Marginal Notes

Questionnaire for Canadians on Medical Assistance in Dying

Remember to give 5 minutes or so to provide feedback to the federal government on assisted dying legislation. You can access the questionnaire here.

 

I have been an advocate for disability rights for years and I have lived as a disabled person most of my life as I had significant health issues since birth. I believe many of the proposed safeguards just limit access to medically assisted dying rather than truly protect vulnerable people.

 

The best safeguard is in creating a society that values and embraces the differently abled, the aged and those who are very ill. This means helping everyone to engage in meaningful work and valuing their unique gifts. It means making the health care system less horrific to navigate, cutting down on the drastic waiting times for test results; and lack of government and employer support of people raising children or caring for a sick sibling or parent.

 

To me, the most important questions and answers are:

 

SECTION C:

 

1) Yes; current safeguards are adequate/effective; 2) a, b, c and e -- Not important at all; d) Very important: Making sure the person requesting MAID is aware of all the means available to potentially relieve their suffering, including health and social support services is very important.

 

SECTION D:

 

1) Yes and 2) Yes (although in both cases, I think indicating a desire to proceed with MAID in a PERSONAL DIRECTIVE would be ideal, but I do not think this should be required per the legislation.

 

Cleary, the questionnaire reflects pertinent issues that have been raised in the Courts and the media like the "reasonably foreseeable" clause and the issue of advanced consent.

I am worried that few people will consider the implications of question 'e' which asks if there should be:

"Mandatory consultation with an expert in the person’s medical condition and circumstances (for example a gerontologist, psychiatrist, or social worker), in addition to the already mandatory 2 medical assessments."

Many people would be quick to agree that there should be a mandatory consultation with an expert in the person's medical condition, but such legislation could be a terrible barrier to access for people with rare illnesses. There might simply not be a true expert in the field in the person's area. Moreover, of the very few experts in certain fields, none may be willing to participate in the process.

I myself have Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID). I was provisionally diagnosed by an allergist and an internal medicine specialist in 2007 and commenced treatment -- specifically, monthly intravenous immunoglobulin therapy (IVIG). In 2012, a pediatric immunologist at the Alberta's Children's Hospital ran a series of tests and confirmed my diagnosis. It was not until 2014 that I was evaluated by a specialist in adult primary Immunodeficiencies. It was a long battle to get Alberta Health Services to hire such a doctor at a hospital in Calgary. I know what it is like to have to fight for one's life and fight for access to experts. It would be awful if suffering was compounded for those with rare illnesses because they were forced to have an expert involved no matter how highly improbable that might be.

I ask that you consider how access to MAID will be affected if a seemingly innocuous criterion becomes part of legislation? Please share with your network so we can generate some awareness and discussion of this issue!

The Pained Voice

In 'Blogging the pain,' Höttges (2009) writes,

Grief writing is a strategy that can help the mourner to overcome both the breakdown of the self and the sense of alienation caused by the death of a relational anchor. This healing potential of grief writing is connected to the restoration of language. Pain, as Elaine Scarry writes in her book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, is not only “world-destroying”, it also shatters language: “Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language." Indeed, “[p]hysical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned”. These observations also apply to intense and acute psychological pain—grief—which also resists language and articulates itself in cries, screams, and sobs instead. Attempts to “invent linguistics structures that will reach and accommodate this area of experience normally so inaccessible to language," then, can only be made retroactively, once the wave of pain has subsided enough to allow access to language once more. If the attempt to describe the pain of grief, whether orally or in writing, is made, however, it can “reverse the de-objectifying work of pain by forcing pain itself into avenues of objectification”. Writing, thus, can restore language and reverse the unsharability of pain.

My blogging has been limited this past year. I have shared less of myself than I once did.

Pain and discomfort shattered my language and my voice. It robbed me of time and left me in the confines of a never ending present

In October, I had one of two surgeries that I underwent in winter of 2009. The day after I returned home from this surgery, I received an email from a woman who was an ex-girlfriend of my then recently-ex-boyfriend. Apparently, she had been reading my blog since she discovered me via his Facebook account. She told me that he began discussing our relationship problems with her when I indicated a desire to end things. She had some sort of falling out with him and for god-knows-what-reason felt that she should contact me to reassure me he is a loser. Worse, she forwarded some correspondence he sent to her lamenting the difficulty he was having in stopping himself from reading my blog.

