Society declares the others out of those who they neither understand nor able to neatly fill the ideals set forth as norms. The demarcation of social constructs render the other as devoid of worth. The moment that a living, breathing, human being is relegated to caricature or stereotypical othering, it then becomes much easier to commit and justify atrocious acts to our fellow man.
His name was Larry king, and he was a boy who just happened to discover his true self at the age ten, and had the convictions and courage to refuse to live a lie. He was unapologetically gay, and like many teenagers who have to wear school uniforms, Larry asserted his individuality by wearing make-up, jewelry, and high-heeled boots.
Unfortunately, this annoying little social construct called gender roles dictated that Larry and his choices were wrong. That he chose to be true to himself was a concept that made a lot of people uncomfortable. On February 12, 2008, Brandon McInerney's discomfort at his classmate's so-called otherness led him to bring a gun to school. While inside English class, he did an atrocious, cowardly act: he shot Larry in the back of the head. Larry was rushed to the hospital, but was pronounced dead less than 24 hours later. Just as bravely as he stood up for his choices in life, in death Larry did one final good deed: he donated his organs.
Brandon McInerney should be held accountable for his actions, but in the end, he is just one person. He could be sent to jail for the rest of his life, but sadly, there will be another person just like him, pulling triggers. We can rehabilitate people one at a time, but unless we challenge and actively exhaust all means to change the system of othering, then more Larry Kings will be slain. It is othering that needs to die.
Heto ang katotohanan: habang tumataba ang bulsa ng unanong Commander-in-Corruption at ang malabigoteng Erap aka Commander-in-Theft, eto ang kalagayan ng mga simpleng mamamayang Pinoy.
It is a slap across the face of humanity and human decency for the "leader" of the Philippines to go on a diplomatic tour across the globe with a 400 person entourage. Seriously, it's okay for the wives of the Congressmen to accompany the Presidential midget on these so-called "business trips," but their little vacation should not be paid for by the national treasury.
The rationale for staying at expensive hotels and having lavish meals is usually, "Oh, what would people say if the President of the Philippines stayed at Motel 6?" Saving face, in other words. Newsflash, Unanong may Nunal: Alam na ng mundo na mahirap ang Pilipinas. The only way for you to "save face" is to use the money you spend on your travel entourage on your citizens. Your husband does not need to enjoy another kilo of lechon--mukha na nga siyang lechon, eh, sa kakakain ng baboy. Politicians', policemen's, generals' pockets do not need to be more padded than they already are, but senior citizens--regular na mamamayan--need healthcare, clean water, and food.
So pwede ba, Ginang Nuno sa Punsoy y Tianak, maging tao ka naman?
CLINTON, Ind. (WTHI) - Just days before Christmas, a young woman with muscular dystrophy is planning her own funeral, so she won't leave the burden behind for her family.
Sierra Cooper, 21, has battled muscular dystrophy her entire life, then she received another blow: Being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Now, Sierra faces a grim outlook and doctors said she has little time left.
"If it was up to me, she'd have another 30 to 40 years and she'd bury me," Sallie Cooper, Sierra's mother, said. "You're not supposed to bury your child."
Sierra may only have weeks left. This Christmas, her wish isn't under the tree this year. She's asking for donations to help pay for her funeral.
"I love my parents and I don't want them to be struggling when I'm gone," Sierra said.
Sierra isn't eligible for life insurance. Every day is a struggle for the 21-year-old, as she's hooked to a pack of oxygen and medicine. That's why her mother wants to give her the only thing she can: A proper funeral.
"She'll never get a wedding, so I want to do something special for her," Sallie said. "She's been planning her own funeral, so of course I want to give her the funeral she wants."
While she's planning for her final days, Sierra said she's found peace.
"I'm going to be with God and I'm going to be pain-free, no oxygen, no pain pump," Sierra said. "I'm going to be normal for once and be able to do the stuff you guys take for granted."
For now, she's living life one day at a time. Sierra prepares for a final Christmas. She's hoping for help as she leaves her family behind.
If you'd like to help the Cooper family, you can make donations to the Sierra Cooper Benefit Fund at any First Financial Bank location . Contact First Financial Bank at 812-238-6000.
My love affair with politics was a pre-ordained destiny chosen for me by well-meaning relatives on my momma's side of the family. It began as their hope--hope for the continuation of a family legacy--which became mine the second they recognized in me an aptitude for words and a so-called commanding presence in public speaking. So they nurtured a potential that was more evident to them than it was to me, and in this nurturing the seed of gradual transference of dreams and passions slowly began to take root.
Out of all his grandchildren, my grandfather chose me as his successor--the one who would strengthen the political dynasty he wasn't quite finished building when partial paralysis robbed him of his powerful oratory skills. Whenever my parents and I would visit, I'd be summoned by my grandfather to talk. Over drags of cigarettes and sips of coffee, he would talk to me about game theory, political posturing, diplomacy, candidacy...
