my idea for change

This is something I have been thinking of in my head for years. The form keeps changing as the issues keep evolving. I know that my foundation is going to deal with helping children. I am very passionate when it comes to children that are killed in their homes by either their own parents or a "surrogate" parent; i.e. step-parent, boyfriend/girlfriend, or foster parent. I am appalled that most of these cases of filicide have resulted after numerous contacts with police and child protection agencies. The common belief that the family should stay together at any cost is literally killing the family - and it is an ideal which has carried over from the stone ages. 

Who is going to protect the child and punish the adult? I would like my foundation to do both. I would like to help pay for hospital costs, rehabilitation services, therapy, plastic surgery (in certain cases), anything that will help the surviving abused child to grow up and lead a normal life. If the child has not survived I would like to be able to help the states pay for the prosecution and investigation of these crimes. States have gone into massive debt in trying these high profile cases such as the Casey Anthony case and taxpayers deserve some relief. 

This is just a small piece of what I would some day like to offer with my foundation.

my rough draft

Here is a very heavy quote laden article driven rough draft..The final will be much more refined and put together but as I am not a great draft writer this is more outline formatted.

· The body of Trenor's daughter, two-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers, was found in October 2007 in a large blue plastic container on an uninhabited island in Galveston Bay. Authorities didn't know the child’s identity, until the grandmother came forward after a sketch of the child was released nationally, and thus dubbed her "Baby Grace."
· Entwistle’s spouse had been shot in the head and their nine-month-old daughter had been shot point-blank in the heart with a .22-caliber pistol that belonged to the father-in-law. The bodies were then covered with a comforter, the gun was returned to the in-laws’ home, and Entwistle fled to England, according to police.
· Holton got to spend an afternoon with the four children on November 30, 1997, they went to an amusement park, and a McDonalds before going home, where Holton shot them with a Chinese-made semi-automatic rifle. Shortly after killing the children Holton went to the nearest police station and confessed to the crime.

· According to Stallworth, Hill spanked the 3-year-old boy whenever he misidentified numbers and letters on flash cards and when he wet the bed. The prosecutor showed the jury switches, belts and flash cards that police seized from Hill's home. Stallworth said the assaults occurred repeatedly in the last month of Cha Cha's life, (he died September 20, 2003) in what the prosecutor called the "30 days of hell." An autopsy showed that the 40-pound toddler died of multiple injuries, including a cerebral hematoma, a blood clot in the brain brought on by the beating.

· A few jurors fought back tears and averted their eyes as the prosecutor showed them enlarged photos of each boy with gunshot wounds on the head. At the time of the killings, Brandon was 14, Austin, 7; Brigham, 6; and Matthew, 4.
· The trouble started Friday night at the family's Maywood home the baby started crying and woke Dilworth up. Dilworth called 9-1-1 Saturday morning from the family's home. Prosecutors say when the ambulance arrived, the front door was padlocked. The rescuers could not get in the front door and Dilworth could not get out. So, authorities say, Dilworth took the baby in a car seat and handed him over a locked, six-foot fence.
· The morning of Dec. 14, Bernsdorff drove to the Monterey Lakes apartment complex in Largo. Dressed all in black, removed a screen from the window of apartment 2113 and climbed in, passing the ex-spouses lovers’ 4-year-old daughter, Annie Rose, asleep on the living room floor. The spouse was shot seven times and the lover twice. Later that morning, police found the dead bodies of six-year-old Olivia and three-year-old Magnus in the bedroom of the Powderhorn Drive home.
· An 8-year-old Richmond boy died after allegedly being beaten, tortured and possibly forced to drink household cleaner in what police said Monday was one of the worst cases of child abuse they've ever seen. The boy, who was covered head to toe with injuries in various stages of healing, lived in horrible conditions, staying in a locked room outfitted with a surveillance camera and eating food that was mixed in a blender, police said. Police found signs that Raijon had been restrained on his bed, where the sheets were duct-taped.
At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter what gender these parents are. Only that they all share one thing in common – having a beautiful young child and then callously treating that child as if it were no more than a piece of common disposable property, an accessory to be brought out to make them look good, a bargaining chip and worst of all garbage. Many parents who have killed their children use these poor little beings as a receptacle for bad feelings, family secrets, mirrors that reflect their failures – mirrors which can be thrown down and broken when they can’t stand



























