Returned Citizens – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

Survive

January 1, 2020January 1, 2020 The Last Hiccup1 Comment

From 2010-2020, this decade has been the challenging of how the stigma can be. Someone once said: ‘The thing that I did that I am most proud of this decade? Survive.’ the other day.

W.E.B. DuBois on Abraham Lincoln: “I love him not because he was perfect, but because he was not, and yet triumphed.”

Learning how to navigate a history of bullying, slandering, character assassination, and hate dynamics in regards to a modern scarlet letter. Wellness, healing, equity, and the paramount factor is not so easily accepted: Strength.

Everything is the opposite. Cyberculture is the new norm of bullying. Technology has adapted faster even before blink eyes every time is something of concern we should be aware of in the future.

The wisdom that I appreciate most from books can be found in their writings on how we should how to survive. Landauer’s For Socialism, Day’s Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements, and Holloway’s Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Baird and Rosenbaum’s Hatred, Bigotry, and Prejudice, Lawrence’s Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law, and many others.

Indeed, for many of the great writers, critical thinking is not always abstract, head-in-the-clouds, the kind of thing, but focus on how to survive in a hate-filled life. Professors whom I admire the most, they teach not just as something you do, but find the purpose of living. And I am grateful to know them.

Majoring in Sociology was the best decision rather than advanced math and signed up for those courses that impacted my life forever; Revolution and Radical Social Change, Hate Crimes and Bias, Methodology of the Oppressed, but not something like this, until the book surfaced: Understanding Deaf Culture: in Search of Deafhood by Paddy Ladd in 2010 had changed my life more than anything.

I wonder all the time, if I have not read Ladd’s book, I wouldn’t be here. Honestly, I wouldn’t be here. I am grateful for the book. It is one of many reasons: survive. Every day is filled with mystery and answers to make all the difference in the world.

Encouraging suicide by its Deaf community is something really tough to bear with, and I am thankful for Deaf-centered counseling. Rehabilitation is the key. The obstacles seem insurmountable, and the people I love and care the most had been supportive, though I am about as depressed as I’ve been and kept thinking that it is unbelievable for me to survive through.

Stigma sucks. I walk that road and I keep walking, no matter what how hard it is in the spite of cyberculture, and that makes all the difference, where an 18th-century British legal scholar, Sir William Blackstone: “It is but reasonable that among crimes of different natures those should be most severely punished, which are the most destructive of the public safety and happiness.”

Here comes 2020. I look forward to finishing my greatest project. As of 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln: “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”

The thing that I did that I am most proud of this decade? Survive.

-JT

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Chasing Goals: Strength & Second Chances

December 2, 2019 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

Gallaudet Students’ Pitfall and Administration Pitfalls

December 10, 2015March 12, 2017 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

“In human hands, our intelligence has enabled us to overcome the restrictions of our biological heritage and to change ourselves in the process. We are the only species that does that.”- Ray Kuzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.

Today is the last day (December 10th) of Clerc-Gallaudet week. Next year, it will be 200 years in celebration of their arrival from France for America. It is forever legendary! It means that there shall be a huge change in the face of Gallaudet University starting on January 1, 2016. Within new president-elect coming in, Roberta “Bobbi” Cordano already has been visiting Gallaudet campus and listen to the changes. 59 out of 180 faculty members showed up for a productive meeting along with Bobbi in the audience last Monday, December 7th afternoon that they are not happy with the administration that holds 90 people. 11 people in President’s cabinet. They voted for a change of administration. They are tired of status quo. They really are.

They say only the administration sit on their hands, happy with the status quo. With that in mind, they want to see Gallaudet change with the positive vision. No more bullshit. No more gimmicks. They do not want to have another president in line for another major hardships for Deaf students, but all that has changed now with Bobbi in the mix. I just hope she keeps it gone long enough to get out the vote. The administration is the worst I had ever seen.

As a Gallaudet alumnus, I have some questions I would like to put to some people in the administration who agrees with Donald Trump’s hate-speech policies. How do you think Deaf returning citizens will treat when they are students at the university? Do you think they will be rounded up and put on reservations that lack proper well being for Deaf returning citizens? Do you think Deaf returning citizens will be profiled around? Do you think Deaf returning citizens will be looked upon not being good enough to earn a higher education degree—whatever that means these days?

Why—we might ask—do the administration think they are qualified to belittle Deaf returning citizens whenever they are walking around? Do they, for example, train and tell professors how to perform oppression against them? They apply that reasoning to the teaching profession. The administration needs to stop hiding lies—they do not ever respectfully listen—all of us—to what the administration say about their profession and its many needs. Do they call it and continuing education at Gallaudet? That is why it needs a new blood in the administration.

To paraphrase Socrates in Plato’s Republic, Gallaudet University we have known can never grow into a reality or see the light of day. At Gallaudet, possibilities must be limitless. Deaf returning citizens who are strive to be students are limited. The research has shown that the returning citizens, who have turned their life around for the better, are the best students, because they value the opportunity.

