 By Mariam KhanOn a cloudy winter afternoon in downtown Somerville, Commissioner Melonie Marano sits at a desk in her municipal office, preparing for a commissioner meeting later that day. It’s the fourth Tuesday of the month: one of the two monthly meetings where the five county commissioners convene to discuss health & human services, public works, finances, and public safety for Somerset County.
To my surprise, the Commissioner specifies that this large job description only constitutes a part-time job. “This isn't my full-time job, as much as I would love it to be,” she says. Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, she maintains her regular job as a sales rep for a family business. Needless to say, she deals with a large amount of work and community-building off the clock. Exhausting as this sounds, she’s grateful for the relative tranquility of the post-election season: “last year felt like a juggle between three jobs, with the addition of canvassing and campaigning.” However, if asked in the early 2000s, Mrs. Marano explains that she would never expect to see herself where she is now. “I never thought about government or politics. I got married, I had children, I had a career, and I was just focused on those things,” she says. This changed on one decisive day in early 2003, when the Commissioner decided to attend a local meeting regarding zoning ordinances. She returned home feeling underrepresented and slightly dissatisfied with the local government, but she didn’t automatically volunteer to run for Township Committee. Rather, unbeknownst to her, her husband wrote her in as a candidate, informing her that she had already scored her first vote. “That really got my wheels turning. I realized you know what, I am going to run for Township Committee. And I got on the phone and called the Democratic chair in Greenbrook,” she narrates. There was one important factor that she didn’t quite consider: Greenbrook Township didn’t have a Democratic Party. There was a 3:1 Republican-to-Democrat ratio, and no Democrat had been elected since the 80s. Despite all the odds, the now Commissioner won by a whopping one vote. After the recount, she won by two. After a few years of acclimating to the political sphere, she was appointed mayor in 2009 and finally elected to the County Commissioner role twice in the last two elections. Throughout her time serving in various county roles, Somerville—the central town home to Somerset County’s courts and municipal buildings—has undergone its fair share of transformations. Just last year, Tropical Storm Ida ravaged the town’s buildings and public areas with floods drenching parks and offices alike. To counteract this damage, Marano was involved with a town hall meeting that debated the best use of 228 million dollars in federal disaster relief funding. Ridge High School students were curious as to how this money ended up being spent. She prefaces her explanation by affirming that she, as well as her colleagues, have full faith in climate change’s realness. In 2021, her team passed a resolution stating five pillars that will be used to address the issue for the county. Aside from the pledge to move net carbon emissions down to zero, one of the other core pillars includes mitigating the impacts of floods and other extreme weather. The Commissioner arises from her chair, crossing over to the wall displaying a map of the county’s waterways. She explains the severity of the water management problem, claiming that “New Jersey is one of the oldest states in the nation, and people have been building for over 400 years. We didn’t put stormwater regulations into effect until the late 90s, which makes 400 years worth of irresponsible building that we've got to catch up; this is a huge task.” Aside from her team developing strict new standards for building development and spearheading roundtables on stormwater facilities, she offers one especially hopeful piece of information. A federal project addressing flooding of the Green Brook, basin which is located in the eastern portion of Somerset County, has finally received close to half a billion dollars, which will allow for the completion of the project started back in the 1970s. Aside from Marano’s specialization in public water works and storm management, she is also heavily involved with the county’s LGBTQ+ advisory board, serving as one of its founding members. “While I was campaigning, I spoke with people from this community, and they said that they felt that their voices were not being heard, that they needed representation at a county level. So I promised them that if I'm elected, I will do something about that,” she explains. Despite the pandemic, establishment of the virtual advisory board was swift; three webinars were held in 2021, and two were held in 2022 with more expected this year. Topics included pertinent issues such as name changes, adoption, and specific health issues relating to the queer community. “LGBTQ+ youth have a 20% higher incidence of suicide, and drug addiction. So, we want them to know they are part of us, and we want to know how to make life better for them. This includes having counselors and staff on-hand at VOTECH and RVCC for youth specifically,” she says. On the topic of mental health, several students wondered about Somerset County’s initiatives regarding depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Fortunately, Marano explains that Somerset is the only county to boast a county-sponsored mental health facility for people of all ages. One crucial aspect of this facility is its newly developed partnership with the county’s schools to better the condition of youth patients. Though the county is doing much to support its youth, Marano would like her younger audience to know that they, too, can get involved. She and her colleagues are in the process of creating new, specialized internship opportunities for high school students where they can become involved with areas that interest them within county operations. She hopes that this program can be launched in 2023 to enable young people to help out the public while also gaining experience in a given field. She wants her youth audience to hear a few nuggets of advice from her last 20 years in politics. When asked about advice specifically for women, as the recipient of the County’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award, she stresses the need for political representation. “We need representation. We need it on the state level, the county level, and the federal level. Our voices need to be heard. We need to just step forward without waiting for somebody to tell us that we're okay to do it.” She explains that the person responsible for instilling this message in her was Linda Stender, who encouraged, guided, and supported her as she waded into politics in the early 2000s. Over the last two decades, it’s safe to say that Marano has learned quite a lot from diverse experiences. She wants readers to abide by her life motto: “Don’t be asked. Just do it.”