· "I just kept hitting her with the belt again and again. I don't know how long, but I remember her trying to get away and me knocking her back down," the journal said. – Excerpt from the journal of Kimberly Dawn Trenor, 20, mother of slain child Riley Ann Sawyers.
· “Neil Entwistle had suffered major financial problems and was dissatisfied in the marriage, prosecutors said. Just days before the killings, police said, he had trawled the Internet for "blonde beauties" and "half-price escorts" and searched Google for "knife in the neck kill" and "quick suicide method."
· That Daryl Holton, 36, killed his four children (Stephen Edward Holton (12), Brent Holton (10), Eric Holton (6), and Kayla Marie Holton (4)) was not at issue, nor that he killed them in a premeditated manner, making it a capital crime; he methodically blindfolded them and told them not to peek, as he shot one after the other through the heart. He felt it was the correct moral choice: to save them from being brought up with a mother having a history of alcoholism and abuse.
· In an interview with Oakland police, Chazarus Hill Sr., 27, "had the audacity" to make "the understatement of the year – probably of the century," Stallworth said in his closing argument, quoting Hill: "I may have hit him harder than I was supposed to." Hill’s attorney William Daley said the case "deals with, in an extreme way, the discipline of children" that went "horribly awry." Hill, who had limited education, disciplined his son in the only way he knew how, the defense attorney said: by observing how parents around him treated their children. "Mr. Hill had nothing to look at except his own experience," Daley said. "That is how we got here."

· Defense attorney Garcia wanted jurors to forget about case facts, such as her alcohol consumption on the day of the murder and her penchant for revenge in regards to her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend and estranged ex-husband, when he asked jurors to consider that Susan Eubanks, 35, was brought up by alcoholic parents in a home where violence and abuse were prevalent. Howard-Regan, however, argued that Ms. Eubanks' dysfunctional childhood served only as a smokescreen."The problem with that argument is look at people who have that same background and their children are still alive. They haven't killed their children," Howard-Regan said.

· "The child was in a baby seat. He (Charles Dilworth, 34) stomps the child (Christopher Dilworth three-months-old), picks the child up, shakes the child violently back and forth," said Simpson.”He then threw the child on the bed, beat him again, picked him up by his ankles, and shook him a second time. Dilworth's mother says that he has been depressed all of his life and has been taking medication.

· Oliver Bernsdorff was not happy. He incessantly phoned Jennifer, asking her to come back. He told Jennifer and his mother he was battling depression. His mother now says he was "self-medicating'' with alcohol and was in "extreme emotional pain."

· Moses, who works as a United Parcel Service supervisor in Richmond, told police she had disciplined her son, 8-year-old Raijon Moses for what she perceived to be misbehavior, such as urinating or defecating on himself, police said. Moses admitted that she poured a caustic substance on her son's genitals shortly before his death to discourage him from urinating on himself, Peixoto said. “From what I've seen and heard about this case, I just don't understand how a mother could do this to her child." Moses also told police that she had been punishing her son, whom she home-schooled, since November 2005, because he ran away by jumping out a second-floor window and then stole toys at a store because he didn't have any, authorities said.

Mental illness, discipline, under the influence of alcohol/drugs, revenge these are all valid reasons for a parent to kill their child(ren).























