Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Let’s Talk! Disability and Social Justice Pt. 1 with Silver and Katy

Student Advocates | Start the discussion

Hosted and produced by Carrie Cantrell. Produced and edited by Carrie Cantrell. Transcriptions authored by Louise Magarrell. Carrie, Silver, and Katy talk about the concept of social justice and what it means to them as students who experience disabilities.

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify.

Transcript

Host: Welcome to episode two of Disability Speak Out PCC, the podcast where we talk about our experiences on campus at PCC as students experiencing disabilities. And this episode, we are talking with a fellow student in academics, Silver Fox, who is going to Portland Community College. And our discussion revolves around social justice culture in general and what that looks like, and how we can achieve that for ourselves. This is part one of two parts. In the next episode, we’re talking with Karry Kelly, who is one of the directors of the Native Nations Club on campus at PCC and we’re getting her perspectives on land acknowledgements and building back a culture that’s inclusive and supportive of Indigenous students. So thank you so much for joining us, Silver. How’s it going today?

Silver: It’s raining.

Host: Yeah, it’s raining. Are you an online student? Are you an in-person student?

Silver: Mostly remote.

Host: Yeah, same here. It’s that I’m super grateful for that status right now today being stuck inside on a cozy rainy day is really nice. And can you tell us some background for our listeners? Can you talk a little bit how you identify like, why you are in the Disability Cultural podcast, like what you’re into just in your personal life? What are you studying at PCC? Tell us a little bit about Silver, our classmate, our colleague, our friend.

Silver: Well, I’m autistic, I’ve got ADHD and PTSD. And it took a while to figure that out as an adult, because I’m not the kind of person who usually gets diagnosed as a kid. I am studying Russian language at PCC.

Host: That’s cool.

Silver: Yeah, I took nine years off of college because I couldn’t afford to go and then when the pandemic happened, I moved back to Oregon to apply for financial aid and was like, well, if I’m going to be not able to work, might as well go back to school and so, yeah.

Host: Yeah. What state were you in?

Silver: I lived in Arizona for a bit, and I also lived in Washington for a bit.

Host: Nice. Where were you going to school?

Silver: Clackamas Community College.

Host: Oh, I thought you said you moved back to Oregon to go to college.

Silver: Yeah. So I went to Clackamas first, 10 years ago, and then I moved away, and then I came back.

Host: Oh, nice. Were working when you moved out to Arizona and Washington? What sort of field were you in?

Silver: Oh, geez. Well, I’m a stripper and so I tried some strip clubs in Arizona. I tried some in Colorado. I didn’t ever work in Washington as a dancer because the rules there are dumb. Like they’re not good. So I would like do the 24 hour drive back to Portland every couple of weeks. And I lived in Arizona to dance here! And then I would just take my money back home, to Arizona. And when I lived in Washington, I was a tattoo artist.

Host: Oh, okay! What, the rules in Arizona are weird? So you would drive to Portland to dance every couple of weeks?

Silver: Yeah. In Arizona, you have to buy a year license in order to dance at all.

Host: Interesting.

Silver: It’s like a business license.

Host: Oh, like your own personal business contract.

Silver: Yes. And it’s like $300 or something. And I was like, bro, I’m not paying $300 to maybe make some money in Phoenix. I didn’t even live in Phoenix. And that’s where all the clubs are. So I’ll just go to Oregon where I know I have clients and I know I’ll make money. Yeah.

Host: Well, that’s great. I’m super happy to hear you could work around where there was no work and there was a lot of unnecessary legislation that made it more difficult for, you know, for women. I mean, that’s a whole other podcast, you know, on its own. But it sounds like you as a professional and just, you know, as a person, sounds like you’ve had fairly nomadic way of living, which I think is natural for a lot of human history. And so tell me about the connections that you did have with the places where you lived. You mentioned Washington, Oregon and Arizona so far.

Silver: Yeah, I was born here in Oregon. And I made some friends at my first job, who inherited a property in Arizona and she – they said, “Do you want to live in Arizona and pay a little bit of rent?” And I said, “Oh, I would love to get away from this weather, Yes!” And so I didn’t know anybody. I had no connection to Arizona when I moved down there. When I moved to Washington, yeah. So my friends ended up selling the property and I had to come home and then I moved to Washington. A guy I was seeing from Burning Man said his tattoo artist needed an apprentice. And I was like, “What do I do with my life?” I couldn’t afford rent in Portland anymore because rents keep going up, and I can’t work full time. Like, like becoming a dancer was one of my dreams because I could – I wanted to be on stage and be an artist. And I couldn’t do full time work because I was like – all the psychological disabilities make it really hard for me to do 40 hours a week, like I just didn’t want to live. And so I quit my job, and became a dancer, and moved to Arizona. But yeah, and then I moved to Washington because my ex’s tattoo artist needed an apprentice. And I said, “Well, I’m an artist, I want to do something else”. And so we met up and he’s like, “So when you moving to Tacoma?” and I said, “Well, when you give me a job!”

