February 20, 2010, Austin, Texas
The Campaign to End the Death Penalty sponsored a presentation entitled Lynching Then Lynching Now: the Roots of Racism and the Death Penalty in America. The event was held at UT, and Alan Bean (founder of www.friendsofjustice.org) partnered with Lily Hughes (national board member of the CEDP, and local representative in Austin. The workshop also included a Q & A time at the end of the workshop followed by a panel discussion.
As the title of the workshop affirms, there is a direct link between those executed on Death Row and racism. Racism still permeates many levels of all our institutions, but there is no more glaring injustice to all people, especially to persons of color, than our criminal justice system. Just as lynching was an integral part of southern culture during slavery and the Jim Crow era, so has the incarceration of persons of color (and at every phase) become our new lynching, and for many the obscene presence of the Death Penalty as it manifests today. The fact is this is an insidiously covert part of our American way of life, and so much so that we are unaware or ignorant of its reality—a notable feature of European Americans.
This lack of the understanding of accurate and historically proven knowledge has continued to perpetuate the stereotypes of Latina (o) s, Arab Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and so many other cultures who live in the U.S. This maze keeps us (European Americans) transfixed in ignorance, yes; it breeds more of the same if we don’t substitute it with truth.
Another effect is that we so often fail to view the nature of life as systemic and interdependent. To use this kind of perception means to acquire the art of seeing how the relationships of various cells or families or groups or cultures intermix with each other, bump up against each other, communicate with one another, to observe cause-and-effect relationships and dynamics, make choices and distinguish among different options. To view the world around us without a systemic model or paradigm, is myopic, and will cause us to end up where we don’t want to go.
We need clarity when we look at Racism and the Death Penalty through a “systemic” lens. We are looking at consequences and outcomes when we examine the Criminal Justice System. There are rational reasons for the way things are in the status quo. Here are some more stats from www.publiceye.org that will give facts to show there is a connection between Racism and the Death Penalty:
q Our U.S. prisons contain 2.1 million people, and 70% are persons of color
q African Americans comprise 13% of the U.S. population, but are 48% of adults in the prison system
q African American males, if the current trend continues, can expect a 1 in 3 reality of winding up incarcerated
q Latina (I purposely use this term for both men and women) Americans represent about 10% of the U.S. population, but they’re 19% of people who are incarcerated; they comprise 23% of those convicted for drug offences
q 1 in 25 adult Native Americans is under the jurisdiction of the nation’s criminal justice system—more than twice the number of White adults in the system
q About 43% of death row prisoners are African American, more than three times the percentage of African Americans in the national population
One of the presenters, Alan Bean, said, “We’re dealing with a new Jim Crow” in our contemporary culture; he continued to wrap up his presentation by saying that it’s possible to combat it with new narratives, and this is a way to win popular support. At the end of this portion, Lily and Alan answered questions from the participants.
A dictionary definition of racism is that it’s a way of prejudice and bias that stems from our belief that we are racially superior, as an individual or as a group, in relationship with others. Actually, I lied—this is not strictly a dictionary definition. It’s one that I have synthesized from various sources.
If we believe we (Whites) are superior, in every way, then we can justify actions that are against every ethical point, and punish them. Certain religious teachings beginning around the Nineteenth Century interpreted the Bible to say that Blacks, Jews and others were animals and devoid of a soul. On the other hand, the White line was pure and was the recipients of the riches of the world. Thus, a manifest destiny was created as a part of our fictional, national narrative.
A state-sponsored lynching now lacks the frivolity of lynchings in quaint little towns by those who claimed to “follow the Lord.” Those who are most concerned about laws and more laws carry out the law; we pick and choose and dispense with a law of compassion and justice. These serious people in all institutions, mainly those who usually are at the top, wield the power and collude with each other. Most CEOs are still white and male. 98% of DAs are European American.
Even though we have passed many laws dealing with discrimination, racism is still our national way of life. Racism has always been about Whites enriching themselves (such as in the privatized penal-industrial complex) at the expense of others who don’t look like us. Many folks think that racism is only about individual actions of putting those we deem inferior, but clearly there is a direct relationship between racism, imprisonment and the implementation of the death penalty.
Meanwhile, Whites remain invisible to themselves. Why is this? We wear our invisibility well, because we don’t see our part in the historical-psycho-social-economic problem.
Persons of color already see it, because they’ve lived with it for about four hundred years; they know it and feel it, but generally speaking European Americans live a life of denial when it comes to racism. How often do you see a group of White folks talking opening about the problem, with the intention of changing the causal factors? At the end of the day, we don’t want to abandon our White Privilege.
The use of the death penalty as a method whereby to continue to keep racism alive will be clear to those willing to open-mindedly and clearly examine the connection between racism and the death penalty. We, as those who have European descent, need to do our own healing and changing first. We can’t expect anyone else to do it for us, because it’s our responsibility. We may be inspired by our change, and other’s change, to fuel the movement of abolishing the death penalty.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. February, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
ANGELA DAVIS, EVER THE REVOLUTIONARY
I heard Angela Davis recently, speaking at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Lecture, at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Ms. Davis’ speech and comments brought back many memories of the early movement during the Sixties. It also enflamed other ideas that perhaps had lain dormant within my mind.
Her words and presence brought back to mind my own time spent in Berkeley and San Francisco during the Sixties. During those times of political foment and resistance, Angela Davis was prominent in forming the rhetoric of the movement. As I listened to the speech, Ms. Davis’ presence and words, gave off an air of humility, however, about the movement’s composition of ‘all the people,’ not just those up front on the stage. For me, it was her inspired articulation (as one of the spokespersons of the Freedom Movement’s ideology) that helped me in a personal way to focus on what this shaking of the energies was really all about. She was eloquent in her revolutionary framing of the struggle that included this entire nation, whether they knew it or not.
