Surviving the Witch-Hunt: Battle Notes from Portland’s 82nd Avenue, 2007-2010

By Emi Koyama
Confluere Publications

Surviving the Witch-Hunt is collection of artifacts and commentary from 2007 to the present and catalogues the community forces that emerged after the City of Portland removed its controversial Prostitution Free Zones (PFZ). These zones had allowed the police to issue exclusion orders for those who had been arrested for sex work, even if they had never been charged. For ninety days, anyone arrested for prostitution in the designated area was not allowed to return without submitting an appeal, segregating public space and criminalizing behavior without actual legal indictment.

The uproar from community figures after the removal of the PFZs demonstrated the discriminatory sentiments of many of those living in the 82nd Avenue neighborhood. Those who opposed the end of the PFZs claimed that there was an increase in crime and a correlating decrease in their property value, and they united to fight the “problem” of sex work in their communities. Emi Koyama collected documents that demonstrate their anger toward sex workers and bolsters these artifacts with some social justice commentary, raising arguments that protect the rights of all women and advance a more holistic view of community development. This booklet uses the 82nd Avenue case study as an example of how multifaceted problems cannot be solved via law enforcement but through broader advances in social and economic justice.

Countering the arguments of outraged neighbors near 82nd Avenue, Koyama’s documents describe the harm PFZs do to women who work in the sex industry. The fliers in the collection address the underlying causes of sex work, and explain that improved access to housing, employment, and treatment services are a better response than criminalization. The documents also catalogue the efforts of anti-prostitution advocates who focus on educating men about the social dangers of purchasing sex. This was the most interesting part of the compilation to me, since many anti-prostitution feminists are pushing educational programs as a way to end sex work. Koyama’s work shows that decreasing the demand for sex work, while a seemingly laudable goal, actually harms women. Decreasing demand also reduces the price for services, so sex workers have to do more acts for less money, and it pushes sex work to more remote areas, causing potential dangers for workers. Also, johns who are rational regarding risk taking will be taken out of the pool, leaving a group of riskier men purchasing the services of sex workers. These men are more likely to act violently towards sex workers and are less likely to take safe precautions during sex.

As someone who recognizes that the problems associated with sex work have no simple solutions, I am thankful that Koyama lays out these rebuttals to anti-prostitution groups. Criminalizing and even reducing the amount of sex work will do little to address the more serious problems in our communities. Sadly, the deeply rooted social, racial, and gendered inequities that necessitate sex work too often go unnoticed by policymakers, concerned citizens, and others trying to improve their communities.

As a human rights lawyer, I am personally outraged at the discriminatory attitudes of too many in the 82nd Avenue community regarding the end of PFZs, and I am somewhat embarrassed that I had not known about these events before reading this collection. Many local stories of civil rights conflict, of discrimination, and of survival often don’t reach further than the affected community. By effectively curating a compilation of documents from the 82nd Avenue community, Koyama demonstrates the importance of capturing a historical moment in the trajectory towards justice. The fliers, newspaper articles, notices about community meetings, and email messages Koyama collected were probably designed to be temporary, but in this small archive they combine to tell a powerful story of the strength of community activism.

Review by Andrea Gittleman

Masquerades

Directed by Lyès Salem
Global Film Initiative

The first feature film of Lyès Salem, Masquerades is a lighthearted and quirky comedy about an Algerian gardener, Mounir Mekbek, who dreams of a life beyond the confines of his sleepy village. His arrogance combined with his “responsibility” for a narcoleptic younger sister, Rym, make him the laughingstock of his community. He is a misunderstood dreamer who has aspirations, but can’t quite seem to pull himself together to meet the goals he has set for himself. He blames his humiliation on his sister’s illness and dreams of using the prospect of finding a good match for her to improve his standing in his village.

Following an incident at a wedding, an inebriated Mounir declares to the entire village that he has promised Rym to the wealthy foreigner. As a means of damage control, the family leaves town, in order to return and state that Rym was not interested in the gentleman. However, in order to motivate her sweetheart, Khliffa, to propose to her, Rym declares her intentions to marry the stranger.

Thus, the entire village becomes involved in the exciting lie as everyone wants to be a part of, not only planning the wedding, but the new fortune of the Mekbek family. Salem does a great job of portraying the views and reactions of the village, as well as the aspirations of the other villagers. It becomes evident that Mounir was not ridiculed for his sister, or lack of material wealth, but because of his haughty attitude towards his neighbours. Mounir is swept away in the newfound respect that he earns for commanding the regard of such a highly regarded foreigner. The introduction of the wealthy foreigner is an effective device to show the hypocrisy, but ultimately the desire Mounir has to make a better life for his wife, son, and sister.

