STOP THE HATE, speak no violence

hey!
i saw jamillah moore today and she said that our meeting on friday will only be about the future of my "Equality Coalition " club.  she is not at liberty to discuss the complaints regarding student, professor or ASO harassment which are undergoing investigation.
i want to apologize to anyone who has looked at this blog.

as i walked across campus today i got tears in my eyes thinking about how much LACC means to me.
i have seen both sides of the academic spectrum in america.

as a poor scholarship kid at a really expensive school, i saw the excesses of the rich kid-frat lifestyle.

it really hurt to have no money for food or clothes and to be surrounded with insanely rich kids with big egos.

going to LACC is so drastically different.
i love the diversity in age groups.
i love the feeling that people who are here really want to be here.

we are making huge sacrifices to go to school.

i love to hear so many languages on campus.

i want to learn armenian, russian, hebrew, Filipino, korean.  i want more spanish.
i want arabic too!

i want it all!

i want to embrace the many cultures of LACC and make it a better safer place for all of us.

in a way, my own prejudices run high.
i really don't like a lot of things about american politics and culture.
i don't like the way women are shut out of the political process.
in norway the ministry of equality repaired the system with near 50-50 women and men in balance in government.
i think we could do this too, and i am excited that another woman may sit on the US Supreme court.

as i looked at the collegian today, i realized what a good job they are doing.
i loved the article about the polisci teacher who took inspiration from both malcolm x and MLK.
i felt so sad about the armenian genocide, and the murder of the autistic student by the LAPD in koreatown.

i completely love the fact that they are writing about the lack of healthy food on campus.
the styrofoam really bothers me.
we have to lose the styrofoam!!!
it's illegal in portland oregon!
it leaches into food and is really bad for the human health!

oh my gosh i am so excited about this company they profiled for healthy nutrition vending
http://www.healthyvending.com/
as a vegan on campus, the options are pretty non-existent.
potato chips and french fries from pure luck are well . . . pretty much fried potatoes.
and those have acrylamide, a carcinogen.

raw fruit or veggies would be so much nicer!!
thanks collegian for asking for organic food on campus.

i hope the collegian liked my "press kit" for all the materials i prepared in the last week regarding various acts of hate and intolerance on campus.  sexism is alive and well in some communities.  we can accept diversity without accepting an abridgment of our rights or dignity.

just because some of our professors come from a male-dominated culture which continually objectifies, ridicules, underpays, and ostracizes women, doesn't mean we should "accept" their attempts to inflict their cultural values on us.

in fact, the powerful will win!
and if we, as students take back our power to resist oppression, resist indoctrination, and resist a blind sheep-like attitude which some of our teachers try to cultivate---we might actually change the classroom dynamic to reflect a more modern viewpoint.

we are more collaborative, more consensus based.
i think young people are very fair.
we are very skeptical!
we don't accept authoritarianism well!
we want to participate and be heard and we don't want to disrespect each other, the earth . . .
human dignity should come first.
at the administration building today, i saw a great quote from mother theresa.
it said, "peace begins with a smile."

i want to offer this challenge to the ASO: stop the hate!
can we have peace on campus, knowing the ASO is using its power to victimize and humiliate fellow students!!!!??????????
my conscience will not allow me to witness this much brutality!!!!
that is why my letters and documents are going out to
the federal office of civil rights, sacramento community college association, the american bar association, the LA county bar association, the student press law center, the GLBT center's legal office, gene little diversity coordinator for LACCD, bet tzedek's holocaust survivor group, and then on campus: cristy passman, lawrence bradford, jamillah moore, joyce moore, and the collegian.

please do not use the word "NAZI" in ASO documents!!!  i cannot believe that ASO is so callous!!!!

my roommate just moved out after saying something anti-semitic.
he said, i'm sorry i didn't know you were jewish.
i lost a best friend over that.
i told her she could not say anti-semitic things around me.
another friend and i never saw each other again after a day in which he tried to explain to me his stereotype of "african'american english."

i told him he seemed to be making such a crass generalization, and that after growing up in the south, i could attest to the fact of so many educated eloquent persons of color in many fields.
i spent a semester at the historically black Tennessee State University.   it was amazing.  that the schools were historically segregated!!!  and that the residual racism in the south is high!!!  and going to TSU was so empowering!!!!  there were so many incredibly focussed academically motivated people going to school there!

i am really sorry too that the learning resource center has been robbed.
i am really sorry that the ASO has been circulating sheila dharod's personal address and telephone number as a part of their defamation campaign.
they didn't even have the insight to black it out!