As I listened to her thoughtful and philosophical enunciations, in my own being I honored her, because I realize that I stand on her shoulders, as well as the many, unnamed and ordinary people who took up the struggle at that time.
If the truth were told, we all stand on the shoulders of the Abolitionists who fought to end slavery, and the Abolitionists who fight to change the U.S. Prison/Industrial Complex. MLK, Jr. galvanized the Civil Rights Movement because his rhetoric and actions challenged the white-structural, institutional racism in the nation with our common desire for pragmatic justice. Whether it was for tenant’s rights in Chicago, the garbage collector’s strike in Memphis, or his vehement denunciation of the Viet Nam War his imposing posture against ALL injustice.
It was King, who said that if we find injustice in one place, then we find that it affects all of us—or as he said elsewhere, all humans are bound inextricably into the fabric of all. He was very blunt about the need to have a just healthcare system, and that perhaps this was one of the greatest injustices of all. The center of this fabric consists of the sacred dignity of each human on the planet.
Ms. Davis illustrated a key point to elucidate that the movement wasn’t about celebrity, or who was up front on stage. It was indeed all of us. It had to be all of us to get the nation’s attention and bring about change the way the movement did.
This reminded me, very affectionately, that I stand on the shoulders of my soul mate and mentor, Cherry Steinwender, also Co-Executive Director of The Center of the Healing of Racism, Houston, Texas. Cherry has taught me that my job as a human being is to internalize oneness, and the empowerment that emerges from speaking one’s truth from the source of self-trust and inner beauty.
When Cherry lost her five-year-old son in his battle with Leukemia (most likely sometime in the Fifties), she went to her Catholic Church, in the State of Louisiana, and asked the priest for a plot in the cemetery to bury her son. The priest told her that African Americans couldn’t be buried in the church’s cemetery. Sometimes the cost of death is too great—if you have to choose to give up your dignity.
After this incident, Cherry vowed never again to trust anyone who claimed to speak for God, or some Higher Power, if they mixed their communication into some kind of ‘half-right and half-wrong’ kind of doctrine. She told me that when she made this decision, she left feeling more empowered. The incident sparked a deep trust in her own intelligence—something she had known for a long time.
Later on, Cherry and friends would sit around a kitchen table and openly lay the issue of racism out for open discussion. Their group was diverse, and they found that they could take the risk to talk about a subject that most folks in this nation (most notably European Americans) just won’t talk about in some kind of productive way.
From this point of collective need, they became a community that went on to begin The Center for the Healing of Racism, founded in 1989; since that time individuals and groups, from places around the world, have been impacted in a very positive and healing way. Angela Davis made this point also. She emphasized that community built on trust and respect is the only thing that will keep a movement moving forward to achieve its goals. In her speech, she made sure to tell us that all of us there that night were a community as well. We were the movement.
© ChristopherBearBeam,M.A. 1/28/10
Her words and presence brought back to mind my own time spent in Berkeley and San Francisco during the Sixties. During those times of political foment and resistance, Angela Davis was prominent in forming the rhetoric of the movement. As I listened to the speech, Ms. Davis’ presence and words, gave off an air of humility, however, about the movement’s composition of ‘all the people,’ not just those up front on the stage. For me, it was her inspired articulation (as one of the spokespersons of the Freedom Movement’s ideology) that helped me in a personal way to focus on what this shaking of the energies was really all about. She was eloquent in her revolutionary framing of the struggle that included this entire nation, whether they knew it or not.
As I listened to her thoughtful and philosophical enunciations, in my own being I honored her, because I realize that I stand on her shoulders, as well as the many, unnamed and ordinary people who took up the struggle at that time.
If the truth were told, we all stand on the shoulders of the Abolitionists who fought to end slavery, and the Abolitionists who fight to change the U.S. Prison/Industrial Complex. MLK, Jr. galvanized the Civil Rights Movement because his rhetoric and actions challenged the white-structural, institutional racism in the nation with our common desire for pragmatic justice. Whether it was for tenant’s rights in Chicago, the garbage collector’s strike in Memphis, or his vehement denunciation of the Viet Nam War his imposing posture against ALL injustice.
It was King, who said that if we find injustice in one place, then we find that it affects all of us—or as he said elsewhere, all humans are bound inextricably into the fabric of all. He was very blunt about the need to have a just healthcare system, and that perhaps this was one of the greatest injustices of all. The center of this fabric consists of the sacred dignity of each human on the planet.
Ms. Davis illustrated a key point to elucidate that the movement wasn’t about celebrity, or who was up front on stage. It was indeed all of us. It had to be all of us to get the nation’s attention and bring about change the way the movement did.
This reminded me, very affectionately, that I stand on the shoulders of my soul mate and mentor, Cherry Steinwender, also Co-Executive Director of The Center of the Healing of Racism, Houston, Texas. Cherry has taught me that my job as a human being is to internalize oneness, and the empowerment that emerges from speaking one’s truth from the source of self-trust and inner beauty.
When Cherry lost her five-year-old son in his battle with Leukemia (most likely sometime in the Fifties), she went to her Catholic Church, in the State of Louisiana, and asked the priest for a plot in the cemetery to bury her son. The priest told her that African Americans couldn’t be buried in the church’s cemetery. Sometimes the cost of death is too great—if you have to choose to give up your dignity.
After this incident, Cherry vowed never again to trust anyone who claimed to speak for God, or some Higher Power, if they mixed their communication into some kind of ‘half-right and half-wrong’ kind of doctrine. She told me that when she made this decision, she left feeling more empowered. The incident sparked a deep trust in her own intelligence—something she had known for a long time.
