First off, I want to thank all of you for creating a safe-space that allowed such intimate, and enriching dialogue. I thought it was great how we were able to tie in the previous weeks into today's session. Based on today's session I noted similar themes for being silent, voiceless or even silencing: family and culture. Although there were many deeper reasons for choosing to be silent (fear, shame, heroism, survival, traumatized). There were some moments of the discussion that I feel I should reiterate:
- Sydney & Marina stating a different form of being silent is by moving away from "home". Although this may also be interpreted as leaving a message to family members and communities.
- Danyeli and Prof. Waterston questioning, "at what point does it become us silencing them? What is the line from conformity to silencing?"
- Prof. Rose addressing how to provide the most effective form of communication towards individuals with opposing views "Me speaking my truth has been more effective".
The topic of silence and voice also correlates with our job placements and the attitudes that we see once we are there of those individuals within the system. Therefore, I ask you all the following, at your placement, do you know the "stories" of the individuals in the program? If so are there common themes that cut across the stories? If you don't know their "stories", why don't you. I know that there is a mix between what kinds of client interaction there is within each agency. For those who do research I ask, how is the population discussed in the research being silenced? How has the research silenced that population?
*Also, if you are interested in viewing short clips of individuals who were silenced during their preteens, there are various videos on YouTube under
Mortified. These videos show adult individuals reading their middle school/ high school diaries in-front of a live audience. Here is a trailer of the short film that was produced of all the performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3DmdV9XByY
17 comments:
Hello Brenda !
I loved the class. I had so many epiphanies and it was very therapeutic.
I also appreciate how you tied your class back to our agencies. Since I deal with a lot domestic violence cases and crime victims, the major "silencer" is often the victims' spouse or partner. After years of abuse, they are often too scared to contact the police until they are forced into fighting back either when they get fed up or when they think about their kids. In various cases, the victim had children in the house or was pregnant while she was getting physically abused and it was the anger and fear of the possibility of the spouse hurting the children that makes the victim speak out. Family plays a big role as silencer and motivation to speak out. In these cases, often enough, family works as both, the oppressor and the liberator.
Also, another big "silencer" for the clients is the fear that they will be deported. I have seen cases where the abusive spouse forces the victim to stay in the cycle of abuse by threatening them to get them deported and stay with the kids. Since I work doing U-Visas application, all of my clients have reported the crime committed against them and are therefore in process of legalization. However, at the beginning it was very hard for me to deal with the pain and suffering my clients shared with me. I used-- and still do-- wonder what about the other clients that do not make it out in time? Those that are still in the cycle of abuse? Those that will not get out because they are too scared and ashamed? While I have learned to deal with these questions as I see more similar cases, these are both my motivation to speak out and my motivation to keep silence about the horrible things that these victims go through. I would not want to make anyone feel as though they ought to feel sorry for my survivors.
Dear All,
First of all, I would like to say thank you to Brenda for the class today. That was truly amazing to hear all of your stories. I should give a credit to Brenda that it is not easy to find the right approach to make people talk about their lives. At least, for me, it was a shock that I tried to speak up about my relationships with my mother. Usually, I have trouble to find words in my own language to talk about it. Even though, I do not feel like I revealed all of my feelings. However, that is not an issue any more. :)))))
Moving away from the narratives that were told in class, I would like to raise another issue that has not been raised in class. Silence can often be misquoted. For example, that girl who were forced to get married at the age of 9 is being silent. However, it does not mean that she agreed to accept her environment. Can you think about how often in our lives we have taken silence not in the way that it should be taken. Every day, we do receive messages on our phone. Sometimes, we are too busy to respond. However, we might think different things that are far away from reality. We might think that person does not want to talk. Maybe, someone is still thinking about the message and has not yet decided how to respond. There are a lot of examples in my life when people start fighting because of this silence and misunderstanding.
Silence is very powerful tool to manage people. How many of us did send the email to professor and never received feedback? What are we thinking? He/she does not care. He/she might be too busy. He/she did not get the message…… There are hundred of options. Therefore, my question is what are people on the street feel while their voices are not being heard. All these protests and demonstration is the expression of people’s voice. What do they think when they did not have a response? What if response is different from what they expected?
