Dehumanizing “tired,” “poor,” “huddled masses”

Detained in USA

U.S. disparages, demonizes immigrants; justifies abuse based on demonic characterization

Excerpts, minor editing, comment 

by Carolyn Bennett

Detained in Greece

“It is heartbreaking,” a Greek writer wrote in 2009, how questions of immigration  never raise concerns about “‘aliens’ being forced to hug fathers through prison bars’” or how “‘illegals’ have to go days and weeks without knowing if wives made it through childbirth.”  The writer concludes,       “Something tells me that the reasons human violations like these are possible — even greatly applauded — is that the campaign to dehumanize immigrants through words like ‘illegal aliens’ and ‘illegals’ has been far too successful.”

This week Free Speech Radio News reported members of the U.S. legislature continuing the U.S.  Dehumanization Campaign against immigrants. In a congressional committee hearing purportedly on reform of the immigration system, some politicians reportedly dubbed the U.S. detention facilities “‘Holiday on ICE’” (Reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). One lawmaker compared federal agents to hotel “‘concierge.’” 

I find troubling that people holding inordinate power cavalierly turn other people’s misery — misery often created or exacerbated (or both) by U.S. officials and their corporate allies — into material for ridicule or stand-up comedy.   

The news story also linked to findings in a current study conducted by NYU law school on the treatment immigrants in New Jersey detention facilities.  “Immigration Incarceration: the Expansion and Failed Reform of Immigration Detention in Essex County, New Jersey,” was released this month.  The study concluded that though the immigration detention system in the area studied (and more broadly) has been touted as non-punitive and abuses are set aside  awaiting fulfillment of empty federal promises of reform — the fact is that detentions have increased as have violations of the 2008 and 2011 Immigration and Customs Enforcement Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS).

Some of report’s findings of abuse

In 2011, the number of immigration detention beds in Essex County (New Jersey) increased by 150 percent from 500 to 1,250 detainees per day. Essex County now holds over half of all immigrant detainees in New Jersey.

NYU School of Law
Immigrant Rights Clinic
New Jersey Advocates for
Immigrant Detainees report 

Immigrant detainees in (privately owned and operated) Delaney Hall and ECCF (Essex County Correctional Facility) are not treated with the human dignity and respect they deserve. Many detainees reported verbal abuse and mistreatment from guards and jail staff.

During 2011, immigration detainees in ECCF filed 158 written grievances. These grievances included allegations of mistreatment from ECCF staff, inadequate access to special diet meals, and delayed or unanswered requests for medical attention.

According to written grievance records, ECCF has been in violation of at least five detention standards in 2011 concerning medical attention, food service, religious services, access to legal counsel, and visitation services.

From October 2011 through December 2011, detainees in Delaney Hall filed 46 written grievances. These included allegations of mistreatment from Delaney Hall staff, cold dormitories and inadequate blankets during the winter, and unacceptable food quality.

In both ECCF and Delaney Hall, violations of detainees’ rights to due process and access to justice were reported including obstacles to detainees’ contacting their attorneys after transfers and the negative affect of video conferencing on attorney-client confidentiality and due process rights.

This kind of inhumane treatment gives new meaning to “tired,” “poor,” “huddled masses” “yearning to breathe free.”

United States officials, their callousness and incompetence together with their allies have amassed masses (often fleeing U.S. wars abroad), deepened and exacerbated their fatigue, their poverty, and often their antipathy for this land where stands a Statue of Liberty.  

Some of report’s recommendations

Beginning with facilities that fail to meet the 2011 ICE Performance-Based National Detention Standards and that unduly restrict detainees’ access to family and community, ICE should stop detaining immigrants in state and local jails.

ICE officials should use alternatives to detention, such as supervised release.

Essex County and corrections officials at Delaney Hall and ECCF should take immediate steps to bring their facilities up to the 2011 ICE Performance-Based National Detention Standards.

Essex County and corrections officials should bring ECCF into compliance with existing standards by eliminating routine strip searches of detainees receiving contact visits.

Corrections officials at Delaney Hall and ECCF should undergo training in how to work with diverse detainees and be respectful of different cultures.

Corrections officials at Delaney Hall and ECCF should implement a meaningful grievance process that safeguards detainees from retaliation.

Attorneys and their clients should be able to appear in immigration hearings together in video conferencing rooms, the audio and visual quality of video conferences assessed regularly for quality; and ensure detainees given adequate opportunity to consult off-camera with their lawyers.

Essex County and corrections officials at Delaney Hall and ECCF should ensure that emergency medical treatment is immediately available to detainees 24 hours a day and all detainees receive timely and effective medical treatments.

Both Delaney Hall and ECCF periodically should review food served to ensure compliance with caloric requirements and adherence to special diets for medical and religious purposes.

The facilities should make unlimited clean drinking water available to detainees at all times.