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 By Mariam KhanCreated in 1650 BC by the Ancient Egyptians, the Book of the Dead intended to help the deceased navigate the afterlife. The book includes poetic references for the living as well, showing them how to prepare for the day they pass on: “In the Land of the Dark, the Ship of the Sun Is Driven By The Grateful Dead.” 5000 years later, this particular quote from the Egyptian funerary text would inspire the name of one of the most influential American rock bands in history known as The Grateful Dead. Rather than driving the “ship of the sun”, though, this band steered the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s. But unbeknownst to many, their involvement with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) inadvertently stems back to the CIA and their experimentation with mind control.
In 1965, the first ‘Acid Test’ took place in San Jose California. William Craddock’s personal memoir, Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal, talks about growing up as a part of the psychedelic counterculture movement. The acid tests of the 60s were a series of parties that piloted the use of LSD—colloquially known as acid or battery acid—amongst the public. The people who attended these parties were “ecstatic, painted, long-haired, bearded, beaded, mad-eyed, strangely-dressed, obvious acid-eaters” who vowed “‘to witness the end of the straight-world’” (187). Bright lights, vociferous electric rock music performed by The Grateful Dead, and magic mushrooms made the parties especially appealing to young hippies looking for fulfillment. People like Craddock craved a bit of idiosyncrasy beyond the shackles of society; they objected to the materialistic post-war culture, the monotony of suburbs, and the nuclear family. In an attempt to galvanize nonconformists, Ken Kesey, best known as author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, carefully crafted a rather successful campaign. His mission was to encourage the use of LSD to promote liberation of all socio-political kinds. He organized the acid test parties, which became milestones for psychedelic hippie subculture. Soon after, the drug began to proliferate amongst swaths of youth. The advances of several monumental cultural advances stemmed from LSD. Music genres such as psychedelic rock became hits for their unwillingness to align with the rigidity of live music. Ecstasy even seeped into the albums of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and psychedelic-style art impacted art and vinyl covers across all genres. But aside from the drug’s social impacts, acid-use created a new political awakening that encouraged young people to speak out against oppressive institutions. For example, Vietnam War protests were composed of thousands of hippies across the country who were political radicals, anarchists, and more. LSD encouraged a spiritual revival that went far beyond the confines of traditional societal structures and government. In short, the drug was a pivotal political and social instrument that shaped the mid-20th century. This begs the question: what was the CIA’s role in creating a movement that would go on to oppose their very existence? April 13th, 1953 marked the beginning of a foreboding era of experimentation. The CIA and its compatriots were given the green light to begin “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior”, in a mission coined Operation Bluebird. Through extremely secretive operations, the CIA attempted to “enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion” in order to compete with the USSR, who allegedly possessed these capabilities. Once the goal was approved, the CIA created a continent-wide campaign named “MK-Ultra” to non-consensually test drugs such as LSD on subjects. By the end of the experiment, there were around 80 institutions and 185 researchers indirectly funded and used for data collection by the government. Colleges, hospitals, prisons, and mental hospitals were all acceptable contractors, according to the Supreme Court in Fitzgibbon v. CIA. In the words of Sidney Gottlieb, the head of the experiment, the subjects were “people who could not fight back”: marginalized communities such as prisoners and sex workers. At one point in the experiment, Gottlieb even tested out LSD on a MK-Ultra scientist himself, Frank Olson, eventually leading to his death. Unfortunately, anticipating public outrage, the CIA destroyed thousands of records relating to the experiment at the direction of Director Richard Helms. Thus, little testimonies are known from the victims themselves. One woman, Esther Schrier, recounts her experiences at the Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute where she was administered “four or five barbiturates and amphetamines at a time” coupled with electroshock therapy, in order to test the effect on her brain. Evidently, this was