BRsq (June 2009-present)
Be Respectful, Be Respected (BRsq) is a young people’s media project based in Canton, Ohio. The concept behind BRsq is that young people’s unique viewpoints are often overlooked because of a perceived lack of life experience or lack of formal education. In reality, young people have strong ideas, just no place to express them. BRsq’s commentary section was created to meet their needs.
I am the commentary adviser, and I also contribute articles.
The hard truth
Find the original article: http://brsq.org/article.php?r=298
5/18/10
I spent much of the last week coming to terms with a harsh reality – the reality that being a minority, people hate me and because of my minority status, I am less empowered to combat that hatred.
“Hey, wheelchair guy-” said this short, pudgy man in a mocking voice as I made my way out of the lobby of my building. “All we need is another wheelchair guy.” I’m the second non-geriatric “wheelchair guy” in my building.
I ignored the comment and continued to the store, thinking how incredibly confused this guy was. But I kept thinking about it.
And slowly, I decoded the message. He was calling me a cripple and implying that my moving into the building was a detriment to the other tenants. He was saying, “There goes the neighborhood.”
I had been laughing the comment off until then. “What an idiot!” I was repeating to myself. But then it kind of became un-funny.
Then I remembered one of my other run-ins with this jerk. Within the first couple weeks of moving here in February, I rode the elevator with this guy, a few of his pals, and my neighbor down the hall. The guy and his friends were playing with darts (just darts, no dart board), and for some reason were playing with them in the elevator.
While I was nervous just that these guys were screwing around with darts in a confined space, I became more nervous when the short, pudgy one said something about making me more disabled. After I got out of the elevator, I just shook it off, told myself those guys were awful and forgot about it.
I think minorities are often conditioned by society to think that reporting serious incidents like this is over-reacting. Well, that’s not that bad, we tell ourselves. Worse has happened. Maybe I’ll report it next time.
Next time came in that lobby last week, but soon after I realized this guy really hated me in a potentially dangerous way, I also realized why I neglect to report most harassment. The process of reporting it is in itself dehumanizing and invalidating.
I decided my first action against this harassment would be to talk to the management of my building. Consistent with my luck, the full-time building manager was on vacation for the week.
No one was in the management office, so I waited in the lobby a couple minutes to see if anyone would show up. A maintenance person whom I’d made friends with came by, and I told him what happened.
As I was telling him, the fill-in manager showed up. After I wrapped up my story, the maintenance person told me to wait there, and he walked 15 feet across the lobby to tell the fill-in manager my problem – and he got a couple details wrong.
They talked for a few minutes like I wasn’t there, and I heard every word. Then, the maintenance person came back to tell me what the manager said. Basically, the fill-in manager was hard and unsympathetic to my story. He said he wouldn’t do anything and I should file a police report.
So, because I wanted something on file in case the situation escalated, I called the cops that afternoon. And I waited. Over an hour later, the officer assigned to take my report said that his shift was ending and that I should have my building manager – not me – call back the next day.
My situation just wasn’t important enough, apparently.
At this point, the only people supporting me and telling me I was doing the right thing were my friends. The people with the power to help me didn’t seem to give a damn.
The next day, I called the cops again to file a report. Again, it took over an hour for them to respond. But two patrolmen showed up eventually, took my complaint, then, oozing machismo, one of them said my harasser would be sorry for targeting me.
I didn’t know what that meant, but I was hardly reassured. He seemed less interested in protecting me as a person especially vulnerable to attack and more interested in confronting the guy for picking on someone in a wheelchair.
Nonetheless I have a record of the incident. I really hope I don’t need it, but I have taken the first step to get federal hate-crime protection. The Obama administration expanded the 1968 hate crime bill last year to cover disabled people. In the FBI’s most recent report on hate crimes, police nationwide reported over 7,600 incidents, one percent of which involved disability.
My maintenance person friend said the guy was on his last warning from the building management before I complained. So maybe he’ll be evicted.
Either way, I’m no longer comfortable in my building, and I think few people understand, care to understand or care to care about empowering and supporting minorities, particularly disabled people. There are a few people, though, and those are the people I need to live around.
