She continued to protest. She was placed in handcuffs. She was treated horribly. She was treated as less than human. She protested her treatment. She knew and stated her rights but it did not matter. Her black life and her black body did not matter…
We’ve continued to protest. DEA agents have placed handcuffs on doctors and patients. Pain patients have been treated horribly. We’ve been treated as less than human. We’ve protested our treatment. We know and state our rights but it does not matter. Our chronic pain and our broken bodies do not matter.
I don’t want to believe our spirits can be broken. Nonetheless, increasingly, as a black woman in America, I do not feel alive. I feel like I am not yet dead.
I think the spirits of many pain patients have been broken. As a disabled, intractable pain survivor in America, I do not feel alive. I feel like I am not yet dead.
All Things Chronic 
beautifully written – a travesty –
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It’s scary how many parallels there are between so many different types of oppressed people. I never thought my situation had anything to do with “oppression”, but now you’ve opened my eyes to it.
I guess this means we need to adapt protest strategies from all the other groups in this country that have fought their oppression. I’m not sure what that would look like, but I’ll be giving it some thought now.
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Click to access transcript_155.pdf
“How To Start A Revolution
GENE SHARP: If you can identify the sources of a government’s power, such as legitimacy, such as popular support, such as the institutional support, and then you know on what that dictatorship depends for its existence, and since all those sources of power are dependent upon the good will, cooperation, obedience and help of people and institutions, then your job becomes fairly simple. All you have to do is shrink that support and that legitimacy, that co-operation, that obedience, and the regime will be weakened, and if you can take those sources far away, the regime will fall…
COLONEL BOB HELVEY: These pillars are holding up the government like my fingers are holding up this book, and I developed a strategy to undermine each of those pillars: the police, the Sanghar, the religious institutions, the workers, whatever; every organization. And as they weaken and start to collapse, the government will collapse when those pillars are broken. Ideally, we want those pillars not destroyed, but transferred over to the democratic movement…”
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Very interesting web site – thanks!
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I saw it as a documentary. Since the transcript is so long, you might want to search for the video.
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