I ’ve been waiting for years for a show to be made about photographers. The thrill of following light, seeking out stories and composing masterpieces offers the perfect ingredients for a captivating story. Enter: Netflix. Netflix recently introduced the Australian series “Tales by Light,” which follows an expert photographer in each episode. Needless to say, I binge-watched the first season, but something about the episode “Tribes” disturbed me. The show documents photographer Art Wolfe in Papua New Guinea as he attempts to “record what might not exist too far into the future.” He speaks throughout the episode of his “obligation” to photograph the peoples, cultures and traditions of the places he visits. Is this photographer “running around third world countries objectifying their subjects to the fullest extent,” as one reviewer put it, any different from the influx of so-called humanitarian selfies seen on social media post-Spring Break? As alternative Spring Breakers gear up for their trips of a lifetime, it’s imperative they strongly consider replacing phones with full-on philanthropy. To get a sense for the selfie epidemic — a selfidemic, if you will — everyone going on an alternative Spring Break should pay a visit to the viral blog, Humanitarians of Tinder. The page provides a steady flow of Tinder profiles featuring seemingly well-off 20-somethings posing with impoverished individuals in foreign countries. It doesn’t take long for an innocent selfie taken with a kid in a school, orphanage or clinic to go through editing, filtering and captioning, directly reducing it from memory to marketing material. Don’t see the problem? At the center of this issue is the greater conversation on voluntourism, the ugly American and the white savior complex. Unsurprisingly, many of these problems are evident in Art Wolfe’s travels in “Tales by Light” and in many of our ASB Facebook albums. When we, as students, go abroad in service, what do we stand to gain? Are we widening our worldviews? Or are we going abroad for popularity and profit? In the end, it’s a mixture of both. When Art Wolfe travels to Papua New Guinea out of a self-given obligation to preserve the cultures of indigenous tribes, he’s also focusing on the expansion of his photographic curriculum vitae. And that’s fine. But we have to be critical about serving abroad in order to increase our social media presence when doing so comes at the cost of the service itself. It took a full year of reflection on my freshman year week- long ASB in Guatemala to come to terms with this. I went on my first ASB as the student photographer in 2015 and took tens of thousands of photos for our host organization. The photos were to be used for donor recruitment — in a word, marketing. But to be fair, it was altruistic marketing with the goal of sustaining development efforts in Guatemala. Each photo began with my asking to take their photo, a scrambled, “¿Puedo tomar tu foto?” and was followed by uncomfortable smiles amid a firing of my camera shutter. Eventually it got easier to take photos without receiving full consent. I assumed everyone would want their photo taken and wouldn’t care what was to be done with the picture. The same kind of socially required permission to photograph in the United States is thrown out the window when we, as student volunteers, begin documenting our trips. Throughout the “Tales by Light” episode, I uncomfortably watched as the photographer decorated multiple Papuans with paint and photographed them as full- fledged models. What would constitute participation in the modeling industry in the United States is free labor from the Papuan. But this is an idea that escapes many. When we post pics with our friends, we tag them, and they presumably receive the benefits of social recognition. When we photograph models, we pay them, either in publicity or money. Why don’t we afford these same benefits to the people (read: “fellow human beings”) we serve? I made a decision to put down the camera during my second year in Guatemala and couldn’t be happier with my decision. My focus shifted from self-promotion to service. My concern was no longer photographing the child on his way to getting his vitals checked, but checking his vitals and monitoring his health. So my greatest exhortation to anyone going on an ASB: Think about why you’re going. Think about the people you’re serving and what they deserve and whether or not you want to partially deliver. Don’t make the same mistakes I did; be deliberate in your presence and treat everyone with the same respect you wish to be treated with. A viral and satirical Instagram account, @barbiesavior, really drives the point home. Complete with captions like: “Just taking a #slumfie amidst this dire poverty and need. Feeling so #blessed and #thankful,” Barbie Savior highlights the issues we can get caught up in when we place posting over people. I want to thank Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Not for his public service record or anything like that; I am not a fan of him and do not support any of his political beliefs. No, I want to thank him for accidentally giving Democrats, feminists and anyone else who does not agree with Trump’s appointments or actions their next rallying cry. By now, I’m sure everyone has seen the instantly iconic phrase “Nevertheless, She Persisted” or #LetLizSpeak on Twitter or Instagram. On Tuesday