Facilities should make available to detainees soap for washing and laundry at all times.

Sources and notes

“Immigrant detention in Greece” (la Macha), September 14, 2009, http://vivirlatino.com/2009/09/14/immigrant-detention-in-other-countries.php

“Immigration Incarceration-The Expansion and Failed Reform of Immigration Detention in Essex County, NJ,” ImmigrationIncarceration2012.pdf

Copyright:  NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic and New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees

Report’s primary authors: Semuteh Freeman and Lauren Major, candidates for the JD  at New York University School of Law.  They conducted the work as student advocates in the Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic.

New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees

The New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees is an alliance of civic and religious organizations (individual participation also welcome) whose goals include bringing attention to the plight of immigrant detainees in New Jersey jails, working to improve the conditions in those institutions, and advocating for the reduction and elimination of the use of detention of immigrants. Coalition 

Members include American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Immigrant Rights Program; Casa de Esperanza; the Episcopal Immigration Network; Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry in NJ; NJ Association on Correction; NJ Forum for Human Rights; Pax Christi NJ; Middlesex County Coalition for Immigrant Rights; Monmouth County Coalition for Immigrant Rights; People’s Organization for Progress- Bergen County Branch; the Reformed Church of Highland Park; Sisters of St. Joseph of Chestnut Hill ESL; Unitarian  Universalist Congregation at Montclair; IRATE & First Friends.

NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic

The Immigrant Rights Clinic is a institution in both local and national struggles for immigrant rights. Students engage in direct legal representation of immigrants and community organizations as well as in immigrant rights campaigns at the local, state, and national level.  Students have direct responsibility for all aspects of their cases and projects and the opportunity to build their understanding of legal practice in the field of immigrant rights law and organizing.

March 21, 2012, http://afsc.org/document/immigration-incarceration-expansion-and-failed-reform-immigration-detention-essex-county-nj

http://www.afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/ImmigrationIncarceration2012.pdf

Free Speech Radio News

“Abusive conditions persist at detention facilities as lawmakers weigh reforms” FSRN News Segments, Thursday March 29, /2012 — “Republicans on a congressional committee are coming under criticism after titling a hearing on reforms to the country’s detention facilities ‘Holiday on ICE’.

“At Wednesday’s hearing at the House Judiciary Committee, Congressional member Lamar Smith compared federal agents to a ‘concierge’ and refused requests from Democrat committee members to change the title of the hearing, which refers to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement acronym. More than 33,000 are held at detention facilities daily, according to ICE. Some of those facilities have been under investigation for inadequate medical care, cases of sexual assault and other abuses.

“Even as the U.S. Congress debates how to treat thousands of immigrant detainees in various facilities across the country, a recent report about detention facilities in New Jersey reveals that the detainees are kept under harsh conditions, without proper food or water, and without access to lawyers. [News report by FSRN’s Salim Rizvi] http://fsrn.org/audio/detention-facilities-abusive-conditions-persist-lawmakers-weigh-reforms/10063

Images

Wikipedia image

Customs and Border Patrol ( CBP)  agent with  female Mexican undocumented immigrant in a holding facility.

“Complainant …”  PBS image: “GAO to Investigate Sexual Abuse at Immigration Detention Centers” (PBS Frontline), February 3, 2012,

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/race-multicultural/lost-in-detention/gao-to-investigate-sexual-abuse-at-immigration-detention-centers/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

We celebrate courageous activist, poet, essayist, teacher — Adrienne Rich

L-R: Writers
Audre Lorde
Meridel Le Sueur
Adrienne Rich
(Austin Texas, 1980)

Her words and work our celebration

Compiled and edited 
by Carolyn Bennett

“There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill / and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows / near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted / who disappeared into those shadows.

“I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled / this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, / our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, / its own ways of making people disappear.

“I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods / meeting the unmarked strip of light— / ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: / I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

Adrienne Rich

“And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you / anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these / to have you listen at all, it's necessary / to talk about trees” [What Kind of Times Are These by Adrienne Rich]

She chronicled her journey in poetry and prose. A “critical optimist” … she called herself,

formed by our racial legacy and by the Vietnam War … [who]  became an American Skeptic — not as to the long search for justice and dignity, which is part of all human history — but in the light of my nation's leading role in demoralizing and destabilizing that search, here at home and around the world.

Perhaps just such a passionate skepticism, neither cynical nor nihilistic, is the ground for continuing.

Writer and teacher Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929- March 27, 2012) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and lived in Santa Cruz, California (USA). On her courageous, activist journey, Adrienne Rich refused in 1997 to accept the National Medal of Arts in protest of the U.S. House of Representatives’ vote to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other policies concerning the arts and literature set out by the William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton government. Her words —

“‘I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House,’” Rich is reported saying, “‘because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration.… [Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.’” 

