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Through Twitter, a window into who the favorite presidential candidates are (data-mining project using Python)

This is a story that was produced for my Journalistic Computing class at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I used Python in order to gather information from Twitter (geolocalization, positive-negative tweets). This was done between March and April, long before Donald Trump entered the presidential race. 

The idea was to try to predict who the nominees for the Democratic and Republican parties would be based on Twitter mentions. For that, I used the free Twitter API. 

The infographics won’t be uploaded to this post. 

Date: May 12, 2015

Through Twitter, a window into who the favorite presidential candidates are

 By Michelle Inaba

            Twitter might be able to provide an insight into what the public opinion about the presidential candidates is in real time. If the primaries were today, we would likely see Hillary Clinton running against Ted Cruz in the general elections, based on how much ‘buzz’ they generate on Twitter.

           The key is to look into the amount of times candidates are mentioned in the tweets, or their ‘volume.’ Research has shown that volume is more important than the content of the tweet in showing who is creating the most public interest. Public interest as seen through Twitter ‘buzz’ is an indicator that the candidate is already viewed as a likely winner in a race, which is the main reason both supporters and opponents would be tweeting about the candidate.

           “We took Twitter mentions to indicate the level of attention, or potentially enthusiasm, that the candidate was generating,” said Johan Bollen, professor of Informatics and Computing at the Indiana University and author of a study on the use of Twitter to predict political behavior. “And this seems to be predictive with respect to the outcome of the elections.”

           The Democratic Party has an incumbent candidate, Clinton, who so far is considered the most likely nominee for the party. The Republican Party has no incumbents though, and it is here that Twitter might come in handy in monitoring the development of the race.

           Nationwide, Clinton and Cruz are leading the race on the Twitter sphere as the candidates with the most volume. Clinton’s mentions account for about 29 percent of the total of tweets, whereas Cruz has about 20 percent. Marco Rubio comes in third place, with about 17 percent of the total mentions. For the Democrats, Clinton does not seem to have any real adversary so far, as Bernie Sanders has only nine percent of mentions, which shows that he is not being really seen as a candidate with potential to win. This does not come as a surprise as Clinton is more known to the general public, given that she already ran in the 2008 Democratic primary race, besides her long history in government, including being First Lady and Secretary of State.

           “Familiarity is a positive because people innately come to like things that feel familiar,” said Pamela Rutledge, director at the Media Psychology Research Center. “The high volume and frequency also makes a candidate’s name easier to recall.”

           “It comes down to awareness,” said a planner at SS+K, a marketing and communications agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Because Hillary has the highest name recognition, she’s a lightning rod for both favorable and unfavorable tweets.”

           For the Republican Party, it is not as simple. The party is internally divided right now, as seen by the many candidates stepping in for the nomination, with many unknown to the general public. This division is reflected on the overall mentions of candidates on Twitter: nobody has a clear advantage. In the total volume of tweets generated by the Republican Party, the four candidates taking the lead have very close rates: Cruz, Rubio, Rand Paul, and Carly Fiorina.

           “This happens periodically to parties that don’t have incumbents,” said Fabio Rojas, professor of Sociology at the Indiana University. “And when there’s no incumbent, a lot of people try to step in, and they try to control the field, and right now nobody is controlling it because everybody is stepping in, which means that the attention is being chopped off in very small bits. It’s like a clown-car, with all these clowns in it.”

If the race were today, we would see Clinton as the Democratic nominee, but it isn’t clear who would win the nomination for the Republican Party. Whereas Cruz generates more public interest on Twitter nationwide, Rubio is ahead in the early primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada). Winning in those states could change the tone of the race, swaying a candidate to an advantage in gaining the nomination.

           Clinton is also ahead of everybody else in the early primary states, accounting for 59 percent of the mentions.

All of the candidates, with the exception of Rubio, have seen fluctuations in their volumes of Twitter mentions, which decreased and increased. Rubio was the only candidate who presented a steady growth in public interest, regardless of the new runners in the race.

His steady growth in tweet volume might mean that he is growing in the public eye offline as well, as a candidate with potential to win the GOP nomination in the early primary states. According to Joseph Di Grazia, professor of Political Sociology at Dartmouth College, “the volume of tweets about a candidate relative to that of his or her opponent is pretty highly correlated with electoral victory.” If Rubio wins the election in the early states, the race might change at the national level, placing him as a more likely nominee than Cruz.

           Twitter volumes matter because they represent public interest, or buzz, and that might reflect the public opinion offline because people tend to talk about candidates they perceive as already winners, or highly likely to win.

           “You’re not going to spend time on people who are going to lose,” Rojas said. “You always spend time on people who’s going to win. You pay attention to winners even if you hate them.”

           “Ultimately it’s about driving influence and that can be measured by the number of people reached, the number that engage, how influential that audience is and also the volume of conversation the candidate is ultimately driving,” said a digital strategist at SS+K, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

           According to researchers, the sentiment of the tweet – whether it is positive or negative, does not matter as much as the volume. Negative tweets about a candidate mean that people are talking about that candidate, and they are doing so because they perceive him or her as a possible winner.

           “Candidates who are seen as threatening or as likely to win attract a lot of negative attention from supporters of their opponents,” Di Grazia said. “People mostly ignore weaker candidates who are seen unlikely to win. In other words, attracting negative attention is often a sign of strength.”

           “People who win in politics tend to generate both negative and positive sentiments simultaneously,” Rojas said.

           Additionally, analyzing tweets sentiments in relation to politics has some limitations. According to Bollen, “the problem with sentiment analysis is essentially that it is based on the wording of the tweet.” Tweets do not follow proper grammar, and programs that analyze them would have to be able to read into the Twitter language.

            “I’m skeptical about the reliability of the results as tweets are so short, so context dependent and often use irregular spellings and abbreviations,” Di Grazia said. “I think overall volume is a simpler and less problematic measure.”

           “Sentiment is always a tricky thing to measure using digital tools, as algorithms aren’t sophisticated enough to actually understand emotion outside of prescriptive phrases or words such as ‘love, admire, hate,’ and certainly can’t comprehend sarcasm,” the digital strategist at SS+K said.

           Regardless of the difficulties, Twitter seems to be a tool with a lot of potential in helping us understand what is going on in society at the grassroots level, and in real time. It mirrors what is going on offline. In the case of the primary race, it will only show the person who is generating debate offline, as people will be talking about that person online.

           “Social media has information that is highly valuable,” Rojas said. “You can follow what people are thinking on a minute-by-minute basis.”

           “With Twitter, what I think is really useful is to get sort of a bottoms-up, grassroots indicator of what’s happening in the population,” Bollen said. “That’s even more important than deciding if this candidate is going to win the elections.”

           If Rubio continues to present a steady growth in Twitter public interest, especially in the early primary states, this might be an indication that his persona is growing among the electorate, and that he could be the winner of the GOP nomination. It is very early in the race, though, and many things can still happen that could change the balance on the Republican side, such as Jeb Bush’s entry later on. Even Clinton, who is so far the favorite, might have her position threatened depending on who enters the race later.

           “It’s an evolving landscape and relatively newcomers might grow into sure winners over time,” Bollen said.

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How Russian cyber attacks illustrate the deterioration of U.S.- Russia relations

Reporting produced for my International Newsroom class at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, under the supervision of Dean Steve Coll. Unpublished.

Date: June 2, 2015

How Russian cyber attacks illustrate the deterioration of U.S.- Russia relations  By Michelle Inaba

            Roman Seleznev and his girlfriend were waiting for their plane back to Russia at the international airport of Male, in the Maldives, last July. Only she would make it to Moscow. As Seleznev tried to board, U.S. Secret Service agents detained him and then forced him into a private jet heading to Guam Island, according to Russia’s foreign ministry.

Seleznev is a Russian hacker who had been wanted by the Secret Service since 2011. But his arrest has not stopped other Russian hackers from continuing to target the U.S., as made plain by recent attacks on the White House and the State Department.

Cyber conflict is only adding to the overall deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations since the crisis caused by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine.

           “Russia has a well-educated population with a significant presence on the web and a government that at least tacitly encourages these attacks,” said Garrett Khoury, a political and security risk analyst and director of research and content at the Eastern Project, an online group of policy professionals writing about politics. “Whether it’s going after money, identities, or intellectual property, hackers are going after the economic well-being of the United States.”

Seleznev is the son of Valery Seleznev, a member of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party. The Russian foreign ministry called his arrest “kidnapping,” according to the Russian News Agency TASS. However, in the context of financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Europe on Russia over Crimea, the arrest of Seleznev does not seem to be a matter of real diplomatic repercussion. “It is a relatively small issue,” Khoury said. “If Ukraine, Syria, and Iran weren’t issues, maybe it would be of some importance, but right now I can’t see any tangible effect on relations.”

           Seleznev is accused of hacking into computers of American businesses between 2007 and 2014, stealing credit card information that would be sold to third parties in the digital black market. According to court documents, he is accused of causing millions of dollars in losses to merchants and financial institutions, and has made “millions of dollars in illicit profits.” He operated from servers located in Russia, Ukraine, and Germany.

           “The adverse impact this individual and other transnational organized crime groups have on our nation’s financial infrastructure is significant and should not be underestimated,” Julia Pierson, director of the U.S. Secret Service, said in a statement on July 7, 2014.

           Seleznev advertised his business on international carding forums, where stolen data is usually traded. The ads he placed to attract more customers to his website “2Pac.cc” even resembled legitimate business ads, according to the indictment, with promises of best offers. “2pac, the first market of dumps! All Sellers in once [sic] place!!! We invite sellers, hackers and owners of dumps bases. You get the 50% share of income from selling your base, that is much more than you can earn from selling your base to other seller.” (“Dump” is the word used to describe the stolen data.)

           According to court records, Seleznev even created a website with tutorials on how to buy and use stolen credit card data and what equipment was needed to create fraudulent credit cards. The purpose was to encourage potential customers to go to his “2Pac.cc” website and buy stolen data there.

           Selzenev’s case shows “how cybercriminals use the Internet not only to infiltrate and steal sensitive data, but also to teach other criminals how to navigate the credit-card selling underworld and get equipment that can be used to defraud U.S. citizens,” Leslie Caldwell, U.S. Assistant Attorney General, said in October 2014.

According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice in July 2014, the Secret Service arrested Seleznev in the Maldives and transferred him to Guam, which is under the United States jurisdiction, where he was detained until he was transferred to the United States. The U.S. Secret Service did not respond to requests for comment.

           Seleznev’s case is not an isolated one. CrowdStrike, a cyber security consultant firm, dubbed 2014 as “the Year of the Bear in the cyber realm.” Their witticism referred partly to the fact that many offending hacker groups had the word “bear” in their names.

In a sense, the hacking is a Russian way to retaliate over official economic sanctions, showing that the deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations can reach into the U.S. economy.

“If they are indeed hacking in response to the sanctions, then I think it does show how in cyberspace, there aren’t always neat distinctions between a country’s foreign policy and its domestic policy,” said Shane Harris, author of the book @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex.