· "These crimes are incomprehensible," Judge Diane Kottmyer said, handing down a sentence of two concurrent life terms. "They defy comprehension because they involve the planned and deliberate murders of the defendant's wife (Rachel Entwistle, 27) and 9-month-old child (Lillian Rose) in violation of bonds that we recognize as central to our identity as human beings, those of husband and wife and parent and child."
· "Our dreams as a parent and grandparent have been shattered by the shameful, selfish act of one person, Neil Entwistle," said Priscilla Matterazzo, "For him to have tried to hide behind an accusation of murder-suicide of this beautiful woman and perfect mother is low and despicable."
· "Families should stay together; a father should be with his children." Holton told Shelbyville police investigators. He admitted to also planning to kill his ex-wife and himself but had changed his mind.
· Witnesses testified that the boy came up to them when he wasn't with his father, telling them, "My daddy punched me," and "Shh, my dad hurt me, don't tell anybody," Stallworth said.
· After Ford told Hill that she was done with their relationship, an enraged Hill said, "If you leave, I'm going to f— him up," the prosecutor said.
· "Remember the children and consider the horror they must have felt as their mother took aim and fired," prosecutor Bonnie Howard-Regan told jurors. "If this defendant does not deserve the death penalty, then who does?"
· "It's probably the worst baby murder I've seen in a long time. It's a tragic waste of life - unnecessary - pick up the phone if you can't take care of a child and ask someone else to help you out," said Colin Simpson, Asst. State's Attorney.
· "He cared very much about that baby. That's all I have to say at this time," said Dilworth's mother.
· Pattie Davis remembers the time little Magnus worked the room, toddling from one family member to another, giving out hugs. When he came to Bernsdorff, the child turned away. "Daddy mean.''
· "He wanted his family," Jutta Bernsdorff said. "It was all he wanted in life. His dream of a family was broken. The most important figure is the mother figure and that was gone."
· "She said she thought he was playing mind games with her" whenever he defecated on himself, said Richmond police Sgt. Mitch Peixoto. "That little kid has been going through a living hell," Peixoto added. "I think he was scared to death of his mother."
· Raijon had whip marks, burns, cuts and scars "over every inch of his body," said Lt. Mark Gagan. "It's obvious that this was a sustained and prolonged pattern of abuse.”It was the most disturbing crime scene I've ever seen."




This will be a section devoted to punishment of these criminals. Perhaps how their remorse (or lack thereof) played a role in the sentences they received. And a wrap up of key points.

questions for 2/3/09

#1. Now I am all for drama in its various forms played out in the arts but I am not too sure about the dramatism. I understand the need to pull am audience into an imagined reality – a reality that asks us to connect with the actors, to feel their pain or happiness, to experience their struggles out of poverty or their fall from the top. We are asked to love them, hate them, but most of all identify with them. Even if we have had no prior experience (script) to guide us through the different acts of our new slice of life, each of us have gone in the span of two hours from being an individual to being a universal “we”.
This sounds good on the surface. Empathy, compassion, and a sense of right and wrong – the ability to feel justified when the hero wins out or injustice when helpless victims are preyed upon is a great gauge of a person’s moral fiber.
But I am not so sure that I want to agree with all of the assertions made in regards to the importance of dramatism as Burke lays them out. As is stated in Professor Philpott’s essay, Turning Tragedy into Triumph, “dramatism argues that the essential goal of effective contemporary rhetoric is constructing an alignment between and among audience and speaker based on shared qualities embodied in the symbols used in the discourse (“identification”).” This mirrors Burke’s argument “that you persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his.”
As I was reading this passage my thoughts were turned towards cult groups or groups of the outer fringes of society which tend to feed on their audiences’ fears. Fears which have weakened their morale or resolve. Fears which have allowed a victim mentally to crop up into their everyday lives. Fears which do nothing more than allow a pit of hate and loathing towards those they feel are getting preferential treatment (minorities), taking jobs away from them (illegal immigrants), or who may be contributing to what they perceive as an erosion in the moral fiber of our country (gays and lesbians).
Many cult leaders are well skilled highly charismatic rhetors who since they prey on people whose mental capacities may have been eroded via depression or a feeling of hopelessness are geniuses at recruiting initiatives into their hate mongering institutions through the ploy of identification “by invoking symbols and rhetorical patterns whose value is shared by the audience – whose members share a sense of identity.”
So my question is: the KKK just recently killed one of their own initiates because the 19-year-old decided against becoming a member of this particularly inclusive group. Do you think that he was killed due to the fact that the other members recognized that he was turning his back on their “shared sense of self”? And that the KKK could not allow their doctrine to be ingested and then spat back out at them – would his “turn coat” ways have cast an even longer shadow on the organization which still espouses its hate against African Americans but which cannot allow its members to stand in the light of day? Thus, throwing this particular groups consubstantial notions into the wild, for those of us, who are more enlightened, to pick clean.

