prosody context(e's List: asking about trauma

• Sexual  and physical abuse are just the tip of the abuse  iceberg. The bulk of the abuse in the  "developed" countries in the world today is  emotional abuse. --Steve Hein

   

   

• Emotional Justice was created by Esther Armah. It is a multi media, multi platform arts and conversation project that tackles the role of emotionality in our lives and relationships, then creates a process and a practice to navigate emotionality and transform trauma into triumph. 

• called a contusion (medical term)

• speaks to a larger issue that requires careful consideration. The law’s failure to grapple with the cumulative impact of domestic violence on a survivor’s sense of fear and notion of threat is one such issue. In examining only a single moment, the law fails again and again to navigate the world of a domestic violence survivor. In that sense, Alexander’s individual case is symptomatic of a larger cultural issue: our flourishing economy of violence that is sustained by emotional terrorism—its primary weapons being silence, blame and shame.
• Alexander’s case speaks to a larger issue that requires careful consideration. The law’s failure to grapple with the cumulative impact of domestic violence on a survivor’s sense of fear and notion of threat is one such issue. In examining only a single moment, the law fails again and again to navigate the world of a domestic violence survivor. In that sense, Alexander’s individual case is symptomatic of a larger cultural issue: our flourishing economy of violence that is sustained by emotional terrorism—its primary weapons being silence, blame and shame.
• Gray’s statement supports the statistical evidence that domestic violence is rarely a one-time thing and that violence almost always escalates.
• We almost always ask the victim, why didn’t you just leave? Our economy of violence has an emotional currency: a specific and deadly structure of weapons routinely aimed at women revolving around the tropes of responsibility, silence, judgment, blame and shame.
• Again, as women are so often held responsible for the domestic violence they suffer, they are also often charged with resolving that violent situation. If they don’t, they are blamed. If they survive the violence, they are judged. If they find a way to continue, their trauma is dismissed, negated or trivialized. We routinely excuse and exclude men from being active participants in the domestic violence resolution process. These are the politics of emotionality that shape our intimate relationship with violence.
• deadly force

• What qualifies a judge to measure actions taken from a space of trauma? The judge’s remarks reflect the consistent failure to recognize a crucial element within an economy of violence: the cumulative impact of escalating domestic violence on the abused and the legacy of multiple traumas.

  The law ignores such histories, and instead, chooses to spotlight single moments.
• In a 1991 survey of 223 appellate cases of homicide convictions of battered women in California, Holly Maguigan found that judges implement their bias through the exclusion of battered woman’s evidence, denial of self-defense instructions, and/or the repudiation of instructions to the jury on the relevance of that evidence. Their decisions to disregard the failure of law enforcement as well as issues of duress, violence or threat virtually guarantee conviction of battered women defendants. That’s what happened in Alexander’s case in Florida—the judge failed to properly instruct the jury regarding what is needed in self-defense cases.
• calls to revise stand-your-ground laws, including serial action by the “Dream Defenders.” Each action must be actively supported.
• bigger questions about our economy of violence and the ways it is protected, sanctioned and sustained by the law—and our politics of emotionality—that need to be addressed. We say in cases like Alexander’s that evidence alone is what counts, with no space for emotion. But the facts around domestic violence are supported by myriad studies. Those facts consistently reflect that violence is rarely a single act, it escalates, and too often it ends in homicide. Despite that evidence, that set of established facts, a woman’s accusation of feeling threatened, and in fear of losing her life when she chooses to defend her body from a man with a history of domestic violence, is routinely ignored or dismissed. The question of race combined with gender means black women are especially susceptible to being dismissed and denied justice in courtrooms that become a cauldron of discriminatory practice and where humanity becomes some elusive thing, somehow not applicable to black women.
• She is a woman, a mother, a human being. Her case has made national headlines. She has become the face of our flourishing economy of violence. On March 31, 2014, a new trial for Alexander is scheduled to begin. Marissa Alexander could become every woman who has ever faced escalating threat and violence at the hands of her partner and chose to take action in defense of her body and her life. She can be the face of an economy of violence in revolt, shutting down, standing up. Marissa Alexander could be the face of something radical and revolutionary—a legal system looking at a black woman whose actions were backed by a body of evidence and seeing her emotionality and humanity.

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• inadvertently tying yourself to her will.  This may have even resulted in being labeled

• “pries into families’ privacy,” and families may be reluctant to reveal information that might put them in a negative light.

• Psych Crimes and Crisis Unit was Dr. Daniella Ridley's initiative. She helped design the unit with Inspector Caligra

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  Obtaining Evidence

     

       

   

     

  Taking Care of Evidence

       

   

     

  Showing Evidence

       

   

     

  Watching Out for Yourself

       

   

     

  Inspiration

• "evolving states of consciousness become increasingly structuralized, beginning as conscious attempt at mastery and gradually becoming internalized into a fixed mental structures (altar personalities) that function with increasing independence" (Adams, 1994).
• term "dissociation" arose from the understanding that "memories are brought to consciousness by way of association of ideas" (Braun, 1988).
• People who have outside support to help them cope with trauma are less likely to experience dissociation. In fact, most well-supported adults and children can face extremely traumatic events without developing dissociative defenses (Sikes, 1998).
• "The existence within the individual of two or more distinct personality states, each of which is dominant at a particular time; the personality state that is dominant has executive control over the individual's behavior; and each personality state is complex and integrated with its own unique behavior patterns and social relationships" (Braun, 1988).

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• wrestle with the blank page monster (or blank wordpress text box)
• Writing is like a detoxification.

• The play is also known for its twist ending, which the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal after leaving the theatre.

• pedosadist propagandists

• Free will does not exist, there is always coercion. Representative democracy, NGOs which divide people into groups competing for advocacy, sensational corporate media and protected online thought bubbles create myopic societies with no empathy for those outside. Societies formed in these thought bubbles will always be challenged and perceive themselves as persecuted when they attempt to enter wider society. Censorship which prevents all voices from being heard is a tyranny of the majority or the powerful. Amplification controlled by corporate media and celebrity is governance by oligarchy.

   

  The only way we will attain self-governance by auto-coercion is through free and open forums where every person is allowed to speak and the crowd chooses both who to amplify and what actions to shun.