Doctor Grandma

Atlanta opened its rolls for subsidized housing for the 1st time in 8 years and 30,000 people showed up. Just to put their names on the list which currently has NO OPENINGS. People fainted and collapsed in line with the heat. Riot police were called in.

My students might say all those 30,000 people are the reason their taxes are increasing and those 30,000 people should go out & get a job and an education to support their lazy selves! Maybe in another 3-4 years after they graduate with their hard-earned 4-year degree and still have no job, maybe they will remember something — anything at all — from my stratification class, or the chapter on Poverty from my Social Problems class. Do you think??

Do you think all those 30,000 people stood in line because they’re lazy?? Really? Do you think if they were lazy maybe they’d be back at home –which obviously isn’t a home they own these days — playing video games or something?? I think people are dang desparate, are losing their homes while they HAVE jobs nd WORK, or seek work while their unemployment checks run out. I think we are in the middle of a crisis with 10% unemployment nationwide and people are looking for scapegoats.

For example, I heard today the South Carolina legislature proposed making it illegal for illegal residents to LIVE in SC. Wow, all those meat packing plants better raise their pay and look for American workers who might then take it.

People are so cruel and we are very heartless. If I couldn’t make a dime in my own country and businesses were HIRING ME in the next nation over and there was all kinds of possibilities there for my children besides maquiladoras, I do believe I’d try to go there and work. And have my children be born there. We are all human beings trying to survive. Yes we need laws, but there are too many million Mexicans here in our work force to “send them all back home”. People are ignorant. Ignorance is bliss. Them vs. Us.

So I have been out of touch w / the news all summer because I’ve been traveling to my kids & picking up grandkids here & there, for 2 mos. Turning on the news this morning, here is what CNN is telling me:

1. A clerk stopped a bank robber by talking to him about Jesus. I commend her faith. Someone else could have and would have blown her away, but this man wasn’t a violent person. He said ‘God bless you’ and told her he was robbing her because he needed $300. or he would be evicted from where he lives. See what condition people are in today?? They are not all evil-spirited criminals who want to hurt people. Does that give him the right to rob someone or not be punished? No. It just means he is not mean spirited, and part of the problem is the social condition of our SOCIETY. Go back to DURKHEIM and read about the state of “anomie” — confusion, disarray, disconnectedness among people, resulting in more crime, more suicide, a sense of hopelessness. He wrote this 100+ yrs. ago. — So the “robber” left without the money and told he he was carrying a BB gun.

2. Huge flood in Pakistan, as many as 1500 dead. Lives lost and disrupted, makes me think of rescue efforts there compared to here.

3. Oil-based violence in the Niger Delta region.

4. In the Gulf, the oil cap is working but unstable. Who knows if it will hold or for how long. I can never remember the # of millions or billions of gallons of oil that have been released to the fish and living things in the Gulf. Was it 5 million?

I have to leave now for my college, to meet a student and my colleague. Seems there is never time to think and write. Even when one has the “summer off”.

(AFP/Thony Belizaire)What comes to mind to write about Haiti, is that I was watching CNN night before last, and saw starving hungry people standing in a food aid line, who eat about once every 3 days right now. And then I saw armed law enforcement spraying them back with pepper spray.  It was the most disgusting display of human tragedy I’ve ever seen.

Any of us would give our dinners to these suffering people. Millions upon millions are being collected and sent, and in the meantime, their infrastructure, airports, docking stations for ships, are so destroyed, plus the general state of chaos where bureaucracy no longer works to get anything done, that 150-200 planes WITH SUPPLIES AND FOOD await PERMISSION TO LAND.

Conditions are so unimaginable, it boggles the mind to even think about it. What good does it do for me to sit here and write about it.

The cruelty of racism, oppression, colonialism from years and decades past set up Haiti to be the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. And now the latest, a huge earthquake. You can’t help but see the beautiful brownness of the people in all the news coverage. It reminds me of Katrina footage.

Today I read they pulled a 16-yr-old girl from the wreckage of a house, who had been buried for 2 weeks. She is alive and no doctor knows why.

What this shows is how the world needs to come together — I mean really come together — and have a functioning world superstate that administers justly and fairly the resources and food of the world. There is no need for such suffering. All we can do is text our $10.00 donations to ATT by texting “haiti” to 90999, and pray that it makes a small difference. All they can do is fight every day for whatever help the rest of the world wants to send to them.

Weeks ago, I wrote a piece titled, “Lil Monkey Black Baby Doll” on this blog. It was my thoughts on the fiasco committed by Costco stores, in putting two baby dolls out for sale, one white and one black. No problem there, except they named the black one “Lil Monkey” and put a banana in its hand, and named the white one “Pretty Panda” with a bottle or something else in its hand. You can read the piece for my detailed reaction.

I just thought I’d write about it being the one and only piece that is consistently and repeatedly searched for and read, on my blog. It FREAKS ME OUT, people!! What the heck?? Are we so obsessed?

What is it about this piece that grabs people’s attention to the point that I get 100 searches on it in one week?

Yes it deals with racism, but so does the piece on the swimming pool in Philadelphia. So does the piece on Henry Louis Gates. Is it the fact that it’s about racism, children and dolls? No one ever comments, they just look it up. Makes me think some instructor is pointing students to it, I don’t know. One person did write to me and thought I was saying it was okay, somehow, for Costco to sell the dolls the way they did. I have no idea how he could think that from reading my post, but he did. His comments were so angry and full of profanity that I deleted them.

so you tell me, why the fascination with this post? What else can we talk about, or is there more to say on that one issue but nobody’s speaking up?

