Perhaps I am alone in this, but I find going to the dentist to be a somewhat of a traumatic experience. I think anything involving one's mouth is intimate, so having people working in your mouth with sharp objects and possibly hurting you can be an awful experience. Everything about me is sensitive. People who overstep the boundaries and touch my hair learn that I feel it even though my hair is very long. Anyway, my sensitivity extends to my teeth, my gums, and everything else, and I can feel when an object is touching/scraping my gums instead of my teeth. I am also sensitive enough to know that a person's emotions affect their physical actions, and believe me - you don't an upset person working in your mouth. Instead complaining when I feel something wrong (especially when I can't talk), I speak with my body language - the "ouch, you just hurt me" jerk, or the "I'm trying to move away from you because this hurts" move. I find that dentists want to talk about upsetting subjects when you are most vulnerable. Once, back in the day, I had a dentist lecture me about my skin while he worked in my mouth and he was giving me bad advice! I was younger and self-conscious about my appearance, so his comments were not welcome.
Most experiences with doctors and dentists have been awful. Quite frankly, I often feel violated. I have been treated so badly at times that I've ended up in tears. Gynecologists are often not very sensitive either. I don't think health care is about health at all. It's more like sick care pharmacies. You are given drugs to mask symptoms of sickness, and you have to keep coming back. Imagine sitting in a dental office chair thinking you will never come back again. Imagine questioning going to dentists at all. That was what I did less than an hour ago, but I was in a bad position at the time. I was also remembering my last experience with a so-called hygienist (yeah, right!) who showed me a bloody scene in my mouth that I can't even bear to discuss here.
When I looked around the dental office, I noticed all of the brochures and brand named items - from the Listerine to the Sonicare, I noticed how everything was something that had been marketed and sold. I felt like none of it had to do with health. It was just a business. Whew! I know I'm ranting, but I'm still recovering from my visit. All I know is that I am looking forward to seeing a change in the way we think of ourselves, our bodies and our health.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Racial Injustice
http://www.counterpunch.org/woodward07102007.html
July 10, 2007
White Supremacy and the Jena Six
Southern Discomfort
By ALICE WOODWARD
On a late summer day in 2006, in Jena, Louisiana, a Black high school student asked permission to sit beneath the "white tree" in front of the town's high school. It was unspoken law that this shady area was for whites only during school breaks. But a student asked, and the vice principal said nothing was stopping them. So Black students sat underneath the tree, challenging the established authority of segregation and racism. The next day, hanging from the tree, were three ropes, in school colors, each tied to make a noose.
The events set in motion by those nooses led to a schoolyard fight. And that fight led to the conviction, on June 28, 2007, of a Black student at Jena High School for charges that can bring up to 22 years in prison. Mychal Bell, a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, was convicted by an all-white jury, without a single witness being called on his behalf. And five more Black students in Jena still face serious charges stemming from the fight.
* * *
Caseptla Bailey, a Black community leader and mother of one of the Black students, told the London Observer, "To us those nooses meant the KKK, they meant, 'Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die.'" The attack was brushed off as a "youthful stunt." The three white students responsible, given only three days of in-school suspension.
In response to the incident, several Black students, among them star players on the football team, staged a sit-in under the tree. The principal reacted by bringing in the white district attorney, Reed Walters, and 10 local police officers to an all-school assembly. Marcus Jones, Mychal Bell's father, described the assembly to Revolution:
"Now remember, with everything that goes on at Jena High School, everybody's separated. The only time when Black and white kids are together is in the classroom and when they playing sports together. During lunch time, Blacks sit on one side, whites sit on the other side of the cafeteria. During canteen time, Blacks sit on one side of the campus, whites sit on the other side of the campus.