Though it's embarrassing to reveal this, I desperately need to liberate myself of this little secret. I am not some sad, broken woman who feels betrayed. I am just so embarrassed and ashamed that I dated someone so fucking weird and creepy. Seriously, should I have not have honed my intuition by now? I am a grown woman not some freak made for the Jerry Springer show!

Anyway, for some time, I really felt robbed of this space.

It is entirely possible that one or both continue to read my blog. I don't care.

I stopped caring quite a while ago, but by February I faced a new set of hardships. I had a significant setback in my recovery. Around this same time, my father became very ill.

My father is doing much better which has been a huge relief - I literally feel like a weight was lifted off my chest.

I am slowly, but surely getting stronger and enjoying longer periods of good health. I am wrapping up my graduate work which was interrupted terribly last year - being torn from the work I loved was a terrible loss which I grieved intensely.

Everything is returning to normal again. My words are forming more easily.

It is difficult to know how much I will be blogging given that I will be incredibly busy as complete the last leg of this academic marathon.

For certain, any absence will not owe to a loss of voice. I am able to speak through the pain that lingers.

In a week it will be the one year anniversary of the first surgery. I have endured.

I wish I could claim to be kicking ass in a bigger way. I will be soon...Watch out!

Illegal War is Not Good Policy

I have lived in Calgary for my whole life...I have always struggled with the Conservative culture, but it is rare that it overwhelms and shocks me. I feel incredibly sad that The University of Calgary would honor Condoleezza Rice by inviting her to be the keynote speaker at the opening of its new school of public policy. This is ugly. This is wrong. How can the deaths of so many innocent people be called "good policy"? I feel like I am in Wonderland; Dr. Mintz's words are nonsensical. How do these people fool their minds and hearts that pillage of other lands for resources is good in any way?

How can The University of Calgary support this decision? How is it that a graduate student like myself has to go through all sorts of hoops to get a small study approved by an ethics board, but Dr. Mintz is supported in his invitation of someone who has behaved unethically and harmed millions? Is there any such thing as academic integrity or are things like ethics boards just part of an empty process to pretend that we are doing everything OK? I hope not. I hope that University of Calgary students and faculty will resist and protest this decision with the support of members in local and international communities.

Petition to Dr. Harvey Weingarten, President of The University of Calgary:

The University of Calgary has announced that it has invited former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the keynote speaker at the opening gala of its new school of public policy. The director of the public policy school, Dr. John Mintz, celebrates Dr. Rice as “a good example of what a school of public policy can achieve.”

We, the undersigned, are a group of academics, activists and concerned persons who stand with global human rights organizations and the International Criminal Court to condemn the atrocities that were committed under the Bush administration's Iraq invasion and occupation. The evidence is overwhelming that Dr. Rice was a principal participant in the planning and propaganda efforts of an aggressive occupational war waged in violation of international law.

Multiple estimates indicate that over 1.2 million Iraqi people have died as a result of the war. According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, over 4 million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has devastated the lives of people across America. Along with those who have lost family and friends, all suffer from the trillions of dollars spent on an illegal war, which is now resulting in drastic budget cuts to fundamental domestic policy sectors, infrastructure, and essential services.

The outcomes of Dr. Rice’s policies should be held up and identified as an example of the horrors that result when policy is made at the service of the military industrial complex, oil cartels, and geopolitical gain. These policies should not be honored at an institution of higher learning. Dr Rice's participation will not only undermine the credible standing of the new school of public policy, but tarnish the reputation of the University of Calgary as a whole.

We, the undersigned, strongly urge The University of Calgary to rescind its invitation to Dr Rice to open its new school of public policy. To do otherwise sanctions and celebrates violations of international laws, including illegal war causing the deaths of millions.

Links:

Please sign the electronic version of this petition.

Please contact me if you are in Calgary and able to collect signatures; I will send you a hard copy of the petition.

For extensive documentation of Rice's activities, see Stanford Says No to War here.

Me and My IVs

...still writing papers so blogging is still sub-par to the less-than-interesting-anyways entries that I dish out these days. Oh well.

I recently updated my Facebook status to:

1. Get to the doctor. 2. Finish last paper of this freakin' degree. 3. Suck it up and write the petition against U of C hosting Condi Rice. 4. Resume data collection and finish my thesis. 5. Become a vigilante.

One of my cheeky friends commented: "Do vigilantes make priority lists though?"

