Web Paper or Special Event

In trying to connect our prison classes and voice, I keep returning to the ongoing discussions our Friday group has about the structure of our class. One conflict we’ve had is how to open up the space we create, and be able to have “something for everyone”. We want to be accommodating, but it’s impossible to create a space accessible to all learners. Having a silent space or encouragement to write, moving on conversation when it’s off-topic, interrupting discussion for activities versus letting the discussion flow naturally. Additionally, there’s the consistent issue of having one or two strong voices among the inmates that can dominate the conversation. How do we intervene in that scenario?

Beacons of Fury

W.E.B. Du Bois recognizes in “The Souls of Black Folk” a complex and paradoxical process of defining the struggles and achievements of “Negroes.” Du Bois endeavors to articulate the racism inflicted upon and experienced by “Negroes” and the meanings and shapes it takes in “American” culture and society, while not categorizing and attributing specific attributes to particular races. It is essential for Du Bois to focus on racial divides in order to recognize that certain people experience violence and hatred more often than others because of how their skin color is perceived. Du Bois uses this argument to demonstrate that no matter how hard “Negroes” have worked and how determined they have been, “Negroes,” are not seen as equals in society.

I saw this image on twitter and it stuck with me. 

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander discusses the most recent iteration of the fundamentally racist system that exists in the United States: mass incarceration. Just like their ancestors, many black Americans cannot vote and are denied rights, only this time it is justified by their criminality. Their fathers were kept under control through fear and the guise of state’s rights. Their father’s fathers were controlled and dehumanized by slavery. 

Fighting systematic oppressions, People with high aspirations often express deep doubts and contradictory feelings about any acts that seem to work under the same system they want to fight against, and will be discouraged if there come no salient, quickly showing achievements of institutional changes. However, without gaining enough strength within the system at the first place, without temporarily enduring the unfairness to survive, without being somehow more successful or productive by the current social definition, how can people collectively get any opportunities to cause any changes forcefully in a long-term process, without being silenced, oppressed and excluded again and again, in the criminal justice context, prisoners being trapped in the cycle of incarceration?

Experimental Essay #2

The Commodification of Justice Movements (“Working” Title)

idea(s):

• disseminating information about antiblackness in the ever-changing united states, and the transformative power of this information

the #blacklivesmatter movement, as shulman states in his keynote, “update[s] a radical democratic imagination that characterized the great theorists of black power, the american new left, and many second wave feminists.” the idea of “update” is something interesting here to me, given the inherent quality of the #blm as part internet activism – an internet in which “updates” have a certain meaning and connotation about new online information and its availability to the public.

Again, this essay is uploaded in the original color as well as copy and pasted here:

Joie Waxler

Experimental Essay

11/23/15

Basically just lots of jumbled thoughts about BMC, #BlackLivesMatter, the world, and other general musings through the lens of a synesthetic white lesbian

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wonder at the world,

in horrified awe

At its dazzling capacity

to absorb yet another blow.

I wonder at the world,

But mostly, I wonder at myself.

I would, first, like to discuss the meaning of "ecological intelligence" with the rest of the class, because though I have my own ideas about what the term might mean, I want to hear what everyone else's interpretations were so that I can develop my own and understand it better. Then, I want to talk about colonization in the linguistic sense, and how this impacts the natural world. It was very interesting to me that Bowers said that Western thinkers did not consider environmental limits when they were drafting the contemporary meanings of words that we still employ today in our language. Something I've been thinking about more and more, based on the recent readings we've been doing, is the idea that language is inadequate when it comes to expressing ourselves and conveying meanings.

An expansion of my last paper: this picture explores a sliver of what I have been contemplating in the recent weeks and days. There is much that I need to add and expand upon.