           To understand how the relations between the U.S. and Russia went sour, it is necessary to go back to the protests in Kiev, Ukraine, in November 2013. Ukraine’s economic situation was dire, and both the European Union and Russia proposed aid. Russia offered a $15bn loan, and this would foster Ukraine’s participation in an “Eurasian Union” with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. When Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych decided to take the Russian money and turn his back on Europe, protests erupted. As they became more deadly, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and a temporary coalition government took over Kiev.

           Meanwhile, Russian troops were mobilized on the border of Ukraine, in what Russia called “military drills.” Simultaneously, armed gunmen seized government buildings and airports in Crimea. In March 2014, Crimeans voted on a referendum to decide whether the region would join Russia or would be independent. According to the published results, 97 percent of Crimeans voted for a Russian annexation of their territory, which Ukraine, the U.S. and the E.U. considered illegal. Immediately after the referendum, the U.S., the E.U., and Canada responded with financial sanctions against Russia. American sanctions evolved from targeting one bank and individuals who were close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, to sanctions against major Russian banks, defense and energy industries.

Before the Russian annexation of Crimea, it appeared that the U.S. and Russia might cooperate on cyber security. In June 2013, the countries signed an agreement to share information about threats appearing to emanate from each other’s territory, and made the commitment to keep a hotline to make formal inquiries about cyber security incidents. The goal of the agreement is to avoid that a cyber attack is misperceived as being state-sponsored, thus causing an escalation of the incident that could spill over to areas that are not in cyber space anymore, such as a military conflict.  

           “That’s what some people worry about: someone will make a mistake, and you’ll see some sort of problem grow out of this escalation or concern,” James Lewis, a partner at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. “One of the big fears of cyber security is that you’ve got these risks that are very hard to control, and they might end up leading to a much bigger conflict.”

           Just three months after the agreement was signed, however, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a travel warning cautioning Russian hackers wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations to avoid traveling abroad. “Practice shows that the trials of those who were actually kidnapped and taken to the United States are biased, based on shaky evidence and having a pronounced accusatory [tone],” the Russian Foreign Ministry stated. “Under these conditions, the Russian Foreign Ministry recommends Russian citizens to refrain from trips abroad, especially in countries which have concluded agreements with the United States on mutual extradition.”

The travel warning came after Alexander Panin’s arrest in the Dominican Republic. Panin is a Russian hacker, author of the malware SpyEye, which is believed to have infected more than 1.4 million computers in the United States and abroad. He is accused of hacking into computers to steal personal and financial information in order to defraud banks in the United States. He was also selling SpyEye in underground online forums. In June 2011, a FBI covert agent contacted Panin and bought a version of SpyEye for $8,500. In July 2013, Panin was arrested while flying through the Atlanta international airport, according to a statement issued by the FBI. The Russian foreign ministry claimed that he was arrested in the Dominican Republic and extradited to the United States.

Since Russia does not have extradition agreements with the United States and does not help prosecute its cyber criminals, American authorities try to arrest them when they travel to countries that have extradition treaties with the U.S.  

“The message to the Russian cyber criminals is ‘you’re basically stuck in Russia for the rest of your life,” Edward Lucas, author of the book Cyberphobia, said. “Maybe you can get to Belarus or Uzbekistan, but you basically can’t go anywhere else because you are on the Americans’ radar.”

“U.S. law enforcement interprets this as the Russian government being in league with and supporting criminal hackers in their country,” Harris said. “I was told by a senior U.S. law enforcement official that the Russians will tip off hackers who are under investigation and advise them to change their names,” Harris said.

Peter Clement, a visiting professor at Columbia University currently teaching a course on Russian security policy, said there were several possible reasons why Russia does not seem to want to cooperate with the United States in cyber security matters. “Because there’s been a long history of bad feeling about the U.S. - this goes back into the Soviet period, there are people on the Russian government and security bureaucracies who very much think the U.S. is their main enemy still, and they have no problem with people doing things that are disruptive to the US,” he said. “And certainly now, since we are imposing all these sanctions on them.”

Some experts speculate that Russia might conceivably authorize cyber attacks as a form of retaliation against the financial sanctions imposed by the United States against Russia for its occupation of Crimea. “Attacks against us are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and severity of impact,” James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, said in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on February 2015. “While I can’t go into detail here, the Russian cyber threat is more severe than we’ve previously assessed.”

“There certainly are researchers, including those I trust, who are tying the increase in Russian cyber activity targeting the U.S. to the sanctions imposed on Russia for its aggression in Crimea,” Harris said.

“Right now probably the far more dangerous aspect is what is called ‘exploitation’ which is considered a form of espionage, not warfare: the ‘exfiltration’ of intellectual property and other information from U.S. firms, educational institutions and government systems,” added Matthew Jones, professor of early modern Europe and information technologies at Columbia University. “This is clearly occurring at a massive scale, by state actors and many non-state actors.”

The attacks recently started moving from stolen credit card information and industrial espionage to the realm of government. Last October there was a cyber attack against the White House, compromising its unclassified email system. One month later, the State Department suffered the same type of attack. The government did not confirm the identity of the hackers, nor where they were from, but media reports at the time cited Russians as the authors of the attacks. And in the beginning of April the White House suffered a similar cyber attack. CNN reported that confidential sources briefed on the investigation confirmed that Russian hackers were behind it.

“Criminal hackers go after money; so there is no money in neither the State Department or the White House,” Lewis said. “And that makes you think it had to be politically motivated.”

This brings into question whether the United States is engaging in a new type of Cold War with Russia, one that is being battled through financial sanctions and cyber attacks. The tensions between the two countries have been increasing ever since the United States imposed sanctions on Russian banks, energy and defense industries.

“It is certainly true that we are in a new world with respect to Russian and U.S. relations; there’s no question about that,” said Herb Lin, researcher for cyber policy and security at Stanford University.

However, argued Lewis, “It’s not really a Cold War because it hasn’t gotten to that point yet. It’s tense, it’s hostile. The Russians seem to want to re-start the Cold War. I mean, they fly bombers up and down over Sweden, and Denmark, and Britain; and they send ships through the English Channel; they use their fire planes to harass airlines over Europe, and they send bombers near Alaska. My question to the Russians is: they didn’t do so well in the last Cold War, so what makes them think they’re going to do better this time?”

The escalation on cyber attacks coming mostly from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran led to the creation of a new government agency in February. The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center will report to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and is tasked with fighting cyber security threats.

Just two weeks after the announcement of the new cyber security center, the U.S. Department of State also announced a reward of $3 million for information leading to the arrest of Evgeniy Bogachev, a Russian hacker responsible for the malware GameOver Zeus, Peer-to-Peer Zeus, and Cryptolocker. Bogachev is allegedly responsible for over $100 million in financial losses in the United States alone, according to the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

“Perhaps one of the most serious cyber criminals found on Planet Earth today,” William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said at a press conference on February 24, 2015.

Bogachev has been indicted for hacking computers at Haysite Reinforced Plastics, in Erie, Pennsylvania. He allegedly installed malware in the company’s computers, stole confidential personal and financial information, and used that data to steal funds from the company’s bank account. In just three days he stole approximately $374,000.

The details of his hack are typical of a new era of sophisticated bank robbery:

On October 18 2011, Bogachev sent an email to Haysite pretending to be a financial institution and said that an ACH payment (a payment directly debited from someone’s checking or savings account) had been canceled. The email had a link that offered information about the canceled payment. An employee at Haysite clicked on the link, which installed the malware in the computer.

Two days later, Bogachev sent web injects (fake internet pages) to Haysite computers, asking three employees to enter their credentials into a fake online banking page, which gave Bogachev access to their banking identities. On the same day, he used those credentials to transfer funds from the company’s account to two money mule accounts, one in Atlanta and another one in New York City. (Money mules are individuals who receive the stolen money and then transfer it to accounts overseas.) On October 21, the mules transferred the funds to bank accounts in London.

Joseph Demarest, FBI Assistant Director for cyber security, said during a press conference on February 24, 2015, that 14 countries are giving assistance to the United States in the search for Bogachev, but he did not mention Russia.

Of Bogachev, he said, “While he is known to reside in Russia, he may in fact travel,” he said. If he travels to a country that has an extradition treaty with the United States, it is very likely that he may be caught and extradited. When asked about the lack of Russian cooperation on this case, Demarest dodged the question answering that the FBI has “engaged the FSB on this particular case and are currently sharing information with them regarding Bogachev.”

In April, President Barack Obama approved a new wave of financial sanctions on Russia, including some that target cyber criminals and the companies that buy their stolen data. The sanctions are intended as another form of deterrence against cyber threats, focusing on activities that threaten national security, foreign policy, economic health, or financial stability. “Cyberthreats pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges to the United States,” Obama said.

           “It’s a move that says we need to have better ways than going to war when people hack us, and this is a way to do it,” Lin said. “The question is whether or not they thought it through to the end, when the other guy responds. You’ve got to think that part through, and it’s not clear to me that anybody has thought that part through.”

           Because America’s cyber defenses are erected mostly by private companies, not the government, Obama’s policy is dependent on corporate cooperation. “I think President Obama’s remarks on cyber crime are actually not so much aimed to the criminals, it’s aimed to the victims: what he’s really trying to do is to get American companies to take cyber crimes more seriously,” Lucas said.

           Seleznev is still imprisoned in the United States. Court records show that he has changed defense lawyers several times since the U.S. Secret Service caught him. His new trial is scheduled for November 2, 2015. His two defense lawyers did not respond to requests for comments.

Russia may complain about Seleznev’s “kidnapping” by America but it’s undisputed that Russia does nothing about the cyber criminals on its own soil. “Russia doesn’t punish hackers who attack the United States because it doesn’t want to,” Khoury said. “First, because it’s better to have the hackers going after the United States than after the Russian government. Second, because those hackers, whether directed by the Russian government or not, are doing exactly what the Russians would like them to be doing.”

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U.S. economic sanctions on Russian banks punish, but not that much

Reporting produced for my International Newsroom class at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, under the supervision of Dean Steve Coll. Unpublished.

Date: March 24, 2015

U.S. economic sanctions on Russian banks punish, but not that much  By Michelle Inaba

            A little over one year after the Russian annexation of the Crimea region in Ukraine, the economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Russian banks do not seem to be achieving their goal. Russia still has a grasp over the region, showing that the economic punishment on the already fragile Russian economy might not be enough to force president Vladimir Putin to stop supporting separatists in Ukraine.

           The United States started imposing economic sanctions on Russia last year in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea, which caused destabilization in the country and violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. The sanctions were intended to force Russia to stop supporting Ukrainian separatists and fostering further destabilization in the region. The banking sanctions closed U.S. capital markets to Russian banks, prohibiting them from refinancing their debts, issuing new equity, and borrowing money with longer repayment periods.  

