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Reflection Friday: Doing & Getting No Where

[From the unpublished drafts folder, 06.2018.]

Have you ever thought about what you’ve been taught to think? What you’ve been indoctrinated to do?

During the last decade, I’ve been struggling a great deal with “the way things are supposed to be.”

Society’s Pipeline

In high school, we were taught that a college degree would lead to a good job and a comfortable life. Higher education became my albatross. The first degree I completed was an associate degree no one acknowledged. It rolled into a seven year pursuit of a four-year degree that also went largely unacknowledged. Fifteen years later, I completed my Masters in International Affairs while working in the executive office of a global bank. When I began my master’s program, my manager rejected my request for tuition reimbursement, which HR claimed was approved solely by manager’s discretion at my level. My request was denied because my role as her senior executive assistant (she was a global head of litigation at the bank) would not receive any benefit from anything I could learn in a graduate program, so she said. She didn’t need me to have a master’s degree for my role, therefore she was not going to approve tuition reimbursement. Despite being stunned by he reasoning, I managed to say, “No one goes to school to stay in the role they’re in.”

Fast forward four years to a follow-up conversation with another manager about career opportunities. I told her I had hit a wall. I had been with the company for over ten years and worked with senior level executives for over eight years. I had spoken with a few senior executives and managing directors (all division heads with global reach at the bank) about acquiring my M.A. and wanting to transition out of the senior executive assistant role into a project or program management role. Many I saw daily and had some history with – they began to avoid me, despite assuring them my manager was supportive of my search. Our neighbor on the floor, global head of risk and operations, actually had a job posted that was a match for my skills and experience, when I asked him directly about the position, he refused to answer my questions about what he was looking for to fill the role.

After summarizing my lack of progress to my manager, she coolly said, “Your initiative and confidence are admirable, but in this case you’ve over-stepped yourself.” This is a woman I openly admired. I had asked her to mentor me when she hired me. I had been completely honest about my career and life goals. She told me to come to her if I needed help. This follow-up meeting was me asking for help after six months of getting nowhere.

“You may not want to hear this,” she continued, “but if you want a different career, you’re going to have to start over.”

“Start over for what?” Was my incredulous response. “My ten years with this firm don’t mean anything? Or because my advanced education was a waste of money? You’re telling me that my experience and education are worthless?

“No, not quite worthless, just not worth as much as you think.”

“Really? I’ve been working for over twenty years and you’re saying I need to compete with college graduates with no real world experience??

“If you want to change careers. You don’t have the experience in the area you want to transition to.”

“I’m a quick learner and most of my work as a senior executive assistant is project based. I’m not reaching here. I’m seeking opportunities that align with my skillset and interests, which I am more than qualified for.”

“That’s not the point. This firm does not have a corporate structure that supports training people. We hire people who know what they need to do.”

“My learning curve in any new role in this company would be much shorter than anyone coming from outside. No matter who is hired for a role, they are going to have to learn their new job.”

“That may be true, but that’s not how it’s done. I’m not trying to be mean here.”

“Go on.”

I had reached out to one of her legal colleagues before he began with the firm. He was in a newly created hybrid role overseeing government affairs based in Washington DC. I emailed him to introduce myself and asked if he had considered creating a project role in his new organization. If so, I asked to be considered for the role. I mentioned my eight-year tenure in the legal department, ten years with the bank, my good working relationship with the senior executive offices and global legal teams, my flexibility to travel between DC and NYC as needed, and the projects I had been responsible for for the general counsel (his boss) and my managers. He never responded. But he had obviously spoken to my manager. When she introduced us for the first time, he dismissively said, “We’ve already met.” When I mentioned my unacknowledged email query, my manager became scathing.

“I wouldn’t hire you for that role.”

Completely taken aback, I stiffly asked, “Why not?”

“Because you don’t have any experience on the Hill. In a role like, an intern with two to three years’ experience in DC would be more practical. They would already know how to get around.

“So an outside person with two to three years’ work experience beats my internal ten years? A recent college grad trumps my overall experience? Despite my skills and experience being completely transferable?”

Moral of the story: as long as I was okay being led by the nose in circles, life was good from the outside. When I confronted the bias (what amounts to corporate racism), all I could see was the outline of the matrix and the box I was stuck in.

Career mobility was not intended for me. Non-support roles in the executive office were not intended for me. My “superiors” would decide which opportunities I would or would not have access to. It was not for me to impose my career objectives on them.

I was relatively content as a senior executive assistant until I realized management had decided that’s all I would ever be.

What are we rethinking here?

That last conversation was the beginning of the end of my time with that bank. It took place right before my three week year-end vacation. I had closed on my home in Southern Arizona six months prior and planned to spend the holidays there. During my time in Arizona, I rethought my life. I only had an air mattress and a tv in the house but I preferred it to everything I had in New York. That was eye-opening.

