The inspiration for this week’s assignment came from Jordan Abel’s long poem Injun. I would definitely recommend at least listening to the reading that is in the link I provided. It is an amazing project. Abel created his poem by cutting up words from a source text of pieces of text that offended him (by using the derogatory word Injun). He arranged and rearranged the cut out words and ended up with this as one of his segments:
We were asked to bring a piece of text that offended us, or at least one you wanted to deconstruct. I do not get offended easily, even for a straight white male, so I settled on something that I wanted to shred apart. During the whole fight around Proposition 2 (referred to the church by “the Marijuana Initiative”, this was the proposition that wanted to legalize medical cannabis use in Utah), the LDS Church sent out a statement of why they opposed Proposition 2. During their whole crusade, most of their information was either misleading, or not based on any real facts. The excerpt I dismantled was no exception.
I began dismantling my piece using an online tool called Voyant. I copy/pasted about a page from the LDS Church’s list, and Voyant gave me data on each word and its structure in each sentence.
Immediately noticeable is the fact that ‘cannabis’, ‘marijuana’, and ‘medical’ are the three most used words in my piece of text. Obviously, the text is about medical cannabis, so it’s not surprising that those are the top three hits. However, upon closer inspection, I realized that the word ‘medical’ only appeared before the word ‘marijuana’ or ‘cannabis’. This use of ‘medical’ is only a pre-implemented explanation of the word ‘cannabis’ or ‘marijuana’. This makes it seem like the LDS Church isn’t concerned with any of the medical issues that are the reasons medical marijuana is needed in the first place. Additionally, they claim that their interest is in keeping people safe, but the words ‘person’, ‘people’, or any other compassionate term, do not show up even in the Top 10 most frequent words. The word ‘Utahan’ only appears once, and ‘safe’ or ‘safety’ or any other term with that meaning? Not at all.
So if they aren’t concerned with that, what is their issue with Proposition 2? One recurring theme that seems to be an issue is the medical cannabis dispensaries. The LDS Church finds multiple reasons why the medical marijuana dispensaries, and the regulations surrounding them, will be inefficient or will “hamper the law” (again, their claim for this point is based on no factual evidence).
Now, add in to the mix the fact that the LDS Church has purchased major stock in pharmaceutical companies. I could go on a whole tirade about this, and the abuse-of-prescription-drugs-epidemic in Utah, but basically a very major source of the church’s (unethically sourced) funding comes from pharmacies. The medical marijuana dispensaries, however, would be independent from any pharmacies or corporate drug producers. If medical marijuana were to be dispensed as proposed, it would immediately alleviate anybody’s need for many prescriptions drugs and their terrible side effects (not to mention their lack of effectiveness). This would cause a large drain on the income for pharmacies, and thus would be a huge cut in the church’s paycheck. It seems like the LDS Church is against the dispensing of medical cannabis for the simple reason that pharmacies (or themselves) are not involved in it, and therefore will not get any cut of the benefits.
Keeping all this in mind, I ended up creating this project out of the text I chose:
I began by cutting out key words I believed were important to the issue and laying them on the ground. I actually originally arranged them in sentences, which helped me express my thoughts. However, after some experimentation (and frustration after my cat walked over the pieces and scattered everything about), I came upon the above format, which I must say I am very proud of.
I hesitate to explain everything in my piece of work above, because I feel that it takes the fun out of everything. However, after explaining my interpretation of the data given to me by Voyant, and given my cynical view of the LDS Church’s motives, I’m sure this piece can be entertaining to you as well.
Thanks for reading!
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