The effect of these measures on Russian economy is that Russian banks have less access to U.S. dollars, and thus have less money to lend to Russian companies. “They can’t utilize the international financial markets to borrow money,” Bruce Johnston, partner at Morgan Lewis, said. “And that means that they are having trouble with liquidity problems.” As some of Russia’s major banks such as Sberbank, VTB, and Gazprombank have been sanctioned, the burden of financing investments and infrastructure falls on the Russian Central Bank. “Effectively, it doesn’t stop them from borrowing rubles in Russia, or borrowing money from the Central Bank, so they will continue to survive,” Johnston said.

           Alone, American sanctions would not pressure Russia to the point of forcing Putin out of Crimea, since Russia’s economy does not depend heavily on the United States. But Russia has a strong trade relationship with the European Union, which is the most powerful ally to the United States in the punitive sanctions against the Russian Federation. European sanctions target individuals, and the financial, energy and arms sectors, but exclude the gas industry, which European countries rely heavily upon. Because of the economic ties between the E.U. and Russia, some European countries started asking for the rolling back of the sanctions. “The Spanish…were talking about how much money they were losing from losing trade to Russia,” Garrett Khoury, director of research and content at the Eastern Project, said. And Russia also loses more with the European sanctions than with the American sanctions. “There’s less trade between Russia and the United States than there is between Russia and Europe,” Johnston said.

           Historically, there is no real track record that determines whether sanctions are effective in changing a state’s behavior or not. Observers cite Iran as an example of sanctions that turned out effective as they brought Iran to the negotiating table in regards to ending its nuclear program, but point that the same strategy might not work with Russia. “Iran is a lot more dependent on the world than Russia is, in a way,” Khoury said. “Iran needs…to send its oil out to be refined. It’s very much dependent on outside flows of currency.” Iran has been sanctioned from shipping oil or gaining access to the international financial markets, as well as being excluded from SWIFT, which had a tangible effect on their economy. SWIFT is an organization that enables secure transactions between financial institutions around the world, and their system is the main method of financial transactions between institutions in the international financial system.

“When it comes to Russia, though, it’s different because it’s hard to really see if it’s the sanctions that are causing all the economic trouble in Russia,” Khoury said. Last year, the drop in oil prices heavily affected Russian economy, and the sanctions made it harder for Russia to do business and to bring in new investments. But Khoury adds that Putin’s government style might also influence the flight of business investments from Russia. “One of the prices of doing business, be successful in Russia, is that you give Putin his cut,” he said. “That’s really maybe the biggest problem in Russia, and maybe even the biggest negative factor superseding the sanctions and the drop in oil prices.”

Doing business in Russia might become even harder if Putin does not abide by the Minsk agreement, which is a ceasefire protocol signed in September last year and again last February, after the first ceasefire failed. Sanctions from the United States and the E.U. might intensify. “If Russia continues to support destabilizing activity in Ukraine and violate the Minsk agreements and implementation plan, the already substantial costs it faces will continue to rise,” Adam Szubin, U.S. Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a press release. Some observers say that Russia could be excluded from SWIFT, while others consider it a drastic measure. “I think it’s unlikely to happen, unless the United States wants to escalate the political unrest with Russia,” Johnston said. According to the Russian news agency TASS, the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia’s “economic reaction and generally any other reaction will be without limits” in case Russia is excluded from SWIFT.

If Putin complies with the Minsk agreement, sanctions from both the United States and the E.U. will be lifted, but that is an unlikely scenario. “If nothing changes on Crimea (and nothing is likely to change), we should see sanctions (in the current or intensified form) stay in place indefinitely,” Alya Guseva, economic sociology professor at Boston University, said in an email. A U.S. Treasury spokesperson, who asked not to be identified, said that American sanctions “do not have an expire date” in case Putin does not leave the Crimea region. European sanctions were renewed last week and will last until the Minsk agreement is fully implemented, which the European Council foresees to happen by December 31, 2015.

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Struggling with Tourette Syndrome

My final project for my Master of Science degree in Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Produced in video and print, between December 2014 and March 2015. Unpublished. 

This story is about the struggles of a 12-year-old student in Queens, New York City. Joseph suffered from Tourette Syndrome and was struggling in school. At the time of the reporting, he used to go to a public school in Queens. According to his mother, the school wasn’t prepared to handle kids with TS and that resulted in the difficulties Joseph was experiencing with his teachers and administrators. By the time I finished the project, it wasn’t sure whether Joseph would fail that semester or not due to the difficulties caused by his condition. 

For the video part of this reporting, please see: https://vimeo.com/122950602

Struggling with Tourette syndrome   By MICHELLE INABA

With stiff fingers, Joseph Pizarro sat at the kitchen table typing on his computer when his mother, Lisa Torres, entered the room. It was a late Saturday afternoon, and the light coming through the windows covered the wooden furniture, making the kitchen cozy and warm. On the wall, there was a rectangular wooden board with the saying “Love Lives Here.” As he was typing, Joseph’s mom asked him if he was hungry, and what he wanted to eat. “Mac and cheese,” he said. Although Joseph appears to be a typical twelve-year-old, there is something that makes him feel quite different than his peers.

Joseph suffers from Tourette syndrome (TS), a neurological disorder in which a person makes uncontrollable movements and sounds known as tics, such as grunting, yelling, cursing, head jerking, and eye blinking. The national Tourette Syndrome Association estimates that approximately 300,000 children suffer from TS in the United States. “Tourette’s is a tic disorder, it’s just specific, defined as a combination of motor and vocal tics for at least a year in the absence of other neurological symptoms,” Dr. Michael Pourfar, neurologist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said. “A tic is like an itch; if you don’t itch it, it bothers you more and more; if you don’t tic, it bothers you more and more,” Joseph explained.

Joseph was diagnosed at age 7, after presenting vocal and motor tics for one year. The diagnosis came as a shock to his family, who did not know much about Tourette syndrome. “I felt I was cheated,” Torres recalled. “I felt that Joseph was gonna have this very difficult life, and we were all going to be challenged with Joseph’s condition. It was heartbreaking.” According to Torres, doctors consider Joseph’s tics mild. But when he was younger, tics would bother him even at bedtime. “It was very hard, as a mother, to see him not being able to go sleep because he would tic and tic, and he would shake the whole bed,” Torres said. “It was so bad at times, and I felt guilty going to sleep before him. I had to make sure that he was sleeping first, before I can go to sleep because I felt guilty that he’s having this difficulty and I don’t.” What Joseph’s mom did not grasp at the time was how much his condition would affect him not just at home but also at school.

Joseph’s tics consist of movements with his wrists, feet, and neck. “I have a wrist tic that actually makes my wrist really tired after a while, after writing,” Joseph said. “I can write for a very short period of time.” Torres said he has been diagnosed with Carpal tunnel syndrome in his right wrist, a condition that causes pain or numbness in the hand, wrist, and arm, and the reason he has difficulty writing. Torres said it is possible that he developed Carpal tunnel by rotating his wrist too much because of his tic.

Struggling with writing assignments because of his tics is not the only challenge Joseph faces in school. He also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, psychiatric disorders often associated with Tourette syndrome. “Tourette syndrome often has other things that travel along with it: OCD, attention deficit disorder; sometimes it’s a constellation,” Dr. Pourfar said. “A lot of times the tics are not the biggest problem. In a lot of patients, it’s actually the obsessive-compulsive behaviors, or the attention deficit behaviors, that are much more disruptive to, let’s say, their school performance.”

Torres said that Joseph’s teachers do not understand the disorder and the underlying conditions, and tend to think that he has behavioral problems. “The more difficult challenge for Joseph is his internal challenges, things you cannot see,” she said. “His focusing…his OCD.” Those are more of his challenges than the actual tics alone.” In describing his condition at school Joseph said, “The teacher’s reaction, most of the time, is not a good reaction. They think that I’m just lazy.”

Several education specialists who work with kids with Tourette syndrome said that organization is a common problem among students with the disorder, and that ADHD often affects a person’s ability to organize. “Kids who have processing disorders tend to be very disorganized,” Sue Conners, education specialist and president of the Tourette Syndrome Association of Greater New York State, said. Joseph is no exception. He has a difficult time organizing his schedule and does not always hand his homework assignments on time.

In an effort to help Joseph’s teachers understand his neurological disorder and the psychiatric disorders from which he suffers, Joseph’s mom meets with them at the beginning of every school year. In September 2014, Torres met with school administrators and teachers from I.S. 93, the public middle school in Queens where Joseph attends seventh grade. She said it took about two months until Joseph’s new teachers grasped his condition. In December 2014 he appeared to be doing very well in school, according to his mom.

Torres said it came as a shock when she received, in mid-February, emails from the school that said that her son was failing four out of his seven classes. One Tuesday afternoon in February, Torres received an email from Joseph’s science teacher, alerting her that Joseph had not handed in homework assignments. The teacher was sending Joseph home with some work that needed to be turned in at the end of the week in order for it to be counted for that marking period. But Joseph did not complete his assignments on time. On that following Friday, Grace Sears, the assistant principal, emailed Torres to let her know that Joseph would not pass science that quarter because of “missing homework, assessment scores and now no scores for three projects.” She added that she hoped Torres would review her son’s data on Pupil Path the following quarter “to ensure his success.” Pupil Path is a website for the New York City public schools where parents can see the date and the name of their children’s homework assignments, as well as their grades. Torres described Pupil Path as a confusing system that does not describe what the assignments are. Handouts are not seen or available to download on the website, so she does not know what her son has to do.

The bad news did not end with the science class. Soon after receiving the science teacher’s email, Torres emailed the physical education teacher to discuss Joseph’s failing grades in his class, according to information she found on Pupil Path. She asked for an extension for his missing work or an extra credit assignment so he could get a passing grade. In an email exchange, the teacher denied both requests, saying that he had already given Joseph extensions for his assignments. He also wrote that, “Joseph has difficulty following directions during physical education. To be specific, Joseph lays on the floor of the gym during instruction, refuses to complete written work in class and [interrupts] instruction by talking to others in class.” Torres replied by suggesting that Joseph might have problems sitting on the floor because of his tics, and questioned whether he was allowed to use his Neo, a word processor he uses to do his written assignments, in class. The teacher answered that Joseph never mentioned an issue with his back, and that he did not know what tics were or what the Neo was. In a phone interview, Torres said she is frustrated with the lack of communication on the part of the school, and that the assistant principal should have reached out to her earlier. “I’m not saying that my son is a victim here,” Torres said. “Communication is what I’m really upset about.”

According to education experts, Joseph’s problems with his homework and behavior in physical education might have a more complex explanation than simply being lazy. Based on information described in the emails between Torres and I.S.93, Kathy Giordano, an education specialist for the national Tourette Syndrome Association, suggested that Joseph’s behavior is likely related to his Tourette’s and his OCD and ADHD. She described a possible challenge Joseph might have in processing directions, something that is not unusual for children with Tourette’s. In addition, he might lack sensory input, which could cause him to want to lie on the floor of the gym. “I know some kids come home from school and they lay on the living room floor, and the parents will take the cushions off the couch, and lay it on top of the kid, and then lay on top of the cushions,” Giordano said. “The mother lays on top of the cushions because the kid needs more sensory input.” Giordano’s explanation seems to fit Joseph’s case, based on Torres’s description of Joseph’s need for sensory input, caused by his OCD. “Sometimes when we are walking, he has to touch something,” she said. “If he doesn’t touch it, it’s like he can’t move on. He needs to go back and touch it.”

