Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Human Rights Law Blogs -> Never In Our Names

Human Rights Law

: Never In Our Names

Miracles: Gracias, Nezua

By Alexa

Take a look at us now, mi amigos! Who thinks a human rights community has to be a dark and cheerless place? Dios mio, I couldn't have dreamed this sazon and brio and new light, but Nezua has created a very beautiful and exciting new look for us.

There are a couple of tiny tweaks left, for which we will need some help from Soapy, but I'm ready to welcome our contributing editors back and announce our reopening very soon.

So what's the story on this milagro?
Almost one year ago, the editors and my family decided to close NION at least temporarily. At that time, no one knew that we would reopen, so this is a miracle in more ways than one.

If you're a regular reader, or used to be, you probably know that in 2005, I was diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma. This is a very aggressive form of lymphoma. I spent much of the next year at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (and want to send my love to Dr. Luis Fayad, Dr. Alexandra Phan, and the many nurses and volunteers and staff at MDACC who sometimes look in). Then as now, there is no cure for Burkitt's. There are some different options for chemotherapy, radiation therapy and targeted gene therapy, but this depends on the cytogenetic markers of one's disease. (What works for one will not work for all, or even many). In the spring of 2006, I had a translocation gene expression, which meant my options for treatment were even more limited. Then things got worse fast when El Jefe Bush vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. Why did he do that?

Bush and his allies say that frozen embryos are tantamount to humans, and therefore are no more appropriate for medical research than are death row inmates. "If this bill were to become law," Bush said yesterday, "American taxpayers would for the first time in our history be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos."

Now as you know, amigos, this is a completely false argument. It's a fundamentalist religious, not scientific opinion of people like Dr. James Dobbs, as adult stem cells (we all have 'em) have absolutely nada to do with abortion.

The experimental protocol study I was in lost funding, as did many others which were defunded at the time. I have no words to tell you what it was like to see almost everyone I had known for the last couple of years in chemo lose hope. Many have died. I didn't feel much of anything except this very surreal sense of time moving too fast, and my need to do things quickly that I never wanted to do at all. I knew that at 80 pounds and 29% lung capacity, I couldn't live much longer. And that would have been okay at the time because every day was harder than the one before . . . except I have a little daughter and a papi who has been my only parent for most of my life, and we didn't want to, and couldn't say goodbye.

Fast forward to March 2007, when I woke up in the hospital after three months, or as mi companero blueness calls that time, "when Alexa was sleeping." I still don't know exactly how it came to be that I was trying to put some tape on a Christmas present without getting up from the floor, and it was oddly, springtime. I had, the day before Christmas and unknown to me until that time, had a bone marrow transplant.

In this long sleep in the isolation ICU, the  life-saving gift from my cousin Jaime in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, remapped my entire DNA system. This is a true miracle because the body begins to recognize cancer cells and fight them, giving people with cancer a way to live. More chemotherapy, more radiation, and many platelet tranfusions later, I had cytogenetic remission (no cancer whatsoever in my blood or bone marrow) in January of this year.

Can you guess what one of the very first things I wanted to do was? In the time I had given up on myself, in much the same way, I had despaired that the hundreds of detainees Mikk0 and I had tried very hard to follow over the years were forever lost. I had lost hope after the Military Commissions Act of 2006 for the people who need hope, and certainly need to be and will be remembered by people like you and I. That's the inspiration of Never In Our Names: We will never forget, and we will never give up on those silenced by the Bush administration. We can't change the Unitary Executive or the Imperial Presidency, but what we can do is what we've always done. We work together to make sure that these illegally imprisoned children, men and women aren't easy for others to forget. We keep their names alive every single day. If nothing else, we know that if an interrogator or contractor types a name into Google, there will be plenty of evidence to confirm that yes, Sami al-Haj exists, and yes, we remember Omar Khadr, Juma al-Dossari, Abu Zubaydah. We have lost status on some of the detainees but we haven't forgotten and you can count on this, te lo juro: We will never forget and we will do whatever we can to increase awareness that Bush's black sites and torture gulags are inhabited by real people, just like you and I, whose only "crime" is happenstance of whom they were born to, their appearance, the places of their birth.

In May of this year, Sami al-Haj was released from Guantanamo. In his first interview, this broken but brave man told the world all the truth you'll never get from a secret military tribunal: "Torture is terrorism." In this post-Orwellian world,  the president of the United States openly boasts on television:

We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why.

