Dear Joel Barish: Acknowledging the White Privileges

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Dear Mr. Joel Barish:

I would like to applaud Mr. Joel Barish for acknowledging the White privileges and power-tripping being preserved to hide a sociological problem of the damage control; However, when Mr. Joel Barish wrote, “Our hands were intended to block multiple cameras…” that was a good defense, and if necessary to avoid the acknowledgment of inflicting pain for the memories of Nazism, it is too great, and how often do we see the pose of Nazi salute in repeated cycles and becoming a bystander is hard enough.

With the utmost respect for the human rights of the Deaf, can we acknowledge for all of the Deaf survivors from the Nazi regime who have their dignity bulldozed by the ignorance? They had been subjected to cost-benefit practice to deny the existence of a “sacred fire of liberty” is something we cannot ignore.

The struggle for freedom feeling exiled from human rights is difficult to swallow. Understanding for the human rights to describe the human struggle–what does not appear in their struggles is being ignored easily?

Let us look at the everyday life of the Deaf, especially Deaf survivors of the Nazi era, and recognize the lack the knowledge of hate crime and how to develop the layers of sympathy, tolerance, and compassion. The goal of this compassion is to help to defeat the hate in our community who are potentially living and operating in a hostile environment to survive and thrive in that environment today and tomorrow.

Helping the member of the Deaf community understand how they can transition from being a bystander of a bias incident to becoming an active bystander and respect Deaf survivors from the Nazi regime. The pain was too destructive. The force is with them. They are real-time heroes.

Much of the destructive, painful stories the society had practiced hate crime, the forgotten stories of Deaf survivors from the Nazi regime is due to the widely practiced oppression that would be more likely to repeat history.

What does this society was actually doing does not contribute with the headline with community responsibility to discuss hate crime that harms Deaf survivors of the Nazi regime? Human prosperity, knowledge, and happiness, will find in our quest and insights somewhere on how those goals can be achieved—and on what stands on the way of Deaf people.

Like society who never takes enough community accountability by discussing the news or educational discourses just because there is nothing else to write or discuss. The human element is, of course, important of our lives in this regard we can teach each other how to minimize hate crime. There is not much sympathy in this society, and we can make sympathy to prioritize justice all over.

America is the number one geographical of hate crime. Hate crime is deeply entrenched in our society. Silencing Deaf people is deeply rooted, too. At the start of empowering, we need to educate the tendency of oppression for the sake of white privileges. Much empowerment goes into maintaining cultural standards—get siphoned off any empowerment for challenging hate.

Nazi salute should not be an opportunity to target vulnerability in the Deaf space, and the bias is pretty serious not to ignore the problem. Allowing a culture of fear is very complicated more than we understand.

There is no denial in that, we do not need Nazi sympathizers unchecked, and we can effectively challenge White privileges. There are most books I’ve read below including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi. One of my all-time favorites was The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

 

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To the highest standard of compassion, I think Mr. Joel Barish would understand the better road. Who says that Mr. Joel Barish is an expert on hate crime? Distressing and damaging? So much for “committed to fighting for a society in which white privilege and power will no longer exist” in his words. As well as much in his own words for far from “equitable country, and I am committed to fighting for a society in which white privilege and power will no longer exist.”

As the only Deaf lecturer with strong knowledge focusing on hate crimes in the Deaf community. My passion has been burning the flames since 2007. My proudest achievement was to help hate-crime law protecting Deaf Oregonians was passed in 2012.

We live in a culture of fear. What we now identify as “hate crime” has been part of our culture for centuries, only it wasn’t recognized.

