The Half Message

By Joanne Greenberg

Care2 News Network

Many people who have been through strongly negative experiences will declare afterwards, that their sufferings gave meaning and richness to their lives. I’ve never heard these emotions expressed by people who have been in prison. Incarceration is an experience its designers made for the purpose of changing lives. Each country’s prison system mirrors its society’s values. We prize liberty – liberty is denied. We prize individuality – prisoners are given numbers for their names, dressed alike and regimented. What stops the prison experience from bringing meaning and thus growth to the experience is the huge inconsistency of the system, which was once planned to be strict but fair, and has ended up being capricious and undependable hour to hour. What is OK on Monday is forbidden on Tuesday. Where there is randomness, meaning shrinks and dies and so does learning. Lab animals are driven mad by random rewards and punishments; people fare hardly better.

Pg2a.org

I could imagine Deaf people doing well in a structured, consistent and fair situation. They follow a lifetime of watching the body language of the Hearing, which may be inconsistent with what the hearing person is saying. Unfortunately, the randomness of prison life has militated against guards or prisoners expressing outward emotion at all. Deaf people can read displeasure, fear or rage by closely watching the pupillary reaction of a subject, with this beyond conscious control. Staring however, which is what such monitoring takes, is liable to land the starer in the infirmary, or worse. In addition, body language can tell what – anger, fear, etc. but not why. The half-message  is often worse than none.

Joanne Greenberg was born in 1932, in Brooklyn, NY. She was educated at American University and received and honorary Doctorate from Gallaudet University – the world’s only college for the Deaf. She has written 2 books on the subject and has spent decades working with state mental hospitals for appropriate care for the mentally ill Deaf.

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Marsha Graham’s Presentation at the Symposium

By BitcoDavid

A particularly eerie image from the film Brazil. Credit, Filmicability

Marsha Graham, from AnotherBoomerBlog, has been a great supporter and an even greater asset to us, here at DeafInPrison.com. In her presentation at the Internationl Symposium on the Deaf and the Justice System, she drew a comparison between the Deaf and the insular Native American cultures she has also worked with, in Alaska.

She pointed out the similarities between the two cultures, stressing the linguistic and literacy limitations, making the point that if someone can’t understand what’s going on during a trial, they can’t be said to be competent in their own defense. She went on to stress the need for interpreters – or at the very least, some form of communication assistance – from the very first contact between law enforcement and members of the Deaf community.

Ms. Graham, also mentioned the case of Lashonn White, which we’ve covered, as well as the Felix Garcia Case. Ms. White, you may recall, was the woman who called the police after being attacked in her home. When the cruisers arrived, she ran out of her house, screaming and waving her arms – believing them to be her salvation. When she failed to stop her advance on the officers – unable to hear their commands to stop – they tased her multiple times, and put her in jail. She stayed there, unaware as to what was going on, for 4 days. Felix Garcia on the other hand is an individual whom we have been working – since our launch a year ago – to secure release for. Our contributor Pat Bliss, has been working directly with Felix on his case for many years prior to that.

The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marsha also gave DeafInPrison.com a little well needed shout-out, which we gratefully appreciate. She mentioned Pat Bliss and our publisher, Joanne Greenberg, by name.

She stressed the need for interpreters, emphasized the advantages of live interpreting over C.A.R.T. and spelled out examples of where the justice system failed to provide adequate services for the Deaf. She also spoke of her own deafness, and how that impacted her abilities as a trial lawyer when working in noisy courtrooms. She said that judges want to move cases along, and become annoyed when interpreters are late, or when seemingly competent defendants request them. I found myself reminded of that old song, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, “The judge said guilty in a make believe trial, Slapped the sherrif on the back with a smile and said Suppers waiting at home, and I gotta get to it.”

BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.

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Book Review of Outcasts and Angels: The New Anthologogy of Deaf Characters in Literature by Edna Edith Sayers, Galluadet University Press (2012).

By Jean F. Andrews

CHOICE is a publication which reviews books for academic settings. This book appeared in the April 2013 issue of CHOICE.

