Trigger warning: Trauma-informed setbacks

For some days now, an author by the name of Jason “JT” Tozier has been deeply grieving the loss of his mother — the greatest of life’s grieving — missing his beloved mother, Jody. She had been fooled by Alexander Graham Bell’s lies. One day, his mother stood up against the lies and dismantled them, battling those horrible acts of evil, and thenceforward fought for her Deaf son to be left alone, to live life by the language and communicative means of his choosing, being attended to with pure unconditional love.

She was lured. She was exploited. She was targeted. She was innocent. Her soul was stolen. She was 19 years old, and her first-born Deaf son’s soul was stolen, too, by an oral school in Portland, Oregon that is still in existence today and is still harming its students just as before. Bell was a master propagator of a great fallacy, that the state of being Deaf is supposedly a danger so great that a violation of Deaf people’s humanity is necessary and called for.

My Mom, me, and my Father. December 9, 1976. Exploitation right there.

My mother’s legacy continues in me, her spirit is humane and compassionate. Without her living affection, which was profoundly without hostility, her love still rumbles throughout the land with authority through painful times.

It is not an easy process. Alexander Graham Bell’s forced exile of Deaf people to sign language-less zones continues and is well familiar to us. We push against that evil which pushes back like a hurricane force wind. All of us know that it is a philosophy of the language-destruction of the Deaf, by sharing stories of that destruction of how the deprivation of sign language chips away at the development of one’s intelligence in its full power.

The Alexander and Mabel Bell Foundation, by some twisted logic, flatly denies that Alexander Graham Bell created such a state of alarm, by adopting a patronizing attitude that, in effect, continues the implied-hate-oriented practice: Making the Deaf disappear from existence. How? Eugenics and the bastardization of signed languages. Worst of all, Alexander Graham Bell is being regarded as a first class hero, when he committed many monstrous and bigot acts, his thinly veiled overtly hypocritical beneficent stance notwithstanding.

Oralism thus joined the much thicker fraternity of oppressors and colonizers of the world, creating a culture of fear, corrupting the cognition of the Deaf, stealing the unparalleled innocence of parents’ relationships with their own Deaf children and telling them to not learn sign language, causing much painful experience, for example, in terms of mental health, love, and family unity.

How come Deaf children were and are made to be lambs sitting amongst the wolves? Why this outrageous fortune? Its very origins have been a continuing source of long-standing oppression. Alexander Graham Bell was hailed by his popularizers, and his devious plans quickly succeeded in their twisted ways, its evil machinations flowing like tainted air currents that wind about hither and yon, eventually entering the open doors and windows of hearth and home, and brainwashing the innocent caretakers of the youth, including my own mother.

I will not let Alexander Graham Bell’s evil empire have continued control over my mother’s lasting legacy.

As a young boy, I remember reading E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web in a book of literature given to me by my mother, with its empathy and helpful attitudes toward human society, reminding people to be more compassionate.

E.B. White shared his thoughts about his writing in a 1969 interview, relating something his wife’s aunt Caroline once said: “Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.” White continued, “I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive world.” This inspires me to be a better writer.

I note the major problems with Alexander Graham Bell’s philosophy and the philosophy of the organization that continues in his name, which claims that economic incentives are needed to promote innovation. This is not especially innovative. There are biases in research. There’s the “hard sell” and marketing disguised as “education,” all of which foster the illusion that Oralism (the promotion of “listening and speaking,” as it is now euphemistically called) is better than signing with our associated Deaf culture (“the deaf culture,” as they refer to it, with a sneer that leaps off the pages of their brochures).

Their push is for profit — research for profit, i.e. moneymaking — and they resort to spin. They suppress negative findings and they gorge themselves at the trough of conflicts of interest.

We should argue that Alexander Graham Bell’s organization is actually not engaging in “free enterprise,” because what they do is, in fact, heavily dependent on monopoly power granted by virtue of government protection: for example, through patents. In such ways, including the purposeful perversion of the function of governmental agencies meant to promote healthier maternal-child relationships, haven’t they garnered the power to wipe out the culture of the Deaf? How did they get such power?

I will tell you. They seek out and harness the powers of the largest lobbying firms in the District of Columbia.

Therefore, it is irrefutable that Alexander Graham Bell’s minions bullied my mother by denying sign language and snatching it from us. They desecrate the very foundation of humanity by their grotesquely perverse methods, all the while cashing in by converting a mother’s naivete and her Deaf child’s innocence into corporate profits — a naked aggression which knows no bounds. In order to work to reverse this trend, I share these words about my mother’s painful journey. The public must be educated.

My mother and I once had a conversation about how she believes that the oral school in Portland, Oregon hid their secret dark “pot” from which activities that, on the surface, only seem to vaguely relate to oppression of sign language, originated. By recourse to such attitudinal subterfuge, they stole our means of expressing our ultimate love for each other.

The public needs to ask questions and become more hesitant in supporting Alexander Graham Bell’s organization, and properly regard their ostensive methods as being ineffective.

Love and unity should take the place of their deceit by all of us making an honest effort to create a success of American Sign Language (and thereby eliminating their (pseudo-)educational bullying) and offering the new philosophy which, when charges need be incurred, are offered at a fair and reasonable price. In this way, fewer and fewer people will have to choose between sign language and other basic needs.

Fewer people will have to suffer in their afflictions for lack of being able to support their basic needs. Finally, more and more people will be able to engage in the pursuit of happiness, as well as participate in promoting compassion and unity, against dark forces which were once deemed impossible to fight.

My Mom and Me cheerfully playing. October 1975.

My mother died at her home in Milwaukie, Oregon on July 26, 2021, ensuring a lasting strength, and her considerable love and spirit for her Deaf son that was much stronger than Alexander Graham Bell’s belief that it was OK for him to destroy the love between mother and child. Her death will not be in vain. Love reigns supreme.