Please visit my website should you be interested in hate crimes.

https://jasontozier.net/

-JT

Copyright © 2020 Jason Tozier

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: Invisible Hate Crime of the Deaf

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Nancy Rourke’s Deaf Survivors of the Holocaust

Around the world commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the greatest pain of the camp where six million Jewish prisoners of the German Nazis were murdered, humiliated, suffered. and targeted, today on January 27th, 2020 is the Holocaust Memorial Day, we must continue to challenge hatred. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was on an educational tour around the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Poland, on December 6, 2019, must-have impacted her life by now. I quote, by Angel Merkel’s powerful words: “I feel a sense of shame for the barbaric crimes that were here committed by Germans—crimes that are unfathomable.”

I am struggling to get through this post because there is a problem where people interchangeably use language bigotry with what should be called hate. Hate cannot be compared to any other words. Hate is its own beast with the terrible history that should be recognized by all and the suffering of Deaf people cannot be compared to any other oppression. This is a severe case of non-compliance, and pure oppression.

Often, people use ignorance and compare it to their own oppression. This is problematic for a number of reasons. If you want to write a piece on hate, it has to be about hate. If you want to call this language bigotry, then you can call it language bigotry, you cannot call it to hate. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Jack Levin, professor emeritus at Northeastern University and co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict states: “When people think of hate crimes, they think of neo-Nazis, they think of racism, they think of homophobia, they just don’t seem to think of people with disabilities as being a protected category. I call it the invisible hate crime.”

However, ‘Deaf Jews’ were murdered, Deaf schoolchildren were sterilized, and those who survived, even rendered unable to ever have children, considered themselves lucky, seen as the most notorious minority group, ‘Deaf’ were the first people to be targeted, in the name of the most barbaric thinking; Is it not unfathomable? Imagine all the execution walls. 

Deaf people in the Holocaust is being treated invisible, but to focus on hearing-dominated choices, instead of exploiting Deaf people and trying to present a life that allows them to feel tolerant; However, those very Deaf people who survived the Holocaust, presents the struggles and triumphs of their lives in a human way.

Two books: ‘Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Europe’ by Horst Biesold, and ‘Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe’ by Donna F. Ryan, where I wrote an essay project for Hate Crime and Bias class 13 years ago. That opened my eyes. This assault in our democracy, leading a fight against hate.

“Yet this most stigmatized group is not often viewed through the lens of compassion and understanding, only modern forms of old ignorance. The Deaf community has gone through considerable evolution, but hate crime remains invisible in the face of society.” (Tozier, 2007)

What happened in Holocaust is forever scarred by facing a moment of the growing pain, Deaf people had been profiled by Germans and needs to be held accountable about Deaf people in Holocaust for its culturally labeled in hate and bias, because it is not enough talked about the fabrication of human civilization and their identity.

The best description of the deep feeling of admiration for the language and the culture of the Deaf, and when it comes to the Deaf, we should just respect their language and culture, full stop. When social media choose not to talk enough about Deaf victims and survivors in the Holocaust, losing respect is a tragic loss in the world. 

Much like Deaf Jews being murdered, ending up on the wrong side of the hatred and bullying by expressing views seemingly on the right side of a power-hunger in cultural hegemony. The witch-hunting of the Deaf is not the answer, extensively on the social construction of “Deafness”.

There are many and many historic written articles around social media (NPR, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, et al) about German Chancellor Angela Merkel visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, none of them had mentioned Deaf Jewish prisoners as the first people to be murdered.

Merkel said in the New York Times article written by Melissa Eddy: “We are witnessing and experiencing an attack on the fundamental values of liberal democracy and a very dangerous historical revisionism that serves a hostility that is directed at specific groups”

A powerful piece by BBC where it can be found on YouTube, BBC: ‘The Deaf Holocaust’, Deaf People and Nazi Germanyof Aktion T4 survivors sharing their experiences. The trend of discrimination has been documented from the Holocaust forward. When I visited the United States Holocaust Museum for the first time, I was blown away that it was not enough documented about Deaf people. That is a good example of the invisible hate crime.

Last March 2019, a performance by Deaf actresses and actors held at George Washington University: ‘Crying Hands: Deaf People in Hitler’s Germany’ sends a powerful message: “based on interviews of Deaf Holocaust and civilian survivors, explores the fates of the Deaf and disabled in Nazi Germany, a neglected story of the Holocaust.” 

