Browsing by Author "Nash, Jennifer"

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    Inequality, Resistance, and Reparations: A Step Towards Justice for Puerto Rico
    (2023-05-10) González Buonomo, Tatiana
    This project examines how Puerto Rico’s history has been shaped by colonialism, specifically through the construction of structural inequality from the 16th century until today. It analyzes how the Spanish colonization established social inequality through many mechanisms, including othering, the privileging of whiteness, the systematic erasure of Blackness, slavery, and the influence of the Church. Other historical moments to be highlighted are the notable events of rebellion performed by both the enslaved and the free population. These efforts of resistance were continued by three Puerto Rican feminists: Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Luisa Capetillo, and Julia de Burgos, through their lives and literary contributions. Structural inequality became further entrenched with the United States’ colonization, and I focus on the Foraker Law, the Maritime Merchant Act, the Ponce massacre, the birth control experiments, the occupation of Vieques, and the differential response to Hurricane María to show how the U.S. has benefited from and continues to harm the Puerto Rican population. In this project, I argue that there is a case to be made for reparations in which the United States acknowledges, redresses, and apologizes for the harms and atrocities committed to the Puerto Rican people. Instances in which the U.S. exploited Puerto Rico are not the exception to the rule; they reflect a pattern. I made these observations through a survey of the available scholarly literature, articles, and a literature review of the only work which posits a preliminary framework for reparations conducted by Pedro A. Malavet. My project addresses a huge gap in the literature, since the only scholarly article regarding reparations for Puerto Rico was published in 2002. Through a program for reparations, Puerto Ricans could balance structural inequalities and take a step towards justice.
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    Reconsidering Occupy Oakland and Its Horizons: Media Misframing, Decolonizing Fractures, and Enduring Resistance Hub
    (2021-04) Alvarado, Madisoon
    Reconsidering Occupy Oakland and Its Horizons is an archival study of the creation, reception, evolution, and remembrance of Occupy Oakland using a feminist lens. I investigate how Occupy Oakland’s radically democratic mobilization against economic violence, racism, and police violence was undermined by local and regional news coverage—namely in the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune—through framing devices that demonized protesters and delegitimized the movement. I nevertheless found differences between local and regional coverage. Occupy Oakland challenged existing hegemonic boundaries regarding participatory democracy as its activists –seasoned and less experienced people from multiple generations – experimented with horizontal world-building through community structures, methods, and processes. This horizontal radical movement nevertheless struggled with the same divisions and inequalities that existed outside its camps: heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and classism. The “stickiness” of embodied and structural inequalities persisted in Occupy Oakland camps despite efforts to create a radically egalitarian community. The nature of this stickiness can only be understood by taking seriously the local material and institutional conditions, obstacles, and histories that shaped the spaces of protest and its participants. Though news coverage often describes the movement as a failure, several new projects and coalitions formed during and after Occupy Oakland, illustrating its dynamic legacy and challenging social movement scholarship that reproduces temporal demise frameworks in its analysis. A feminist examination of these projects demonstrates how stories of Occupy Oakland’s “failure” or “death” miss the nature of projects attempting to radically reimagine a patriarchal, racist, neoliberal social world along more egalitarian and just lines. The problems Occupy Oakland struggled against and challenged have only intensified during the CoVid-19 pandemic.