Basic PR for the Amateur

If you have public relations or journalism experience, this list is not meant for you. This list is meant for the mom in charge of the PTA public relations committee or the poor guy who volunteered at the animal shelter hoping to walk a dog and got stuck behind a computer. It’s always a great list for the small business owner hoping to generate media interest in their operations without paying for it…

  • A press release should be about 400 words long. It should never be longer than one page.
  • A press release should end with three number signs (###) centered on the bottom of the copy. (Copy is the lingo for “the words.”)
  • If writing from a business, non-profit or some other not immediately recognizable entity, the paragraph about the ### should say, in about 75 words, the history of the entity. This paragraph should be on every press release you send out and it should always say exactly the same thing. Update it yearly, or when there’s a big change.
  • When you email a press release: the subject line of the email should say PRESS RELEASE: and then state the most basic facts: what’s happening, why they care, and the date. All in the subject line. This information will be similar to the headline you put on the press release and similar to the file name of your press release.
  • Copy the entire press release into the body of the email, so they don’t have to download the attachment to read it to judge how important it is.
  • Attach a .doc, .rtf or .txt file of the press release to the email, so if they want to copy your press release without retyping they can without having the hard returns and goofy formatting that comes with email.
  • For an event, send a press release about two weeks in advance. You may send a reminder a few days before the event, and clearly state REMINDER in the subject line with the same title as the original message.
  • Now, the writing. Always write your first paragraph as if it’s the only paragraph the editor will read. Keep it under 100 words. Cover who, what, when, where, why and most importantly: convey any specific info that would resonate with the readers/public.
  • The second paragraph can provide more info as to why it’s an important event. Provide the details that will convince the editor to do the story.
  • Paragraph three is a nice place to provide a quote from someone involved, with the quote marks and everything, just like they do in the newspapers. This will relate directly to what was said in paragraph 1 & 2.
  • You can single space your press release, but provide a space between paragraphs so it’s easy to read.
  • Always provide a “For more information, contact:” line. I put mine at the very top. Include the person’s name, their title, their email, business phone, and, if possible, an “after five p.m.” number so a reporter on deadline can find you.
  • Use active verbs. This means avoiding as much “to be” as possible, avoid “is,” “been,” “was,” “being” etc.
  • Use spell check and grammar check
  • Have a friend read it before you send it out
Photo by Tracy Chafin