To which, I was able to offer the following response: "You would not be taunting me, if you saw me get in a fight in the blood infusion room last week. Some guys were saying that the non-Western world needs to realize that it will continue to get its 'ass whooped' and then went on to suggest that we privatize health care. I spoke up...One started swearing at me. I was very close to pulling out my IV and stabbing him with it. If there weren't sick people around (besides us), he would have been a dead man. But, yes, I suppose the same 'ol, same 'ol, average vigilante does not make priority lists."

What I didn't mention in this Facebook exchange is that I HAVE pulled out my IV before. Last fall, I was stuck in emergency for close to a day (which eventually ended up to be a series of days) and I was waiting over two hours for the nurse to remove my IV, so I finally decided to take it out myself. I learned quickly that there is a very good reason to get the cotton dressing over the injection site AS SOON AS the IV is removed. Otherwise, a LOT of blood gushes from your vein. Fortunately, I was heavily medicated and managed to find a bunch of cotton dressing and the bleeding stopped with about five minutes of applied pressure. After I cleaned the blood off of the floor, one could hardly tell that an "incident" had occurred.

The nurse was so unaware or jaded from her Third-World-like working conditions - yay, Alberta health care system - that she either did not realize or care that I removed my own IV. 

Anyway, when I returned home that night and lay in bed super ill, I suddenly began to get paranoid about how IVs work. I kept thinking: "How come there was no needle to pull out? Where is the needle? Is it still in my arm? Oh my God, they will be so angry if I have to go back and admit what I did. OK, wait, the needle just gets the IV in...Is that right?"

Fortunately, I found a website that night for nurses which had a discussion topic on tips for removing IVs. (Yes, it is scary that these nurses are not getting the tips from senior nurses on the job!) 

I was relieved to realize that the needle itself is only used to insert the plastic tube. So, for all of you who have always wanted to know how IVs work, there you go - mystery solved.

Mmm...OK...hopefully this final paper will be a little more captivating than this so-called blog entry. Over-and-out.

Sickening: From illness identity-marketing to health care solidarity

I was recently diagnosed with Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID).

It made me reflect on the bouts illness I have experienced all of my life...

I dug up a little picture book that I wrote when I was five for a grade one project. It is titled 'My Scotland Trip.'

We went on the plane to Scotland.
Then the bus, then we met my auntie.
We went in a taxi to the house to see my grandmother.
I went to Lorvan's school.
And when we went out to play we saw double deckers.
We went to the tea shop. I had coke and cakes.
And my Auntie Freyda gave me a pad of paper.
And my Auntie Elizabeth gave me a doll.
And I was very sick there.

The End.

At a very young age, I had already begun to grapple with how illness fit into the storying of my life. Over the years, I have struggled with this aspect of my identity...It has been particularly hard because my illness is not among the well-known that come with there own imagery, narratives, languages and even brands.

I was quite pleased to know that there are foundations dedicated to my illness - some with their own store!
Similarly, I felt excited to come across this site which advertises "National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week."

Finally, I belong!

And not only do I belong, but all my symptoms are suddenly LEGITIMATE.

And yet these feelings trouble me...

For one, I am disturbed by the branding and marketing of illness as identity. Some of my concerns are captured in Jennie Bristow's review of Sarah Moore's book Ribbon Culture:

Ribbon Culture is a brilliant little book. Drawing on her doctoral research, Sarah Moore, a research assistant at the University of Kent, provides a cogent analysis of the ubiquitous ‘awareness-raising’ ribbon and its more recent offspring, the wristband. What do these things represent, she asks, and why do so many people wear them? The answers are revealing and disturbing.

‘Since its emergence in 1991, the awareness ribbon has achieved the kind of cultural status usually reserved for religious symbols and big-brand icons’, notes Moore in her introductory chapter. Fewer than two decades on from the launch of the red AIDS-awareness ribbon, which Moore credits with starting this trend, one can buy ribbons in every colour, to ‘show awareness’ for a ‘staggering’ range of causes:

‘… the Oklahoma bombing, male violence, censorship, bullying, epilepsy, diabetes, brain cancer, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), autism, racial abuse, childhood disability, and mouth cancer, to name just a few.’

