Tournament:  | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge: 

1AC

In  the squo, debate is  an activity focused on energy production. Judges and debaters produce a number of policy affs as soon as the topic is announced . Debaters must read through their affs at break neck speed or else risk a loss. After my first debate tournament, I realized that reading policy plans that I knew nothing about on the affirmative wasn’t conducive to education. That’s when I started running kritiks on the affirmative to criticise the way we chose to learn about the topic. This year since the topic is about energy production I began to learn more about people who are excluded from discussions about energy policy. As I began to know my partner better, I realized that the practice of debate itself is exclusionary to those who are not able to perform certain functions. This is why I am choosing to kritique  ableist modes of thought within the debate space. Because of the current structure if policy debate,  I was apprehensive about running this argument out of fear that my partner and I would lose many rounds because we chose to argue the aff from a holistic perspective. I was afraid that we would lose because we decided to focus more on the quality of our argument instead of the number of arguments  made in debate rounds. I kept asking my coach if any judge would vote for us if we performed our affirmative this way without speed reading. I was nervous about facing speeches with 9 minutes of framework and topicality arguments from opposing teams and being forced into speed reading to respond to all these arguments. But I am deciding to perform this because I believe ableist modes of thought have been unexamined in the debate community.

… Our relationship with Energy Discourse comes through a rubric of a focus on abilities and ableism.

Wolbring et al. 2010 (Gregor Wolbring, Andrea Zipprich, Jeremy Moss, Darryl Macer, and N. Manohar.  "Energy Equity and Environmental Security" Report produced for the Environmental Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific Project. http://www.academia.edu/289286/Energy_Equity_and_Environmental_Security-http://www.academia.edu/289286/Energy_Equity_and_Environmental_Security)  RJG

If one looks closely at the energy discourse the favouritism for certain abilities is one
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that are seen – whether real orperceived - to lack these essential abilities.

This system of Ableism operates as the master trope illuminating the fundamental tactic of oppression, the naturalization of social inferiority as inherent in biological difference.

Siebers, University of Michigan, Professor of Literary and Cultural Criticism, 9
Tobin, "The Aesthetics of Human Disqualification", Oct 28, Lecture, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t%26rct=j%26q=%26esrc=s%26source=web%26cd=1%26ved=0CCoQFjAA%26url=http%3A%2F%2Fdisabilities.temple.edu%2Fmedia%2Fds%2Flecture20091028siebersAesthetics_FULL.doc%26ei=LWz4T6jyN8bHqAHLkY2LCQ%26usg=AFQjCNGdkDuSJkRXMHgbXqvuyyeDpldVcQ%26sig2=UCGDC4tHbeh2j7-Yce9lsA-http://www.google.com/url?sa=t%26rct=j%26q=%26esrc=s%26source=web%26cd=1%26ved=0CCoQFjAA%26url=http%3A%2F%2Fdisabilities.temple.edu%2Fmedia%2Fds%2Flecture20091028siebersAesthetics_FULL.doc%26ei=LWz4T6jyN8bHqAHLkY2LCQ%26usg=AFQjCNGdkDuSJkRXMHgbXqvuyyeDpldVcQ%26sig2=UCGDC4tHbeh2j7-Yce9lsA, accessed 7/7/12, sl)

Oppression is the systematic victimization of one group by another. It is a form
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where aesthetic judgments about the creation and appreciation of bodies are openly discussed.
One additional thought must be noted before I treat some analytic examples from the historical
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signs of incompetence, weakness, or inferiority as undeniable facts of nature.
As racism, sexism, and classism fall away slowly as justifications for human inferiority
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Disability represents at this moment in time the final frontier of justifiable human inferiority

This plays itself out through the debate space where everyone is assumed to be white, male, adept at speed reading, has enough time to immerse themselves in both topical and critical literature, and someone who wants to make the world a better place in a world that will listen.

Breckenridge, New School for Social Research-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_School_for_Social_Research History, Associate Professor and Vogler University of Chicago, Professor of Philosophy 1
 (Carol A. Breckenridge and Candace Vogler, Fall 2001, Public Culture, Volume 13, Number 3, Duke University Press "The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Disability’s Criticism," Pg. 350 Project Muse accessed 7-2-12 BC

Disability studies teaches that an assumed able body is crucial to the smooth operation of
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people unsettle ideals of social organization as freely chosen expressions of mutual desire.

