To Ottawas

[shanlea]

OK. Moving on from Mooses....

Many of us on the board have outlined specific reasons why we have a problem (understatement of the century) with CEDU. But none of us have heard the specific aspects of CEDU that your family endorses. What specifically did you find helpful about the program.

I already know that you find the post CEDU son/brother more fulfilled and on the right track. I want to know the SPECIFIC ways the program contributed to this. Hopefully, we can get a more constructive dialogue going and people can disagree on merit over personal attacks.

Also, this is a sincere inquiry as it has just occurred to me that I never asked. I will endeavor to think openly before replying.

[ottawa5]

I would really like to speak with you more later in the week.

Right now I am in the middle of something very time-consuming, and shouldn't even be checking this site.

I was actually just seeing what my daughter who is away at the moment, might have posted--boy, I fear for the children of some of those who have responded to her, especially when these kids are old enough to disagree their parents---CEDU may look pretty good by comparison!

If you are still of such a mind later, I will reply--I think that I answered with some specifics in the past but perhaps they are on an old post or not what you are looking for.

[Antigen]

Shanlea, I've asked essentially the same question of O5 before and gotten essentially the same answer. I suspect this is all the answer we'll ever get.

BTW, Jeff Shaler remarked at the Treatment Abuse conference in Bathesda in 2000 that he's asked the same question of Stepcraft practitioners many, many times and gotten similar responses.

My theory is that, in order for thought reform to be effective, the subject must be unaware of the mechanism by which it works. You simply can't carry it off w/ informed consent because understanding the process renders the process ineffectual.

Understand that legal and illegal are political, and often arbitrary,
categorizations; use and abuse are medical, or clinical, distinctions.

--Abbie Hoffman

_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Seed sibling `71 - `80
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
   10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

[blownawaytheidahoway]

Now I see how all the stuff with Otowa5&2 started. I just want to say again that my experience was not really good. Even if it MIGHT have saved me. And that phone call with mom and dad and the threats of jail until I was 18. True. My Parents being lied to about what the program delivered followed their orders just the way the cookie cutter ordered. Yes, the folks were angry with me, and were encouraged by someone who probably got kickbacks (re-education consultants)leave me with those nuts. That is unfair. Being punished for what? I had never stolen anyones shit (money, car, or soul)did tons of drugs, I hadn't done anything but run away alot. So I was punished for adolesence. Nothing more. School problems. FOlks had a baby and I had basic sibling rivalry that took arms and starting revolting early. Lot's of personal factors, of course. But to be punished for hormonal changes? Puberty?
And the raps. Described well, accurately and in detail in many postings. And to take us all out of oblivion, it's like this: People feel things differently. Some people who went to CEDU or RMA feel things a LOT more than others. Sadness, Anger, Love, and Guilt. We resent. We can't help it. When we were in our most developemental period the kind of communication we recieved was totally inappropriate. And the messages WERE hostile, out of touch, scary, mean, very wierd sometimes, and unpredictable when the fire would combust under you for NOTHING.
And as for abuse. There was physical hazings in the dorms and everywhere else that staff were not privy to or supported. Ex CEDUITES were the worse.
Yes, I've been in touch a little with some staff and ex staff and they comment that these places have already changed a lot since 1990 and that the confrontational style that was employed during my tenure at RMA is different now. Non confrontational. So OTTS listen. What I think some of us are still needing to fight against is the idea that ANYONE can like it. I've been rational a long time about it but now...I'm with the Serb (staunch enemies of Hitler and facism) and Bryan who has more definitive statements with a FIRSTHAND experience like MINE.
     OH! I loved it when I was brainwashed, and I Love the master who gave me my food and sometimes didn't beat me up hard for no reason. Fuck. It's hard to be nice to anyone who tells me what they don't know. Fuck the anons who defend CEDU ED and fuck the non anons who support CEDU too. whoops now I'm negative. I've got my summit and I DO use it, but man I wish I had a choice about the matter. I was ready after 2.5 years but a shell of the young man I could have become. I had to wait until I wasn't terrified of the world anymore.
     Then the nightmares about RMA started. The re-occuring dreams of returning there. Lies of love. Dreams of Raps and special moments that were only special becuase they stopped the current for a while. sheesh. Oh. BTW. I found a lot of the staff that I mentioned on another thread.
OUR kind who have experienced this evil, EVIL will to change us. To beat our very soul into submission and then abandon us to the problems itself created is not the way to change the world. You can't positively change the world while imprisoning children at the same time! They are incongruous.  
Ottowas, I'm glad I got involved. I'm great with kids but you shoud NEVER, NEVER think you would know what the fuck to do with a teen like I was. Sickening limp noodle. Just Believe that NOTHING there can help everyone... and the gal needs something better to do with her time. This is not for people who don't want to hear the TRUTH.