Research is a really big tool of silencing and speaking out. Coming back to my class, I can not forget when Michael German said that there is no discipline studying terrorism because people are always biased about it. Thinking about the ethics of research, I would say that we all come up with our research questions not for the sake of the science but in order to search answers for the questions that we want to get answered. For example, if I believe that Muslim Community is being stigmatized in the United States, how huge is the probability that I will try to prove that there is no stigmatization within this community. In my agency, I do research on prescription drug abuse. According to the data that I have gathered at this point, I can not really prove the statements that have been done in my literature review. My literature review says that there is a prescription drug epidemic in the United States. However, my research shows that only 0-10% of drug court program’s participants used prescription drugs as the drug of choice. Additionally, only 0-10% of people arrested in 2014 in 12 states that I am doing research on have the problems with prescription drug abuse. These facts let me to conclude that person who actually wrote this lit. review has different perspectives that I do have right now. Obviously, now I have to pick a side. So, every researcher has to pick a side. Neutrality is the main principle of research. However, the researcher always looks for data that proves his/her point of view.
Considering this, I would say that it is hard to rely on research while making particular solution to the problems because you have to make sure that they answer the question that people ask. Without getting a right reply, people might loose trust in society and get silenced. However, this silence would not bring to anything good at the end.
wow. Brenda inspired me to write an essay:)
First I would like to say thank you so much Brenda for a truly amazing class! It definitely felt more like a therapy session!
As for your question and your reference to Danyeli's comment in class, I think my placement works in two ways: to give defendants a voice as well as take that voice away. The whole point of the prearraignment interviews is to give the judge a better look at the person behind the crime. In a way, this interview gives the defendant a voice because it gives some information about the defendant's everyday life, giving the judge more than just a charge to look at.
However, the interview also silences some important aspects of the defendant's life. For example, many times when I ask a defendant if they have a job, they often give me two or three jobs they are working at currently. Unfortunately, there is only one slot for ONE job position and, therefore, if they are only working, say, 20 hours at that one job, I would have to put them down as a part time worker. They are not receiving all of the credit they deserve in the eyes of the judge even though they could be working three different jobs to support their family. The very specific questions asked by CJA seems to inadvertently silence the population it seeks to help.
Brenda your class was amazing!
I agree with Danyeli it inspired so many epiphanies. My understanding of the concept of "silence" was so limited, before last week. I had never thought in depth about who is silence and who is the silencer.
In the DD population, people are often silenced. Jobpath does a great job allowing their voices to me heard but in the process others are silenced. Many of the employees are discounted and silenced. From support workers to management,the non-profit style of the organization leads to many people being taken advantage of and discounted. Staff opinions are often voiced but rarely heard. Even when they are heard very little is done to resolve the issues.
Hello everybody,
I feel that every week we get to know each other a little bit better. This seminar is definitely a safe environment that is allowing us to grow academically and as individuals.
To answer Brenda’s question, I want to share the “silencers” at my placement. At CEO, we can find an endless amount of stories with many “silencers”. One of the biggest “silencers” for our participants is their criminal background. After coming out of jail, most participants feel they don’t have the qualification to apply for any job. In addition, the few ones you have a good amount of experience think that employers wouldn’t hire them because of their convictions.
From the administrative side, there are moments in which CEO silence and allow participants to have a voice. On one hand, Job Coaches recommend participants to get into a specific industry such as fast food instead of trying different industries before making a final decision. Although I understand the program doesn’t have all the resources and time to help participants explore all the careers and opportunities they may be interested in, I still believe there has to be a balance between what the participant may want and the opportunities the program can offer. On the other hand, Job Coaches also prepare participants to explain their convictions to employers in a smooth manner. This training our participants received allow them to advocate for themselves.
Brenda- Great class! I really enjoyed it!
In regards to CASES I think it is interesting because I haven't experienced much silencing of the participants. I have seen a lot of rewording and redirecting though.
My most shocking moment was hearing that Liz, my supervisor tells students who graduate his/her HSE (high school equivalency) from CASES not to state outright that it's from CASES. She'll shorten the name to Center for Education. It took me a moment but quickly I realized why (people at whatever organization could google CASES and then realize that the student might have a record) and now I do the same thing. I feel like things like that happen a ton of time.
I also had a bizarre moment after class with Arturo, Sidney, and Danyeli - once we walked out of class the film crew right away tried to shush us(or specifically me) and were really intense in making sure we stayed quiet.
I, of course, started doing the total opposite and actually got really upset because ironically we had just walked out of this class...
At URI I am constantly working with clients who have spent the better part of their adult life being silenced. A client once said to me, "I've been silenced so many times I have forgotten how to speak", and this is during a conversation in which I needed recognizably basic information to open a case for her status adjustment. The women I meet with have a hard time forming sentences, remembering things, and looking me in the eye. Something I've noticed recently is that this changes over time. There are several clients with whom I met with at the beginning of my internship in august and now I'm meeting with them again and they are totally different people. The way they sit when they talk to me is different, they smile and make eye contact, they are confident in their words-- its often like I'm meeting someone new. This speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the programs at URI,but has also been an amazing thing to witness.