Difficulties between Torres and I.S. 93 have increased. Torres said that two weeks after she transferred Joseph to I.S. 93, in sixth grade, the school wanted to move him into a special education class because he had Tourette’s. Torres refused and insisted that Joseph remain in mainstream “because he doesn’t have a learning disability,” she said. “He just needs accommodations. He can learn, he understands all of the stuff. I don’t want him to fall behind.” I.S. 93 allowed Joseph to remain in mainstream classes, which are classes that follow the standard curriculum.

Despite the bumps on the road, I.S. 93 provided all the accommodations required in Joseph’s Individual Education Program (IEP). An IEP is a binding document, which contains all the accommodations and services that the school needs to provide to the student. Once the IEP is finalized, the school is obliged to comply. When a child is diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, the initial step is a request for an IEP evaluation, which can be requested by the parent, teachers, or another educator, if they feel the child needs special services.

Joseph is allowed to have an IEP because of his diagnosis of Tourette syndrome and its impact on his ability to function in school. Currently, his accommodations include: occupational therapy sessions, which he gets twice a week; testing accommodations where he gets a separate classroom with less distraction and extra time; somebody to read the tests for him; and a Neo, or some other type of word processor, for his writing difficulties. The federal law Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (I.D.E.A.) guarantees the rights of special needs students to receive these accommodations and demands compliance from the schools. According to the National Tourette Syndrome Association, the I.D.E.A. law classifies children with Tourette syndrome under “other health impairment” in order to “help correct the misperception of Tourette syndrome as a behavioral or conduct disorder and prevent the misdiagnosis of their needs.”

Torres said that I.S. 93 was complying with Joseph’s IEP, but that they still did not understand his condition. “They were doing it because the IEP said to do it, but they are not understanding the need for him to do it,” she said. “I really do not think at all that my teachers understand, cuz I guess it’s just confusing for them,” Joseph said. Teachers said that the greatest difficulty with kids who have mild or moderate cases of TS is to know when it is a tic, when it is the underlying conditions, and when the child is manipulating the situation. “You always have to go to the default setting of  ‘this is a tic and they can’t control it,’ until you really get to know that student,” Stefanie Piraino, a second grade teacher at Livonia Elementary School, in Livonia, N.Y., said. “You’re [going to] know when they are trying to manipulate or avoid the situation.” She stressed the necessity of cooperation and communication between the parents, the teachers, and the school administration. “When the teachers don’t believe me, it makes me really mad,” Joseph said. “It also increases my tics. When they don’t believe me, how is that helping me?”

I.S. 93 refused to comment on any issues associated with Joseph. Harry Hartfield, deputy press secretary for the DOE Office of Media Relations, was contacted several times by phone and email, and refused to answer any questions or requests for comments. But an official at the Special Education Office from the New York City DOE, who talked on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to give information to the press, said that when schools do not have the necessary supports or skill sets to work with a student with TS, the general procedure is that they reach out to a network within the DOE that can provide what the school needs. “There is a support network that every school is affiliated with,” the official said. The administrator from the network would then help the school to set up the necessary supports for the child’s academic success, such as training for the teachers who work with that student, for example. The networks provide education and administrative support to the schools. They are, in turn, supported by education clusters, which respond to the central DOE.

The official said that there is no cookie-cutter approach when working with students who have Tourette’s, and that the department looks at each case individually. “Not every student who has Tourette syndrome is going to need the same type of supports, or the same level of supports,” he said. “It depends on the severity of the disability and how it impacts on his functioning in school.”  The IEP, for instance, is not the only support in place for kids with special needs. They might use other types of accommodations, such as a 504, which provides, among other things, a structured learning environment, different testing accommodations, and medical and transportation services for kids who did not qualify for an IEP. Since I.S. 93 has refused to comment, it is unclear whether they requested support or training for their teachers.

Tourette syndrome is a complex disorder and, according to doctors, there is still much that medical science does not know about it yet. It is difficult to find an accepted, definitive number of children who are affected by the disorder in the United States. For instance, a Center for Disease Control (CDC) study estimates that Tourette’s affects 138,000 children, but it also acknowledges that this number could be higher depending on the study. Dr. Pourfar said that a lot of TS patients do not follow up with their treatments when their condition improves, and disappear from the system, which makes getting longitudinal data in the United States very hard. Another difficulty is the large spectrum of tics associated with to Tourette syndrome, and their different degrees of severity. “A lot of people live relatively normal lives with Tourette syndrome, and a percentage of them is just devastated,” Dr. Pourfar said. “We only capture the people that come to us. Some of them never come to us because they have tics and they live with it, and they don’t seek help.”

Today it is estimated that 86 percent of the children diagnosed with Tourette’s have also been diagnosed with at least one additional mental condition, according to data on the CDC website. OCD and ADHD are the most common underlying conditions associated with Tourette syndrome. “Forty to seventy percent of patients have one or both,” Dr. Pourfar said. And studies suggest that Tourette syndrome might be a hereditary disorder, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), affecting boys three to four times more than girls. “We believe there is a genetic component to Tourette syndrome, and you can see it in multiple family members, but the majority of people with Tourette’s actually don’t have any family history of it,” Dr. Alon Mogilner, a neurosurgeon who performs brain surgery for Tourette’s patients at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said. New clinical and genetic research is being conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Tourette syndrome to find information that would help understand TS genetic risk factors, as well as new findings regarding TS and the co-existing conditions, such as OCD and ADHD.

Joseph’s disorder is complex and his IEP might not be enough to help him achieve academic success. Education specialists stress the need for understanding, acceptance, and patience by the teachers and the school. That translates into trying to find alternative methods to solve Joseph’s behaviors. For instance, both Conners and Giordano suggested that the school performs a functional behavior assessment (FBA) to understand when and how Joseph’s behaviors tend to appear, which is also recommended on the NYC DOE website. Depending on the results of the FBA, the school might develop a behavior intervention plan (BIP), which would include intervention strategies to curb the behaviors. Conners pointed out that the student’s parents can request this from the school and can ask for an assessment appropriate for someone with Tourette’s. “The schools often have their own assessments, but they don’t take into consideration neurological difficulties,” she said.

Additionally, the education specialists recommended training teachers when there is a student with TS in their classroom, and assigning a separate teacher to work with the student on a daily basis to help him with his organization issues and to assist him with keeping with his homework. Conners also suggested an assistant technology evaluation, in which the school would see what are the available technologies that could help Joseph with his writing and organization issues. She is a strong proponent of using an iPad instead of a Neo because the iPad is better for organization and allows for students to immediately email assignments to teachers. It also offers apps that can help with reading, writing, and note taking. “Many schools need more education,” Brad Cohen, an assistant principal at an elementary school in Atlanta, G.A., said. “They need to learn not only what is Tourette syndrome, but about the accommodations to help these kids find success.”

Some public schools are setting an example of what can be done to help students with Tourette’s. In the small town of Livonia, N.Y., Livonia Elementary School seems very supportive of students with special needs, according to one of its teachers, Piraino. The school also tends to maintain students with mild or moderate cases of TS within the regular mainstream classes. “We truly, truly, try to keep the kids within the mainstream, and put the support services in the classroom, within the regular classroom, rather than pulling them out, and I’d mean providing them an one-on-one aid, who could see when things are escalating,” Piraino said. Livonia Central School District has a full time occupational therapist, a full time physical therapist, a school psychologist, a psychologist intern, teacher assistants - for when students need one-on-one assistance, and a school home coordinator, who functions as a liaison between the families and the school. “Essentially, our administration was fabulous,” Piraino said, in regards to the school’s handling of her students with Tourette syndrome.

It is unclear whether Joseph will have tics for the rest of his life, or whether they are going to disappear once he becomes an adult. Studies show that in about half of the cases the kids became tic-free after age 18. “Know that there is hope,” Dr. Mogilner said. “This is a disease that can get better… people can get cured from Tourette’s spontaneously.”

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

Quinn’s Rise and Fall in New York Politics

Profile produced for my writing class at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Date: December 14, 2014

Prof.:  Dean Steve Coll

NOTES: This story was produced for a writing seminary, and we used secondary sources in that class. Quotes that come from secondary sources are marked with a number at the end of the paragraph, with the corresponding footnotes at the end of the story.

QUINN’S RISE AND FALL IN NEW YORK POLITICS

On a Friday night in late October 2012, in front of the Stonewall Inn, Christine Quinn stood on the stage, surrounded by hundreds of supporters. The atmosphere was uplifting. Kim Catullo, her wife, stood one step behind her on the podium, silently watching Quinn as she addressed the crowd. “You know what? If we turn everybody here and everybody you know and everybody they know out to the polls on Tuesday, people are gonna be shocked and surprised, and we are going to go into this runoff as winners!” \1

 The crowd erupted in applause and cheers, and music started blasting. Quinn took a step backwards, and Catullo pulled her in, hugging her. Quinn then turned around, looked at the people and waved. One by one, supporters climbed the stage, lining up to give the Speaker a hug.

 Exactly four days later, at the Dream Hotel in Chelsea, there was only quiet. Quinn and her supporters stared at flat-screen TVs in shock as anchors announced Bill de Blasio as the new Democratic nominee for mayor of New York. De Blasio had left her in third place with a meager 15 percent of the votes. Quinn’s eyes were glued to the screen as they started watering up. She got up and walked toward Catullo. Catullo hugged her. It was over.

 A middle-class girl from Long Island, Quinn moved to New York City soon after graduating from Trinity College, in Connecticut, in 1988. Upon her arrival in the city, she started working as a community organizer. Her entrance to New York politics effectively started when she was hired to manage Tom Duane’s City Council campaign, in 1991. He was elected and she became his chief-of-staff, a position she held for five years.

 “She’s the smartest person in the room,” said Jim Oddo, a former City Councilman. “I don’t mean that in an Al Gore way; she’s the most prepped, the most organized person.” /2

 In 1999, Quinn decided to run for city council, to represent her neighborhood of Chelsea. It was a district with gay voters; Quinn lived openly as a lesbian. Her journey and professionalism resonated with her neighbors.

 When she was in her mid-twenties, Quinn approached her father to tell him that she was gay. “It wasn’t a great moment,” Quinn recalled. “I went to see him in his apartment. I told him, he said, ‘never say that again.” They did not talk for some time.

 “And then he, as many parents do realize, he was harsh and didn’t react the way he would’ve wanted to, and then we put it behind us and moved on,” she said. “And he’s been incredibly always very supportive.”

 Between 2001 and 2005, Quinn was reelected three times. In 2006 she ascended to become the first female and gay New York City Council Speaker.

 “Even from her early days, as a housing advocate, she was super, super skilled politically,” Ginia Bellafante, a journalist at the New York Times, said.

 Yet as she aimed at the possibility of becoming mayor eventually, Quinn made decisions as a Speaker that did not please all Democrats.