[**PIXIE DUST**]

dude, they're (the O's) are just trying to cover their asses right now, and are stalling to try to come up with an excuise or answer.

A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special

--Nelson Mandela

[Oppositional Defiance]

I really wish that I would write something as intelligent so goddamn fucking HEALING for my ears to hear as what blownawaytheidahoway, Son of Serbia, and Brian Felsher have written. You guys are real men for what you've all said. Thank you all so much. And thank you Antigen.

[Antigen]

::rainbow::

Homeschool is self regulating. The school board is not going to have illiterate useless people living in their homes forever if they don't have a working education policy.

--Sisterbluerose

[**PIXIE DUST**]

O2 and O5, what's you're purpose on this web sight?  are you trying to piss people off?  are you tring to belittle us like we were at cedu?  are you trying to make us "see the light in cedu"?  (cuz we all know that's not gonna happen...)  are you some one relaying information about this sight to legal people?  are you trying to make what we have to say seem outragouse and not true?  are you tring to keep your "son" from knowing the truth about what other people have to say about these places because you're afraid he will relate to us?  are you tring to brainwash us like cedu tried to?  are you trying to shut us down?  because i will have to second what Bryan Felsher said, "YOU WILL NEVER SILENCE US!"

Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/remon.html' target='_new'>James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

[ This Message was edited by: **PIXIE DUST** on 2004-08-28 14:35 ]

[Oppositional Defiance]

I for one theorize that she is doing this because if she were to believe us, she would be forced to accept the ramifications of what she has done. Rather than face the truth, she chooses to put on goggles through which her false universe exists. She's a coward, and a criminal, and she'll never face herself. Too bad for her son, is all I can say.

[Antigen]

On 2004-08-28 14:58:00, Oppositional Defiance wrote:

"I for one theorize that she is doing this because if she were to believe us, she would be forced to accept the ramifications of what she has done.

I tend to agree w/ you.

As to why she/they post here, I don't think it's substantially different from what motivates religious zealots to do various things from pounding on people's doors on Sunday mornings all the way to lobbing bomb laden virgins at infidels.

All I ask is equal freedom.  When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.
--H.L. Mencken

[blownawaytheidahoway]

What she doesn't seem to understand is that we can have a real dialogue about the program and what it's funcions should have been...if this young man would spend a few hours delving back into the pain/joy he feels. God knows, as does the Cleavers, I mean Ottowas, we can be the warmest bunch and most tender welcoming committee.
    We can't even touch the issue of what was so very powerful about the system and what positive measures we COULD have taken out of it without looking at being incarcerated without our will. Then we can explore the breaking of the individual and that will, and the usages of mind control that CEDU used to supposedly lay new positivly enhanced messages for future living. (they do fail miserably in this and for me DID cause MORE damage in the longrun) and then we can look at what having that will shattered into a thousand pieces feels like and what good that may or may not do. But first things first: if you want dialogue provide the evidence you attest to. If he is so happy-go-lucky and doesn't hang out with us Eddie Hascals anymore where is he? I can't hate my Darth-vader hand that is RMA, I can only learn to live better because of it. I'm trying but hearing it was all pink perfume and flowers from someone who wasn't forced, FORCED to feel bad about themselves for 913 days, and deprived of basic rights, pisses me off.
     But Ottowa(s) you must know that without hearing from this kid ourselves...we ALL think you must be full of shit.
again...I'm Blownaway by thinking about this shit again.

[shanlea]

And I am anxious to hear exactly what SPECIFIC aspects of the program were so helpful according to Ottawa. I hope for:
1. Specific aspect #1
2. Specific aspect #2 and supporting data etc.



I know you all think this is hogwash but I want to know exactly what she finds helpful about the program.

[ottawa5]

You told Shanlea today that I never responded to you about your question as to what specifically I liked about the CEDU experience.

I most certainly did---in a post entitled "Antigen, do you have no sense of humor at all?", I think it was on 8/19 or maybe 8/17.

As well, I told a much longer version of the same basic story to some poster named Cypress earlier in the summer.

Although it must be hard for you to keep track, having to plow through all the insightful comments, beautiful (and well-written) poetry, and so forth at this site.

Perhaps you just didn't like my answer, well that's OK, I don't think much of most of the stuff I hear from you, but I would hate for you to really think that I made no response at all   ( I mean, at the time, I even considered that it might be a sincere question).

[**PIXIE DUST**]

dude, just stop beating around the bush, just answer the fuckin question!!!!!!!  

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make  some of the worst movies in the history of the world.
-- Dave Barry

[**PIXIE DUST**]

in other words, just say it so that people don't have to go looking trough everything if the wanna know the answer

Any policy that has Ted Byfield on the same side as many Rastafarians can fairly be said to have generated a consensus.
-- Ottawa Citizen August 28, 1997