returning 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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Deaf Returned Citizens: The Key to the Liberty

March 26, 2015March 20, 2016 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

“The work our hands do at the command of our eyes is infinite.”

—Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490)

Remember the ‘80s TV show,The A-Team? Good times! Now there is a team called The F-Team in 2015. They promote hate speech targeting Deaf people—their own people. I draw the line when a Deafhood-hater use the Internet who targets Deaf people by throwing offensive hate messages. Every group being fair game to this unsavory person makes this practice acceptable? The message we are missing is the lack of democracy for cultural diversity, especially for the oppressed people (e.g.; Deaf returned citizens) who are still rejected to this day by the mainstreamed society and who are not empowered yet. That is the key.

How would Deaf returned citizens feel if the Deafhood-hater and its peers approve a show of mocking and degrading them? What kind of message is this sent to the Deaf returned citizens and their families who struggle against discrimination and prejudice on a daily basis?

What about the self-esteem of those Deaf returned citizens already demoralized by the extensive Audism in Deaf community? To add the salt on the wound, Deafhood-hater’s show is not being financed for their money via website’s fees. Those people can practice hate speech elsewhere—-something is very wrong with this picture degrading its own minority groups.

The Deafhood hater needs to examine at what price to their self-esteem and pride in themselves as Deaf people are they being asked to sacrifice when they permit the hater to continue on the rights of hate speech.

It is important to be aware that the Deaf eyes are the infinite at our command to express hands that is, the work of sharing stories. The society we live is to convey a message that it reiterates to them that the intention ill had been directed their human rights. Their strength as a Deaf returned citizens had been attempted to intentionally undermine their learning experience is distorted and offensive.

Patrick Henry shouts 240 years ago on March 23rd stands up and said those words that would forever stamped one of the most important historical trademarks, “Give me liberty or give me death!” is what it would send death stare in their eyes that targets Deaf returned citizens in all of congressional districts in America, the liberty we do not forget. The death stare: to look fixedly at someone with so much hate in hopes that their face melts, explodes, or caves in with extreme discomfort and pain.

In large part, it is the result of the “neglect” and reflects America’s tendency to send a cruel and unusual punishment known, as Eighth Amendment in the Bill of Rights that would violate in our eyes is infinite.

The society needs to be confident that that the Deaf returned citizens’ needs shall be accommodated as best as possible. Not only have they had been granted an extension on their life, they switch the topic to a path for the pursuit of happiness. They are in effect getting a second chance is accurate and adequate.

Why are Deaf returned citizens held on a different standard?

-JT

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