Conversation Project: The Plan (Erin & Nikki)

For our project, our objective is to raise awareness about the current controversy surrounding the arrest of two activists, Mike Wallschlaeger and Elliot Madison, for tweeting to protesters during the G20 summit to help them evade the police. They are the first Americans to be criminally charged for using social networking devices in connection with political protesting.
We want to use two corresponding animations to visually present the conversation. We will use our own voices to express how we feel about the situation, along with facts about the Patriot Act, the Civil Rights amendment, and social injustices, in conjunction with explaining the case concerning the two activists. We will also use another voice in defense of the Patriot Act and illegal searches and seizures to illustrate an opposing stance to our views.

For our research, we are planning to research Russ Feingold, since he is the only senator who actually read and voted against the Patriot Act. There are also numerous articles on the web about the G20 incidents in Pittsburgh, and the Patriot Act itself.

Each voice will be visually represented at a certain position on the slide and will vary in color and size. Color will be communicated as mood, size as emphasis, and font as the perspective of the speaker. The viewer will be able to read our texts because as the conversation builds on the slide, the comments will be displayed until the next section of slide is introduced.

On May 23, 2009 around 4:45 in the morning my cat woke me up. I immediately became aware that my partner, Ralph, had never come home that night.

When I called him he sounded disoriented, said he was with the police and that they were bringing him home soon. About twenty minutes later I heard a man say "okay, take care, Ralph!" and I ran out onto the porch to see him hobbling, wincing, toward the house, pushing his bike along side, with his face beaten. My first reaction was anger. I didn't know what had happened. As he struggled to stand on his legs he couldn't help but cry...we didn't know at the time but he was putting weight on a tibia that was fractured in three places, with much of the soft tissue behind the tibia and in the knee torn from the bone or ripped.

He had been out late making sure some acquaintances got in this bus safely. They had gone to a casino and some bars. He described his level of intoxication to the police in the emergency room twelve hours later as having been "two sheets to the wind." As he was on his way home he came upon a residence in which a group of men just south of Brady Street were saying some demeaning things to some women on that same property. Ralph sought a way to interfere in the conflict and derail attention from these women by asking them for a cigarette. A conversation ensued which escalated into an argument because Ralph challenged how they had been speaking to the women, and then how they were speaking to him. As it got more heated, they told Ralph to leave and he obliged willingly. However, as Ralph was walking away from these men, he was attacked from behind and held down by one man (Radakovich), and then punched in the face repeatedly by another (Busalacchi). They did this directly in front of their house, so when they were done they just went inside. Two girls across the street shouted to Ralph that they were calling 911, and the police came in record time (because it was on the east side, of course.) Ralph refused an ambulance because he did not have health insurance, so they had a paramedic check to see if his leg was broken and it was not. They put him and his bike in the paddywagon, and dropped him off in front of our house.

Only after I convinced him he needed medical help and solicited my mother for a car ride to hospital did we find out the extent of the damage. We called a police officer to the hospital to report what had happened, since we figured the cops that came to the scene hadn't reported anything. They treated the event like it had been a bar fight. Angry. Drunk. Mutual.

The officer who came to the hospital was in the room when the physician came back to report the extent of the damages to Ralph's body. He said it amounted to substantial battery - a felony. He also told us that the officers who had come to the scene of the crime (which included a sheriff) had completely mishandled the situation, that Ralph should never have been taken home, that he should have been taken right to the hospital regardless of insurance status because an officer is not qualified to determine the extent of the damages and his condition could have worsened in going home and sleeping, especially if he had experienced a concussion (which he fortunately did not.)

Interestingly, as this case progressed, his assigned officer who took the initial report was taken off the case, and switched to another district. We were not able to get an attorney to take the case because they all wanted a copy of the police report, and we were repeatedly told that we would not be allowed access to the police report until the district attorney had settled the case.
Well, interestingly enough, we recently discovered that the man who attacked Ralph from behind and held him down and is thus responsible for most of the damage done to his body, THAT GUY, that guy's father is a sheriff in New Berlin. Yep. Sure thing. And he works at an attorney's office, put that on yr brainy-brain.

So, I pose the age-old question. Police: To serve whom? To protect what?

Additionally, Ralph could not work for two months and didn't have insurance and we were denied any kind of government assistance besides food stamps (which we weren't granted until September when he applied in mid-July). Here are some of rationales offered by various social services as well as the district attorney's office for why they aren't going to do anything:

You were drunk.

You were walking around at four in the morning.

You initiated a conversation.

You accused these men of being "nazis," how do you expect white men to react when you, a brown man, calls them that?

The Criminal Victim's Compensation people pretty much described it like "You were rambling the streets drunk at 4am, initiated an argument with some other drunk guys, and you got punched," totally ignoring his motivation for talking to them at all and the fact that he was attacked by more than one person and that he got punched numerous times after he had already sustained major injuries to his leg that would prevent him from getting up without help FROM BEHIND.