Through readings of her poetry and other activities during the 2000s, Adrienne Rich stood among anti-war activists protesting the then-“threat’ of U.S. war on Iraq. A panel of judges awarding her the 2003 Yale Bollingen Prize for American Poetry applauded Rich’s  “‘honesty, at once ferocious, humane; her deep learning and her continuous poetic exploration and awareness of multiple selves.’”

MIGHTIER THAN SWORD

We celebrate this outstanding intellectual, writer, activist who leaves a seven-decades legacy in work and words.

Sources and notes

‘What Kind of Times Are These’ © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich. Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181516

Some of Adrienne Rich’s writings:

Nonfiction books

On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose (1966–1978, 1979)

Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose (1979–1985, 1986 including essay ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’)

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993)

Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (2001)

Poetry and Commitment: An Essay (2007)

A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997–2008, 2009

 Poetry collections

The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970 (1971)

Diving into the Wreck (1973)  

The Dream of a Common Language ( 1978)

A Wild Patience Has Taken Me this Far: Poems 1978-1981 (1982, (reprint 1993)

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (1991)

Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995 (1995)

The School Among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004 (2004)

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004–2006 (2007)

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010 (2010)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich

‘What Kind of Times Are These’ © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich. Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181516

Adrienne Rich — Career (a 2012 update)

• Poet and writer, Conductor of workshop YM-YWHA Poetry Center, New York, NY, 1966-67;
• Visiting lecturer, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, 1967-69;
• Adjunct professor in writing division, Columbia University, Graduate School of the Arts, New York, NY, 1967-69;
• City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, lecturer in SEEK English program, 1968-70, instructor in creative writing program, 1970-71, assistant professor of English, 1971-72, and 1974-75;
• Fannie Hurst Visiting Professor of Creative Literature, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 1972-73;
• Lucy Martin Donnelly fellow, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, 1975;
• Professor of English, Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1976-78; A. D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1982-85;
• Clark Lecturer and distinguished visiting professor, Scripps College, Claremont, CA, 1983, 1984;
• Visiting professor, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 1984-96;
• Burgess Lecturer, Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, CA, 1986;
• Professor of English and feminist studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1986-92;
• Marjorie Kovler visiting fellow, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1989;
• National Director, The National Writers’ Voice Project, 1992 — Member of advisory board, Boston Woman's Fund, National Writers Union, Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa and New Jewish Agenda. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich

Adrienne Rich 1929–2012, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich

Image at Wikipedia: L-R: Writers Audre Lorde, Meridel Le Sueur, Adrienne Rich (Austin Texas, 1980)

Pen and paper image: http://bookofhov.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/pen.paper_in6a.jpg

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

Woman reporter threatened for telling FGM story

Silencing begs lifting secrecy

Notes from Liberian journalist Mae Azango’s international interviews on  a secret trauma story and threats for telling it

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

Female genital mutilation …  

Partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs, for non-medical reasons 

Areas practiced Western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, Middle East, Near East, Southeast Asia 

Number affected 135 million women and girls as of 1997 

Age performed A few days after birth to age 15; occasionally in adulthood

“My [March 8, 2012] story,” Mae Azango said, “was about female genital cutting.”

School a mother stood against

Tools in FGM

The “Sande bush” is where these girls go. They call it a “bush school” where female genital mutilation is prerequisite for graduation. “I went and took pictures of these girls coming from the Sande bush,” Mae Azango said.

Azango knows of what she speaks because she barely escaped the blade herself. She said her father, whose origins were in Liberia’s north where genital mutilation is practiced, had insisted that the girls in her family go to the bush school but her mother had other ideas. She “did not agree for her girl children to go to the bush: ‘not in my sight!’” her mother had said. “If my mother had not stood strong, I would have been affected, therefore, I feel sorry for those who were forced into the Sande and cut.”

The cutting and its impact

“Four or five women hold her, a child; and another woman comes and cuts that child,” Mae Azango continued. “You grab a six, seven-year-old child. You cut her [and] that pain remains in her mind. It has a traumatic effect on the child.”

If she lives, and not all do live, the trauma remains in the child’s head into adulthood as “post traumatic stress disorder.” She probably withdraws into herself. Because of this mutilation and the long-term effect, “Women really suffer for it!”

Women must shine light on male-imposed secret, speak out, end women and girls’ suffering

Tools in FGM

“It is a secret that they are trying to hold,” an oath-imposed to silence. Many women suffer but neither an imam nor “even women’s groups have spoken about this.”  Men in society are deciding that women be cut, Mae Azango says, but “who are they to decide what women should go through?” Men are the ones imposing this punishment on women. …

“It was the men’s idea, not the women’s idea, so we women are suffering from what the men want us to do because they feel this is a male-dominant society. …But I want women to stand up. … If we women do not talk over what affects us, who will listen to us?” Women “are feeling bad now because they are troubled and if nobody will talk for them, at least I am able to talk for them.”