I was only six years old.
I thought such grandfather-granddaughter dynamic was normal, until the day I realized that with my other cousins, he discussed the importance of obedience to one's elders and which countries produced superior chocolates. Whenever he asked them about school, it was always in the framework of whether or not they made new friends or what they had for lunch, or what they learned.
So I asked my momma and grandmother why he didn't see me as a child, and in hushed voices, they told me that my marked difference was a privilege. It was an honour for such a learned man to groom me to be his equal. His staggering brilliance and titanic legacy would be passed on to me. Even at a young age, I understood the weight of this inheritance, but to my momma and grandmother, it was a pair of coveted wings; a privilege my grandfather did not deem them worthy of.
"You are an American," they proudly said, "and you have the chance to fulfill your potential. You can marry a powerful politician and together, you will be stronger. You are lucky."
And so there it was, laid bare: American privilege. My citizenship was simultaneously a beacon of hope--the triumph of my colonized ancestors--and the invictus sword of elitist masters who colonized. At such a young age, I became keenly aware that I lived in the borderlands. In these amalgam lands, I began to understand the importance of examining the little details that people overlook, and to listen to every story regardless of how many times I heard similar ones.
They didn't count on my American-ness to be flawed. My constitutionally-protected American freedom of expression gives me the luxury to be able to question the validity of everything and to seek truth far deeper than what is seen by the naked eye. My American outspokenness allows me to speak my mind, regardless of whether or not the world agrees with me. My American sense of human rights advocacy made me value humanity, truth, and justice over political posturing and saving face. My American sense of identity values my ancestors' cultures, languages and traditions--fights for their preservation and revitalization--but refuses to follow blindly to legacies without first exploring the unknown.
Confession.
My momma's side of the family remains, to this day, Marcos loyalists and apologists. I grew up believing that Macoy and La Imierdawere the saintly saviours and heroes of the Philippines. I grew up defending Imierda's vast shoe collection and extravagant parties as small repayments for a great service to the country. Martial Law, as explained by my grandparents, was good. Because of the vigilance of the Marcos administration, the Philippine military, and the Philippine police, criminals were forced to confront the error of their ways and learned to suppress their "evil urges." Those who were defiant were quickly arrested and brought to justice. The Marcos era was a proud, prosperous time in the Philippines, wherein a Third World country held the esteemed audience of the First World nations it wanted to become.
But that was their truth, not my own.
I found the missing pieces to the story of the Pilipino people years later, long after the dictator perished in shameful exile. I, who have Pilipino blood coursing through my veins, learned about the history of the Pinoys as a high school student in Hawai'i, from Pinoy political refugees. "What do you mean there are Pinoy political refugees? I thought only Vietnamese, Cambodians, Cubans, Eastern Europeans, and Africans were political refugees." I asked the old, one-armed man who lived at the nursing home where I volunteered. And in his hoarse, heavy-accented voice, Manong Isko told me his story.
He was a priest who dared to speak out for a nun who was brutally raped and left for dead by several members of the Pilipino military. She was found buried underneath rotted garbage in Smoky Mountain with her dark blue skirt bunched around her waist and her Rosary beads hanging out of her skirt pockets. Manong Isko wanted me to know that her name was Sr. Maria Cecelia--birth name Clarita--and she was a 30-year-old woman who loved to cooksinigang na hiponand play the bandurria. Sr. Maria Cecelia was a beautiful Spanish mestiza, which was probably why these rapists targeted her, disregarding the fact that this young woman made purity vows to serve God. He was their God, too, supposedly. Yet in times when man shows his darkest shadows, it is difficult to reconcile this duality. Manong Isko--who was Brother Franciso in another life--raged. He went into Camp Crame to file a complaint and refused to leave until they listened; for this insubordination, he was taken into an interrogation room. Details of what happened next, Manong Isko did not want to elaborate to a 14-year-old, but the tears in his eyes and the tremor that shook the stump that used to be his right arm told the whole story. He remains in Camp Crame still.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, I ask? Who will guard the guards?
The Marcos government regime enacted a campaign of terror, abuse, fear, and silence against its own citizens. The rapes, robbery, murders, and terror were not absent; they were just swept away and spoken about in soft whispers and averted eyes. It didn't happen to us, so there's no need to get involved became the collective credo. For the elite bystanders, there was no need to make ripples in the water lest they get drowned in the tsunami of retribution. My family was unharmed and retained our properties and social standing because Marcos was an ally. My family never had to worry about receiving phone calls in the middle of the night, telling us about an unfortunate accident that claimed the life of a beloved. Born into a working-class family, La Imierda and her Macoy sought validation and acceptance from old money alta sociedades, to further assert their righteousness and worth in the international arena of must-haves. In turn, alta sociedades wanted to retain their power, fearful of descending into the dreaded masses. Quid pro quo. Silence and indifference was acquiescence, and for the privilege of being untouchable, the price was humanity. It was the country, as a whole, that paid the price.
