Tag: Empowerment
The Power of CSD: Managing Information in Deaf Community
The information must free itself from the old known. To the Deaf community and the media everywhere in the world through social media—the only freedom lies in the unknown because whatever is known cannot be ignored from the past. Whatever the media learns the facts from Communications Service for the Deaf (CSD) about whoever the Deaf-owned organization were bounded, as soon as it put words around Deaf people’s experiences, it might affect them as state of being Deaf getting lost.
The month of May is Mental Health Awareness is an important learning experience for adequate mental health services in Deaf community. Deaf Counseling Center (DCC)–the first-Deaf owned counseling by Deaf women since 2001 has been the pioneers of mental health services with web-based platforms through Videophone (VP), FaceTime, Zoom, all the available platforms as long as I can remember back to year 2010 when I first learned about DCC through my Deaf friends from several states in America whom themselves been helpful thanks to web-based platforms.
It is the strongest proof that DCC had been the first-ever counseling organization to stay ahead even in technological wonders. It is a marvel invention!
Mental health awareness, may be challenging to slip what little remains of the Deaf community that limits Deaf people seek for help, and DCC takes a bold step, justifies empowerment whatever it takes to help Deaf people since year 2001 in a growing movement in both human interaction and web-based platforms to address a variety of social and life skills.
Sure, there are many Deaf communities around the world, for so long Deaf people have defined themselves in opposition to how the general society has viewed Deaf people, and they have defined themselves, and been defined, by that which seemed to be in them as most different, but their struggles alone in Deaf community with lack of access to mental health, not its difference from the society defining who Deaf people are, and the access to mental health services makes them better.
CSD’s website: Challenging Misconceptions Since 1975.
“For over 40 years, Communications Service for the Deaf has been working hard to create opportunities that allows each Deaf person to discover their gift that they bring to the world.”
For almost 20 years, Deaf Counseling Center has been working hard to create healthy mental health services that allow each Deaf people to empower their well being that they can make all the difference available in Deaf community. It is no easy feat, and they deserve all the hard work.
However, the pioneer by Deaf counseling through web-based platforms who been labeled on the wrong side had been approved by CSD not to recognize DCC as the first Deaf women owned counseling to offer web-based platforms is biggest mistake. DCC is the primary source for its first ideas in American Sign Language (ASL), and nowhere else are intense intellectual debates in ASL a common part of DCC’s mission values. When DCC is silenced, Deaf community is silenced.
It is not the first time CSD had neglected pioneers in Deaf community claiming that they have the right information because of the enumerated powers forging their homework done by CSD researchers or decision makers–yet, 18 years later, CSD said that DCC is not the first Deaf women owned counseling organization to offer web-based platforms is a flagrantly neglected, to CSD’s advantage and give National Deaf Therapy (NDT) the honours that they claim they were the first Deaf women owned therapy organization to offer web-based platforms whom just created baby steps just a year ago (2018)–It is something CSD needs to challenge its own misconceptions.
-JT
Copyright © 2019 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
Choosing to Overcome the Greatest Shame in Deaf Community: Suicide
There were couple of older blog posts I wrote about challenges of suicide in Deaf community. It’s really powerful. I’ve experienced a Deaf friend by the name of Greg from the school bus we rode together committed suicide when I was in 8th grade, and one of my hearing professors who committed suicide which hit me hard. She was only 39 years old. My first Sociology class was Sociology of Health and Medicine under Professor Heather Hartley.
I never forget the day when I showed up into classroom with injured right arm from kick-ass bicycle accident where I crashed my right shoulder so hard on the road and I was wearing an arm sling that time. I couldn’t write. Too much pain. That day was final exam. Yet, I still showed up with bicycle again.
She had a better idea and asked me to meet her in her office, and took the final exam by typing down the answers on her computer to take final exam and save it and send it to her. That was a brilliant idea. She was a good professor. Also, I remember the day when the news broke where I showed up for a Sociology course, Criminology and my professor was looking really down, it was not the professor I know. It became quiet in the classroom. It hit the hardest. They were good friends. The same professor in that quiet classroom later discussed about “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” book by Émile Durkheim.
When I had a fatal heart attack last November 2016, I continue to question my death experience and how I defied death. Living in real world at this current hour has been much harder than I ever face with, and it finds a lot of strength and growing pain to deal with, and one of the most challenging part, was the haters who went after me after I woke up from death. It is much worse than death. Living with labels. Especially most damaging labels. It leads a major culprit.
