Risk and Death

One year ago today, I lost my cousin to leukemia. In less than three months, my little sister will be shipped back to Iraq for her fourth tour of duty. Last spring, I lost a friend and mentor, Mona Harris, to cancer. My little brother recently returned from Afghanistan, and with that war showing no signs of ending, it is almost a surety that he will also be sent back into harms way.

I am sick and tired of death and the risk of death.

At the age of 32, I should rarely have to think of death. If I do, it should come in the form of elders that have lived long and fulfilled lives, individuals that die surrounded by the people that love them knowing that they are loved.

How fucking naive is that statement.

Unfortunately, I know that because I am not white and most of the people around me are not white, they will die younger than they should. I know because I have had one family member die from cancer that now it is more likely that others will also pass along.

And then there is war.

When a country enters into a war it enters into a compact with death. It promises to the Reaper the certainty of soul collection in order to achieve some goal. Some wars are fought because they must be fought. Though the impetus for the United States to enter the Second World War had little to do with justice and everything to do with empire, entering World War II was just. Hitler was an evil man with evil ambitions that caused great and destructive harm.

No war since then that has been fought by the United States has been right or just, they have simply been the United States trying to protect or enforce a particular corporatized political ideology or protect our own selfish and self-destructive political and economic interests.

The rest of the world and the families that sacrifice their children on the altar of false patriotism be damned.

The death of my cousin and Mrs. Harris and the risk of death of my little brother and sister are connected.

We spend BILLIONS of dollars each month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Forget Korea, forget Vietnam, forget the silent invasions of Grenada, Panama, Somalia and the first Gulf War. Just calculate the amount of money that we have spent in the last six years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now imagine if even ten percent of that money had been spent on cancer research and treatment.

My cousin almost survived leukemia.

He had an experimental bone marrow transplant, and for months the doctors at the University of Illinois-Chicago were calling him the miracle guy. Except the cancer came back and took him down quickly.

Afterwards they examined the data and thought perhaps they had done the transplant to soon, too quickly, they hadn't given his own immune system enough time to resist the cancerous blood cells. What if they had been granted a billion dollars to do their research? One billion dollars is LESS than we spend on war in one month. YET imagine what it would mean to research labs across the country. A year ago, perhaps the researchers would have known what they WILL know five years from now. If only they had the staff, equipment, lab space, and materials to move forward. If ONLY Bush hadn't restricted stem cell research during his eight years in office. If only we cared more about preserving life than we did about preserving the bottom line of corporations and shareholder profits.

If only.

But we don't. Instead, I am sitting here nearly a year after my cousin's death. I am remembering that I couldn't afford to fly from California to Minnesota to be with my family. To this day the guilt of that sits in my stomach. I saw my Aunt in June for the first time since my cousins death. All I could think of was that I was my cousin's closest family member outside of his Mom, Dad, and two brothers. I WAS the cousin that made sure to see him when he was in the hospital. I was the cousin that his wife loved. I was the cousin that went to see him when he got back from Korea. I was his friend.

And there is a good chance that if we spent more on life than on death that he would still be alive today, and I would still get to see him at family reunions and on holidays. I would have gotten to be at his wedding, and I would, perhaps, be with him right now.

Instead I am wondering how his nephew, the son of his twin brother, will ever know how amazing his uncle was. Instead, I wonder if my Aunty Susie, a woman that treated me like one of her own children, a woman that I love and look up to, a woman that understood me when I didn't really understand myself...I wonder if she will ever be the same aunty that I have known and loved my entire life.

And all because of a stupid disease that we could cure, except that we are too busy spending our money on war. And I am too busy worrying if I am going to lose my brother and sister too soon as well.

Breaking News: PTSD Tragedy in Iraq

I have written in the past about my personal struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I never fought in a war, lived in a town that was being shelled by Israel, or sat in a cafe when a suicide bomber blew out the front door. I grew up from a very young age (roughly 3 or 4) until age 13 with a very verbally and mentally abusive home environment. Though the circumstances that created the mental illness in me called PTSD are wildly different than the causes of PTSD in refugees and soldiers returning from war...the result is much the same: anxiety, depression, programmed reactions, hyperactive fight or flight instincts, and a host of secondary mental illness (that can include addiction and any number of other mental health coping mechanisms). .