"At any activity done in the auditorium-anything-Blacks sit on one side, whites on the other side, okay? The DA tells the principal to call the students in the auditorium. They get in there. The DA tells the Black students, he's looking directly at the Black students-remember, whites on one side, Blacks on the other side-he's looking directly at the Black students. He told them to keep their mouths shut about the boys hanging their nooses up. If he hears anything else about it, he can make their lives go away with the stroke of his pen."
DA Walters concluded that the students should "work it out on their own." Police officers roamed the halls of the school that week, and tensions simmered throughout the fall semester.
In November, as football season came to a close, the main school building was mysteriously burned to the ground. This traumatic event seemed to bring to the surface the boiling racial tensions in Jena.
On a Friday night, Robert Bailey, a 17-year-old Black student and football player, was invited to a dance at a hall considered to be "white." When he walked in, without warning he was punched in the face, knocked on the ground and attacked by a group of white youth. Only one of the white youth was arrested-he was ultimately given probation and asked to apologize.
The night after that, a 22-year-old white man, along with two friends, pulled a gun on Bailey and two of his friends at a local gas station. The Black youths wrestled the gun from him to prevent him from using it. They were arrested and charged with theft, and the white man went free.
The following Monday students returned to school. In the midst of a confrontation between a white student, Justin Barker, and a Black student, Robert Bailey-where Bailey was taunted for having been beaten up that weekend-a chaotic fray ensued. Barker was allegedly knocked down, punched, and kicked by a number of Black students. He was taken to the hospital for a few hours and was seen out socializing later that evening.
Six Black students-Robert Bailey Junior, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Mychal Bell, and a still unidentified minor, allegedly the attackers of Justin Barker-were arrested, charged with attempted second degree manslaughter, and expelled from school.
White Supremacy Then and Now
This did not all happen in the "Red Summer" of 1919 when Jim Crow segregation thrived, and Blacks in major cities faced race riots that raged throughout the country. This did not occur in the 1950s after Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954 and young children faced angry white mobs to make history in desegregating public schools. This did not happen in the summer of 1955 when, in Money, Mississippi, a vibrant Black youth by the name of Emmett Till was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman. This did not occur in 1960, when on February 1 four Black college students sat in at a "white only" lunch counter, demanding service and launching the civil rights movement to another level. This did not happen during the period 1865 to 1965 during which 3,446 Black people were lynched in the United States.
This is now. When three white students in Jena committed this hate crime, hanging three nooses from the "white tree," they evoked the ugly history of slavery, segregation, lynching, and police brutality to threaten the lives of Black students at their school. The "white tree" stands in Jena, Louisiana. The Jena 6, as the Black students have come to be called, are in prison and on trial for defending themselves against white supremacist attacks.
The Jena 6 were arrested in December 2006. The outrageously high bail ranged from $70,000-$138,000, leaving most of them stuck in jail for months.
The first student to go to trial this June was Mychal Bell, who waited behind bars, unable to post bail. Like a scene from the Jim Crow South, he was judged by an all-white jury, in a courtroom run by a white judge. Whites sat with Justin Barker and his white lawyer on one side. Blacks sat with defendant Mychal Bell, who was represented by a court-appointed attorney.
The prosecutor called 16 witnesses, mostly white students. The court-appointed defense attorney called none. Accounts of the incident, who was involved, and who did what, vary highly, including whether Mychal Bell was the one who first punched Justin Barker. Barker's attorney argued that Bell's tennis shoes on his feet were a "dangerous weapon." The trial was so outrageous that when a Louisiana TV station polled viewers, 62% said that Mychal Bell was not getting a fair trial.
Mychal Bell was convicted of two felonies: aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery. He faces up to 22 years in prison. The remaining five defendants await their trials.
Standing Up to Racism
Few people in the United States have heard of the case of the Jena 6. But the trial was covered by the French newspaper Le Monde, and the BBC aired a documentary on the case. The London Observer reported on the Jena 6 story.
