Web Paper or Special Event

Questions

- How is the issue of transgender medical care handled in the prison system?

- How must transgender medical care be framed so that it is deemed acceptable and worthy of time and money in the eyes of both the prison system and the public?

- How does the issue of mental health care in prisons enter into this conversation, and how does this impact the efforts of both mental health and transgender activists?

Background

In the last two weeks, I have been unprecedentedly exposed to numerous perspectives on social injustices and the mass incarceration in the United States. Among them I am finding myself especially interested in the topics of racial profiling, the accountability of education system, and stereotype threats as the consequence that further harm disenfranchised people's well-being. 

Resources:

Banks, R. Richard, Jennifer L. Eberhardt and Lee Ross. "Discrimination and Implicit Bias in a Racially Unequal Society." California Law Review Vol. 94, No. 4 (Jul., 2006), pp. 1169-1190. Web

Research Question:

What factors (social, physical and ethical/philisophical) impact the breakdown of medical care in prison systems?

On Thursday, two of the women from the prison were engaged in a lively debate about structure, mental health, agency, and personal responsibility.

“What do you do when the police won’t come to your aid?”

“Then they send you to prison for protecting yourself and your family.”

“There needs to be therapy. Those who are abused are more likely to abuse others.”

“But past abuse doesn’t give someone the right to hurt someone else.”

“You need to find a balance.”

Tong Tong

360s Program: Arts of Resistance

Research Proposal

09/15/2015

Starting Questions:

[full disclosure that this posting is "live" so to speak; i hope to edit and add onto it once we've had our class discussion, and i've done some more of my own legwork. think of this as a hybrid essay/lesson plan]

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Very Personal

I might preface this essay by acknowledging the figurative nature of my previous post. Through the personification of contending emotions, I present my psyche as a contact zone, in itself. Though abstract, the short, poetic-prose alludes to the greater dilemmas of mental illness, emotional disorders, and from this, one may draw connections to the utilitarian school of thought in correspondence with the essay, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

For a week each of the past three years, President Lincoln’s Cottage and Students Opposing Slavery have hosted an international youth summit centered on training and empowering youth to combat human trafficking. There are typically around 30 participants, aged around 14-19, with established abolitionists from many backgrounds serving as speakers and facilitators. At the 2015 summit, there were students from seven different countries and six different American states. We meet for only a week, five intensive, long days of powerpoints, brainstorming sessions, lectures, and action-planning. We’re vulnerable. We cry. We laugh. We shout. We deeply feel a need for change, even those of us who haven’t been personally or directly ensnared in the dark world of trafficking.

Last December, I went to Nicaragua and spent my mornings at a local house taking care of children. The experience was novel, to say the least – we put on plays in Spanish, explored the neighbourhood, and played a couple thousand games of tag – and I was struck, constantly, by the comparisons to my life in the USA and my time in Nicaragua.

Alison

ESem Paper #2
September 11, 2015

I still remember the day when I was playing a piano in the common room for my theater audition and a girl came in. She just set beside me and waited for me to finish my practice. After the last song, she said to me with enthusiasm:” The music you played is so beautiful! I really love this song!” 

As I have not played any instrument since I went to high school, I know my music was not as good as she said thus I did not take her sentences seriously at first. However, she compromised my music and my skills for a while and asked me the name of the song. I could feel her passion about music and the ingenuousness when she talked to me. We set together and had some discussion about music that afternoon.