night, during a Senate debate on the nomination of Jeff Sessions, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) read a 1986 letter written by Coretta Scott King in which King argued against confirming Sessions for a federal judgeship. But, Sen. McConnell interrupted her by citing a rule, one that is rarely used, meant to keep a certain level of civility in the Senate. I’m not surprised that he tried to quiet his opponent. I would expect that from any politician, especially one who refused to hold hearings to fill the vacant seat left by Antonin Scalia, former U.S. Supreme Court justice. But I wonder what he thought would happen when he tried to shut up one of the most vocal Democratic voices in the country. Did he really think that a woman who exchanged blows with Donald Trump on Twitter and joined protesters in a Boston airport following Trump’s travel ban would stop speaking? McConnell should have realized that any attempt to silence her would have the opposite effect. Sen. Warren is not someone who will sit quietly in the background if you tell her to. She was barred from speaking on the Senate floor, so she said what she needed to outside of the Senate and broadcasted it to millions of people. Whether or not you warn her against doing something, she will do what she feels needs to be done. If anything, attempts made to silence her, like the one on Tuesday, will just make more people listen to her and make her message more potent. I hate the fact that attempts to silence progressive female politicians continue to happen, but I love what follows. When Trump or McConnell try to dismiss their opponents, the result is never what they intended. With Trump, it was “Nasty Woman”; with McConnell it is “Nevertheless, She Persisted.” In both cases, these statements were reclaimed and used to band women together. They gave us great memes and slogans for shirts, but they also gave many women something they could connect to. This shows that there are people, masses of people, who oppose the limits Trump attempts to set on freedom and who will support each other in the fight against him. Sen. Warren, and other senators fighting against Trump, give me hope that he will not just stomp on and tear down what people have worked hard to achieve. I need this reassurance. For the past few months, national political news has seemed like a constant stream of disappointments. Watching Trump be inaugurated as president, hearing the news of the confirmations of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and Jeff Sessions as attorney general and seeing the anger and frustration of my friends leaves me worried. The people who are coming to power have records showing that they are unfit for these jobs and that they do not have everyone’s best interest in mind. They want to bring the old rules of the game back; the ones that say if you’re not rich, white and male, you may as well count yourself out and watch while the boys play. Seeing this political shift is discouraging, but this shift has forced people out of complacency. It has encouraged people to take a more active role in government; this is obvious by the amount of protesters at the Women’s March and even in late-night shows. It brings attention to the voices of minorities and other marginalized groups because Trump will affect everyone. Hopefully, this activism and inclusion will continue. We need to keep this attitude and sustain this energy; we cannot allow the events Trump has orchestrated to become the norm. We need to stay vigilant, not just right now but always, to ensure that the government is filled with people like Elizabeth Warren, who does not just advocate for the rich and ignore the concerns of minorities like Betsy DeVos or Jeff Sessions do. Warren’s actions, those of other senators speaking out against Trump’s nominations and actions and the protests that followed Trump’s election win and travel ban show that no one is going to quietly take their seat. People will speak whether Trump or Sen. McConnell want to hear it or not. Any attempt to silence us will only make us louder. If you try to stop us or to warn us, nevertheless, we will persist. Opinion The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 4A — Wednesday, February 15, 2017 REBECCA LERNER Managing Editor 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. EMMA KINERY Editor in Chief ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY and REBECCA TARNOPOL Editorial Page Editors Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. Carolyn Ayaub Megan Burns Samantha Goldstein Caitlin Heenan Jeremy Kaplan Max Lubell Alexis Megdanoff Madeline Nowicki Anna Polumbo-Levy Jason Rowland Ali Safawi Kevin Sweitzer Rebecca Tarnopol Ashley Tjhung Stephanie Trierweiler EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS #LetLizSpeak COREY DULIN | COLUMN Selfies not for service IBRAHIM IJAZ | COLUMN Ibrahim Ijaz can be reached at iijaz@umich.edu. Corey Dulin can be reached at cydulin@umich.edu. L ast Tuesday, racist emails were sent to the University of Michigan computer science and engineering email list. Three days later, Students4Justice organized an emergency protest and sit-in to denounce white supremacy, racism and bigotry and to call for action by the University administration to create a more inclusive environment on campus. As the protest commenced last Thursday on the Diag, I sat in the Michigan