Host: Yeah.

Silver: Well, I got to do that until COVID.

Host: Yeah, I mean, so yeah COVID was one thing that sort of interrupted everybody’s plans. But it’s nice to hear that you had that kind of sovereignty over movement, over your body and your career as well. And growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I don’t know if you’re anything, you know, if your house, what was your household background like? But would you say that your parents were like more open minded or liberal or conservative? What kind of attitudes were you growing up with around just that same sort of attitude that you seem to carry now, the freedom of movement, the freedom of behavior.

Silver: My dad is a hippie, 100%. He taught me to care for the environment and to care for people. And he also, I think, maybe anti-authoritarianism might be genetic. Like he couldn’t handle having a boss. I also couldn’t handle having a boss. And he really supported my creativity and my weirdness. And I’m like, “Hey, Dad, I need a letter for you about my childhood so I can talk to my psychiatrist about autism.” He’s like, “Well, I thought all this was really cool.” I’m like, “it doesn’t matter if you think it’s cool, because I struggle still.” So yeah, my mom, on the other hand was really closed off and mean and judgmental. Yeah. Not, not good.

Carrie Cantrell

Yeah. What sort of influences did you learn from them? Did you have a spiritual background growing up?

Silver: I did not. I think my grandparents raised my dad to be like, the generic sort of Christian. He left, like he didn’t really care for Christianity. He thought Christianity was really oppressive. He was also into, like, human rights. And would, I guess, I think my mom was also a little bit into human rights. I remember her saying when she was little that the kids would bully her when they would play the, you know, those dumb racist games like Indian and cowboy and she wanted to not be the cowboy. And they were like, well, you’re dumb for that. And she was upset, of course. But I don’t think they talked about spirituality or religion when I was growing up. My dad would take me to protests too and stuff.

Carrie Cantrell

Your dad would take you to protests?

Silver: Yeah.

Host: What sort of protests were happening when you were growing up and your dad would take you?

Silver: Those were the anti-Iraq War protests, actually. Because I started out being the environmentalist, like the endangered species person, like megafauna, and then it turned from that into the wolf thing. I was really into wolves. And that somehow turned into “Oh, yeah, people.” Because I remember being as a very young kid, like people are the worst and nature would do better without us. And then eventually, I realized, like, I don’t even know when or how, but it was like, “Wait a second, this is also racist.” Like the environmentalists are kind of racist to say that all people are bad when we know that like Native Americans have been living in symbiosis before white colonizers showed up. And that’s when I was like, “Oh, my God, I’ve been accidentally racist my whole childhood.” And so yeah, it might have been in my 20s. I think it was the solar not the solar, it was the wind. It was the Sami people and the wind turbines. They were like in Norway and Sweden and Finland, like we’re going to build these wind turbines on Sami land, and maybe it’s Sahmi, and like, “Fuck the people who already live there and their reindeers because like, we need renewable energy.” And it was like the hardcore environmentalists were all “Yeah, fuck humans.” And that’s, I think that was when I was like, “Wait a second. No, we can’t sacrifice people like, for us, especially these people who have been sacrificed so much due to colonization and everything.”

Carrie Cantrell

What is your opinion of the way you see land acknowledgments used these days by organizations or public speakers?

Silver: It’s, I think it’s so annoying. It’s like, “I’m gonna take your water bottle off your desk. Oh, I acknowledge that. This is your water bottle.” “Like okay, can I have my water bottle back?” “No.” It’s like, great, you’re admitting you’re benefiting from stolen property. What the next step is dot dot dot.

Host: Yeah, I agree. We got a eulogy every time I hear a land acknowledgment.

Silver: Yeah, we acknowledge that we’re here, and they’ve been stewards and it’s so great and Okay. What’s the point statement if you’re not doing anything about it, though.

Host: Right! Yes. And that’s, okay, so that’s something that is what you know, what we should do to write a land acknowledgement. But ultimately, it’s going to be up to us. What sort of things can we do? We’ve been talking about, we just took a course moving beyond land acknowledgement. And one of the things that have been offered are a free college tuition for students that are coming from recognized tribes and native nations.

Silver: Cool! I am 100% on board with free tuition. And even more than that. Like, I want universal basic income, and I want like the tuition money to also pay for like food and housing and transportation costs. I am very pro free education. Talking in Ballet yesterday about racism in ballet and the lack of diversity among dancers and choreographers. And it kind of comes down to if POC can’t get into the extracurricular like dance activities, because their family is too concerned with survival, they’re not going to get good enough to be hired for these productions. And if they don’t get to go to school, because of their parents, and the racism and the policing and redlining and stuff, they’re not going to get to the point where they can get a Master’s to be a teacher. So we end up with a lot of like white dancers and white teachers. And then it’s like, oh, there’s all these “Why aren’t there any, like Asian people or black people doing ballet?” Like, “Well, have you seen society?” And yeah, if we had free education, that would be a big removal of some of those barriers.

