Photographic Evidence

The Frame Matters, but So Does Justice

Hank Kalet Apr 30 ∙ Preview

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A Rutgers divestment rally, April 29. Photo: Hank Kalet.
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Tents now occupy Voorhees Mall at the center of Rutgers University’s College Avenue campus, with students pressing their demands for justice for Palestinians and university divestment from companies doing business with Israel.

The encampment is one of dozens around the country, many of which have been met with police crackdowns and threatened suspensions of students. It is too early to know how the Rutgers administration will respond — I write this at the very early stages of the action — but it is clear we have reached a tipping point for this pointless and murderous war.

We are approaching 35,000 dead in Gaza, killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in what some call a genocide. The word is contested, but the unremitting assault by the IDF has exceeded all logical proportions. If Israel’s actions in the days following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas could be seen as defensive — as the Netanyahu government and Israel’s supporters argue — the nearly seven months of total assault, which has leveled much of Gaza and has its population on the precipice of famine has left that thin rationale in tatters.

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The quick spread of these encampments are evidence of a refusal to tolerate the kind of brutality being imposed on innocent civilians by an Israeli government — with material support from the American government. The 60, 80, 100 encampments have a singular message: Not in our name.

What we are witnessing in Gaza, after all, is a series of war crimes, that build on a history of repression. I agree that the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas also constituted a war crime, but we are seven months in and it is disingenuous for us to keep pointing to the 1,200 dead Israelis as a justification for the continued slaughter in Gaza, which I would call an ethnic cleansing, if not a full-on genocide.

Understanding the debates over what is happening in Israel and Gaza and on our campuses, which are linked, requires us to understand how divorced we have become from notions of evidence how much we have given in to our own biases. We have lost any sense of intellectual humility, and would rather engage in shouting matches and rely on absurd conspiracies (someone must be funding these kids? Who bought the tents?) to justify our preconceived beliefs.

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The Cult of Trump

Notes on a Dangerous Imaginary

Hank Kalet Apr 25 ∙ Preview

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Above left is an email I received today from  something called Proud Patriots, a company that describes itself as ” a place where the love for America burns brighter than a sky full of Fourth of July fireworks.” It is an independent online retailer unaffiliated with the Trump campaign — according to its website — but its definition of patriotism is certainly wrapped up with the fetishization of Trump as  savior.

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Take the product being hawked here — a bobble head doll that merges Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character, in militaristic leathers and dark sun glasses. It’s meant as a play on two Schwarzenegger catch phrases: “I’ll be back,” i.e., as in I’ll be back in the White House, and “haste la vista, baby,” which is recast as “haste la vista, Biden.”

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Capitalism’ Homelessness Trap

The Court Will Rule on the Legality of Tent Bans, but Homelessness Will Remain an Issue

Hank Kalet Apr 22 ∙ Preview

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My book As An Alien in a Land of Promise is a hybrid work that looks at the problem of homelessness through the literal camera lens of Sherry Rubel and our reporting work in Lakewood, NJ.
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case today that, in the words of The Guardian newspaper, “could significantly change how US cities respond to the growing homelessness crisis.”

The case involves a local ban in Grants Pass, Oregon, on sleeping outdoors, a law that criminalizes homelessness without doing anything to address its root causes or effects on those forced to find shelter in the now-banned tent encampments. A lower court already has ruled in favor of the homeless in this case, building on a 2018 decision barring the enactment of such bans.

But Grants Pass is now taking this to the Supreme Court, and it is unclear how a bench ruled by six conservative justices might respond.

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This all seems too familiar. Men and women with nowhere else to go, cobble themselves together into a ragtag community. They pitch tents. Find ways to provide food and other forms of aid. Knowing they will face reaction from the powers in city hall. They do this because they have no choice, because the alternative may just be worse, even as the city turns to its police forced to roust the men and women from their tents and chases them into the darkness.

This is familiar because it happens repeatedly. I remember, back in 2012 and 2013, watching several police SUVs rumble down the central dirt road of a tent encampment in Lakewood, N.J. The encampment, run by the Rev. Steve Brigham, was home to about 75 to 100 displaced men and women. A houseless population, but not necessarily homeless, because the encampment was offering a rough version of what most of us think of as home.

The use of law enforcement is a failure of both policy and imagination. Criminalizing the homeless (as I write here) only exacerbates the homelessness problem.

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