Without an education, the path toward rehabilitation and economic security is far more challenging—they do not need cruel punishment anymore. This sort of action in support for Deaf returning citizens would provide education—adding their intellectual, experiential, and cultural diversity within the student body.

-JT

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Is American with Disabilities Act [ADA] provocateur for the Deaf people?

July 23, 2015April 26, 2017 The Last Hiccup1 Comment

[Image: Me. American flag ignores my pursuit of happiness. A tattoo that says Audism Negat Surdi in Latin which means Audism looks down Deaf people. The shirt says “Audism is Ancient”.]

So, it is the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] theme this month—25th year anniversary. I have to write as an ADA critic this that it is really making me sick to my stomach and mind right now. The mandatory ADA does not always have an outstanding credentials to make contributions to my life—that has failed my pursuit of happiness and my safety for one, I am a returned citizen all because when I was 12 years old. The days when I was being ignored when I was abused in any form at age of ten years old—and that means I was outnumbered when ADA was supposed to protect my life.

Well, those kind of incidents that happens to Deaf children known as survivors every day in the last 25 years has been swept under the rug even though with the new conduct rules that was supposed to be investigated by authorities whom knows that ADA is the most important tool that could have saved their lives. Yep, you read that right. Guidance. And no, this is not a teaser for an upcoming episode of “Simpsons”.

There are many police agencies, school districts, and sign language interpreters that does not follow the lead of the ADA, which narrows the definition of American Sign Language [ASL] for Deaf survivors today and that is a big, big, big problem! People are out there celebrating 25 years anniversary laughing, cheering, shaking hands, clapping, hugging…. but what about crying? The cries are all over the mountains and valleys by Deaf survivors and the responsible people was supposed to take advantage of the good graces of the ADA to bring protection of Deaf survivors—is being forced to lie through their teeth and haul them around what they see as livestock.

What is more—the same school districts and sign language interpreters I lived through did not exactly administer the 25-years old ADA that the stricter rules did not define what could be legitimately treated as a forgotten survivor. That has been a problem for years and years. The school officials are not the experts and will never understand when a Deaf child is in crisis. The list of pain has strayed into the realm of the far-fetched, which is not healthy for the law’s public image. Is it painful to see the image of ADA 25 years anniversary? I believe that is, but it is a pain I should not complain, a suffering I must learn to sociologize the more I engage in it. American society sets me up to be free of this necessary pain, so I need to turn against the oppression and question why ADA is not practiced enough. It is not an easy route—at all.

I support the great change against the flawed due process and I believe that is what the change is all about, and it has two demands–to have me bow out and the oppression to resume afresh after future returned citizens.

Yes, I am a well-known troublemaker always at a distance for each position I espouse. Just mention my name Jason Tozier to those who have known or read you and me no doubt stir a flurry of controversy. I have amused some and angered others, refusing to be pinned down to silence. Some say I have never grown up, while others are sure I have been a troublemaker since birth. Some say that I have a great gift in knowledge, but I have thrown it to the winds so I could spend more time in forests to feel the wind differently when I was living in Great Pacific Northwest.

As a returned citizen, the traits in ignorance by those people who did not follow ADA properly has prepared me miserably for my life, I am the subject of an intellectual vulnerable in our American society, namely Deaf community. I needed the opportunity with my own space to reclaim and revitalize my human rights to protect my life and allow me to survive and flourish in higher education, so I could advance my future.

ADA was supposed to be the makers of meanings if you catch my drift.

I support the demands: to stop the unusual punishments and mob mentality of Deaf returned citizens. I am seriously not shamed of those demands. I do crave such systems, educational oppression, claims of the past; their words in the meeting inspired me to no end, their conduct of words to encompass human knowledge in their categories that must be corrected. ADA was supposed to be known as an integral to learning and thinking. Does Deaf people know this intuitively? Yet in our own time, ADA and education have parted ways in almost every school systems. ADA, created in 1990, had rejected many certified ASL interpreters worldwide and robbed Deaf children not only their language and culture, but also their citizenry: this is the first step in Audism—a racial term we know that it was coined in 1970s to suggest that it is better to hear and speak than not. My sociological bias makes me sure that such language bigotry is an important reason for the poor state of critical learning and thinking, which I have concerned year after year.

Is it painful to celebrate the most important landmark for Deaf people? People, who laugh, hug, shake hands, smile, mock—all that will keep wink…wink…wink…. I am a prospect of an ADA failure. You see all the images that says “Disability Rights are Civil Rights”—well, Deaf people are not disabled—they are language minority and it is time to see “Language Minority Rights are Civil Rights” or maybe “Deaf Rights are Human Rights”, or “Deaf Rights are Civil Rights”—Deaf people are overwhelmingly different from Disability Rights. Is ADA the provocateur for the Deaf people?

-JT

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