Addicted to Rights: Smoking and Paternalism

Michelle Imburglia has a cigarette with co-workers Taryn Anderson and
Edward Carroll, outside of Loyola's Centential Forum Student Union.

The average temperatures for Chicago winters can vary from 18 to 38 degrees, but most residents will tell you it’s the wind chill that creates inhospitable conditions. While many seek refuge by commuting in the comfort of their cars, others huddle in bus shelters, incubate under heating lamps on the elevated platforms, or simply endure the cold as they shuffle quickly to their destinations.

To Michelle Imburglia, a 20-year-old student hailing from the suburb of Mount Prospect, the climate is all too familiar. Under her fire-engine red peacoat, Imburglia usually layers with sweatshirts and a thick black scarf. She wears leggings and high-rise socks under her jeans to protect against the biting chill as she walks the few blocks between her apartment and the Loyola University campus.

But Imburglia spends far more than the few minutes between her classes in the dismal conditions. As a habitual smoker, she frequently steps outside to smoke a Marlboro Light cigarette.

Less than two years ago, Imburgia found refuge during the winter months in coffee shops and restaurants with designated smoking sections. “I’d spend a lot of time at Denny’s or at IHOP, and get a cup of coffee and read a book,” she said during a recent interview. “I used to go there because I could smoke, and now I can’t do that anymore.”

As of January 1, 2008, Illinois joined 22 other states as its Smoke-free Illinois Act took effect. Banning cigarette smoking in all publicly patronized establishments, including privately operated bars and restaurants, the act seeks to combat health risks caused by secondhand smoke. Since the early 1970s, a barrage of studies has all but confirmed that a range of medical problems, including increased rates of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, can be caused by a non-smoker’s exposure to carcinogens in cigarette smoke.

The recent discovery of an effect called “third-hand smoke” may result in further harsh restrictions on the legal consumption of nicotine. According to a study published in the January issue of the medical journal, Pediatrics, particles including “heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials” that result from smoking can cling to fabrics and hair follicles long after second-hand smoke has been filtered out. The findings are particularly relevant with regard to infants, who, in their endless exploration of their homes, can ingest these particles through cushions or carpet fibers.

In response to such health findings, smoke-free laws come as a hardly noticeable shift in public policy. Regulations on tobacco have accumulated since 1613, from the early sale of products to later legislation regarding consumption and advertising. Sidled along with alcohol, tobacco products were considered morally reprehensible during the Prohibition era of the early 20th Century. As the dangers of these and other once-common drugs began to surface, thanks to scientific and research developments, the urge to prevent the use of tobacco has only increased.

Motivated by medical and other concerns, including promotion of clean air, reduction of health care costs, and reducing fire hazards, most smoking bans in this century and the last have been enacted largely without opposition. However, opponents of smoking have now turned their gaze toward what were once considered sacred, inviolable space: private property.

State bans on smoking in private business establishments, while they have enjoyed a great deal of support, also have faced opposition, primarily from those of a libertarian bent. Jonathan Wilde, contributor to the classical liberal blog, The Distributed Republic, examines the passage of an early Florida smoking ban with respect to the harm principle. As popularized by political theorist John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, the harm principle contends that the state is justified in intervening in one’s personal activities only insofar as they pose a direct and unavoidable harm to others.

While research has provided definite evidence for the potential harm of secondhand smoke, Wilde writes, “the debate is not about smokers vs. non-smokers… rather, the debate is about control of an individual's property by himself vs. by the mob.”

Focusing on the rights of private business owners to set their own standards of conduct, as well as the freedom of customers to patronize smoke-free restaurants, Wilde claims that laws like the Smoke-free Illinois Act become not an issue of public health, but rather an intervention in private, voluntary interactions between business and customer.

“For someone to step onto another's property and demand that the owner set the rules for his liking is rude,” Wilde writes. “For the guest to actually use government force to make it happen is an act of aggression and a violation of the owner's rights. It is an infringement of the freedom from violence that is owed to the individual due to his nature as a man.”

Despite Wilde and the vocal minority in his camp, a barrage of new legislation has continued to spill over into the boundaries of private property. Spearheaded by a vocal group of citizens of Bonnie Brae Terrace, a retirement home in San Mateo County, the city of Belmont, Calif., has outlawed smoking in most apartment buildings. Divided only by walls and ceilings, residents felt the habits of smokers in their complex to be both a health risk and an annoyance.

Belmont’s smoking ban reflects a giant step in the legislation of private property, from publicly patronized business to an individual’s residence. In order to satisfy nonsmoking customers, many business owners imposed their own smoking bans long before statewide legislation. In the realm of a personal living space, however, no such incentive exists, nor does the greater public face the danger of exposure.