Much of what I have to say about the silence my clients suffer is the same as Danyeli, as we do the same work. Everything about the life of someone who is being abuse involves being silenced in one way or another. Something that I did not expect is the way that the court system in New York (and in many states) also silences victims. Custody/visitation laws, child support, divorce court, all of these things are extremely biased in favor of the father. There is little to no understanding in the laws for survivors. I've often presented clients with their options and they've something to the effect of "So I guess the courts just want me to get back together with the abuser". It is impossible for women to flee and orders of protection do basically nothing. The women are not safe with the abusers if there are children involved and they are also not safe without the abuser.
Thank you all for your feedback. First off, I would like to go back to the point Marina raised. Silence is not only addressed through actually silence, but through body language, and with the evolving technology (emails, text). I am not going to lie I do not look at my phone often therefore it takes me FOREVER to respond to texts, so I hope it doesn't leave the wrong impressions.
Also what Bekah stated about one of the clients she assisted stating "I've been silenced so many times I have forgotten how to speak". That truly reminded me of the individuals at FedCap. Many of them want to just give up. They feel as though no one is on their side and the system is meant to oppress them. I will give an example of the transitions at FedCap
Many of the customers feel discourage because they have not obtained a High School Diploma and wanted to lie about it (some complained that FedCap should create a program). Fora a while I assisted on preparations for GRE exams. Ms. West heard of the request and the following week hired a full-time instructor. From one person speaking out this new program was established and everyday 20-30 students attend.
One voice can make a difference.
Thank you for a really memorable class Brenda. I am glad I walked away with something I had not given thought to before: that what we choose to say out loud is a comment on a deeper reality that might have gone unarticulated (and as you point out, there are endless reasons for that). It’s fascinating to think about what gets said, both in public and private, and the reasons for that.
At my internship with the Pathways Project, the population that the Project serves is incarcerated individuals who desire college education, and the research conducted for the Project features quite prominently the voices of these people. For instance, in RAND’s preliminary evaluation of the project, there was a section dedicated to feedback provided by the participants of Project (i.e. the inmates) whose voices were heard during focus group sessions that RAND organized.
What I’d like to draw attention to then, is the platforms that these stories are featured on. It is telling that such voices are heard only in research and professional publications that are read by people connected to the field of correctional education, and not the public. The reason that Pathways exists is a lack of public funding for in-prison college education, and the audience that most needs to the hear from those whose lives have been quite literally transformed by education, sadly do not. So another issue I believe is worth discussing, is who gets to hear these stories, and why that may be.
P.S. Random thought: I think it's cool that "listen" is an anagram for "silent", the two words complement each other like yin and yang.
Thank you for an exciting class, full of insightful discussions.
At my internship, My position has not allowed me to have direct contact with the our clients. However, from my observation, I can argue that at Common Justice one way that we give our clients the voice to express their stories is through the services that we provide. we believe that individual can be transformed if they receive the necessary assistance to help them in their moment of suffering. For instance, the harm parties a.k.a the victims, are given a case worker who sits with them and listen to their needs and direct them to organizations that will meet their needs more adequately. On the other hand, the responsible party, are also given a case coordinator, who prepares them for a dialogue with the harmed party. After the dialogue, we hold the responsible party accountable for their wrong deeds and we identify the needs of the harmed party in order to repair the damage.
Thank you, Brenda, for bringing to the class an important set of issues that get to the most intense level of the personal as well as to the larger forces that shape those personal experiences.
In what follows, I ask a series of questions to each of you in response to your post. I start with the last entry (Kevin) and work my way up....
Kevin: can you offer some reflection on why the process at the heart of Common Justice is important? Beyond helping the individuals involved, in what ways (if any) does such "voicing" and "listening" help society?
Gina: Your questions--and your observation that the word "listen" is an anagram for "anagram"--are terrific and thought provoking. I wonder who that audience is you say "most needs to hear from those whose lives have been quite literally transformed by education [but who] sadly do not." Who is this audience and why is it the one that most needs to hear these voices?
Bekah: I'm intrigued by your observation of the change in the women over time and your explanation for it. My question to you is: how do you know that their change is due to the program? And if it is due to the program, what PART or parts of the program? By what evidence do you make that claim? What might be some other factors that affect why these women have "found" or "recovered" their lost voice?
Monica: How is changing the name of CASES to Center for Education a form of silence, and it what ways, if any, does it ensure voice and prevent silence? It's interesting to hear about your sensitivities in the story about what happened when you left class. The context of your being "silenced" was of course that they were filming. Do you somehow feel you have more of a right to have "voice" in this space than they do? How do we negotiate shared space in a way that is mutually respectful and avoid hostility?