 “Although she may have began with very progressive tendencies, I think her main goal was to get things done, get laws passed, and stand against the laws she didn’t want passed,” Bellafante said. “She tried to negotiate, she tried to be a pretty good stand between the mayor and the city council.”

 “As a Speaker of the council, she was viewed by many of her members - the council members - as a very driving and intense kind of a leader,” David Chen, a journalist at the New York Times, said.

 Quinn’s legislative decisions were viewed as being calculated to provide the maximum impact on her potential mayoral ambitions.

 “Almost every decision she made had to be viewed through the prism of mayoral politics. Whether that was fair or not, that was the conventional wisdom out there, and that was how people viewed her as a politician,” Chen said.

 Quinn received a lot of criticism in 2010, when she refused to bring to vote a bill that would give paid sick leave to employees of small businesses.

“There were certain things, certain legislations that she blocked because the Bloomberg administration didn’t support it, but she was also doing her own political dance,” Kate Taylor, a journalist at the New York Times, said. “Even though she was a Democrat, she wanted to seat herself into that moderate mold and she wanted to attract the wealthy, sort of establishment parties, who supported Bloomberg.”

 “She wasn’t motivated as much by her own idealism that she had when she was young,” Bellafante said.

 “She had to make the transition from being a liberal activist, with roots in Chelsea which, you know, is one of the more liberal parts of the city, to being a citywide official,” Chen said. “She had to balance all those interests in there for her to be more practical, a little more pragmatic in getting some things done.”

 One of the major sources of Quinn’s identity became her relationship with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

 “I think they were friendly, I don’t think they were close personal friends, and their views were not completely at odds, obviously, but when Christine Quinn was first elected to the City Council, she disagreed with him in a lot of things,” Taylor said. “Before he supported gay marriage, she would kind of bug him about that.”

 “She brought waffles to City Hall to mock his waffling stance on same-sex marriage, which she ultimately supported,” Taylor recalled.

 When dealing with Bloomberg, Quinn usually chose the path of cooperation instead of confrontation.

 “When she became a Speaker, I think someone from the administration approached her and said, ‘you can get a lot more done by working with us.’ And she really took that approach,” Taylor said.

 “Quinn, who always came across as [having] a background as a pretty vocal liberal activist, made the calculation when she became Speaker that she had to forge a productive working relationship with Bloomberg, in order to make a run for mayor,” Chen said.

 The turning point in their political cooperation came in 2008, when Bloomberg needed a favor from Quinn. He wanted to have a third term in City Hall. Quinn then pushed the controversial term extension bill for a vote by the city council.

 “She had been planning to run for mayor herself - but she decided to support his effort to list term limits in the city council and get the city council to vote for it,” Taylor said. “And she earned a lot of gratitude from him for that.”  

 In November 2011, the council sued the administration for the first time under her leadership, over the mayor’s policy requiring city shelters to submit homeless people to a rigorous interview before offering them a bed.

 “I think they had a contentious relationship,” Bellafante said. “She was certainly tacked to the left of him. But they agreed on a lot of things and she was very good at playing politics. In terms of real estate development and friendliness to Wall Street, they had a lot in common.”

 “My sense of the relationship between the two of them, which was mainly on impressions from their staff, or maybe a little bit from Quinn herself, it was a kind of practical, and sort of transactional relationship,” Chen said.

 In August 2011, there were rumors in the city’s political scene that Bloomberg had been talking privately to other politicians and civic leaders about endorsing Quinn as his successor. However, the public endorsement never really came.

 “The mayor has said for years that Speaker Quinn has been a great partner in government and that view hasn’t changed,” Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said. /3

 “He treated her very respectfully, and I think the assumption was that he would endorse her for mayor, until it became clear in the election that his endorsement would only hurt her,” Taylor said, because New Yorkers were increasingly dissatisfied with Bloomberg.

 In March 2013, Quinn announced her bid for mayor.

 “I don’t think I anticipated how negative it would be from day one,” Quinn said. “I don’t think I anticipated just the negativity.” /4

A conflict between Quinn and animal rights activists escalated throughout the campaign. In almost every single event she attended, activists heckled her.

“I worry about some of the people out there, some of the haters,” Catullo said. “I don’t wanna go into detail, but we get letters, we’ve gotten a number of things. People don’t see what she’s had directed at her. People don’t always see that.” /5

 “It was the kind of level of intensity that the other candidates – the major candidates – did not encounter, and that was kind of striking,” Chen said. “She very rarely … would put out in advance schedule because I think they were very leery of one of these activists sort of crashing the scene and really disrupting things, and really making things difficult for her. So that was a factor that the public didn’t realize, that it really influenced the way she campaigned.”

 During the campaign, the animal rights groups paired with a committee called NYC Is Not For Sale 2013, forming the coalition “Anybody but Quinn.” Members of the coalition went to Quinn’s public events, protested in front of her door, and stopped passersby on the street to tell them not to vote for her.

 “The animal rights activists who were against the horse carriage trade really raised a lot of money to defeat her because she was never in favor of banning that industry,” Bellafante said.

 “There was an independent expenditure against her of over $1 million in negative advertising,” Mike Morey, spokesperson in Quinn’s campaign, said. “It was a group that desired to ban horse carriages. They were funded by groups that supported Bill de Blasio.”

 “The animal rights movement has focused on the horse carriage industry, and there’s nothing in New York like a small, well-organized group to make themselves heard,” Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at the New York University, said. /6

 The first televised debate took place on August 13. Quinn was wearing a pink dress, a light pink small jacket, and make up in soft shades of rose. As the other candidates confronted her about doing a backroom deal with Bloomberg for the term extension, her lips sealed tightly as she looked at them, her head tilting down a little to the side, and a small frown formed on her forehead. Her arms were securely locked at the side of her body, her hands clasped each other on the podium, and her feet were militarily close together. Only her right thumb seemed out of place, nervously caressing her left hand. Her answers had a controlled tone of voice, different from her other public appearances.

 “It just seems like it was so unnatural, and so orchestrated, that a lot of voters felt uncomfortable in the end with her,” Chen said. “They didn’t think she was as authentic as they would’ve liked.”

 Quinn was also criticized for her choice of outfit because it did not seem to square with the business-like approach she had usually taken on before.

 “It seemed out of character and there was a sense that she was trying to overcompensate and appeal to the general electorate,” Chen said. “And also her performance during that first debate was viewed as very scripted.”

 In the last debate, the issue of the paid sick leave bill was brought up by De Blasio, who asked Quinn why she had blocked it for three years. She answered that she had helped pass the law in 2013.

 “That really put her in a difficult position because she was trying to appeal to the business community and get their support, but at the same time, obviously, she had to run a democratic primary,” Taylor said.

 From March through August, Quinn had been ahead in the polls. After the first debate, Bill de Blasio appeared as the new frontrunner, with Quinn falling to second, and then to third place. She never recovered the first position again.  

 “So, there’s two things: the behind the scenes, sort of anxiety, because of all these protesters, and the other is these debate performances, where she came across as less than authentic, or a little too scripted which, I think, reinforced the image of her being a sort of insincere person who would do anything or say anything to get elected,” Chen said.

 On election night, when it was clear she had been defeated, Quinn, Catullo, and the campaign team left the hotel to address supporters.

 “There’s a young girl out there who was inspired by the thought of New York’s first woman mayor and said to herself, ‘You know what? I can do this,” Quinn said. /7

 She then thanked everyone, and the crowd exploded in applauses. Quinn turned to her right, where Catullo was standing, and gave her a long hug. She, then, turned again to her supporters, smiled, and waved.

“Obviously, in the end of the day, the voters had a different vision at that moment in time, what they believed they needed in the mayor,” Quinn said.

 “There was also a Bloomberg fatigue in New York against her. Even though Bloomberg was still popular in New York, people saw her as a continuation of Bloomberg and they had the desire to move on,” Morey said. He said he does not believe the term extensions were a deciding factor in the election: “Some New Yorkers couldn’t get over that. Also Bill de Blasio also supported the term extension when he was a city comptroller. So, no, it wasn’t a deciding factor.”

 “She also lost because her team was very conscious and they thought they were running this campaign of inevitability from the very beginning,” Chen said. “A lot of people in the inside, reporters included, felt that she was not a strong frontrunner in the very beginning, and that a lot of the polls were inaccurate and based on name recognition.”

 After leaving city politics, Quinn has been working with a few different non-profits, such as the Athlete Ally, which fights homophobia in sports, and the Naral Pro-Choice New York, an abortion rights groups. She said most of this work is done pro-bono.

 “I just worked with the governor’s campaign on the effort to create the Women’s Equality Party, which was successful and exciting, and new,” Quinn said. “I never created a party before, so that was fun.”

 Quinn deflects a little when she talks about watching the new mayor in action. “Obviously, it was not the plan that I had, but that said, what I wanted was to open the paper everyday and to see things in this city and country get better,” she said.

When talking about De Blasio’s soon-to-be bill banning the horse carriages, Quinn’s reaction is a brisk, fast answer. “Clearly the mayor and I have a different view on that,” she said. “We’ll see what happens as time goes on.”

 Her future plans are not yet clearly shaped, but government does not seem to be in it.

“My goal and hope is to continue to find ways to be of service and to work on the issues that I care about and try to help in a different role than in government and make the city a better place,” Quinn said.

 FOOTNOTES:

1/: Christine Quinn: “…if we turn everybody here…”: New York Observer, “Christine Quinn rallies LGBT supporters outside Stonewall Inn,” 9/6/13.

2/: Jim Oddo: “We’ve known each other since 1992…”: New York Magazine, “Quinn in the Slush,” 5/19/08.

3/: Howard Wolfson: “The mayor has said…”: New York Post, “Mayor’s Christine nod now in doubt,” 8/5/12.

4/: Christine Quinn: “…how negative it would be…”:  New York Times, “Hers to Lose,” documentary, 9/26/13.

5/: Kim Catullo: “I worry about some of the people…”: New York Times, “Hers to Lose,” documentary, 9/26/13.

6/: Mitchell Moss: “…animal rights movement has focused…”: New York Times, “Hers to Lose,” documentary, 9/26/13.

7/: Christine Quinn: “There’s a young girl…”: New York Observer, “Christine Quinn for New York,” 9/10/13.

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

Profile: Ydanis Rodriguez

Profile produced for my reporting class at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Unpublished. 

Date: October 11, 2014

Ydanis Rodriguez in his office

As Ydanis Rodriguez was leaving home to go to an Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park, his wife Yarisa asked him to be careful. She reminded him that they had to go to their daughter’s school meeting later that morning. He never made it to the meeting that day, but he made it to the cover of the New York Times Magazine “The Protester” edition.

 “I did have no plans to be arrested,” the council member for Washington Heights, Inwood and Marble Hills said. “My plan that day was to be there, see what’s going on, make sure that there was no excessive use of force.”

 The participation in the Occupy Wall Street protest wasn’t the only time that Rodriguez was arrested for civil disobedience as an elected official. In 2010, he was arrested, along with other council members, for protesting against the then recently passed Arizona immigration law. This measure allowed state law enforcement officers to determine a person’s immigration status during a stop if the officer believed the person to be an illegal immigrant.    