Photo by Tracy Chafin

Photographs of Tunisia, January 2012

Travel Essay: Initial Impressions of Tunisia

Ruins of Carthage, Tunisia

My initial impressions of Tunisia

My traveling companion and I stood close together on an airport shuttle, him with his backpack slung over his shoulder and me with my massive red bag under my arm. More and more people shoved onto the vehicle at Charles de Gaulle, forcing me closer and closer to him.
“Does it feel strange yet?” he asked me quietly in English.
I peered up at him, as M is significantly taller than I am. “No.”
More bodies pressed against us. More green passports with gold Arabic on their covers.
“We’re the only white people here,” M asked. “Does that bother you?”
“No,” I said.
It didn’t bother me. It excited me and made my toes tingle. I wondered if maybe I should be scared, or if maybe I’d totally lost my mind, but I felt big and invincible. This was false confidence on my part, because I get nervous very easily and during a recent stressful patch of life had experienced some mild panic attacks. Yet, right now I was headed to a liberal Muslim country in North Africa. I was an American headed to Tunisia on a whim because of some visa complications.
M, on the other hand, has an American passport with extender pages full of stamps and visas from places that the average person would never go like Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Djibouti. He jokes about using the Department of State’s travel advisories as a checklist for where he wants to go. If it’s not a good idea, according to the Department of State, he’s interested as long as his research shows there is minimal danger of kidnapping. He blames some of this on his brain tumor.
We had originally planned to spend twelve days in Algeria. I have an interest in post-colonial France, Algeria, and how the two may intersect in contemporary politics regarding Muslims in France. I wanted to see Algeria before I started my research. My visa arrived December 23, and I stalked the mailman three city blocks to claim it. We had plane tickets for January 10. M’s visa never arrived. On Monday morning mere hours before our planes would depart, M still had no visa.
He had so carefully planned our itinerary: Algiers, Constantine, Sétif, and a trek into the Sahara to visit Tlemcen and sleep in the desert. The embassy referred to my visa as a mistake and told M he would be lucky to see results in two more weeks.
So we canceled.
And rescheduled.
M asked me where I wanted to go.
“Somewhere that doesn’t require a visa,” was the only response my broken heart could give.
Later that day, I received an email offering a choice: Istanbul or Tunis?
“Tunis.” The choice came easily. I even had the logic why. “Normal people go to Istanbul. I can go to Istanbul later. The French whore in me has to pick Tunisia. It is a former colony, after all.”
My family and friends liked this choice better than Algeria. I don’t know why. Perhaps it sounds safer, or maybe it’s due to the general lack of geographical knowledge of the average American.
More than one person told me they felt I’d be safer in Tunisia.
“Why?” I would reply, “It’s right next door to Libya.”
My husband decided most people probably thought Tunis was a city in mainland France, especially since our trip would start in Paris (France) and end in Marseille (France). So when I said, “Paris, Tunis, Marseille,” of course they all sounded like perfectly mundane French destinations.
The air route to Tunis went over the Alps, over Corsica, down the Italian coast, across Sardinia, and to Africa. I may have the order of that mixed up. Every time one of the islands would pop out of the Mediterranean Sea, I’d say to M, “That’s land, maybe it’s Africa.”
So by the time I really saw the African coast, I was too confused to trust my judgement. When the plane landed, the window gave me glimpses of pale, nondescript buildings. The airport was small and white. The sky was cloudy and white. The air had a crisp dampness to it. I had hoped for sun and 60 degrees. Instead I wore my coat.
Baggage and a cigarette. That’s always M’s priority list when we disembark. He always has a plan to beeline through customs and then we stand by the baggage carousel, where we retrieve the carryons we checked. Mine has leopard spots, his is a Travelpro he got a deal on.
He always asks if I mind if we go out for a smoke. My answer is always no. Because I don’t. It gives me a chance to breathe, to feel the first few glimpses of a place. Sure, it’s only taxis and travelers but i liken it to dipping my toes in the pool before jumping in.
I remember thinking it looked like rain that afternoon in Tunisia and that the countryside looked empty and the buildings low. That’s partially because the airport is about 20 minutes away from the capital city. I use the phrase “about” because a funny thing happened on our way into town.
The streets were closed. It took more than an hour to get to downtown Tunis. We had arrived in the capital at about 4:30 pm on January 14, 2012, a Tunisian independence day of sorts, the exact one year anniversary of President Ben Ali’s “abdication” to Saudi Arabia.
“Did you do this on purpose?” I asked M.
He assured me he did not, but man, did it end up a serendipitous event.
The taxi ride that followed terrified me. I won’t lie. If I did it again tomorrow, I wouldn’t flinch. But then, I thought something awful would happen. I reminds me of my first roller coaster ride. I rode a small coaster when I was about eight-years-old. My mother rode with me. somehow, on the top of the highest hill, I stood up. I was scared and I wanted to get off. My mother pulled me down, and I avoided coasters until I was big enough to ride them without an adult companion. But, it turns out, I love roller coasters.
I had never been to Africa, or an Arab nation. This pleasant but slightly off his rocker cab driver was “doing a forbidden” and zooming down one way streets the wrong way or commandeering the lanes for oncoming traffic because there was no one there. Pedestrians would swarm the car and our driver would lock the doors and tell us “there might be one bad man.” he had two speeds, fast and dead stop. We had driven down the same one way street twice– both times the wrong way– as our cab driver proclaimed valiantly that he would get to the side street that could connect us to the hotel. A car approached. Honking ensued. Our cab driver left the car and started yelling at the driver of the car which was using the road in the correct fashion.
“And people think French drivers are bad,” I said.
“North African drivers make Europeans look like pussies,” M replied.
Later we discovered his guidebook tells French travelers not to rent a car and try to drive in Tunisia.
We looped around the city again and I watched an Arab young man pee on a wall. Cats darted along the sidewalks. A little girl my daughter’s age smiled at me from a passing car. Pedestrians marched up to cars in the streets and tapped on them as if telling them to get out of the way. In Tunisia, whoever can occupy a space can have it.
I can’t even tell you what M said to me after an hour in the cab, something like “isn’t this great?” I replied I might need a tranquilizer.
M processed this. You can tell when M is processing. As part of his testing for his brain tumor, someone determined he has Aspergers. This makes sense if you know M. It hadn’t occurred to him that driving in circles through a crowded city for an hour might be harrowing. He filed that away for future reference, I’m sure.
The chaos and celebration was great. Little red flags flying everywhere. People cheering, singing, dancing. “The people are happy,” the cab driver tells us. Everyone assumes we are French, especially since M speaks French “like the French,” as Tunisians would say when they tried to guess his nationality. I spoke only when necessary, between my American accent and the fact that I’m a women I thought it’d be best to let it look like M was in charge. He had already warned me not to speak English in public, just in case people here didn’t like Americans.
The hotel, Grand Hôtel de la France, gleamed with white tile, blue trim and lots of mosaic. The clerks took our passports, probably filed a report with local authorities, and kept our documents in a wooden file compartment with our room key and our room number.
“That way no one can steal our identification,” M said.
“That way someone notices if someone steals us,” I replied.
“That too,” he agreed.
The room had a white tile floor, a balcony, two twin beds, and a mantel where perhaps a fireplace used to be. The bathroom had a toilet, with a toilet seat. I soon learned in Tunisia that bathrooms either came with a toilet seat and soap. Seldom both. I experienced one bathroom, at the Antonin Springs in Carthage, that had both and was clean. In the hotel lobby, the ladies room did not have a toilet seat. I discovered this when my traveler’s diarrhea kicked in on our last day in Africa. This did not bother me as I was relieved to see they had soap.
Our room had no soap. M had teased me for “stealing” soap from our Paris hotel room. I took one travel-sized bar, because both he ad I had packed body wash and I thought to myself, we might need a small bar of soap at some point in our travels.
At about this point, as the sun had started to set. Someone had lit fireworks from the balcony a few buildings away. And I don’t mean firecrackers. I mean fireworks.
“Welcome to North Africa,” I said. “if you burn down your neighbor’s house, oh well.”
We headed into the crowds one block away near the Port de France and down the main drag. It was six-ish on a Saturday night and everything was closing. People were packed tightly in every crevice. Chanting, dancing, cheering, drumming. Our cab driver was right, people were happy. One Arab man leaned back and grabbed my ass as I walked by. Graffiti on a nearby wall read, in French, “Long Live Tunisia, free and democratic.” The French embassy and the Tunisian government offices were surrounded in barbed wire. Soldiers and police were everywhere.
We were celebrating the Jasmine Revolution with the Tunisians. The Tunisians had launched the Arab spring. This was history.

Long live Tunisia: Free and democratic, Rue Mubarak, Tunis

Long live Tunisia: Free and democratic, Rue Mubarak, Tunis

Thesis: Civilizing Muslims

In spring 2013, I completed a second bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from Lafayette College. As part of that degree, I opted to write an honors thesis on prejudice in colonial Algeria and how it continues in contemporary French-Muslim relations. As part of a contingent sponsored by Lafayette, I attended the National Conference on Undergraduate Research and gave a 15-minute presentation on my work.

Silly self portrait the morning of my NCUR presentation

Silly self portrait the morning of my NCUR presentation

My abstract can be read online here:

http://ncurdb.cur.org/ncur/msearch/Display_NCUR.aspx?id=70469

INTRODUCTION

The Anti-Veil Laws Continue the “Civilizing Mission”

(from a 200-page thesis,

CIVILIZING MUSLIMS: HOW THE FRENCH PERPETUATE 

ALGERIAN COLONIAL PREJUDICE TODAY

 by Angel Ackerman)

Islam has never been welcome in Europe.