When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, Hitler was obsessed with racial purity, the notion that nature had created a superior Aryan race. Persons who were of “mixed-race” and those with disabilities, chronic diseases (e.g. epilepsy), mental handicaps, and illnesses, etc, were to be weeded out of society or prevented from reproducing. Between 1933 and 1945, some 17,000 Deaf people were sterilized. The youngest was nine years old.

Hitler masterminded the barbaric attacks. The consequences were grave, nothing powerful than this. “Deaf people in Hitler’s Europe were among those who were killed by the Nazis during the Third Reich because they were Jews, others because as congenitally deaf people, they were considered “defective” and “biologically inferior” (Gilbert, 1998) 

The Nazi campaign against the handicapped begun in 1933 with the passage by the Reichstag of the Law for the Prevention of offspring with hereditary diseases. The conditions were mental illness, retardation, hereditary blindness, and hereditary deafness. 17,000 out of 375,000 people were Deaf people. 28 percent of 17,000 Deaf people were under the age of 18. Nine (9) percent were women who were already pregnant.

Hitler created a secret campaign called Aktion T-4 to mass-murder disabled people because they were “life unworthy of life.” Infants with disabilities were the first victims. (Gilbert, 1998)

Reminder: Not only Deaf Jewish were targeted, but also Deaf Germans and Deaf Polish Jewish, too.

Any kind of participation would go a long way to raising awareness in the community about some of the unique issues that arise in matters involving Deaf survivors in Holocaust and to providing them examples of positive examples of how with community and support, plus the right resources, contributing to the community is possible. 

We cannot ignore hate crimes that must be challenged by us all. No matter what. There were older blog posts to share with the readers. As the only Deaf lecturer focusing on hate crimes in the Deaf community, available for lectures below. 

https://audismnegatsurdi.com/tag/deaf-people-in-hitlers-europe/

https://audismnegatsurdi.com/2019/03/10/crying-hands-deaf-people-in-hitlers-germany-reflection/

https://www.nancyrourke.com/deafsurvivorsholocaust.htm

https://jasontozier.net

-JT 

Copyright © 2020 Jason Tozier 

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message. 

References: 

Gilbert, Jean (1998). Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe. Gallaudet Today, September 1998.

Tozier, Jason (2007). Negative Perceptions of Deaf Individuals in Relation to Knowledge of American Language. March 2007.

Eddy, Melissa. (2019). Visiting Auschwitz, Merkel Warns Against Danger to Liberal Democracy. New York Times. December 2019. 

Harry H. Laughlin’s Hatred of Deaf People

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Hearing supremacy is a hellavu drug. A mind filled with hatred speaks a sober heart. History did not teach us enough about haters that comes out of their mouth right into the public when they feel safe because of eugenics ideology. Not only that, but Whiteness is like a drug.

After I learned the history about Harry Hamiliton Laughlin, one of the staunchest supporters of eugenical research and policy in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, where Laughlin writes a letter to Professor Dr. Eugene Fischer, President of International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems in 1935, responsible for the sterilization of Deaf people where the Nazi party filled with white supremacy loved his idea and used his model in 1933 to verbally and physically assault Deaf people by sterilization.

If it was in 2019, would Harry Laughlin be prosecuted for a hate crime? Would that be a prosecutorial slam dunk……but white privilege gets in the way. Wasn’t he possibly suffering from a lithium imbalance? Isn’t paranoia approaching severe personality disorder characterized by a constant suspicion that Laughlin have sinister motives against Deaf people?

When I learned about the history about Harry Laughlin through Equal Justice Initiative, one of my favorite organization, commented: “On this day [December 2nd] in 1922, eugenicist Henry Laughlin published the “model sterilization law” which encouraged lawmakers to develop more effective and “constitutionally acceptable” sterilization laws.” and realized that he was public enemy number one influencing American eugenics policy. That was where Alexander Graham Bell loved his idea.