Later on, Cherry and friends would sit around a kitchen table and openly lay the issue of racism out for open discussion. Their group was diverse, and they found that they could take the risk to talk about a subject that most folks in this nation (most notably European Americans) just won’t talk about in some kind of productive way.
From this point of collective need, they became a community that went on to begin The Center for the Healing of Racism, founded in 1989; since that time individuals and groups, from places around the world, have been impacted in a very positive and healing way. Angela Davis made this point also. She emphasized that community built on trust and respect is the only thing that will keep a movement moving forward to achieve its goals. In her speech, she made sure to tell us that all of us there that night were a community as well. We were the movement.
© ChristopherBearBeam,M.A. 1/28/10
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Saturday, December 19, 2009
PERPETRATORS OF AFGHANISTAND AND IRAQ OCCUPATIONS USE FLAWED LOGIC
Patriotism is a funny thing. It’s often used for a hyper vigilant cover for ignorance and fear. The current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq follow the same, sick pattern of thinking we’ve always followed when conflicts are the result of the imprisoned, colonized mind, consumerism, racism, and power. It’s unconscionable that President Obama has just ordered 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. This on the heals of pious promises to the American people that we would drop troop occupation, bring the troops home, and focus on the real problems: universal healthcare, insuring all Americans a living wage, and prosecuting members of the prior Administration for war crimes or crimes of lying and falsifying information.
Patriotism may be a bias that creates a commitment to denial and the glory of imperious empowerment at the expense of smaller countries that are rich in natural resources, like oil, and have suffered under the jackboot of occupation and injustice. These occupations are wars of the rich, the connected and the elites, and the rest of us who oppose them aren’t being listened to. One organization, March Forward, urges all troops to refuse orders to go to Afghanistan. A sad result is that more troops back from Iraq have committed suicide than have been killed in battle.
Those claiming to be patriotic appear to have cases of selected memory. They will claim to be loyal to the U.S. Constitution, following the Commander-in-Chief’s orders on blind faith, but they ignore the constitutional imperative that both Houses must declare a legal war.
They intone that recruits signed a contract to unthinkingly follow all orders. They say that those who refuse to go to war, after experiencing the reality of way, should have never signed those contracts, and have full knowledge they’re now breaking the law.
This is an example of Western, white-based, linear reasoning; it’s rigid and doesn’t allow for any change on the part of Conscientious Objectors to military service and war. The way the world works is that it’s in process constantly of change, death, and growth. It’s dynamic is cyclic, not linear. The fact that a soldier has fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, seen the death of innocents, participated in interrogation techniques that may be torturous, and have known the racism and injustice firsthand has every right to respond like an intelligent human being and change his/her mind from a political, philosophical, or spiritual motivation. This is dissonant to the super-patriots’ tunnel-vision view of patriotism and sacrifice, so it cuts no ice with them; in fact, it creates division within themselves, and all they can do is to push back with paranoid, parroted, reactionary ideas, given to them by their social conditioning and the corporation’s cry for help!
I would argue that dissenters and COs are living out the real definition of patriotism. A loyal person isn’t one who never rocks the boat. True loyalty is born out of living out one’s truth even when under attack; true allegiance is not found in a ‘go along to get along’ philosophy. It’s found in the minds and actions of the nitty-gritting saying “no” philosophy in order that truth and justice has a tangible and demonstrable example of a person who believes that an illegal war will take more life in the end.
I know. I was a Vietnam Era Vet who became a CO. I was a CO when I was ordered by my local draft board in 1969 to be inducted into the U.S. Army. Did I remain the same throughout my entire military experience? Absolutely not. I grew as a human being in my core beliefs. In the final analysis, this is what it’s all about. I was a human being first, and a soldier second. I took personal responsibility for my own life, and the position in which I placed myself in: would I be a mindless, subservient killer, or a thoughtful person who had to consider whether any form of violence, abuse, or colonial domination would save lives. The ethical adage of do no harm was one guideline I followed, and almost forty years later I’m glad I did. Patriotism that feeds off illegal wars has never worked and it never will.
If you aren’t military or ex-military, you as an ordinary citizen must decide how you come down on this issue. If you decide or have already decided that we must get out of these racist, illegal conflicts, you must act. You can partner with other anti-war groups in their efforts to stop the war machine, or you can act alone by whatever means you choose. This is your choice. This is our choice, and choose we must. Do not let your speaking truth to power be shut down. Life is the most sacred essence we have, so we must take life by the horns, and pass it along in whatever form of protest we think is best.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. December 2009
Patriotism may be a bias that creates a commitment to denial and the glory of imperious empowerment at the expense of smaller countries that are rich in natural resources, like oil, and have suffered under the jackboot of occupation and injustice. These occupations are wars of the rich, the connected and the elites, and the rest of us who oppose them aren’t being listened to. One organization, March Forward, urges all troops to refuse orders to go to Afghanistan. A sad result is that more troops back from Iraq have committed suicide than have been killed in battle.
Those claiming to be patriotic appear to have cases of selected memory. They will claim to be loyal to the U.S. Constitution, following the Commander-in-Chief’s orders on blind faith, but they ignore the constitutional imperative that both Houses must declare a legal war.
They intone that recruits signed a contract to unthinkingly follow all orders. They say that those who refuse to go to war, after experiencing the reality of way, should have never signed those contracts, and have full knowledge they’re now breaking the law.