On the face of it, gaining access to find help, support, and strength how to overcome adversity, it was also cynical, is the most difficult thing. The last 32 years of my life has been rough enough that is way too much to deal with everyday, and when I got a gift certificate for my birthday from my mother last December 2018, I stopped by Barnes and Noble bookstore to buy a book to read: Shame: Free Yourself, Find Joy, and Build True Self-Esteem by Joseph Burgo, Ph.D.
Joseph Burgo writes: “Self-esteem can’t thrive in the soil of nonstop praise and encouragement. Instead it depends upon setting and meeting goals, living up to the expectations we hold for ourselves, and sharing our joy in achievement with the people who matter most to us. Listening to and learning from encounters with shame will go further than affirmations and positive self-talk in helping to build authentic self-esteem.”
One of my many and beloved Sociology classes, I learned a great deal about Erving Goffman, a high-thinking sociologist who coined “stigma” where he described, “Society establishes the mean of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories.”
How do you cope with the society when it establishes the mean-spirited of battling with tendencies to go toward suicides?
I am not writing this for myself only, but it applies to Deaf returnees living in Deaf community lacks for accessibility and big help, over the past couple of decades have shaken Deaf America and made them the most invisible minority group and their own identity and forgotten stories. When it comes to Deaf returnees who comes back into the society to change their life around, and blowing the whistle to test the strength, and the story is very much related to my experience.
When Calvin Young, a Deaf vlogger made a vlog: “Life is like a Jenga” is a great example of how to overcome adversity. Dealing with Jenga through shadows, and try to think positive as much as possible, and try to be in my shoes if you can handle Jenga. Beyond the shadows of Jenga, there are real consequences for living with the label. I learned of the news that there are four times more likely to commit suicide for young children as much as ten years old, with hard life lessons.
There are plenty of people who got away with miserable actions, but did not own up to their actions. Again, I am far from perfect and I make human mistakes, too. Will you be willing to learn the culture of Deaf returnees?
As the author of Shame: Free Yourself, Find Joy, and Build True Self-Esteem wrote from the book: “You’re a fucking loser. You’re pathetic. You’re ugly. Nobody likes you. You might as well die. You’re stupid. Why bother doing anything? You know you’ll fail. It goes on and on like that for hours, repeating the same things. Relentless, like I’m always being watched and judged. You’re pathetic. You’re ugly. Over and over.”
I know the feeling. I won’t let it control me to set up for self-hatred so profound it sometimes left me dealing with the label. Will you accept me to be part of Deaf community? I’ve told many times that I should not doing anything and set me up for failure, and judged without knowing my life stories.
Bullying: Deaf vs. Deaf is the hardest thing to deal with. I am no better either. In this time of crisis, it is Deaf leaders and Deaf community itself who hold out, by our very nature, the deepest vision of healing and peace that is possible for Deaf people including Deaf returnees. It begins in our hearts, in that place that is never separate from the living heart of ours. Am I allowed to earn empowerment that is something that begins within ourselves that finds a big mirror to reflect who we are between healing and growing pain?
-JT
Copyright © 2019 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message
Additional blog posts to read about suicide:
https://audismnegatsurdi.com/2017/04/03/suicide-is-a-big-problem-in-deaf-community/
https://audismnegatsurdi.com/2018/06/09/treatment-of-suicidal-deaf-people/
Thought of the Day: Is “Disempowerment” Overlooked?
Deaf author published an article, “A Quick Look at Everyday Disempowerment of Deaf people” in Spring 2016 issue of NADmag.
“The Deaf community certainly has come a long way over the decades, even if the pendulum constantly swings from one side to the other in terms of education, discrimination, access, and equality. It is so important that we are all aware of the rights we hold as humans who are Deaf.”
“…having our lives decided or even dictated by people with no knowledge of ASL or Deaf culture…”
“Ripple effects: deaf people aren’t hired, and those outside of the deaf community, in turn, continue to have beliefs and perceptions shaped by hearing people.”
“What can we do, as Deaf people, to help lessen disempowerment ranging from simple acts to in-depth, intentional acts?”
