Roger, you had every right and every ability to teach people about blindness.
Being blind means different things to different people and we all don't
experience it in the same way. For you it was late in life onset. That doesn't
make you any less blind, competent, or an expert on the subject. As far as I am
concerned we are all experts in our own lives since our own lives are just that
our own.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 3:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Palestinian Center for Human Rights: Gaza
When I first found myself teaching sighted people about blindness I did not
consider myself very qualified. That was mainly because I was freshly blind and
didn't know much about it myself. My blindness may have come on quickly, but it
was still gradual and I continued to use my residual sight as much as possible
and as long as possible. This caused a lot of people to assume that I was
faking. Also, I think I was a rather ubiquitous figure around town and people
recognized me even if they didn't know me. Then suddenly I turn up tapping my
way around with a white cane. Again, the automatic assumption was that I was
faking. I assure you that it got really tiresome really quickly to be
constantly explaining my situation. I still have some residual vision, but not
enough to be of any use and so I am accused of faking less frequently now, but
now and then they still do it. Nevertheless, it still never fails that when I
meet someone new the main topic of conversation is my lack of eyesight. I have
been tempted to mimeograph sheets with answers to the most common questions to
hand out. I do get tired of the same old thing all the time and so I always try
anymore to steer the conversation elsewhere, but most people seem to find it
incredible that I would be interested in talking about anything but blindness.
On 6/21/2017 1:45 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Over the years I have heard the same comment many times. "I'm tired
of putting forth the effort", or, "I didn't sign on to be the public's
teacher about blindness". Since this is not something that bugs me, I
have to scratch around to try to relate...Hmm...Nope, I have to admit
that the best I can do is to say, "I hear you!" But in fact, it just
isn't something that I even think about. Explaining about blindness
to sighted folks is as natural to me as explaining that although I am
a White Man, I do not associate with the White Ruling Class. And I
also enjoy explaining to Religious people why I believe that our
religious beliefs are at the base of most of our social problems. But
as much as I enjoy talking about my positions on most any subject, I
equally enjoy hearing those of others...even though it may not appear
that way.
It's interesting to think that while I feel that I can relate to the
discrimination felt by a Black Man, or the fear felt by a person
crouched behind the shattered walls of their bombed out home, I can't
relate to a person who tells me, "I never cared to read". "What! Not
enjoy reading? Impossible!!!" And I struggle to feel what it is like
to be bothered by nosy people, poking into how I do this or that
because they can't relate to being blind. Oh me. Some things we just
have to accept.
Another thought just hit me. We saw a woman yesterday who is 92 years
old and has just recently begun losing her sight. She has other
issues, including hearing and dementia. She lives with her son and
her daughter, all share the home. The son is a very strange fellow,
indeed. As soon as we entered the house he asked me if I were blind.
Now I have to pause here and say that I have a sometimes odd sense of
humor. I said to this fellow, "I bet my long white cane gave it
away". He never missed a beat. "You been blind all your life? Is it
hereditary?" He continued firing one question after the next, never
reacting to my responses. So I began providing answers that had Cathy
wondering if I'd lost my mind. Still, although he bugged me, it was
not because he asked questions, it was because he was "center staging"
by running on and on. We were there to see his mother, not to listen
to his monologue.
When I was an instructor in the Training Center, students would say
from time to time, "I get sick and tired of having people ask nosy
questions. Just because I'm blind they think they can ask personal
questions." Back then my stock answer was, "You probably get upset
because you don't want to be blind, and their questions force you to
have to deal with it". While I never got hit, I did get a fair amount
of opposition to my remarks. But it was a good launching place for
discussion.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/20/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But each group has an experience that is specific to them. How each
group experiences discrimination, is influenced by the history and
culture of that group. You can point out what all of the groups have
in common. However, when you tell people that their experiences are
like those of other groups, it feels to them like you are
trivializing their specific experience. The organizers on the Left had
better learn this if they are to be successful.
Being a Muslim is different from being a Latino. As for being blind,
well, I'm at a point where I just recognize and accept my rage at how
blindness has affected my life both in real terms, and in terms of
social ingteractions with sighted people. But I also recognize that
the sighted people's actions toward me or lack thereof, are motivated
by ignorance and a real terror of blindness. It really has nothing to do
with me as a person.