I know now that there are some people who sit in their thrones not because of their power, but because they relinquished it. Power is subjective, and for some, the price of a throne, privilege, or elitism is the abandonment of their freedom and individuality. Power, for some, is worth the price of what it means to be human.
My activism and outspokenness as a twenty-something is shaped by a six-year-old me who was told I would one day take over my grandfather's legacy. Despite his brilliance and his success, and despite the fact that I love him deeply, I refuse to be like him. The bystander mentality may be ingrained into my upbringing, but in my heart and in my soul, humanity is far deeply rooted.
Leslie Ironroad was 20 years old when she moved from one side of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas to the other — the town of McLaughlin, S.D., home to one gas station, one diner and her friend, Rhea Archambault. She roomed in Archambault's spare bedroom.
"I make star quilts, so she was helping me make patterns," Archambault said recently, sitting at her dining room table. "She was just a nice little girl."
One night four years ago, Ironroad left the house to go to a party a few miles away. Early the next morning, she called Archambault's brother in tears asking to be picked up.
"She said, 'Can [you] go get Rhea to come get me 'cause these guys are going to fight me,'" Archambault said. "And so he said, 'Well where you at?' And she was just crying and hangs up."
Leslie never made it home.
When Archambault found her friend in a Bismarck, N.D. hospital, she was black and blue.
"'I said, 'Leslie, what happened?.' She said, 'Rhea, is that you? Turn the lights on, I can't see.' But the lights in the room were on. She said, 'Rhea, I was raped,' and she was just squeezing my hand," Archambault recalled.
Archambault called the Bureau of Indian Affairs police, a small department in charge of all law enforcement on the reservation. A few days later an officer arrived in the hospital room, and Leslie scratched out a statement on a tablet laid across her stomach.
Ironroad told the officer how she was raped and said that the men locked her in a bathroom, where she swallowed diabetes pills she found in the cabinet, hoping that if she was unconscious the men would leave her alone. The next morning, someone found her on the bathroom floor and called an ambulance.
A week later, Ironroad was dead — and so was the investigation. None of the authorities who could have investigated what happened to Leslie Ironroad did — not the Bureau of Indian Affairs, nor the FBI, nor anybody else.
People who know the men who likely attacked her say they were never even questioned.
Archambault couldn't believe nothing came of Ironroad's report.
"She named all the people that were there, the ones that were hitting her, the ones that were fighting her, she named everybody — what more else?" Archambault asked.
The alarm blares before the wings of dawn spread across the horizon, jarring awake a woman taking refuge in rest. She rises slowly, feeling the aches in her joints, fully aware that for her, acknowledging pain is time wasted. She cooks herself a modest breakfast, takes a shower, gets dressed for work and kisses her slumbering son on the forehead before rushing off to take the E train. There is no respite for her during this long commute; her mind is busy trying to figure how what percentage of next week’s paycheck will go towards her son's Cystic Fibrosis treatment co-pay. The woman graduated with a degree in Science, but works as an entry-level custodian, spending countless hours on her feet, restoring those grimy tiles into their sanitized and luminescent glory. She knows she is overqualified for this position and dreams of someday working as a high school science teacher, but even her mother has told her to stop reaching towards the sky; she is not an American. So she puts on a brave face, watching people live out her dreams, waiting for that beautiful day when she will swear allegiance to the United States of America.
This woman's name could Mairead, Maria, Ming, or Muna. She shares the seemingly unreachable dream of nameless and faceless shadows in our country who risk their dignity and lives for a chance to live the American Dream. They leave behind lives of either certain comfort or indefinite poverty for one of uncertainty, yet tinged with promise. On the edge of maybe they come: the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. They come to America clutching tickets and boarding planes with the blessing of their families and the approval of the USCIS. Others come as children of the night, streaking across deserts or swim across the other side of the river. They come for the American Dream and instead, they face American Reality.
The reality is that in this land of plenty, there is plenty of want. With over 13.8 million hungry children, 1.35 million homeless children, and 64.8 million children with no health insurance, promises are broken and children are being left behind. One only has to walk through Harvard Square to see the disparity of the haves and the have-nots. Inside Johnson gate, students are cloistered in a world of Facebook, Loboutin, Aristotle and Tommy Doyle’s. Step outside from within its confines, and one would see an old homeless woman pushing a shopping car filled with her belongings, and a mother playing peek-a-boo with her dirt-covered toddler. It is ironic how the cost of a Balenciaga City bag is the same amount it takes to feed, clothe and shelter that toddler for one wintry month. Costing over one thousand dollars, it is the same amount, after taxes, that a Harvard custodian makes in a month, working a minimum of forty hours a week.
