Honor is life, for with no honor one may as well be dead. — From the Mandalorian Cannons of Honor
Never been more proud of my son.
Here’s the story.
Disney has come under fire for shooting portions of the live-action Mulan in the northwestern region where an estimated one million members of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority have been placed against their will in internment camps as part of an effort to forcibly assimilate them with China’s majority Han population.
Some have been subjected to forced sterilizations and abortions, recent reports show, with former detainees describing torture and inhumane treatment.
In its end credits, the film gives “special thanks” to Chinese government organizations in Xinjiang, among them, the Turpan Bureau of Public Security, directly involved in an ongoing campaign of cultural genocide.
After learning of this fact, my boy became incensed. We just watched the live-action Mulan like many subscribers, we were entertained but found it shared little of the “Disney Magic” of the original animation.
Once my boy found out about the treatment of the Muslim Uighur minority? My son, straight up disgusted, confronts me. “So we just paid $29.99 toward ethnic cleansing? “
“Dad, we’ve got to do something to support oppressed minorities in China! We should cancel Disney Plus until they apologize and help these people!”
I said to him. “We LOVE Disney Plus Bugs. This means No Mandalorian or Marvel. You up for that?”
He countered, “We can’t just fight for Black lives when these Chinese people are getting persecuted. It’s not right. What if Disney made a movie about Nelson Mandela in South Africa during Apartheid?
Would you still watch Disney Plus then?”
The mouths of babes…
No lie detected.
I was both ashamed of myself and had a heart bursting with pride for the boy, no the young man, who reminded me of the lessons I had forgotten in a moment of myopic Star Wars Geekdom.
We can’t abandon our morality or turn a blind eye to suffering to be entertained. That’s the same as White football fans who whine about players kneeling in solidarity to highlight police brutality.
How can we expect Whites to value our Black Lives, if we don’t acknowledge and stand in solidarity with ICE detainees at our borders or persecuted Chinese Ethnic Minorities simply to be entertained?
Is human dignity that cheap a coin?
Following some devastating revelations on Monday, from a nurse-turned-whistleblower at a Georgia immigrant detention center (as shared with the Intercept earlier this week) about concerns over medical practices at the center during the global pandemic, the full complaint obtained by SheKnows provides a grim closer look into the practices putting immigrants detained in the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) — operated by private prison company LaSalle Corrections — at risk and allegedly irreparably harming their health and reproductive freedom.
Through on-the-record insights from Dawn Wooten, the licensed practical nurse employed by ICDC and protected whistleblower quoted throughout the complaint, and interviews with detained women, the complaint shares reports of a lack of clear informed consent before procedures are performed and numerous women undergoing traumatic, lasting changes to their reproductive health.
The complaint was filed by Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network on Monday, September 14.
Our country’s hands are far from clean as far as this kind of barbarism toward ethnic minorities, particularly women & girls.
There is a long history of both medical experimentation and forced sterilization that targets our most vulnerable populations in the United States.
According to a story in NPR, In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, by a vote of 8 to 1, to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate. The case, known as Buck v. Bell, centered on a young woman named Carrie Buck, whom the state of Virginia had deemed to be “feebleminded.”
Author Adam Cohen told Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that Buck v. Bell was considered a victory for America’s eugenics movement, an early 20th-century school of thought that emphasized biological determinism and actively sought to “breed out” traits that were considered undesirable.
All told, as many as 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized during the 20th century. The victims of state-mandated sterilization included people like Buck who had been labeled “mentally deficient,” as well as those who who were deaf, blind and diseased.
Minorities, poor people and “promiscuous” women were often targeted.
State Governor’s to this day, maintain the right to forcibly sterilize those they determine “unfit”.
How can this be?
Didn’t we fight Hitler’s Axis to put an end to this?
There were all kinds of categories of people who were deemed to be unfit [to procreate],” Cohen says. “The eugenicists looked at evolution and survival of the fittest, as Darwin was describing it, and they believed ‘We can help nature along, if we just plan who reproduces and who doesn’t reproduce.
This is an issue we cannot ignore nor pretend doesn’t exist. In this turbulent time of change. With an election and some say the “Soul of our Nation” on the line.
The idea of what America will look like for the foreseeable future with my children’s children’s welfare is at stake.
My family and I are determined to do what we can to raise awareness and stop the systematic abuses highlighted above.
We encourage Disney, as a powerful corporate entity with vast resources and influential megaphone to do the same.
