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Pro-life speaker comes to campus
By The Front | April 13“There’s not a lot of pro-lifers on campus,” Lodjic said. “A lot of times they don’t know how to respond to people who disagree with them.”
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Beyond Vietnam, reflecting on MLK’s speech today
By The Front | April 1150 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave what some consider to be his most controversial speech. Exactly one year later, he was shot. The speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, was delivered in a New York City church on April 4, 1967. On Tuesday, April 4, Bellingham’s Veterans for Peace hosted an event to listen to sections of and discuss the speech and how it is still relevant half a century later. In the speech, King took a stance against the Vietnam War and the events that led up to it. He spoke out against policies created by the U.S. government and the powers at be, saying “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.” One of the planners of the event, Ellen Murphy, described the speech as the most powerful and dangerous of all of King’s speeches. “He (King) made it crystal clear of what the roots and structures of such an evil thing as the war on Vietnam are,” Murphy said. “In this speech, he calls them the giant triplets of racism, militarism and extreme materialism.” The goal of the speech was that we, as a country, need a radical revolution of values, Murphy said. “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society,” King said. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Yet, 50 years later, things have not changed, according to Western Washington University professor Vernon Johnson, who spoke at the event. “We are the most militaristic government and country in world history,” Johnson said. “According to the Peterson Foundation, the United States had spent more on military spending in 2015 then the next seven countries combined.” Bill Distler, another speaker from the event, is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He described how, at the time the speech was given, major news sources ‘bashed’ King, and his public approval rating dropped. “The war at that time was popular,” Distler said. “He (King) was advised by most of his friends, ‘Don’t do this.’” Despite the backlash when the speech was given, King’s speech is still being discussed. “We are not a force for peace in the world,” said Distler. “Dr. King says we’re the most powerful nation in the world, surely we can go down the path of promoting peace instead of war. We’re not doing that yet. It’s still relevant today.” One year after his speech to the day, King was shot and killed. “The day he died, I was in Vietnam,” Distler said. “My unit came in from the field, the news went around, and people started crying and screaming and taking their gear off and throwing it on the ground and kicking it, saying ‘they killed him.’” At the time, however, Distler was still in support of the war, like much of the public. It wasn’t until after the war that Distler began to take King’s speech seriously. “I don’t know when the speech started sinking it, but I’m glad it did,” Distler said.
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Award-winning poet visits Western
By The Front | April 6Dominique Christina’s poetry performance was not for the faint of heart. “Assume trigger warnings in everything I say,” Christina said. “If you are feeling triggered you should take care of yourself by whatever means.” Christina is an award-winning poet and activist who has won two Women of the World Poetry Slam championships and the 2013 National Underground Poetry Individual Competition, according to her website. She has performed for the families of Trayvon Martin, who was fatally shot at the age of 17 by a neighborhood watch volunteer, and Emmett Till, who was killed at the age of 14 after being accused of flirting with a white girl in 1955 in Mississippi, according to her website. Christina read poems about her childhood, losing her virginity, black kids getting shot and her experience dealing with her daughter’s period. The event took place in Fraser Hall room 102 on Monday, April 3. The poems Christina performs are never predetermined, she said. “I never know what I am going to read,” Christina said. “It is all about how I feel in a space and if I don’t feel safe, I do not reveal myself.” Christina said she had a lot to live up to because she came from a family activists and high achievers. One of her relatives has won the Congressional Medal of Honor and another is a baseball hall of famer. Even though she came from an accomplished family, Christina said she had to deal with violence and abuse growing up. “When violence introduces itself to you, you are not the same,” Christina said. “Your consideration of the world changes.” After talking about her childhood, she went on to speak and perform a poem about losing her virginity at the age of 16. “I planned it for eight months because I wanted to get it right,” Christina said. “If you do this the right way, right person and right time, you might be able to get your body back. Because, for me, it still belonged to my stepfather.” Next, Christina talked about black children who died in recent years. “There are critical conversations to have. About who is protected and who can be legitimately killed,” Christina said. “Because when they die, if they are vilified even in death, they are probably not in the protected class.” Christina wrote a poem dedicated to the mothers of black children who were shot called “Mothers of Murdered Sons.” “It is for three women in particular: Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till, Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton and Michael Brown’s mother Lesley McSpadden,” Christina said. The “Mothers of Murdered Sons” really made an impact on sophomore Daniel Kolb. “The most poignant poem and the one that brought me to tears was the one about mothers whose boys were murdered,” Kolb said. To conclude, Christina ended on a light note by talking about her daughter’s first period. “I threw her a period party with everybody showing up in red and we collectively raised the roof to my daughter’s shedding uterus.” Sophomore Brendan O’Neill enjoyed Christina’s no-filter approach to her performance “At first it was surprising, but it made sense,” O’Neill said. “In order to get issues out in the air and better understand them, it is way better to be open for people to feel a personal connection and share their own experiences.”
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Scent-free zones planned for Viking Union
By The Front | April 5For those who suffer from allergies or asthma, even the slightest fragrance wafting through the air can cause a serious reaction, including severe migraines, nausea and asthma attacks.
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Western opposes bill making presidential search private
By The Front | March 14Western’s next president could be decided without public input due to a bill that would allow public four-year institutions to privately select a candidate.
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Snowy conditions at Western prompt safety petition
By The Front and McKenna Cardwell | March 14