My grandma once told me that the United States is the land of milk and honey. Ironically, people her age can barely afford to buy milk and honey. A disproportionate number of senior citizens who live on fixed income often have to choose between medication or food. Stroll down the aisles of your local grocery store, and you will see a nice old lady who could be your grandmother buying cheap ramen noodles with zero nutritional value while wistfully gazing at a can of corned beef. What is the price of a grandfather’s life in this land of milk and honey? One month’s heating bill? One month’s bus pass?
Immigrant fathers dream of giving their sons the lives they never had, but the reality is that in our country—the leader of the free world—we are trapped by the high cost of a dream. Is it really free to dream? While minorities can now sit in front of the bus if they so choose, socio-economic disparity dictates that immigrants and minorities seeking a better life stay where they are. A black child from South Central may have the brains to get into Princeton, but Early Action ensures that she attend her local community college instead, because time does not give her the luxury of comparing financial aid offers that have march 1st deadlines. Scholarships and grants simply do not meet the number of dreamers who could be leaders, and those who gamble with loans do so saddled with debt before they even receive their cap and gown. Some triumph against all odds, but some stop reaching or even looking toward the skies. To dream is free, yet the price of hope is heartache.
Many immigrants come to the United States with dreams of escaping religious and political persecution, but find themselves the target of hostility and suspicion because they wear a hijab, light incense for Buddha or roll their Rs excessively. The reality is that in here, a Chinese scholar with perfect grammar will still be told he speaks “broken” English because of the accent with which he pronounces his words. Just like how the Mason-Dixie line divides the North from the South, accent has been used as a measure of the wholeness of one’s thoughts and intellect; a means to divide the smart from the dumb, the patriot from the terrorist.
The American Dream is one filled with hope and promise, yet the American Reality is one of blindness. Although our society is aware of the existence of inequities, society turns away, thinking it can correct them tomorrow or some other day. What we as a society fail to realize is that we’ve turned away one too many times and uttered “tomorrow” and “someday” for far too long. One day, we will realize that the reality is that there won’t be a tomorrow.
M's son recognizes the footsteps even before he hears the jangle of the doorknob. He recognizes it by its sound; the weariness, the tired feet and the determination to ignore the pain. M walks over to him, gives him a hug, whispers "I love you," and asks him about his day. M rests for a while, rubbing her legs, before they eat. She takes her dishes into the kitchen, washes up and gets ready for bed. Tomorrow, before the wings of dawn stretch across the horizon, M will get up. The cycle continues.
The American economic system is a dichotomy. As others live in $75 million dollar McMansions, some of the original inhabitants of this country live in squalor that most equate with the other side of the world.
Let’s talk statistics for a moment, shall we?:
Name: Pine Ridge Indian Rez (~1.7 million acres)
Where: South Dakota
Inhabitants: Oglala Sioux (~30,000)
Average Annual Family Income: $3,700.00
Average Unemployment Rate: 80%
$3,700 annually. That is well below the Federal poverty level, set at ~$15,000. And yes, this is in the United States of America, the Leader of the Free World.How can we, as a nation, justify the spending of millions of dollars on a presidential campaign when its people are living in abject poverty? How dare a president choose to spend billions on a war abroad when his citizens are fighting a losing war on poverty? How dare a president ask his constituents to “keep the faith” on the War on Terror when they are terrorized by hunger and unemployment? How dare a president ask a nation to “stay the course” when harsh winters force the elderly to choose between warmth or medication?
For all of our languages, we can’t communicate
For all of our native tongues, we’re all natives here
Sons of their fathers dream the same dream
The sound of forbidden words becomes a scream
Voices in anger, victims of history
Plundered and set aside, grown fat on swallowed pride
With promises of paradise and gifts of beads and knives
Missionaries and pioneers are soldiers in disguise
Saviours and conquerors they make us wait
The fishers of men they wave their truth like bait
With the touch of a stranger’s hand innocence turns to shame
The spirit that dwelt within now sleeps out in the rain
For all of our languages, we can’t communicate
For all of our native tongues, we’re all natives here
The scars of the past are slow to disappear
The cries of the dead are always in our ears
Only the very safe can talk about wrong and right
Of those who are forced to choose, some will choose to fight
For all of our languages, we can’t communicate
Wemustneverpermitthe voiceof humanitywithinus tobe silenced. It is Man's sympathywithallcreatures thatfirst makeshimaMan.
--Albert Schweitzer
Everything can betakenfromamanorawomanbut one thing: thelast of human freedoms tochoose one's attitude in any givenset of circumstances, to chooseone'sownway.
