Dan's blog

here's a really great clip from a mainstream media source:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/420371/october-22-2012/governor-magorium-s-ganja-emporium?xrs=share_fb

http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_ritz_a_teacher_growing_green_in_the_south_bronx.html

          The description of the Visions community in chapter 5 is reminding me in ways of the Delpit article because it displays the ways in which a liberal, middle class, white agenda about personal growth and well-being can actually be incredibly harmful due to the ways it clashes with the realities of systematic oppression. The ways that the staff people thought of themselves as “liberating” the women, by telling them they couldn’t wear makeup or sexually revealing clothing, when in fact, that is one perception of freedom oppressing these women’s ability to control the external expression of their identities.

         This also makes me think about intentional communities in general -- and when and why they work and fail. This seems to produce evidence that, if an intentional community is established, and you bring in and subject others to the intentions of that community who are not devoted to the ideals, but rather are prisoners of those ideals, it becomes another form of incarceration, even if it’s more “humane” according to middle class standards.

      “I looked at her and realized that she wasn’t the same woman who entered [Visions]  a year ago. This time she couldn’t make it but maybe next time she will… My job is to make the women aware of their psychological pain. She’s aware of it now. So in some way, it was a kind of victory” (176).

    I wanted to return briefly to the question I asked in class on Thursday about what I Rigoberta Menchu, and the trauma novel, does. I asked this question because I have read Trauma fiction before. Most recently, I read Half of a Yellow Sun, a Nigerian novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The novel explores a horrendous civil war which took place in Nigeria in the 1960s – essentially a genocide which was funded by European and unrecognized by Americans. It was difficult but incredibly moving to read, and for me, it succeeded in establishing empathy and producing shock and disgust that I had never heard any mention of this history (especially considering that it wasn’t that long ago).

      The more time that passes --- the more time I have to process the "restorative justice" mural tour yesterday, the more problematic I find it... and the mural arts program in general (plus someof the comments made by our tour guide). The question I'm contemplating most now is about the difference between these murals and street art/graffiti. Especially if one (the mural) is combatting/silencing the other.

          Although I want to respond to my first web event on active listening, I don’t think I will be able to. I’ve learned so much about communication and how communication is affected by privilege since that reflection that I have to move in another direction.

            This past week in the 360 has been an emotionally charged one – challenging, frustrating, belief shaking. After Tuesday’s class, I felt so confused about my voice, about my place in the world and my privilege that I walked out of class in a daze, and ended up screaming in the woods with Johanna. After Thursday’s class on academia, rationality, and coherence, I was flooded with doubts about how I speak and write. My classes have never left me feeling so vulnerable and uncertain about everything – so I’m in a place of utter confusion.

"More African American Adults are under correctional control today-- in prison or jail, or on probation parole --than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began" (180).

I'm definitely feeling a lot of things reading The New Jim Crow. The War on Drugs seems like such a rhetorical farse to keep black American's enslaved. When I was living in North Carolina, I went to this Anarchist conference, and in a lecture on harm reduction, we were told that there are more prescriptions for high potency painkillers (such as oxycodone or percocet) than there are number of people living in the state. So -- the drug usage has changed -- in a way that allows white middle class people to avoid being seen as drug users.

The "Prisoner's of a Hardlife" comic mentioned the sentencing distinction between Crack and Cocaine as reflecting class and racial oppression. Who do we think of when we hear the terms drug-user or addict? I imagine there are hundreds "high functioning" and legally sanctioned drug addicts and users who work on wallstreet or as Ibankers, who just fill their prescriptions of morphine and thus are considered upstanding, contributing members of society. Obviously the system is targeting certain people. 

I wanted a female-bodied avatar -- and I like this artist a lot. His name's Conrad Roset-- and he does really powerful illustrations of people with a few simple lines and water color. The eyes in this one were particularly striking. I feel like it speaks to silenced women-- but in a way I can't exactly articulate.