This is an example of Western, white-based, linear reasoning; it’s rigid and doesn’t allow for any change on the part of Conscientious Objectors to military service and war. The way the world works is that it’s in process constantly of change, death, and growth. It’s dynamic is cyclic, not linear. The fact that a soldier has fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, seen the death of innocents, participated in interrogation techniques that may be torturous, and have known the racism and injustice firsthand has every right to respond like an intelligent human being and change his/her mind from a political, philosophical, or spiritual motivation. This is dissonant to the super-patriots’ tunnel-vision view of patriotism and sacrifice, so it cuts no ice with them; in fact, it creates division within themselves, and all they can do is to push back with paranoid, parroted, reactionary ideas, given to them by their social conditioning and the corporation’s cry for help!
I would argue that dissenters and COs are living out the real definition of patriotism. A loyal person isn’t one who never rocks the boat. True loyalty is born out of living out one’s truth even when under attack; true allegiance is not found in a ‘go along to get along’ philosophy. It’s found in the minds and actions of the nitty-gritting saying “no” philosophy in order that truth and justice has a tangible and demonstrable example of a person who believes that an illegal war will take more life in the end.
I know. I was a Vietnam Era Vet who became a CO. I was a CO when I was ordered by my local draft board in 1969 to be inducted into the U.S. Army. Did I remain the same throughout my entire military experience? Absolutely not. I grew as a human being in my core beliefs. In the final analysis, this is what it’s all about. I was a human being first, and a soldier second. I took personal responsibility for my own life, and the position in which I placed myself in: would I be a mindless, subservient killer, or a thoughtful person who had to consider whether any form of violence, abuse, or colonial domination would save lives. The ethical adage of do no harm was one guideline I followed, and almost forty years later I’m glad I did. Patriotism that feeds off illegal wars has never worked and it never will.
If you aren’t military or ex-military, you as an ordinary citizen must decide how you come down on this issue. If you decide or have already decided that we must get out of these racist, illegal conflicts, you must act. You can partner with other anti-war groups in their efforts to stop the war machine, or you can act alone by whatever means you choose. This is your choice. This is our choice, and choose we must. Do not let your speaking truth to power be shut down. Life is the most sacred essence we have, so we must take life by the horns, and pass it along in whatever form of protest we think is best.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. December 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
PULL DOWN THE VEIL OVER YOUR FACE WITH TWO HANDS
FAMILY SECRETS
If you go up into the attic of the house of the U.S.A., and poke around a little, you will find an old, musty chest. It’s maybe a chest from the 1880s I would imagine. Slowly you open the creaking top of the chest, and inside you find a box labeled in faded black charcoal Family Secrets.
Every family has its secrets—some just have more than others. But this find is special, I mean it’s unique; it’s historic, isn’t it? Yes, it is. The U.S.A. Family Secrets is mixed in with a bucket of mortar to patch the brick of the house. It’s mixed with denial, doublespeak, and hypocrisy. Granted this kind of covert hype makes it easier to control children, because the chest of family secrets is like Santa’s bag of goodies at Christmas time. As long as we don’t let the family secrets out, our kids are happy, and ignorance is bliss, ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you,’ and they think they’re going to live in the Garden Land of America.
We are the nation that purports to be a “Christian nation,” aren’t we? How is it then that we have trained ourselves so well to turn away, to turn our eyes towards the ground, to avert looking into the eyes of Mother Truth? This makes us a nation of dishonesty. Dishonest about the cruel oppressions of the past, their causal effects on the present, and their prophetic link to the future. Hypocrisy is being one way on the inside, but changing the outside to project our rightness in our own eyes. It’s wearing a mask like an actor who takes on the “face” of the person she’s portraying. We want the audience to see us with the mask---to see through the real face to only register the one portrayed.
We have “falsies” and “truthies.” They are all around us. It’s hard to get close to people when they have eyes in the back of their heads, but they have ways of watching. The “Truth Police” can only exist where there is no trust or a little trust. Since our forefathers (for me white, Scottish American) began this sewer of hypocrisy and doublespeak, to get what they wanted for themselves (shall we get real?) isn’t it for us to attempt to bring some answers and confessions to the public domain. Using doublespeak means we say one thing but mean another for our own purposes. It’s a clever distortion under cover in a land where statistics can lie depending on who is running the numbers.
To rationalize and continue our denial about what we actually did to human beings who don’t look like us or have the same color of skin hue, we must pretend that truth is stranger than fiction. We’ve created “sincere fictions” (Joe Feagin) to hold up the whole lie for somehow we have to, I mean just have to keep it held up. We like our fiction on CDs, movie theaters, DVDs, and draft houses, where we can suck our beer and punch more pizza into our mouths. We have to have it pretty to justify ourselves in our own eyes. We are the innocents! Our previous, familial generations could never have rapaciously ripped off the naïve and weak Indians in the way some people argue? The slaves from Africa were brought her to civilize them and bring them into another form of consciousness, out of savage wilderness, lonesome lands were only wild dogs and two-winged ones can exist. Their masters took care of them. Sure, you had the occasional rape or children out of wedlock coming from the consensual unions of whites and blacks. Indeed, they were happy and provided for by their owners and the plantations, were they not?
These are the fantasies that are fatal. When children wake up to the fact that the ones who love them the most (the “gods”) have lied to them for years about the truth of a being named Santa Claus, this is a rude and traumatic shock to a child’s entire conscience, brain chemistry, cognitive processes, and affective education for their sentiments and emotions.
Family secrets are closed off from public view, and peculiar masks and hypocritical means must be found to keep them hidden; the light hurts their eyes as they lie in the attic with chains of invisible silk.