Carrie Cantrell

Yeah, that’s very true. That’s very true. And I think it would also support the preservation you know, of knowledge.

Silver: Oh, yeah!

Host: And, you know, the systems of caretaking with the land that like we don’t know, or utilize at this moment, because of our, technology and our capitalist culture.

Silver: Mm hmm. Totally. Like school is not just a place to be taught by instructors. It’s a place to share ideas amongst each other, like the teachers are supposed to also be able to learn from the students.

Carrie Cantrell

You’d hope so, right? Yeah. Has that been your experience at PCC so far as like your teacher has been open minded, or you find yourself arguing or what?

Silver: I had a Psychology teacher that was open minded, and my Russian teacher is open minded. I’ve had it really impersonal classes like fully remote, or I mean, fully online, where there’s no zoom lectures. Those are – there’s not really an avenue for exchange. It’s just like the teacher teaching. I think my Anthropology teacher is also good at picking up stuff from students in addition to teaching us things.

Carrie Cantrell

That’s cool. That’s good. That’s good.

Silver: Like, the Psychology teacher was talking about the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I was like, “No, hey, you know, this guy stole his ideas and flipped them upside down from like, the tribes in America that he was hanging out with.” And she was like, “Oh, I didn’t know that. Thank you for the information. Silver.”

Host: Really?

Silver: Yeah.

Host: The famous Maslow stole his ideas from Indigenous people.

Silver: Yep. And I was really glad that she said, “Thank you for telling me this. I had no idea.” Because I’m used to teachers and peers going “Well, I don’t know about that.”

Carrie Cantrell

What tribes was he hanging out with? Was that here in North America?

Silver: Yeah, I think one of them was the Blackfoot.

Host: Okay.

Silver: But I don’t remember for sure. And I also don’t remember if they have a name that they would rather be called.

Host: Right. If we list a couple of concepts that we think can describe the LandBack movement, and I’m just going to throw one out there to get us started, like one I think, is environmentalism. One, I think it is having relationship. And it’s not I think, in previously, like, there might have been the attitude where environmentalism is enough. But I think treating the land and waterways that we exist on and around with respect in regards to like chemicals and usage, I think that is something that should be a principle of practicing LandBack. So if we as a culture, practice good environmentalism, that’s like a piece of the pie that’s part of the way there and we can continue doing that. What are some maybe other things that we can practice that would be that would be good towards that movement,

Silver: Housing as a human right is related.

Host: Okay.

Silver: Like the concept of LandBack compared to forcing Indigenous people onto reservations. Like they could – housing is an issue for so many people. And if LandBack, then more opportunities for people to live where they would want to live rather than where they have to live.

Host: Okay.

Silver: And If we had housing as a human right, that would make that easier too.

Carrie Cantrell

Supporting housing as part of a LandBack is a great way to support, is a great concept to include.

Karry: Hey,

Host: How’s it going?

Karry: Good, how are you?

Host: We’re talking as disabled students, as white people, like what kind of culture can we create that’s going to reflect the values of LandBack, and Indigenous rights, and Native rights. And a couple of the concepts that we’ve landed on to work towards a greater vision is, you know, by practicing environmentalism as a group, you know, with our movements and activities on campus. We mentioned housing, and we’re still talking about housing. But one of the last things we brought up was also respect.

Karry: Beautiful, I love that.

Host: Karry Kelley is the president of Portland Community College’s Native Nations Club, and she has graciously agreed to come and answer some questions for us on Zoom and be recorded for the podcast. And give us some tips about how we can get started. So we’ve had a little bit of a pre-conversation to get some ideas / juices flowing.

Karry: And what do you do?

Silver: I’m a stripper.

Karry: Ooh! I’m sorry. I’m going to say this. I love it. Because like, obviously, there’s times as girl where you’re like trying to move in the mirror. And there is something very freeing about like, the way strippers move. It is just like a true confidence in your body. And like, a girl always wants to embrace that. So to me, I’m just like, Fuck, yeah. And Portland strippers are all about like, unionization, and like, employee rights, and you’re making such a national statement right now. I’m just so proud of Portland strippers. So, I will just say that.

Silver: And Portland is a great place for, like, queer strippers too, because we are free to have short hair, and tattoos, and take hormones, and not present as hyper femme.