                                        — Edward Said (1)

In 1827, a dispute arose between the dey of Algiers, a governing official from the Ottoman empire, and a French envoy sent to deal with a trade incident. Marseille port authorities confiscated two shipments of wheat from Algiers and never paid for them. The dey’s pirates had blocked the Mediterranean in retaliation. Three years later, the French military invaded and conquered Algiers, planting the first seeds of not only what would become Algeria but also the beginnings of a large-scale colonial empire.

The subjects in the colonies that formed the Second Empire never asked to be French. As work began on the Suez Canal in 1859 (as conceived by Napoleon Bonaparte more than 50 years earlier during the First Empire), Emperor Napoleon III conceived a French Arab empire from the Middle East throughout North Africa and drafted France’s first official colonial policy. This became the mission civilisatrice, the institutionalized nationalistic ideology where French leaders believed they could improve the lives of people in less developed countries by indoctrinating them with republican values. After all, the French had organized the concept of civilization and invented a word for it. (2)

The French believed civilization was the opposite of “barbarism,” the common way to think of non-Christians during the eighteenth century and that the universalism of French culture could assimilate these non-Christian populations. (3)

The French embarked on this mission to civilize, first in Africa, then in the Americas and Asia. The French marched into foreign lands, settled colons (French people who would live in the colony) in others, and redistributed property and resources primarily as forms of political reward and punishment. French officials perfected this process in Algeria.

Colonialism only works if the colonizer can label the colonized subject as inferior. In Algeria, the French settlers and officials used Islam as a primary reason why most of the indigenous Arab people could not be treated as equal and worthy of citizenship. For more than 100 years, the French reinforced stereotypes of Arab Muslims as an inferior race. Despite the loss of many French colonies in the mid-twentieth century, and the traumatic effects of the Algerian War for Independence in the 1950s, the imperialistic “civilizing mission” continues to perpetuate those same stereotypes in the twenty-first century, now applying them to Muslims (and “immigrants” who are actually the French born descendants of former colonial subjects) instead of indigenous Arab Algerians.

This project will expose the uneasy relationship between contemporary political reality and the Enlightenment-era values of the Fifth Republic by examining the intersecting points of religion and citizenship. The story begins with the French Revolution and the development of the Republican ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood and how they influenced the deconstruction of religious influence in French society. It continues looking at citizenship and religion in Algerian colonialism to the present to show how the current socio-religious cleavage in French society has heightened because of the Algerian War. In different terms, I’m asking whether French political institutions are using religion as an excuse to continue the civilizing mission, but this time within the hexagonal borders of the mainland. In this work, I show how politicians have extended the “civilizing mission” because of a failure to reconcile French losses in the Algerian War for Independence. This failure of reconciliation with the Algerian colonial past expresses itself in a desire for control over the Muslim veil, in addition to other prejudice against contemporary French citizens with roots in the former colonies.

To highlight the relationship between French citizenship and religion, I use a variety of sources to establish how the French elite viewed the Algerians. As colonial masters, the French establishment maintained visions of the inferior racial Arab throughout the colonial experience and into contemporary times. These stereotypes violated the republican values that French political documents claim as the keystone of society. What could be referred to as the French dichotomy of religion and citizenship, that a person cannot be true to the State and to God, plays a central part of my argument. From the dawn of the Enlightenment which strove to end the political influence of the Catholic Church and the subsequent development of laïcité, to the denial of native Muslim Arabs in the Algerian colony and the second class citizenship of Muslims in France today, French institutions have reinforced the belief that one cannot have strong religious values and be a good citizen.

In this project, I begin with ideas from a variety of leading scholars and researchers. Eugen Weber and Robert Nye have shown how the French institutions of the nineteenth century build proper Frenchman through the schools and the conscript army. Both the conscript army and the school system influence the Algerian experience and modern Muslim relations in France. Herman Lebovics and Todd Shepard tackle the relationship between decolonization and French national identity. Tyler Stovall discusses the colonial paradox within the French system, looking at how a nation dedicated to human rights and personal freedoms can colonize and subdue a native people as inferior. Alec Hargreaves and Paul Silverstein study the statistics, attitudes and conditions of multi-ethnic France in the twentieth century. Lawyer Jeremy Gunn has labeled French laïcité (secularism, or absence of religion in the public sphere) nothing more than a national myth with a violent history and uses his training to examine the laws. His interpretation of the French constitution(s) and the 1905 law coincide nicely with my previous work on the constitutionality of the anti-Muslim laws. Harry Judge looks at France’s history of universalism and assimilation with “the headscarf affair” as it affects the educational system.

Anti-colonial writers Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Memmi provide my work a framework of how colonialism changed societies. While the writings of these men emphasize the evils of colonialism and might be seen as minimizing the colonizer’s contribution to infrastructure, education and health in North Africa, I feel that while their depictions can be graphic and severe, they are good reminders of the weight of oppression under colonialism and therefore a representation of how the colonized viewed their colonial masters. Albert Camus, Ted Morgan and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber provide first-person accounts of the French experience in the Algerian colony. The latter two are journalists conscripted into the French army during the Algerian conflict.

While my training in feminist scholarships and women’s and gender studies is somewhat limited, I have relied on social scientists like Caitlin Killian, associate professor of sociology at Drew University interested in gender and immigration;  Marnia Lazreg, a French-Algerian sociologist currently teaching at Hunter College; Tricia Danielle Keaton, associate professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbuilt who specializes in questions of race identity; Emma Tarlo, anthropologist and fashion theorist; Lila Abu-Lughod, an anthropologist and the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia who specializes in the dynamics of gender and women’s rights in the Middle East; and Linda M. Scott, feminist scholar, to provide a framework for looking at the politics of dress and the veil.