© Christopher Bear Beam 11/09
If you go up into the attic of the house of the U.S.A., and poke around a little, you will find an old, musty chest. It’s maybe a chest from the 1880s I would imagine. Slowly you open the creaking top of the chest, and inside you find a box labeled in faded black charcoal Family Secrets.
Every family has its secrets—some just have more than others. But this find is special, I mean it’s unique; it’s historic, isn’t it? Yes, it is. The U.S.A. Family Secrets is mixed in with a bucket of mortar to patch the brick of the house. It’s mixed with denial, doublespeak, and hypocrisy. Granted this kind of covert hype makes it easier to control children, because the chest of family secrets is like Santa’s bag of goodies at Christmas time. As long as we don’t let the family secrets out, our kids are happy, and ignorance is bliss, ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you,’ and they think they’re going to live in the Garden Land of America.
We are the nation that purports to be a “Christian nation,” aren’t we? How is it then that we have trained ourselves so well to turn away, to turn our eyes towards the ground, to avert looking into the eyes of Mother Truth? This makes us a nation of dishonesty. Dishonest about the cruel oppressions of the past, their causal effects on the present, and their prophetic link to the future. Hypocrisy is being one way on the inside, but changing the outside to project our rightness in our own eyes. It’s wearing a mask like an actor who takes on the “face” of the person she’s portraying. We want the audience to see us with the mask---to see through the real face to only register the one portrayed.
We have “falsies” and “truthies.” They are all around us. It’s hard to get close to people when they have eyes in the back of their heads, but they have ways of watching. The “Truth Police” can only exist where there is no trust or a little trust. Since our forefathers (for me white, Scottish American) began this sewer of hypocrisy and doublespeak, to get what they wanted for themselves (shall we get real?) isn’t it for us to attempt to bring some answers and confessions to the public domain. Using doublespeak means we say one thing but mean another for our own purposes. It’s a clever distortion under cover in a land where statistics can lie depending on who is running the numbers.
To rationalize and continue our denial about what we actually did to human beings who don’t look like us or have the same color of skin hue, we must pretend that truth is stranger than fiction. We’ve created “sincere fictions” (Joe Feagin) to hold up the whole lie for somehow we have to, I mean just have to keep it held up. We like our fiction on CDs, movie theaters, DVDs, and draft houses, where we can suck our beer and punch more pizza into our mouths. We have to have it pretty to justify ourselves in our own eyes. We are the innocents! Our previous, familial generations could never have rapaciously ripped off the naïve and weak Indians in the way some people argue? The slaves from Africa were brought her to civilize them and bring them into another form of consciousness, out of savage wilderness, lonesome lands were only wild dogs and two-winged ones can exist. Their masters took care of them. Sure, you had the occasional rape or children out of wedlock coming from the consensual unions of whites and blacks. Indeed, they were happy and provided for by their owners and the plantations, were they not?
These are the fantasies that are fatal. When children wake up to the fact that the ones who love them the most (the “gods”) have lied to them for years about the truth of a being named Santa Claus, this is a rude and traumatic shock to a child’s entire conscience, brain chemistry, cognitive processes, and affective education for their sentiments and emotions.
Family secrets are closed off from public view, and peculiar masks and hypocritical means must be found to keep them hidden; the light hurts their eyes as they lie in the attic with chains of invisible silk.
© Christopher Bear Beam 11/09
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Are You a Conscientous Objector?
On Saturday, September 26, 2009, in Austin, Texas there was an assembly to honor Conscientious Objection. This included having CO values and commitments to any thing that one chooses to make a stand to oppose. One panel had a group of Desert Storm and Iraq Occupation occupations, with panel members describing how their combat experiences triggered PTSD and its concomitant symptoms.
The purpose of the assembly was to honor all those who are Cos; this may include being conscientiously opposed to paying taxes to pay for the U.S. Military or to a service member who takes a stand against the Corporation-Military Complex by making application for Conscientous Objection. Honor is a vital key to creating any sort of community; many cultures practice honor as a regular part of their deep and surface structures by their honoring traditions, notably Native Americans in North America. Men can honor their elders who came before them; women can honor their sheroes who took stands against various injustices perpetrated against them and others. Seems like it’s a good practice to honor anyone older than we are or who come from the generation that came before us.
Unfortunately, our culture highly values the ‘glorious deeds’ of military service and war. We want to be triumphant in all we do and say; the propaganda of the state rolls out its script whenever a war happens, giving the entire society the norms of what it means to be patriotic in our day and time. Sadly, the war spirit, with all of its emotional content too many times keeps people in a mental state of inertia with the symptoms of narrow definitions of patriotism. Would it not be patriotic, as happened to one WWII CO, to do some kind of alternate service? Instead, the residents of the small town he lived in thought he was crazy, a slacker, and not patriotic simply because he didn’t want to kill anyone.
As we have seen recently, from the narratives of “Bush and Cheney’s War,” many lies concerning the facts on the ground were told to the American people. Clearly, there was no respect shown to us here. And having telecom companies spy into our phone conversations is the antithesis of a free and open society and flies in the face of the Constitution. There have been many allegedly illegal acts foisted on the military and the citizens, all in the name of the War on Terror.
Personally, this entire experience was deeply moving and refined my thoughts and memories to some new insights. One of those is that being a CO may be seen in a very broad panorama, and goes way beyond the boundaries of being a military CO. One can be a CO who is opposed to globalism, and dissents by choosing to live an alternate lifestyle. A friend of mine is adamant about helping to keep his community environment clean and spends hours cleaning up trash. He is conscientiously opposed to a non-hygenic and ugly landscape in the city where he lives.