“I don’t feel like it’s right for a smoker to put people at risk,” Imburglia says. “But there’s a point where it’s [regulation] just silly.”

Belmont joins the cities of Calabasas and Glendale, Calif., both of which have banned smoking in privately-owned, and privately-inhabited, apartment buildings. While anti-smoking advocates have high hopes for this new breed of state intervention, smokers like Imburglia say states have “reached the limit of public domain.”

“It’s not fair” she said. “It’s my home, you know. Renters have rights.” She also noted that such bans affect only those without the resources to own their own home, which she says is an implicit form of class warfare. “You’re not as free, just because you don’t have enough money.”

While it is uncertain whether other states will adopt such extensive measures, the consequences of even moderate bans seem to be far-reaching for those who legally indulge in nicotine.

“I think the laws have made people feel they have the right to chastise you,” Imburglia said, relating a story of a passer-by who, seeing her on the sidewalk, “rolled down his window and said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’”

In a Gallup poll among smokers, the percentage who feel “unjustly discriminated against by society” has risen from 32 to 47 percent in the past six years. Public support for smoking bans in various locations, from workplaces to bars, has also risen.

Ray Goodrich, an 84-year-old resident who started the Belmont smoking ban through a letter-writing petition, sees the less-than-enthusiastic response from smokers as trivial. “The worst place you can be is between an addict and their fix,” Goodrich noted in an interview with the Belmont Journal.

The reality of addiction is readily apparent, thanks to scientific research. What remains unresolved, however, is the tacit conflict between individuals, from bar owners to sidewalk smokers, and the will of the majority imposed through state intervention.

Enough noise. What do you think about smoking bans?

A Spit-Roast for Democracy

In the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis, it may seem oddly comforting to find Congress behaving according to their breed. Inside the beltway, a natural habitat for ambitious politicians, the traditional feast upon yet another appropriations bill goes off (almost) without a hitch.

Certainly there have been many calls for a kosher budget, including both President Barack Obama and his opponent last year, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who denounced the Congressional habit of bringing home the bacon for those they represent. And of course, there is no shortage of shining examples of wasted federal tax dollars, including the infamous Alaskan bridge to nowhere.

It’s admittedly difficult for the nation to accept the business-as-usual attitude, particularly after hearing calls for reform throughout the campaign. While it’s easy to condemn the Congressional cronies from high atop the campaign platform, hacking off a mere 1 to 3 percent of a $410 billion spending bill seems hardly worth a presidential veto. As often is the case in legislative politics, it’s what’s in the margins that counts. Like democratic representation.

And perhaps that’s what makes this legislative force so resilient. Those Congressmen (and women) who wish to keep their seats often use earmarks to cut a deal with the most dreaded of political interlopers: their own constituents. The citizens, in turn, elect the alpha-politicians, those who reliably bring back the meat. In a legislative process littered with subcommittees, continuing and non-binding resolutions, there is something delightfully primitive about a representative-- well, representing their people.

Among the over 9,000 earmarks wedged into the latest appropriations bill, however, the most frivolous, wasteful, and outright ridiculous have already found their way into public scrutiny. And rightfully so. If anything, the responsibility of the federal government is to ensure the purity of legislative earmarks, through the public disclosure of each dollar spent in the margins.

There are, in fact, rarely enforced regulations which serve to weed out the most needless of these appropriations, including a 20-day review of earmarks by their respective federal agencies. These measures have fallen short for a number of reasons, primarily the considerable number of proposals. As in its nature, the federal government seems to have overlooked the most efficient method to filter out unpopular allocations, that is, the populace.

By imposing a requirement to release full details of each earmark proposal, including a budget and proof of merit for each project, a well-informed constituency would, once again, ensure that all is at peace in the political jungle. Those with concerns regarding the $190,000 sent to New Orleans (for a community center project which has already been abandoned) can wield their vote over their regional representative. As for Louisiana Democrat Mary L. Landrieu, she’ll have not only her fellow Senators, but also her community to answer to.

Rather than dismissing Congressional earmarks as a crude version of democratic leadership, politicians, as well as the public, should take an interest in what is, at worst, a necessary evil. By bringing them to the forefront of political discourse, the only standard these appropriations would have to meet is their ability to gain Congressional support. As long as Congressmen have a taste for power and the public a taste for the other white meat, pork will continue to serve an integral part in the legislative process. Let’s simply do our best to trim the fat.

Enough Noise. Check out earmarks in the New York Times.