They don't even know me. I'm invisible. And I'm tired of putting
forth the effort to attempt to remove their fear.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2017 10:45 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Palestinian Center for Human Rights:
Gaza
True. We Blind Folk aren't shoved out of the way by angry White
Folk, or hunted down and burned out of our homes, or awakened in the
Midnight Hour by a bomb hurtling into our home. We don't have our
farms seized, or made so unsafe that we dare not tend our crops. We
don't have to travel out of our way in order to wait in long lines at
check points, where we are examined like vermin, by coldly
indifferent armed soldiers. Still, exclusion is exclusion. Being
cast into the Outer World, whether violently or indifferently still has the
same dehumanizing effect.
No, I have no real sense of what walking out my door wearing a Black
Skin every day, and seeing the faces of the mostly White folk as I go
about my daily activities...if I have any daily activities to go about.
And especially, I have no way of relating to an elderly grandmother
tending her garden and seeing, as the last sight she will ever see,
an object hurtling toward her.
Still, many of my friends in the Washington Council of the Blind(WCB)
have learned to compartmentalize the discrimination they feel as a
blind person, and their view of the discrimination and oppression
being experienced by other minorities.
I used to consider these people as being self serving or self
centered. But at this moment I see them as victims, no different
than those people around them whom they curse and condemn.
Years back, when I worked on Seattle's waterfront in the Sweat Shop
named Bartmann and Bixer of the Northwest, Incorporated, I would
wander the streets of that area known as Skidrow, or Skid Road. The
bars along First Avenue were segregated to some degree or other. The
Indians had several bars they hung out in, often making a circuit
walking from one bar to another during a Friday or Saturday night.
The Negroes hung out in a couple of bars further down at the South
end of First Avenue, and no Indian had better put his/her head in the
door. The two groups hated one another. Both Blacks and Indians
believed that they were better than the other. "But," I would say to
any who would listen to me, "can't you see that you are both being
treated the same?" But it was as if each minority did all it could
to not be the one at the bottom of the pile. Blacks, by being "better"
than Indians felt they had a measure of dignity. And Indians felt
that by being "better" than Blacks gave them more stature in the eyes
of the White Masters.
This need to feel superior is turned against us by the Ruling Class.
And so it is around the Globe. One People create a superior image of
themselves, and create an inferior stereotype of those they oppose.
Perhaps it is so much a part of our Nature that we'll continue until
the last two humans die in a life and death struggle. I watched a
program the other night about the Silver back Gorillas. As the 35
year old dominate male was finally bested by the younger, stronger
male, I could see how these animals had survived because of their
"survival of the fittest" that kept them a strong species. And yet,
this strong instinct forced the old leader into fighting to the
death, even though he might have fled into the forest and lived out his life
in peace.
Humans are no different, except in one important way. Driven by our
"survival of the fittest" instinct, we have set in place an
artificial standard of what we consider to be the Standard for a Strong
Species.
Possession is put in place of Strength. I could wax long and loud
about this wrong turn in the Survival Road, but suffice it to say
that we now see at the top of our People, a weak blubbery, self
focused creature. Or maybe we see something even worse. Donald Trump.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/19/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I used to think that being blind was what allowed me to identify
with members of other minority groups. Perhaps it did. But the
differences between being blind and being a Palestinian in
Israel/Palestine or being Black in America, are just too great. We,
the blind, aren't hated and reviled. Cops don't feel endangered by
blind men and shoot them. We're not incarcerated. I am, here in my
apartment building, socially isolated. But if anyone chooses to
relate to me when they see me in the lobby or the elevator, it is to
offer help. It's a very different dynamic.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2017 11:42 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Palestinian Center for Human Rights:
Gaza
There are no words for such heartless, cruel, cold behavior.
It's hard to wrap my head around what life is...or in the case of
the mother, was, like under this constant surveillance.
To a greater or lesser degree I can "feel" what it must be like to
be a racial or religious minority in America. Despite the "Free
Pass" of Whiteness, I am still a member of a small, ignored
minority. While being blind has some distinct advantages over being
Black, Brown or a Muslim, we blind people are faced with
misunderstanding and ignorance, and often mean spiritness. At least enough
for us to "understand"
some of what other minorities face. But to live under constant
threat of death from a distance? To go about doing what must be
done to survive? To never know, when going to bed at night, if
morning will find your house and family still "safe"? To be bullied
with no one to turn to? And worst of all, to have no way out! Even
this old blind man can dream of better days.
