I Stand in Solidarity with the California Inmates who are Starving for Human Rights

On July 8th, California Prisoners began an indefinite hunger strike for basic human rights such as sunlight and human contact.  They have asked for our support. I am here to say, I stand in solidarity with the prisoners fighting for human rights.

I would like you to read the following passage from our declaration of independence. Truly read it.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;

Our founders felt it as their duty as moral men to care for their fellow man, and that when government became so overbearing and grotesque that it endangers the livelihood of its citizens, it is the citizen's responsibility and moral obligation to take a stand.  Who are we if we do not stand for the weakest among us? for those who do not have a voice?

Just as in the writings of Martin Niemoller many can argue, that "Hey! I didn't mess up, I'm not in jail, why should I care?" You should care because these are human beings. If you want to fine a person then fine them, if they are sentenced to the death penalty, then give them the death penalty, if they are to serve 5 years then let them serve five years, but you don't lock a human being in solitary confinement for more than 20 years. No human is meant to endure torture or cruel and unusual punishment.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

So Please, I ask of you, help us be a voice for the voiceless. If you would like to help these prisoners stand with us on saturday as we take a stand with these prisoners for basic human rights.  If you would like to help, Here are a few ways.

The 400 prisoners have just 5 demands:
1) End long-term confinement 
2) End group punishment & administrative abuse 
3) Abolish the debriefing policy & modify gang status criteria 
4) Provide adequate and nutritious food
5) Create & expand constructive programming While hungry, there's plenty to do besides eat. 
1) Call Governor Jerry Brown at (916) 445-2841 to let him know why you are participating.
2) Call your state representatives to let them know why you are participating and that you just called the Governor. http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/  
3) Call up an old friend, preferably living in California, and let them know why this is important to you. Also ask if they wish to fast with you for the rest of the day. For more information: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/california-prison-hunger-strike-inmate
4) JOIN THE FACEBOOK EVENT https://www.facebook.com/events/196927767149865/?notif_t=plan_edited

For more inspiration and ideas, watch the video at the top of this blog! 

Let Your Light Shine

 In life, many of us live afraid of a physical death, or of something "bad" happening to us. We live afraid of persecution, afraid of death, afraid of outside circumstances hindering us, or of robbers or murderers. Yet, these are not the threats we should most fear, we should fear as Victor Hugo once said, what hinders the soul, whatever it is, whatever leaves us disempowered from standing for our beliefs and letting our glorious God given light shine. I would like to throw the following quote by Martin Luther King out there. 

 

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.” 

- Marin Luther King Jr. 

 

I wanted to share this as a reminder to all, the true tragedy, the true horror, is not the persecution that comes with standing for who you are, but allowing that fear to paralyze you. The true tragedy is not in the death of the living, but the living of the already dead.

Good Read on Why Anti- Authoritarians are diagnosed as Mentally ill

This was an amazing article by Bruce Levine, if you have some time it is definitely worth the time for a read.  These issues have absolutely become relevent in my life, and others I know who think for themselves and refuse to view the government or other worldly authorities as God.

Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

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Bruce Levine, Ph.D.

February 26, 2012

(Note: Read Bruce Levine’s latest post: Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?
In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.
Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that authority—sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes wisely and sometimes not.
Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities.
Why Mental Health Professionals Diagnose Anti-Authoritarians with Mental Illness
Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world—a diagnosable one.
I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.
In graduate school, I discovered that all it took to be labeled as having “issues with authority” was to not kiss up to a director of clinical training whose personality was a combination of Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, and Howard Cosell. When I was told by some faculty that I had “issues with authority,” I had mixed feelings about being so labeled. On the one hand, I found it quite amusing, because among the working-class kids whom I had grown up with, I was considered relatively compliant with authorities. After all, I had done my homework, studied, and received good grades. However, while my new “issues with authority” label made me grin because I was now being seen as a “bad boy,” it also very much concerned me about just what kind of a profession that I had entered. Specifically, if somebody such as myself was being labeled with “issues with authority,” what were they calling the kids I grew up with who paid attention to many things that they cared about but didn’t care enough about school to comply there? Well, the answer soon became clear.
Mental Illness Diagnoses for Anti-Authoritarians
A 2009 Psychiatric Times article titled “ADHD & ODD: Confronting the Challenges of Disruptive Behavior” reports that “disruptive disorders,” which include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and opposition defiant disorder (ODD), are the most common mental health problem of children and teenagers. ADHD is defined by poor attention and distractibility, poor self-control and impulsivity, and hyperactivity. ODD is defined as a “a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior without the more serious violations of the basic rights of others that are seen in conduct disorder”; and ODD symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”
Psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading authorities on ADHD, says that those afflicted with ADHD have deficits in what he calls “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of established authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. ODD young people, according to mainstream mental health authorities, also have these so-called deficits in rule-governed behavior, and so it is extremely common for young people to have a “duel diagnosis” of AHDH and ODD.
Do we really want to diagnose and medicate everyone with “deficits in rule-governed behavior”?
Albert Einstein, as a youth, would have likely received an ADHD diagnosis, and maybe an ODD one as well. Albert didn’t pay attention to his teachers, failed his college entrance examinations twice, and had difficulty holding jobs. However, Einstein biographer Ronald Clark (Einstein: The Life and Times) asserts that Albert’s problems did not stem from attention deficits but rather from his hatred of authoritarian, Prussian discipline in his schools. Einstein said, “The teachers in the elementary school appeared to me like sergeants and in the Gymnasium the teachers were like lieutenants.” At age 13, Einstein read Kant’s difficult Critique of Pure Reason—because Albert was interested in it. Clark also tells us Einstein refused to prepare himself for his college admissions as a rebellion against his father’s “unbearable” path of a “practical profession.” After he did enter college, one professor told Einstein, “You have one fault; one can’t tell you anything.” The very characteristics of Einstein that upset authorities so much were exactly the ones that allowed him to excel.
By today’s standards, Saul Alinsky, the legendary organizer and author of Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, would have certainly been diagnosed with one or more disruptive disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, “I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass.’ Then I would stomp all over it.” Alinsky also recalls a time when he was ten or eleven and his rabbi was tutoring him in Hebrew:

One particular day I read three pages in a row without any errors in pronunciation, and suddenly a penny fell onto the Bible . . . Then the next day the rabbi turned up and he told me to start reading. And I wouldn’t; I just sat there in silence, refusing to read. He asked me why I was so quiet, and I said, “This time it’s a nickel or nothing.” He threw back his arm and slammed me across the room.

Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized; but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will cause them existential death.
I have also spent a great deal of time with people who had at one time in their lives had thoughts and behavior that were so bizarre that they were extremely frightening for their families and even themselves; they were diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses, but have fully recovered and have been, for many years, leading productive lives. Among this population, I have not met one person whom I would not consider a major anti-authoritarian. Once recovered, they have learned to channel their anti-authoritarianism into more constructive political ends, including reforming mental health treatment.
Many anti-authoritarians who earlier in their lives were diagnosed with mental illness tell me that once they were labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis, they got caught in a dilemma. Authoritarians, by definition, demand unquestioning obedience, and so any resistance to their diagnosis and treatment created enormous anxiety for authoritarian mental health professionals; and professionals, feeling out of control, labeled them “noncompliant with treatment,” increased the severity of their diagnosis, and jacked up their medications. This was enraging for these anti-authoritarians, sometimes so much so that they reacted in ways that made them appear even more frightening to their families.
There are anti-authoritarians who use psychiatric drugs to help them function, but they often reject psychiatric authorities’ explanations for why they have difficulty functioning. So, for example, they may take Adderall (an amphetamine prescribed for ADHD), but they know that their attentional problem is not a result of a biochemical brain imbalance but rather caused by a boring job. And similarly, many anti-authoritarians in highly stressful environments will occasionally take prescribed benzodiazepines such as Xanax even though they believe it would be safer to occasionally use marijuana but can’t because of drug testing on their job
It has been my experience that many anti-authoritarians labeled with psychiatric diagnoses usually don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities.
Maintaining the Societal Status Quo
Americans have been increasingly socialized to equate inattention, anger, anxiety, and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and to seek medical treatment rather than political remedies. What better way to maintain the status quo than to view inattention, anger, anxiety, and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than normal reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society.
The reality is that depression is highly associated with societal and financial pains. One is much more likely to be depressed if one is unemployed, underemployed, on public assistance, or in debt (for documentation, see “400% Rise in Anti-Depressant Pill Use”). And ADHD labeled kids do pay attention when they are getting paid, or when an activity is novel, interests them, or is chosen by them (documented in my book Commonsense Rebellion).
In an earlier dark age, authoritarian monarchies partnered with authoritarian religious institutions. When the world exited from this dark age and entered the Enlightenment, there was a burst of energy. Much of this revitalization had to do with risking skepticism about authoritarian and corrupt institutions and regaining confidence in one’s own mind. We are now in another dark age, only the institutions have changed. Americans desperately need anti-authoritarians to question, challenge, and resist new illegitimate authorities and regain confidence in their own common sense.
In every generation there will be authoritarians and anti-authoritarians. While it is unusual in American history for anti-authoritarians to take the kind of effective action that inspires others to successfully revolt, every once in a while a Tom Paine, Crazy Horse, or Malcolm X come along. So authoritarians financially marginalize those who buck the system, they criminalize anti-authoritarianism, they psychopathologize anti-authoritarians, and they market drugs for their “cure.”
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6 Hard Truths

Oh my... I so SO wish everyone in the world was forced to read this article. It very clearly outlines the difference between winners and losers. I wish more people would quit bitching about how "life is so unfair" and actually do something with their lives. Get inspired :)

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

Vote Nobody 2012

On this election day in 2012 I will be voting for nobody. The picture below quite eloquently explains my reasons why:

It is rather insulting that our established government acts as though it is giving us a choice by choosing between mass murderers A and B. Yes, I personally believe Mitt Romney would be the lesser of two evils, however since when is "less evil" good enough? Have our standards gotten that low? Ron Paul was the only even remotely legitimate candidate running for office, and we shouldn't settle for anything less. Lets let the system know we will vote for principle by voting for no one at all. So long as we are willing to accept evil nothing will ever change.