Shocking shooting at Fort Hood tonight. Here is what is known as of 8pm Thurs. night. A major in the Army and a psychiatrist treating people for Post traumatic stress syndrome, walked into a graduation ceremony at Fort Hood, TX and opened fire with 2 hand guns, killing 13 and wounding another 30 people. The shock wave of this event is riveting the news stations as I write this. He was American, Muslim, and his name was Nidal Malik Hasan. He was to be deployed to Iraq at the end of Nov. and had been stating openly that he did not want to go, that this was his worst fear! He also, ironically, graduated from Virginia Tech, the school that had its own mass shooting just s couple of yrs. ago. He had a master’s in mental health and a medical degree. Just an incredible story tonight.

What was he hearing in his counseling sessions from servicemen returning who were having mental problems? We know they are not receiving the mental health care they need, and their families need, to survive being deployed to some god forsaken rock country 3-4-5 times. The stress level on them and their families is unimaginable.

The army is grappling with a high number of suicides. What about that tonight? This man committed suicide but mass murder at the same time. He was killed by police, but he had to know he would not survive opening fire in a military establishment.

Someone else may have been shooting with him. There is no information coming out about that yet, that makes any sense. We have heard 2 were taken into custody, then released, and another 3rd man arrested. We don’t know what’s going on.

A press conference from the base has been delayed now for over an hour. They’re not letting any information out. It’s the military. The FBI is trying to get in on it, but it’s everybody’s guess who will get in, who will investigate, or what the hell is going on.

Meanwhile, the blatant hatred is coming out in Washington, with VERY high-level Republican leadership holding a rally, calling for “revolution” (their words) against the current government, reading the Declaration of Independence and calling it the Constitution, AND — THIS IS SO SHOCKING I CAN BARELY WRITE IT — Holding up a poster with some slogan against Socialist Medicine tied together with, literally, a horrific picture of bodies at the Nazi camp Dachau . . .

People are going nuts with hatred and greed, and loss of their power base. A medical doctor was ranting and raving at the podium. Some woman in Congress, Bachman, was calling for revolution. There was not a brown face in the entire 4000 people from what we see on camera. There is no doubt in my mind there is a backlash going on, born of ignorance and greed, and insidiously feeding on people’s patriotism in a way that is unconsciounable (sp?), terrifying and inexcusable. I don’t know what else to say tonight.

Dallas Police have been issuing tickets to drivers — not for breaking any traffic law, but for not speaking English. Now granted, they had to be pulled over for some other reason before the officer realized they could not speak English. But then the officers issued 2 tickets: 1 for the traffic violation and a 2nd one for not speaking English proficiently. The New York Times is denouncing it as the latest insult to injury provided to illegal immigrants.

The first point is, it is NOT against the law to drive without being able to speak English. They were mistaken. It must have caught on like wildfire, because over 200 tickets were issued until one woman finally decided to get a lawyer and challenge it. Of course, what do you do as an illegal immigrant? You have a right to a lawyer, but you’re not going to draw attention to your position of being here illegally by challenging the practice. The police say they got confused because of some statute that dropped down on their laptop menu, which applied to COMMERCIAL drivers only. But even that statute is not enforced. Somebody started it, and it caught on like hotcakes and was not challenged by other officers, administrative personnel reading their police reports, court room judges listening to their stories in court, OR those recv’g the tickets. These facts also highlight the fact that people are sheep. Nobody wants to challenge their peers, especially those in law enforcement or the military,  and we all just go along with standard practice. We blindly follow those who go before us.

What human rights do we believe in? Citizens’ rights vs. human rights. I think with the illegal immigrant issue, that’s what it comes down to.

Do we stop educating children of illegal immigrants, refuse them entry into school? CA voters had a referendum on this and said yes. However, it proved impossible to enforce.

Do we refuse them health care? Access to services? Think in terms of pregant mothers, whose children, when they are born in America, are Americans. Do we refuse the mothers health care, raising their chances of being born with defects and problems, requiring longer hospitalization time and more care afterwards? Just how far do we go with this?

These people are not criminals, they are not breaking the law except for one. They came in without waiting the years it would take to enter legally. We cannot realistically keep them all out. There are too many literal holes in our “fences” along the border. We can’t send them all home either. There are millions of them and they have fit right into our labor market like a glove on a hand. Businesses get off paying them cheap. They usually don’t take jobs that carry benefits and health insurance. If we forced all illegal immigrants to leave America tomorrow, our business world would collapse. They know it. They just don’t talk about it publically.

Many Hispanics in America are LEGAL. We annexed in about 1/3 of Mexico as a country, with the Treaty of Guadalupe at the end of the Mexican-American war. Most of CA, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and other states were Mexico. They speak Spanish because they were Mexicans living in their country, and then found themselves annexed into America.

There are many other Hispanic groups in America, from Central and South American, to Cubans, the most assisted group to immigrate into America in our history. They were provided money and jobs, when they left Castro’s Cuba and today, you have to speak Spanish to live in Miami.

American tourists in France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and many other countries drive cars and cannot read the road signs. It’s a little more difficult to figure out where you are, but it’s not illegal.

It is a complicated issue. What’s the answer? Well it certainly is not the answer to issue tickets for laws that do not exist. That, we call discrimination.