The two laws in question that spur my interest are the 2004 law against conspicuous religious emblems in school and the 2010 law prohibiting facial covering in public. While each law sounds universal in its breadth, in reality, the incidents behind the laws stem from the relationships between Muslims and French society at large. Each law was sponsored by the center right political party, the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire), and passed during a time when the UMP had a seated president, Jacques Chirac in the case of the former and Nicolas Sarkozy in the latter. To connect these laws to their roots in stereotypes against Arab Muslims forged during Algerian colonization, I believe one has to understand the multiple meanings of the veil, the development of French secularism, and the history of the Algerian colony to see how these three very different elements intersect in the Fifth Republic today.

The 2004 law prohibits conspicuous religious symbols or clothing in public schools, which theoretically covers everything from Jewish skull caps to Sikh headwear as well as the hijab (commonly a headscarf). The law traces itself to a 1989 incident to the suburb of Creil, north of Paris, where three girls of Moroccan heritage, ages 13-14, were asked to remove their headscarves in school and refused. The more recent law (2010) prohibiting facial covering, also applies to everyone but stems from a proposal for a ban suggested in April 2009 by André Gérin, the communist mayor of Vénissieux—a suburb of 60,000 near Lyon where half the residents are “non-French citizens or their French-born children.”

Anti-veil laws receive popular support from French voters. According to an April 2011 report on France24 television news, all the Muslims want is no longer to be stigmatized or used as an instrument of France’s political parties. (4)

The unidentified reporter who prepared interviews with many suburban Muslims noted, “between the fierce defenders of secularism and the political fights, the Muslims wish to live in full measure within the French Republic.” (5)

Many already do, by “adopt[ing] French cultural norms; they enthusiastically endorse republican values, including laïcité.” (6)

The 2004 law received 496 passing votes to 36 “no” votes in the National Assembly and by 276 to 20 votes in the Senate. The National Assembly passed the 2010 facial covering law passed 335 to 1 with the Socialists abstaining about 100 votes. The Senate passed the law in September, 246 to 1, with 46 Socialists voting for and the remaining 70 members also abstaining because of the perceived unconstitutionality of the ban. The lone “no” vote in the senate came from Louis Giscard-d’Estaing, the rightwing offspring of former president (and leader of the now defunct center political party, the UDF) Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. (7)

Louis Giscard-d’Estaing has since retired from politics.

At the heart of the UMP’s strategy for the future of Islam in France is the idea of transitioning the debate from one of “Islam in France” to the “Islam of France” within the boundaries of secularism. (8)

During the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP presented its plan to deepen the codification of secularism in society, which would give the laws regarding Muslims appropriate legal background. The rival of the UMP on the center-right, the MoDéms, has hosted public lectures on topics like Islam, democracy, pluralism, and the future of the Fifth Republic. MoDém founder François Bayrou, formerly (like the UMPs’s François Fillon) an educational minister during the time of the headscarf affair, had pushed the legislative and judicial powers to support the headscarf ban.

On the far right, Marine Le Pen of the Front National attacks the sincerity of the government and of the UMP in their defense of laïcité igniting “a big hogwash over nothing.” (9)

Le Pen believes that the government needs to outlaw public prayer and forbid the construction of mosques, which she claims are illegally funded, while also implementing a strict application of the 1905 law. (10)

On the left, the socialists refer to the UMP as making a “pseudo debate” that aims to continue the stigma against Islam. (11) Political parties recognize the importance of the Muslim issue and its cleavage within society, but a question remains of whether they wish to resolve it or maintain the status quo.

Before anyone can attempt to answer that large political question, it’s important to understand the veil itself and its origins. In chapter one of my project, I blend the ideas of Edward Said and Sadakat Kadri, whose 2012 book chronicled the history of shar’ia law from Islam’s origins to the present, to create a context of what the veil means in Islam. With this as a starting point, I move into the twenty-first century research of Killian, Lazreg, and Keaton for some context on what the veil means in France and North Africa. The interviews from these women with Muslims in France, and in Lazreg’s book also Algeria, balances the rhetoric of the politicians involved in the anti-veil laws.

The veil provides a case study of how the French are using one visible element of religion to perpetuate their colonial era stereotype that Muslims belong to an inferior race that must be civilized before attaining full citizenship or belong in society. Many women claim their veil as a religious act, but by wearing a veil in a Christian-influenced, secular society that has outlawed it, the Muslim woman in a veil has committed a political act, whether intentional or not. Jean-François Copé presents the argument of his political party, the center-right UMP, on how the veil prevents participation in French society. Popular “immigrant” musician Diam’s (half-French, raised in France by her French mother but born in Cyprus) highlights the discontent of immigrants and provides commentary on the immigrant view of current French politicians. These attitudes contribute to the disenfranchisement of immigrants and the colonially-descended population, separating them from mainstream society and driving them to a Muslim identity.

Contemporary French Muslim citizens form an ostracized population because they don’t fit within the French universalist ideals. Under the ideology of assimilation, a key strategy of the colonial empire, French universalist ideals demand that every citizen is the same. Having a visibly Muslim population clearly demonstrates that some citizens are different from the homogeneous majority. The attitudes in France today regarding Islam have deep connections with what happened in North Africa, but they also stem from the French mistrust of their own religion that developed in the eighteenth century. The embracing of the concepts of progress, logic, and freedom during the Enlightenment era ushered Europe into an era where men (and women) could challenge their leaders whether political or religious.

In chapter two, I chronicle the laws against the Catholic Church, examining Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about religion and the common good. I study the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State (including Aristride Briande’s introduction) to understand the French institution of laïcité as a weapon against the Catholic Church. This chronology highlights the Enlightenment-inspired origin of the ideology that one cannot be a faithful religious follower and a proper citizen. The French government, in taking power from the Church, wanted to produce citizens that would be more loyal to the nation than to the Pope or clergy.