But to have absolutely no Light at the End of the Tunnel? To not
even have a Tunnel.
We Humans are such a contradiction. We can sore, like angels, to
the heights of compassion, and turn right around and become more
cruel than all of the Demons waiting to embrace us in Hell.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/19/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Life under Siege: Indiscriminate killing of farmers
Date: 18/06/2017
"Our life has turned upside down since my mother's death. With her
passing, we lost the backbone of the house." Hani Salem Elomor is a
married father of
3 children and resident of El Elfokhari neighborhood, Khan Younis,
whose mother Zeina was killed by the Israeli occupation forces in
2016 when she was working on the family's farmland.
The tree was planted by Zeina's family where she was killed by the
Israeli occupation forces Zeina was solely responsible for Hani and
his six siblings and the family's income is based on the 2 dunums
of land they own and where they plant wheat, which is located in
Elfokhari neighborhood, about 350 meters from the borderline line
with Israel. Supposedly, the farmland is outside of the buffer zone
implemented by the Israeli occupation forces, stretching from the
Israeli border 300 meters into the Gaza Strip. The buffer zone is
an area prohibited to Palestinians, which is illegal under both
Israeli and international law. According to the United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA), the buffer
zone takes up 17 percent of Gaza's total land, making up to 35
percent of available farmland unsafe for Palestinians to use, with
the areas nearest the border fence being the most restricted. It is
harshly affecting the livelihood of tens of thousands of Gaza
farmers, who rely heavily on agriculture to provide for their families.
In addition, the Israeli occupation forces regularly enforce the
buffer zone and nearby areas with live fire, which is what Zeina
became a victim of.
In the evening of 05 May 2016, Hani received a phone call from his
brother Monzer, who informed him that their mother got wounded from
a shell by the occupation forces and that she was on her way to the
Gaza European hospital.
"I immediately rushed to the hospital and when I arrived there, I
could see my family members getting into the emergency room. I
followed them and saw my mother's dead body lying on one of the
beds with her face covered.
Unconsciously, I uncovered her face and saw the blood covering her
neck, shoulder, and right hand. The doctors informed me that she
was killed on the spot by the Israelis", Hani tells in vain.
Zeina was collecting hay on her farmland and filling it into bags
to move it to the house, when the occupation forces fired a rocket
at her, as her relatives that accompanied her tell. In the place of
the incident there were a number of other farmers working on their
farmlands. The area is very flat, the sight is obvious, and the
attack happened during day time, which is a clear evidence for the
arbitrariness of the killing. "There is an Israeli military tower
east of the land, about 350 meters away, so the occupation forces
could see with their bare eyes that my mother was a civilian,
working on her land to provide her family with an income. They shot
her for no reason", Hani emphasizes. "Ever since the end of the
latest war on Gaza, Israel allowed farmers to cultivate this zone
using short crops that do not grow higher than 80 centimeters, such
as wheat and barley, as it forbids them from establishing
greenhouses or buildings there", Hani highlights.
Enforcing the buffer zone by means of live fire constitutes a war
crime, as codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome
Statute, prohibiting the targeting and severe injuring or killing
of a civilian or protected person. However, Israeli troops
typically enforce the buffer zone with live fire which often
results in, inter alia, the direct targeting of civilians and/or
indiscriminate attacks.
Furthermore, preventing Palestinians from access to their land is a
violation of numerous provisions of international human rights law,
including the right to work, the right to the highest attainable
standard of living, and the right to the highest attainable
standard of health. Accordingly, the PCHR has filed a letter
requesting the military advocate general to open an investigation
into the incident on 30 May, 2016. A reminder was sent on 26 April,
2017 regarding the complaint and PCHR received a response that the
incident is under treatment by the Israeli military prosecution for
operational affairs.
"A year later, day by day we still go to our land and work the same
way as if our mother was still among us. The occupation forces
tried to frighten us several times, but they will not succeed and
we will never give up our land.
It belongs to us and we will not lose our sole source of income",
Hani emphasizes. "Until today, we don't know the reason why she
was killed; my mother was killed for nothing. We hope for
accountability, even though it has been a year since the incident
happened and no progress has been made in the case."
Public Document
**************************************
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PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip.
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