Measuring Up

As the pendulum of partisan politics swings into the liberal spectrum, many policies which have carved indelible effects into the lives of American citizens are now up for review. In various aspects of public policy, President Barack Obama’s call for change is warmly welcomed, particularly in reshaping a floundering economy and housing crises.

As Obama’s actions alter the landscape, taken by some as a call to disband the relics of a conservative state, the bipartisan education initiative proposed by George W. Bush, the No Child Left Behind Act, provides a potential cautionary tale for congress: don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

In an unprecedented step to involve federal government in public education, No Child Left Behind created national standards of measurement, implemented through standardized tests devised by the states, to promote improvement through the dangled carrot of federal funding. The mandate included a punitive measure, rescinding Title I funds to schools who failed to demonstrate an increase in scores testing basic subjects such as math, reading, and applied science, and providing options for parents to remove their children from sinking schools.

The principle is apolitical, a claim which the Bush administration sought to illustrate by receiving bipartisan support from Democratic bigwigs like Ted Kennedy. Not only does the nation as a whole have a vested interest in increasing the academic success of its next generation, the public school system must be held accountable, at the national level, for the successes and failures within its control.

Though federal funding comprises roughly 10 percent of most public school budgets, its role as the national yardstick is no less crucial. Since the implementation of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education act, the federal government has held a strictly defined, though rarely exercised, role in public schooling: compensation for existing disparities, equalization of imbalances in funding (collected through property taxes), and providing oversight for a responsible education system. If anything, No Child Left Behind holds both the state and the schools accountable for their respective roles in educating the populace.

As leadership on this critical initiative changes hands, however, the limitations of No Child Left Behind must be acknowledged, in order to guide the future administration in its adaptation of the fledgling program. NCLB reflects a proactive approach to providing equal education opportunities for all its children, marked by its recognition of the federal government’s constitutionally limited power. By setting a benchmark and allowing states to evaluate its performance, with particular attention to their own racial and ethnic minorities facing the consequences of disparate education, the standards and priorities should continue to be outlined by state and local leadership.

Unfortunately, both spheres of power are confined by factors they have yet to address through legislation. By limiting the scope of education reform in placing the burden of responsibility on schools and teachers, NCLB puts blinders on the comprehensive view of education.

Closing achievement gaps between wealthy and poor school systems requires a great deal more than setting an academic minimum. Rather, both state and federal administration must focus on the elements of success that, while abundant in middle-class American families, are rarely found in low-income areas.

Environmental issues such as lack of prenatal care and child nutrition are known to impede development. Parents employed full-time often rely on television for child-care, to say nothing of a lack of involvement in the PTA. The values of the community, particularly peers, often devalue the education process, while No Child Left Behind offers no incentive for children to achieve.

While a nation anxious for stability clamors for rapid change, a clean-slate approach to education may appeal to those hoping to wipe away eight years of unsettling government action. Yet the principles behind the No Child Left Behind Act have woven through decades of government policy. The Obama administration, as well as congress, must continue to pledge its devotion to providing an equal opportunity for its children, using innovative methods to ensure public schools play their vital role. By providing a standard of achievement, coupled with intensive examination of the roadblocks created within the environment, No Child Left Behind can broaden the view of education for a future of innovative reform.

Enough noise. Check out NCLB.

The Company of Injustice

It has been almost a year since hundreds of students and faculty marched through Loyola University’s Lake Shore campus in a public outcry against racism.

On February 21, 2008, protestors, joining a small but vocal group called the Anti-Racism Movement (ARM), donned electric green armbands and shouted slogans like, “We pay for education, not discrimination!” They stormed across campus to the offices of Father Garanzini and Campus Security, demanding that attention be paid to what ARM called “the systemic racial inequalities on our campus.”

After the widely reported “Labor Day Incident,” in which a campus security officer berated and removed a small group of minority students from Loyola’s campus, ARM had created an undeniable tension and presence within the community. Weeks of phone calls, petitions, and gathering buzz finally reached a climax when the huddled mass of students sang “We Shall Overcome,” led by freshman Erica Granados-De La Rosa.

Erica is a petite latina with soft features, sporting a recently buzzed head of hair and eyes that speak along with her animated voice. Her apparent youth belies the fact that, at only 18 years old, Erica is completing her sophomore year at Loyola, having entered into the university at the age of 16. As a victim of the incident that inspired action, De La Rosa was a likely candidate to be a part of the movement. Having been a student for barely six months at Loyola, however, it may be surprising that De La Rosa herself created it.

Entering the microcosm of politics and power plays entangled in Loyola’s student groups, De La Rosa contends, “I wouldn’t have been able to take that next step if it had not been for other people sharing their experiences, similar experiences, with me.” Through what De La Rosa calls a grassroots campaign, she and several other members of the Loyola community created a movement that captured an unprecedented amount of attention among the students of the university, with mixed results from the school administration.