The female cast definitely makes the movie more powerful. The character who shines the most is Habiba, Mounir’s wife, played by Rym Takoucht. She sees right through Mounir’s cocky façade, and brings him back to reality from his schemes to gain respect from the village. Her relationship with Mounir represents the realities that she has had to face, despite having been very in love with him at the time of their courtship. I was grateful that the film did not depict her as a bitter hag, but as a woman who is discontented in a sense, but keeps her family grounded in reality. Their relationship provided an interesting parallel to the courtship of Rym and Khliffa. I became disappointed towards the end of the film, because the lie about the wealthy foreigner simply goes away, and Rym ends up with Khliffa, thus providing a clean and happy ending.

Overall, I really enjoyed this film, and I thought it was a great depiction of the restlessness that comes with wanting something more in the face of socioeconomic hardship—something that I feel that many can relate to. It was also refreshing to watch a film in which an Islamic community was not depicted as the barbaric site of oppression of women, but rather showed the complex nuances of life in a small village in a changing world.

Review by Sara Yasin

Habits of the Heartland: Small-Town Life in Modern America

By Lyn C. Macgregor
Cornell University Press

I am really worried about Viroqua, Wisconsin. Not because Lyn C. Macgregor made it the subject of a two-year community study, which she writes about in Habits of the Heartland, but because in a footnote on page forty-eight she mentions that the Utne Reader had an article about the town as a good place to live. In the age of the Internet, attractive places to live do not stay secret long. Combined with the commodification of lifestyle, the publicity can change the character of a locality. I date the demise of my own Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to gentrification from a recommendation of that same publication that it was a hip place to live. Good luck, Viroqua!

Like the majority of United States residents, I do not live in the country or a small rural town—and my experience with small towns was the romance of “going to town” while vacationing on my grandparents' farm in Jasper County, Illinois. The names of nearby towns—Oblong, Robinson, Paris—recall adventure and mysteries of the beyond—that famous cities do not conjure up.

In Habits of the Heartland, Macgregor jumps right in to address a common claim about small town life, that everyone knows your business. Well, she says, it's true. The clerk at the optician's knew that she had been pulled over for not having a current registration ticket on her plate. It turned out that the clerk was also a member of the ambulance squad and had heard about the incident on the police scanner.

Macgregor reveals her sociological findings right away. She sees not just one but three social groups in Viroqua: the Alternatives, anchored by a Waldorf school; the Main Streeters, active in preservation of the buildings on Main Street and in mitigating the effects of a Wal-Mart on its businesses; and the Regulars, who just want to live there. She introduces these subgroups by recounting how each of them celebrate Halloween, a vibrant explication of their different folkways and values. She then devotes a chapter to each of these groups and concludes Part I with her view of their interactions. In Part II, she slices her research a different way, in terms of civic engagement, retailing, and consumption. Esoteric but still readable comments about her methodology and the place of her study in the sociology of small towns are relegated to an appendix at the end of the book.

Why does an ordinary reader crack open a sociology book? For me, sociology casts a cool eye on one's life lived with others. Macgregor's glance is kind and her accounts gleam with lived experience. She refers to Herbert Gans's Urban Villagers in her appendix. Reading Gans as a young woman, I discovered some of my Italian-American father's quirks were not unique to him but were common in the immigrant Italian communities who settled in the United States.

Macgregor's work, too, gave me an insight about my own counterculture politics. Her argument that people think very differently about community and whether and how it can be made. The vulnerability in this alternative, outside-the-system politics is the potential for isolation from the larger society. Active in a community-supported agriculture group—Viroqua, like Brooklyn, has a lot of them—I bristle when people call this foods movement elitist. Macgregor’s comment, “The Alternatives were proud of all they had accomplished in Viroqua, and this pride made them feel that their deliberately made community was distinctly superior to other organizations and people in town,” stopped me cold. Even alternative communities become just another “gated community” unless they are open to the outside world. Not bad for a book about one small town.

Review by Frances Chapman

Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry

By Tiffany M. Gill
University of Illinois Press

In Beauty Shop Politics, Tiffany M. Gill documents the central role that Black beauticians played in the struggle against Jim Crow laws. Beauty shops were one of the few industries that offered Black women some economic stability and upward mobility in the face of segregation. The industry also offered Black women a respectable alternative to domestic labor, as well as a chance to not work for White people. As political tensions rose, civil rights organizers increasingly turned to Black beauticians for disseminating social and political information.

Initially, White English and French men dominated the hair care industry. Black men slowly worked their way in, serving as hairdressers for White women, but that period was short-lived, as the stereotype of Black men as sexual predators began to emerge. During the antebellum period, Black women began to emerge as hairdressers in greater numbers; the early twentieth century saw the emergence of Black female entrepreneurs, namely Annie Malone and Madame C.J. Walker, who played an integral role in expanding Black beauty culture.