The anger, and the arrogance towards innocent Deaf people Harry Laughlin did not know, and cannot fathom to understand this hatred. The damage control has been done. Laughlin who went after Deaf subjects for eugenic sterilization of personal power and a higher degree of self-esteem because it demonstrates that one feels good enough about himself to demand something better or higher from the world.

Harry Laughlin knew who Alexander Graham Bell, the leading eugenicist in the Deaf community who would publish articles on hereditary ‘Deafness’, and they were responsible for the destruction of the Deaf community.

Imagine if Harry Laughlin and Alexander Graham Bell who sit together in order to spew hatred towards Deaf people. Wake up! Inside the media propaganda is yet another effort to dismantle the Deaf community. Or, another effort to deter intellectual freedom to all the Deaf?

Would they really understand the painful history what Harry Hamiliton Laughlin and Alexander Graham Bell had caused enough destruction in the Deaf community? Where is the mistrust of what we see on the news outlets about Harry H. Laughlin and Alexander Graham Bell?

The sterilization of the Deaf people is the worst of all. The Deaf community began to sense differently.

When I first learned about Charles Darwin back in 1988 in eighth grade after taking Biology class, my hearing teacher would speak highly of Darwin’s work, also learned about Francis Galton whom I had no idea he was related to Charles Darwin as half-cousins in college days and told a history lesson where eugenics were taught in schools across the country, only many years later after I read Paddy Ladd’s Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood:

“Against this background, Darwin’s initially explosive ideas on evolution served to reinforce the medical discourse. Deaf people and their languages were confirmed as akin to those of other savages, and an atavistic throwback who, like them, ‘may fancifully be called living fossils [and] will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life’ ” (1859: 448)

That hit me hard. I had no idea until 2010 when I was 35. The book written by Paddy Ladd had changed my life completely. I feel the wind differently. I relate to the Deaf community and experience a bond with the Deaf community which clearly unknown to you.

Sociology had stolen my heart and became a student of Sociology, and learned that Harriet Martineau, the Mother of Sociology, Martineau was Deaf. I was surprised. I bet you do not know that either. Even my professor whom studied Martineau in graduate school had no idea that Martineau was Deaf.

Not even hearing professors ever mention anything about it. A pattern of ignorance? A certain weaving together of ignorance? Peace, freedom, and global health of the Deaf shall not be ignored.

Martineau was dating Charles Darwin’s older brother, Erasmus Alvey Darwin, and Darwin saw and grabbed the greatest ignorance, the slandering of Deaf people so great that not even an idea exists of what Darwin’s hatred should look like. Would it end all kinds of intellectual oppression? Darwin’s ideology rakes for the highest form of democracy in the broadest sense of hatred.

Despite the vast differences, would The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, formerly American Eugenics Society apologize for Laughlin’s hatred of the Deaf people? Would they do so with a commitment to develop healthy task to overcome indifference, show of human compassion, that plagues the Deaf community?

Deaf people who lived in Hitler’s Europe, whom were targeted for the display of symbols of hate, thanks to Laughlin’s work. Dealing with the cultural differences, specifically, with the way of life of the ‘minorities’ who live in the society. After reading Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany by Horst Biesold, by cultural norms, in processing of a hate crime, and that becomes an issue that all hate crime sessions by Laughlin’s work, must tackle.

Isn’t hate crime by no means unique in the broadest respect of the Deaf people?

If The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, formerly as American Eugenics Society, refuses to apologize for Laughlin’s action, why should Deaf people be punished more severely because of social and psychological pathology?

Laughlin as an American citizen who breeds in White Supremacy as he received an honorary degree from the Nazi-controlled, University of Heidelberg for the work of race-cleansing. Hate crime violates constitutional rights of the Deaf people, especially Deaf babies.