Outcasts and angels: the new anthology of deaf characters in literature, ed. by Edna Edith Sayers. Gallaudet, 2012. 361p bibl afp ISBN 9781563685392 pbk, $35.00; ISBN 9781563685408 e-book, $35.00

 

Explaining Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects for deaf and hearing impaired children through an interpreter. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fiction helps readers know and understand cultures other than their own in more empathetic and compassionate ways than informational nonfiction can’t accomplish. This anthology does just that. Edna Sayers (Professor of English at Gallaudet Univ.) gathered 32 short stories published from 1729 to 2009 that feature deaf characters. Through clever plotting and character creation, the authors of these stories reveal attitudes of hearing people toward sign language, the challenges and limitations of lip-reading, the difficulty of understanding deaf speech, and the infantilization of deaf people.

Edith Edna Sayers

Sayers notes that the only story in this anthology that advocates for signing is Joanne Greenberg‘s And Sarah Laughed. Sayers also offers writers a useful formula for what she calls a “nonexploitative treatment” of deaf characters in literature: there are at least two deaf characters in a story, these deaf characters converse with each other, and their topic of conversation is about something other than being deaf or the deaf community. This stimulating compilation of short stories with deaf characters will endear, enlighten, provoke, and amuse all readers. This book is highly recommended for undergraduates and graduate students; professionals; general readers.

Jean F. Andrews is a Reading Specialist and Professor of Deaf Studies/Deaf Education at Lamar University.

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Romancing the Wind

By Joanne Greenberg

Next time someone tells you to go fly a kite, show them this.

Ray Bethell is in his 80s, and Deaf. A Canadian, Ray comes to the Washington State Kite Festival every year. He flies 3 kites. Two with his hands and one attached to his waist. The audience signals their applause by waving their arms in the air. Please enjoy this man’s unique artwork.

Joanne Greenberg was born in 1932, in Brooklyn, NY. She was educated at American University and received and honorary Doctorate from Gallaudet University – the world’s only college for the Deaf. She has written 2 books on the subject and has spent decades working with state mental hospitals for appropriate care for the mentally ill Deaf.

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Your Money or Your Life

By Joanne Greenberg

http://oeom.org/activism/

Activism usually means my telling someone what to do for someone else, and it generally involves the transfer of money from one group to another.  The prison system here is fund-starved, but our idea, the one about grouping deaf prisoners together, isn’t costly at all.

Once deaf prisoners in a state system are brought together, all manner of help is available to them. Professional and volunteer attention is much more easily  enlisted for various kinds of help, at no cost to the facility.  Every State has an Association of the deaf. Every State has interest groups which can be enlisted in the work of communication and the improvement of conditions in the prisons.

http://www.deafwired.com/nyc/st-elizabeths-church-religious-education-programs-for-deaf-adults-august-5-19-2012/

There are prison writing groups and groups providing religious services and ceremonial items, books etc.   Deaf organizations find visits too difficult and time consuming when those being visited are scattered through the buildings in a facility, or in different prisons in the State.

As things stand now, deaf prisoners are not helped by programs made for hearing prisoners — writing programs, GED Etc. Housing deaf prisoners in one place costs no more and is of great benefit, even involving discipline and control.

Joanne Greenberg was born in 1932, in Brooklyn, NY. She was educated at American University and received and honorary Doctorate from Gallaudet University – the world’s only college for the Deaf. She has written 2 books on the subject and has spent decades working with state mental hospitals for appropriate care for the mentally ill Deaf.

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Promises Made, Promises Broken

By Joanne Greenberg

Part of the problem of Deaf low reading levels is due to insufficient education. Why should this be? The problem of low reading levels among the Deaf was supposed to have been solved 30 years ago, when mainstreaming was instituted to give Deaf kids an equal classroom experience, among their hearing neighbors at the local school. Why weren’t Deaf children, many of whom were supplied with interpreters, not following the trail of the “normal” kids in their classes?

Promises were made that couldn’t be kept.

http://www.acespace.org/blog/2012/01/climate-change-denial-hits-the-classroom/education-in-the-classroom/

For Deaf students with Deaf parents, the understructure of ordinary information was present. Most Deaf children have hearing – non-signing – parents. Even those who do sign are not as linguistically proficient as a bilingual family would normally be.

Schools don’t do remedial work during summers. They tend to pass low functioning students on, until they drop out of High school, unequipped, even for High school – and with Grade school reading levels.