Union’s quiet Reading Room, unaware that the organizers were planning the sit-in and protest in the same building. By afternoon the protesters could be heard marching down State Street, passionately chanting, “If you’re with us, join us!” and ascending into the Union, where they distributed a letter of demands directed to the University president, administration and Central Student Government. The attendees and organizers protested in the Reading Room as well, urging those studying and quietly working to join the protest. But a majority of people packed their things and left. The discomfort I felt when the protesters walked into the Reading Room and the reaction from those who decided to leave troubled me. Though I decided to join the sit-in, I was conflicted. Over the past few weeks, I have questioned how my anger toward the political climate can be channeled to effect change. Ending racism, misogyny and xenophobia calls for broad support and participation. With Trump as president, combating discrimination and seeking reparations for hate speech and crimes will be an ongoing struggle. White supremacists, like those who sent the racist emails, feel emboldened, no doubt, by Trump’s success in the election. Richard Spencer’s “Hail Trump” speech at the “alt-right” conference in November is an example of this sentiment. So, the question remains: How do we build a broader political coalition to resist dangerous government actions and hateful speech? Sometimes, forceful protest will be necessary. Actions by the Trump administration, and his extremist supporters, have had a threatening impact on the lives of minorities, women and immigrants. His executive orders and cabinet appointees threaten to further disempower the already oppressed and vulnerable. These actions need to be opposed with strong, civil expressions of disapproval. Jeff Session’s appointment as attorney general presents an imminent threat to civil rights. The executive order banning refugees from several Middle Eastern and African countries was targeted toward Muslims and thus was discriminatory. Hate speech, like the racist emails, poses a threat to people’s lives by inciting violence against minorities. The list goes on. Furthermore, protests like the one in the Union or like the protests carried out in airports across the country in response to the Muslim ban should not wane. It is necessary to continue to advocate for the people whose lives are affected by hateful actions. In order to continue the momentum of resistance, however, we need broader coalition building: The organizers needed everyone in the Reading Room to join the protest. On campus, we strive to promote inclusivity. The initiatives set forth by the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan have created programs to teach incoming students about diversity and political correctness during orientation. With good reason, then, we begin our college career cautious to approach sensitive topics. But this poses a problem: Avoiding a controversial topic out of fear of criticism, or critically denouncing our peers for using potentially offensive language, limits discussion; it shoves difficult issues aside. In our classes we restrain ourselves from expressing our opinions on difficult issues — if we avoid talking about race, at least we won’t say anything racist. Associating ourselves with like-minded people protects us from having our opinions challenged. However, this inhibits us from developing a deeper understanding of the problems facing minorities. We need to create an environment where discussion about controversial issues is encouraged. So, engage in open dialogue. Work together to understand how non-politically correct language can have harmful implications. Be open to criticism and be willing to point out when assumptions about others are biased. If the vulnerable and disempowered in society continue to be threatened by actions from the Trump administration — and by his extremist supporters inciting violence — organizations advocating for change will need stronger coalitions to resist. Being open to speaking to people who look, sound and think differently than you do and reaching out to your peers, including the ones who are apolitical or generally apathetic, is crucial for mobilizing a broader base of allies over the next four years. Now is not the time to ignore the demands of those who feel threatened. And it is not the responsibility of minorities to teach the world why they must chant their demands so loudly. By working together we can build greater understanding and unity in the face of oppression. Mobilize against Trump SARAH KHAN | OP-ED Sarah Khan is a Public Policy junior. IBRAHIM IJAZ COREY DULIN SUBMIT TO SURVIVORS SPEAK The Michigan Daily’s Opinion section is seeking additions to Survivors Speak, a series of first-person accounts of campus sexual assault and its corresponding personal, academic and legal implications. Submissions will be due by March. 10 at 11:59PM. Visit http://bit. ly/2kIeoMq for more information. — Sen. Richard Burr, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Tuesday. “ NOTABLE QUOTABLE We are aggressively going to continue the oversight responsibilities of the committee as it relates to not only the Russian involvement in the 2016 election but again any contacts by any campaign individuals that might have happened with Russian government officials. ”