highly excessive treatment for someone struggling with postpartum depression. Schrier was never officially recognized as a victim of illicit governmental experimentation. Aside from unwitting test subjects who made up the vast majority of research, certain individuals did volunteer to be a part of experiments, in search of monetary or spiritual benefits. The lyricist for The Grateful Dead, Robert Hunter, was a willing subject. In the case of author Ken Kesey, a research hospital near Stanford—where Kesey completed his undergraduate studies—was offering $75 for subjects willing to undergo experimentation. Of course, this hospital was also covertly funded by the CIA. The day that Kesey walked through the doors of this research hospital would prove momentous for the psychedelic revolution. The doctors summoned subjects into a spotless and airless observation room, fed them a white substance they didn’t know, and took notes. In the words of Kesey himself, the first acid trip he experienced alongside other subjects was surreal: “We were alive and life was us”. Inspired by his first trip, Kesey got a job as a night-attendant in the hospital where he could steal the drug and bring it home for his peers at Stanford. It was during this time that he wrote the renowned novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a work which served as a magnet for rebels in and of itself. From there, the rest is history: the Acid Tests began, and with help from The Grateful Dead, the psychedelic movement officially emerged. Later, the Grateful Dead went on tour and left a trail of acid in their wake. Simultaneously, the CIA began to fear that it was losing control of LSD as it seeped beyond the fences of psychiatric wards and into the walls of concert halls and parties. Fearful of legal concerns, in 1973, the agency conducted a purge of all materials relating to MK-Ultra and Operation Bluebird. But the damage had been done, with LSD use already prevalent in America, youth culture completely altered, and public outrage about the CIA’s unethical experimentation. Despite the lack of documentation about the experiment, MK-Ultra’s legacy ought not be understated. After all, it was a multi-million dollar, systemic campaign that served to target the outcasts of society in order to achieve a far-off political goal: mind control. In the process, the CIA inadvertently reinvented the culture of the mid-20th century and led to rampant drug abuse. Despite a 1975 Senate Intelligence hearing concluding that the CIA “demonstrate[d] a fundamental disregard for the value of human life”, little was done to combat future abuses within the agency. The CIA even failed to denounce the illegal actions of Sidney Gottlieb, who himself did not face any consequences until well into his retirement when he merely faced lawsuits. The minimal accountability stemming from the CIA’s mass psychiatric experiment underscores a greater governmental problem in which bureaucracy has the potential to grossly abuse power. When citizens' rights are impeded upon without their knowledge—or even the knowledge of the rest of the government—this paves the way for a plethora of problems. In the last few decades, mistrust in the government has reached concerning highs. Americans feel that their government is corrupt, ineffective, or wasteful. From the Watergate Scandal to the CIA’s intelligence failure regarding WMDs in Iraq, citizens certainly feel weary, exploited and under informed. At the same time, an excessive amount of problems still await solutions: climate change, poverty, racism. But a prerequisite to solving these problems is governmental transparency and accountability to regain public trust. Why did so many Americans refuse to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? Systemic distrust in the government is certainly one of the causes. If people don’t trust the system, it’s reasonable to expect that they will try to circumvent it. The CIA can continue to unleash Operation Bluebird, Hummingbird, and Mockingbird, but these birds have the potential to become vultures if left unchecked. If the foundations of American government were not decomposed by mistrust and lack of accountability, the plight of these issues would be far more resolvable.  By Mariam KhanSomething that George Orwell didn’t quite anticipate in his fictitious novel, 1984, was the progression of a dystopian surveillance state—amidst a global pandemic. The essence of his book focuses on the watchful eye of the government as it evolved into an authoritarian regime ripe with privacy concerns and human rights violations. Today, as the world faces one of the largest public health crises of the century, countries veer closer to becoming ominous super-surveillance states. Experts warn that the sharp rise in disease surveillance starts a dangerous precedent for the future, making the discussion of privacy concerns more applicable than ever.