Giving voice
Find the original article: http://www.brsq.org/mission.php
Years of experience are not a requirement to form an opinion about foreign policy, homeland security or myriad other issues that affect young people today. What we do need are the confidence to say our piece, a forum to do so and facts to support our positions.
Fresh out of high school, I began writing guest columns for the Canton Repository, but I’m odd. The lack of young people who write formal opinion pieces is disheartening. The media seem to have no faith in a person’s opinion until half his hair is gone.
Young people have great ideas – the buds of future progress. To give just one example: Benjamin Franklin was 16 when he wrote his first column for the New England Courant. His articles, published under the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood explored granting women access to public education and the ideals of the First Amendment – some 50 years before independence.
But frankly, young Franklin’s writing doesn’t have a lot of punch. It doesn’t have the power of a revolutionary. It lacks the stick-it-where-the-crown-don’t-shine spirit. Also missing in Franklin’s columns are facts, facts we often have at our fingertips today via the Internet. Granted, appeals to emotion and reason are types of arguments that do not require cold facts or statistics. But facts, like grammar and vocabulary, are the opinion writer’s tools. They help us make our point.
In Franklin’s piece about allowing the poor to go to college, having the stats about college attendance in the colonies certainly would have made the issue more tangible. (In 1790, one in 4,000 people was enrolled in college.) I know we can outdo the young Ben Franklin as a commentary writer, and my hope for this section of BRsq is to outdo today’s media in giving young people a voice. Crusty old white men like George Will and Paul Krugman are fixtures in opinion writing. But their light bulbs won’t glow forever. We need fresh ideas and new faces. We need people who are trying to find a way to pay for college during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; people who are growing up in the age of terrorism and trying to define it; people who know what post-industrialism is, even if they don’t know exactly what the word means.
This is who we are. We are young and bold and finding our ways in life. Many of us have the fire and punch of the older, revolutionary Franklin but few outlets. We want to improve our communities. We want to promote our values, varied as they may be. We seek ways to add our own perspectives to national and global debates.
Our opinions grow ever more important as we become adults, and should not be dismissed. “You’re too young to understand” is a cop-out of someone who just isn’t explaining the topic well enough or wants to avoid it altogether. We can understand as well as anyone, given the opportunity. We should demand the opportunity to understand the world around us. After all, we are the ones to inherit today’s messes and protect today’s blessings. We need to understand what we’re getting ourselves into.
A call to pens
Find the original article: http://www.brsq.org/article.php?r=108
As a disabled man, my experiences have differed significantly from those of many other college students. Simply ordering a pizza is a chore because of my speech impediment, and getting to class in a finicky, old wheelchair is a hassle. This is how I live, though, and it has shaped the way I see the world.
Indeed, all of us who pay any attention to our surroundings have discovered something novel about being part of our community. Yet, when I challenge folks to share their experiences in writing, their instinctive reaction is often hesitation, procrastination and simply ignoring what they know.
Putting one’s beliefs into words makes him or her accountable for those beliefs, and putting them into writing creates a tangible record for others to read and debate. Hesitation is a reasonable reaction.
Does this idea say something about me I don’t want others to know, a writer asks himself or herself. Who am I to say this?
These questions, rather than limiting us, can make us better people and stronger writers. They poke at us and our beliefs. If we don’t want others to know something about us, then we might ask ourselves why. Good reasons may underlie the answer, but just by giving it some thought, we shore up our belief systems.
And when we ask who we are to say something, confident writers take on the challenge of proving ourselves. We have discovered something about our community. And it might lead to change.
Some writers, particularly young writers, are easily dissuaded because they hold no certification as an expert in a topic they find important.
Of course no writer has complete knowledge on any topic. Events are always changing and each of us interprets events and their consequences in different ways. The knowledge we do have, however, is important, and others will recognize its importance if we have the courage to present it.
Reputation is another factor. Because words on paper – or in BRsq’s case, on digital archive – can stick around for a long time, some would-be writers balk at putting pen to paper. In 10 years this can come back to bite me, they think.
But look at politicians. President Obama, for one, promised change all over the place: to reporters, on his Web site, even on cars’ rear bumpers. He may have the somewhat acceptable excuse that the economy tanked, but the U.S. military is nowhere near withdrawal from Iraq, and banks, even with the end of Bush economic policy, are faring better than working-class people. Is this change?