Both candidates support indefinite detention, both support their own forms of socialism and obamacare, both support the patriot act, both perpetuate war, both have supported the killing of innocent human life through the process of abortion, and its time we say enough is enough, given the choice between two evil men IS NO CHOICE AT ALL. Let us not play along and act as though we believe it is.

Scarlett's "Alice in Wonderland Teaparty" baby shower: Beautiful baby girl is almost here

My cousin Kelly and I at my baby shower. I am almost 8 months pregnant here!

This past weekend was Scarlett's baby shower! It was hosted by one of my best friends since high school who was absolutely the most magnificent hostess anyone could imagine. Basically all I did was make the invitations and think up the theme and she ran with everything else. There was not a detail Dawn overlooked. It just goes to show how very thoughtful and brilliant she is! It could not have been better and I am so thankful to have such a creative and generous person in my life. She is one of the most selfless people I have ever known and I am so thankful to her for making this day so special. I do have pictures from the event some are blurry and i will add the rest to this blog once my grandmother develops them. In the meantime these blurry photos will have to do.

These are the invitations I made, the theme was "Alice in Wonderland" teaparty. Guests were encouraged to come in dresses, hats, gloves and other "teaparty" attire.

The cute greeting table

guests were to sign the book when they walked in what a cute idea!

The cute "clothes pin game" guests were to take a clothes pin and if they said "baby" the person next to them is able to take their pin, the person at the end of the shower with the most pins wins!

Me all dressed up and ready for the shower

Cute pic of my mom and dear friend Lindsey

Don't worry it is only a candy bar! Dawn thought up a game where melted candy bars are put into diapers. Then the diapers are passed around for people to guess what kind of candy bar is in each diaper. The person who guesses all the candy bars correctly wins! ( Haley was taking a bite of the "doodoo" in order to help her figure out what kind of candy bar it was LOL.)

My mom and my sister Haley

hanging out with my grandad at my family's house after my shower "Thats a baby!" cutest grandad ever.

Couple update pics on the pregnancy...entering the 8th month!

6 months Pregnant!

Believe it or not I have entered my 6th month of pregnancy. It doesn't even sound real to say. I have been swamped, with church, and taking intensive spanish courses (I want Scarlett to be multilingual, so trying to become fluent in spanish within the next year or two so we can teach it to her) but now that I finally have a day off, I can catch up on my blogging.

Ok, first trimester (january - March) was HORRIBLE. I had always heard women talk about "morning sickness" and when I found out I was pregnant in January, I just figured, it would be a little nausea, but no big deal. But month 1 through month 3 (ALL of January, February, and March) I literally could barely move. I was vomiting anywhere from 2 to 8 times a day, every. single. day. I could barely get out of bed to do even the most basic of things like clean the house, take a shower, or cook a meal. Even the smallest of tasks took a herculean effort. Some women say they dont get morning sickness at all and I suppose that every woman is different but for me, I can say I was probably much worse off than most.

2nd trimester bliss (months 4, 5, and 6!) (April - June!)
The doctors told me that once I hit my second trimester, my nausea and fatigue should subside, and boy were they right. It came almost as a miracle, literally overnight I felt great.  Since the end of March I have literally only thrown up once.... I went from vomiting 5 times a day to feeling absolutely fantastic! I had no idea what to do with this new found energy. I took a quick trip to Dallas to show off my belly to friends and family, then the second I returned to Arizona  I enrolled in very intensive spanish courses so as to be able to teach my daughter multiple languages. The doctors told me exercise was imperative to ensure a speedy deliver with fewer complications, So i joined the local walking club and do several miles with them every week. and i recently signed up to work in the church nursery so that I can get used to working around children before Scarlett gets here. Also I have had a blast decorating the house and planning for the baby shower. It is sooooo fun planning for a girl. I have so many ideas for her room. This is the mural I am currently painting on her wall except instead of disney princesses I am going to be painting my own characters, and I am painting a night sky above her crib.

Not to mention, this was the trimester I began to show. and it was so much fun. It is really nice because you finally go from looking as though you might be pregnant, to definately looking pregnant, and people are so nice to me. Everywhere I go people open doors, greet me, ask me how the pregnancy is going. Its so fun to share such a special experience with the world. Also other moms have been really helpful, at work and school other moms are there giving me a plethora of tips and tricks about pregnancy, childcare, and birth. People let me cut in lines, offer me free food at restaurants, and I have even had strangers offer to buy my lunch! Who knew pregnancy had so many perks? lol.

This is me Pre-Pregnancy, weighing in at about 110

Definately got a baby bump at 3.5 months

4 months pregnant, at about 120 at this point.

5 months pregnant

6 months pregnant. Weighing in at a whopping 126!

Well, thats about it for now.  hope everyone has a great week!