On the run, Azango speaks out, urges other women to speak out

“I am getting a lot of threats,” she says. People are saying they “will catch you and carry you to the Sande bush and they will have you cut.… They said traditional women went to look for me…  They went to my offices to look for me. … Before that,  more women went around my house area looking, asking for me, asking for my daughter. I had to take my daughter out of there and ship her to a new destination because I do not know how far they are taking it. ” Azango said, in the face of mounting threats on her life, she has not slept at home and has “just been everywhere.”

 

Truth hurts but must be spoken. “I am getting all these threats [because] I am talking about what I am not supposed to talk about. …  I am discussing a secret and, as a woman, I am supposed to keep this secret.” But shining light on this horror is precisely what women must do.

“The truth hurts,” Mae Azango says, “but it should be said. [This abuse of women and girls] should be spoken about.”

Sources and notes

“A Liberian journalist in hiding,” CBC Dispatches interviews Journalist Mae Azango, in hiding in Liberia,  a reporter with the daily newspaper FrontPage Africa, and the website New Narratives, a development project supporting independent media in Africa.March 25, 2012, http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/episode/2012/03/21/mar-22-25/

“NN Journalist Mae Azango’s Interview with Radio France Internationale,” March 26, 2012, by New Narratives: “Liberian journalist urges women to speak out on excision … Liberian journalist Mae Azango has been forced into hiding after publishing an article in the Liberian daily Front Page Africa on the practice of female genital cutting or excision in the country”(by Laura Angela Bagnetto: Azango, a New Narratives fellow talks to RFI’s Laura-Angela Bagnetto about her experience), http://www.newnarratives.org/featured/nn-journalist-mae-azangos-interview-with-radio-france-internationale/

Wikipedia notes on FGM

• Female genital mutilation … Partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs, for non-medical reasons
• Areas practiced Western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, Middle East, Near East, Southeast Asia
• Number affected 135 million women and girls as of 1997
• Age performed A few days after birth to age 15; occasionally in adulthood

Types I and II

Type I is the removal of the clitoral hood (Type Ia); or the partial or total removal of the clitoris, a clitoridectomy (Type Ib).

Type II, often called excision, is partial or total removal of the clitoris and the inner labia or outer labia. Type IIa is removal of the inner labia only; Type IIb, partial or total removal of the clitoris and the inner labia; and Type IIc, partial or total removal of the clitoris, and the inner and outer labia.

Type III

Type III, commonly called infibulation or pharaonic circumcision, is the removal of all external genitalia.

Type IV

A variety of other procedures are collectively known as Type IV, which the WHO defines as ‘all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example, pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.’

This ranges from ritual nicking of the clitoris—the main practice in Indonesia—to stretching the clitoris or labia, burning or scarring the genitals, or introducing harmful substances into the vagina to tighten it.[2] It also includes hymenotomy, the removal of a hymen regarded as too thick, and gishiri cutting, a practice in which the vagina's anterior wall is cut with a knife to enlarge it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation

World Health Organization (WHO) notes on FGM

WHO estimates that between 100 and 140 million girls and women worldwide have been subjected to one of the first three types of female genital mutilation. Estimates based on the most recent prevalence data indicate that 91,5 million girls and women above 9 years old in Africa are currently living with the consequences of female genital mutilation. There are an estimated 3 million girls in Africa at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation every year. http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/fgm_trends/en/index.html

Female genital mutilation comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. It has no health benefits and harms girls and women in many ways.

It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and hence interferes with the natural function of girls’ bodies and women’s bodies. The practice causes severe pain and has several immediate and long-term health consequences, including difficulties in childbirth also causing dangers to the child.  http://www.who.int/topics/female_genital_mutilation/en/index.html

Countries where female genital mutilation has been documented

Listed below are countries in which female genital mutilation of Types I, II, III and ‘nicking’ Type IV has been documented as a traditional practice.
 Prevalence is derived from national survey data (the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) published by Macro, or the Multiple Cluster Indicator Surveys (MICS), published by UNICEF).

Country	Year	Estimated prevalence of female genital mutilation in girls and women
		15 – 49 years (%)
Benin	2006	12.9
Burkina Faso	2006	72.5
Cameroon	2004	1.4
Central African Republic	2008	25.7
Chad	2004	44.9
Côte d’Ivoire	2006	36.4
Djibouti	2006	93.1
Egypt	2008	91.1
Eritrea	2002	88.7
Ethiopia	2005	74.3
Gambia	2005/6	78.3
Ghana	2006	3.8
Guinea	2005	95.6
Guinea-Bissau	2006	44.5
Kenya	2008/9	27.1
Liberia	2007	58.2
Mali	2006	85.2
Mauritania	2007	72.2
Niger	2006	2.2
Nigeria	2008	29.6
Senegal	2005	28.2
Sierra Leone	2006	94
Somalia	2006	97.9
Sudan, northern (approximately 80% of total population in survey)	2000	90
Togo	2006	5.8
Uganda	2006	0.8
United Republic of Tanzania	2004	14.6
Yemen	2003	38.2

http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/prevalence/en/index.html

