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February 03, 2020 - Image 1

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michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Monday, February 3, 2020

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

BEN ROSENFELD
Daily News Editor

Your name is Michael Sterling
and you are 6 years old. You are
sitting cross-legged on the rug
of your first-grade classroom,
watching three white children
play with colorful plastic blocks.
One of the kids has built a wall,
while the other two launch blocks
— “fireballs,” in their childish
fantasy — at the wall, trying to
knock it over. Turning to you, the
boy farthest to your right urges
you to throw a fireball, one the
color of your skin.
“Yours would be the scariest
because yours is black, and black
is always the scariest,” he says.
You reach down to pick up a
block, then you toss it across the
rug. The teacher, who is standing
by a table to your left, immediately
whips her head around and shouts
your name.
“Mike, look at me!” she snaps.
“You’re being dangerous and
you’re going to hurt someone.”

Michael Sterling is the central
character of a virtual reality
experience, 1000 Cut Journey,
designed by Courtney Cogburn,
University of Michigan alum
and associate professor at the
Columbia School of Social Work.
Meant to foster awareness
of the day-to-day racism faced
by Black Americans, 1000 Cut
Journey walks the user through
three different scenes, allowing
them to experience subtle and
overt
racism
from
Sterling’s
perspective as a child, adolescent
and adult.
Cogburn discussed the project
Friday afternoon at Rackham as
part of the Center for Academic
Innovation’s Winter 2020 XR
Speaker
Series,
an
initiative
showcasing developments in the
field of virtual reality. To kick off
her talk, titled “XR: A Critical
Analysis and Transdisciplinary

ALICE TRACEY
Daily Staff Reporter

GOT A NEWS TIP?
Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail
news@michigandaily.com and let us know.

INDEX
Vol. CXXIX, No. 57
©2019 The Michigan Daily

N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A

OPINION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4A

CROSSWORD................6A

M I C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A

A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A

S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 B
michigandaily.com

For more stories and coverage, visit
Follow The Daily
on Instagram,
@michigandaily

CEDAR
RAPIDS,
IOWA
— In the weeks leading up to
the Iowa caucus, Democratic
presidential candidates have
crisscrossed the state.
They’ve
held
rallies
and
town hall events and met voters
in their own living rooms.
They’ve mobilized voters to
knock on doors. They’ve even
sent surrogate supporters to
energize voters in cities they
can’t reach themselves.
The Daily attended three
rallies
for
three
different
candidates
with
significant
support in Iowa in the weekend
prior to the Iowa caucuses.
Here’s what we saw.
At Sanders caucus concert,
young supporters “feel the
Bern”
More
than
2,000
people
gathered at the Horizons Event
Center in suburban Des Moines,
Iowa Friday night for the
Bernie Sanders Caucus Concert,
featuring popular indie folk
band Bon Iver.

At the rally, a crowd of
primarily young voters drank
beer and ate burgers while
standing facing a large stage.
22-year-old Allie Hoskins from
Marion, Iowa, stood near the
front of the crowd with a group
of friends. She caucused for
Sanders during her first election
in 2016, and couldn’t wait to do
it again on Monday.
“It was just really fun and I’m
excited for it again,” Hoskins
said. “Hopefully I can instill
that energy among my peers
because we don’t do it as much
as we should. Historically, we
have the lowest turnout rates
in the country, year after year,
election after election. And this
election is probably the most
important for people our age.”
Two
Iowan
folk
bands
kicked off the event, followed
by speeches from documentary
filmmaker and activist Michael
Moore — a one-time University
of Michigan student originally
from Flint, Mich. — and Nina
Turner, national co-chair of the
Sanders campaign.
Moore,
who’s
been
campaigning
in
Iowa
for

Sanders,
spoke
about
the
similarities he’s seen between
Iowa and his fellow Midwestern
home state of Michigan.
“I’ve seen Flint, Michigan,
all across this wonderful state.
I’ve seen and talked to so many
people who are struggling to get
by or tired of the old way and
want something new,” Moore
said. “And it’s no surprise to me
that Bernie Sanders, for the last
three-for-two, has been polling
number one here in the state of
Iowa.”
Sanders
had
planned
on
attending the rally himself,
but
was
unable
to
leave
Washington, D.C. in time after
the Senate’s impeachment trials
of President Donald Trump on
Friday. In a phone call lasting
about 10 minutes and broadcast
through
the
event
center’s
speaker system, Sanders spoke
to the crowd about several of
his platform points, including
reforming the criminal justice
system, ending the war on drugs
and banning assault weapons.
“We will do exactly, in our
campaign, the opposite of what
Trump is trying to do. He is

trying to divide the American
people,” Sanders said, receiving
loud
cheers
from
audience
members. “We are gonna bring
our
people
together,
Black
and white and Latino, Asian
American, Native American,
gay and straight — we’re gonna
bring our people together.”
He
underscored
the
importance of Monday’s caucus
— seen throughout the world as
an omen for which candidates
will do well in the forthcoming
primaries, and eventually, on a
national stage.
“On Monday night, the entire
country and in fact the entire
world will be looking at the
great state of Iowa,” he said.
“And my humble request from
you is to do everything that
you can to make sure that our
friends and neighbors come out
and vote.”
Following Sanders’s speech,
progressive
Congresswomen
Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal
and Ilhan Omar, who have
all endorsed Sanders as their
pick for Democratic nominee,
took the stage for a short panel
discussion about their work in