Starting over has never scarred me. But starting over to fit someone else’s narrative in a system I no longer wanted to be part of, was not appealing at all.

My practical self outlined a plan to phase myself out of New York City over the course of one to two years. Build up my savings, perhaps rent out the Arizona home to cover those expenses. Suck it up and stick it out to better position myself financially. Unfortunately, my heart and spirit rebelled at the being somewhere I was obviously not respected. It also hurt that someone I so admired had so little care for me that she set me on a course she was intentionally sabotaging. Upon my return in the new year, I handed in my resignation. I felt as if I had liberated myself completely. Perhaps foolishly, but mostly happily.

When your adulation yields nothing, is it really worth it?

Thinking of adulation, men come to mind first. Men who adored being adored but didn’t reciprocate any interest. Yet, children taught me the magical beauty of mutual admiration. The four precious children of family I rented from for six years in New York City. From the first time I knocked on their door to answer the studio vacancy ad, they were all over me and I was beyond smitten. Every time their eyes touched on me in greeting they became screeching jumping beans. Their excitement was palpable. They brought me so much joy, I can’t even articulate it. They jumped, I jumped. They screeched, I screeched. They recalibrated how I view people. If you’re not jumping out your skin to see me, don’t expect me to jump out of mine to see you.

My admiration of my managers, colleagues and company got me nowhere. My availability, interest, eagerness, planning, preparation – none of that was worthy of promotional opportunities. Working long hours, logging in on vacation, being ready and available for whatever were expectations of the role I had and the salary I received.

I received occasional treats and pats on the head. I was the recipient of the occasional “thank you” and “you’re the best” and quite honestly I was paid extremely well to do a job that kept me seated in front of a computer most of the day. But none of that was fulfilling for any amount of time.

I wasn’t growing or advancing. I was on a hamster wheel running in place. For the first six years I thought I was working towards something, yet the reality was I had plateaued my second year. When I finally saw I was running in circles on a hamster wheel inside a box placed in a larger matrix, I decided to step off the wheel, climb out the box and attempt to claw my way out of the matrix.

Stepping off the wheel

One would think that running in circles within a confined space would make one dizzy. However, it’s when one comes to a full stop that confusion sets in. While doing what is supposed to be done – what is expected of us – there is a system in place to support expected actions. The system in place suppresses a mind that wants to think, a consciousness that wants to wake, a heart that wants to love, a soul that wants to spark life and lungs that want to breathe.

There is no support, no system, no back-up for those who resist conforming.

I’ve been flapping in the wind for five years now. Starting over has become a reset and rethink of every area of my life. Everything I thought I ever wanted, any vision I had for my adulthood, all the things I’ve formed beliefs about – all of life has been questioned, reevaluated, re-edited, re-organized and revisited in different ways.

This isn’t a lament. It’s a reflection of the things we chase in life that provide no sustenance, growth or fulfillment. As much as I would love to have a partner and family, I’ve been grateful for my relative mobility due to the absence of such. I have picked up my life and changed course without destabilizing anyone but me. At this stage of my life, I’ve pursued all the things society laid before me, to the point that society itself has become undesirable.

What fulfillment does life offer that isn’t connected to other people? Meaning, fulfillment that isn’t contingent upon someone else’s approval, agreement, admiration, interest, commitment, integrity, support or anything else? Whatever that is, that’s the fulfillment I seek.

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Poem: Death is passive. Killing is not.

This poem came from frustration with the passive language most media use to report state-sanctioned murder and police brutality. They say “the death of” this person or that person, as if the person died in an unremarkable way. They speak of people who “lost their life” as if the opportunity to reclaim lost life is available. A more accurate wording would be “life was taken.” Life was stolen. Life was destroyed by someone who had no right to take a life.

Death is passive. Killing is not.
On the lynchings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breyonna Taylor and George Floyd

Death is a passive word.
There is no story attached to death.

Killing is an active word.
Someone does something:
Killer killed.

There’s always a story attached to a killing.
Who did the killer kill?
Why did the killer target the victim?
How was the victim killed?
Will the killer be prosecuted?
Is the killer still breathing?
Why do killers kill?

People who kill inherently believe
They are judge, jury and executioner.
They are the law,
Inhabiting space above, beyond
and around societal norms.
They enjoy an extrajudicial existence.
The law as we know it
needs to be eliminated.
We need to write new laws.
We need to establish new societal norms.
Killers need to know
Murder is not something else
Because of their badge
Skin color or family connections.
Murder is an intentional act.
It is purposeful destruction of an active life.
Murderers think they have the right
To take away life.
To steal another person’s breath.
To extinguish a human being’s light.
They do not have that right.

Witnesses need to name names.
Supervisors need to hold perpetrators
Accountable for their violence, brutality
And abuse of authority.
Administrative leave is not enough.
Job termination is not enough.
Payouts to injured families is not enough.