Could this be a hate crime if he hadn't said anything to them? If he had just been attacked from behind, two guys against one, the assailants white and privileged, and the victim brown and passive, would they care about this then? DOES THE FACT THAT HE WAS ATTACKED AFTER SPECIFICALLY TELLING THESE MEN THAT THE TIME FOR WHITE MALES TO FREELY DEHUMANIZE WOMEN AND MINORITIES WAS OVER, does that strike any of these bureaucratic assholes as a clear indication of hatred?

There is a restorative justice intervention scheduled for November 4th. This means there will be no prison for his assailants, but it does mean that they had to admit guilt to avoid prison.

Though I am looking forward to making them pay off the medical bills and the fees incrued on Ralph's bank account and his lost wages while he was put out all summer, I honestly, honestly, honestly can't wait to force these men to have to look into our eyes.

America, the Beautiful?

I'm at my desk at work listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR. The radio announcer says:

"Hate crime legislation has been introduced that would finally cover crimes committed against persons because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Christian conservative advocates have opposed the legislation, arguing that it 'is an infringement on their freedoms of speech as well as religion.'"

I just want to make sure that I heard this correctly. There are people who are opposing HATE CRIME legislation because it would be an INFRINGEMENT on their FREEDOM? Their freedom to what? To rape and assault people for not having the sexuality you want them to? To abuse people for not conforming to gender as it is socially constructed and mandated? Did these same people think hate crime legislation that covered racially motivated crimes was a threat to their freedom? And if they think their freedom is impeded by protections for marginalized groups of people, wouldn't that imply that their freedom supersedes the freedom and protection of marginalized groups of people? That their freedom is dependent on the suppression of others?

[and outside the specific context of this legislation...]

AT WHAT POINT DO WE ADMIT THAT FREEDOM IN THIS WORLD, AS WE HAVE CONSTRUED IT FOR THE MOST PART, IS DEPENDENT ON OPPRESSION SOMEWHERE ELSE? That to live comfortably in America, others must live uncomfortably elsewhere? That there are not enough resources in the world to provide adequate nutrition to everyone, even if we wanted to make feeding the world a priority?

[and I'm getting way off of my original topic, but I have been wanting to ask you this question as well,]

AND KNOWING THAT THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH RESOURCES TO SUSTAIN THE LIFE CURRENTLY ON THIS PLANET,

knowing that each additional child born into the developed world sucks money, and resources, and LIFE away from the less developed world...

HOW CAN YOU JUSTIFY HAVING CHILDREN? IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WOULD WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO INHERIT, and if not, WHY NOT DEVOTE YOUR LIFE TO CREATING THE WORLD YOU WOULD WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO INHERIT, SO THAT THE NEXT GENERATION MIGHT HAVE SOME KIND OF LIFE?

Note: Wanting to establish a relationship with a baby/infant/child is not a logical response. If we are to change anything about this world, we must change the way we think about human relationships, must realize we are all a family, and that you do not need to see your own physical features reflected in the form of another being to have a powerful impact on their life and to benefit from their participation and influence in yours. I refuse to accept any answer that doesn't acknowledge these facts.

In Case You Weren't Already Convinced...

that the health "care" system in this country is not meeting the needs of the people physically or financially;

that the current system puts profits before people;

that Americans die every day because they can't afford the PRICE of continuing to live;

that our society has become a plutocracy in which those who can't AFFORD TO LIVE die, those struggling in the middle live in fear, and the rich live off of the frequently invisible slaughter parasitically;

YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS. Even if you are convinced. No argument has been made against the current health "care" system that is this public, this evocative and this direct. You should watch this because you are not outside of this. I know we live in a culture of alienation and disillusionment, especially among young people, being a young adult during the Bush II era was really rough, BUT HONESTLY: We are mortal. We will get sick, we will be injured, we will experience great hardship that we do not deserve. That is definite. Whether or not we have a system that is responsive to our challenges is what determines whether we survive. Currently, even those of us who have private health care, have no reason to feel secure. If you care at all about the life of yourself and anyone you know in this country, this is important to you.