For De La Rosa, issues of race and inequality have pervaded many of the defining moments of her life. A daughter of two undocumented immigrants, Erica described her childhood as one of many hardships, “affected deeply by many things that I feel we have been a victim of, as a first-generation, lower-class Latino family in the U.S.”

Her mother grew up in a family of migrant workers from Northern Mexico, moving listlessly through various low-paying agricultural jobs in the U.S. Erica’s father, whom she connected with for the first time two years ago, was raised as a criado, given away in order to work for a wealthier family in Morzan, El Salvador. As the nation descended into civil war, he became politically active as a guerilla soldier for FMLN, the people’s army; though he left the country to work within a Salvadorian community in Washington D.C, Erica’s father continues to send much of his income to foster political activity in his native land.

Erica’s parents (whose names she requested be omitted) met through their social activism in Columbia Heights, D.C. While their pasts were mired by struggle and poverty, Erica believes “my parents were given the opportunity to receive their education and develop their social consciousness.” Both received some college education in the U.S, an advantage which allowed them to understand the implications of their reality as U.S. immigrants. De La Rosa saw the achievements of her parents as monumental. “I always felt like people around me were kept on a leash that only allowed them to see so much or go so far,” Erica said. Fortunately, both Erica and her parents were able to transcend these limits.

Erica, too, faced the burden of placelessness, as a result of divorce and family difficulties; born in Baltimore, Md., De La Rosa spent her early years in Langley Park, Md., and the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C, which she described as “low-class black and Latino communities, affected by the crack epidemic of the early 90’s.” At 9 years old, after two years in a migrant community of Lincoln, Neb., the beginning of Erica’s adolescence was spent in the Chicago neighborhoods of Humboldt Park, Pilsen, and Evanston. At 12 years old, her family settled in Dallas, Texas, where she completed her high school education in 2006.

“Dallas is the most difficult place to describe,” Erica adds, “because of a lot of instability and moving around the city. I spent the most time in Texas, although it feels like the shortest.”

At 12 years old, she discovered her passion for community organizing in her neighborhood of East Dallas. Attempting to start an after-school church program for her peers, De La Rosa was met with opposition from the community.

“Church dynamics and politics, is like, these ghetto kids are coming into the church, and they’re like, ‘Whoa! We don’t want to let you come in,’ Erica noted laughingly. Still, it was an unsettling response from the community. “They wouldn’t even get to close to us,” Erica said. “It was like they needed special equipment to even talk to us. We were kids.”

Despite the implicit discouragement from community leaders, Erica sought out grant monies and developed a comprehensive summer program, which provided her peers with activities, including a trip to Six Flags amusement park, and opportunities for community service. “And at the end of it,” Erica recalled, “this woman came up to me and she was like, ‘You’re amazing! You’re 12 years old, about to be 13, and you’re organizing! Do you realize how much power [you have]?’”

Six years later, Erica once again felt the need to exercise her power, after being orally harassed and removed from the college campus that had only months ago become her home. A campus security officer at Loyola, suspecting De La Rosa and her friends were members of a neighborhood gang, refused to allow them to walk through campus, even after they showed their student ID cards.

After informing Loyola’s Latin American Student Organization of the incident, Erica quickly acquainted herself with other victims of discrimination on campus and those who, “even if they weren’t active on campus, were conscious of this idea of racism and this idea of race and just, you know, forms of systematic discrimination and prejudice.” Through her aggressive campaigning to find a solution to her experience, a coalition of students formed the foundation for the Anti-Racism Movement.

The founders of ARM, a small, tight-knit group of primarily minority students, met in the office of the Black Cultural Center, cloistered in the basement of Loyola’s Campion Hall. In heated discussions that went well into the night, ARM members sacrificed the social opportunities of their Friday nights in order to craft a detailed mission statement and organize large-scale public events, including a kickoff rally and the February protest.

Initially, allied organizations, like the Black Cultural Center, and even ARM’s co-founders, were skeptical of the movement De La Rosa was attempting to build. Her inexperience in student government, coupled with a tenacious pursuit of immediate action, may have at first appeared unrealistic, if not radical.

“One of the first things we did as a group was, we had to go to Office of Student Diversity and let them know that we’re going to start something on this campus,” Erica describes. “And so we went… and I was like, ‘Okay, gentlemen, you ready? Today is the beginning of something, blah blah…’ And I gave this huge lecture. And they [ARM’s co-founders] were like, ‘O-okay, let’s just go into the office.’ I’m sure, I think about it now, I’m like, man, they must have had some crazy idea about me.”