Family, friends, and supporters of the young men are protesting and struggling to free the Jena 6. The Black community in Jena and people from across Louisiana and Texas have come together to support the Jena 6 and fight the injustice of their trials. People have put their lives on hold, and churches have opened their doors. The Jena 6 and their supporters are defiant and continue to be under attack. Marcus Jones described the most recent event:
"Thursday night we had an NAACP meeting here at the church. The next day, in the morning, the pastor goes to his church and somebody just clean ran through his church yard, knocked his sign down, ran over back and forth on it with they truck, and just took off, you know. People report it to the police (laughs). What good they gonna do here, I don't know."
The majority of Jena's estimated 385 Black people live in an area of town known as Ward 10. Many homes there are trailers or wooden shacks. Rubbish lies in the streets. Only two Black families live in the all white middle class suburban area of Jena. An article in the Observer recounts how one of them bought a house: "A teacher from Jena High had enough money to buy his way in. But when he arrived local estate agents refused to show him a 'white' property even though several were advertised in the local paper ('they're all under contract,' the agents lied). The teacher eventually went to see one white owner and offered him cash. 'The guy preferred green [dollars] to Black, so I got the property,' laughed the teacher, 'but since we moved in three years ago we haven't been invited by a single neighbor.'"
The "white tree" stands in Jena, Louisiana today while entire neighborhoods and precious lives in the 9th ward of New Orleans are left wasting away, even as the more profitable and less Black areas of the city are rebuilt. It stands while a father, a mother, a fiancée, a child, and many friends are still feeling the devastating loss of Sean Bell who was murdered by the NYPD. It stands while the Rutgers University basketball team gets subjected to racist and sexist verbal assault from a national talk show host. While the N word is spouted with rage by a comedian.
In a world such as this, there's nothing left to do but pull this tree up by its roots and get rid of it for good.
Alice Woodward writes for Revolution.
For more on the Jena 6 visit Friends of Justice at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
On youtube.com, search for "Jena Six, A photo story."
July 10, 2007
White Supremacy and the Jena Six
Southern Discomfort
By ALICE WOODWARD
On a late summer day in 2006, in Jena, Louisiana, a Black high school student asked permission to sit beneath the "white tree" in front of the town's high school. It was unspoken law that this shady area was for whites only during school breaks. But a student asked, and the vice principal said nothing was stopping them. So Black students sat underneath the tree, challenging the established authority of segregation and racism. The next day, hanging from the tree, were three ropes, in school colors, each tied to make a noose.
The events set in motion by those nooses led to a schoolyard fight. And that fight led to the conviction, on June 28, 2007, of a Black student at Jena High School for charges that can bring up to 22 years in prison. Mychal Bell, a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, was convicted by an all-white jury, without a single witness being called on his behalf. And five more Black students in Jena still face serious charges stemming from the fight.
* * *
Caseptla Bailey, a Black community leader and mother of one of the Black students, told the London Observer, "To us those nooses meant the KKK, they meant, 'Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die.'" The attack was brushed off as a "youthful stunt." The three white students responsible, given only three days of in-school suspension.
In response to the incident, several Black students, among them star players on the football team, staged a sit-in under the tree. The principal reacted by bringing in the white district attorney, Reed Walters, and 10 local police officers to an all-school assembly. Marcus Jones, Mychal Bell's father, described the assembly to Revolution:
"Now remember, with everything that goes on at Jena High School, everybody's separated. The only time when Black and white kids are together is in the classroom and when they playing sports together. During lunch time, Blacks sit on one side, whites sit on the other side of the cafeteria. During canteen time, Blacks sit on one side of the campus, whites sit on the other side of the campus.
"At any activity done in the auditorium-anything-Blacks sit on one side, whites on the other side, okay? The DA tells the principal to call the students in the auditorium. They get in there. The DA tells the Black students, he's looking directly at the Black students-remember, whites on one side, Blacks on the other side-he's looking directly at the Black students. He told them to keep their mouths shut about the boys hanging their nooses up. If he hears anything else about it, he can make their lives go away with the stroke of his pen."
DA Walters concluded that the students should "work it out on their own." Police officers roamed the halls of the school that week, and tensions simmered throughout the fall semester.
In November, as football season came to a close, the main school building was mysteriously burned to the ground. This traumatic event seemed to bring to the surface the boiling racial tensions in Jena.
On a Friday night, Robert Bailey, a 17-year-old Black student and football player, was invited to a dance at a hall considered to be "white." When he walked in, without warning he was punched in the face, knocked on the ground and attacked by a group of white youth. Only one of the white youth was arrested-he was ultimately given probation and asked to apologize.
The night after that, a 22-year-old white man, along with two friends, pulled a gun on Bailey and two of his friends at a local gas station. The Black youths wrestled the gun from him to prevent him from using it. They were arrested and charged with theft, and the white man went free.
The following Monday students returned to school. In the midst of a confrontation between a white student, Justin Barker, and a Black student, Robert Bailey-where Bailey was taunted for having been beaten up that weekend-a chaotic fray ensued. Barker was allegedly knocked down, punched, and kicked by a number of Black students. He was taken to the hospital for a few hours and was seen out socializing later that evening.
Six Black students-Robert Bailey Junior, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Mychal Bell, and a still unidentified minor, allegedly the attackers of Justin Barker-were arrested, charged with attempted second degree manslaughter, and expelled from school.
White Supremacy Then and Now
This did not all happen in the "Red Summer" of 1919 when Jim Crow segregation thrived, and Blacks in major cities faced race riots that raged throughout the country. This did not occur in the 1950s after Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954 and young children faced angry white mobs to make history in desegregating public schools. This did not happen in the summer of 1955 when, in Money, Mississippi, a vibrant Black youth by the name of Emmett Till was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman. This did not occur in 1960, when on February 1 four Black college students sat in at a "white only" lunch counter, demanding service and launching the civil rights movement to another level. This did not happen during the period 1865 to 1965 during which 3,446 Black people were lynched in the United States.
This is now. When three white students in Jena committed this hate crime, hanging three nooses from the "white tree," they evoked the ugly history of slavery, segregation, lynching, and police brutality to threaten the lives of Black students at their school. The "white tree" stands in Jena, Louisiana. The Jena 6, as the Black students have come to be called, are in prison and on trial for defending themselves against white supremacist attacks.
The Jena 6 were arrested in December 2006. The outrageously high bail ranged from $70,000-$138,000, leaving most of them stuck in jail for months.
The first student to go to trial this June was Mychal Bell, who waited behind bars, unable to post bail. Like a scene from the Jim Crow South, he was judged by an all-white jury, in a courtroom run by a white judge. Whites sat with Justin Barker and his white lawyer on one side. Blacks sat with defendant Mychal Bell, who was represented by a court-appointed attorney.
The prosecutor called 16 witnesses, mostly white students. The court-appointed defense attorney called none. Accounts of the incident, who was involved, and who did what, vary highly, including whether Mychal Bell was the one who first punched Justin Barker. Barker's attorney argued that Bell's tennis shoes on his feet were a "dangerous weapon." The trial was so outrageous that when a Louisiana TV station polled viewers, 62% said that Mychal Bell was not getting a fair trial.
Mychal Bell was convicted of two felonies: aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery. He faces up to 22 years in prison. The remaining five defendants await their trials.
Standing Up to Racism
Few people in the United States have heard of the case of the Jena 6. But the trial was covered by the French newspaper Le Monde, and the BBC aired a documentary on the case. The London Observer reported on the Jena 6 story.
Family, friends, and supporters of the young men are protesting and struggling to free the Jena 6. The Black community in Jena and people from across Louisiana and Texas have come together to support the Jena 6 and fight the injustice of their trials. People have put their lives on hold, and churches have opened their doors. The Jena 6 and their supporters are defiant and continue to be under attack. Marcus Jones described the most recent event:
"Thursday night we had an NAACP meeting here at the church. The next day, in the morning, the pastor goes to his church and somebody just clean ran through his church yard, knocked his sign down, ran over back and forth on it with they truck, and just took off, you know. People report it to the police (laughs). What good they gonna do here, I don't know."
The majority of Jena's estimated 385 Black people live in an area of town known as Ward 10. Many homes there are trailers or wooden shacks. Rubbish lies in the streets. Only two Black families live in the all white middle class suburban area of Jena. An article in the Observer recounts how one of them bought a house: "A teacher from Jena High had enough money to buy his way in. But when he arrived local estate agents refused to show him a 'white' property even though several were advertised in the local paper ('they're all under contract,' the agents lied). The teacher eventually went to see one white owner and offered him cash. 'The guy preferred green [dollars] to Black, so I got the property,' laughed the teacher, 'but since we moved in three years ago we haven't been invited by a single neighbor.'"
The "white tree" stands in Jena, Louisiana today while entire neighborhoods and precious lives in the 9th ward of New Orleans are left wasting away, even as the more profitable and less Black areas of the city are rebuilt. It stands while a father, a mother, a fiancée, a child, and many friends are still feeling the devastating loss of Sean Bell who was murdered by the NYPD. It stands while the Rutgers University basketball team gets subjected to racist and sexist verbal assault from a national talk show host. While the N word is spouted with rage by a comedian.
In a world such as this, there's nothing left to do but pull this tree up by its roots and get rid of it for good.
Alice Woodward writes for Revolution.
For more on the Jena 6 visit Friends of Justice at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
On youtube.com, search for "Jena Six, A photo story."
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Clarity in midst of Mercury in Retrograde
Much has occurred since my last post. A close friend passed away, and I just completed a week long fast. The fast was done with a group, and it began and ended with a live food feast. During the fast, I gained the clarity and peace of mind to speak my mind about some things I had been holding in. I find that I am still growing (not a surprise), and I feel myself evolving as a person. I've become more aware of my thoughts and habits. I have always felt that words were sacred. I would notice how people would say things they don't mean, or state inaccuracies, and then expect you to know what they mean. I feel the purpose of language is communication, and if you are not being understood, then we need to find other ways to communicate. I think words reveal your thinking. We can't say something that isn't present in our minds, so I have become increasingly aware of the thoughts behind my words. We also create our expectations, so I am now learning to expect good things instead of anticipating the bad.
I took a quiz on being an introvert, and there's no doubt about it - I'm an introvert. I do find that extroverts are more respected. I have never been a "loud" person. I was always the quiet one who liked to find an unoccupied corner to write her thoughts or to just be alone. I value solitude as well as time with my friends and loved ones. It always seemed to me that the opinions of the introverts were unfair and untrue. I noticed that things that people made up what the didn't know about me - I have heard assumptions about me religion, diet, and even my temperament. Those who have actually gotten to know me think very differently than those who make those assumptions (ha ha). I am glad to say that I never thought there was anything wrong with being the introvert that I am :).
I am currently in a state of peace. I must say, that fasting and cleansing is great. I am still getting used to eating again, but I feel I will now eat better.
I took a quiz on being an introvert, and there's no doubt about it - I'm an introvert. I do find that extroverts are more respected. I have never been a "loud" person. I was always the quiet one who liked to find an unoccupied corner to write her thoughts or to just be alone. I value solitude as well as time with my friends and loved ones. It always seemed to me that the opinions of the introverts were unfair and untrue. I noticed that things that people made up what the didn't know about me - I have heard assumptions about me religion, diet, and even my temperament. Those who have actually gotten to know me think very differently than those who make those assumptions (ha ha). I am glad to say that I never thought there was anything wrong with being the introvert that I am :).
I am currently in a state of peace. I must say, that fasting and cleansing is great. I am still getting used to eating again, but I feel I will now eat better.
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