This religious history of France is important to understanding the French institution of laïcité, or secularism, and how it rules the public sphere. The term laïcité literally translates from French to English as non-religious or secular, but the French also have the word séculier that means secular. Laïc could be more similar to ecumenical.

I use laïc and secular interchangeably because of the appearance of the word “secular” in the official English translation of the 1958 constitution provided on the web site of the French National Assembly. I understand laïc to mean “non-religious” and I use “secular” and “secularism” to mean the absence of influence of religious institutions on the State and the absence of the influence of the State on the religious practices and beliefs of its citizens. Since the twentieth century and contemporary politicians in France cite secularism as part of the reason the veil must be regulated, understanding the roots of laïcité is the first step of showing why that is not the only ideological force at work in the argument against the public appearance of Islam.

With the historical background of secularism established, I look at the role of religion in the construction of the Algerian colony since the French believed they had a duty to civilize the inferior Muslims and replace the Arab’s communal, tribal society with a capitalist Christian one. In chapter three, I study the translated-by-the-French Arab Muslim oral tradition that attributed the success of the French conquest to punishment from God (Allah) for being bad Muslims in a decadent Ottoman Empire. One criticism the French had of their Arab Muslim subjects was that the Arab mind had a fatalistic acceptance of God’s will. Yet, to claim what is now modern Algerian required more than 40 years of fighting to come under French control. Starting in 1830 with the conquest of Algiers, the French stripped the natives of their rights, steal their land, and reinforce the notion that the Arab Muslims were inferior people. As the indigenous population received less to live on (less land, less resources, less food, less education), their deeper descent into poverty provided more evidence that they needed the French to civilize them. The “civilizing mission” could only be possible with the creation of certain stereotypes and prejudice.

The complex interplay of race and religion in the French colonial system created hierarchies of who was superior to whom even among various colonial subjects. This occurred across colonial borders, certain Africans were better than others, and across continents, the Asian immigrants of today are often seen as less trouble than their North African counterparts. In Algeria, the number of different ethnic groups and tribes within the colony created a hierarchy within that one colony.

The Kabyles were seen as most easily assimilated, because they did not lead a nomadic lifestyle. They built farms and served as artisans constructing the day-to-day goods that everyone needed. De Tocqueville supports this in his 1837 writings on Algeria, calling the Kabyles superior to the Arab because the Kabyles “are always sedentary; they cultivate the soil, build houses” and produce weapons and fabric.

Because of this perception that Kabyles could be more easily assimilated, most schools, especially in the early Jesuit-led efforts, were concentrated on Kabyle villages. In 1892, the Kabyle district of Tizi-Ouzou had about nine percent of the total Algerian population and almost 25 percent of all French-directed classes.

The French army also perpetuated a racial hierarchy. Known for his criticism of the French colonial system, Frantz Fanon, as a West Indian, experienced it first-hand: “The French army he joined was ‘structured around an ethnic hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top… North Africans at the bottom… Black colonial troops… superior to Arabs, and the position of West Indians… ambiguous in the extreme.’”

Algerian troops were segregated from European troops. Algerians were denied promotion to the rank of officers.

Even in the twentieth century, he colons, maintained a racist ideology that the Arab Muslim was simply not capable: “The Arab was not a Cartesian; he could not think rationally. His laziness and immorality were inbred. How could citizenship be granted to men who kept their women in bondage and had no notion of land ownership?”

Islam gave a basic structure for Arab society in what is now Algeria, providing law and guides of how to live, rules that governed marriage, dress, food and economics.

So while the French undertook the civilizing mission as part of their commitment to Enlightenment era values that everyone is the same, their actions in remained in juxtaposition to the post-1789 political policies that “avoided putting racial classifications into law” as part of their commitment to “‘sameness’ and universality.”

Instead of racial classification, the French focused on religion as the key to why the Arab needed to be civilized and why they could not have the same citizenship rights as the French colon, the Spaniard or the Jew. Religion became a racial classification. According to Dana Hale, French officials in the Third Republic classified the Algerian Muslim as an inferior breed of Caucasian.

In chapter four, I focus on post-World War II, the failure of the Fourth Republic and the creation of the Fifth Republic. At this time, the rise of Algerian nationalism had planted the initial seeds of the upcoming war for independence, and the French experimented with new policies that appeared to offer the Arab Muslims equality in society but still reinforced the same colonial era prejudice. My main political documents of this era are the preamble to the 1946 constitution of the Fourth Republic, the 1958 constitution of the Fifth Republic, memoirs (from French soldiers in Algeria and Albert Camus for the European colon experience) and anti-colonial writings of the time period (both colonial évolués like Aimé Césaire from Martinique, Frantz Fanon from Martinique but transplanted to Algeria, and Albert Memmi from Tunisia and Frenchmen like Jean-Paul Sartre). The violence that transpired during the Algerian War for Independence fueled the fear of Islam that continues in today’s France.

My fifth chapter ventures into the Fifth Republic, looking at scholarship about modern Islam in France, the anti-Muslim laws and other legislation, speeches from politicians and newspaper articles about current events. I use these English and French language materials and concepts to compare present-day French-Algerian relations to the interplay between colonists, Algerians and the mainland in the colonial era to suggest that there is minimal difference between how the French treated the indigenous population of the Algerian colony and the treatment of the Muslims in France today. In other terms, the “civilizing mission” is alive and well in the Fifth Republic.

French government institutions reinforce the idea that one cannot be Muslim and French, just as the legislation against the Catholic Church two hundred plus years ago claimed that one could not be Catholic and French. The majority of French citizens are not practicing Catholics, yet they are still steeped in Catholicism. Does the Muslim population have a similar situation? Many French Muslims identify as ethnically Muslim but not religious or necessarily practicing.

