12:08am January 9, 2015

Seven Deadly Words.

(Content warning for abuse, homicide, disability institutions, prisons, police, deadly ableism, deadly racism, suffocation, and violence.)

Seven Deadly Words: “If you can talk, you can breathe.“

That’s what they said to me. I weighed about 105 pounds at the time, somewhere between 5’1” and 5’2” in height. And was very thin (for my bone structure), no padding to absorb what they were doing to me, nor the strength a bigger person.

They had me pinned to the ground. I forget what my crime was, or even if I had a crime to begin with. Merely fighting them when they randomly grabbed you from behind (as nearly anyone would fight in such circumstances!) was considered “danger to others” and allowed them to put you in an isolation room, tie you down, and possibly lengthen your stay.

The biggest men were often tasked with the job of keeping people on the floor. So, remembering my height and weight again, I had men at least 6 feet tall and over 300 pounds holding me down. Sometimes they used their hands and leaned their weight into my back. Other times they just sat on me.

When I had trouble breathing, they just laughed at me. Laura Tisoncik once briefly described that story in anonymous form:

As an IRC channel manager I get to see other things, too. I get to see the carnage wrought by years of "help”– not just in people my age, who were supposedly misdiagnosed and mistreated, but even in young teens. Ever want to clear out a room full of autistics? Start discussing restraints. But don’t do it unless you enjoy watching a lot of people have PTSD flashbacks. If you think this was all done for our own good, think again. I still have scars on my body, 30 years on, from having been beaten by hospital staff while restrained and drugged to the point where I was unable to sit up for three days. A friend of mine– a 19 year old, so this was not back in the Bad Old Days– tells stories of being restrained face-down, and the staff watching and laughing as she began to suffocate. And if you go peruse the Oasis web board online right now, you can read about a mother upset because her 16 year old aspie son was locked 4 days in a hospital “quiet room” for refusing medication. No, she wasn’t upset at the hospital, staff or doctors– she was upset at her son!

(from Why I Am Angry.)

But what she didn’t say was the fatal words that have meant so many deaths in both instittions for disabled people, and prisons. I recently read yet another story of a cop killing someone for walking while black, and hist last words were “I can’t breathe.“

When I said “I can’t breathe,” the institution staff laughed at me. But they also said the fatal words: “If you can talk, you can breathe.” I don’t know how I got out of there alive. Luck, probably.

I’ve seen too many stories where people have died right after saying “I can’t breathe”, when being put into various kinds of restraint holds — choke holds, basket holds, and holds that have no fancy name but are still dangerous restraint holds. Even putting someone in mechanical restraints increase the possibility of the person dying of severe stress, among other things that are more physical.

And always, always, when we say we can’t breathe, what do they say?

“If you can talk, you can breathe.”

And that is often the last words we’ll ever hear, just as “I can’t breathe” is often the last words we’ll ever say.