Full accountability and prosecution
of killers is necessary.
No matter their uniform.
No matter their perceived goodness.
No matter their community.
A killer is a killer. Their victims
Don’t just die. They are killed.

Breathing is active.
Breath is sacred.
Air is life.
We are all created beings
with the same Right to Life
and unhindered breathing.
Access to air should not depend on
Assumptions, opinions, political views,
Occupation, wealth, social status,
Skin color, mood, hatred of fellow humans
or self-hatred. Access to air should
not require legislation.
Yet here we are.

There is a great lack of understanding in America,
An astonishing general ignorance across the continents,
Of an elemental natural truth:

The deeper you grind US into the ground,
The stronger OUR roots become.
One day, your tsunami of brutality
Will wash you and your generations
Out into the sea you brought US across,
While WE who are deeply rooted in the soil
Will not only still be standing,
But will be flourishing. Gloriously.

~ LaShawnda Jones, May 2020

#newpost #blog #poem #wordpress #policebrutality #murderbycop #murderismurder #kill #death #media #biasreporting #passive #active
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Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution

Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution is a state holiday celebrated in California and Virginia.

Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (January 30, 1919 – March 30, 2005) was an American civil rights activist who objected to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy launched its attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized that individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the Pacific Coast were to be removed from their homes and forced to live in internment camps, but Korematsu instead challenged the orders and became a fugitive.

The legality of the internment order was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Korematsu v. United States; this ruling has never been explicitly overturned.[1] Korematsu’s conviction for evading internment was overturned decades later after the disclosure of new evidence challenging the necessity of the internment, evidence which had been withheld from the courts by the U.S. government during the war. [Wikipedia/Fred_Korematsu]

 

Photos: On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, thereby making a law to forcibly remove all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to incarcerate them in American concentration camps.

Law Suit: Korematsu v. United States (1944)

Korematsu v. United States (1944) was a significant United States Supreme Court case that ruled that the Government’s use of Japanese internment camps during World War II was Constitutional. This decision, written by Justice Hugo Black, was very controversial because it was the first time the Supreme Court ruled on racial discrimination based on the strict scrutiny standard. This means that the Supreme Court applied the most stringent interpretation of the law to justify the use of Japanese internment camps as superior to individual rights.

Executive Order 9066, passed in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ordered those with “Foreign Enemy Ancestry” to be sent to internment camps. Although the
order did not technically name any ethnic groups, this applied to about 120,000
Japanese Americans. The U.S. Government considered these individuals to be of
heightened risk to national security. [Constitution.laws.com]

In Korematsu’s case, the Court accepted the U.S. military’s argument that the loyalties of some Japanese Americans resided not with the United States but with their ancestral country, and that because separating “the disloyal from the loyal” was a logistical impossibility, the internment order had to apply to all Japanese Americans within the restricted area. Balancing the country’s stake in the war and national security against the “suspect” curtailment of the rights of a particular racial group, the Court decided that the nation’s security concerns outweighed the Constitution’s promise of equal rights.

Justice Robert Jackson issued a vociferous, yet nuanced, dissent. “Korematsu … has been convicted of an act not commonly thought a crime,” he wrote. “It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.” The nation’s wartime security concerns, he contended, were not adequate to strip Korematsu and the other internees of their constitutionally protected civil rights.

In the second half of his dissent, however, Jackson admitted that ultimately, in times of war, the military would likely maintain the power to arrest citizens — and that, possessing no executive power, there was little the judicial branch could do to stop it. Nonetheless, he resisted the Court’s compliance in lending the weight of its institutional authority to justify the military’s actions, and contended that the majority decision struck a “far more subtle blow to liberty” than did the order itself: “A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. … But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all of time has validated the principle of racial discrimination. … The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of urgent need.”

Justice Owen Roberts also dissented in the case, arguing that a relocation center “was a euphemism for prison,” and that faced with this consequence Korematsu “did nothing.” Also dissenting, Justice Frank Murphy harshly criticized both the majority and the military order, writing that the internment of the Japanese was based upon “the disinformation, half-truths and insinuations that for years have been directed against Japanese Americans by people with racial and economic prejudices.”

The Court’s decision in Korematsu, loudly criticized by many civil libertarians at the time and generally condemned by historians ever since, has never been explicitly overturned. However, a report issued by Congress in 1983 declared that the decision had been “overruled in the court of history.” [PBS.org]

[In the 1980’s] Korematsu returned to court to challenge the original court decision. Irrefutable evidence was discovered that top government officials knew and covered up significant government intelligence information that Japanese Americans had not actually posed a threat to national security. His 1944 conviction was overturned. The decision eventually propelled the Internment Redress movement to success.