The president's lawyer, John Yoo, defends Bush's absolute right to torture children, men and women. I think you understand why. (Padilla, Jose.)

Look to the individuals detained, tortured and dead in ICE custody. The ghost ships and ghost planes and the disappearing of tens of thousands (conservative estimate) at the sadistic pleasure of a president cracked on power and cruelty.

We have become Dr. Steven Miles' torture-endangered society, a people who can't get enough fictional torture but deny or don't care about torture in the real. This is actually much worse than an unaware society. We've blurred the lines between fantasy and reality so effectively that people believe a sobbing 16 year old boy is "the worst of the worst." (Bush, George.) I find this appalling. I will not, NOT stand by silently or be polite and allow the people I work with or interact with to live in a state of denial. For over six years now, we have become further enmeshed in cruelty and passive acceptance of what many consider war crimes. I don't accept that qualifier. Crimes against humanity are what they are and to diminish that is to diminish ourselves and each other. We aren't sleeping, this isn't a dream that'll be over when we wake up, and it won't stop, even when Bush finally leaves office, without the strength and solidarity of we, the people.

When there are individuals like Jerry Northington (possum), blueness, Valtin and Unitary Moonbat standing shoulder to shoulder with me, I believe, absolutely, that we are stronger than even we know.

And this is where I am proud to introduce you to someone who you should already know and read every day as I do, the brilliant poet, artist and maestro Nezua, The Unapologetic Mexican. I have loved Nezua's work since he designed kyledeb's Citizen Orange. One day last May, after looking at portfolios and resigning myself to the fact that I'd rather keep the original design by Zwoofie than take a chance on an unknown designer, I found a beautiful new site, The Sanctuary. Take a look if you haven't seen this wonderful community for immigration reform. All the the Sanctuary and Citizen Orange writers kick major ass. I love 'em. This site represents the cause and the purpose in words and in art by Nezua.

I emailed Nezua, was immediately laughed at in disbelief by my daughter, a big fan of one magical book called Scary and prayed to the Copper Virgin, put glasses of water behind the doors (si; I know, but it seemed like too much of a dream to really happen). If I was ever to be graced with the kind of site I really wanted, it would only be through Nezua's time and talent.

Nezua replied to my email (Amy was really jazzed about that . . . "are you sure he is the friend of Horris, mami?") and told me it would take some time, but I have to tell you, it was well worth the wait.

Thanks to Nezua's incredible gift of knowing exactly what I wanted before I had ever seen it, that miracle is now reality. If you want a site you'll fall in love with, mi bueno amigo Nezua is the designer you should contact. I'm amazed at the way NION looks, and one reason for that is that I never actually talked with Nez about design specifics, but he was able to "read" what I wanted from what I told him about why this site is so important to me. That's some big talent. As I mentioned earlier, there are a couple of tweaks left, but they are what the artist sees, not this overjoyed and completely awed girl at the exhibit.

I also want to thank Duke at The Sanctuary and Migra Matters for his generosity of time and spirit in helping me with last minute, late night coding. Duke, without you, I wouldn't be here tonight. I'd probably be coding and cursing and re-coding until next week. Many, many thanks, amigo.

This may be the longest post I've ever written. A lot of it was hard in the telling and probably for you, hard in reading. I've never talked openly about my cancer treatment and never expected to, until my good friend possum, aka Dr. Jerry Northington, decided to run for Congress. There were a few times that I honestly felt like giving up, having no more treatment, for everyone's sake, letting it end. Jerry encouraged me to fight. When no one else could get through to me, Jerry did, not just once. I am here today because this amazing man convinced me I still had some work to do.

Without mi companero supremo, blueness, who understands what no one else does, none of this would be here. When I was determined that I would never go to a museum again because Omar Khadr was blind (and other similar restrictions, one for each detainee) blueness said to me, "who do you think he'd want to look at beauty, Alexa? Someone who has never stopped thinking about him, maybe?" Blueness has never given up on me and is not just my wavelength but my best friend.

Big love to mi novio, Unitary Moonbat.

I have learned in the last few years that nothing is impossible. So if you're with me, and you want to get serious about ending torture, kicking butt and taking names for indefinite detention and due process, welcome to the online community inspired by the words of a child who knew at age 11 that all you have to do to qualify for human rights is be human.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on August 17, 2008 (boomark / email).