This creates a sense of false identity that we each internalize, learning to look at the world through eyes that aren’t our own and with a subject position that hurts each of us.

Lang, Overseas Development Group Senior Research Associate, 1
(Dr. Raymond, January, 2001, University of East Anglia, Overseas Development Group, "THE DEVELOPMENT AND CRITIQUE OF THE SOCIAL MODEL OF DISABILITY," http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lc-ccr/lccstaff/raymond-lang/DEVELOPMMENT_AND_CRITIQUE_OF_THE_SOCIAL_MODEL_OF_D.pdf, accessed: 7-8-12, CAS)

Charlton also maintains that the majority of disabled people have been so psychologically oppressed by
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internalized their own oppression". (Charlton, J. 1998:27)

Debate changed me by showing me that when we craft solutions to problems we end up overgenerlizing people and excluding their imput on these plans based on our judgments. Last year’s topic led to the creation of policy affs that justified American intervention in Middle Eastern countries on the basis that people in those countries were unable obtain democracy for themselves. Many affs asserted that if we didn’t do something, areas would destabalize and people would resort to terrorism. These assertions were based on the fear of the unknown, the fear of what people who were unfamiliar to us might do. Being an Egyptian-American, I was angered at the overgeneralizations of Egyptians and other middle eastern people . This is when I realized in debate, many people embedded within affirmatives are treated as if their opinions and experiences don’t matter as long as the aff has " a general idea" of who people are and how they matter. This type of thinking leads to the exclusion of many valuable voices. This is why I chose to challenge it. I believe that we can also change exclusionary practices in debate by including voices that were previously excluded. I have learned that  it’s not-just the knowledge of debate that’s exclusionary, it’s how we practice it too. people who do not run typical policy affs are to be excluded because they don’t fit into a certain framework. People who are not physically able to speed read are not able to win because they can’t respond to as  many arguments as teams who read cards at break neck speed. People who can’t express themsleves in a way that is normative to policy debate are immediately shut out.

PLAN ADVOCACY: THUS, WE ADVOCATE REMOVING THE ABLEIST RESTRICTIONS OF DEBATE AND ENERGY PRODUCTION. 

But our understandings and experiences can create new discourses that let us see outside ourselves for brief moments. While I can’t put myself in my Partner’s mind, nor in yours, by talking about our personal experiences I can come to understand where her experiences and mine diverge. This lets us change the world and our understanding of it.

Ferri, Associate Professor, The Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, Syracuse University, 11
(Beth, Teachers College Record, "Disability Life Writing and the Politics of Knowing", Volume 113 Number 10, http://syr.academia.edu/BethFerri/Papers/661249/Disability_Life_Writing_and_the_Politics_of_Knowing-http://syr.academia.edu/BethFerri/Papers/661249/Disability_Life_Writing_and_the_Politics_of_Knowing, accessed 7/12/12) 

Seeking to interrupt the dominant scripts of disability (Ferri, 2008) and to
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within clinical and popular discourses (Ware, 2002, p. 146).
Autobiographical narratives as a form of "counter discourse" (Couser, 1997)
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and challenge conventional meanings ascribed to disability (pp. 109-110).

Debate is a special place to do this and the most important. Its communicative focus and ability to force us to engage each other and pay attention to their story and break down our conceptions of normativity in a safe and changeable space.

Shelton %26 Matthews ’1 ~Mike, frmr prof %26 debate coach at Louisville; Cynthia, Comm PhD student, "Extending the Diversity Agenda in Forensics: Invisible Disabilities and Beyond," Argumentation %26 Advocacy, v38, pp121-130~
Shame is an intense emotion involv¬ing a negative assessment of the global self (Tangney
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in a manner similar to Bruschke and Johnson’s (1994) gender examination.
Further, participation rates for the disabled could be explored by using Loge’s (1991
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awareness efforts are among the ap¬proaches addressed throughout the remain¬der of this piece.
The relationships and interactions be¬tween colleagues and friends, and people who are disabled are
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and the possi¬bility of maladaptive shame responses from the person with invisible disabilities.