Still, few pundits in mainstream politics are challenging Obama’s campaign promises. Most of them accept that he has been busy with the economy. The crisis that unveiled itself toward the end of the presidential campaign changed his priorities. That he abandoned such an ambitious plan might actually add to his reputation; it may show his adaptability in times of crisis.
For good or bad, people forget what was in the newspaper yesterday. The reputations of politicians are founded on their ability to bring funding to constituents. The reputations of writers are founded on reasoned thinking and evocative writing.
Nevermind what others think or how they receive a certain idea. Is it better to have a reputation of never having said anything important or to have a reputation of taking risks in contributing to important debates?
The classical liberal theory of the marketplace of ideas promotes democratic thinking. This theory holds that all ideas have a place, no matter how backward/progressive, authoritarian/empowering, or dangerous they may be. Liberals contend the free exchange of ideas spawns more and more ideas. After culling through all these ideas – supposing a true democracy, a free marketplace – we can make the best choice for society.
Though this theory makes assumptions that exist only in theorists’ imaginations, the main idea is solid. Yes, in reality, the concentration of the media in the hands of a spattering of moguls inhibits the free exchange of ideas. And governments around the world are not equipped for this kind of decision-making.
Still, the most important principle is the more people who find their voice, the better the conversation. Ideas have more staying power than corporations or governments. I advocate for and believe we will achieve a more democratic structure by which to disseminate and act upon ideas.
A first step is to get over reputation, timidity and doubt. Open up and speak your piece.
No outlet for young people
Find the original article: http://www.brsq.org/article.php?r=51
My mom said that before I leave for Portland, Ore., at the beginning of the year, she will wish me farewell as if I will never return. And my brother told me that my sister is now talking about moving to Portland despite holding a steady job and owning a house in Alliance.
Guilt trips and potential sibling supervision aside, the prospect of moving to a different state is daunting. I have a few friends in the city, but I will need to create a new network of friends. As a quadriplegic, I need to find accessible housing and apply for state services. And as soon as my plane lands, I should start hunting around for a job.
Still, I see few other options. Ohio winters are murder – often literally – on wheelchairs. Ohio still sings the “Rust Belt Blues,” unable to find suitable alternatives to steel manufacturing. Canton, in particular, suffers from very high unemployment and worsening crime4.
I am looking for a new hometown without snow and with a decent job market for writers. Good social services, busing, subways and lots of young people are also a plus. From all the research I’ve done, I know Portland has all these things.
From life experience I know Stark County doesn’t.
I am excited about the opportunities that lie in front of me, but I am saddened that I will have to leave Northeast Ohio to find them.
The cornfields of Stark County grow tall within me. The death of industry in Canton and Alliance cast my sympathies for workers and taught me about loyalty. Even The Strip and the development around Jackson Township shaped many of my beliefs about rich and poor.
Northeast Ohio does hold a few points of distinction. The Cleveland Clinic is touted as a world-class hospital. Akron and Goodyear have invested time and research into polymers and have managed to keep the city afloat.
When the outsider looks at Stark County, though, he or she sees the darkened factories and determines we have nothing to offer. But we have brilliant young people. Just in our newsroom, for instance, we have college graduates, award-winning scientists, a former business owner, an editor on her way to CUNY, and me, a poet with a book coming out in September.
Many other young people in Stark County are just as capable and motivated, and we have roots here. The problem is that we cannot find outlets for our potential.
Because outlets don’t exist, several of the people I graduated high school with are stocking shelves, flipping burgers and serving beer. That’s not the future we deserve.
I will spend next week in Portland exploring the intricacies of the city and looking at apartments. After a car ride, which I anticipate will be tense, my mom will drop me off at Hopkins Airport. I will fly back in time for the fall semester at Kent State University, my last.
Then, I will settle on the West Coast by March. I’m confident leaving the area is best for me, but I will not say goodbye forever because I have faith Stark County will recover from factory closures, poor-performing schools, government infighting, and myriad other issues. I don’t expect a utopia, just adequate opportunities.
But Mayors Toni E. Middleton of Alliance and William J. Healy of Canton must mind their young people, the ones who will turn their cities around one idea at a time.
