Tournament: 2013babyjo | Round: 7 | Opponent: Emporia State Turley-Bonnet | Judge: Burns
Song – usually Wavin' Flag by K'naan
 

1st verse

Let me take you back to where I come from.  I come from a family that’s not so typical... I am a white skinned fat Filipino adopted into a Mexican American family with a GED that sings the blues.

You should take no credibility from that because nothing about it makes me an expert on any subject other than myself.  I still don't speak Spanish, nor any of the languages of the Philippines,  but I can tell you when my grandparents are talking about me and they don't want me to understand what they're saying. I can tell you that my Mexican non biological great grandmother loves me very much.

And that my Filipino grandmother is the best Mexican cook alive.  My Filipino grandmother is also the greatest ally in my life... I love my Mima.

AND - It is from the Philippines that I draw my relation to this year’s resolution.  My Mima used to talk a lot about where she grew up…

She would speak of her sadness walking down the streets after it rained (most people think of rain as cleansing)…no pavement, just dirt or in the case of rain thick mud.  In her town you had to walk because vehicles were reserved to two groups of people…the rich and the soldiers.

you grow to be humble in the Philippines, because your meekness wouldn't have it any other way. 

there was no worrying about your car breaking down and you not being able to get around... cause you had no car. 

for my grandmother growing up she tells me it was impossible not to be humble and friendly when you had nothing.

In Manila there was a military base, in fact the community surrounding it became economically dependent upon it to the point where they forced you to learn English in schools so you can interact with the military better.

The base is where many young and beautiful Filipinos
made their income to help support their families. Communities Indoctrinated by the U.S. military presence into careers like prostitution and drug dealing. My grandmother had firsthand experience with these issues forced to watch her less fortunate friends raped and beaten by soldiers on what she called nearly a daily occurrence.  

She says that some of her best friends where prostitutes and that she herself had never participated, however when you’re the oldest in your and the parents are all out of the job…aunts, uncles, her mother and father all out of the job, living in that two bedroom no bathroom house we visit and cry in front of every time we visit there…

I know even if she ever participated she wouldn’t be any less of a person in my eyes. Even today she represents herself as that strong Filipino woman supporting my family unconditionally.

2nd verse

When i was in the second grade and moved in with my grandparents. they decided it was best that they put me through Catholic school like my grandmother had gone through in the Philippines... by second grade in my grandmothers school she had already been fluent in English and she had a job. 

while i was in second grade i was being taught to open my eyes. 

my teachers when i was not in trouble with them would often compliment me on my beautiful eyes. A back splash of green which often transforms into blue surrounding a ring of yellow and brown.

"Why don't you keep your eyes open brian?" my teacher asks me "you would look so much better if you weren't squinting all the time" 

"I can't" i told her, "it's just the way god made me"

"sure you can" she says "we'll get someone on it right away"

so the school behavioral specialist, determined it would be best to let the faculty know that every time i squint my eyes they should give me a red card... which in those days meant after school detention. 

so for a whole two years of my life i learned to walk around like this ... 

and they told me it made me look better... lol

my mother went through something similar but a little bit more extreme. When she first immigrated here they would not feed her lunch unless she only spoke in english. 

It took a long time to break her but she no longer knows the language of her home.

This is the power of the war waged on identity... the effort they have taken to eradicate difference and erase identity as a consideration all together. For a half white like me, this war has been constant.

When i left that ungodly establishment for public school I kept my eyes closed to white authority, because now i realize that my teachers weren't in it for the beauty of my eyes... they did it out of the fear of the blackness they saw when they could only see my pupils.  

Chorus -

Whiteness has been a thorn in my existence as a human. starting with the white sperm that decided the sanctity and beauty of my mother was something not to be taken seriously. It started with a white twinkle in the eye of my white conservative father who has had three divorces four marriages and three kids between those times. interesting that the one he chose not to take care of was the fat Filipino trouble making mistake of a first born... yes my mother had her tubes tied but it appeared i would stop at nothing to come into this world. 

white people were to be avoided in the neighborhood i started in. fo alot of kids i was the only white kid thy knew. When white people came into my neighborhood it was never good except in the case of a football scholarship but usually whiteness presented itself to either arrest someone's parents in the form of police officers, or steal your friends away from you in the form of red suit wearing blonde case workers.

Better behave my mother told me, or they'll get you too. well they ended up getting the both of us. mom was gone so i moved up with my grandparents in the white suburb of Millard. Where i was eventually granted the privilege of a white millard education. which i know i shouldn't scoff at and i should ultimately be thankful for it at the same time.

And much like my Millard education, debate is a privilege that I have been granted access to, and am grateful for, however, with privilege comes responsibility, and as a community dedicated to bettering the lives of those involved and those who have been left behind, it is crucial that we centralize those identities rather than simply letting them exist at the margins, not only in these conversations, but in our very practices.

Therefore, the role of the ballot for this debate is to determine who best performatively and methodologically integrates identity into politics.

our critical and personal investigations  into our own lives informed by the stories and experiences of those affected by presidential war powers, and the everyday wars against identities, best informs our understanding of the way this year's resolution operates.

My Filipino identity or lack of filipino identity in many instances is the direct result of the powers of war, and my whole existence as a person is the direct result of the presidential war powers that made white American political leaders think it was okay to take over the Philippines in the first place. The Filipino blood that runs through these veins would not have it any other way than to have me confront presidential war powers in this space.
chorus -

Tournament: Gsu | Round: 1 | Opponent: Georgetown Kazteridis-Unwala | Judge: Schultz
Blue knowledge key

Kincheloe, 2005 (Joe L. professor at Stanford University, School of Education and director of the Public Knowledge Project: March Critical Constructivism Primer 165-9)

Armstrong, Waters, Franklin and Hendrix are just a few of the countless blues artists...
...you ain’t seen nothing yet.

State co-opts dissent
Bilgin 05 Pinar (Department of International Relations, Bilkent University, Anarka, Turkey) Regional Security in the Middle East 2005 p49-50 

The positions of Gray and Garnett regarding the theory....security thinking in the post-cold war era (see, for example, Walt 1991)

Disinterested debate practices result in error-replication
Spanos 4 (William V., available online cross-x.com: url - http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t+345110andhigh)

Dear Joe Miller, Yes, the statement about the American debate....historical arena where positions make a difference

Tournament: tournament | Round: 2 | Opponent: Baylor Bacon-Boor | Judge: Stone
They performatively did nothing about capitalism - we must prioritize dealing with, overcoming, and coping with racist capitalism and other forms of racism.

bell hooks in 2000(TY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK, PROFESSOR, THEN DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, 1995–2004; BEREA COLLEGE, BEREA, KY, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR-IN-RESIDENCE, BEGINNING 2004. CO-FOUNDER, HAMBONE LITERARY MAGAZINE. BELL,WHERE WE STAND: CLASS MATTERS, P. 129-130

The poor may be with us always...
...material needs in daily life as well as needs of the spirit.

Tournament: tournament | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming Dilldine-McFarland | Judge: Bunas
Cesar Chavez in 1971

(Transcript of a Speech Delivered by Cesar Chavez at a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Rally in Exposition Park, Los Angeles on May 2, 1971 (A transcript of this impromptu speech is in the United Farm Workers Papers, Wayne State University.)

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this meeting......

.......we decide to use our own lives to show the way.

40 years later, we remain the focus of targeted killings and the US remains racially divided and at war with its own people. 

The hostilities are endless; the War on Drugs, the prison system, and the poverty and wealth gap normalize warfare against the poor, black and brown.

And when these oppressed groups explore higher education as an alternative to this cycle of violence, the US military sends its shock troops to beat them down. Not with batons and machine guns, but with military recruiters who point to the battlefield that is our everyday lives, and tell us we will amount to nothing -  that our lives would be better served fighting for some bullshit cause. 

In order to better understand and combat presidential war powers, we must investigate the underpinnings of the militarism we are called to restrict that too often goes un-criticized.

Wars overseas are made possible by the ongoing war against the poor. This process is neither natural nor neutral but instead the result of aggressive recruitment tactics which disproportionately target and pressure low-income, black, and brown students in America.

Shahshahani in 2010 (Azadeh;“Military must back off its recruitment of teens” http://www.ajc.com/news/news/opinion/military-must-back-off-its-recruitment-of-teens/nQcSQ/ )

The United States has long participated in programs abroad that.....

.......America and Georgia must lead by example.

And, this is not unique to high schools - community colleges are becoming increasingly more militarized. Many of the same underprivileged youth who became accustomed to aggressive recruitment tactics in high school will not be surprised to learn recruiters have followed them to college. 

This is targeted killing - underprivileged students are targeted by the military to serve as cannon fodder for imperialistic wars. They don't have to use a drone strike to kill us, they just have to offer false promises of on-the-job training and paying off our student debt-~--all the while knowing we are being put into a meat grinder of exploitation and perpetual war. 

MARISCAL 05 (Jorge; From Draft NOtices, March-April 2005 Uncle Sam Goes to College Military Recruiters Target Community College Students —  http://www.comdsd.org/article_archive/UncleSamMar05.htm )

When students at Seattle Central Community College forced community recruiters off their campus in January......

.....with limited opportunities who are struggling to get a college education. 

Economic conscription is nothing more than the rationalization of the ongoing death and suffering of oppressed peoples. It is a strategy of indefinite detention that ensures the oppressed remain complacent in a system of violence rather than be liberated. 

Abu-Jamal in 98 (Mumia; “A QUIET AND DEADLY VIOLENCE,” 9/19/98, http:www.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm)

It has often been observed that America is a truly violent nation....

.....so that their great and terrible violence passes away with them. 

The role of the ballot for this debate is to determine who best performatively and methodologically builds counter-hegemonic politics.

As half-white community college students who need to find positive modes of resistance towards broader, overwhelming and overarching hegemonic structures, we must deploy strategies of anti-recruitment civil disobedience in this space in order to overcome our own self-loathing and to promote broader accessible liberatory practices.

Giroux in 2008 (Henry; “Against the Militarized Academy” - Found online at http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/81138:against-the militarized-academy)

In a post-9/11 world, with its all-embracing war on terror and a culture of fear.....

.....must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.

Tournament: tournament | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Oklahoma Chiles-OBrien | Judge: Chase, DiPiazza, Van Luvanee
(Brian sings a song about hope and love)

Let me take you back to where I come from.  I come from a family that’s not so typical... I am a white skinned fat Filipino adopted into a Mexican American family with a GED that sings the blues.

You should take no credibility from that because nothing about it makes me an expert on any subject other than myself.  I still don't speak Spanish, nor any of the languages of the Philippines,  but I can tell you when my grandparents are talking about me and they don't want me to understand what they're saying. I can tell you that my Mexican non biological great grandmother loves me very much.

And that my Filipino grandmother is the best Mexican cook alive.  My Filipino grandmother is also the greatest ally in my life... I love my Mima.

AND - It is from the Philippines that I draw my relation to this year’s resolution.  My Mima used to talk a lot about where she grew up…

She would speak of her sadness walking down the streets after it rained (most people think of rain as cleansing)…no pavement, just dirt or in the case of rain thick mud.  In her town you had to walk because vehicles were reserved to two groups of people…the rich and the soldiers.

you grow to be humble in the Philippines, because your meekness wouldn't have it any other way. 

there was no worrying about your car breaking down and you not being able to get around... cause you had no car. 

for my grandmother growing up she tells me it was impossible not to be humble and friendly when you had nothing.

In Manila there was a military base, in fact the community surrounding it became economically dependent upon it to the point where they forced you to learn English in schools so you can interact with the military better.

The base is where many young and beautiful Filipinos
made their income to help support their families. Communities Indoctrinated by the U.S. military presence into careers like prostitution and drug dealing. My grandmother had firsthand experience with these issues forced to watch her less fortunate friends raped and beaten by soldiers on what she called nearly a daily occurrence.  

She says that some of her best friends where prostitutes and that she herself had never participated, however when you’re the oldest in your and the parents are all out of the job…aunts, uncles, her mother and father all out of the job, living in that two bedroom no bathroom house we visit and cry in front of every time we visit there…

I know even if she ever participated she wouldn’t be any less of a person in my eyes. Even today she represents herself as that strong Filipino woman supporting my family unconditionally.

2nd verse

When i was in the second grade and moved in with my grandparents. they decided it was best that they put me through Catholic school like my grandmother had gone through in the Philippines... by second grade in my grandmothers school she had already been fluent in English and she had a job. 

while i was in second grade i was being taught to open my eyes. 

my teachers when i was not in trouble with them would often compliment me on my beautiful eyes. A back splash of green which often transforms into blue surrounding a ring of yellow and brown.

"Why don't you keep your eyes open brian?" my teacher asks me "you would look so much better if you weren't squinting all the time" 

"I can't" i told her, "it's just the way god made me"

"sure you can" she says "we'll get someone on it right away"

so the school behavioral specialist, determined it would be best to let the faculty know that every time i squint my eyes they should give me a red card... which in those days meant after school detention. 

so for a whole two years of my life i learned to walk around like this ... 

and they told me it made me look better... lol

my mother went through something similar but a little bit more extreme. When she first immigrated here they would not feed her lunch unless she only spoke in english. 

It took a long time to break her but she no longer knows the language of her home.

This is the power of the war waged on identity... the effort they have taken to eradicate difference and erase identity as a consideration all together. For a half white like me, this war has been constant.

When i left that ungodly establishment for public school I kept my eyes closed to white authority, because now i realize that my teachers weren't in it for the beauty of my eyes... they did it out of the fear of the blackness they saw when they could only see my pupils.  

Chorus -

Whiteness has been a thorn in my existence as a human. starting with the white sperm that decided the sanctity and beauty of my mother was something not to be taken seriously. It started with a white twinkle in the eye of my white conservative father who has had three divorces four marriages and three kids between those times. interesting that the one he chose not to take care of was the fat Filipino trouble making mistake of a first born... yes my mother had her tubes tied but it appeared i would stop at nothing to come into this world. 

white people were to be avoided in the neighborhood i started in. fo alot of kids i was the only white kid thy knew. When white people came into my neighborhood it was never good except in the case of a football scholarship but usually whiteness presented itself to either arrest someone's parents in the form of police officers, or steal your friends away from you in the form of red suit wearing blonde case workers.

Better behave my mother told me, or they'll get you too. well they ended up getting the both of us. mom was gone so i moved up with my grandparents in the white suburb of Millard. Where i was eventually granted the privilege of a white millard education. which i know i shouldn't scoff at and i should ultimately be thankful for it at the same time.

And much like my Millard education, debate is a privilege that I have been granted access to, and am grateful for, however, with privilege comes responsibility, and as a community dedicated to bettering the lives of those involved and those who have been left behind, it is crucial that we centralize those identities rather than simply letting them exist at the margins, not only in these conversations, but in our very practices.

Therefore, the role of the ballot for this debate is to determine who best performatively and methodologically builds counter-hegemonic politics.

our critical and personal investigations  into our own lives informed by the stories and experiences of those affected by presidential war powers, and the everyday wars against identities, best informs our understanding of the way this year's resolution operates.

My Filipino identity or lack of filipino identity in many instances is the direct result of the powers of war, and my whole existence as a person is the direct result of the presidential war powers that made white American political leaders think it was okay to take over the Philippines in the first place. The Filipino blood that runs through these veins would not have it any other way than to have me confront presidential war powers in this space.

Tournament: tournament | Round: 6 | Opponent: Missouri - Kansas City Ajisafe-Fisher | Judge: Guha-Majumdar
Universal solutions to the complex realities of the war against identity fails fail

Paula M. L. Moya (Introduction: Reclaiming Identity, http://clogic.eserver.org/3-1and2/moya.html)

The first problem with essentialist conceptions of identity....
....identity categories are neither stable nor internally homogenous.

Tournament: NDT | Round: 2 | Opponent: Kentucky Grasse-Roman | Judge: Neighbors, Hennigan, McCleary
2AC vs Framework and case

WE ARE NOT VICTIMS – WE ARE SURVIVORS
Akhila 2012-http://akhilak.com/blog/author/Akhila/ (Why words matter: Victim v. Survivor Posted on March 13, 2012 http://akhilak.com/blog/2012/03/13/why-words-matter-victim-v-survivor/ )
I am of a firm belief that we should use the term "survivor"
AND
many survivors are moving forward with their lives and healing from the trauma.

Gaborro 2002 (,Allen, TO SPEAK WITH A CULTURAL VOICE Published in PAWA’s anthology Reflections: Readings for the Young and Old,)
But colonial cultural representations serve their creators’ purposes only until they elicit a forcefully critical
AND
that stubbornly promote the course of cultural pre-eminence and ethnocentric triumphalism.

Carbo 2004 (The struggle for form: a conversation between Nick Carbo and M. Evelina Galang.(Panel Discussion) Article from: MELUS | March 22, 2004 | Davis, Rocio G.)

I grew up in Manila in the seventies and early eighties during the height of
AND
Agustin, and Xavier, where there was more homogeneity among the students.

Tournament: KCKCC | Round: 1 | Opponent: Oklahoma HW | Judge: Corey Stone
The role of the ballot is to determine who best perfomatively and methodologically builds counter hegomonic politics.

Tournament: Httpwwwweberdebatecomvalbrowningcollegerrhtm | Round: 5 | Opponent: Weber State Hendricks-Alvarado | Judge: Miller
First, the legal system particularly the Prison Litigation Reform Act acts as a tool of class and race domination.  The PLRA, under the illusion of necessary prison reform, has further silenced the most oppressed members of our society sapping revolutionary potential and condemning them to the most horrifying dungeons available leaving in its wake a legal discourse dominated by state slave masters.   

Mumia Abu-Jamal 2009 American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the December 9, 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He has been described as "perhaps the best known Death-Row prisoner in the world", and his sentence is one of the most debated today. PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE U.S.A. page 18-19

The law is a tool of class domination and....
.....humane treatment of the imprisoned. 

Our affirmation will not be a conventional one. We will advocate Resolved: The Supreme Court of the United States should restrict executive war power authority by overturning section 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Section 4:The Exhaustion Clause, Section 5: Mental and Emotional Injuries Clause, Section 6: Attorneys Fees Clause, Section 7: Filing Fees and Cost Clause, Section 8: Three Strikes Prevision, Section 9: Screening and Dismissal, Section 10: Waiver of Reply, and Section 12: Revocation of Earned Release Credit. 

However, we will further argue that the this governmental approach is only a step in a larger movement for the inclusion of marginalized voices in decision making processes…we will begin the process of inclusion by examining the case of John Africa, a social revolutionary and founder of the MOVE organization who in the face of the threat of final judgment alongside his brother took up his own defense…
Mumia Abu-Jamal 2009. PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE U.S.A. page 24-29

Using trial transcripts, published accounts, and personal recollection....
.... John Africa had won by representing himself. 

Unfortunately, John Africa’s victory was short lived.  His life was ended too soon by the very same men and women whose grasp he eluded in this case.  Africa’s life is a testament to the powerful voice of the Jailhouse Lawyer and a sober reminder of the awful power of the state.  It is up to each of us to determine how we are going to remember this amazing human being…as a painful reminder of how insignificant our voices are in the face of state violence or rather as a stark reminder of the power of one voice armed with the truth against all odds…

Finally, while the social location of the Jailhouse Lawyer is one that can unwittingly serve the illusion of state centered justice these radicals also resist the will of the state by speaking truth to power.  Fortunately, the brutal tactics of the state cannot completely erase the voices of these men and women.  They are in fact the part of a social fabric that ties them to everyone everywhere who engages revolutionary practices.  We wish to recognize that the debate is not insulated from this social fabric or revolutionary praxis. We affirm, in the memory of John Africa and in the hopes for the Mumia’s freedom, the joining of our voice to this movement… 

Mumia Abu-Jamal 2009. PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE U.S.A. page 73-74

There is an old African-American saying:....
.... in a radical and revolutionary context, to the people. 

FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL!