chrissyhassomethingtosay

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Letter to Cinema and Media Studies  Faculty in Support of Zain Jamshaid

Dear CMS Faculty, We are a group of graduate students writing in opposition to the forced withdrawal of our colleague, Zain Jamshaid. No graduate student should face removal––and the resulting loss of income, healthcare, housing, and immigration status––during a global pandemic. We ask that this decision be suspended immediately and that Zain be reinstated. We write with concern not only for Zain, but for the entire CMS community. We may never know the full details of Zain’s experience in the Department, but our position is not contingent on knowing these facts. We are not writing to offer or endorse a particular version of events, but to defend Zain and ourselves from opaque disciplinary procedures that threaten us all with sudden removal and precarity. As graduate students, we are all vulnerable to the same punitive measures. If the Department is comfortable going forward with this decision, even in light of its immense consequences, what does that say about the Department’s willingness to take similar action against other graduate students in the future? We worry that this decision will fracture the bonds of trust and community that attracted many of us to join CMS in the first place. The knowledge that the Department is willing to remove a student under these circumstances has already caused many of us to fundamentally reconsider our relationship to the Department. CMS Faculty have made repeated commitments to supporting graduate students. Most recently, the Department opted not to admit any new PhD students during the coming admissions cycle in order to, in part, strengthen its support for current students. We ask that the Department stay true to this commitment. Promises to support graduate students are meaningless; it is in emergency situations such as this that the Department demonstrates its support for us, or lack thereof. We ask that you take urgent action to reinstate Zain before his visa is terminated on January 12th. This matter is extremely time sensitive, and we hope to have an official response to this letter by Friday, January 8th.

**************************************************** While this is welcome news of support, I know that the The University of Chicago will not do the right thing because it is a predator protection racket. It cares about protecting predatory faculty not the students harm. So...please help Zain by donating to his gofund me page which will support his law suit.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/title-ix-retaliation-from-uchicago?utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Help Zain Jamshaid Sue the University of Chicago for Aiding and Abetting his Sexual Harassment and Assault.

Since March, I have reported on Rochona Majumdar's harassment and assault of a PhD student at the University of Chicago. After he filed a Title IX case, the University of Chicago retaliated and eventually expelled him. This is utterly illegal.  He's fighting for his life and livelihood. Please help him with legal fees.

As you know, he is not alone. I was harassed off campus by her husband, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and many of you have have written me to share your own stories of abuse from Rochona or her husband, Dipesh Chakrabarty. He is not only seeking justice for himself, but for all of us.

Please help him restore his status at the wretched university, finish his PhD and put an end to the long reign of predation by these weasels and the sanctuary they have enjoyed  for too long at  University of Chicago, which has long been a predator protection racket.

Help him out here. Any amount will do and you can--like I did--make your donation anonymous if you fear retribution from these devils.

Please help by donating here. Of course, I donated too:

https://gofund.me/be44ee45

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Many thanks to Michael Simms of Vox Populi  for running my piece titled "Revenge of Farkhunda" with his own piece  "Civilization and Her Discontents." It's very humbling and intimidating to be paired with him!

https://voxpopulisphere.com/

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

So grateful to Lunch Ticket for publishing a fictionalized version of one of my basic truths.  I grew up knowing I was "Bob's Bass Turd." But I didn't understand who Bob was or what a "Bass Turd" was.  

https://lunchticket.org/bobs-bass-turd/

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

So grateful to Lunch Ticket for publishing a fictionalized version of one of my basic truths.  I grew up knowing I was "Bob's Bass Turd." But I didn't understand who Bob was or what a "Bass Turd" was.

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

I am so psyched! My first attempt at literary translation was just published in The Bombay Review.They also ran with the collage I did for the story.  Of course, Gurdit Singh gets a shout out as does my patient Punjabi teacher Seema Jaggi Miglani.

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

This is a COVID-motivated, mixed-media triptych. The left image depicts the brewing storm driven by China’s wet-market where trafficked animals are kept in conditions of bio-insecurity, ripe for zoonotic events. It details 2007 scientific findings that SARS emerged from these conditions and predict that the next pandemic will as well. The middle image depicts the brutal reckoning of this disease and the concomitant haphazard way in which countries like the United States (mis)managed it. To the right, is an imagined post-pandemic future of renewal. Running across all three pieces is the image of the damaged lung, COVID’s most gruesome signature.

This was published in Detour Ahead on 6 November 2020 and in Passager Books' Pandemic Diaries. 

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

I'm really, really excited my piece titled "COVID Lungs: A Trilogy" was recently published. Shout out to my art professor  @deirdre.saunder in whose class I did these pieces and benefited from her enormous wisdom and guidance. Check her work out at https://deirdresaunder.weebly.com/

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Visual Poetry in Typehouse Magazine

Many thanks to @TypehouseLitMag and its thoughtful editors for publishing several pieces of my visual poetry and figuring out how to make the triptychs work within the constraints of the magazine's print format. Working with them gave me new insights into the impact of layout upon the work itself. The layout has made this a completely different work than the one I submitted. 

https://typehousemagazine.com/th/content/TypehouseMagazineIssue20Sept2020.pdf

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

I somehow missed that this was published in July.  Thanks to Mustafa Samdani for reasons he knows but which I won't share.

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

And here I thought Pakistan's goons in the ISI had stopped their systematic campaign against me...I was wrong. The ISI actually included me in this organized Information Ops offensive on Facebook.India must have some clout to get these pages taken down.  When the INCELs and Garden Variety White Male Supremacists and Abercrombie and Bitch Wannabe Nazis harassed me through this platform, inclusive of death threats and rape threats and other graphically horrible attempts to intimidate and silence me, Facebook did nothing EXCEPT put me in Facebook jail when I shared the post and Facebook's determination that the "male hate" did not violate Facebook's "standards.""Some posts are anti-Semitic and some criticise Professor Christine Fair, an author and commentator on South Asian affairs.  In its conclusion, the Stanford report suggested that ISI elements may be responsible for the pages taken down. “While we do not know who was behind the operation, we note the repeated invoking of duty towards religion and nation for mass reporting. We also observed a post on the network that stated that a member of one of the mass reporting teams had died... and that he also worked with ‘agencies,’ (implying either intelligence or military) on the ground.”"

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Many thanks to VoxPopuli and Michael Simms for taking a chance on me and responding to an email which was unsolicited and giving me another chance by publishing my visual pieces on the Rohingya Genocide.  Also thank you all for giving me advice on which portraits of ASSK.Michael Simms paired it with @MasonAtoms' essay on the long history of resistance in Appalachia. For both, visit  https://voxpopulisphere.com/2020/09/05/c-christine-fair-myanmars-lady-of-genocide/ and https://voxpopulisphere.com/2020/09/05/mason-adams-appalachias-deep-history-of-resistance/.This is a very serendipitous pairing.  As many of you know, I frequently discuss the poorly understood precarities and resilience of Americans in Appalachia as well as the American South with my friends and colleagues in South Asia who are mostly familiar with America's urban conclaves.  I think this will be most interesting to Seema Sirohi and other journalists who write about the United States. I hope they come to appreciate the importance of writing about the rest of America.While you're at it, check out the stirring work of Simms at at https://www.michaelsimmsart.com/media-press and the various insightful essays by Mason Adams about the long history of resistance in Appalachia at https://masonadams.net.  Kindly give them some love and share widely.

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Many thanks to @barzakhmag for publishing my two pieces on incarceration.

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Many thanks to @CrackTheSpine  for running this piece of "micro-fiction" in Issue 264. See the full issue here: http://www.crackthespine.com/2020/08/issue-264.html?fbclid=IwAR1uA1SNkRmJB7tkkTtec2izepBbaQp56Hua8WWEMui4ZkFkA5Q7zFHGLYI

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Awesome Possum News. My story "Hobo Queen" was chosen as one of @furiousgazelle 's Spring 2020 Contest finalists. I am sooo grateful to @furiousgazelle !

[chrissyhassomethingtosay]

Meet Jeremy Inabinet of the @UChicago. He is the associate dean of students in the University for disciplinary affairs. He is notorious for victimizing the students he is meant to protect.

And he is the one helping to protect Roachna Majmundar who is accused of sexually assaulting a student.

I see you Jeremy. I look forward to our conversation.

"Though she went in expecting the experience to be difficult, she realized quickly that it would be much more harrowing than she had initially feared when Inabinet referred to the rape as "sex" in their first meeting.....

Briana was right—Inabinet routinely disadvantaged her throughout the investigation. Inabinet discouraged her from seeking legal counsel, claiming that having a lawyer would look suspicious to her hearing committee. Mere days before her hearing, however, she found out that John had not only obtained a lawyer, but would also be accompanied by him during the hearing process....

Throughout the process, Inabinet consistently failed to respond to e-mails in a timely fashion and when he did respond, failed to answer her questions. He granted John extensions on necessary meetings, respondent documents, and witness name submissions. Meanwhile, he denied Briana similar extensions, even though John's extensions cut into her time. Grappling with the task of writing over 50 pages about her traumatic experience while taking a full course load would have been stressful enough without Inabinet’s repeated failings...

Although Briana objected, and University policy outlines confidentiality quite clearly—a rarity within this sea of ambiguity—Inabinet allowed John to submit “evidence” that violated this policy. Inabinet claimed the illegitimately obtained statement would not be taken seriously but still allowed the University-wide disciplinary committee to see and consider the disparaging document.

Rest assured, Jeremy, I see you and I know you. I am looking forward to speaking to you this week and understanding how you are revictimizing a graduate student sexually assaulted by a faculty member.