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

[Gun] VIOLENCE permeates U.S. culture

Right to kill, right to be killed pathology

Edited with comment 
By Carolyn Bennett

From an Al Jazeera
“Inside Story” edition

Ninety (90) guns for every 100 residents [USA]

Six (6) guns per 100 residents [England]

Zero (0) guns [Japan] Firearms illegal

Every able-bodied adult male “considered … a soldier” and “required to own government-issued gun, 50 rounds of ammunition” [Switzerland]

Survey findings 2007

Gun violence in 2010 accounted for 8,775 homicides in United States
Guns were used in 67 percent of 2010 murders

Fifty-three (53) percent of Americans oppose tougher gun laws

In the United States, guns are widely available to anyone and laws and restrictions concerning them are confusing and widely variable from one U.S. state to another. “[The] United States has some of the most lax gun laws in the world. …

“‘Guns are purchased at gun shows and other places without background checks,’” says Hubert Williams, a former police officer and current president of the Police Foundation. The U.S. has “‘more gun dealers … than … gas stations….’”

Private sales constitute “‘40 percent of the weapons that exchange hands.’”

Elliot Fineman of the National Gun Victims Council says “‘the idea that law-abiding citizens should have a right to protect themselves sounds good, but…people lose control [and] do not remain law-abiding citizens. …

Every criminal was once a law-abiding citizen.’”

Thousands of people are shot dead every year in the United States, a country that leads the developed world in “the highest rates of murder caused by firearms.”

American-on-American combat and casualties sometimes reach the headlines.

• Colorado Columbine High School shooting 1999 (15 dead)
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University shooting 2007 (33 dead, 15 wounded) 
• Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church shot gun shooting 2008 (13 shots fired, 2 dead, 7 wounded, the 4th church shooting attack in 15 months) 
• Arizona supermarket car park shooting 2011 (six dead including a federal judge, member of U.S. Congress, Gabrielle Giffords, critically wounded
• Sanford, Florida, neighborhood shooting 2012 (1 unarmed teenager dead)

Despite deadly shootings, the number of Americans opposing stricter gun control laws increases … Some U.S. states continue to push for legalizing “carrying concealed weapons” in schools, on campuses.

Given these facts of cultural indeed mental impairment, I fail to understand the feigned outrage — except that in itself reflects mental impairment — surrounding the latest killing.

Until we actively achieve substantive solutions.

Until the United States becomes a nation indivisible, with caring for all life, until we address our problems in law and correct underlying causes. Until we accomplish a cultural revolution or a reimagining in nonviolence, amending this culture of violence — we will continue on a regressive, medieval course in our actions at home and abroad.

To feign outrage in the face of a protracted status quo — to orchestrate a distraction in the wearing “hoodies” to church and everyday — is therefore to compound true outrage, to insult the intelligence and add further injury to the dead and wounded and to those who survive them.

Source and notes

In discussion with Al Jazeera’s “Inside Story Americas” presenter, Anand Naidoo, were David Burnett (Students for Concealed Carry advocating firearms); Elliot Fineman (National Gun Victims Council whose son was shot and killed in 2006); and Hubert Williams (president of the Police Foundation and former police officer), Al Jazeeera Inside Story: “Why do Americans love their guns?” March 27, 2012,   http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/03/20123277115372628.html

“Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church Shooting” (Brady Blog,  Dan Gross, Dennis Henigan from NewsWatch, CNN and WVLT CBS-8 (Knoxville),  July 27, 2008, http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?p=464&s=1

“Worst U.S. shooting ever kills 33 on Va. campus — 15 others wounded as panic grips Virginia Tech for 2½ hours” (msnbc.com and NBC News, updated 4/17/2007 1:07:58 AM ET), http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18134671/

CAPTIONS:

Gun image from"Spellbound"

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Spellbound+gun+image&view=detail&id=E5903D56BC71CC92F34E452E94765A591221D4FA&first=0&FORM=IDFRIR

Status quo image: http://dbms.com/BankersLikeStatusQuo.jpg
Status quo image: http://www.daviesand.com/SQ_Costs_NBannerClear.gif
Status quo image: http://www.dpmc.gov.au/reformgovernment/images/Slide14.jpg

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

Going beneath the blather of division

Common Ground-University of Richmond

Together in nonviolence ends violence

By Carolyn Bennett

“Trayvon Martin had a handful of Skittles. Barack Obama holds the presidential pen,” Sally Kohn opined this bit of nonsense on Wednesday at Reuters, and she didn't stop there. “But both are viewed, especially by white America,” she said, “as holding weapons, and in my view, both have been mistakenly fired upon, whether with real bullets or unprecedented political vitriol.” 