For me, when I was discharged in the beginning of 1971 there was no hero’s welcome; I had been a member of an unorthodox church denomination that had a lengthily tradition of pacifism going back to the Civil War. It also espoused various other religious practices that more or less drew a line in the sand between orthodox and unorthodox Christianity. I was a relatively new member in this denomination when I faced my own crisis of conscience at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. With their assistance, I wrote my application for CO.
When I was released, after spending time in house arrest, and a minimum-security prison within the confines of the military base, I was clinically depressed, and my spirit had suffered severe pummeling. Not one minister or administrative member from this denomination really sat down with me to debrief the experience, nor counsel me about the kinds of symptoms I might see in myself due to this trauma. The term PTSD wasn’t even created yet. Going back to WWI and WWII PTSD was called battle fatigue or shell shock, but what about COs who never saw combat experience but were just as much impacted by the system as they were. Combat vets could show their physical wounds, but I could show my psycho-spiritual ones.
In 2007 or so I decided to write a book called The Invisible Warrior (2008) (available by going to http://www.xlibris.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, or http://www.bn.com/). This was a chronicle of my journey as a Vietnam Era Vet CO, and the kinds of experiences, both humiliating and scintillating, that I encountered in my resistance to military service and war. It’s a collection of reflections of what I learned. As time went on, I noticed more and more PTSD symptoms in my life, even though I didn’t wear that diagnostic label. At the very least I was diagnosed as having a Depressive Disorder accompanied by an Anxiety Disorder.
It was then that I decided to make an appeal to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. However, the military system is based on really not trusting your own instincts (I realize this may vary with the kind of superior you’ve got), but those of the powers above you. It is courageous and brave to be so counter-cultural to trust yourself that you’ve had certain symptoms you can read about in the Diagnostic Manual. We, after all, know our bodies and minds better than anyone else; you may ask, “Yes, we do know ourselves the best, but someone who is dealing with an assessed mental illness is out of touch with reality, so how could this person trust herself to make a clear-thinking diagnosis?” That’s a very good question. But there are various kinds of psychiatric diagnoses, many of which don’t include psychosis, meaning a break with reality.
It’s true that some may not be able to function enough so as not to be able to do this, but for many of us, who are functioning enough can see the tree that is squarely in front of us. Needless to say, my application was denied, but I had to follow my own conscience here too.
Honor is the tonic we need to restore trust and community. Respect and honor are two curative properties for healing trauma. A drink of honor is equal to a gallon of cure. Most importantly we must honor ourselves; guard against shame (“I am a mistake”) and guilt (“Oh no I did something wrong; I’ll be punished; better not to do anything else than what I’m told to do. How high was that you wanted me to jump?”). When we take steps to put our true selves on the line, after thinking about the many consequences this decision will engender, the voices of doubt, uncertainty and self-hate will try to take over. Speak the truth first by loving yourself in all your nobility and warrior-like qualities. We are the pure gold found in a rock at the bottom of the streambed. We have shined beautifully.
© Christopher Bear Beam, MA 10/09
The purpose of the assembly was to honor all those who are Cos; this may include being conscientiously opposed to paying taxes to pay for the U.S. Military or to a service member who takes a stand against the Corporation-Military Complex by making application for Conscientous Objection. Honor is a vital key to creating any sort of community; many cultures practice honor as a regular part of their deep and surface structures by their honoring traditions, notably Native Americans in North America. Men can honor their elders who came before them; women can honor their sheroes who took stands against various injustices perpetrated against them and others. Seems like it’s a good practice to honor anyone older than we are or who come from the generation that came before us.
Unfortunately, our culture highly values the ‘glorious deeds’ of military service and war. We want to be triumphant in all we do and say; the propaganda of the state rolls out its script whenever a war happens, giving the entire society the norms of what it means to be patriotic in our day and time. Sadly, the war spirit, with all of its emotional content too many times keeps people in a mental state of inertia with the symptoms of narrow definitions of patriotism. Would it not be patriotic, as happened to one WWII CO, to do some kind of alternate service? Instead, the residents of the small town he lived in thought he was crazy, a slacker, and not patriotic simply because he didn’t want to kill anyone.
As we have seen recently, from the narratives of “Bush and Cheney’s War,” many lies concerning the facts on the ground were told to the American people. Clearly, there was no respect shown to us here. And having telecom companies spy into our phone conversations is the antithesis of a free and open society and flies in the face of the Constitution. There have been many allegedly illegal acts foisted on the military and the citizens, all in the name of the War on Terror.
Personally, this entire experience was deeply moving and refined my thoughts and memories to some new insights. One of those is that being a CO may be seen in a very broad panorama, and goes way beyond the boundaries of being a military CO. One can be a CO who is opposed to globalism, and dissents by choosing to live an alternate lifestyle. A friend of mine is adamant about helping to keep his community environment clean and spends hours cleaning up trash. He is conscientiously opposed to a non-hygenic and ugly landscape in the city where he lives.
For me, when I was discharged in the beginning of 1971 there was no hero’s welcome; I had been a member of an unorthodox church denomination that had a lengthily tradition of pacifism going back to the Civil War. It also espoused various other religious practices that more or less drew a line in the sand between orthodox and unorthodox Christianity. I was a relatively new member in this denomination when I faced my own crisis of conscience at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. With their assistance, I wrote my application for CO.
When I was released, after spending time in house arrest, and a minimum-security prison within the confines of the military base, I was clinically depressed, and my spirit had suffered severe pummeling. Not one minister or administrative member from this denomination really sat down with me to debrief the experience, nor counsel me about the kinds of symptoms I might see in myself due to this trauma. The term PTSD wasn’t even created yet. Going back to WWI and WWII PTSD was called battle fatigue or shell shock, but what about COs who never saw combat experience but were just as much impacted by the system as they were. Combat vets could show their physical wounds, but I could show my psycho-spiritual ones.