We must always remind ourselves as well as all others how our Declaration of Independence makes our country different from any other nation around the world. The Declaration proclaims that we have inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

American Eugenics Society, under the establishment of Harry H. Laughlin in 1926 who was served as the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, probably the best known, if not the most oppressive, White supremacist in America–all but faded into culture of hate.

Will Deaf people ever get a formal apology from The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology?

-JT

Copyright © 2019 Jason Tozier

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

Harry Laughlin: Sterilize Deaf People!

After I learned that today on December 2nd where Harry Laughlin, a eugenicist published the most damaging paper in 1922 that went ahead and sterilizes Deaf people against their will.

Sean Spicer Whitewashes Deaf Holocaust Survivors and Victims

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I am still in disgust what Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary said to the world, “Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”—To me, it is a human militarization language as well as whitewashing America. Do you realize that Spicer also used the violence of hate in denial that he confronts Racism, Anti-Semitism, and all kinds of bigotry in any kind of form?

Spicer also insulted all Deaf survivors and victims—hate crimes in Deaf community is one of the world’s most neglect symbols because it identifies the moment at which he creates white-washing and, in effective yet oppressive language, describe the reasons for growing pain for those Deaf people. As you know, Deaf people were the very FIRST people to be killed in a chemical weapon style. Yes, as in gassing people.

The Nazi campaign against the disabled people begun in 1933 with the passage by the Reichstag of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with hereditary diseases. The conditions were mental illness, retardation, hereditary blindness, and hereditary deafness. 17,000 out of 375,000 people were Deaf people. 28% of 17,000 Deaf people were under the age of 18. Nine percent (9%) were women who were already pregnant. Hitler created an operation called T-4 where he wanted to see disabled people murdered because they were “life unworthy of life” Infants with disabilities were the first victims. (Gilbert, Jean. Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe. Gallaudet Today. September 1998.)

The word ‘forgotten’ itself is not hard to understand, defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “left unoccupied or unused” and it applies to the outbreak of the hate rhetoric. Deaf survivors of Holocaust, however, were united in supporting all the documents of living in society again.

Why do you think there are books such as Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, Surviving in Silence: A Deaf Boy in the Holocaust: The Harry I. Dunai Story, Deaf People in the Holocaust: The Extraordinary Story, Survival Artist: A Memoir of the Holocaust and other books were written, researched, and archived their painful stories is important to document?

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Are Deaf people viewed as forgotten people? People who committed those actions against Deaf people has not charged with hate crime, wondering if Sean Spicer is ignorant, while most of Deaf survivors and victims are facing the most intense treatment than others, Spicer do not need to mimic Deaf community. After all, Spicer’s knowledge is heavily flawed.

This is a dangerous trend and the White House must not be allowed to let whitewashing get away with this. We cannot have a society that ignores hate crimes in the life’s most vulnerable direction.

Spicer needs to be fired. He does not deserve to be the White House Press Secretary. He failed homework. After all, he is the most uneducated puppet. He needs to visit Holocaust museum–it is like ten minutes drive from White House. Then once he visit the museum maybe he would say, “I need to realize why I am the White House Press Secretary in the first place” and do not JUDGE those survivors and victims!

-JT

Copyright @ 2017 Jason Tozier

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.

AGBell’s House Shall be Demolished

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AGBell’s birthplace.

Yesterday, there was a headline about demolishing a house where Adolf Hitler was born—a birthplace in Austria. Yes, wise decision to do so! Time to heal—and I support the idea. I mean, after visiting United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. more than five times, it is mind-boggling and it makes you THINK what Hitler has done to Deaf people was fucking unbelievable—yet, Deaf people were in silence!  After reading few books, Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, and Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany was painful to read—it is exactly why bigotry and hate crimes had been recognized in Alexander Graham Bell’s (AGBell) hands.