sheila dharod actually helped me for my anthropology project one day as we discussed the many religions of india.  one of our classmates came from an islamic family.  sheila explained that in india the many religions can co-exist.  she said she had family members that came from the jain tradition.

i really like jainism.  gandhi's mother was jain.  jains beieve in non-violence (ahimsa) as their highest principle.

the typical hierarchy of violence

1. physical--the obvious---punch, kill, maim, etc
2. verbal--speaking violent words
3. thought---imagining violence, or wishing harm upon someone

is actually a FALSE HIERARCHY!!!
in jain thought--to think violence is as powerful as to physically hurt someone, to verbally attack their character is also the same as to think of hurting someone.

i found this little bit of wisdom in 2003 in a yoga magazine.  it really helped me a lot.
so ahimsa--or nonviolence---must be integrated into the speech and the mind.

when the ASO launches a personal attack and says a lot of mean unsubstantiated things about sheila, they are really unleashing a tyrrany of violence, which is impacting all of us.

my compassion has allowed me to feel this in my heart!!

i realized one day, what is going on?
am i trying to turn LACC into some spiritual utopia, where no one says anything rude or unkind?
am i trying to turn it into a mystical vaguely buddhist monastery or something?
as in, am i trying to enforce my cultural ideals on the community???

is there some truth though to the concept of charity, kindness?
my father said, "never say an unkind word."
if you know me or hang out with me, you know that i do not like backbiting, cursing, sexist words, racism.

i wish people would have a more jainistic understanding of language.  that the language they use can do real physical harm to the people they inflict it upon.

so all the hatefulness i witnessed at ASO and recorded for youtube just eats my soul.

my teacher brian bartelt, the day of his outburst, was discussing something from his brilliant thesis paper. he references the crystalline structure of water as it can be altered by sound, an idea popular in many meditational practices.
http://spiritofmaat.com/archive/aug1/consciouswater.html
and with that as premise, if our bodies are water, and sound and thought can change the structure of water, isn't that all the more reason not to abuse each other with words of hate and disrespect.
that my class could vear from so much brilliance to so much banality in a matter of minutes astounded me.
i have really held bartelt to task for some fine-tuning.
he has a clean web trail.  i resisted looking him up for weeks, because i resent the invasions of the facebook culture.  all i found was this.
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/usctheses-m220.html
i read it twice and a half.
i would set my text to speech to read it to me so i could really learn it.  it's brilliant.  in a way, i still have hope.  i tend to avoid truly hopeless causes.  that i ask bartelt to be more respectful, is because i have faith that it is in the range of possibility.  i hope he is smart enough to see now, why it is important.  i am sorry his verbal excesses have made it into this blog.
there is a sad weird thing about internet speech.
i have been reading about it here http://www.splc.org/
as a purveyor of the open data ethos and un-intellectual property spirit, i am all for sharing, republication, no rights reserved, replication, copy, alter, remix, distort.
share freely and realize property is an illusion!!!!!!
maybe i should make an LACC rap?
i feel like some of ye olde professors don't know much about the internet.
i think some great entrepreneurs will come up with a YELP for schools, which is better than ratemyprofessors.com, and more comprehensive.
wouldn't that be great???

so when teachers try to get away with crazy stuff in class they really should be prepared to see it go up on to the blogosphere immediately!!!!

and same for fellow students who can't keep there hatefulness to the privacy of their minds, but for some reason, want to spew it all over us like vomit.
ASO, stop the hate!!!

hmmm.
and what is the fine line between peacefulness in speech and satygraha, truth action?
i can't stand by and see so much violence at LACC.  it is liek a microcosm of all the worst in humankind, being enacted upon us.
how can i demand justice and peacefulness and move into the future?
how can i forget what i have seen???

if teachers and students continue to be so abusive to each other, i think we will need a better counseling department.

it seems strange to me that people can be so cruel to each other on campus especially in light of alll the columbines and the recent yale murder.

schools can be dangerous places!
please don't contribute to violence.
realize your harassment can induce depression, appetite loss, addictions, even suicide, murder.
don't hurt us with your words.

do not contribute to the suffering which might induce catastrophe!

and if anybody on the campus has violent tendencies, do not push them over the edge with racism, sexism, and other intolerances!
this is dangerous!
teachers!!!!
students!!!!

please!!!!!
STOP THE HATE

LACC stay positive.
the crushed budget has been really hard on us this year.
i am so sorry the summer session is canceled too!