In 2007 or so I decided to write a book called The Invisible Warrior (2008) (available by going to http://www.xlibris.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, or http://www.bn.com/). This was a chronicle of my journey as a Vietnam Era Vet CO, and the kinds of experiences, both humiliating and scintillating, that I encountered in my resistance to military service and war. It’s a collection of reflections of what I learned. As time went on, I noticed more and more PTSD symptoms in my life, even though I didn’t wear that diagnostic label. At the very least I was diagnosed as having a Depressive Disorder accompanied by an Anxiety Disorder.
It was then that I decided to make an appeal to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. However, the military system is based on really not trusting your own instincts (I realize this may vary with the kind of superior you’ve got), but those of the powers above you. It is courageous and brave to be so counter-cultural to trust yourself that you’ve had certain symptoms you can read about in the Diagnostic Manual. We, after all, know our bodies and minds better than anyone else; you may ask, “Yes, we do know ourselves the best, but someone who is dealing with an assessed mental illness is out of touch with reality, so how could this person trust herself to make a clear-thinking diagnosis?” That’s a very good question. But there are various kinds of psychiatric diagnoses, many of which don’t include psychosis, meaning a break with reality.
It’s true that some may not be able to function enough so as not to be able to do this, but for many of us, who are functioning enough can see the tree that is squarely in front of us. Needless to say, my application was denied, but I had to follow my own conscience here too.
Honor is the tonic we need to restore trust and community. Respect and honor are two curative properties for healing trauma. A drink of honor is equal to a gallon of cure. Most importantly we must honor ourselves; guard against shame (“I am a mistake”) and guilt (“Oh no I did something wrong; I’ll be punished; better not to do anything else than what I’m told to do. How high was that you wanted me to jump?”). When we take steps to put our true selves on the line, after thinking about the many consequences this decision will engender, the voices of doubt, uncertainty and self-hate will try to take over. Speak the truth first by loving yourself in all your nobility and warrior-like qualities. We are the pure gold found in a rock at the bottom of the streambed. We have shined beautifully.
© Christopher Bear Beam, MA 10/09
Saturday, August 22, 2009
A VIEW FROM EL PASO
I recently went to the border town of El Paso, Texas that is just on the other side of the river from Cuidad Juarez.
I am not familiar with many of the issues that affect those who live on the U.S. side nor the Mexican side. I know what people told me. I do know that there is a great deal of traffic between both cities, in work places and domiciles. I do know that since about April of 2008 there has been a major increase in cartel and gang-related violence; American citizens have also been targets. Murders have taken place in broad daylight, and sometimes bodies are found decapitated.
The “narco wars” have taken more than 11,000 lives since it started to heat up in intensity and frequency. Juarez has now become known as “Mexico’s deadliest city” with 800 drug-related deaths so far this year. This isn’t only happening at this crossroads, but is occurring at many areas along the U.S./Mexico border.
I went to El Paso to be a participant in a training conference. One mental health professional from Juarez told the participants that the residents have few options to deal with this trauma along the border. She said what is needed is activism and hope. She related to the audience that ‘this is all we have—hope.’
What does any community do when their main resource is hope, and when deadly stressors and community-disruption now are the way of life? Any organism will respond by seeking more creatively how to survive. But if the societal breakdown is maintained over a long period of time, research indicates that the kind of behavior we call “normal” doesn’t return. It’s replaced by a new, more violent sort of behavior.
According to the stories—from those who are aware of this regression—this significant trauma is affecting the social, physical, emotional, mental, and religious domains of life in many ways. For one thing, the violence is just one more reason for people to want to migrate to the U.S. for something better for their families. Last week, however, the Barrera family was returning to their home deeper into Mexico, after living for a while in Juarez, and was attacked with gunfire. Three of the family members were murdered, while the two youngest children watched in psychic shock. The violence is more and more affecting innocents who have no connection with drugs, crime, or anything illegal.
Which brings me to an important point: many of you have heard that we’re attempting to build a wall all along our border with Mexico. Now, apparently, we’re trying to keep out illegal aliens (there are no illegal people by the way) and drug-runners who are competing for the market in the U.S. In my mind, this is an archaic way of dealing with these two problems. The U.S. and Mexico will never even come close to solving this problem, by the use of power, force, the military, or money. Fear is an incredible motivating factor; no one wants to live in the middle of this kind of chaos, so believe me, they’ll keep coming.
And why shouldn’t they? The United States of Europe has already been using a model of porous borders, and people cross from one country within the EU as freely as we go from one state to the next. Europe has not experienced the same kinds of consequences that we have by using an “old brain” approach to a “new brain” dilemma.
Of course migration is built into our human natures. People have been migrating from one place to another ever since humans have been on the planet. People can migrate to get away from something such as political unrest, or migrate to get somewhere such as employment.
A famous eco-researcher, Jack Calhoun, predicted years ago, that the nations of the world would be facing these kinds of staggering problems; he said that immigration is the problem, but it isn’t the problem. His research demonstrated that there were predictable human behaviors that occur when stress reaches a certain maintained level. Any social order will do what it can to retain its own culture and way of life within the parameters of social networks and social connections. This is survival for the need of community, closeness, and support. One of the worst spin-offs of the immigration quagmire is the separation of family members, and this adds more tension to an already tenuous situation.
The experience of history indicates that we need a new adaptive focus to problems like what we find on the border between El Paso and Juarez. These problems call us to look at all the factors involved in a systemic fashion. Sometimes the smallest of changes within any system can have huge consequences; these changes may be for better or ill.
