A photo of a solemn Filipina girl holding up a barbed wire circle. She is in a field of sugarcane.
“Langit Lupa” — Heaven and Earth, Life Beyond Death

On Nov. 9 and 10, 2024, Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien screened their newest experimental labor-activist documentary, Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) (2023), at 2220 Arts + Archives in Historic Filipinotown. The documentary braids personal testimonies from survivors of the violent Escalante Massacre with vivid phytograms taken from a sugar plantation in Negros, Philippines, raw 16 mm film, and theatrical performances by Escalante children. The weekend screenings and related programs were part of Camacho and Lien’s artist residency with Active Cultures, a public arts nonprofit in Los Angeles that explores the intersection of art, food, and ecologies through artist-led projects and programs.

A photo of a solemn Filipina girl holding up a barbed wire circle. She is in a field of sugarcane.
“Langit Lupa” — Heaven and Earth, Life Beyond Death

On Nov. 9 and 10, 2024, Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien screened their newest experimental labor-activist documentary, Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) (2023), at 2220 Arts + Archives in Historic Filipinotown. The documentary braids personal testimonies from survivors of the violent Escalante Massacre with vivid phytograms taken from a sugar plantation in Negros, Philippines, raw 16 mm film, and theatrical performances by Escalante children. The weekend screenings and related programs were part of Camacho and Lien’s artist residency with Active Cultures, a public arts nonprofit in Los Angeles that explores the intersection of art, food, and ecologies through artist-led projects and programs.

A black-and-white Victorian-era photograph of two white AMAB people dressed as women.
Misgendering the Misgendered

I first witnessed a transgender character misgendered by her own author in “The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman,” a short story published anonymously in 1857. The text was assigned for a queer short stories course at UCLA, and while I wasn’t surprised that a transgender character was misgendered by a writer in 1857, I was surprised that a professor of queer studies in 2023 would as well.

Viral on Twitter, But Are the Polls Immune?: A Response to Obama’s Endorsement of Same-Sex Marriage

On May 9th, 2012, President Obama made history. Or at the very least–he made Twitter history. In the first few hours after his statement of personal support for same-sex marriage, Obama’s official same-sex marriage endorsement tweet, which read “Same-sex couples should be able to get married” was retweeted a whopping 50,000 times! To get some perspective on this number, it is approximately half as many tweets as the number banked by the most retweeted post of all time: a promotional tweet by the esteemed Wendy’s restaurant in June of last year.

Obama and the Great Gay Marriage Flip-Flop

Photo via Pixabay Ahh, the Republican Primary – what a thrill it has been to watch that hot, sticky mess play out. And while Mitt Romney has emerged as the likely nominee, he hasn’t exactly come out clean. Observers across…

Ally Week Update

The second annual Ally Week began this year with a presentation on athlete allyship by Hudson Taylor, a wrestling coach at Columbia University.  Though raised in a staunchly religious household, Taylor’s experiences in college shifted his perspectives on the LGBT…

Acting White: What’s Feminism and Queer Theory Got to Do with It?

As someone who often has questions about what it means to be a queer feminist of color surrounded by whiteness, I immediately saw this lecture to be of particular importance. While the very act of having this conversation is more…

Silence = Death: Lessons in AIDS Activism

Credit to ACT UP Over on Bruinwalk on a cold February day, at least three fundraisers are taking place. Most are for Dance Marathon, an event that enlists thousands of students to raise money to fight pediatric AIDS. They’re wearing…

Seeing With A New Spectrum: A Conversation About UCLA’s Vital LGBTQ Space

Co-written by Dylan Chouinard and Kim Lau “There are three kinds of gays. Party gays like to have fun and get drunk. Political gays are activist-y and fight for rights and stuff. Normal gays fall in the middle.” If that…

A Minute of Your Time: Notes from the Canvassing Trail

The door standing in front of me is worn with age. It may have once been a pleasant shade of blue, but its extended life has stripped it of color. This weary door is my most daunting enemy. All I…