Linear vs Relational Narratives and Revisionist History in Susan Howe and Alistair Reid

In the Susan Howe poem there seems to be a specific division of labor between the two paragraphs. The first paragraph actually resembles an airplane changing direction with its nose slightly up, suggesting that it is leaving or moving away from the ground, which here we can think of as the second paragraph which looks similar to a pile of rubble or a structure collapsed in on itself. The first paragraph consists of a sequence of words that suggest a rigid procession: “in mum/in arm/in at/ in ale as in tone.” The words overlap occasionally, such as “in arm” crossing over “in mum” and “in at” in the opposite direction, which to me suggested a system of silence and domination that both kept people collectively powerless (arms locked together) and was enforced through the barrel of guns, or arms. Below that, the word “open” literally opens the form of the poem for a moment, and then the words “peon vies company” flows upward, with the word “fluent” transposed over it, suggesting a conflict between an indigenous and an imperialist culture in which the indigenous people are fighting. Furthermore, the word “wedged” suggests something in a difficult position between two things, followed by “destiny shed,” which reflects possibly a dream broken. “[Cancel whole]” seems to confirm this idea of an indigenous culture’s destiny not being fulfilled because of cultural interference, especially if we look at it as the cancellation of a holistic way of living, such as what western culture has largely done to indigenous people around the world. The paragraph ends with squall extending out into the abyss between the two, like an actual wild cry.


In the next paragraph, Howe discusses history as a record of survivors, introducing the idea of revision. In this stanza the phrase “They cumbered the ground,” shoots out of the word “[authoritative];” this, (along with “Human [authoritative] human!”) is a rare instance of adherence to typical grammatical structures in the piece, suggesting the authoritativeness of the “human” in question.

It makes sense to use a non-traditional structure for this poem because the emphasis of the poem seems to be on the revisionist properties of history. The idea of re-doing or un-doing works well for her purpose of capturing the complex smattering of ideas and feelings the dominant cultural narrative leaves out or glosses over; the outburst(s) she is trying to give voice to require an experimental form. Reading the author commentary was very intrinsic to my eventually forging a meaningful relationship with this text. Without some background on the author, I think it would be hard to interpret this poem without feeling that you were totally going out on a limb, but I do think that the second paragraph functions as a directional signal back to the first in some way and that applying clues in the second half to the first would be of assistance in breaking it down. Additionally, it works in two main contexts; the form represents a product (war) of the topic (conquest), and the words imply a historical counter-narrative through the use of words such as “revision,” “record,” and “cumber” to describe the “authoritative” humans taking up space (potentially in regard to clearing green space to pursue agriculture/industry beyond initial settlements). What I want to retain from this piece is the application of form and use it in the process of thinking about making a visual out of words that communicates something about the subject that contributes to the overall meaning a reader takes from it, or that assists in the reading process.

Comparatively, Alastair Reid’s “Mandala: Dilemma” has a similar application of form to create meaning. In this piece there are only four words: “mightier than the penis.” This would be hard to contribute if it were written in a line like a typical poem, however Reid places his words in a circle with equivalent space between each character and no definition between the individual words. Thus, the words in this piece are completely dependent on the shape that they make. Reid is at a literal level making a comparison between the genitals specific to each sex. We see that comparison through the words which describe the relative power of the male sex organs, versus the shape, which represents in a figurative kind of way the female opening, or “hole from where it all arrives.” I offer the “hole from where it all arrives” idea because Reid seems to be pitting male sex organs against female sex organs as a metaphor for the conflict between linear and relational – the penis representing more of a line, with a beginning and an end, and vaginas representing a circle, life, and all of the deep, dark mysteries patriarchal culture has affiliated with the female sex organs throughout much of history. Reid seems to be saying “[this circle is] mightier than the penis,” and to me what this means is that Reid is saying a relational way of thinking and living is mightier (and perhaps less destructive) than the linear fashion so prominent in the progress narrative.

In conclusion, I see these poems relating in two very important ways. Both of them contain meanings that rely heavily (in the case of Howe) or solely (in the case of Reid) on the formatting of the words themselves. Furthermore, both seem to be discussing a conflict between the linear and the relational, in Howe’s poem this is just demonstrated specifically through the lens of history. We can view the conflict between the “peon” and the “authoritative human” as a conflict between linear and relational ways of life, and linear versus relational means of conveying a people’s history, specifically.

Justice?

So, admittedly, I've been getting consumed a bit by the global debate about Roman Polanski's recent arrest in Switzerland. As someone who is against prisons, and someone who is a sex abuse survivor/feminist/person with a conscience/human/activist, this is really a quagmire. I hate the idea that he committed this horrible crime, and that he has evaded punishment for so long. I hate the idea that almost every article on this subject refers to his crime as "sex with an underage person" (the reader perceives: consensual) when non-consensual sexual assault against someone of any age is rape, and always rape if their consent is not legally recognized if it is there. I hate that almost none of the articles mention that he was a full-grown man of 44 when he did this. I hate the idea that his actions are perceived as "not rape-rape" because he is a Holocaust survivor and his wife was killed by the Manson cult and he has made some important films. I hate the idea that he should be freed because his victim no longer wishes to pursue the charges against them; as a survivor I hate that our wish to not suffer further is interpreted culturally as retroactive consent and as a citizen of a purportedly democratic nation I hate that we accept the idea that just because a victim forgives hir abuser that an instance does not need to go to court. This is not the United Arab Emirates, blood money (though it always seemingly finds ways to exist), is not supposed to in this country. Simultaneously, I hate, very intensely, HATE, the idea that so many of the people who support this man's imprisonment support it because they are dreaming of the horrible things that would most likely happen to him if he was indeed imprisoned. Yet I am totally disgusted with the Hollywood supporters petitioning for his return to being a free citizen.