This is so ridiculous as to be laughable except that a major international news wire published this drivel and except for the fact of another sad and unnecessary death is added to hundreds of thousands of U.S.-inflicted deaths among Afghans and Pakistanis and Iraqis and Libyans and Somalis.

Dictionary.magnificent ideas 

Of course, Al Sharpton weighed in on the “Trayvon Martin case.” The man has built a reputation exploiting such cases. We become  spectators at theater in reality of the absurd — tribe time in the land of the free. Facts, memory, reason be damned.

In the face of an avalanche of blather, I wanted to know the facts sans emotion and, while I am unsure whether all the facts are in, the early reports in the Orlando Sentinel seemed to set them out.

A boy of 17 was visiting relatives in Sanford, Florida. Passing through the gated community of “Retreat at Twin Lakes,” the young man got into an altercation or a fight with an armed neighborhood watch agent. The agent shot and killed the 17-year-old.

End of story —or is it?  

Dictionary.magnificent ideas 

Whatever is or should be the proper or most effective response in these cases, the blather surrounding this case solves nothing. It certainly will not solve the underlying problem of the U.S. penchant for violence and, together with that pathology, the pervasive, irrational fear and paranoia among the U.S. citizenry.

Dictionary.magnificent ideas 

You can pray and chant and plant as many flowers as you like. March until your feet fall off. Attract jillions of clicks on websites where people spew offenses and other nonsense championing or slandering saint/sinner-black/white dichotomies or conjugating race, racists, racism. Cameras rolling, you may drag out as many pundits and presidents and preachers serving their own ends, spouting nonsense, pandering to one tribe or a thousand tribes. But none of this gets to the root of the problems and none of it will solve them.

Dictionary.magnificent ideas

The United States of America has deep-seated problems that are globally pandemic. They extend much farther than what occurs between or among kin, colors or kinds within the United States. This condition, this fundamental ethos in action is in evidence from the highest levels of governance, through our neighborhoods, from sea to shining sea, and crossing borders in U.S. relations with many countries of the world. 

We are what we do — in New York, Florida, Kansas and California as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, Libya and Somalia, Bahrain and Yemen.

All rights reserved by RDR
Regional Diversity Roundtable 

To take hold of our problems responsibly, we must let go of the politicians and panderers. Let go of opportunists who build their reputations on manipulating us, dividing Americans from Americans and America from the world’s peoples. 

Sense our connectedness. Around a round table, join hands (that is, efforts and activism) in solving the problems of U.S. fear and fear mongering, paranoia and violence.  Divest of what sickens us. Disenthrall ourselves from that which divides us and from those who construct walls and drive wedges between and among us.

Sources and notes

“Trayvon Martin, Obama, and the persistence of bias” (Sally Kohn), March 21, 2012, www.reuters.com.

“Boy, 17, shot to death in Sanford during ‘altercation,’ police say” (Susan Jacobson, Orlando Sentinel), February 29, 2012, sjacobson@tribune.com or 407-540-5981; http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-02-29/news/os-fatal-shooting-sanford-townhomes-20120226_1_gated-community-death-sunday-night-shot

“Trayvon Martin case myths, half truths” (|By Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel), March 23, 2012, rstutzman@tribune.com or 407-650-6394;

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-23/news/os-trayvon-martin-questions-20120323_1_sanford-cops-sanford-police-investigator-suspicious-death

See also: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/#navlink=navbar

Photo images: 

University of Richmond, http://commonground.richmond.edu/programs/diversity-roundtable.html

Diversity roundtable (b): All rights reserved by RDR - Regional Diversity Roundtable

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/diversitypeel/4497645086/sizes/z/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diversitypeel/5142502059/sizes/m/in/photostream/

[Nonviolence international, nonviolence2, equality center, gun wrapped2 at]:  http://dictionary.magnificentideas.com/word/nonviolence/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

Africa USA-made — CRISIS CHAOS CONFLICT PLUNDER clouded by mass media

NGO-Government Co-op
Virtual reality is not REALITY
Editing by Carolyn Bennett

“A whole generation of Acholi people were born and grew into adulthood in government-created camps for internally displaced people,” Juliane Okot Bitek wrote in 2009. She is an Acholi woman who lives in Vancouver, Canada, who also spoke this week with Vancouver’s feminist radio program “The F Word.” Juliane Okot Bitek is president of the Acholi Community of British Columbia Society and a University of British Columbia doctoral student interested in post-conflict narratives of formerly abducted women in northern Uganda. She said that for years the Ugandan people had been dying at an alarming rate. World Health Organization (WHO) figures showed in 2009 that a thousand Ugandans died every week — a catastrophe “in plain view of the rest of the world.”

