Can questions lead to empowerment?

In class we discussed how the "banking method" prevented individuals from developing a critical consciousness. It would be difficult to become critical thinkers if we are used to accepting ideas without questioning their validity. The danger of the "banking method," I believe, is that it slowly crushes our inquisitive and curious spirits by not promoting their development. Questioning things, concepts, and life, implies that something could have been done differently. Changing that something could have brought about a different reality, whether good or bad is irrelevant, but simply knowing that our actions could have affected this world is empowering.

Freire's problem-posing method aim is to empower individuals. Empowerment is the ability to understand how we relate to the world. Learning that our actions affect the world, and that the structure of society also affects us is empowering because we understand that people make history. I think that for some people it is easy to understand their relationship with the world, but we should be aware that there are many who cannot do this as easily.

At the shelter, I met a woman who felt shame for staying in an abusive relationship. She believed she was very weak, and dumb for not noticing the early warning signs of abuse. At the end of the conversation I always repeat the story back to the clients to make sure I got everything right. Without noticing, I emphasized a bit more on the economic, and social factors that contributed to her decision about staying with batterer. It was still the same story, but this time I saw her face change. For a minute, she understood as she heard her own story that there were many outside factors that contributed to her decisions. I believe she felt relieved to understand that she was not weak nor dumb and the image of herself improved. I realized that my view of her change as well. I understood her position more and began to realized that under the same circumstances I may have suffered the same consequences.

I told you guys this story to show that many of our clients do not realize how our social circumstances affect our everyday life. Now I want to learn about your own views of empowerment. Is it your goal to empower your clients? Also, will a better understanding of our clients' position in the world allow us to see eye to eye more? Do you even want to have an eye to eye relationship with clients?

Vaughn and Amanda's Post: Structural Violence

Our last seminar raised a lot of interesting questions on sensitive subjects; paramount among the many were our discussions on the concept of violence as a hereditary trait. The word violence is sometimes used “subjectively” if you’d like. However assuming we all agree that structural violence is a valid concept, and structural violence is defined as a systematic way in which society, government, and institutions deny people from opportunities or basic needs by placing barriers on them, and structural violence is indeed a type of violence, would this make it hereditary in the eyes those following this new school of thought that seems to predominate the social sciences? It is easy as cake to point to brainwaves and say, these ten people have similar patterns, these ten people have a particular genetic alteration, and these ten people are imprisoned for the same violent crime. Assuming that’s somewhat how it goes, do we say these government officials and institutions are filled with people that have a genetic defect which makes them more prone to inflicting evil upon our nations poor, or do we say these people are all a part of a collective environment that induce these practices. No, wait a minute, I’ve narrowed the scope. Maybe the conclusion that needs to be drawn is there is something in the biological make up of some people in American society on a whole. After all we do have the highest incarceration rate per capita? What is wrong with those Americans? The world says forget about the violence being done to women and people in our countries, land of the free. Amanda what do you think?

Violence, where does it come from? Is it hereditary or is it our environment? We always try to find the causes of an issue, like that of violence. Then we knit together our findings to a set definition and place it under a category and pat ourselves on the back for finding the cause. But we our not solving the issue, we are just reporting our findings. I think we should not look for the causes, but try to understand the situation itself and analyze it. What we need to examine are these narratives that we our comparing and if they hold the same values, rights, and views. Is there a such thing as Universal Human Rights, without going in and destroying another nations culture? As Professor Waterston said, Traditions/Culture is not static it changes over time, but is it the right of another nation to bring about that change or does this seem like the Whiteman’s burden? And another thing, we accept the violence in Usha’s case because it was the only way to stop this man. But why is it that when we look at our own society, where a women has been battered and kills their abuser, why is it that they are not seen as their own savior in their story? We can point out the problems of these countries, but heaven forbid we see the log of a splinter in our own eye. So is structural violence something that is universally experienced?

After defining structural violence as placing barriers on people and denying them their basic needs, it is apparent that this theme is found in all three narratives (Willie, Usha, and Molly). In Willie’s narrative, society and his family brought him up to be tough, but no one was there to really be his support system or to guide him to the correct path. I like to believe that our families help support our success and our education supplies opportunities. But if the way we function is to have a vicious circle of abuse and lack of care from the educational system, can we really be surprised when our youth becomes confused and violent. I understand that it all comes down to the individual and how they react to a situation, like the a saying goes it’s not the things that happen to you that count but how you reacted that matters. It is just a complicated mess of how we our mentally to deal with a situation and how society allows us to deal. In the case of female circumcision I believe that it is most definitely a form of structural violence. You can say that it is a tradition, but I firmly believe that is a tradition to oppress women. It is a tradition that markets a women’s value to that of a piece of prized virgin property for a husband. Maybe it my inner feminist that comes out, but it really grinds my gears to be told to be tolerant towards a tradition that masks this form of structural violence as cultural. I believe that if they have to correct support system and our educated on the health risks then they can make their own rational decision, which we saw in Molly’s story that a portion of women stopped this act. So in trying together the two stories we see that the home can allow structural violence and the government places it within our institutions