Since AGBell’s time, he had devastated as the whole world and villages that had decimated Deaf people and forced them to walk into the deserts of pain. There are millions of scenes that have tragically become familiar again today by not recognizing enough hate crime in Deaf America. From I can remember those books, I have not seen a detailed story about Deaf people that suffer through hate crimes, the America we live in the shadows of freedom, time for us to prevent hate crimes in Deaf community, too. I must be an advocate for Deaf people who were survivors of AGBell.

Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe written by Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchmann, the book made an agreement with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

The fate of deaf people in Nazi Germany is a neglected aspect of the Holocaust. Certainly, few would think of them as Holocaust victims or survivors. In the United States, even in Germany, few were aware that during the Nazi era, human beings—men, women, and children—with impaired hearing were sterilized against their will, and even fewer know that many deaf people were also murdered. Under Nazi rule, they shared the fate of all persons with mental and physical disabilities. [Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community, Henry Friedlander, Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, p. 15]

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I learned that there were an international conference held in Washington, D.C.—1998, called “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, 1933-1945”—I was only 23 years old that time living in Great Pacific Northwest.

The media continues to portray “uncalled” hate crimes in Deaf community so wrong is that they has successfully evolved hate speech into story-tellers to guide us to speculate or guess diverse modes of Audism. For example, as a kid I grew up into reading literature, Christopher Columbus thought that the world is flat and the stars revolve around the earth to determine our fate and future. The same future we live shall makes a difference and support Deaf people to minimize hate speech in our community.

If you read Deaf books, try to find why most of survivors who were living in AGBell’s hands, it is clear that they represent a new, important form of hate expression. They mark a fundamental shift in power away from public life dominated by invisible hate crime to dark cave, which now empowers the Deaf community. For example, the books reach places that Deaf community, as journalism cannot touch today.

With a Deaf fellow like myself, who was survivor of AGBell —his ideology was a fearful example of the damage wrecked by inbreeding leadership with Deaf community, is it painful to protest hate crimes against AGBell? The answer is yes! I believe that they should complain to start the healing process. The same Deaf community we live in, sets up us up to ignore the pain of Deaf people who were survivors of AGBell, so we need to turn against the oppression and question why it is still practiced today.

Can we dream that AGBell’s birthplace in Scotland be demolished? We are dreaming because we can see by dreaming a connection between premises and conclusions: we dreamed that we would solve a problem that we would read earlier then we would write down on it on the paper made out of tree, we found out that the conclusion does not follow from the premises in our dreams. As you can imagine, it must be painful to write a story about it. AGBell destroyed Deaf people was the exactly what Adolf Hitler destroyed Jewish people and others—including Deaf people.

Yet, it fails to mark a case that Deaf people experience of a hate crime, literature, or speech. It must be even more painful that people who are AGBell advocates are protesting the ignorance of Deaf American community. In the time of crisis, it is AGBell who holds out, by our very nature, the deepest vision of healing and peace that is possible for Deaf community.

Again, AGBell in Deaf community was biggest insult because Deaf people were not taught to be leaders for their own people—Deaf people. This is the reason they live in silence. We need to feel the wind more often. We relate to Audism nor hate crime in Deaf community as family and experience a bond within the same community, which is clearly unknown to you. We have different inner clocks and deal with time differently. Maybe you can remember the famous artist by Salvador Dali where the clock was melting. That is the most invisible trait that did not prepare us excellently enough for Deaf community to talk about it and easily labels us as intellectually vulnerable in our American society.

The media and newspapers are what you know: a modern of they-Adolf-Hitler. They use the recipe for using propaganda, fear, and scapegoats to convince the readers to go along with AGBell that is supposed to be the bureaucrat’s heaven. Not only Deaf people suffer, but also the Deaf community as a whole becomes more vulnerable. It is time to have AGBell’s birthplace DEMOLISHED house in Scotland and begin healing!

Thanks, friend for sending me the pictures of AGBell’s house. He was actually there in person. Oh, clocks are melting everywhere!

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References: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37682298

-JT

Copyright © 2016 Jason Tozier

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.