Through hard work and sheer perseverance, the women fought for beauticians to gain the respect of the general public. The women had to fight charges that they were inhibiting racial uplift, particularly because their products appeared to straighten Black women’s hair at a time when it was culturally looked down upon. Still, the women fought to have beautician courses established at Black colleges, arguing that the industry provided Black women economic stability. They also fiercely promoted themselves to the public by contributing to various philanthropic causes.

In times of economic hardship, the beauty industry offered Black women an opportunity to enter a respectable profession that entailed a steady income and entrepreneurial opportunities. On the national level, women worked to create a national organization that would legitimize their profession. In 1912, Madame Walker argued that “hairdresser” was a derogatory term, and insisted on the use of the term “beauty culturist.” With their economic and professional status now in place, beauty culturists were quickly gaining a strong foothold and establishing their place within their communities.

Because the Black beauty industry was owned and supplied by Blacks, and catered to the Black community, Black beauticians had some insulation from the economic hardships that their peers faced. Thus, they were able to participate in civil rights activism without the fear of losing their jobs or their customer base. Some, for instance, established literacy schools so that their students would be able to pass voter registration tests. Others distributed information through their beauty shops, which had become central locations for community organizing. Gill also extends her research to the present day, noting how the focus has now shifted from civil rights to women’s health initiatives.

Perhaps the best thing about this book is its accessibility to a wide audience. Gill writes in a clear and engaging style that makes the book an excellent choice for a non-academic reader who is interested in the subject. She includes noted figures in Black women’s history such as Madame Walker, Annie Malone, and Septima Clark, and uses compelling anecdotes about women such as Mahalia Jackson and Anne Moody, author of Coming of Age in Mississippi. Most importantly, Gill introduces the reader to a roster of lesser-known figures who also played important roles during this period. The book is an invaluable resource for women’s history and African American history scholars.

Review by Melissa Arjona

Change the World, Change Your Life: Discover Your Life Purpose Through Service

By Angela Perkey
Red Wheel/Weiser

Change the World, Change Your Life materialized as the author, Angela Perkey, reflected on how to help others find personal and community connections through donating one’s time. In her formative years, Perkey’s parents instilled in her the importance of volunteering and making a time commitment to help others. Thus, she spent time volunteering in various ways, and the most memorable volunteer experience to her was when she spent time painting the toenails of elderly women in a senior center. Although she knew that she was providing companionship, she wasn’t wholly invested in the experience. As she got older, she realized she wanted to find volunteer experiences that matched her passions and interests, as well as find an opportunity to volunteer where her talents could be most utilized. Perkey discovered in college that she wanted to form an organization where students could apply for grants to fund their own service projects, and from this, Students Serve, Perkey’s nonprofit, was formed.

In Change the World, Change Your Life, Perkey advocates on how to find a type of giving that matches with one’s goals in life. At one point in the book, Perkey points out that in reality, most organizations have failed because they have not succeeded in what they have aimed to do, such as eradicating hunger or providing an equal education for all students. Her brashness is a way to emphasize the fact that there are multiple problems which need solving and that maybe we are the ones to solve them. She also wants her readers to realize that we should be selective in choosing where we give our money and spend our time; in other words, we should think about what a volunteer opportunity is going to do for us as well as what we will be doing for the organization. Will we be happier as a result of the time we spend volunteering? Will we come home invigorated, so that our positive energy is felt by those around us? Perkey points out that only when we feel that we are making worthwhile contributions to our society will we be truly spurred on to continue our efforts, and only then will we be able to really help the causes to which we are dedicated. Furthermore, Perkey creates many guiding questions which are meant to help her readers find the volunteer opportunities that will be the most fulfilling and rewarding, and have the most impact on those we are serving.

If an individual is not already volunteering her/his time to an organization, there are probably a plethora of reasons why she/he will start this important work in the future and not today. I have wanted to volunteer for years, yet my work and home schedule always seemed so hectic, and I couldn’t imagine fitting volunteering into my schedule. Then I had kids, and I wasn’t sure what service opportunities were available for families to do with their children. After starting Perkey’s book, I made a call to a local Meals on Wheels organization. I asked them if I could volunteer with my children, and sure enough, the following week I started taking meals to senior citizens in my town with my four year old and seven month old in tow. That was a month ago, and now I am wholeheartedly enjoying spending a few hours each week volunteering due to Perkey’s straightforward guidance and gentle prodding to take action sooner rather than later. Any book that can motivate people to take action should be shared, and I’ll happily recommend this to anyone who is looking for a way to become involved in her or his community.

Review by Kirsha Frye-Matte