 The difference between the two instances, however, is that in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest he was allegedly beaten on the head by a police officer as he was trying to identify himself as a councilmember.

“For me it was a decision that the administration took that day, to clean the park, and not only had they stopped an elected official from being able to witness what was going on in the park, but they also stopped people from the media,” he said. He was referring to the freelance journalists who were there with him, and who were also arrested.

 “It wasn’t a good day for democracy in New York City,” he said. “It is clear to me that they don’t understand that you can take people from the park, but you cannot take people from the movement.”

 He reencountered many of the people he had seen at the Occupy Wall Street movement in later protests. They were all there during protests for better working conditions for fast food workers, in the movements supporting the struggle of car wash workers and, more recently, in the Climate Change march.

 “What you see is the same faces that were in the movement,” he said. “So the movement will not leave our society until we address the major issues that affect our whole world, which is the issue of inequality.”

 When asked about the efficacy of protesting in changing large issues such as inequality and climate change, his brows furrowed slightly as he let go of a profound sigh.

 “Look, I believe in the organizing movement,” he said. He had the expected reaction of a man whose life has been marked by community activism.

 Son of agricultural workers in the Dominican Republic, Rodriguez arrived in the United States in 1983, when he was 18. He came with one of his sisters (he has 13 siblings) to join the rest of his family who was already in Washington Heights, in New York.

 In his first year in America, Rodriguez had several different jobs: first he washed dishes, then he worked in a cafeteria, and lastly he became a livery cab driver. That’s when he finally could make his way to college.

 “And at City College, one of the first actions that I was part of was organizing a take-over of the administration building at City College, in 1988, against tuition increase and budget cuts,” he said.

 The takeover took place while Rodriguez was still an undergraduate pursuing his B.A. in political science. Later, in 1998, during his Master’s program in bilingual education, he and other two students at City College filed a lawsuit (Sigal v. Moses) against the then president of the college, Yolanda Moses, for nullifying the student government elections, which Rodriguez and the other two students had won. It took them ten years to win the lawsuit.

 By the time he won, Rodriguez was already a teacher at the school he had co-founded, Gregorio Luperon High School, where he taught for 13 years. The school was created to be a bridge, providing a transition between Spanish to English classes for students newly arrived from Latin America.

 Yokarina Duarte, Rodriguez’s former student and current deputy chief of staff for community affairs at his office, remembers the day Rodriguez explained the takeover of the City College building. It was a Saturday, and Rodriguez was teaching a group of students from Gregorio Luperon in one of the rooms the City College had given to the community after the 1988 protests.

 “He explained to us that they had to do different rallies, and in one of the rallies they took over City College, and nobody could get out of City College, no guard could get into City College, because they were protesting against tuition increase,” she said. “So, as part of the deal, they were able to gain the second floor.”

 The second floor she refers to was a room used for Saturday classes in the pre-university program Rodriguez had founded in 1996, the Dominicans 2000, long after the 1988 protests. The group met every Saturday to help students from Gregorio Luperon with homework, English language enhancement, academic tutoring on math, sciences and social studies, sports, and arts. All the teachers, including Rodriguez, who provided help to the students did so as volunteers.

 Milton Baez, a teacher at Gregorio Luperon and Rodriguez’s former co-worker, remembers seeing Rodriguez long before they worked together at the school.

 “In the Dominicans 2000, he was really the lead person there,” he said. “In the sittings, in the protest at City College, basically he was one of the leaders in the committee.”

Baez recalls that, while he was teaching there, Rodriguez was always organizing student groups to do community work. 

“There was a drive for keeping the streets clean, and he would get from the sanitation department, he would get shovels, and rankers, and plastic bags,” Baez recalls. “And he would go around the community cleaning, cleaning the streets. And the students would participate.”

 He added, “Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been an organizer. He likes to do stuff around the community.”

 Duarte’s first trip to Washington, D.C., was with Rodriguez and other school employees. The school had taken the students to the capital to protest against the war in Iraq.

“They got a free bus,” she said. “I don’t know how they got a free bus, but we had a wonderful time. We were making jokes, we were talking, we were singing in the bus all the way to Washington, D.C.”

 Teachers and students marched and chanted together that day. Rodriguez’s chant was “We cannot give up! We cannot give up!”

 “Ydanis was very good at it, making sure that we knew the importance, the difference that we were making by expressing support for a good cause,” Duarte said.

 In his office in Washington Heights, locals always come to ask the councilman for help. On the day of this interview, just after noon, a woman rushed into the office. She was shaking and spoke to the receptionist in Spanish. Her nephew had died in a hospital and she wanted to see Rodriguez to ask him to help send her nephew’s body back to the Dominican Republic.

 As a councilman, Rodriguez sits on eight City Council committees, proposing legislation on education, housing, transportation, and sanitation, among others. For instance, he was one of the sponsors of the local law to reduce the use of carryout bags, in which people would be required to pay five cents for plastic bags at shops, convenience, and grocery stores.  

 It seems like Rodriguez continues fighting, but this time from inside the establishment he once fought so hard against.

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

New York Magazine

Two articles published in the New York Magazine in May and June 2012, under my former last name (Mocarski). I was also the assistant editor at the time (2 last images down here). 

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

The General Studies Student Council held its first meeting of the semester last night. Michelle Inaba Mocarski has all the details on the council's budget and increased enrollment in the School of General Studies: The meeting opened with a moment of silence for those who died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, eleven years ago yesterday. The tone got lighter after that, though, with baked goods and an ice-breaking game of 'Would you rather...?' GSSC rolled out its budget for this academic year, which is much smaller than last year's budget because this year GSSC has only $277 in rollover funds. Two years ago, the GS dean of students' office told GSSC that it had access to $30,000 in surplus funds that the council hadn't known about, but the council has used up those funds over the last two years.

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/09/12/week-gssc-budget-crunch

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorApril 20, 2012, 4:49am

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/20/gs-class-day-speaker-swapped-computers-classics

Thomas Reardon, GS ’08, after creating Internet Explorer, turned in his computer when he arrived at college.

General Studies students don’t shy away from Hillel. According to Hillel President Daniel Bonner, CC ’13, the organization serves at least 200 GS students, most of whom are enrolled in the General Studies/Jewish Theological Seminary joint program, each year.

But Hillel is the exception rather than the rule, as GS students tend to avoid student groups at Columbia. In an effort to change that, SGB and the General Studies Student Council have formed a task force to examine GS involvement in SGB organizations.

Former Student Governing Board chair Barry Weinberg, CC ’12, proposed the task force to GSSC President Jacqueline Thong, GS ’12, in January. Weinberg said he wanted to “examine GS participation in student groups and ways it could be easier or more attractive for GS students to participate,” and Thong said the goal of the task force is to “find out what students think and how we can improve their engagement on campus, and how we can increase or encourage them to participate.”

Both of them are members of the task force, which is composed of SGB members, GSSC members, and other GS students.

Hillel executive board member Ariel Brickman, GS/JTS ’13, said that it is often difficult for nontraditional students at GS to get involved in groups, as many of them “are also balancing jobs, families, in addition to often times not living near campus.”

“I also think that what makes it different is that, in general, GS is very separated from the other schools,” Brickman said. “And bridging that divide and moving beyond the labels of our respective schools is not always easy.”

Three-step plan According to GSSC vice president of communications Jennifer Wisdom, the task force has devised a three-part plan to gauge GS students’ interest in groups and find out potential obstacles to their getting involved in those groups.

The first part of that plan is already complete—task force members conducted in-person interviews with GS students. Wisdom said that students identified age differences, residence hall locations, and meeting times as some of the factors that stop them from participating in groups.

“Some students are older and feel they are treated differently from clubs because they are so, making it hard to be cohesive with their club members,” Wisdom, who is heading the task force, said.

The second part of the plan is holding focus groups, with both students who are and students who aren’t active in SGB groups. GSSC and SGB expect to have the first focus groups assembled by April 1, and the task force will use the interviews to tailor its questions for the focus groups.

The third phase of the initiative will be a GS-wide survey with questions based on the information gathered in the interviews and focus groups. Once the project is done—probably by the end of the semester—GSSC and SGB also plan to survey non-GS undergraduates.

Task force members will use the information they gather to develop a strategy for getting more GS students involved in student groups. They will present recommendations to the administration, SGB, and GSSC.

“The diversity of GS is what makes us so wonderful, but it also will make this a terribly difficult issue to solve with one specific approach,” Wisdom said. “We hope to find some answers and more importantly, produce tangible results from those answers that will benefit GS students and hopefully get them more active with SGB clubs.”

Motivations and perceptions GSSC member Angelica Hoyos, GS ’13, believes that extracurricular activities are a fundamental part of an education. But she said that many GS students don’t get involved in student groups because they believe that they do not have much in common with younger undergraduates.

“It is lack of motivation, or they have not found strong ties with a particular group,” Hoyos said. “If you look at the MilVets, you see how actively engaged they are in campus. Yes, most of them are GS-ers, but there are a few from other schools. The difference is that they have a common bond, which I believe GS-ers are reluctant to try to find somewhere else.”

GSSC vice president of student events Scott Bacon, GS ’13, said that a common misperception among GS students is that most clubs and activities on campus are geared toward traditional-aged students.

“Every club I’ve wanted to participate in has been more than welcoming, but this sentiment does vary in the GS student body,” he said. “However, undergraduate student events—Glass House Rocks, Lerner Pub, and the like—are definitely more oriented toward the three other undergraduate student bodies.”

Trexy Ching, GS ’12, doesn’t want to get involved in campus life. Ching said that she has already built a social network in New York, and that clubs aren’t generally geared toward GS students.

“Most of them are run by traditionally aged undergrad students,” Ching said. “Being that I am older, I do feel slightly uncomfortable socializing with people that are about a decade younger than me.”

GSSC member Nikki Morgan, GS ’13, said she decided to get involved in campus life to balance her academic life. She said she joined GSSC because she wanted to give back to Columbia, which has given her many opportunities.

“I think the task force is a great starting point. I feel that this will diagnose some of the problems we may have regarding GS participation, and then we can act accordingly,” Morgan said. “I think increasing participation won’t happen overnight, and that this can only come from fostering feelings of camaraderie and school pride—not only within GS, but as part of Columbia University as a whole.” Madina Toure contributed reporting.

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

The Student Governing Board and the General Studies Student Council have formed a task force to find ways to get GS students more involved in student groups.

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorApril 4, 2012, 5:32am

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/04/gssc-sgb-examine-gs-involvement-student-groups

General Studies students don’t shy away from Hillel. According to Hillel President Daniel Bonner, CC ’13, the organization serves at least 200 GS students, most of whom are enrolled in the General Studies/Jewish Theological Seminary joint program, each year.

But Hillel is the exception rather than the rule, as GS students tend to avoid student groups at Columbia. In an effort to change that, SGB and the General Studies Student Council have formed a task force to examine GS involvement in SGB organizations.