Fear causes people to seek out single causes expecting single effects; behavior becomes reactive and many tend to lean towards biases against the groups involved in the conflicted paradigm. In other words, they use a means of stereotypical thinking, and by this I mean they view the groups who they feel are parts of the problem by using stereotypes as a form of fact. “If we don’t put that wall up, they’ll keep coming over and take all of our jobs! That’s a fact.” Usually, immigrants do the kind of work others don’t want to do, they pay taxes, and add monetary influx into the economy.
We’ve been trying these methods for some time, and we must acknowledge that they simply don’t work; “the war on drugs” has been a dismal failure. Many law enforcement officials now come down “anti-drug war” because we spend far too much money, and the models being used leave out much that is needed to correct the problem.
El Paso seemed like a quiet little town; for me it was peaceful, and a restful escape from the heat and humidity in East Texas. Cooler winds are the natural, airy fans to maintain comfortabililty. It’s nestled in the mountains and seems like a laid back place. Unless you seek it out, you may not hear much about what’s really going on in Juarez—it’s such a different environment. That’s why you need to make it your business to obtain news from good, perhaps alternative media sources, so that you can view the border situation in a systemic and facts-based way.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
I am not familiar with many of the issues that affect those who live on the U.S. side nor the Mexican side. I know what people told me. I do know that there is a great deal of traffic between both cities, in work places and domiciles. I do know that since about April of 2008 there has been a major increase in cartel and gang-related violence; American citizens have also been targets. Murders have taken place in broad daylight, and sometimes bodies are found decapitated.
The “narco wars” have taken more than 11,000 lives since it started to heat up in intensity and frequency. Juarez has now become known as “Mexico’s deadliest city” with 800 drug-related deaths so far this year. This isn’t only happening at this crossroads, but is occurring at many areas along the U.S./Mexico border.
I went to El Paso to be a participant in a training conference. One mental health professional from Juarez told the participants that the residents have few options to deal with this trauma along the border. She said what is needed is activism and hope. She related to the audience that ‘this is all we have—hope.’
What does any community do when their main resource is hope, and when deadly stressors and community-disruption now are the way of life? Any organism will respond by seeking more creatively how to survive. But if the societal breakdown is maintained over a long period of time, research indicates that the kind of behavior we call “normal” doesn’t return. It’s replaced by a new, more violent sort of behavior.
According to the stories—from those who are aware of this regression—this significant trauma is affecting the social, physical, emotional, mental, and religious domains of life in many ways. For one thing, the violence is just one more reason for people to want to migrate to the U.S. for something better for their families. Last week, however, the Barrera family was returning to their home deeper into Mexico, after living for a while in Juarez, and was attacked with gunfire. Three of the family members were murdered, while the two youngest children watched in psychic shock. The violence is more and more affecting innocents who have no connection with drugs, crime, or anything illegal.
Which brings me to an important point: many of you have heard that we’re attempting to build a wall all along our border with Mexico. Now, apparently, we’re trying to keep out illegal aliens (there are no illegal people by the way) and drug-runners who are competing for the market in the U.S. In my mind, this is an archaic way of dealing with these two problems. The U.S. and Mexico will never even come close to solving this problem, by the use of power, force, the military, or money. Fear is an incredible motivating factor; no one wants to live in the middle of this kind of chaos, so believe me, they’ll keep coming.
And why shouldn’t they? The United States of Europe has already been using a model of porous borders, and people cross from one country within the EU as freely as we go from one state to the next. Europe has not experienced the same kinds of consequences that we have by using an “old brain” approach to a “new brain” dilemma.
Of course migration is built into our human natures. People have been migrating from one place to another ever since humans have been on the planet. People can migrate to get away from something such as political unrest, or migrate to get somewhere such as employment.
A famous eco-researcher, Jack Calhoun, predicted years ago, that the nations of the world would be facing these kinds of staggering problems; he said that immigration is the problem, but it isn’t the problem. His research demonstrated that there were predictable human behaviors that occur when stress reaches a certain maintained level. Any social order will do what it can to retain its own culture and way of life within the parameters of social networks and social connections. This is survival for the need of community, closeness, and support. One of the worst spin-offs of the immigration quagmire is the separation of family members, and this adds more tension to an already tenuous situation.
The experience of history indicates that we need a new adaptive focus to problems like what we find on the border between El Paso and Juarez. These problems call us to look at all the factors involved in a systemic fashion. Sometimes the smallest of changes within any system can have huge consequences; these changes may be for better or ill.
Fear causes people to seek out single causes expecting single effects; behavior becomes reactive and many tend to lean towards biases against the groups involved in the conflicted paradigm. In other words, they use a means of stereotypical thinking, and by this I mean they view the groups who they feel are parts of the problem by using stereotypes as a form of fact. “If we don’t put that wall up, they’ll keep coming over and take all of our jobs! That’s a fact.” Usually, immigrants do the kind of work others don’t want to do, they pay taxes, and add monetary influx into the economy.
We’ve been trying these methods for some time, and we must acknowledge that they simply don’t work; “the war on drugs” has been a dismal failure. Many law enforcement officials now come down “anti-drug war” because we spend far too much money, and the models being used leave out much that is needed to correct the problem.
El Paso seemed like a quiet little town; for me it was peaceful, and a restful escape from the heat and humidity in East Texas. Cooler winds are the natural, airy fans to maintain comfortabililty. It’s nestled in the mountains and seems like a laid back place. Unless you seek it out, you may not hear much about what’s really going on in Juarez—it’s such a different environment. That’s why you need to make it your business to obtain news from good, perhaps alternative media sources, so that you can view the border situation in a systemic and facts-based way.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
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