As there are clearly more causes than there are colours, a particular coloured ribbon could denote a number of different things that the wearer could be seen to be raising awareness of. Not that this potential confusion matters all that much: as Moore remarks, a few of her ribbon-wearing interviewees had to be reminded which causes their ribbons represented, while one teenage collector of wristbands proudly described to her ‘a gold anti-poverty band, a particularly rare wristband that he had given to his girlfriend as a present’:

‘When I asked him whether he thought it a little contradictory that an anti-poverty wristband should be gold, he was genuinely surprised at the observation; absorbed in the task of locating rare bands, choosing which to display and which to give as gifts, he hadn’t given consideration to the meaning of the objects he collected.’

In many respects, Ribbon Culture is an analysis of several apparently contradictory aspects of contemporary culture. The ribbon is, explains Moore, ‘both a kitsch fashion accessory, as well as an emblem that expresses empathy; it is a symbol that represents awareness, yet requires no knowledge of a cause; it appears to signal concern for others, but in fact prioritises self-expression.

The great strength of this book is the way that it unpacks these different features of ribbon-wearing, in an account that is both sympathetic and critical. Nowhere does Moore mock the intentions or practices of her ribbon-wearing interviewees, though sometimes she must surely have been tempted: ‘When I asked one of the young female interviewees who wore a pink-ribbon t-shirt what made her choose to wear the garment on certain days, I was seeking to understand whether there were certain situations, relationships and experiences that prompted her to show her awareness of breast cancer. Her keen reply took me by surprise: “I think ‘it’s got pink in it, what goes with pink?’ Actually I wear it with this skirt quite a lot …”.’

For Moore, this is not an example of individual silliness, but a reflection of the extent to which ‘the pink-ribbon campaign is a thoroughly commercial exercise’, which carries the risk ‘that the products will fail to communicate anything meaningful about breast cancer’. It is the commercialisation of causes, which both empties them of all content and transmits messages that are negative and misleading, that Moore sees as problematic. In seeking to understand why the individuals she interviewed wear the ribbons or wristbands that they do, Moore’s account stands out through her refusal to pander to the rhetoric of ribbon culture, which emphasises ‘awareness’, ‘caring’ and engagement with a cause. In reality, these positive rhetorical sentiments mask an anxious, self-obsessed, depoliticised culture.

In her essay, "Rethinking Recognition", Nancy Fraser discusses the dangers of identity politics:

I want to argue here that we need a way of rethinking the politics of recognition in a way that can help to solve, or at least mitigate, the problems of displacement and reification. This means conceptualizing struggles for recognition so that they can be integrated with struggles for redistribution, rather than displacing and undermining them. It also means developing an account of recognition that can accommodate the full complexity of social identities, instead of one that promotes reification and separatism. Here, I propose such a rethinking of recognition.

I know that for myself, I would be far less desperate to belong and find a branded-illness-identity, if I did not live in an ableist culture that individualizes medical problems and pathologizes those who don't fit well into the capitalist system nor its diagnostic categorization of its misfits. I would also be less desperate to belong if I lived in a culture that made me feel cared for and safe. A week of awareness for invisible illness is nice, but I need a funded health care system where one does not wait for over a year to see a specialist.

Before we find ourselves drowning in wristbands and ribbons, we must learn how to make common cause with others to struggle for our common good. We don't need any more illness industries. We need to fix the economic maldistribution and biological fall-out of capitalism by creating a world that is in the service of life NOT profit. We need a world that cares for each according to her need, not according to her brand.

I don't know how my story will end...I just hope that part of it can read: "I was very sick and I was cared for by my community..."

Links:

Alberta Friends of Medicare

Ribbon Culture by Sarah Moore

Related Entries:

Checking Out of Feel Good Capitalism

Shopping IS the Problem

Eat Lifestyle Activists

Shut the Fuck Up

There a lot of things that I want to blog about...so many things, but I feel so mentally and physically exhausted these days. It is hard to know where to devote one's energy. Currently, I am getting more involved in student organizing...I find it hard. The commercialization and growing inaccessibility in Canadian education frightens me...Between trying to get my course work and thesis done, I am trying to squeeze in time to read books like Trevor Harrison's Contested Classrooms. I want to find time to write about the issue of unpaid practica in social work programs...and I am tired of having faculty feed capitalist rhetoric to me sweetened by cuddly-social-work-jargon so that I will be OK with my own exploitation and that of my peers.

While I am increasingly disenchanted with academia, I am also losing faith in formal politics - why does the NDP continually shy away from a radical program that would include nationalization of energy and free education among policies that actually help us average Joes?