Former Student Governing Board chair Barry Weinberg, CC ’12, proposed the task force to GSSC President Jacqueline Thong, GS ’12, in January. Weinberg said he wanted to “examine GS participation in student groups and ways it could be easier or more attractive for GS students to participate,” and Thong said the goal of the task force is to “find out what students think and how we can improve their engagement on campus, and how we can increase or encourage them to participate.”

Both of them are members of the task force, which is composed of SGB members, GSSC members, and other GS students.

Hillel executive board member Ariel Brickman, GS/JTS ’13, said that it is often difficult for nontraditional students at GS to get involved in groups, as many of them “are also balancing jobs, families, in addition to often times not living near campus.”

“I also think that what makes it different is that, in general, GS is very separated from the other schools,” Brickman said. “And bridging that divide and moving beyond the labels of our respective schools is not always easy.”

Three-step plan According to GSSC vice president of communications Jennifer Wisdom, the task force has devised a three-part plan to gauge GS students’ interest in groups and find out potential obstacles to their getting involved in those groups.

The first part of that plan is already complete—task force members conducted in-person interviews with GS students. Wisdom said that students identified age differences, residence hall locations, and meeting times as some of the factors that stop them from participating in groups.

“Some students are older and feel they are treated differently from clubs because they are so, making it hard to be cohesive with their club members,” Wisdom, who is heading the task force, said.

The second part of the plan is holding focus groups, with both students who are and students who aren’t active in SGB groups. GSSC and SGB expect to have the first focus groups assembled by April 1, and the task force will use the interviews to tailor its questions for the focus groups.

The third phase of the initiative will be a GS-wide survey with questions based on the information gathered in the interviews and focus groups. Once the project is done—probably by the end of the semester—GSSC and SGB also plan to survey non-GS undergraduates.

Task force members will use the information they gather to develop a strategy for getting more GS students involved in student groups. They will present recommendations to the administration, SGB, and GSSC.

“The diversity of GS is what makes us so wonderful, but it also will make this a terribly difficult issue to solve with one specific approach,” Wisdom said. “We hope to find some answers and more importantly, produce tangible results from those answers that will benefit GS students and hopefully get them more active with SGB clubs.”

Motivations and perceptions GSSC member Angelica Hoyos, GS ’13, believes that extracurricular activities are a fundamental part of an education. But she said that many GS students don’t get involved in student groups because they believe that they do not have much in common with younger undergraduates.

“It is lack of motivation, or they have not found strong ties with a particular group,” Hoyos said. “If you look at the MilVets, you see how actively engaged they are in campus. Yes, most of them are GS-ers, but there are a few from other schools. The difference is that they have a common bond, which I believe GS-ers are reluctant to try to find somewhere else.”

GSSC vice president of student events Scott Bacon, GS ’13, said that a common misperception among GS students is that most clubs and activities on campus are geared toward traditional-aged students.

“Every club I’ve wanted to participate in has been more than welcoming, but this sentiment does vary in the GS student body,” he said. “However, undergraduate student events—Glass House Rocks, Lerner Pub, and the like—are definitely more oriented toward the three other undergraduate student bodies.”

Trexy Ching, GS ’12, doesn’t want to get involved in campus life. Ching said that she has already built a social network in New York, and that clubs aren’t generally geared toward GS students.

“Most of them are run by traditionally aged undergrad students,” Ching said. “Being that I am older, I do feel slightly uncomfortable socializing with people that are about a decade younger than me.”

GSSC member Nikki Morgan, GS ’13, said she decided to get involved in campus life to balance her academic life. She said she joined GSSC because she wanted to give back to Columbia, which has given her many opportunities.

“I think the task force is a great starting point. I feel that this will diagnose some of the problems we may have regarding GS participation, and then we can act accordingly,” Morgan said. “I think increasing participation won’t happen overnight, and that this can only come from fostering feelings of camaraderie and school pride—not only within GS, but as part of Columbia University as a whole.” Madina Toure contributed reporting.

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

GSSC hosts a gala event every year, but the 2012 GSSC Venetian Masquerade Gala is the biggest one it has ever hosted.

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorApril 2, 2012, 7:00am

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/02/450-general-studies-students-turn-out-masquerade-gala

Among the masked faces at the ball, Erin O’Brien, GS ’12, and her boyfriend Dustin Reyes stood out, dressed as characters from “The Phantom of the Opera.” The couple spent two weeks creating outfits from the scene in which the Phantom appears at a masquerade ball.

“I’m more of a girl version of the Phantom, in a way,” O’Brien said. “Both characters are … just extensions of our true selves,” she said.

O’Brien and Reyes were two of the 450 General Studies students and guests who packed the house on Saturday for their student council’s largest event of the year, a Venetian gala held at Capitale in SoHo.

GSSC hosts a gala event every year, but the 2012 GSSC Venetian Masquerade Gala is the biggest one it has ever hosted.

The first 300 tickets sold out within two hours, according to Jacqueline Thong, GS ’12 and GSSC president. In response to the demand, GSSC released a new batch of tickets, of which 50 were sold in less than two minutes.

Over 50 venues were considered. The challenge, Thong said, was to find a venue that was both appropriate for the occasion and “something that could fit our very tight budget.”

“I’m blown away by this place,” Andrew O’Connor, GS ’12, said.

“I expected a very high-end sort of event, and we certainly got it. This is extremely lovely,” O’Brien said.

Patrick Raftery, GS ’16, was dressed in a tuxedo and skull mask.

“When I first saw that it was Venetian masquerade … I thought I was gonna wear a cape, a monocle, and a top hat. And then I saw the tickets, and it said ‘black tie,’ so I had to go get a tux. And then I found my skull mask,” Raftery said.

The committee brought a jazz trio of Manhattan School of Music students, a quartet of student woodwind players, and DJ Kelly Kellam, GS. The ballgoers flooded the dance floor as soon as Kellam began DJing, and the room was still crowded until the very last song played at midnight.

“I danced my ass off,” Zac Chen, GS ’13, said. “I thought it was fantastic. I haven’t had this much fun in quite some time.”

“Everyone is in a really good mood, everyone is bringing really positive energy, and we have an amazing venue. So, everything is really working out,” Robbie LeDesma, GS ’13, said.

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

A Community Impact group sends Columbia students overnight to staff two Upper West Side homeless shelters weekly. The shelters need one volunteer every night to stay open.

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorMarch 2, 2012, 7:51am

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/03/02/staffed-students-homeless-shelters-stay-open

When Henry Zhang, CC ’12, arrived at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue Next Step Men’s Shelter on Wednesday night, volunteers had finished preparing dinner, and music was being played on the upper floors of the synagogue. The guests were about to arrive, and Zhang was there to stay the night as a volunteer.

“The first time I was here I was kind of nervous and shy,” Zhang said. But “they did their thing and it was very pleasant and easy going,” he said.

Zhang is a student volunteer with the Community Impact group Project for the Homeless, which provides volunteers for two Manhattan homeless shelters, both of them near Lincoln Center: the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue shelter, a men’s shelter, and the New York Society for Ethical Culture, a women’s shelter.

“It’s not dangerous, and it’s not scary,” Dane Cook, CC ’12 and PFH’s chief executive coordinator, said.

New York state law requires homeless shelters to have a non-homeless supervisor on the premises during all hours when the shelter is open. The Project for the Homeless group helps shelters stay open each night by recruiting Columbia and Barnard students to be those supervisors.

“They have to have someone there. If a volunteer doesn’t show up or if they don’t have a volunteer, they have to close the shelter for the night,” Cook said.

HIGH-IMPACT VOLUNTEERING “It’s a different kind of volunteering because, as Dane says, it’s high-impact,” Zhang said. “Just by being here, you’re helping the shelter to stay open.”

Sometime last semester, Zhang realized that he was going to graduate without having done much volunteer work while at Columbia. He found Project for the Homeless through Community Impact’s website.

“I really didn’t know what to expect because I haven’t actually volunteered at a homeless shelter before, and in my mind I expected something like a huge room, with lots of beds next to each other,” Zhang said. “But this area is really small and very nice, too,” he added.

Students usually arrive between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., when the synagogue volunteers are about to leave. All they have to do is be there—the shelter provides them with a private bedroom and bathroom, and they can spend the night studying, doing homework, or even sleeping. Lights go out at 11 p.m., and everyone wakes up at about 5:30 a.m.

“This type of shelter model is that the people who stay there are invested in the shelter, so they all have chores that they do, which means our volunteers do very little,” Cook said. “Our volunteers are the living, breathing person who’s there just to be there.”

Student volunteers can talk to the homeless men and women as much or as little as they want.

“Whatever you are comfortable with doing,” Cook said. “But I really enjoy talking to them because it kind of gives me a dose of reality you don’t get at Columbia.”

‘SOME KIND OF HOPE’ Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s shelter hosts about 10 people at a time, most of whom are returning guests and all of whom must be pre-screened for tuberculosis and drugs.

The two shelters served by PFH are both considered transitional shelters by the city, because they serve people who are in the process of getting public housing. The shelters provide them with showers, as well as dinners prepared by synagogue volunteers.

Cook said that based on his experience, the shelter’s guests average between 20 and 35 years old, and come from all walks of life.

“Generally, the population is black and Latino, but not always, not necessarily,” Cook said.

According to Cook, there are several reasons that people take refuge in shelters like these two.

“They are not the people that you normally think when you think of homelessness in New York,” he said. “These are people who are working on not being homeless. They are real people. They have jobs. They have lives. They have fallen under harder circumstances,” he said.

That’s what happened to Ginyar Ejiofor, 28, who was at the synagogue shelter on Wednesday night. Ejiofor moved to New York from Florida in search of new job opportunities, but he was also drawn by the city’s culture and the possibility of finding love.

“Pretty much employment opportunities, just life in general,” Ejiofor said when asked why he had moved to New York. “Employment opportunities, love—because of my own sexual orientation—culture here, just events in so many different areas.”

Ejiofor worked in retail and in journalism, but things started to change when he lost his job and was diagnosed with depression.

“Depression led to substance use, lack of motivation, and I guess, at the end, total isolation,” he said.

Ejiofor is still looking for a job, and he keeps himself busy by writing and blogging about fashion and life. He’s now in his second week at the shelter, and he said he appreciates the volunteers’ work.

“I know I’m not at the best situation, but it makes it a lot easier and manageable. And it’s really uplifting,” he said. “There’s a clean environment that I can come to, and it’s safe, and it’s warm ... So it’s a kind of recharge.”

Although Ejiofor’s situation is harsh, he hasn’t lost hope.

“In terms of motivation, I am more than I can see,” he said. “My existence is my validation. Can I do this? Can I kinda survive from this? And the answer is yes, because I’m still here. So, there is some kind of hope.”

‘NOTHING IN STORE’ The search for a better life is also what holds Alex, 29, in New York City. Alex, who was staying at the synagogue shelter Wednesday night, suffers from schizoaffective disorder, a psychiatric condition which combines schizophrenia and mood problems.

Alex, who did not want to give his last name, said he thinks that being in his hometown, Lancaster, Pa., worsens his condition.

“While I was there, I was in psychosis the whole time,” Alex said. “When I came here, the psychosis cleared up.”