Carrie Cantrell: For sure. Have you seen any – okay, so I’m actually taking a human trafficking class right now, and this has been something that I’ve – that’s intrigued me about Portland forever. Because the sex positive culture in this city is so wide that like, you know, usually I look at any cultural iceberg, and I’m like, okay, what you see is the top 10%. And I’m like, Okay, if the top 10% of what I see is the top 10%, there’s like, strip clubs everywhere in Portland. It’s like sex culture is just everywhere around the city. How much of it is underground that you see? And that is like, kind of against like our mainstream understanding?

Silver: Well, since SESTA/FOSTA, more people have had to leave the internet and work on the street.

Host: What’s SESTA/FOSTA?

Silver: Oh, SESTA/FOSTA was a bill that called – SESTA means Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking, SESTA, I don’t remember what the A stands for. And FOSTA is Fight Online Sex Trafficking. I think they both end in Act. But they both ended up making trafficking worse, because they made up for the content that the users create and post. So like pre SESTA/FOSTA, independent workers and also people who were trafficked would have their ads on sites. And then people who wanted to save folks who were being trafficked, or people who wanted to just harass sex workers, they could go and find the people who were posting it. And after SESTA/FOSTA we can’t post anything. So you can’t find the people. You can’t save the people who are being trafficked. And it’s making it more likely for consensual workers to get like murdered and kidnapped and robbed and stuff.

Silver: Yeah….

Karry: So they kind of turned it in a way more of a darker market.

Host: Oh.

Silver: Yeah.

Karry: Is that what kind of around the same time when Craigslist went down with the Personals and people

Silver: Yes

Karry: before, were able to maybe mandate their own schedule and their own comfort level? And they had a little bit more sense of control. And so now that’s not a thing? They again, like you said, they’re forced to kind of go out on the streets, which is innately more dangerous?

Silver: Yeah. Like if you can’t talk to a potential client online first, and like, do a background check on them. You like, what if this guy’s going to murder you?

Karry: Right.

Silver: You meet a random stranger on the street. Are you a cop? Are you violent? Are you going to steal my wallet? Or are you going to be polite? Are you who you say you are.

Karry: And it is kind of offensive to in its own way, that like it takes away the worker’s own discretion, you know?

Silver: Oh, absolutely. I mean, in this country, they want sex work to be eliminated completely. Like during the pandemic, businesses got to have – they could apply for loans to help them stay afloat as long as they weren’t adult industries. Like legal strip clubs couldn’t apply for these like business saving loans. And strippers also had to deal with a lot of trouble trying to get unemployment.

Karry: That’s really shitty. That feels – especially knowing how much fraud went on with that, that feels very specific to degradate them.

Silver: Um hmmm.

Karry: Alright, let’s say our really weird things that we create mole hills consistently. Silver, what is a molehill of yours that is like, ridiculous, but your brain is just like, nope, nope, this is happening.

Silver: Quizzes in Russian class!

Silver: They are so much easier than the classes themselves and way easier than the homework! But every week I’m like, panicking like “oh my god, I didn’t study these verbs. Oh my god, I’m going to fail, I’m never going to, this quiz is going to ruin my life and I’m going to drop it at college” and then I do the quiz and it’s like, so easy and I get extra credit on it.

Karry: Okay.

Carrie Cantrell

I would say my mountain out of a molehill also is school related. And it’s those discussion posts. Due by Wednesday the initial post, two responses by Thursday. Like, I just freaked out about it. I’m like, ” Oh my God!”

Karry: Well, and then part of them have them saying you have to post on two separate days. It can’t all be on one day. You know.

Host: What’s yours, Katie?

Katie: Dude, mine is mail. Mail is like my arachnophobia. Like, I hate mail and I have forced myself to do it. But I used to like open my mail maybe once every six months. I would have like, I would have like bags of mail in the corner of my room. And I’d be so like, I don’t know. It still feels like nails on chalkboard and someone’s like cutting my heart out every time I open it, but I’m getting better about it. You know, so, yay brain!

Host: That’s hilarious. Thanks for showing up both of you guys and contributing to the discussion.

Karry: Dig it. I dig it.

Host: You guys are amazing. Thank you so much and have a great weekend.

Karry: Silver, can you say goodbye in Russian please?

Silver: Do svidaniya.

Host: All right, and thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed that conversation with myself. Carrie Cantrell, Student Advocate with Accessible Education and Disability Resources at PCC, Katie Corbin, fellow student advocate jumped in there at the end with a couple of questions and amazing comments to make. And thank you so much to Silver Fox for being the subject of our interview today and coming in to have a conversation with us. Tune in to the next episode, where we have a follow up interview with Karry Kelly, who is one of the organizers of PCCs Native Nations Club. We have more in-depth conversation with her about what social justice, LandBack movements and Indigenous rights look like at PCC from an Indigenous perspective.