“Even the seemingly small acts of disempowerment that we’ve become so accustomed, almost immune to, have major impact on our everyday lives as Deaf people. It is crucial that we, as Deaf people, become fully educated on acts of disempowerment, the interpreting process, on our roles, on our legal rights, and on how to deal with conflict or oppression.”
How can we overcome the disempowerment even by own Deaf people that continue to have beliefs and perceptions to oppress own Deaf person?
Deaf vs Deaf—would end up attacking each other in order to gain popularity and it is dangerous. It shapes perceptions of Deaf people when they do not know the full stories in the mind of viewers, and thus endangers Deaf people in neighbourhoods across the country. Also, profiling is extremely dangerous, too.
That might be the thought of the day.
-JT
Copyright @ 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
HEARD: Outstanding Community Service Award
-JT
Copyright © Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
As Speechless As You Are
After collecting and reading archived letters from Gallaudet University about EPHPHATHA in my previous blog with 12 different posts, (I could not upload all the images at once, so I had to split different posts and I apologize about that) it is still blurry and very limited information. We the Deaf need to report Audism, language aversion, our language, and our culture. Removing EPHPHATHA will design to empower the Deaf community to prevent these religious “bad omen” or “witch hunt” to heal and minimize the false beliefs and negative feelings that people have about the Deaf. What does Deaf people feel like when they drive by, walk by nor walk around Gallaudet and see EPHPHATHA playing behind the fence? Deaf people on display?
EPHPHATHA is driving Deaf people out of their state of being Deaf and only sees the world of action to make sure that Deaf people do not think and desire their own culture because EPHPHATHA is an everyday influence on Gallaudet’s seal which has a huge power-playing and that is why Deaf people do not talk much about it. Talking about EPHPHATHA is an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves as Deaf people and I think it is very important to know that we need to reclaim our lives back in good conscience. Not only that the term also fragmentize the Deaf community into quattuordecillion pieces.
Deaf people must fight against the religious belief to heal us in order to preserve our language and our culture for future generations. Gallaudet needs to know that every Deaf citizen’s rights to be rooted in the free pursuit of happiness. “Be Thou Opened” has nothing to do with the opening of mind, knowledge, education, learning, whatever, but we must look at the very ORIGIN of the term: healing ears and speech. That is very much hidden message. Every English word always has the ORIGIN meaning of it. We must remember to recognize the origin meaning first. The term itself taught the university how NOT to tolerate diversity.
From one of my favorite books, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense by Lawrence Grossberg wrote “Cultural Studies describes how people’s everyday lives are articulated by and with culture. It investigates how people are empowered and disempowered by the particular structures and forces that organize their everyday lives in contradictory ways and their (everyday) lives are themselves articulated to and by the trajectories of economic, social, cultural, and political power..This is, seeks to understand not only the organization of power, but also the possibilities of survival, struggle, resistance, and change. It takes contestation for granted, not as a reality in every instance, but as an assumption necessary for the existence of critical work, political opposition, and even historical change.”
It is time to make a substantive democracy and work for real change. EPHPHATHA is divided. We, the Deaf people, are united. It is pretty much evident that Audists are holding large claims on Gallaudet’s property, including a fair amount of government debt. President Hurwitz is not the president we need. He is not doing his job. We have to let him ago. We need to get back in shape. It is pretty easy choice when you compare two circus clowns, I. King Jordan and Alan Hurwitz that lie at the drop of their teeth every time they speak, worship only the greed of EPHPHATHA and never tell us what their plans who allows the obstruction of Audism on the Gallaudet seal. Both are members of Alexander Graham Bell Association. No character and heart for the Deaf community at all.
It is time to propose to the Gallaudet administration that it is enough to play mind games with Deaf people’s emotions. We need to get ourselves involved in this hidden term and remove it. Our activism needs to make a loud statement and let them know that our conviction that EPHPHATHA is wrong. Why does Gallaudet fail Deaf people from not succeeding their hearing abilities? Deaf people should not been criticized and their biggest liabilities are to be succeed and get a fair education from Gallaudet without the term wringing their necks around. EPHPHATHA does not contribute to the cultural diversity of this Deaf community and makes us invisible in this world. Removing the term off the seal will bring Deaf people a place of belonging, but if the term is still there, then Deaf people will deny their sense of belonging. Simple.
-JT
Copyright © 2013 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
...And the Truth Shall Set You Free. 
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