their own communities.
Later
in
the
discussion,
Jayapal brought up Hillary
Clinton,
former
Secretary
of
State
and
presidential
candidate, and crowd members
began to boo at her mention.
Panel moderator and Des
Moines school board member
Dionna Langford jumped in,
saying, “We’re not going to boo,
we’re classy here.”
But Tlaib interjected: “No,
no, I’ll boo … You all know I
can’t be quiet. No, we’re going
to boo. That’s all right, the
haters will shut up on Monday
when we win.”
Tlaib has since apologized
for her response on Twitter,
writing
the
“movement
deserve(d) better.”
Following
the
panel
discussion and a short speech
from
Jane
Sanders,
the
senator’s wife, Justin Vernon,
the Wisconsin-born front man
of Bon Iver, took the stage for a
solo acoustic set.
“I was learning more and
more about this caucus on
Monday and it’s so important
to get out the vote,” Vernon told

the crowd between songs.
Enthusiastic
Warren

supporters
admire

campaign’s empathy
A rally for Senator Elizabeth
Warren at the Coe College
Kohawk Arena in Cedar Rapids
garnered about 700 supporters
early Saturday afternoon.
The
enthusiastic
crowd
included one supporter, Mary
Sullivan, who came dressed as
the Statue of Liberty.
“(Warren’s)
got
health,
she’s got experience, she’s got
humanity. She takes good ideas
and gives credit to the people
who came up with them. She
sees the whole picture and
the details of how to make it
happen,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan
has
been
volunteering with the Warren
campaign since this summer
and will be a precinct captain for
Warren on Monday. She said she
felt a little burnt out the other
day after so many door-knocking
shifts, and was amazed when an
organizer called her to check on
her mental health.

ANNIE KLUSENDORF/Daily
Ed and Jane Cranston discuss caucus preparation in the living room of the North Liberty, IA, home, where they’ve hosted several
Democratic presidential candidates this election cycle.

See CAUCUS, Page 2A

‘Democracy live’: Nation watches
Iowans prepare for 2020’s first vote

Volunteers, community members share experiences of unique civic responsibility

MAYA GOLDMAN
Daily Staff Reporter

Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
See IOWA, Page 2A

Back on track

Behind a 20-point performance from
Brandon Johns Jr., Michigan picks up a
Quadrant 1 win over Rutgers at Madison

Square Garden. » Page 1B
SPORTS
MONDAY

ANNIE KLUSENDORF/Daily
DESIGN BY LIZZY RUEPPEL
Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Senator Nina Turner and former Vice President Joe Biden campaign around Iowa the weekend before the caucus.

NORTH
LIBERTY,
IOWA — After Donald
Trump’s victory in the
2016 presidential election,
Ed and Jane Cranston, a
married couple from North
Liberty, Iowa, wanted to
take action. The Cranstons
decided they would begin
by organizing what they
call a “potluck insurgency”:
a
monthly
get-together
of
Johnson
County
Democrats to talk about
political issues and hear
from selected speakers.
“We didn’t know what
we were going to do,”
Jane Cranston said. “We
were just so upset that
Hillary lost that we thought
we’d just keep commiserating
and getting together, but then
we got speakers, people really
loved it.”
According to Ed, who is
serving in his first year as the
Democratic Party Chair of
Johnson County — the home
of the University of Iowa and a
Democratic stronghold in the
state — the group was able to
bring in major political figures
over the course of the past year.
He credited this partly to the
centrality of Iowa, the first
state to caucus during primary
season.

The Cranstons recall one
night in early January 2019,
when the group had arranged
for
Julián
Castro,
former
San Antonio mayor, to speak.
Coincidentally,
they
had
scheduled it the same day
Castro
indicated
he
would
announce his candidacy for the
2020 Presidential race.
“What happened was Julián
Castro had just released that
he was running that day,” Jane
said. “So everybody wanted to
cover him.”

As a result, what was intended
to be a small get-together of
Johnson
County
Democrats
to hear Castro speak became
so large that Jane likened it to
the Dwarves of Middle Earth
occupying Bilbo Baggins’ house
in the movie “The Hobbit.”
“It was just a crazy night,”
Ed Cranston said. “We thought,
‘you know, maybe we’ll get a
little local press.’ Well, like
an hour before it starts, Fox
News shows up, and we had
everybody. I mean, ABC, NBC,

in our house. CBS, AP, Hearst
Papers. It was packed with 75
people. Normally we have a
potluck, but that night was just
going to be desserts. And it was
so crowded they couldn’t even
get the desserts. And then after
they left, it was like we said,
‘Jane — what just happened?”
“If you look up ‘Castro,
North
Liberty,’
all
those
(pictures) are at our house,”
Jane added.

Virtual reality
tool exposes
racism against
Black people

Project allows users to experience racist
behavior through immersive scenarios

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