Like many people who suffer from PTSD, I was initially misdiagnosed, put on the wrong pills, and continued suffering from, what was then, an undiagnosed affliction. Thankfully, five years ago, I was diagnosed correctly, given the right medicine (don't be surprised when one of my kids has the middle name Zoloft), and found a life where PTSD plays a very very very minor roll.

I wish the same could be said for the poor, tragic man that opened fire in a Camp Liberty stress clinic today and killed five of his comrades in arms.

While at the gym today, I was watching CNN, and I heard the breaking news that a solider had killed five and wounded several others. The soldier was most likely seeking help from the stress clinic. Unfortunately, help did not arrive in time. These are the stories of war that we hear too little about...the impact on the soldiers...the way that the hearts and minds of thousands and thousands are ripped apart by what they are forced to see, feel, and do.

Tomorrow, there will be people who are calling for this soldier's head. There will be some few that will advocate that he receive help. Others will simply boil it down to him pulling a trigger and the rest is filler.

I have a sister I love with all my heart and a brother who makes me so very proud.
This sister has served three tours of duty in Iraq, and this brother has served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. My little brother, who is just 21 years old, has seen and done things in this life that I can not imagine. For a time, every blog entry on his Myspace page was dedicated to a friend that had been killed in the war. My sister, who enlisted before the war started in order to pay for college, is a brilliant and beautiful woman who once wrote to me telling me about a bomb exploding near where she was sleeping. She was, at the time, also about 21.

When the story broke on CNN today, I didn't see a nameless/faceless soldier. I saw Shannon. I saw Julius. I saw my cousin Vincent. I saw my ex-boyfriend and friend Rada. I saw people that I know and love and who, except for by the grace of God, were not the solider that opened fire today. But they could have been. How easily they could have been.

Right now, I am torn between tears and ridiculous anger. George Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals. They fabricated a cause for war and have sent hundreds of thousands into battle. They have the blood of tens of thousands on their hands. They have the weight of hundreds of thousands of wounded and damaged bodies and souls and minds on their hands. And though the justice of the land seems to be unable to reach either of them, the justice of God is waiting, and I can only pray that he shows them some of the mercy that they refused to show the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the young men and women that they sent face their deaths, fears, and nightmares.

It is Bush's fault that this young man walked into a clinic today and pulled the trigger. The solider who opened fire should be taken into care not custody. He should be give the time, space, and quiet to heal and to face the crushing guilt that will come down on him when the full realization of what he has done hits him. He has created a jail cell around his heart and mind as a way to survive what he has already survived. He does not deserve a jail cell around his body.

It should be Dick Cheney and George W. Bush that face courts martial, and George W. Bush, the man who surpervised the most executions of any governor in modern history (and perhaps in the history of the United States) should reap what he has sown. God can be merciful, today, I can not.

My heart and sympathy goes out to the families of those slain today. The blood of your children was shed today, and it never needed to happen. It is time that this nation wake up and understand that mental illness is REAL; it is as real as a broken arm or cancer or any other physical ailment. It is time that we pass health care reform that forces parity between mental illness and phyiscal illness. It is time that we END THIS SENSELESS war. How many more soliders, civilians, militants, HUMAN BEINGS have to die before it ends? How much blood must the beast have before it is sated? How much blood has to be spilled before we, the people of the United States, demand an end. The blood is on our hands as well, and it will take a generation to wash it away.

(Here is a link to an article posted on yahoo regarding today's events in Baghdad)

It's Not About Ugly Betty: The DTV Transition and Why It Matters

On May 3, 1963 the North was stunned as it saw broadcast images of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor,turning fire hoses, dogs, cattle prods, and billy clubs on peaceful black protesters that had organized a campaign targeting the local business community. The response was immediate and profound. The public outcry forced President Kennedy to send a negotiator to the city. By May 10 the campaign was ended, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had won, and television was catapulted into the national arena as a tool for social change.

Over the next decade, images of violence from the Civil Rights movement and from the Vietnam War entered U.S. homes on the evening news. For the first time in U.S. history, people far removed from the realities of the South and urban black communities, people that could not find Vietnam on a map, found themselves staring at images of violence, death, destruction, segregation and apartheid. And the nation was moved. A national consciousness, begun by community organizers working in the streets and fields, was broadened and deepened by the family television set.