The Acholi people numbering more than one million at the turn of the 21st century are an ethno linguistic group of northern Uganda and southernmost Sudan. They speak a Western Nilotic language of the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family and are culturally and historically related to the neighboring Lango. The Acholi are the descendants of a variety of Luo-speaking peoples who are believed to have migrated from adjacent areas of the southern Sudan into what is now the Acholi district of Uganda three or four centuries ago.

Under the Ugandan president Idi Amin (1971–79), the Acholi were severely persecuted, the men systematically executed for past association with the [British] colonial army and for their support of President Milton Obote (1962–71, 1980–85) [Britannica note].

The people in the northern part of Uganda have suffered at the hands of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) and the Ugandan government has failed to protect them, Juliane Okot Bitek said. The international community has largely ignored their suffering. International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo appeared on film wondering, callously, who might have “‘interest in Ugandans, in the Acholis?’” Answering his wondering, he said, “They have no oil [except now oil has been discovered], nothing to win, so how much effort do we have out there? Not a lot.’”

The current generation, Juliane Okot Bitek continued, “has grown up without the strong Acholi culture that for generations held the people together with their traditional values — 30,000 children had been unaccounted for over the years. What kind of people can come through this unscathed? Ours will take many generations to heal from the legacy of Joseph Kony, the LRA and the Uganda government that failed to protect its own people — and the rest of the world that watched in silence.”

NGO-GOVERNMENT CO-OP

Making money on misery and make believe

"Kony2012" 

No clever tactics, as those used by the Invisible Children organization — self abduction, fake homelessness or other antics — are going to change the conditions of life for the Acholi people. The tactics only manipulate and delude. “It hurts immensely,” she said, “to watch commercialism take over in a bid to garner the interests and involvement of young people in these campaigns. “The British Red Cross has joined in the fray by producing a game that allows players to become 16-year-old Joseph who ‘has one goal – to find out from the Red Cross if his mother is dead or alive.’

“Reducing the horrific experiences of hundreds of thousands of young Ugandans down to a game is unconscionable.

“To ask thousands of young people to pretend that they can ‘abduct themselves’ into creating a new reality for the children in northern Uganda is more than appalling – it is manipulative and undermines the horror of the last two decades of Ugandan suffering.… One wonders if such theatrics are reserved for African settings.

“Would anyone in the United States dare to create similar gimmicks to highlight the suffering of the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. city of New Orleans?”

Boys will be boys (?)

Founded in 2005 by three “‘normal’ guys” (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole) in California who loved surfing, playing sports, goofing around, and making movies, Invisible Children “has raised plenty of money through their unusual tactics. Using technology preferred by the young, “they inspired thousands of young people to sleep on the streets as they did on a  2006 ‘Global Night Commute’ that reportedly attracted well over 80,000 people all over the United States” according to the group’s website press releases.

On a lark in Africa, the “boys” decided to spice up theirs and other young lives. They found the situation in Acholi intolerable and in need their brand of “help,” so they made a film. The half-hour film made by U.S. organization Invisible Children Inc is “Kony 2012” sold and marketed live (in virtual reality) and online in aid of the group’s bottom line and sporting a brand new movement, ‘Stop Kony’, purportedly to profile and push for the arrest of indicted Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony. [Not William Jefferson Clinton, George H. W. or George W. Bush,  Barack Obama or Madeleine Albright or Hillary Rodham Clinton.]

Reality check

Dr. Vincent Magombe, a Ugandan journalist and broadcaster based in the United Kingdom, writes that while there may be some good in what the boys are doing, there are many damaging omissions and “misrepresentations in the film” — and in “the filmmakers’ blanket support of U.S. military deployments in the region, which many Ugandans view with suspicion and distaste.”

Misrepresentations the Ugandan journalist points to are these:

The war in Northern Uganda ended over six years ago and not since then has Kony been active in Northern Uganda. People in the northern part of Uganda now suffer abject poverty, lack of medicine, illiteracy, incurable diseases (e.g., the nodding disease has killed hundreds of children and infected thousands) — problems directly resulting from current leaders’ corruption and poor governance. 


The film fails to mention that Uganda government troops also killed, raped, and maimed civilians in the region (e.g., on several occasions government soldiers pretended to be Kony rebels and caused deaths for some crazy PR aims).

The film fails to show LRA/ Kony menace in regional countries or a similar type combined military operation (Americans and Uganda government, December 2008: a  CIA-led military operation involved a special American-established and armed force, the Ugandan Special Forces commanded by Yoweri Museveni’s son, Muhozi Kainerugaba) that ended two years of inactivity by Kony’s LRA, wrecked hopes for regional peace. Most of the consequent attacks in DRC, Southern Sudan, and now Central African Republic are more to do with a much-weakened LRA trying to escape the wrath of the Ugandan army (now the Americans) and survive another day.

