protest
13 October 2006If you’re a deafie in any way connected to Gallaudet and have a sidekick and/or internet access, you already know all about the arrests going on tonight at Gallaudet.
To say that it is an unfocused mess is perhaps too succinct. But I think that it is safe to say that there are not going to be any winners here. There is not a unity of purpose here, a clarity of vision, of voice, like there was in DPN. It seems sad that even now people are asking, what is this protest about?
Please don’t try to tell me this protest is some noble thing, a desire to address oppression. I was there at Gallaudet all last year. I worked in the same workplace as some of the early FSSA leaders, and I know. The uprising came the moment Fernandes was announced as the ninth president and not before.
My friend David has come up with a well thought through analysis of the players in whole situation here.
DeafDC has been a great source of information lately, including the posts Fictitious Protest for Fictitious Reasons and Worlds Apart.
To say that the deaf community’s sidekicks are blazing and blogs everywhere are going back and forth on this issue is to put it mildly. We are all affected by this.
I would like to say that, no matter what side we are on, I pray for the safety of everyone physically involved on the Gallaudet campus’s protests, particiularly those who are being arrested, and hope that, somehow, there can be some kind of peaceful resolution.
I don’t see how, but I still hope.
I’m a deafie and profoundly glad to not be at Gally. I am deeply saddened by the actions by these people over the past few days.
I am proud of how the Gally adminstration has conducted themselves and been so very patient with the students. Knowing all too well the harsh consequences of the outside world once the arrest is on a record, IKJ and JF were infinitely patient with these students. Unfortunately, infinite cannot go on as it is true, learning must continue for these who want to teach and learn.
Big chunks of money were paid for these classes that were disrupted so “dramaqueenly” and for what? For something that none of the students and faculty members protesting can even articulate?
If I had been there in person, I would be standing on IKJ and JF’s side, telling the protesters to shut up and go home to their rooms. To read up on DPN. To UNDERSTAND what the whole point of DPN was. To understand why DPN was effective and why this eh, so-called protest is not.
Jane Fernandes is going to be the next president. Simple as that. I see no proof anywhere why she should not be one. These so-called letters on the blogs could have been faked, could have been written by anyone. Anonymous is not proof enough. There were plenty of time for people to submit complaints against JF beforehand, long long before her name came up as a possible candiate as a possible future Gally president. This, right here, tells me that the whining about her being a horrible, awful, whatnot is bollocks.
She is deaf. She is fluent in ASL. She is a woman. She meets all the awesome minority quotas. Except for race. So we’ll meet that in the 10th Prez, if the right candiate has all the qualifications and isn’t white. Heck, in 5 years, maybe there’ll be no more whites. Or we’ll be all hybrids – half human-Vulcans.
Who the fuck cares what we are!?! Deaf or hearing, it should not even matter, either.
All that matters should be if we can do the job, and Jane Fernandes is obviously capable of it, and well capable from what I see.
You, the protesters, are hypocrites. If you want future bosses to choose you for a job, you had better hope the boss is going to choose you based on qualifications, not whether you’re hearing or deaf. Or whether you can talk or not. That’s the way of today’s world, still – even if ADA says nope.
And here’s the REALITY of what’s going on.
Thanks to PlutoGirl for that link – it was really helpful to me!