The right to information is a fundamental human right. More than 80% of American households still receive the majority of their news and the issues that impact them through their local television broadcasts. Anything that threatens easy and bountiful access to timely and accurate news and information has very real impacts on the lives of American people. The Digital Television Transition, ill conceived and corporate focused, is poised to strip millions of Americans of their ability to receive the information they need to make decisions about their lives.

Although Congress passed legislation changing the digital television transition date from February 17th to June 12th, 491 stations are choosing to switch early. Combined with those stations that have already made the transition, there will be more than 700 television stations broadcasting in digital after February 17th. And yet, at least 21 million households are either completely unready or will have significant problems when the switch happens. Indeed, already, the DTV Assistance Centers created by the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) in partnership with the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, have received hundreds of phone calls from families that are experiencing major difficulties, and some, after having followed the esoteric instructions for connecting the DTV converter boxes, are finding that they are still left with black screens despite their best effort and the promises of a smooth transition.

Fundamentally, the digital transition was ill conceived. From its inception it was focused on corporate media giants. Scarce resources were allocated for the transition, and poor outreach was done to ensure that those most impacted by the transition--people of color, low income communities, people with disabilities, and the elderly--were prepared for the switch. The federal coupon program ran out of funds more than two months before the switch. National retailers, looking to profit from the underfunded federally mandated switch, refused to carry the $40 converter boxes, creating an undue economic burden during a time of economic crisis. And local community organizations, already cash strapped and overworked, were left to pick up the pieces and develop solutions to problems created by Congress.

And, unfortunately, the public discussions about the switch have either been complaints with few solutions or have dismissed the switch as unimportant in the context of the current state of the U.S.A. From the left and the right, people have exclaimed that “TV is not a right!” And they are absolutely correct. TV is not a right. This transition is not about ensuring that folks get their Ugly Betty fix. This is about the fundamental human right to information and the the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that right is protected for the least as well as the privileged. And this right is directly tied to economic and racial justice.

When a transition occurs or a decision is made, and those impacted or left behind are people of color and working class people, it is clear that there are race and class implications to the decision. As we move forward with rebuilding our economy, those that have ready access to the most current information will be those that succeed in getting newly created jobs and finding new opportunities to support their families. When millions of low income people and people of color are locked out of the information system, they , too, are locked out of economic opportunities. As we continue with massive corporate consolidation, radio stations run remotely, and disappearing newspapers, television will continue to maintain its hegemonic place as the common green.

But it is not too late to close the gaps in this transition. There are solutions. MAG-Net is launching a national Socially Just and Responsible Transition campaign. The campaign is targeting electronics retailers with the aim of having the major national chains in multiple metropolitan and rural communities commit to providing a $40 converter box with analog pass through capability and closed captioning. Each retailer will receive a certification that they have taken the Socially Just and Responsible Pledge and will receive a designation indicting such.

Congress has included funds in the economic stimulus package geared at making sure that the coupon program is sufficiently funded. In addition, Congress must also provide significant funds to support the grassroots organizations across the country that are providing direct assistance to their communities to ensure that the 16.5% of Latinos that are currently unready in Phoenix and the 13% of the households in Albuquerque are prepared for June 12th.

Further, Congress should work with the FCC to create impact guidelines for future major shifts in communications policy. President Obama is committed to building a broad band infrastructure, the digital switch is opening analog spaces for public consumption, a battle is being waged over free speech rights on the internet with regards to content, “net neutrality,” and as new media and communications systems are developed new communications policies will be developed. The FCC and Congress should create guidelines focused on the racial and economic justice issues of major transitions. Questions should be asked, in advance, that will ensure that low income communities, people of color, immigrants, elders, and people with disabilities are not left scrambling to catch up. And resources should be allocated to ensure that government and community partnerships are able to make sure that America and not just corporate America is ready for these changes.

We now have the opportunity to rectify one of George Bush’s many mistakes. The work is happening on the ground, in San Antonio, Oakland, Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, Minneapolis, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Community organizations are stepping up to and doing work that they can ill afford to do. As we make our break with the corporate values of the Bush administration and re-center the value of the people in the national consciousness, we must act proactively, with vision, and use this transition to lay the ground work for future communications policy that works for the people instead of including the people as an afterthought. The air waves are a public trust. And the public should be able to trust that they will have their full use by June 12, 2009.