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Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Volume 162 No. 21 WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
SERVING SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
Water pipe under construction By Aaliyah Roman A&E EDITOR
A 115-year-old water pipe is in the process of being replaced by Lewis and Tibbitts, Inc. contractors and public utility company San Jose Water at the intersection of Seventh Street and San Fernando Street on Tuesday afternoon. San Jose Water construction supervisor Ernie Robles said the pipe had a few leaks and needed to be replaced to suit the amount of water local residents currently use. Robles said the process of replacing the main pipe, following up on water services for nearby homes and repaving the cement will take about another month. He said Seventh Street will be closed for another couple of weeks. “We’re here to help each other out,” Robles said. “This is definitely for the benefit of everybody.” Robles said his team blocked off Seventh Street because they are working in a heavily trafficked area and have to take safety precautions for both the workers and the public.
Computer engineering lecturer Chao-Li Tarng said he teaches several classes at the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering building close by the site He said he wishes he would have been warned about the noise level or given an opportunity to teach elsewhere and avoid the loud sounds from disrupting classes. Tarng said the construction has been going for the last month or two but he is trying his best to make it work in class. “Obviously they’re doing something good for the street, for the school (and) for the city,” Tarng said. “I’m supporting them, but on the other hand, it’s been so long so I’m a little bit frustrated. My students are frustrated too.” Tarng said he and his students have to speak louder to hear each other past the construction noise. Accounting senior Taylor Luong said he lives a block away from the intersection, and walks to class. He said he doesn’t know what the construction is for, only that it’s been going on for some
ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY
Construction workers work on replacing a 115-year-old water pipe near the San José State campus on Tuesday.
time. “The noise can get a little much depending on what they’re doing,” Luong said. “There was one day when they were making a lot of noise and I was just walking towards campus, and it was kind of disturbing.”
Luong said the construction has added an extra five minutes to his commute to campus and he finds it inconvenient when driving to places such as the grocery store or freeway. He said it mostly affects people in the afternoon,
because that’s when campus is on campus or just getting the most busy. around places.” “The construction has been going on for quite some time, so it just shuts down this entire road,” Luong said. “I’m pretty sure commuters feel a Follow the Spartan Daily little different (compared to on Instagram me) when they have to park @SpartanDaily
Students learn reproductive justice By Kaya Henkes-Power STAFF WRITER
The San José State Gender Equity Center hosted a Lunch and Learn session that discussed how reproductive justice is racial justice on Tuesday afternoon. Students ate free pizza and salad while a group of panelists discussed the intersections of reproductive justice and racial justice. Gender Equity Center event coordinator intern Kayla Le led the session and asked questions to the panelists. “(The Gender Equity Center focuses) on education, outreach and programming on gender equity issues,” Le said. “Specifically empowering the voices and experiences of historically marginalized genders and gender identities.” Le said reproductive rights are a more individualist approach to reproductive rights and systems, whereas reproductive justice is a broader analysis of racial, economic, cultural and structural constraints on individuals and communities. SJSU women, gender, and sexuality professor Tanya Bakhru opened the discussion by talking about the origins of reproductive justice. “Reproductive justice is a term that was coined in the late ‘90s by black feminists who were looking at issues around reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity in an intersectional way,” Bakhru said. The term reproductive rights initially started considering the issues of bodily autonomy intersectionality but was co-opted by the mainstream to mean abortion rights, she said. Panelist and associate professor for the Department of Justice studies Grace Howard said that the reproductive justice approach brings in a holistic view.
“Some people find themselves at the intersections of multiple kinds of oppression at the same time,” Howard said. “Instead of looking at oppression as racial oppression which is separate from sex and gender oppression, we can instead bring those two together.” The contemporary framework for reproductive justice lies on three tenets; the right not to have a child, the right to have a child and the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments according to the library guide from the Fordham University Libraries. “Some folks add a fourth tenant to the typical three,” Howard said. “It’s sort of implied in the three, but I like to say it out loud – and that is the right to separate sex from reproduction.” During the women’s suffrage movement, people with marginalized identities were often excluded from the movement according to a National Park Service webpage. Women, gender and sexuality studies assistant professor Susana Gallardo said that reproductive justice speaks to the concerns of mostly women of color. “(Reproductive justice) takes and listens to those concerns that women-of-color activists and sexuality activists and so many others who said ‘hey what about all this other stuff,’ ” Gallardo said. She said reproductive rights is not just about abortions, but also the right to not have one and be able to afford to raise a child. Challenges faced by women of color both historically and currently were discussed by panelists. “(There) is this tug of war over who our society feels is legitimate to have children, and who isn’t legitimate to childbear,” Bhakur said. Forced sterilization was discussed, this is when a person is involuntarily or coerced to remove their ability to
KAYA HENKES-POWER | SPARTAN DAILY
Department of Justice Studies associate professor Grace Howard (left) and Gender Equity Center event coordinator Kayla Le lead a discussion about reproductive and racial justice on Tuesday.
reproduce according to a webpage on the International Justice Resource Center. Gallardo said the film “No Más Bebés” covers the case of Mexican American women who were forcibly sterilized at the USC County Medical Center in the 1960s and 1970s. “All these women had gone into a C-section and been sterilized without their knowledge,” Gallardo said. “In many cases they actually signed but they were talked to when they were in labor.” Bhakur said that there is a deeply racist white supremacist history in America around reproductive autonomy. Just some examples of such were Africans being forced breeders, sterilization of women of color, and child removal from Indigenous and Native communities, Bhkaur said. “The founding of modern-day gynecology is basically this guy who had black slaves and did experiments on them,” Bhakur said.
Gallard said there’s this sense that there are certain types of people that should have the right to have children and others the sense they should be controlling it. “Very deeply entrenched legacies of forced family separation among enslaved Africans, Native Indigenous communities mourning the Indian boarding school system,” Bhakur said. “In contemporary society the foster care system, which is a result largely of poverty and surveillance.” Howard said that the maternal mortality rate is a massive issue in the United States and has only risen. Maternal mortality refers to death occurring from the complications of pregnancy according to data by UNICEF. Black women in America have the highest maternal mortality rate, which is three times higher than the rates of maternal mortality of white women according to a 2023 article by the Associated Press. “This is not physiological,”
Howard said “This is what happens when the healthcare system is racist.” Bhakur said something that illustrates how society places different values on different bodies, which can be seen in the amount of money someone is offered for egg donation. “(Egg donation is) incredibly medically risky to do this, we don’t even really fully understand the medical impact of doing this on our bodies,” Howard said To wrap up the panel, Kayla Le asked panelists about how we as a society can address inequalities within race and reproductive justice. “Reproductive justice is about reclaiming our lives, reclaiming sexuality (and) reclaiming our gender identity,” Gallardo said.
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