#2. As I was reading another part of Professor Philpott’s essay I came across the section Rhetoric and Situation: The Strategic Transformation of Experience. In this section Philpott is explaining Burke’s theory of “symbolic action” which states that “rhetoric succeeds in modifying or adjusting situations by transforming interpretations of the situation and of ourselves.
This particular theory really hit home to me especially when I started to think about how we like to define or put everything into specific categories so that we are able to better deal with our everyday life. “Thus, the names and labels used to describe events contain an understanding of those events and of both the rhetor’s and audience’s relationships towards the situation’s features,” explains Philpott.
I agree with this perception because if it were not true than people would not feel the need to define themselves or others in terms of what do you/they do? Upon meeting a new person that is probably one of the top ten questions asked. Until recently when I was asked what do you do I would normally tell people that I was a server but that I was going to school. I am not very proud of the fact that I am in my mid-thirties and until recently have been working in a restaurant as my main source of income. I felt ashamed and as if people were going to look down on me – due to the general populations perception of restaurant workers. I always felt the need to qualify my occupation with the fact that I go to school.
Now I am able to say that I work in E-commerce which I feel is more “respectable” and more in line with where I feel I should be at this stage in my life. I never wanted people to see me as a waitress I never wanted to define myself in this way – so it always caused tension in my everyday sense of self. Even causing me to feel as if I were a failure.
However, as the section goes on I am validated in the knowledge that “naming is inherently an act of renaming, and serves to define the event and proper reactions to the situation: the human process of symbol using integrates, shapes, and controls both external and internal realities.” Thus, “understanding of both situations and of ourselves is continually transformed through rhetorical responses.”
Does anyone else feel this way in regards to how they feel people are sizing them up and perceiving who they are as people based on their career choices?
#3 This will be a short question. In Kenneth Burke’s Philosophy of Literary Form he argues that strategy is performed in many various forms – one being realism. He states that the author may forget that realism is an aspect for foretelling. Instead the author may do one of two things: 1. “he may take an ill digested philosophy of science, leading him to mistakenly to assume that “relentless” naturalistic “truthfulness” is a proper end in itself”, and 2. “a merely competitive desire to outstrip other writers by being “more realistic” than they.”
He goes on to talk about the American people having no shortage of rhetorical situations, and the recurrence of such situations – “singles out a pattern of experience that is sufficiently representative of our social structure, which recurs sufficiently often for people to “need a word for it” and to adopt an attitude towards it.”
Some of our more contemporary “authors” have tried to trademark common phrases which were used more as a catch-phrase to further their own economic gains – such as Donald Trump on The Apprentice with his “You’re Fired” slogan. Trump’s bid was not successful. However, basketball coach Pat Riley was successful when he trademarked his catchy phrase “threepeat” which helps the American population easily reference the accomplishment of winning three championships in a row.
So I guess my question is this: If language/words are the domain of the entire speaking world how is it possible or even ethical for a very elite portion of the population to be able to lay claim and potentially make money off of what is the only commodity which is truly free?