Are we ever going to get national child care or shall I count on the inevitability of the exploitation of both my unpaid and waged labour? Wow. Thank you, Capitalism, for all these choices.

Fortunately, there are some good things happening in my personal life. I am acutely aware right now of the need to embrace the joys of life...because activism can be thankless and tiresome...and scary.

Anyway, since I am feeling at a loss for words, I offer this video from Seriously Free Speech that tells the story of three activists being sued my the media giant Canwest. I'm not being sued but I sure as hell know what it is like to be pressured to shut the fuck up.

I genuinely wonder how the people being sued by Canwest feel...Do they feel "chilled"? I do.

Laying on the Ropes

Last weekend, at the Alberta NDP convention, there was talk of collaborating with other parties to develop opposition against the Big, Bad Conservative Party of Alberta. There was a lot of hallelujah-like-talk about sticking to values, but I heard little in the way of concrete strategy.

Labour parties must be prepared to lay into the ropes and take a beating. They weaken when they try to cater to the party in power, employing their opponent's rhetoric of "productivity" and "efficiency" to appeal to the masses. It is like a tired, desperate prize fighter who starts throwing aimless jabs because he has lost faith in the potential of his knock-out combination.

Recently, I have personally come under attack by supposed political allies. At first, I threw desperate punches like a novice. Now, I am laying on the ropes; I have been there before. I have taken physical beatings and emotional beatings and I'm one motherfucker who can't be brought to the ground.

I have also seen many opponents bring themselves down with their flailing and huffing and puffing. My K.O. combination is tight and I can take the beating for as long as I need to. Can you?

Go on and punch yourself out.

...because you're a bad bitch

From Doris Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook'

an exchange between Anna and Molly

    "And how about you Anna?"
    And now, for the first time, Molly had asked in a way which Anna could reply to, and she said at once:
    "Michael came to see me. About a month ago." She had lived with Michael for five years. This affair broke up three years ago, against her will.
    "How was it?"
    "Oh, in some ways, as if nothing happened."
    "Of course, when you know each other so well."
    "But, he was behaving - how shall I put it? I was a dear old friend, you know. He drove me to some place I wanted to go. He talked about a colleague of his. He said, 'Do you remember Dick?' Odd, don't you think, that he couldn't remember if I remembered Dick, since we saw a lot of them then. Dick's got a job in Ghana he said. He took his wife. His mistress wanted to go too, said Michael. Very difficult these mistresses are, said Michael, and then he laughed. Quite genuinely, you know, the debonair touch. That was what was painful. Then he looked embarrassed, because he remembered that I had been his mistress, and went red and guilty."
    Molly said nothing. She watched Anna closely.   
    "That's all, I suppose."
    "A lot of swine they all are," said Molly cheerfully, deliberately striking the note that would make Anna laugh.
    "Molly," said Anna painfully, in appeal.
    "What? It is no good going on about it, is it?"
    "Well, I've been thinking. You know, it's possible we made a mistake."
    "What? Only one?"
    But Anna would not laugh. "No. It's serious. Both of us are dedicated to the proposition that we are tough -- no listen, I'm serious. I mean -- a marriage breaks up, well, we say our marriage was a failure, too bad. A man ditches us -- too bad we say, it's not important. We bring up kids without men -- nothing to it, we say, we can cope. We spend years in the communist party and then we say, Well, well, we made a mistake, too bad."
    "What are you trying to say," said Molly, very cautious, and at a great distance from Anna.
"Well don't you think it's at least possible, just possible that things can happen to us so bad that we don't ever get over them? Because when I really face it I don't think I've really got over Michael. I think it's done for me. Oh I know, what I am supposed to say is, Well, well, he's ditched me -- what's five years after all, on with the next thing."
    "But it has to be on with the next thing."
    "Why do our lot never admit failure? Never. It might be better for us if we did. And it's not only love and men...