In March 2020, as China continued waging its long battle against the coronavirus, they inputted an effective, but controversial contact tracing app required for citizens in more than 200 cities. Coined as the Alipay Health Code, the system granted users codes that spontaneously changed color depending on location and virus exposure. Though the concept sounds phenomenal in keeping the virus at bay, it presents a cause for concern, as the app automatically sent personal data to law enforcement—and this begs the question: what are the implications of police having easy access to citizens’ location data and private information? The mass collection of data by the police may carry unforeseen consequences, especially given that officials can choose bits and pieces of information from one’s data storage site, and use it at random times to incriminate dissenters. As researcher Maya Wang told The Times, China has a history of using specific events as means of justification for the introduction of surveillance tools, yet usage persists well afterward. Citing the 2008 Olympics, she says that new monitoring tools are consistently introduced for a purpose, but they never leave. “The coronavirus outbreak is proving to be one of those landmarks in the history of the spread of mass surveillance in China,” she said. Wang says that the newly introduced data-sharing and location-grabbing technology that was originally created by the government for the purpose of tracking the coronavirus will be here to stay. In fact, the algorithmic techniques that were used to predict the likelihood of infection are similar to the ones currently being used on the Uyghurs, China’s Muslim ethnic minority. Technology provides scores for individuals that tell officials of their political pliancy and aid in their decision of who should be rounded up into an internment camp. It’s not just China that has inputted algorithmic contact tracing technology; in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu issued an emergency order and bypassed the standard process of approval to allow the government to use technology to monitor citizen’s cell phones and track those suspected to have the coronavirus. In addressing privacy concerns that arose from the addition of the tracking app, Israel swiftly responded by inputting an oversight committee to balance the necessary public safety with data privacy. Still, the fact that the Prime Minister gracefully advanced surveillance on the Israeli people in a matter of a few days shows how easy it is to use the pandemic as a scapegoat for tightened control. Reports as of March 2020 show that the 65 contact tracing apps that were in use did not specify how long user data could be stored. Additionally, 49 percent of these apps lacked privacy policies, and others had privacy policies that were completely misleading. For instance, one Canadian contact tracing app claimed that it did not utilize GPS or location tracking, yet when scrutinized further, it subconsciously initiated location permissions for users. What’s more troubling is that half of the apps explicitly state that they will share data with law enforcement agencies, again displaying how companies and governments alike are trying to take advantage of this public health vulnerability. These apps have brought about much public response from dissidents (at least those who can dissent), as well as those genuinely concerned about the future of democracy when it comes to surveillance states. Ever since Edward Snowden’s incident and before, the issue of surveillance has moved more and more into the global spotlight, but author and activist Arundhati Roy put it best when she told The Guardian that “Pre-corona, if we were sleepwalking into the surveillance state, now we are panic-running into a super-surveillance state.” The widespread expansion of mass-surveillance has led to backlash; but in India, journalists speaking out against a new state-built contact tracing app’s prospect for undermining public privacy have faced charges and accusations of threatening national security. This app utilizes GPS and BlueTooth technology, and its privacy policy does not provide a timeframe for data collection. Users are being left in the dark when it comes to where their data will be used, yet they’re being left helpless and scared to criticize the government for fear of facing legal consequences. Given that India’s history is rife with the silencing of political opposition, this comes as no surprise. Experts and lawyers agree that the coronavirus is being used to justify attacks on freedom and privacy, and these measures are likely to persist well after the pandemic ends. Despite the privacy violations, it must be remarked that, around the world, different governments’ use of surveillance technology aimed at containing the virus has been immensely successful. South Korea, which was faced with widespread outbreaks very early on in the pandemic, has observed that information collection has worked to contain the spread of the deadly virus. Contact tracers can see the full train of a person’s movement through the collection of several forms of sensitive data, and this is useful in administering state-mandated quarantines. Aside from its obvious societal health benefits, the deployment of surveillance technology poses dangerous consequences for the future of democracy. Researchers claim that citizens’ privacy is essential for the prevention of democratic backsliding, because it ensures that states have limitations. When governments know everything about their citizens, this allows them to extend state control beyond moral premises. According to Justice Felix Frankfurter in Wolf v. Colorado, the “security of one’s privacy against intrusion by the police – which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment – is basic to a free society.” Essentially, not only does privacy makes sure that democracy remains authentic, but it also allows for the progression of society, where individuals can think and advocate for themselves. With one-third of the population already living in declining democracies as of 2018, it is necessary to consider the long-term implications of the coronavirus pandemic on politics. While the world edges closer to the circumstances depicted in 1984, there’s still a long way to go. Constituents and their governments must strive to establish proper surveillance boundaries. Ensuring that both security and privacy can coexist is vital, because as Edward Snowden said, “Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are, and who we want to be.” |