The “One Man Seeks Justice” story addresses these issues in the wake of September 11, 2001, and the racial and religious profiling against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians that ensued. Fred Korematsu’s story challenges readers to remain vigilant against civil liberties violations even in times of war or national crisis. [AdvancingJustice-LA.org]


Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Korematsu

Korematsu v. United States

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_korematsu.html

http://advancingjustice-la.org/Korematsu

 

 

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The right to life.

Life. Witnessing the wanton destruction of life has deeply impacted me these last few years. Every life I’ve witnessed killed on a video…every life I’ve heard was destroyed… everyone who has their right to life taken from them by someone who believed their right to kill trumped another’s right to live…all of those lives have changed me.

People are people. No howevers, buts, if onlys can change that.

Popular culture would have us believe animals are people. Some people are animals. Dogs and lions have a right to life. Some people forfeit their right to life the moment they’re born. That’s popular culture.

Popular culture is wrong.

People are people. No matter how a person is described in media, they have a humanity that cannot be denied or explained away. It is unfortunate that we have to announce, chant, insist, scream and demonstrate that Black Lives Matter with the full knowledge that doing so lengthens the noose around our necks and enlarges the target on our backs.

Encountering the hidden biases and deep-seated hatred of people I know personally has changed me. I haven’t succumbed to internalizing their venom but I have come to understand how so many others have. I don’t want to understand hatred in any form. Yet here I am, understanding with a great deal of disgust, the fuel that runs this world.

I choose to focus on life. What about a black life has impacted me most? Life. Shared humanity. The sure knowledge that murderers are killing and eliminating themselves even as they think they are “cleansing and purifying and keeping others safe.”

The world will not remain in darkness forever. It’s impossible to do so. The capability of the public to  share murder and information in real time is already changing how injustices are perceived, received and handled. Life will win. Simply because sooner rather than later, everyone will recognize themselves in the abused, downtrodden, uncounted and eliminated.

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Jesse Williams: Freedom Now

On Sunday, June 26, Jesse Williams won the 2016 BET Humanitarian Award. He gave a powerful acceptance speech that is an on-point statement highlighting racial inequality in America today. It’s ironic that is was given before a room full of entertainers, one of which was posturing with pointing to the brand on his shirt right before Jesse called out the culture of selling ourselves for brands when we prayed and worked for centuries to escape being branded.

“This award is not for me. This is for the real organizers across the country: the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. Right? It’s kind of basic mathematics. The more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize.”

“There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There’s no job we haven’t done. There’s no tax they haven’t levied against us. And we’ve paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here. You’re free – they keep telling us. But… she…she would have been alive had she not acted so… free. Freedom is always coming in the hereafter. But, you know what though? The hereafter is a hustle. We want it now.”

“The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job. Stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance… for our resistance, then you better have an establish record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for Black people, then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.”

“The thing is though, just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.”

~ Jesse Williams

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Paul Finkelman on 19th Century Slave Trade

Paul Finkelman on 19th Century Slave Trade 

April 21, 2012

Albany Law School professor Paul Finkelman spoke about the practice of kidnapping freemen from the North and sending them South during the 19th century. He also discussed the wide-spread practice of renting slaves and how this tied non-slave owners to the slave system. Paul Finkelman has taught classes and written about the slave trade for many years. This interview took place at the organization of American Historians meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Click here to view interview: http://www.c-span.org/video/?305668-1/paul-finkelman-19th-century-slave-trade

Source: http://www.c-span.org/video/?305668-1/paul-finkelman-19th-century-slave-trade

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Quote: Four hundred years of black blood and sweat invested here in America…

Yesterday I spoke in London, and both ways on the plane across the Atlantic i was studying a document about how the United Nations proposes to insure the human rights of the oppressed minorities of the world. The American black man is the world’s most shameful case of minority oppression. What makes the black man think of himself as only an internal United States issue is just a catch-phrase, two words, “civil rights.” How is the black man going to get “civil rights” before first he wins his human rights, and then start thinking of himself as part of one of the world’s great peoples, he will see he has a case for the United Nations.

I can’t think of a better case! Four hundred years of black blood and sweat invested here in America, and the white man still has the black man begging for what every immigrant fresh off the ship can take for granted the minute he walks down the gangplank.

~ Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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Quote: Justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other.

None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There’s no short cut. We don’t need more talk. ….

But, it would be a betrayal of everything Rev. Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do… to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudices that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change. That’s how we lose our way again. …

Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other.  That my liberty depends on you being free, too. That history can’t be a sword to justify injustice. Or a shield against progress. It must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. How to break the cycle. A roadway for a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind, but more importantly an open heart.

~ President Barack Obama, from Eulogy for Reverend and Senator Clementa Pinckney, Charleston, NC, June 26, 2015

Obama on justice


Read President Obama’s full remarks here:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/26/remarks-president-eulogy-honorable-reverend-clementa-pinckney