CRISIS CHAOS CONFLICT PLUNDER clouded by mass media has consequences. Vincent Magombe continued.

Politically, financially and militarily strengthened by the Americans— Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, heading a corrupt regime whose ministers steal millions that could be used to solve the living nightmare of children in the northern part of Uganda, is emboldened in violating the freedoms and human rights of the whole country.

Many Ugandans — especially those campaigning for democracy and political stability — see the military operation against 300 LRA ex-combatants as a diversionary strategy to divert attention from the ongoing national struggle for change. 


Since the new representation of the troubles only points at one culprit, Joseph Kony and his ‘barbaric gang’, Museveni and his regime — who have committed enormous crimes in the northern part Uganda — are being offered an exit route from accountability.

Without democracy and reconciliation in Uganda — as was true of South Africa’s minority White South African regime who had committed more egregious crimes than LRA and Kony and were effectively absolved of the crimes against Black Africans — there will be no peace.  We may start to see many more Kony-type rebel groups mushrooming to fight the Kampala regime.

Though many outsiders think and have the view that Ugandan people are naive and incapable of seeing the wider implications of the deployment of American troops in East and Central Africa, the opposite is true.

Many Ugandans know the U.S. military has encouraged Museveni and his regime to continue militaristic tendencies in the region. 


Ugandans know the Ugandan regime and its military are powerful allies of the United States in Somalia and indeed in the Great Lakes region and that now the U.S. seeks to establish its so-called AFRICOM (African Command) Headquarters in Uganda and continue building a powerful military alliance involving U.S. soldiers and the militaries of the East and Central African nations (Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, DRC, and Central African Republic).

 

This is not aimed merely to capture Kony but to safeguard and secure the strategic interests of a now declining American Super Power. …

The strategic vision of the American political and military thinkers is to shift and try to consolidate U.S. influence in West Africa and now East and Central Africa where it is much easier to deal with existing regimes and where local people have no real capacity to force the Americans away, as is true of the Middle East.  

Major oil discoveries have been made in Uganda and Southern Sudan and the region is bustling with inexhaustible reserves of other mineral resources. 

The world we live in is complex; in reality, not reducible to clever tactics, clouded causes and sentimental simplicity. Vincent Magombe concludes.

Research will reveal that Invisible Children was among the two or three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who vigorously lobbied in the United States for U.S. military deployment in Uganda and Central Africa. (The other NGOs included Resolve! and The Enough Project).  

Though IC’s awareness raising about one ‘evil man’, Joseph Kony, may be appreciated, Magombe says, Invisible Children must be “held responsible for intended or unintended consequences that may in the long run bring much more damage to Uganda than Joseph Kony and his LRA ever would.”

Sources and notes

“Commercializing Children's Suffering Is Macabre,” By Juliane Okot Bitek, April 24, 2009,

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/11/11/UgandanPowerlessness/ http://www.friendsforpeaceinafrica.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=132&Itemid=77

For Invisible Children information on the upcoming ‘abduction’:

http://ncm.newcitymovement.com/2009/04/abduct-yourself-april-25th-rescue-child-soldiers.html

http://www.invisiblechildren.com/theMovement/

Juliane Okot Bitek is an Acholi woman living in Vancouver, Canada. She writes as she lives, thinking about a place to call home much of the time.

See also blackstarnews.com

“Grounding focus in the midst of the Kony 2012 social media storm” (By The F Word, Length: 22:32 minutes March 13, 2012)— “The Kony 2012 film is officially the fastest spreading viral video of all time. On March 5, 2012, the video release launched a campaign by Invisible Children Inc. to promote the charity’s ‘Stop Kony’ movement to make indicted Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony internationally known in order to arrest him in 2012. The campaign has been wildly popular with youth on social media.

“Since the launch, the campaign has come under much due criticism such as simplifying a complex issue, ignoring the voices of Northern Ugandans (including many female leaders), and promotion of a consumer-based and ultimately ineffective brand of charity, among many other issues.”

Ellie Gordon-Moershel spoke with Acholi Juliane Okot Bitek who has been close to the conflict in Northern Uganda since 1986. Juliane Okot Bitek is “president of the Acholi Community of British Columbia Society and a Ph.D. student at UBC interested in the post-conflict narratives of formerly abducted women in northern Uganda. She is passionate about the ways we can present and represent our own stories in the media, in our communities and in the general society.” More information about The F Word at www.feminisms.org

http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/f-word/2012/03/grounding-focus-midst-kony-2012-social-media-storm

“Joseph Kony viral video campaign clouded in controversy” (Allison Cross, March 7-8, 2012), http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/07/kony-2012-video-controversy/

“The Truth About KONY2012” (By Dr. Vincent Magombe), March 13, 2012, http://www.blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=5605

Dr. Magombe is a Ugandan journalist based in the UK

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy