Tournament: Httpwwwweberdebatecomvalbrowningcollegerrhtm | Round: 1 | Opponent: Johnson County Community College Gillespie-Maichel | Judge: Copenhaver
*KATIE READS A PERSONAL TESTIMONY*

The role of the ballot in this debate should be whoever best performatively and methodologically engages responsibly in the recovery process of the community.


Richard Delgado explains the community building effects and useful destructive functions that narratives and stories wield;
Richard (Degrees: BA, University of Washington; JD, University of California-Berkeley (Boalt). Areas of Specialization: Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory.) “Legal Storytelling: Storytelling for Oppositionist and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, Edited by Richard Delgado

Stories, parables, chronicles, and narratives are powerful
AND
other half—the destructive half—of the creative dialectic.

Susan Brison also explains that narratives help create a shift in which person’s gain back autonomy and recreate the sense of self previously lost. They allow for an integration back into a community, and to better cope with psychological violence. This violence creates long term effects that reduces us to mere objects. When you bear witness to our testimonies, you participate in the common culture narratives employ in which we take a symbol like the ballot and make it transformative to ensure we have a better, more continuous, recovery to events.
(Susan J., Susan Brison is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth College where she has been teaching since 1985.  She has held visiting positions at Tufts University, New York University, and Princeton University, and has been a Mellon Fellow at New York University and an NEH-funded member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy from the University of Toronto and a B.A. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Professor Brison is currently the faculty associate of Dartmouth's East Wheelcok Cluster. She resides with her family in Hanover, New Hampshire and Thetford Vermont., “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self”, Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, 1999, pg. 39-42)

The undoing of the self in trauma involves a radical disruption of memory,
AND
startle response, insomnia, and other PTSD symptoms were no more psychological, and no more under my control, than were my heart rate and blood pressure.

Tournament: Shirley | Round: 1 | Opponent: James Madison Miller-Bosley | Judge: Cooper
*KATIE READS A PERSONAL TESTIMONY*

The role of this tournament is to engage in community building in every way that we can, especially IN debates

Therefore, Alex and I advocate a first response to the incidents at the Harvard debate tournament

The role of the ballot should be whoever best advances an inclusive and welcoming debate community

Scribner and Herzer explain that the role of first responders is to ensure that the community can stabilize and move in a more productive direction in order to empower individuals and ensure that support is given. This process is not an overnight solution, but requires adaptation and constant attention in order to accommodate changes in order to mobilize and have the effects spillover to all levels.

(Megan and Lauren, A Fetzer Institute and Woodrow Wilson Center, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,¶ established by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a living¶ national memorial to President Wilson. The Center’s mission is to commemorate¶ the ideals and concerns of Woodrow Wilson by providing a link between the¶ worlds of ideas and policy, while fostering research, study, discussion, and collaboration¶ among a broad spectrum of individuals concerned with policy and scholarship¶ in national and international affairs. Supported by public and private funds,¶ the Center is a nonpartisan institution engaged in the study of national and world¶ affairs. It establishes and maintains a neutral forum for free, open, and informed¶ dialogue. Conclusions or opinions expressed in Center publications and programs¶ are those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the¶ Center staff, fellows, trustees, advisory groups, or any individuals or organizations¶ that provide financial support to the Center.¶ The Center is the publisher of The Wilson Quarterly and home of Woodrow¶ Wilson Center Press, dialogue radio and television. THE FETZER INSTITUTE is a nonprofit, private operating foundation whose mission is to foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community. Established by broadcast pioneer John E. Fetzer (1901–1991) and located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, the Institute uses its philanthropic resources to create programs in support of its mission. With an endowment of $380 million, the Institute dedicates approximately $20 million annually toward its programming efforts.”After The Disaster: Rebuilding Communities” pg. 82-86)

The following are some of the insights and suggestions that were shared from¶ small group sessions:¶ • Provide opportunities for people to help themselves by recognizing opportunities¶
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response is really a form of development. Look at the piece not with¶ a short-term lens but within the context of the longer-term framework and¶ the ultimate goal.¶ •

Tournament: D3 | Round: 2 | Opponent: Kansas State Scott-Stidham | Judge: Murillo
This is just my own flawed flow of the 1AC and 2AC. -Koslow

1AC
April 25, 1954, Mumia Abu jamal was born. Some later date he was attacked in Philadelphia. A police offer kicked him in the face and arrested him rather than helping him. Said later that he thanked that officer.
He became a social activist fighting racism.
Some later date he was working to supplement his lack of income. Say a police officer beating a man. Attacked the bop, and shot him twice. The police reports and the official court documents claimed that he shot lots of times, shot with a different type of gun, that it was his gun when there were no finger prints. A nother officer claimed that he had confessed, but that police officer was later dismissed for corruption. Mumia Abu Jamal had to be taken to the ER because beaten by the police. Sentences to death.
Repeatedly asked for retrial, and not granted.
His defense attourneys said that he’s 5th and 14th amendment rights had been violated. Lots of testimonies that mfiosos killed the officer. Another confession that another officer killed the officer. Lots of stories.
Moved revently from death row to life imprisonment. He wrote a book about this imprisonment, on freedom and control.
“There’s no hope on death row, everything controlled and regimented. Death row prisoners were best behaved of prisoners, but most controlled, only 2 hours a day outside their tell. Treated as bodies, kept alive only to be killed.”
Allowed TVs and entertainment, but not books or type-writters. TV is a tool of psychological death. And if one misbehaves they’re denied TV. Inmates come to depend on TVs, rely on it as a lonely person turns to TV for companionship. And very restricted in interacting with others. Have body cavity strip-searches before and after meeting anyone, can only meet them through a glass wall.
State action makes them dead to those they know, separated from their relationships. Some fight a battle to prove their innocence. Others live as they’re treated, as shadows of their former self.

Student activists, us, can’t place our hope on the government of the president.
Abu-Jamal
“Can’t rely on the ballot box. Our politics are 95 beauty contests, where no one will ever actually challenge power. Politicians never mention capitalism, resistance or poor people”

Role of the ballot is who best performatively and methodologically engages in activism.

We’re in solidarity with the free Mumia movement.

The law is a tool of the state, we must resist the state and the law.
Abu-Jamal
“We live in the midst of American empire, which engages in structural violence, increased rates of death for those living at the bottom of the social ladder. Systems are ways of doing things without question of the rightness of those ways. Systems must die away, so their violence will die away with them.”

2AC
CASE
Role of the ballot is engaging in social activism. Menas we need to actualize social change. We need to do something to counter-act oppressive systems.

Abu-Jamal says the legal system just allows us to preempt any concern with nuclear war because it’s more important. Must resist these structures to create change.
Abu-Jamal
Some movements have transformed society. Civil rights movement, Black power movement, etc. The Prison Industrial Complex is intolerable, must forge real movements to address social justice. Can bring down death row and racism.

Reading Abu jamal means that we can supplement Abu-Jamal with something?
XXX
Knowledge comes from members of oppressed groups, allows us to understand oppression. Criticial to understand oppression. Can’t begin from any other point, or else will ignore relationship to the oppressed, speak for them. The oppressed are necessary to mediate our relationship with systems of oppression

Structural violence is the frame which we should understand the debate through.

They say narratives shouldn’t be tied to the ballot, but turns cap. We would need to do a historical genealogy, contradicts.
Everything is a narrative.
And this evidence is about speaking as “I”, but Mumia evidence is all talking about death row inmates in general.
No impact.

They say rhetoric of demand, but cap is a demand as well. If they say that they engage in activism means that this evidence goes away.

Black Panthers will be crushed: We’re not black panthers or even in solidarity with the black panther party. This is structural violence because you say Mumia tied to black panthers.
And no impact.

TERRORISM DA
No link.
Not significant. Freeing one person wouldn’t lead to terrorism. Link only makes sense if Mumia is the terrorist, means they’re racist labeling.

They don’t know what a terrorist is.
Abu Jamal

NAYAR
Student activism: We supplement our arguments with those who’ve lived through that shit. Their evidence is about abstract theorizing.

And they can speak to Mumia, proves they’re not listening to the voices of the oppressed, assume Nayar knows more than Mumia Abu Jamal.

They double-turn themselves, proves they create a double identity of professional and personal life. Doesn’t allow those who must deal with daily violence to negotiate this shit.

CAPITALISM
We can do the aff and fight capitalism. Performance can be a mode of anti-capitalist resistance.
XXX

No specific link. Not about race, we just say that systems of oppression is bad.

They have no historical genealogy, we do. That was the 1AC.

FRAMEWORK
ID is the ability to be detained without trial. That’s Abu Jamal. Proves that we allow topic education. And they have any topic ground.

They say decision making skills, but we’ve made a decision, we’re in solidarity. And they say decision-making skills lead to activism, we can engage in activism right now, don’t need training.

Tournament: tournament | Round: 2 | Opponent: Augustana College Cantrell-Paulson-Thakkar | Judge: Munoz
*katie reads a personal testimony*

The current widely accepted mentality of “the prison” is one that excludes many of those institutions and social issues. Nagel and Nocella explain that “the prison” is not merely a geographical place, but rather a mentality that extends into institutions, social practices and structure. Before we can ever challenge policies of indefinite detention, we must first challenge this prison mentality on an individual level. Without this examination, violence is overlooked and politics remain unchanging.
(The End of Prisons: Reflections from the Decarceration Movement edited by Mechithild E. Nagel, Anthony J. Nocella II; 2013)
Following Michel Foucault (1997), we argue that prisons that surround it (non-United States citizens) and those trapped within it (American Indians and immigrants).

The Role of the Ballot for this debate should be whoever performatively and methodologically creates the best process for resisting indefinite imprisonment.
Susan Brison also explains that narratives help create a shift in which person’s gain back autonomy and recreate the sense of self previously lost. They allow for an integration back into a community, and to better cope with psychological violence. This violence creates long term effects that reduces us to mere objects. When you bear witness to our testimonies, you participate in the common culture narratives employ in which we take a symbol like the ballot and make it transformative to ensure we have a better more conscious understanding of the violence individuals in this space need to cope with.
(Susan J., Susan Brison is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth College where she has been teaching since 1985.  She has held visiting positions at Tufts University, New York University, and Princeton University, and has been a Mellon Fellow at New York University and an NEH-funded member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy from the University of Toronto and a B.A. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Professor Brison is currently the faculty associate of Dartmouth's East Wheelcok Cluster. She resides with her family in Hanover, New Hampshire and Thetford Vermont., “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self”, Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, 1999, pg. 39-42)

The undoing of the self in trauma involves a radical disruption of memory,
AND
, to how others in the survivor’s culture respond.

Tournament: Njddt | Round: 1 | Opponent: Kansas State Karimi-Stebbins | Judge: Garcia-Lugo
*Katie reads a counter-story*

The current master narrative of “the prison” is one that excludes institutions and social issues. Nagel and Nocella explain that “the prison” is not merely a geographical place, but rather a mentality that extends into institutions, social practices and structure. Before we can ever challenge policies of indefinite detention, we must first challenge this prison mentality on an individual level. Without this examination, violence is overlooked and politics remain unchanging.

(The End of Prisons: Reflections from the Decarceration Movement edited by Mechithild E. Nagel, Anthony J. Nocella II; 2013)

Following Michel Foucault (1997), we argue that
AND
those that surround it (non-United States citizens) and those trapped within it (American Indians and immigrants).

The Role of the Ballot for this debate should be whoever best performatively and methodologically resists indefinite imprisonment. 

Hilde Nelson explains that identities are pre-narrativized by hegemonic orders and are distributed systemically by their characterization and restriction of personal agency. We resist these by re-narrativizing this space and our identities by providing counter-stories; your ballot acts as way to culturally digest this resistance. Master narratives are the war powers on identity deployed to oppress marginalized bodies. 

(Hilde Lindemann Nelson, associate professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University, “Damaged Identities; Narrative Repair”, pg. 150-151)

The connection between oppression and identity, I have claimed, lies in the master narratives
AND
widely circulated, taken up not only by those who are on the receiving end of abusive power arrangements, but also by those who have benefited from those arrangements. 

Hilde Nelson also outlines the criteria for our method;
Nelson ’01. 

(Hilde Lindemann, associate professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University, “Damaged Identities; Narrative Repair”, pg. 156-157)

We’re now in a position to make some very general observations about counterstories.
AND
since success consists precisely in the counterstory’s becoming widely circulated and socially shared.

Tournament: tournament | Round: 2 | Opponent: Georgia State Nails-Stewart | Judge: Slattery
*Katie reads a personal testimony*

Fiona Campbell explains that persons in a privileged speaking position have an ethical obligation to interrogate how that privilege functions within their method and what their relation to disadvantaged people are; a failure to do so is a flagrant denial of that privilege and is an act of complicity to systematically mislead
Open Lecture Certificate IV in Community Services, Melton Campus, Victoria University of Technology Thursday November 4th 1997

So who am I - to speak, to be listened to? And why is it important to identify AND
academic Bell hooks asks us to decide where we ‘stand in the struggle’:

The role of the ballot in this debate should be whoever best performatively and methodologically opens this space for intersectional coalition building

Laura Toussaint explains that intersectional analysis advances our understanding of how individuals are affected by social locations but also is a powerful tool for coalition building;  intersectionality allows for the reflective process key for addressing inequalities and power relations that affect individuals in spaces like debate and politics 11 (Laura, Academic core faculty member at the Lake Washington Technical college and research affiliate for the “Globalization, Gender, and Development” project at the Department of Sociology, the American University.  Serves on the editorial board of Societies without Borders. Published in the academic journal of the Indian Academy of Social Sciences. Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and Multiple Inequalities: Global, Transnational and Local Contexts. Pg. 267)

Moreover, as Edwina Barvosa-Carter (1999) demonstrated in her study of activism AND
for people who cannot as readily speak out. 

Toussaint goes on to explain that…
(Laura, Academic core faculty member at the Lake Washington Technical college and research affiliate for the “Globalization, Gender, and Development” project at the Department of Sociology, the American University.  Serves on the editorial board of Societies without Borders. Published in the academic journal of the Indian Academy of Social Sciences. Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and Multiple Inequalities: Global, Transnational and Local Contexts. Pg. 274-275)
While coalition building creates ties through an
AND
the direct benefits of peace and to solidify coalitions.

Tournament: Uco | Round: 1 | Opponent: Trinity Dardant-Russell | Judge: Holland
*KATIE READS A PERSONAL TESTIMONY*

Imperialist structures have waged war on the under-privileged. The structural weapons they have used are designed to target individuals who they want to remain at the bottom of the social rungs of society. This targeted killing is no accident, this targeted killing is not easy, it is silenced by the power structures. Those structures use everything they have at their disposal to create circumstances that not only hurt oppressed individuals but also ensure their power remains intact.

The oppressive structures wage a war on the disadvantaged that Mumia Abu Jamal describes as worse than the most severe nuclear war or genocide.  
 (1998 “A Quiet and Deadly Violence”,  9/19/98, httpwww.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm)

It has often been observed that America is a truly violent nation
AND
 weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world." Gilligan, p. 196

Most debaters will speak towards the way in which presidential war powers are exercised without even considering the oppressed, and many debaters will speak about their oppression abstractly, or advance debate practices that only disarm the just causes of the oppressed. Currently debaters are assumed to take on the role of a neutral subject where issues of life and death do not matter, and the words we speak and the ideas we advance don't matter so long as “they are strategic.” This discourages participation in this activity and renders all ethical considerations void and allows for disinterested debate that either replicates flawed policy-making or allows us to condone violent rhetoric and conversations.
Spanos explains (2004. William V., available online cross-x.com url: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=945110andhighlight=Spanos+Email Nov. 18)

Dear Joe MIller, Yes, the statement about the American debate
AND
which the blind arrogance of Bush Administration and his neocon policy makers is leading.

The Role of the Ballot in this debate is whoever best performatively and methodologically reorients power within the intersections.

As debaters speaking towards presidential war powers, we must first investigate the ways in which the institution deciding those powers is founded and surrounded by oppression, and investigate the oppression it creates on the other side of the world. However, this oppression cannot be explained by politicians or by military reports; Henze explains that we must heed the perspective of the oppressed as to gain the best and closest understanding of the oppression we may only witness secondhand.

Brent R. Henze, 2000“Who Says Who Says?: The Epistemological Grounds for Agency in Liberatory Political Projects.” Found in Reclaiming Identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism. Edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia
CONCLUSION: WHAT ROLE CAN OTHERS PLAY IN THE POLITICS OF THE OPPRESSED?
The question has necessarily shaped my approach to the work I have presented above:
AND
In other words, the standpoint of the oppressed is necessary to manage our own involvement with systems of oppression so as most effectively to combat oppression