Dorothy Allison, also a survivor, has written that "there is no justice." I have been coming to that conclusion with regard to this current news topic. Is a wrong righted if an old man spends a few years in prison? I mean, this is America, so you have to be aware at this point that most rapists get less time than drug dealers and even some people who have been detained without any trial? And he's rich, so is it really feasible that he would much, if any, time in prison? My partner asked me what I think would be a good solution to this problem, because I keep bringing it up and he can see how intensely conflicted my feelings are about this, and the only thing I could come up with was that he should have to visit sex offenders in prison. Frequently. Be an ally for them, help them work through their shit by discussing his crime and how it has affected him, and also never be allowed to shake off his wrong doing. That doesn't seem equitable, though. Like, I'm sure Roman Polanski would definitely choose my punishment over the equivalent of what he did to his victim happening to him. There is nothing that would cancel out rape. There is nothing that would balance the scales here. Any attempt, as much of the media has done, to put the suffering of the victim and the abuser in some kind of hierarchy is futile, callous, and insulting.

So, as per usual, when I don't know what to make of the world, I turn to Adrienne Rich, who always seems to have commanding responses, if not answers, to the truly difficult questions.
Below is one of my favorite poems in the world, which I thought of while reading an article today on Switzerland not offering Polanski any bail, the parts I find most related to this are bolded.

HUNGER

--for Audre Lorde

1.

A fogged hill-scene on an enormous continent,
intimacy rigged with terrors,
a sequence of blurs the Chinese painter's ink-stick planned,
a scene of desolation comforted
by two human figures recklessly exposed,
leaning together in a stick like boat
in the foreground. Maybe we look like this,
I don't know. I'm wondering
whether we even have what we think we have--
lighted windows signifying shelter,
a film of domesticity
over fragile roofs. I know I'm partly somewhere else--
huts strung across a drought-stretched land
not mine, dried breasts, mine and not mine, a mother
watching my children shrink with hunger.
I live in my Western skin,
my Western vision, torn
and flung to what I can't control or even fathom.
Quantify suffering, you could rule the world.

2.

They can rule the world while they can persuade us
our pain belongs in some order.
Is death by famine worse than death by suicide,
than a life of famine and suicide, if a black lesbian dies,
if a white prostitute dies, if a woman genius
starves herself to feed others,
self-hatred battening on her body?
Something that kills us or leaves us half-alive
is raging under the name of an "act of god"
in Chad, in Niger, in teh Upper Volta--
yes, that male god that acts on us and on our children,
that male State that acts on us and on our children
till our brains are blunted by malnutritiou,
yet sharpened by the passion for survival,
our powers expended daily on the struggle
to hand a kind of life on to our children,
to change reality for our lovers
even in a single trembling drop of water.

3.

We can look at each other through both our lifetimes
like those two figures in the sticklike boat
flung together in the Chinese ink-scene;
even our intimacies are rigged with terror.
Quantify suffering? My guilt at least is open,
I stand convicted by all my convictions--
you, too. We shrink from touching
our power, we shrink away, we starve ourselves
and each other, we're scared shitless
of what it could be to take and use our love,
hose it on a city, on a world,
to wield and guide its spray, destroying
poisons, parasites, rats, viruses--
like the terrible mothers we long and dread to be.

4.

The decision to feed the world
is the real decision. No revolution
has chosen it. For that choice requires
that women shall be free.
I choke on the taste of bread in North America
but the taste of hunger in North America
is poisoning me. Yes, I'm alive to write these words,
to leaf through Kollwitz's women
huddling the stricken children into their stricken arms
the "mothers" drained of milk, the "survivors" driven
to self-abortion, self-starvation, to a vision
bitter, concrete, and wordless.
I'm alive to want more than life,
want it for others starving and unborn,
to name the deprivations boring
into my will, my affections, into the brains
of daughters, sisters, lovers caught in the crossfire
of terrorists of the mind.
In the black mirror of the subway window
hangs my own face, hollow with anger and desire.
Swathed in exhaustion, on the trampled newsprint,
a woman shields a dead child from the camera.
The passion to be inscribes her body.
Until we find each other, we are alone.

WOR(L)D/fnl drft

I lrnd hw to mk a wbpg fr my anmtnz.

My id(ea) ws too cncptl.

Thngs gt cnfsng wtht vwls...

https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/erinmday/worldfnldrft.html