HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT

That’s just what Walker and a group of Black, homeless and housing-insecure mothers and children did in November, moving into the unoccupied “Magnolia Street House” to shelter themselves as they called attention to the blatant injustices of Oakland’s overwhelming housing crisis.

Wedgewood Properties, the owner of the house and flipper of dozens of other properties in the area, lost little time in fighting to evict the families. In an early January ruling, Moms 4 Housing lost their case to Wedgewood, which claimed the moral high ground in the situation. Shortly thereafter, the Moms were forced from the home just before 6 am by officers of the sheriff's department armed with riot gear and AR-15 rifles.

In the wake of the Moms’ eviction, and in celebration of their recognition by the Oakland City Council as Black History Month honorees, we checked in with Walker to talk about what’s happened and what’s to come for the Moms.

You’ve gotten a really militant response. Does the scale of that reaction surprise you?

Not the scale of reaction, I don’t think that surprised us, but the support has been outstanding. And we appreciate all of our supporters, it just lets us know we are on the right side of history, we’re doing the right thing, and I think this resonates with everyone, because all of our basic needs are being commodified. Housing is a basic human need, and I think folks are starting to realize that capitalism is playing a part in that not being a reality. And it should be.

It’s been an intentional act of civil disobedience. You’re a lifelong activist. Is that true of the other moms?

Yes, I’ve been a community organizer since the age of 14. All of the other moms have been organizing in their communities, and we’ve seen the change that gentrification has had, we’ve seen our community be victims of the foreclosure crisis, and we’ve seen our folks be displaced either out into the street or to any outside place, to Vallejo, Fresno, Madesto, places like that.

There’s no scarcity of housing. There’s a profiteering crisis.

What’s it like seeing so much support for your mission?

The support has been great, folks are realizing that this is their fight, too, and I think some of the opposition—we’re really clear on the overall message, because we were never about, like, “Oh, so they can just come and take my house.” It was never about that. We wanted to bring awareness to speculation in our community. Corporations that buy hundreds of homes a month and horde them for profit when there’s actually folks that need housing.

There’s no scarcity of housing. There’s a profiteering crisis. There’s a moral crisis that lets this happen in a city with four vacant houses for every one homeless person.

Wedgewood stated the court’s ruling wasn’t only legally correct, but ethically and morally right. I can almost understand playing the devil’s advocate to argue that it’s not ethically ideal, but to say it’s morally okay to have so many homeless people and people pushed out of their homes is truly insane.

We’re all on stolen land. This is indigenous land, so when we talk about “stealing,” this country was stolen, and the corporation does not need this home. They’re composed of five different companies that all play a part in displacing folks.

In their CEO’s office there’s a big Monopoly board. They’re doing this on a mass scale, and I’ve heard that they have properties all over the world. I was very shocked by the overwhelming support, but it just lets me know that everybody is having this issue.

There’s a lot of issues especially with the homelessness in Oakland. It’s been a 47 percent increase since 2017 in homelessness. That is absolutely alarming. It should be an emergency. Until we brought awareness, national attention to this, our mayor wasn’t acting on it, our governor had declared a state of emergency, but the community, our supporters, Moms 4 Housing and other organizations put pressure on these people to actually act. So it just let me know the power of the people. When we organize, we can win.

What have been some of the greatest successes of the movement so far?

Having shelter for those 58 days for myself and my children. We know the facts about homeless children and brain development, but I actually got to see that. I got to see my son take his first steps in that house on Magnolia Street, and say his first words, which were “Thank you.” And my daughter being able to be free and have some security.

It’s so important for our children to have shelter and I think a lot of us don’t even think about what it’s like for children to be homeless and not even have space to develop. That’s been the most rewarding thing to see personally.

Also movement-wise, to see that this is still Oakland. Even though Oakland is rapidly changing, there’s still that history of resistance here, and we’re going to continue to resist, and we’re going to continue to organize, and we saw the power of the people in this whole situation. Our community continues to show up for us.

When we organize, we can win.

What’s been the most unexpected challenge?

Just dealing with a company that hired a PR firm and just dealing with someone who tried to smear the overall objective of the movement, which is for folks to have housing. That has always been the forefront of our struggle. We’re fighting for everyone, not only ourselves.

Dealing with the militarization of the eviction, that was very unexpected. I was actually on Democracy Now! Doing an interview when I heard from Amy that they were coming into the house, so we got over there, and it looked like a scene out of a war zone. They sent robots into the house, they had drones flying over the neighborhood, there were tanks, there was riot gear, military fatigues, police with AR 15, everything. I’ve never seen anything like that in a residential neighborhood to evict mothers and children at five o’clock in the morning.

And they had no idea that our children were not in the house, but luckily we prepared and had our children away and in a safe space, but they didn’t know that. That was a challenge and right now we are holding the Alameda County Sheriffs accountable for this. They have to be held accountable for the way they came in to evict mothers and babies.

What’s the long term goal?

We’re working on a lot of things right now, and our overall goal is to end homelessness. To make sure that folks that want shelter have shelter. And to recognize that housing is a human right. So we’re always going to fight towards that. We also want to be a resource for other homeless mothers and homeless people, and we want to work on policy change, legislation, and come up with real solutions. We just want to work towards real solutions with grassroots organizing.

We have to take care of ourselves, because some of our elected officials are not, unless we put pressure on them. We’re going to continue to put pressure on them, hold the sheriffs accountable, and keep the movement going.

That’s the best example you can give to your children, is to be on the right side of history and to be working to make the world a better place for them.

What are the kids’ reactions and what do you hope they take away from this?

Well my daughter, she asks, we’re not at mom’s house right now, and I’m like, we’re not, we might go back, we’re in negotiations. She’s 5 and she’s very intelligent, so there are some things I can explain to her.

Overall, I think it’s been a good experience for our children because they’ve bonded, all our children love each other, it’s like a sense of community has been created, they see us speaking and they see us taking a stand and putting our bodies on the line for others, and I think that’s the best example you can give to your children, is to be on the right side of history and to be working to make the world a better place for them. I think that when they get older they will really appreciate this moment and the courageousness of their mothers in bringing awareness to this issue.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line is wrapped around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?,” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I am going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounded fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I imagine the inside to be a mirror of this, hopefully with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I made a mental note to not drink too much liquid, the bathroom line is almost as long as the line outside. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provided me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

My hips swing around before I head towards the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I head back to dance when I hear Shigecki’s set start. I’m jumping around, sweating, and when I pause for a beat I let out a yelp. There are strippers working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.