Adding Women and Stirring

Women have been striving for equal treatment for a long time and in some ways, women are receiving equal treatment in the criminal justice system--to their detriment. The criminal justice system seems ill-equipped to deal with women and the issues that concern them. Women are still seen as "other" or "abnormal" in the criminal justice system. To deal with females who have offended, policies and programs used for men are being applied to women without recognizing that women have different needs and concerns. And to deal with the claims that women receive beneficial treatment, gender-neutral policies are being applied, which ironically are putting a lot of women into prison. Although it may be that women are sentenced to prison less frequently than men, more female offenders are likely to be incarcerated now than at any other time in U.S. history. When it comes to issues of female offenses, gender-neutral merely means that models used for men are being applied to women without any gender sensitivity. These policies fail to look at the reality of women's lives or the contexts in which women offend. For example, if we look at issues of domestic violence, we find that often now both women and men are arrested when a call is made to the police. Although there are many reasons this policy was put into effect, in a way it is punishing women who are victims of violence. Also, when battered women kill, often times they are convicted of the crime and sentenced to many years in prison, despite the stereotype that many of these women are acquitted. One of the reasons for this is because of the lack of awareness about battered women and a lack of gender sensitivity in the criminal justice system. Compared to the understanding of male offenses and reasons for offending, there is an immense lack of understanding about female offending. Beliefs such as the women should have just left, or that women are just as violent as men, or that the women on trial should fit the stereotype of a "real battered woman" are harmful misconceptions that jurors, lawyers, and judges often hold.
Some people argue that although gender neutral policies may hurt women in the short run, in the long run, it is the only way that women will be treated equally in economic and social fields.Others argue that using a male standard to apply to both males and females does not mean equal treatment and that rather than gender-neutral policies, gender-sensitive policies must be implemented.
Should justice be gender blind?

Experiments in Blogging

Hello Verons,

Below, you'll find an "embedded" pdf of the murder case on which The Postman Always Rings Twice was based. I can't figure out how to link to a pdf, only how to embed one, so it is below for your reading pleasure. You can e-mail it to yourself for reading on your computer. This is NOT Neethu's blog, so stay tuned for that.

Professor Reitz

Murder case behind POSTMAN

"Postman" murder case

budget season

Had a wonderful time with y'all last week. Thanks for inviting me.

Since then, my journey from the warm, safe environment of the classroom led to an afternoon finishing up our plan for advocacy day in Albany on March 18th and trying to work out how the most recent havoc in the statehouse might impact our budget. Meanwhile, there are applications to make to city council for discretionary funds, grants to write, relationships to build and maintain, a press release i'm burning to get out, and Oh Dear, an event to plan.

I think here, in my 30s, is where i've really started to think about work as a career, and mostly the reasons have to do with personality (never was a careerist); but a contributing factor is the reality of this planet-like-in-size world of human services spanning issues of hunger, poverty, mental illness, the real estate market, policy, press, building maintenance, and government, to name a few. The emotional and intellectual investment goes waaaay beyond my days at Mitsubishi EDM where i took a beginning level engineering class to learn to work an EDM machine (metal cutting) or the days off-Broadway working until close to midnight at least a third of the year. There is no One Thing we're selling here. It is not a machine. It is not a play. We can't measure our success in dollars. Well, we could, but it would go against our mission and the natures of the people i work with.

But what we can do is experience true emotion from our work, sometimes sadness, sometimes joy. And i really get into that. That's not to say that NYC theatre artists don't experience it or machine tool engineer manufacturers don't (they do!), but this is a career all about people -not machines, not art. This is the work that in their twilight year retirees are referring to when they say, I'd like to volunteer somewhere and help people, or disillusioned lawyers up-and-quit their job and join the Peace Corp to be a part of. It's hard, but i like it.

Hope this bit of confessionalism isn't too off-topic for the blog. Thanks if you read this far.

On the question of illegals in supportive housing - sometimes, illegals do end up in supportive housing, which means they cannot get benefits to pay for their rent and the company housing them would either eat the cost or evict them. I would think that a company whose mission is to house the homeless would have a difficult time doing the latter.