Arturo: your entry raises some interesting issues about how those who provide social services actually know what their clients may need, and how--under conditions of scarcity (of time, resources, etc) actual needs can be addressed? It's one thing to "voice" one's need and another to find ways to meet it. What do you think are some ways out of this dilemma?
Sydney: I wonder: can the silencer also be the silenced?
Lauren: your post is so interesting and so nuanced. You move out of the the silenced/silencer binary and or voice enabler/silencer binary and show the ways in which these can happen all at once. This is a fruitful way for us to think more deeply about the issue, I think. Also, how can the specific problem you describe be "fixed" or at least amended? Any ideas??
Marina: I am so glad to hear that the space and place of the seminar enabled you to give voice to things you otherwise may have kept "silent." I'm also glad the session inspired you to think about the multiple forms of and uses of silence. I think you could take your blog post and expand on the ideas (not for this class, but for some future project!). In terms of your point about how we interpret other people's "silence" when it comes to responding to emails, etc., I will say that as a professor, it is very frustrating to be met with "silence" when we reach out to students, esp. when, as in this class, the agreed upon norm is to check and respond to email every day.
Danyeli: It is clear that your personal experience enables you to understand and empathize with your clients, and that's wonderful. Do you think it's possible that you might ever over-identify with clients and therefore "silence" someone because of your assumptions about what they may be feeling?
To answer your question Professor Waterston: I think this issue could be amended by adding an "additional comments" section to the interview, enabling the interviewer to add additional information about the defendant that would otherwise be "silenced." The issue hear becomes the amount of time given to each interview. An interview that is usually 5-7 minutes could easily become 15 minutes with this additional section. Of course, there is always a give and take. I think some more time added to the interview is a small price to pay when we consider giving the judge a better look at the defendant's life.
n response to Professor Waterston's prompt, I had mistakenly assumed that the audience I was referring to would be apparent when I mentioned "public funding". Indeed, if the public gets to hear these stories, the tide of opinion might very well shift towards support for educating the incarcerated, but these narratives are denied the public stage they deserve.
Lauren it's interesting to think about who designs these forms and creates such restrictive categories that silence important aspects of a person's life. Just this morning I came across something in the literature for an project I'm working on, that reminded me of your post and our class in general:
"dominant cultures often silence or diminish the value of other groups' narratives, that is they disqualify other people's knowledge and limit what may be discussed publicly"
Fantastic blog everyone. Dr. W covered a lot in her response, so I'll speak to two points.
Danyeli wrote to a theme in our seminar introduced last year: ideal victim. We learned that the "charitable industrial complex" uses band aids to address insidious systemic problems. I also worked in domestic violence and was dumbstruck by the treatment of the women in a Chicago shelter where I was hired as a direct service provider, my first job out of college, at 21 yeas old. The shelter was in Lawndale, an all Black neighborhood. All of the upper administratiors were white and housed in a separate building than the shelter. All of the shelter low paid direct service workers were Black. You could only stay at the shelter for three months, six if you found a job or got into school. In order to be admitted into the shelter you had to have a police report to "prove" you were actually abused and not what they called a "shelter hopper," homeless. If you used substances even once, you were kicked out. The culture and attitude towards the women in the shelter was condescending and punitive.
Think about the layers of silencing in this one agency. How do our agencies perpetuate the cycle of oppression?
Marina, you discussed that the statistical findings from your lit review based on crime reporting show little evidence of prescription drug abuse. I agree that this is a fascinating example of silencing, but on a different level. I taught a drug policy course last semester. Our definition of "drug" varies based on who's doing the defining and their motivation.
Your research relays not what's actually happening but what's not happening. There are still limited policies in place to detect and prosecute prescription drug use by law enforcement of medical practitioners. Why do you think this is? Marijuana is still classified as a schedule 1 drug by the Drug Enforcement Administration. This means you are charged with a felony and given the longest possible jail sentence.
Now, look at the statistics of how many people die from overdose of prescription drugs. Compare it to the amount of people who OD from marijuana. Your research shows the glaring gaps, the silences in the substance use research.
These gaps, shown both in the criteria for getting services through our agencies and in our research are where we as social justice advocates can bring voice.
Behind the idea of helping the individual, common justice is also raising awareness over some issue that no one has really paid much attention over. We give voice to those who have been incarcerated for many years at Rikers awaiting trials. In addition to reforming the justice system, Common Justice has also played a major role in assisting young men of color to contributing to the social mainstream. And this has been done through job placement, education, healthcare and other social services.
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