I have an interest in the former French colonies and France’s interaction with them, especially how former colonies have reclaimed or developed their own culture to include or renounce certain elements of French influence. In a world where the term globalization is frequently used to describe internal relations and cross-cultural economic influence, the experience of the French and their colonies might provide lessons on what happens to various political players as countries lose and gain status as “world powers” or in the case of the colonies, their independence. Since the French lost control of the colonial empire, they have struggled to maintain a stronghold over what they refer to as a Francophone African Union. This French involvement in former colonies and the French loss of influence as a large world power offers some warnings for the United States as American foreign policy pursues action in the Middle East. Neither country has found a way to extract itself from nor cooperate with these nations, that in some cases are Arab and Muslim, in some cases involved with groups labelled as terrorists, and yet in other cases, these are post-colonial holdings carved into artificial countries.

I approach this topic as a post-colonial critical theorist, hoping to examine the stereotypes and social mistreatments of Algerians in the past and in contemporary times and, with a constructivist bent, explore the attitudes of the French elite behind some of this anti-Muslim prejudice. The development of religious-based stereotypes in the colony of Algeria and their impact on the contemporary French population descended from the colonies provides a fascinating study of the intersection of racism with the history of religious persecution in France.

After the 1789 revolution, legislation crushed the Catholic Church by limiting its power, land ownership, the role of clergy and the place of religion in greater society. If French secular society stems from the post-revolutionary period and wanting to end the influence of the Catholic Church over the mechanics of running the Nation-State, then using the institution of laïcité in legislation targeting Muslims might imply that Islam has gained a foothold in the French political system today. That is not the case. In 2006, one percent of parliamentarians in France were Muslim when Muslims comprise about 8.25% of the general population.

Despite this use of the great French tenet of secularism, which appears in the constitutions of 1946 and 1958, this is not a simple debate about religion.

It’s about citizenship. It’s about national identity and reconciling a colonial past. The rules regarding citizenship and how those rules changed during and after colonialism offer no alternative to the monocultural, universalist vision of what it means to be French. Mainstream French society is unwilling to include their former colonial subjects as legally and culturally French. The Algerians (and other Maghreb-descended populations) challenge the stereotypical white (“European”), secular French identity. The North African descended residents of France are Arab and Muslim. The French government targets Muslims in an effort to legislate away their difference. While one part of the issue certainly revolves around what it means to be French, there remains a question of how religion can exist in Fifth Republic France.

The French have claimed that one cannot be a true believer and serve the Nation-State. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would say this causes a conflict between what God wants and what society requires. Can you be a good citizen and be true to your religion? Perhaps an answer to this lies in more questions. What role does religion play for Muslims in France? Is religion for Muslim citizens in France about a connection to a higher power and morality code or is it about a connection to a familial history? In the case of veiling, are these women searching for belonging? Racism and discrimination against Arabs are common in France, so has French society pushed second- and third-generation “immigrants” (children or grandchildren of colonial subjects who came to the mainland) so far away that they turn to another set of roots and cultural definitions? Since they are referred to as immigrants, have they taken the message to heart and developed their own community, a community that is French and Muslim?

Religious persecution in France began with reactions to Christianity, as early as the 13th Century with the fight against the Cathars, then the huguenots and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and later with the French Revolution and the Catholic Church. Politicians of the twentieth century and today want the French people to believe that Muslims threaten traditional national identity and that religious dress will destroy the secular approach to everyday life in France. One way to look at the issue suggests that how French politicians focus their battle against Islam in a manner reminiscent of what happened to the Catholic Church in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. This cannot be the whole explanation behind why France must legislate against the presence of the Muslim veil in the public sphere. The fight against the Catholic Church was aimed at the institution. Today’s focus is on the individual practitioner.

Politicians defend the need to legislate the veil with discussions of protecting secularism and the public good. Women who wear the veil threaten secularism and the public good, or so the story goes. Secularism and the public good cannot adequately justify these laws. In order to fully understand the French discomfort with the Muslim veil, one needs to look at the development of the Algerian colony, the stereotypes developed there because of religion, and the violence that occurred during decolonization. While secularism and public good are the institutional ideologies behind the effort to legislate the veil, these are merely symptoms of the French lack of reconciliation with the Algerian colonial past. Immigrants, their descendants and now Muslims in France today still face the same attitudes from the civilizing mission.

Me at my thesis defense in May. Photo by Joan Zachary.

Me at my thesis defense in May. Photo by Joan Zachary.

NOTES

1 Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (Vintage: New York, 1997). Updated version, first published in 1981

2 Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: the Republican Idea of empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 1

3 Vanessa R. Schwartz, Modern France: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 40

4 “Actuellement, ce que veulent les musulmans, c’est ne plus être stigmatisés. Ne plus être instrumentalisés par les partis politiques” from France24, “Politique : la laïcité, l’Islam et la France” April 15, 2011. http://www.france24.com/fr/20110414-2011-debat-France-Islam-laicite

5 “Entre les défenseurs acharnés de la laïcité et les combats politiques, les musulmans souhaitent vivre pleinement dans la République Française.” France24, “Politique : la laïcité, l’Islam et la France” April 15, 2011.

6 Stéphanie Giry, “France and its Muslims,” Foreign Affairs (Vol 85, No 5 2006) 88

7 UDF stands for Union pour la Démocratie Française. The party later became François Bayrou’s party, the MoDems, Mouvement Democrate

8 “Notre famille politique a, depuis longtemps, œuvré pour la promotion de la laïcité et pour favoriser le passage d’un « islam en France » à un « islam de France » :” Union pour une Mouvement Populaire, “Laïcité : 26 Propositions Pour Mieux Vivre Ensemble” 3

9Un grand blabla pour rien, une grande entourloupe, preuve de l’absence totale de sincérité de l’UMP comme du gouvernement,” “Communiqué de Presse de Marine LE PEN, Présidente du Front National :” http://www.frontnational.com/

10Elle demande le respect intégral et immédiat de la loi républicaine : interdiction sans attendre des prières dans la rue, et application stricte de la loi de 1905 sur la laïcité, à tous les niveaux.” “Communiqué de Presse de Marine LE PEN, Présidente du Front National :” http://www.frontnational.com/

