When you click on video – it will start on the interview skipping the introduction!
On September 3, 2019,the Clinton Foundation and Clinton School of Public Service hosted the Frank and Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series featuring the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg discussed with NPR’s Nina Totenberg her quarter-century on the nation’s highest bench and historic legal career prior to being nominated by President Bill Clinton to serve as the second female Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
#829 + What YOU allow IS what will continue + an individual requesting for sincere forgiveness + THE definition of VALIANT courage and the pinnacle of a HEROIC character?
In the United States, women, children, individuals of color, those who live in low income economic classes and those who are differently-abled KNOW that their truth-telling stories, no matter their personal integrity and their capacity/pattern of eloquently telling the truth of their life experiences, are invalidated. Their credibility is not upheld, and is, in fact, they are shamed, silenced, judged,taunted and shredded. Actually, the truth-tellers, whose stories counter the dominant culture, are the definition and testament of COURAGE, moral courage, who SEE a universe of greater humanity.
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As Brene Brown said in her viral TED Talk: “Empathy’s the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.”
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NOTE: The Republicans on the Judicial Committee have now POSITIONED Brett Kavanaugh as a partisan prop for their specific political agenda. Brett Kavanaugh has ALLOWED himself to be made into a partisan prop by them – taking away any redemption of possible humility within his character. Brett Kavanaugh has agreed to eliminate his capacity to respond as a human. Imagine what would have occurred IF he spoke of his drunken teenage years at an elite all boys prep school. I do know heavy alcohol drinkers have selective memories and are champions of denial, lash out and blame those who call them out on their behavior and their justifying explanations are obfuscation coupled with empty and repetition of excuses. No healing enters , but, rather a continuum of wounding ensues. Trapped. Tribalism based on distrust of the “other”. Thick institutionalism.
Imagine what would occur IF an individual asking for sincere forgiveness from those they have injured, owning up/being accountable to causing injury by their words and/or actions and making actual amends WAS the definition of VALIANT courage and the PINNACLE of character. IMAGINE the sincere and the joyous energy of FREEDOM ringing through hearts and our humanity and our world IF this was the practice! Gas-lighting as a manipulation to undermine the victim of the abuse and the wide/deep collateral damage of cycles of abuse would cease! NEW worlds would EMERGE! Relationships, true authentic relationships, are slowly built, face to face, the sacred DANCE of evolving/dialectical TRUST – withempathy and reverence. Lives are relational! This ethos and intimate practice would be/is a revolution of overturning tribalism and would be/is a redemption/transcendent fusion story of SEEING the other. A re-negotiation of power that honors the fire and width of humanity and extinguishes the lashing, cruel and hostile burn of divisive tribalism. This would be/ IS sweeping radiant JOY!
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“Let us realize
the arc
of the moral universe
is long
but it bends
toward justice.”
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Truths told by marginalized demographics simply do not resonate with the values of the dominant culture and are dismissed. The truths told do not serve the values of the dominant culture. Praise those who summon the courage to step up and tell the truth of their personal experiences which, in turn, inspires others that their own life experiences are testaments of life – valuable and worthy.
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The Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings is THE truth-telling of our current society.
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Democracy is improvisational blueprint — moving forward with NEW perspectives. A vital ongoing process of rising and constantly adapting, improvising, overcoming > an innovative experiment of inventing and creation! We know the process of suppression of truth telling of specific demographics is the graph, the litmus test, of where our society is.
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The US president and the current Republican representatives on the Judicial Committee is echoed in Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film.
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The clip below of Carl Dreyer’s film, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is, tragically, heart-stopping and relevant to our contemporaneous lives. This film is genius – SILENT – no voices and no subtitles. The visuals of Dreyer’s cinematography, film editing, casting and direction are intentional and silently NAMES the dominant culture at that time and the power hierarchy. Of course, the irony is that HER truth-telling is silenced, prosecuted, judged and she is burned at the stake for her truth- telling.
Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (from top left):
Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Ben Sasse, Thom Tillis, Ted Cruz, John Cornyn; (from bottom left) Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, John Kennedy, Mike Crapo and Mike Lee. (Photos: U.S. Senate)
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We have a few questions for you.
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Don’t be afraid.
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We are open to learning the truth of your experiences.
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We are open-minded and are receptive
to your truth-telling.
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We will listen (wink-wink).
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“I’m, I mean WE ARE looking
for a fair process.”
(We advised Brett to say that over and over and over
when interviewed on Fox News. Nicehypnotic effect?!)
Five things that we know for sure about Brett Kavanaugh:
1.He has not committed to uphold Roe v. Wade, and, if appointed to the Supreme Court, he would likely be the decisive vote that would undermine the right to safe and legal abortion.
2. He refers to birth control as “abortion-inducing drugs” and believes that employers have the right to exclude birth control from health insurance plans.
3. He has gone further than the Supreme Court and written that assault weapons and high-capacity magazines cannot be banned under the Second Amendment.
4.He believes that a sitting president should never be indicted, and he refuses to answer even basic questions about presidential authority, such as whether or not a president can pardon him or herself.
5.He has flat-out refused to recuse himself should any of the president’s civil or criminal investigations reach the Supreme Court.
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Judge Brett KavaNAH:
I am an unimaginative thinker.
I am LOYAL
to those who program and fund my binary brain
with
fixed, obsolete and outdated laws and worldviews
that hold specific demographics captive and hostage
– I will uphold their imprisonment by choosing to
NOT adapt, NOT improvise and NOT overcome
social injustice and inequities!
I love my HERITAGE (wink wink)!
YES, I am their “dummy”!
Precedents and living in fixed pasts is MY future
– and will be YOUR future!
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WHEEEEEEEEEck!
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CHOICES.
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My Mother lost most of her amniotic fluid
when she was 20 weeks pregnant with me.
She was given two possibilities, options, choices:
1.) go home and walk around and you will have a natural miscarriage
– the fetus needs the full volume of the amniotic fluid to create a healthy baby
OR
2.) lie down for a few weeks and see if the tear heals
– the loss of the amniotic fluid is permanent
and if the fetus develops there will be major orthopedic issues.
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My Mother chose to lie down.
I was born 29 December with my right leg twisted around my neck.
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I lived in an institution, Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children
where cribs were lined up in rows and rows and rows in a large cavernous room
and I lived bound face down in body casts.
from 6 months to 3 years.
Parents could visit 1x week and were NOT permitted to touch their children.
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My Daddy fought the hospital administration to get me OUT at 18 months.
He achieved that goal with his phenomenal love and singular purpose
to take his his daughter from captivity and experience the world.
I was/am WONDER and AWE!
I had never experienced the vastness of Nature nor the improvisation of human relationships
– the sensuous brilliant exhilarating experience of touch, sight, sound and taste.
I ate the colors of flowers in my Grandparent’s garden.
I touched and was touched, kissed, caressed by my Mom, Daddy and sister
with timidity, hesitance
and then, slowly, with lessened terror> unfolding overwhelming joy.
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To feel caress was both frightening, overwhelming and amazing GRACE.
I felt the WINGS of freedom and pure love.
I could NOT ever return to a pattern of being hostage and live as a captive.
I was brought back to the institution after 2 months in the world experience.
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At three I began my DANCE,
my life altering blessed, sacred, joyous DANCE
WITH Dr. Mark B. Coventry at Mayo Clinic.
He could SEE me.
We DANCED a miracle.
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I have prevailed.
Forty-eight reconstructive surgeries since my first breath.
I am A/LIVE.
A life of riSING EXODUS.
My life.
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My Mother made a choice. I lived her choice.
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EXODUSIMFREEATLASTIAINTGOINGBACKIMFREE Catherine L. Johnson 2013