fight. I will fight in any way I can.

So what happens now? Now we hope. Now we fight. Now we become the hope. For those of us who had to sit on our hands and hope that the rest of the U.S. would go out and vote, we must fight for a stronger and more influential Democratic ticket in the coming election. What happens now is up to us.

Column: I Just Can’t Wait Until 8 O’Clock

November 8, 2016 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Gabrielle Kreidie

Close view of a collection of VOTE badges. 3D render with HDRI lighting and raytraced textures.

Guest Writer

We are here, the day of the Presidential Election. After over a year of non stop media obsession, months of countless candidates during an unforgettable primary season, and weeks of surprise after surprise for the two top party candidates, we are days away. Days away from electing the 45th President of the United States of America and our country couldn’t be more tense.

The surprises started after a flawed debate performance from the Republican nominee when a few days later, a sexist video representing Donald Trump’s past comments on women began circulating. It seemed like from that day forward, Mr. Trump had no path forward to the highest office in the U.S.. That changed with the Wikileaks investigating into the emails of Clinton’s long term aide John Podesta, released in a segments for the last few weeks ago. These new batches being released daily, show more and more deeply concerning communications, bribes, and possible flawed decisions from an already imperfect Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her defective circle of top aides filled with billions of secrets and inconsistencies. These leaks simply continued the dishonest and skewed thoughts millions of Americans have for a person they think embody everything that is wrong with the political world today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Though these Wikileaks findings were digging close into the heart of a majority of Americans views on Secretary of State Clinton, there were no deep poll numbers or bumps in her campaign. That was until Friday October 28th, which could have been the large turning point for the election. October 28th, 2016, could very well be one of those dates that everyone will remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. The words through my mind and I’m sure many more, was “not more Clinton emails!”.

After months of the nonstop scandalous depictions of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, the FBI and Justice Department were unable to find reasonable evidence to serve Hillary with criminal charges. FBI Director James Comey found that Hillary’s decision was “extremely careless” but gave no indication of charging the Democratic nominee. We all thought that that would be the end of the emails… but then Anthony Weiner happened.

The disgraced, sex scandal complete former Congressman and candidate for NYC mayor, was discovered to have messaged lude comments to an underage girl. The FBI began investigating Mr. Weiner immediately after the accusations were brought to their attention. As soon as the story came out, Huma Abedin–Mr. Weiner’s wife and long time aide to Hillary Clinton– announced her plans to divorce her shamed husband. During the investigation into the messages, the FBI came across the device that was shared between Weiner and Abedin. This device stored emails related to Hillary Clinton that had not been originally looked at in the first investigation. The FBI obtained a warrant and now are searching those emails. Up until Saturday November 5th, it seemed like the investigation would go on for weeks but finally a follow up of the words heard in July came out and Hillary was cleared. From that point forward, Hillary Clinton has had the easier fly to the White House.

So here we stand. Two weeks ago, it seemed like Hillary Clinton was on her way to the office she has obsessively chased for decades and could still very much get there with 320+ Electoral Votes. But you can never trust or call victory to a Clinton to early. With the ever present lack of trustworthiness and lies that follow the Clinton’s and their team everywhere they turn, there is a possibility that this election may not be hers. National polls are closer than ever. State polls are so inconsistent within each other that now pollsters are saying that states that were once seen as Clinton (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) bets could go either way. With hours until the election arrives, and with Clinton and Trump just about tying with dishonesty and unpopularity nationwide, the election is seeming more and more like a tossup. Today is the day. These have turned out to be the most stressful days for the American people and surprises could be lurking around every corner throughout the day. Nothing can happen, everything can happen, anything can happen. The not knowing and the inconsistencies of a Trump presidency are growing by the hour. And we are voting today, we are voting TODAY.

Luke Cage Review

November 8, 2016 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Meymey Seng

Staff Writer

On September 30, 2016, Netflix recently put out Marvel’s first TV series starring a black superhero. He goes by the name of Luke Cage, and has special abilities, such as unbreakable skin and super strength.

He was first seen in Marvel’s Jessica Jones, where he was the owner of a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. In that series, he had a relationship with Jessica and was determined to help her take down a villain named Kilgrave, but that’s a story for another time.

Their relationship did not last, so he decided to move to Harlem, New York, which is where the Luke Cage series began. Wanting to live a normal life, he becomes a janitor at Pop’s barber shop, and a dishwasher and bartender at the club “Harlem’s Paradise”.

Of course, things are not as calm as expected, and a lot of crimes are happening all throughout Harlem. Luke wants to stay out of it, although Pops, the owner of the barber shop, pushes the idea that he should make use of his abilities and help.

With the convincing from Pops, Luke decides to take action and is awarded the title “Hero of Harlem”. He denies being a hero, claiming that he just can’t sit back and watch the chaos happening around him. The rest of the season follows that theme.

Before watching Luke Cage, the show that got me hooked onto the Marvel TV series was Jessica Jones. Personally, I was never a huge fan of Marvel. I could recall watching Spiderman a bunch of times, although I can never remember actually watching the full movie, along with other Marvel productions. So, when my friend recommended Jessica Jones for me to watch, I was very hesitant. They say never to judge a book by it’s cover and this is also true for TV series.

After a couple weeks of pushing this show to the back of my mind, I decided to try it. I clicked the first episode, expecting not be to be into it and I was most definitely wrong. The ending of the first episode caught me off guard and I had the urge to watch episode two. This craving continued and I finished the season in three days. I immediately started Luke Cage right after.

Although Luke Cage is an amazing show, I have to admit, it starts off slow. The first episode was an intro to the show, describing everything. It starts off with Luke, Pops, and the customers discussing basketball. The slow pace continues until halfway through the episode, when the three boys that regularly goes to Pop’s barbershop: Chico, Shameek, and Dante, steals money from Cottonmouth, who is the owner of Harlem’s Paradise.

To conclude, with the humor, history, romance, action, and suspense of this show, I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants a good watch. Some of the actors that I really liked in particular were Mike Colton who played as Luke Cage, Mahershala Ali as Cottonmouth, and Alfre Woodard as Mariah, who was the councilwoman. What I liked about Mike Colton was his realistic acting and determination. In order to fit the role of being a very masculine man, he changed his diet and workout plan, resulting in gaining thirty pounds of muscle! Also, Mahershala Ali was able to convince me into believing that he was a ruthless character, until seeing his backstory. His backstory made me wonder if he is fully at fault for his actions if that was how he was raised? I also really enjoyed Alfre Woodard’s acting because she was able to make me hate her character and I constantly had to remind myself that she is not the actual character.

Now, my perspective has opened and I’ve learnt to not judge a show just by what it’s apart of. It turns out that I’m actually very intrigued with these Marvel productions. I can’t wait for the following series of Luke Cage to come out, which is called Marvel’s Iron Fist. This is said to be released on March 17, 2017.