11un pseudo débat présenté comme portant sur la laïcité, mais dont le seul objet était et reste de stigmatiser l’Islam en jetant insidieusement l’opprobre sur des millions de Français, croyants ou non, issus de cette tradition,” http://www.parti-socialiste.fr/communiques/l-ump-n-organise-pas-un-debat-sur-la-laicite-mais-pour-stigmatiser-l-islam

12 From Le Petit Larousse (1994): laïque, laïc: … “Indépendant des organisations religieuses…”

séculier, séculière: … “se dit d’un prêtre qui n’appartient à aucun ordre ou institut religieux (par opp. à régulier)”

13 Alexis de Tocquevulle “First Letter on Algeria (23 June 1837)” in Writings on Empire and Slavery. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) 6

14 Neil MacMaster Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900-62 (New York: Saint Martins Press, 1997) 44

15 Dennis McEnnerney. “Frantz Fanon, the Resistance, and the Emergence of Identity Politics” in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) 262

16 Ted Morgan. My Battle of Algiers (New York: Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins, 2005) 13

17 Todd Shepard. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006) 12-13

18 Dana Hale “French Images of Race on Product Trademarks during the Third Republic” in The Color of Liberty 132

19 Abdulkader H. Sinno, Muslims in Western Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 76-77

Weekly newspaper clips

When I went online to find the links to my writing samples, I noticed that the weeklies have more or less disappeared. That’s not surprising given that three closed and the fourth was sold to new owners who gave the publication a different look and feel.

I have uploaded these images to include some of my weekly newspaper clippings.

News clip: liquor license

News clip: liquor license

No beer on tap

News clip: Pektor/Trailer Park

News clip: Pektor/Trailer Park

News Clip: Don't eat the dirt

News Clip: Don’t eat the dirt

Feature: Phillipsburg High School art students at Lafayette, page 1 of 2
Feature: Phillipsburg High School art students at Lafayette, page 1 of 2

The second half of a large front page feature

The second half of a large front page feature

Newsletters, brochures, etc.

Yesterday I uploaded some of my newspaper pages. I thought today I’d offer a few newsletters and other publicity materials.

Brochure: Two color trifold, YWCA, some photography also mine

Brochure: Two color trifold, YWCA, some photography also mine

Front page: redesigned GLVWG newsletter

Front page: redesigned GLVWG newsletter

Using member success stories to motivate people to open the newsletter

Using member success stories to motivate people to open the newsletter

Lay out and editing in InDesign

Lay out and editing in InDesign

Inside of the redesigned GLVWG newsletter

Inside of the redesigned GLVWG newsletter

Newsletter: YWCA inside page
Newsletter: YWCA inside page
Newsletter: YWCA front page, two color

Newsletter: YWCA front page, two color

Newsletter: YWCA back panel

Newsletter: YWCA back panel

Newsletter: YWCA inside page

Newsletter: YWCA inside page

8.5 x 11 "poster" in line with USAID branding standards

8.5 x 11 “poster” in line with USAID branding standards

Links

315548_2378150736854_1498168_n

Professional samples available on the web

(In progress. I will add to this post until complete)

My LinkedIn Profile:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/angel-ackerman/20/3a5/b14

NEWSPAPERS- DAILY

Article from The Morning Call, archived through the Library of Congress and visible on the Open World Leadership Center web site (2003)

Visiting Russians Learn about American Libraries

http://www.openworld.gov/article/print.php?id=27&lang=1

More about libraries:
Meuser Library in Wilson sets out to prove it’s friendly (2007)
http://articles.mcall.com/2007-12-28/news/3941239_1_family-place-library-library-director-small-community-library

Phillipsburg to get first look at library addition this month (2003)

http://articles.mcall.com/2003-03-13/news/3450303_1_county-library-entire-library-80th-anniversary

Morning Call sports feature:

Slate Belt basking in glory of two football teams (2001)

http://articles.mcall.com/2001-11-30/news/3380106_1_championship-football-games-class-2a-game-two-teams

Morning Call municipal news articles about Phillipsburg, N.J.:

Phillipsburg group fails to get answers about reassessment (2003)

http://articles.mcall.com/2003-02-12/news/3455078_1_property-reassessment-town-council-assessor

In Phillipsburg, a neighborhood awaits tax ruling (2003)

http://articles.mcall.com/2003-03-05/news/3451707_1_reassessment-property-tax-tax-increase

Phillipsburg PAL serves up invitation to fundraiser (2003)

http://articles.mcall.com/2003-03-23/news/3448553_1_pal-president-green-acres-dinner

Some Morning Call municipal news articles about West Easton, Pa.:

$40,000 fine considered for missed trash pick-up (2002)

http://articles.mcall.com/2002-08-14/news/3420311_1_waste-management-trash-collection-local-hauler

West Easton, trash hauler argue over fine (2002)

http://articles.mcall.com/2002-10-08/news/3444187_1_waste-management-trash-hauler-fine

West Easton to pay trash hauler again (2003)

http://articles.mcall.com/2003-02-04/news/3456379_1_waste-management-payment-fine

West Easton delays choice on $52 tax (2007)

http://articles.mcall.com/2007-08-20/news/3757592_1_emergency-services-municipal-tax-flood-damage-year-s-tax-returns

West Easton, housing developer try to settle dispute (2007)

http://articles.mcall.com/2003-03-09/news/3450944_1_valley-housing-special-meeting-storm-water

Ashley pulls back from two projects (2007)

http://articles.mcall.com/2007-09-29/news/3780119_1_project-majestic-tax-revenue

Some Morning Call municipal news articles about Glendon, Pa.:

Glendon neighborhood sings the stray cat blues, The Morning Call (2007)

http://articles.mcall.com/2007-11-21/news/3808775_1_feral-cat-colony-neuter-and-return-cat-problem