Before being diagnosed, Alex worked for over a year as an English teacher in Korea. Upon returning to the United States, he got diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and took a job as a waiter in a golf club in Pennsylvania. He believes he moved to New York because of the mental issues this caused him.

“I came here with no plans, nothing in store,” he said.

Alex currently works 20 hours a week for the city’s meals-on-wheels program, delivering meals to clients. He has been living at the homeless shelter for four months, but he does not plan to move back to his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

“No, I’m not going back there,” he said.

‘A GREAT REALITY CHECK’ Both Cook and Zhang described volunteering with PFH as a very positive experience.

“Someone needed to be there for that shelter to be open that night for those guys to sleep in beds, under a roof, for the night,” Cook said. “And somebody has to do it.”

Cook also said he has learned from his experiences. Once, he said, a guest told him his life story, making a particular point to tell him to stay in school.

“When a homeless person is telling you very earnestly, ‘Stay in school and work hard in school,’ it’s such a great reality check,” Cook said.

The next morning, that guest offered to buy him a cup of coffee from a street cart.

Cook said he found himself in a moral dilemma: “Do I accept this person’s gift, who’s definitely in a tighter circumstance than myself? Do I accept him buying me coffee? Or do I say ‘Oh, no,’ because obviously I can pay for my coffee?” Ultimately, Cook decided it was appropriate to accept the coffee.

“The reason I think he wanted to buy me a cup of coffee ... was that he was really grateful for what the shelter provided for him, and he was really thankful for the volunteers that came down,” Cook said. “He liked meeting the Columbia kids who came down to volunteer.”

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

For GS student, Prop 8 trial was personal

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorFebruary 11, 2012, 10:20am

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/02/11/gs-student-prop-8-trial-was-personal

Ryan Kendall, GS ’13, sat on a hallway bench outside the courtroom on the morning of Jan. 20, 2010. Kendall was nervous, but focused. He was a man on a mission—he was about to serve as one of 19 witnesses against California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

On Tuesday—two years later—Kendall was finally able to celebrate a long-awaited victory: A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found Prop 8 to be unconstitutional, bringing gay marriage one step closer to a reality in the nation’s most populous state.

“One of the arguments used to take away equal rights from gays and lesbians is that we choose our sexual orientation,” Kendall said, recalling his role in the trial two years ago. “I was presented as evidence that sexual orientation is not a choice.”

When Kendall was 15, his parents sent him to “conversion therapy” at the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality after finding out that he was gay. At NARTH, Kendall said, his life became hell, and he started to believe that suicide was the only way out.

“They were teaching me that I was a terrible person—that I was unlovable, defective, and damaged,” Kendall said. “Plus I had lost my family over this issue, and that just was incredibly emotionally painful.”

But at age 16, Kendall successfully petitioned for his own custody, and he was able to end his treatment at NARTH.

“I couldn’t keep coming to conversion therapy because I would probably have committed suicide,” Kendall said. “And aside from suicide, my only option was to go to Human Services and have my parents’ rights revoked.”

At the Prop 8 trial, Kendall used his experiences to make the case that being gay is part of his fundamental identity, arguing that he can’t be stripped of his right to have a family based on that identity.

“I testified about my conversion therapy because people say being gay is a choice and use that argument to take away our rights,” Kendall said.

Gay marriage was legal in California for several months in 2008, before voters narrowly passed Prop 8 in November of that year. Following the trial, a federal district judge struck down Prop 8, and the court of appeals upheld that finding on Tuesday.

But same-sex marriage is likely to stay banned in California while the appeals process continues. Prop 8’s backers plan to appeal the most recent ruling, either to a larger panel of Ninth Circuit judges or directly to the United States Supreme Court.

Columbia Law School professor Suzanne Goldberg has also been a part of the legal opposition to Prop 8. In October 2010, Goldberg—who is the director of Columbia’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law—filed an amicus brief in appeals court on behalf of the center, arguing against Prop 8.

Any person or organization can file an amicus brief to provide information that might assist the court in reaching a decision. The appeals court’s ruling adopted some of the arguments presented in Columbia’s amicus brief, Goldberg said, adding that many organizations filed briefs.

“In a major case like this, many organizations want to add their views for the court’s consideration, to give the court additional ideas on how to think about the case,” she said.

In her amicus brief, Goldberg argued that California doesn’t have a legitimate reason to establish different marriage rules for same-sex and opposite-sex couples, as it treats those couples identically in all other ways.

“The Ninth Circuit point was the explanation that the rights had already been granted,” Goldberg said. “Giving it out and then taking it away shows a measure only to harm the couples. They have all of the basic rights of marriage, but not the name of marriage.”

Both Goldberg and Kendall said they were thrilled by the appeals court’s decision last week.

“The fundamental issue is whether or not you’re going to let people have their own families,” Kendall said. “And that’s the most basic right anyone gets: the right to their own family.”

After the trial, Kendall was interviewed by CNN and several other news outlets. He’s also become a character in the play “8,” which tells the story of the trial.

The play had a one-night Broadway premiere last September—with a cast including Morgan Freeman and John Lithgow—and in March it will debut in Los Angeles, where George Clooney and George Takei will star, among others. Kendall is portrayed by “The Book of Mormon” actor Rory O’Malley.

Reflecting on the trial, Kendall said that seeing Prop 8 declared unconstitutional made him feel like a “full citizen.”

“It’s a powerful thing for a court to declare what you already know: that you are equal just like anybody else,” Kendall said. “And each day it happens, it’s good for all of us everywhere, because it helps us approach that better world we are trying to build.”

But Kendall is still worried that other children will be put in the situation he was in. He believes that adults must “take away the stigma of being LGBT” in order to reduce youth suicide rates.

“Unfortunately, even if we win in this case, the reality is that many kids will still be shipped off to ‘straight’ camp. It’s an ugly truth,” Kendall said. “But at least when you start normalizing people who love each other, you start to make things better.”

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Ryan Kendall, GS ’13, was one of 19 witnesses against California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorFebruary 11, 2012, 10:20am

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O’Donnell, driving force behind NY same-sex marriage, weds

By

MICHELLE INABA MOCARSKI

Columbia Daily SpectatorFebruary 2, 2012, 3:42am

http://spc.columbiaspectator.com/2012/02/02/o’donnell-driving-force-behind-ny-same-sex-marriage-weds

After years of fighting for marriage equality, a local gay-rights champion was finally married this week.

New York State Assembly member Daniel O’Donnell, the first openly gay man to be elected to the New York State Assembly, married his partner of 31 years, John Banta, on Sunday.

O’Donnell, who lives in Morningside Heights and represents parts of the Upper West Side, Manhattan Valley, and Morningside Heights, was the legislative sponsor of the Marriage Equality Act, signed into law last June. That law legalized same-sex marriage in New York and granted gay couples the same marriage rights, responsibilities, and protections as heterosexual couples.

O’Donnell and Banta got engaged just minutes after the state legislature passed the act in June.

They were married on Sunday by Judith Kaye, the former chief justice of the state Court of Appeals, at Guastavino’s, the Upper East Side restaurant. At the ceremony, Kaye recalled O’Donnell urging his fellow Assembly members to pass the bill so that he could experience the same thing many of them had done “two or three times.”

The wedding was followed by a disco dancing party for more than 400 people, including O’Donnell’s sister, actress and comedienne Rosie O’Donnell. On Tuesday, O’Donnell and Banta left for their honeymoon in Paris.

The gay-marriage bill has been a long time in the making—it was initially passed by the Assembly, but not by the State Senate, in 2007. O’Donnell and other proponents led the bill to passage in the Assembly twice in 2009, only to see it stalled again in the Senate. In his fourth attempt, O’Donnell was successful in passing the bill in both the Assembly and Senate, and Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law on June 24.

THE ROAD AHEAD Passing the Marriage Equality Act was a moment of victory for O’Donnell and the gay-rights movement. But O’Donnell stressed that there was more progress to be made, including at the federal level. He said he viewed the decision of President Barack Obama, CC ’83, to no longer defend Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act—which establishes that only the marriage between a man and a woman is legitimate and refuses same-sex couples any federal benefits—as a watershed moment.

“Standing next to John when President Obama passed the law was an absolute feeling of euphoria,” O’Donnell said.

He said he’s pleased with the headway the gay-rights movement is making.

“Now we have the right to get married, to have a marriage license. Younger people are accepting it more now, which shows that we are moving in the right direction. We’ve come along all this way and things are moving forward,” O’Donnell said.

For O’Donnell, the next step is legalizing same-sex marriage in other states, so same-sex couples can have their rights recognized by the federal government.

“We don’t share the same legal rights as straight couples do,” O’Donnell said. “We need to get more people openly gay and lesbian in the congress, so we’ll be able to change some of the conversation at the federal level.”

Matt Martinez, CC ’13 and president of the Columbia Queer Alliance, said the next steps for the LGBT movement will be a two-fold process, at the state level as well as at the federal level.

“One step is getting more states to pass laws in favor of marriage equality for all citizens, which we will hopefully see soon in Washington, Maryland, and Maine,” Martinez said. “This leadership shown by governors for marriage equality, which I believe was sparked with Governor Cuomo’s determination to pass marriage equality in New York, is, I think, a powerful new force that many states will be utilizing in the future.”

Late Wednesday night, the Washington State Senate passed a similar bill to New York’s, almost guaranteeing it would become the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage, according to the New York Times.

MORE THAN MARRIAGE But gay rights goes beyond just marriage. Barry Weinberg, CC ’12 and co-president of Everyone Allied Against Homophobia, said that the future of the gay rights movement needs to focus more on the daily battle against discrimination toward LGBT individuals and expand the idea of equality.

“Marriage is a very big symbolic issue, but lots of things affect lots more people on a day-to-day basis than marriage,” Weinberg said. “And it’s dealing with these things and dealing with education, and sort of very visible tolerance saying that discrimination is not acceptable. Those are really the sort of fundamental day-to-day victories that the movement will have to keep fighting for.”

Some of the daily issues related to discrimination that need to be addressed, Weinberg said, include protection for LGBT individuals to express their orientation or gender without fear of being displaced from homes, fired from a job, or attacked on the street. Weinberg said state and local LGBT groups have been focusing on issues like these.

“It’ll be a lot about protecting everyone under this spectrum, especially the most vulnerable. It’ll be dealing with those populations whose needs are unmet,” Weinberg added.

O’Donnell also worked on a comprehensive anti-bullying bill for state public schools. He is the main sponsor for the Dignity for All Students Act, an anti-bullying bill that was signed into law in September 2010. The law, which comes into full effect on July 1, 2012, protects students from bullying and harassment, and was one of the first laws in state history to include gender identity and expression as protected categories.

“State school environments are very important, and extending that to college environment would also be very important,” O’Donnell said. “We need to do a better job at protecting our children.”

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

Newlywed O'Donnell and campus LGBT activists say the gay-right movement is headed in a good direction.

[michelleinaba-english-blog]

Taking the wheel - Daily Pilot

Published in the Daily Pilot on May 20, 2009, under my former last name (Mocarski)