The results of ARM’s presence at Loyola, however, seem to be uncertain, even a year after its grand entrance into the community. Shortly after the public outcry by ARM and its supporters, Loyola Phoenix columnist Nick Gamso described the aftermath as “a moment of defeat, when you realize that good intentions and a megaphone have done little to change the world, that the powers that be will keep, uh, being.”

As ARM continues to work alongside with the Black Cultural Center, Latin American Students Organization, and other minority groups on campus to pressure the administration, its demands have yet to be met. Many of the changes, including the establishment of an oversight board to deal with complaints of discrimination, have been gridlocked in the arduous process of negotiation.

“When we sit down with administrators, we can pretend like we’re running shit the whole time, and we can pretend like we understand the game,” Erica said. “But these administrators, these old white men, they’ve been doing this their whole life. They get paid to sit here and do what they’re doing. And they know all the laws, and they know the policies, and they know what we can and can’t do, and they know how they can manipulate us.”

Yet the obstacles to De La Rosa’s current cause are small compared to the hurdles of her past. As she ends her second year at Loyola, Erica is studying abroad in Mexico, an experience which she describes as “healing.”

“Being here, learning my language and culture, is an act of reclaiming my humanity and resisting the injustice against my people,” she said. As she pursues her degree at Loyola, Erica aspires to continue building systematic reform, particularly in the public education system. “I have lived through injustice,” Erica states, “and I continue to keep it company every day. But I have learned to challenge its presence and find the strength to act against it.” With or without her megaphone, De La Rosa’s voice remains one that demands to be heard

Enough Noise. Join ARM on Facebook.

Boyle Makes Slums Sparkle

You know those television commercials, seeking aid for indigent, malnourished orphans, in what are now sensitively referred to as “developing countries”? The ones that force-feed pangs of guilt by throwing you from the comfort of your couch to the bare feet of helpless children, robbed of health, hygiene, and basic human dignity? Those who consider themselves more casual film enthusiasts than humanitarian activists will be happy to note, Slumdog Millionaire doesn’t paint that kind of picture.

Rather, director Danny Boyle does a different kind of painting. In his tradition of dark sensations like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, Boyle’s latest film gleams with vivid, lush, even gritty imagery that delivers both insight and escape. Slumdog Millionaire brings viewers along as Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an ill-fated resident from the slums of Mumbai, ascends from his dismal past to the set of India’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Despite the seemingly American prototype of a beggar bound for glory, the heart of the story takes root through the disjointed flashbacks of Jamal’s history, reshaping the hero long before the TV cameras roll.

Like Trainspotting, Boyle’s previous excursion into beautifying the disquieting world of drug addicts, his latest film doesn’t shy away from the startling reality of Indian poverty and deceit. In the opening scene, bathed in smoldering yellow light, smoke, and sweat, Jamal is brutally beaten, under suspicion of cheating his way to millions. As he defends his case to a ruthless investigator (Irrfan Khan), the fleeting images that pique the viewer’s interest fall slowly into place, creating a dreamlike narrative of a nightmare childhood.

Thanks to near-melodramatic cinematography, Jamal’s callous origins present a striking dichotomy that reflects the Indian nation’s crawl into modern capitalism. The Mumbai slum where Jamal and brother Salim emerge sports sharp, albeit colorful edges, from the cobbled shacks to the landscape carved by mountains of trash. As the brothers face their wasteland alone, after a brutal attack by anti-Muslim fanatics leaves their mother dead, their environment transforms into an industrial paradise. As the hopeful, though often gruesome narrative progresses, the sheet-metal hovels give way to stark white skyscrapers, the neighborhood thugs fall to the knees of sharp-dressed gang lords, and destitution (for some) becomes a world of flash, glamour, and ecstatic violence. Despite the country’s rise to wealth and influence, the rough edges of corruption and class struggle refuse to be smoothed over.

Still, if there’s anything in which Boyle excels, it’s the ability to turn devastation into fantasy. The impish boys survive, thanks to their devotion and (ahem) entrepreneurial spirit and Jamal unfailingly propels toward a triumphant destiny that belies his tragic shadows. Though Slumdog Millionaire walks a tightrope between a striking social commentary and a far-fetched hero’s odyssey, it does so in a frenzied circus of imagery that allows viewers to suspend their disbelief. Whether it’s a heroin addict seeking redemption through mediocrity, or a resourceful orphan grasping his fifteen minutes of fame, Boyle transforms bleak worlds into the site of fairytales, and gives us all a reason to root for the underdog.

Enough Noise: Check out Slumdog Millionaire.