Glendon residents worry about possible work-release program (2007)

http://articles.mcall.com/2007-10-04/news/3782619_1_work-release-counseling-program-residents

Williams eyes taking over nearly a mile of road in Glendon, The Morning Call (2008)

http://articles.mcall.com/2008-02-08/news/3983055_1_road-repairs-road-issues-mile-road

NEWSPAPERS- WEEKLY

Business article from The Bethlehem News

Crystal Signatures shares the art of glass and pride in Bethlehem (2006)

http://www.crystalsignatures.com/csi/crystal.nsf/news/Crystal-Signatures-shares-the-art-of-glass-and-pride-in-Bethlehem

BOOK REVIEWS

Hippocampus magazine:

My Battle of Algiers: A memoir by Ted Morgan (2012)

http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2012/04/review-my-battle-of-algiers-a-memoir-by-ted-morgan/

Becoming Jimi Hendrix by Steven Roby and Brad Schrieber (2012)

http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2012/07/review-becoming-jimi-hendrix-by-steven-roby-and-brad-schrieber/

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2012)

http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2012/06/review-steve-jobs-by-walter-issacson/

House of Stone by Anthony Shadid (2013)

http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2013/02/review-house-of-stone-by-anthony-shadid/

PUBLIC RELATIONS PLACEMENTS

“YWCA seeks volunteers to help” in the daily newspaper, the Express-Times, contributed photo by me (2008)

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2008/09/ywca_seeks_volunteers_to_help.html

“Sciota shopkeeper honors those who serve,” front page of the daily newspaper, the Pocono Record (2013)

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130614/NEWS/306140346

PHOTOGRAPHY

Some snapshots I took during my time at The Lehigh Valley News Group:

Bethlehem Area School District teachers head down the River (2006)

http://lehighvalleynewsgroup.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=163911&CategoryID=16062&ListSubAlbums=0

Freemansburg 150th/Carnival (2006)

http://lehighvalleynewsgroup.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=161595&CategoryID=16062&ListSubAlbums=0

Blueberry Festival at Burnside Plantation (2006)

http://lehighvalleynewsgroup.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=153308&CategoryID=16062&ListSubAlbums=0

Durkee employee reunion (2006)

http://lehighvalleynewsgroup.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=179836&CategoryID=16062&ListSubAlbums=0

Paris Rendez-Vous

Quartier Gare de Nord
October 2010 (my photo)

Paris Rendez-Vous

(A poem from my 2010 trip to Paris)

In the initial flurry of dark coats and

Clunking baggage wheels, my harsh accent that

Does not sing gets lost on the platform. The

Acclimated crowds ravage my coveted Gauloise

While I hesitate.

Emerging, damp silk and cotton clinging to

My skin, my body threatens to fail as I

Pray for her acceptance. The station

Breathes mechanical three-tone chimes

Delineating each train.

Simplicity of metal, glass and concrete,

The station does not yield to the sway

Of engines and cars. This canopy

Protects me from the elements and her gaze.

My reluctant shove opens the door.

I cascade into a surreal apertif of

Flowers, perspiration and urine,

Cigarette smoke and inexpensive red wine

Skimming her flesh. The olfactory assault awakens me

And mocks my freshness.

Redolent of yeast, her warm body embraces

Me. My mouth lusts for her breads and her

Sweets, grime overshadowed, but my first

Need is revival brought by strong coffee

In tiny cups.

At the hotel, I climb a vivid pink and

Worn brown spiral of 85 stairs to a

Corner chamber where imperfect sheets

Remain suspiciously mussed from the

Bodies preceding us.

I step to the balcony, fingers of wrought iron

Restraining me as I stand with no destination

Sandwiched between opposing stations.

In this space, I taste her earnest

Poignancy on the breeze.

From this narrow ledge, she dances

Mesmerizing me with her softness, her angles;

Her age versus her timelessness.

Her caress reaches me and transforms the American

Tension that defines me.

Transfixed, I freeze. Every murmur against

Neighboring tracks rocks my core, screaming of my

Transience. Every siren from the streets below

Thrills me, a tremor for each pin-pon that pierces

My overconstructed fugue.

The passersby below my balcony continue their

Departure, trajectory focused on a shortcut to the

Train. Their nonchalance boggles me. Her touch

Forces amnesia, the mundane discarded in her kisses.

We descend into her streets of rapture.

She leads me through her neighborhoods

Into her flavors. She is not the girl I once knew

But nor am I the same. I desire more than I did in youth

So I chase her as I will chase her for days

Begging for our merger.

The ideologists mandate her purity, concocting paltry laws

While she feigns aloofness. The natives ignore her

Everyday charms but bristle when she shares

Her ardor with Africans, Muslims, and other dark faces

As readily as white skins.

She absorbs the choppy resonance of the Arabic

Laid at her feet and stares at the strange letters

She cannot read, because language constantly

Mutates. She can only preserve her heart and not what the

Populace layers upon her.

My feet blister keeping pace, just the endorphins

Propel me. My mood turns uneasy as she continues beneath

Me, urging me onward into her pleasures. With fats from

Her table and easy-flowing wine, she satiates, sullies

And corrupts me.

Under the haze of alcohol with a belly full of frog,

Snails and rabbit, she lures me to the river Seine,

Tourist-laden boats driving its currents,

Its banks flooded with the silhouettes

Of lovers entwined.

When exhaustion lands me in my bed, I never

Close the window. The bugs nip my soiled flesh

But I continue to expose myself to her.

How else could I monitor her nocturnal movements?

Never have I felt so dirty and free.

But finally, I return to that station, with more

Song in my voice. I laugh and weep as the

RER dashes into the suburbs. Tunnels ascend

Into daylight, sun falling on graffiti, the message too real,

Disconcerting.

My tears draw attention from a tall

Black man with dreads whose soft French comforts

My sorrow. I can only pray that he will

Care for her, as I do, and stay with her

With a permanence I cannot.