enter Polly Jones, clawing her way onto the pages of Lessing

    "Really, Anna, you're missing the point. Go on and admit failure. Admit that you're not so tough. Admit that being progressive makes you none the stronger. Admit that you hate being alone. "
    "That's what I'm saying -- Is it worth it?"
    "You still miss the point. You can admit to sadness. But, you will get on with the next thing. And, it is because they know that you will get on with the next thing, that you will always be left behind...or remain behind. You will always be the other woman, the mistress, the comrade, because that is who you are. So, yes, you might not want to take pride in your nature, but it is your nature nonetheless. Take me, for instance, just weeks ago I was madly in love, stroking his ego over the failed marriage. Oh, you know, indulging him. And then, he casually mentions that he wishes that I did not wear men's clothing around the home. Well, that was it. I went out and bought the most feminine of clothes. I then returned home and told him to go to hell. And, that's that and it's on to the next thing.
Polly paused as both women stared at her confused (after all, she was not a character in their story). So, she continued, "Oh, I take great delight in the thought of another man benefiting from my newly discovered feminine mystique, but I also could lie on the floor crying for days."
    "I'm not sure I follow," said Anna.
    "The point is that I may regret that I couldn't have gotten those clothes for him. The point is that I do sometimes wish I was the woman who did not walk away. I admit freely that sometimes I think I made a mess of my life. But, my thoughts are useless, because I can no more change my nature than a leopard can change her spots. And, really, why did he criticize my clothes in the first place? Was it really about the clothes? Or, was it simply an easy attack on an intimidating woman?"
Molly smiled weakly. Anna's mouth tightened.
    "Yes. He was intimidated. So, you're right. There is no use wondering if we've made mistakes. Because, it was never our choice in the first place. Because we do get on with the next thing. We just do."
Polly retreated knowing that she had just tangoed with all the lies to make herself feel better.
    "Well, I must be rushing along...I have my methodology to nail down and a research position to find to pay for my new clothes."

Ta-fucking-ta

Some Day

'Some day' by Joanne, age six

Some day I will be a teenager.

Some day I will be a ballerina.

Some day I will be a mother and I will have some babys.

Some day I will be a grandmother.

Some day I will be a monkey.

The End.

'Some day' by Joanne, age thirty-two

Some day, I will be an independent woman, complete with house, car and RRSPs.

Some day, I will hope to still be desirable - an aging, commodified 'Cosmo' cunt.

Some day, I will be a big fat academic success – a white woman who has built her career on the ‘study’ of poor women of colour.

Some day, I might compete with these same women who poach all the men as mail-order-brides, undermining the chances at ‘love’ for an outspoken bitch like me.

Some day, I might remember what it feels like to be regarded as human and to regard others as such.

Some day, if I'm lucky, I will be a monkey.

The End.

Resisting Domination

Sunday I was a little hungover and spent most of the afternoon on the couch hiding from the heat. I happened to see Teri Hatcher, of Desperate Housewives fame, on Inside the Actors' Studio. She spoke of being sexually abused as a child, as well as her decision to break her silence several years ago when she found that the perpetrator had abused another young girl who went on to kill herself.

Hatcher said she feels the abuse is part of who she is and that people who become close to her need to accept that. She explained that she believes it best to embrace all of one's past rather compartmentalizing the painful parts; she emphasized, however, that the experience of sexual abuse does not dominate her.

I believe many people are dominated by painful pasts; unable to weaken the grip, because of the culture of silence shaming us from acknowledging our lived truths. It is rare that I speak of being sexually assaulted, but I will speak about it frankly if needed. I've noticed that some react with great discomfort, signaling that I should not talk about it. At the same time, emails and telephone calls follow with people thanking me and wanting to talk about the violence they've experienced.

In my view, it is so important to resist being dominated by violent or shaming pasts, not only so we can reclaim our own joy, but also so that we don't find ourselves consumed by our individual pain and distracted from larger discussions. Shame dominates our individual psyches and acts as a coercive mechanism to prevent us from having the courage and energy to critically engage in the world around us. Resistance of this form of systemic violence is critical, because it allows us to claim power in an immediate way.

Several years ago, I realized how focused I was on my own life and how little I knew about world issues. As I have become more educated about the lives of people around the world, I marvel at how easy my life begins to look.

Also on Sunday, I re-read a speech out of a book that inspired me during the time I was planning to return to school to do a graduate degree. The book is An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, by the amazing Arundhati Roy. Here is an excerpt from the speech delivered in New York by Roy in 2003, titled Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy:

So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).
...
The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.

You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of this.

Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.

If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.

I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great  nation. But you could be a great people.

History is giving you the chance.

Seize the time.

I agree with Roy that the people of the West have enormous power to resist and undermine the Empire. I also believe that this begins with resisting the forms of domination that keep us in a state of shock and awe right here in our powerful nation-homes.

Links:

Read the full speech Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy, Arundhati Roy, found at CommonDreams.