Our family, like many American families for generations, now have loved Disney and appreciated it’s core values; innovation, quality, community, storytelling, optimism, and decency, these high ideals are supposed to be present in everything they do.
My son and I have been listening. All we ask is for Disney in particular and Americans in general, to walk their talk.
The fantasy of “sticking up for the little guy” defying oppression, and upholding democratic supposedly “American values” are uniformly entrenched throughout Disney’s filmed entertainment catalog.
Disney’s real-world actions MUST be aligned with their core values just as American real world actions must align with our founding documents The Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution, to retain the goodwill the Disney brand and the American brand has cultivated for generations world wide.
As Disney goes, so goes America.
Now that we all know better, we are compelled to DO BETTER.
We must all speak out and stand in solidarity any way we can. My family and I will be sending the cost of our monthly Disney Plus subscription toward #amnestyinternational in solidarity with the persecuted minorities of the autonomous regions of northern China until The Walt Disney Corporation unambiguously condemns the treatment of oppressed populations both at home and abroad, and puts its money where it’s mouth is to invest monetarily in making affirmative, positive changes for the aforementioned.
However, we cannot demand China to stop targeting Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other ethnic minority groups whose religious and cultural practices are central to their identity, while vulnerable women in ICE Detention Centers are given hysterectomies without informed consent or still waiting patiently for justice for Breonna Taylor.
How can we as a nation condemn China’s treatment of Uyghurs when Latinx ICE detainees are forcibly sterilized?
China’s treatment of the Muslim Minority mirrors the United States’ own treatment of vulnerable Latinx women & girls. And let’s not forget, Black Lives still do matter.
We realize our Disney Plus subscription means less than nothing to their bottom line. But just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t absolve you from doing something. So for the foreseeable future, No Disney Plus for us. However, it’s far bigger than Disney’s Public Relations mess. This is about our personal ethical codes of conduct.
”A person’s got to have a code.”
You will raise your young as Mandalorians — and defend them. You will wear our armor, and speak our language. And you will serve the clan, and rally when called. These are the Resol’nare — the Six Actions — sacred to our movement. Do them — and you may live to call yourselves Mandalorians! — A MANDALORIAN RALLY MASTER
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Contrary to the latest fashion of “alternative facts”. I was brought up old fashioned. You’ve gotta have a code. Personal guiding principles, that should be immutable. All entities & individuals have some code of conduct.
Whether it’s a company mission statement outlining professional standards of conduct.
A nation’s constitution, a body of fundamental principles that sets limits to determine how that nation is to be governed.
Or the moral resolve of a clear-eyed child with a big heart who wants to be entertained, but understands doing what’s right is more important.
In Star Wars Cannon, The Mandalorian Code of Honor (The Way) was created by Mandalore Cadden Blackthorne as a means of abolishing the savage history that guided the Mandalorian people for eons.
It was created as an unusual perfection in the governing principles of a Mandalorian’s life; he did not destroy their heritage but instead protected it, and others’ views upon the Mandalorians, by giving the Mandalorians a better sense of purpose, and a better image to the rest of the galaxy.
The Mandalorian, titular character of the Disney Plus show, follows “The Way”. He was taken in and raised within this belief system that makes him Mandalorian. Mandalorian isn’t a race, it’s a creed.
Being Mandalorian isn’t what you are, it’s what you choose to do daily.
He had an ethical dilemma which led him to do for The Child what was done for him, protect this child & reunite him with his people, until then? They are a clan of two. Strength, Honor, Loyalty to one’s clan is everything to a Mandalorian.
The phrase “This is the Way” serves as a connection of sorts, personal adherence to a very specific set of rules and guidelines for living — their way of life, reminding Mandalore survivors of what they have in common.
As long time Star Wars fans, this is why The Mandalorian resonates with me and my boy.
We all need three things, An ethical code, a “North Star” a constant to guide our actions, clear eyes to inform us when we’re off course, and a strong hand at the tiller to keep us pointed in the right direction.
We desperately need those in authority to possess these traits. We’re currently living through a nightmare of too many in power who share none of these qualities.
America, we see ourselves as “the good guys” we’ve had past leaders who possessed those three qualities, our “Way” is the U.S. Constitution.
The U.S. Constitution is America’s governing principle. It protects OUR shared heritage and others’ views of America by giving us a sense of purpose, and if we wish to remain seeing ourselves as good guys?
We’ve got to have clear eyes, and the will to steer ourselves on the right course. One big way is doing right by victimized women & girls both here and abroad.
To quote the Mandalorian, “This is the way…”
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