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in special schools for the Deaf, bucking the trend of fake normalization. We are reinventing the wheel.

http://www.azantiqueshow.com/press_ruidoso.html

Joanne Greenberg was born in 1932, in Brooklyn, NY. She was educated at American University and received and honorary Doctorate from Gallaudet University – the world’s only college for the Deaf. She has written 2 books on the subject and has spent decades working with state mental hospitals for appropriate care for the mentally ill Deaf.

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2012 at DeafInPrison.com

By BitcoDavid

Although our brief hiatus for the holidays isn’t officially over until Wednesday, I wanted to get this post up before the end of the year. I would like to begin by wishing all our contributors, guest posters, readers and commentators the happiest of holidays. 2012 was a great year for us, and I truly hope that 2013 proves to be orders of magnitude better, not just for us, but for all of you – you who have made DeafInPrison.com possible.

DeafInPrison.com was founded in December of 2011 by our Publisher, Joanne Greenberg. It was at the behest of one of our contributors – Dr. McCay Vernon – after he was moved by the Felix Garcia story. I became Editor and Administrator in January of 2012. We spent about 2 months developing the format and launched on March 4th.

Solitary Confinement by Stan Moody
Image:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/12/03/18701671.php

During the past 9 months we’ve covered a number of subjects including Deaf culture, Deaf education, the School to Prison Pipeline, prison health care, the mentally ill in prison, prison rape and sexual abuse, overcrowding in our prisons and the War on Drugs.  We’ve managed to bring together some excellent minds as contributors and guest columnists, and enjoyed over 700 comments.

From a suicide awareness contest
Image:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/suicide/ShayySynthetic/SuicideAwarenessContest.jpg?o=3

We’ve peppered these great articles with some truly wonderful artwork. Artwork which – speaking as a content creator – is a source of pride for me. We’ve undergone a number of upgrades and format changes since our launch. First and foremost, our ability to embed videos. This feature allowed us to bring you the entire Felix Garcia Interview. And since we weren’t dependent on a hosting site, we could insert those videos fully captioned. I caption my videos manually. That guarantees an error free and accurate representation of what’s being said. Sadly, I have seen other captioned videos – those that rely on autocaptioning software – that look like the mess you get when you let your cell phone autocorrect your text messages.

Our ability to embed videos, in fact, was what gave Jim Ridgeway the confidence to allow us access to the Felix videos, in the first place. An action that resulted in my deepest gratitude and indebtedness to him. He was quite reticent to put these videos up on YouTube, where they would have been unprotected and vulnerable to abuse.

Felix and me 10/28/2012
Image Courtesy of Pat Bliss

And DeafinPrison.com has done a lot more for Felix’s all important cause, than simply putting up a few videos. Our contributor, Pat Bliss, has been working tirelessly – for several years now – to obtain Felix’s well deserved freedom. She visits him as often as possible, and corresponds with him constantly. (He calls her Mom.) She has become the go to expert on the case, and has written about it extensively on DeafInPrison.com.

We created a petition site at
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/453/783/026/felix-garcia-should-be-granted-a-full-pardon/
and we plan to deliver those signatures to the Governor and several cabinet members in Florida. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks, we haven’t been getting the attention to this petition that it requires. Felix’s clemency hearings are going on now . We need 700 more signatures before we can present this, and we want it to work in conjunction with the hearings.

Please! Please! If you haven’t signed this petition, do so now. And please share it to all your friends.

Felix has already served more time than many guilty people serve for similar crimes – and he’s innocent. He deserves justice.

juvenile girl in prison PBSNewsHour/YouTube Photo by Richard Ross

Other upgrades have included the ability to embed non-video media, such as PDFs and Excel files, and our awesome sidebars – another source of pride for me. Through our sidebars, we’ve been able to provide you with bleeding edge coverage of the latest posts by a host of Web sites and Blogs. Our sidebars are an ever expanding source of additional information and interactive content, and a good percentage of my work on the site is in maintaining and adding to them. I hope you find them useful and enjoyable, and moreover, I hope you will gain a greater appreciation for them as they grow.

We’ve also begun adding interactive tag links to all our stories, as well as related content links to the bottom of each post.

http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/prisoner,shackles/Interesting

During this first 9 months, we’ve made some wonderful contacts and partnerships. I would like to extend my gratitude to each of them, and extend the hand of friendship to all others who would like to be a part of the DeafInPrison.com experience. Here’s the honor roll:

Human’s in Shadow, National Assn. of the Deaf, Glenn Langohr, Jim Ridgeway, Mad Mike’s America, Charlie Swinbourne, Shanna Groves , PrisonMovement’s Weblog , Marsha Graham, DeafRead.com, CrimeDime, Talila Lewis and HEARD, Diane Lane Chambers, ImageWorksLLC, Maria Dollhopf, Cynthia Dixon, Prison Enquirer, Curi56 and Thousand Kites.

I hope I got everybody, but if I missed you, please accept my apology and feel free to backlink to yourself in a comment. A lot of you have multiple sites, and I, obviously can only create one link per name. You can also backlink to one of your other sites.

Randy Garber Blue Jay Blues. Image courtesy of Jean F. Andrews.

Now, on to the Stats:

We received 31,000 views in 2012. We created 240 posts and uploaded 493 pictures. Our busiest day was October 25th with 451 views. Our most popular piece that day was Angela McCaskill Speaks Out. That piece was our fourth most popular of all time, with the first three installments of the Felix Garcia Interviews edging it out for the #1,2 and 3 slots.

Our top 5 referrers were FaceBook, Networked Blogs, WordPress, Blog Catalog and DeafRead. We had views from 84 countries.  Our videos – 16 of them, altogether – received 1897 views. We got 778 comments.

I’ve been involved with the Blogosphere and Citizen Journalism since it first started back in the ’90s, and everybody has always told me it takes at least a year to get a site off the ground. Based on that, I have to say DeafInPrison.com is doing exceptionally well. I’m proud of our success, but I’m looking to 2013 to make this past year, pale by comparison. Remember, we’re only 9 months old. That’s still infancy – at least in dog-years.

Now, I don’t really get why somebody would want this painted over, but…

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/14/tribute-to-graffiti-50-beautiful-graffiti-artworks/

Here’s some of where I see us going. I could die and go to Heaven, if Felix got full clemency, and was finally released. Perhaps we could convince him to share some of his experiences with us, as a contributor or guest blogger. I want to see us at least double - if not triple our posting for this coming year. I also want to add more videos and more non-video embedded media. I want to see our side bars grow further, packed with more interactive attractions. I want more input from our existing contributors, and I would like to bring as many more on board, as possible. I also want to see more guest posts – and of course, I would love the opportunity to guest post on your blog. Shoot me a line or comment if you think that might be something you’d be interested in.

Again, thank you all for being a part of the DeafInPrison.com project and here’s to wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2013.

Visitors entrance to the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.

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November at DeafInPrison.com

By BitcoDavid

View this document on Scribd

BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.

Just thought I’d throw this in. The boards nowadays make this thing look like a table radio.

 

Update on the #JusticeForFelix Project

Update on the #JusticeForFelix Project

By BitcoDavid

Let me start with the petition site. We’re currently at 331 signatures, which is where we’ve been for a while now. We still need almost 700 before we can send the petition. But, there’s a silver lining. Our numbers on the page – signatures notwithstanding – are pretty good. We’ve had 389 FaceBook shares and 54 tweets. It has been shared 9 times on Google+ and once on StumbleUpon.

The Petition page has a Google ranking of 6, out of a possible 10. It’s been listed on Google 156,000 times, 91,900 times on Bing and 8,942 times on Alexa. according to Google it has received 149 backlinks. That means that 149 sites other than our own, have posted a link to the page. All things considered, these numbers are really pretty good, and they support the point that there is substantial interest in freeing this innocent man.

Image: Pat Bliss

I received this via e-mail from Pat Bliss.

Felix’s case is now in the hands of an experienced clemency attorney to take it before the Governor and has signed on to do it pro bono for Felix’s sake. However, there will be reasonable and necessary costs such as photocopies, postage,   public records requests and travel incurred. A trust account has been set up. If you would like to help in this last stretch   of Felix’s quest for freedom, please send a check or money order [mention Felix Garcia under memo] made out to: Reginald R. Garcia P.A., P.O. Box 11069, Tallahassee, FL 32302. Thank you!  Pat Bliss

I would like to thank our magnanimous publisher, Joanne Greenberg, for allowing us to post this. When she created this site, and contracted me to manage and edit it, she insisted that it remain non-commercial and that it never solicit funds. However, she understands the need to help Felix, and has asked me to assure that no funds received here will

Image: Pat Bliss

go to DeafInPrison.com. This is funding for Felix’s case, to cover expenses above and beyond fees for the attorneys – who have graciously offered to handle the case pro bono. So, I repeat. No money from this drive will go to DeafInPrison.com, BitcoDavid BlogSites, or any of our contributors. It all goes to Felix’s worthy cause.

It is our intention to submit the petition coinciding with the attorneys case. It will provide the body blow that will support the attorneys in their knock out punch. (Sorry – had to throw a little Boxing lingo in there.) If you can help financially, it will be greatly appreciated, but if you can’t please sign the petition – if you haven’t already – and share, share, share.

Thank you all, and Happy Thanksgiving!

BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.

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Deaf Males and Sex Crime

By Joanne Greenberg

Deaf men are overly represented in prison for the commission of sex crimes. They are therefore more often the targets of prison cruelty from guards and other prisoners. I think this is the result of a closed world of Deafness, itself. We know that sex offenders are more usually made than born, having been assaulted themselves, during childhood. Other, bigger kids, in residential schools for the Deaf, rape girls and boys, and they have to encounter their tormentors throughout the school year – and often through life. Bullies can act with impunity. Who would tell on them, when there is no safe haven or refuge?

http://www.michigan-sex-offense.com/sex-crime-appeals.html

One sex abuser I know is, himself Deaf, and has been a teacher at a school for the Deaf. He abused many of his students. When finally charged with a rape, he did everything he could to impede the authorities – demanding different interpreters and declaring that without an interpreter suitable to his needs, and a lawyer fluent in Sign – not only Signed English, but also demotic ASL – he was not receiving equal justice.

http://triad.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=11548

Many minority individuals distrust the law so much that they will endure almost anything before calling “outside” for help. It’s only when the Deaf offender leaves that world – and commits offenses in the hearing world – that the offense comes to the attention of the law. By then however, the offender has habits that are entrenched and chronic. It’s not only a lack of knowledge of Deaf language and psychology that keeps Deaf prisoners far longer than hearing ones in prison, it is also the chronic nature of their offenses which makes for far longer sentences.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=432065

Joanne Greenberg was born in 1932, in Brooklyn, NY. She was educated at American University and received and honorary Doctorate from Gallaudet University – the world’s only college for the Deaf. She has written 2 books on the subject and has spent decades working with state mental hospitals for appropriate care for the mentally ill Deaf.

 

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• Deaf voices are natural, so why are they still mocked? | Charlie Swinbourne (guardian.co.uk)
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Deaf Culture Behind Bars – the Book

Here’s the cover photo courtesy of
http://www.harriscomm.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=17570
, where you can also go to order it.

Well, since I spent all weekend fixing server disasters, only to discover that they weren’t fixed, I thought I’d talk about two archaic medieval commodities that you may remember – if you search the darkest recesses of your mind.

The U.S. Mail, and books. You remember books, right? They were like really long tweets only made out of paper.

So, today I received via the U.S. mail, a book. That’s right. The Pony Express rider brought a dead tree – right to my front door. After Jack scared him off, I was able to open the package and enjoy its contents.

The book is called Deaf Culture Behind Bars: Signs and Stories of a Texas Population. It is written by someone with whom we are quite familiar – thanks in no small part to our contributor Jean F. Andrews – Katrina R. Miller. The forward is by our own McCay Vernon. It was sent to me via this antiquated method, by Joanne Greenberg – our site’s owner and publisher.

You can order it from
http://www.harriscomm.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=17570

Now, having just received it today, I’m not really in a position to offer you a qualitative review, but having flipped through it, I find it to be informative, interactive and even somewhat humorous.

There’s a section where Dr. Andrews shows you all the signs you’d need to know, should you find yourself a guest of the state. For example, I now know the proper sign for Ad-seg.

I also found a section dealing with substance abuse amongst the Deaf. There are even a few first hand accounts of life behind bars as experienced by Deaf offenders.

Beautiful Daguerreotype of an old Pony Express rider. Image:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pony_express.jpg

All in all, I can’t wait to start devouring this book. I think it will help me as I write for you on this site, and it will contribute to my overall understanding of this complex and difficult subject.