Emporia SW Quarters Aff

Judy Garland referenced the green farmlands of Kansas when she told audiences there was No place like home in The Wizard of Oz, but in The Wiz the yellow brick road was walked by Miss Diana Ross, a Dorothy from the concrete jungle of Harlem. A school teacher who gave back to the community in which she resided, but who was too afraid of leaving home to venture into the world beyond it. Admonished by Aunt Em for never going farther than 125th street, we learn that a pre-condition for truly being home is the safety we all find in those around us because home is not a place, but a structure of support. As Dorothy opens the door to her New York residence to take out the trash after a Thanksgiving dinner, ToTo runs headlong into a blizzard that transports the pair to the magical Land of Oz where a pair of Silver Slippers snatched from the corpse of Evermeen, the Wicked Witch of the East and the magic of the Wiz seem to be her only hope for finding her way back home. Along the journey with the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow, the jumbled cast of misfits teaches us that no matter where we are going, we cant get their alone.Faced with a yellow brick road lined with a limitless number of off-duty Taxi cabs and miles of open road, Dorothy, like the rest of us, gets on down the road on her search for home-place. Just like Dorothy, I was on my journey to find home. The house, or should I say the many houses that I resided at, were simply just that--- houses. I found it hard to find comfort in battered womans shelter where I knew no one and everybody was scared to disclose themselves to the next person, but shockingly enough, I found it hard to find a place of peace and tranquility in the dysfunctional household where crack was being sold out of the dining room window, mice slept with me in the bed, and food was present just as much as my biological father was rarely. Nothing was stable. Nothing was the same. Every day was so different that I never got the time to find a place called home. It wasnt until I found room 131 at central high did I start to feel somewhat at home. I say somewhat because debate I believe was scary for most of the students entering it. I have to give an 8 minute speech all by myself?? Hell to the naw!! After several days of practice with other students as central high school, it was time for our first actual competition The Central High Debate Kansas City tournament. All the inner-cities pile in to the cafeteria all very chatty, but just to shake the nervous of the first competition. The thing that eased our minds the most was to know that each student was going through a trial of their own. I found new friends, I found family members, and I thought I found home. After two DKC tournaments, Rinehart felt as if we were ready for national competition. I will never forget loading up the coach bus along with 3 other schools from the district and making our way up 35 North to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Once I arrived and stepped off the bus I felt a chill. I didnt know if it was my uncomfort or the freezing weather of Iowa. Whatever it was, I had to get over it because it was time. I grab the tub off the bus and follow the rest of the UDL students inside. As we walk in into the 250 other most causasion stop their talking, their movements, and their lives, and stare at us as we walk to nearest open table and put our stuff down. That was first sign to me that debate here had to be something totally different. As the rounds, the tournaments and years went pass

I knew I needed to change this place that provided me and so many other students an escape from our households. a point in my career where I had to put down the revisions of the patriot acts, the learn and serve America grants, the subsidies, and visas and talk about this community. A lot of bright people get together weekends on end to bounce ideas off of each others minds, but never once did we have a conversation about what took place in the cafeterias and more importantly, what took place in the actual debates. I found that regardless of the style of debate I engaged in, I could never just be Ryan. There was always a framework that I didnt mean, a way to start my politics off better, no way of evaluating me inside of debates. But then I had the epiphany. Just like the students that told me to functionally leave the activity or adapt, Ive been here just as long as you have. We are all Dorothys trying to find our home here, but I never was able to have a debate in my house. So if I am to do something by the time these last four or five tournaments are over, I wanna bring back to its home. Weir 2008 (Allison, Home and Identity: In memory of Iris Marion Young, Hypatia, volume 23, Number 3, Summer, pp. 4-21, Indiana University Press) Iris Young argues that while Martin and Mohanty are right to point out that the boundaries of home typically serve to protect privilege, they are wrong to reject the ideal of home.... Perhaps we can imagine and embrace a different dream of a better home. If home is necessary for members of aggrieved communities to find the power to resist, debate precludes the possibility of becoming a site of resistance for those who need it now: Our stylistic norms for engagement are not only inaccessible but discourage people from even attempting to find home. It is nearly impossible for disenfranchised individuals who have been trained to believe they will never succeed to become attached to this activity when they dont feel welcome. Not only are their perspectives dismissed, but they themselves as people. We can never have an ethical government official that successfully interacts with communities of color when we train them to forego a simple hello for an additional 5 seconds of prep. The current focus on the structure of debate and not those individuals who reside here means that the welcoming relationships of home are never present. Also, the form and content of arguments are structured by the politics of displacement that necessitates the search for home in the first place. Debaters have forgone the speech for the speech doc and spew horror stories that train us to be disempowered citizens that never act in the face of actual oppression. Our current model of debate is disconnected from the lived realities of those affected by structural violence. That makes this activity useless to those who need it, and turns oppression into a game for those who are already here. Debate should not be a place of politics where we pretend every other aspect of our lives is left behind when you get on the van in the morning, but we should understand for some

people the personal is the political. What Diana Ross was searching for wasnt just a cramped apartment in New York, but a site of community to mutually recover from the structural violence they witnessed on a daily basis. In fact , this is the true purpose of energy. When the Dorothys of this world think of energy, they dont think of thorium reactors, but the energy required to get out of bed and navigate the struggle. We all get our energy from home, even the workers who run the power plant. So in a sense, all energy finds it origin at home. Instead of energy production, we need to direct our attention on home production here. Just like Dorothy and her friends, before we establish answer larger questions about what happens with the home or what is needed for it, we have to find one. Debate has been somewhat that place for me. I can honestly say I know debate more than anything else. Thus, the Role of the Ballot is for the judge to endorse the team that best methodologically and performatively brings debate home. Unlike Dorothy, those excluded voices cant click their silver slippers and fly away. We have to make pro-active efforts to be the agents of change that ensure this space and the knowledge produced here is accessible to all that need it. Judy Garland may not have had much on the fabulous Diana Ross, but she did have one thing right.. ..There is no place like home.