Archive for the "V-Day" Category
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
V-Day joins thousands of activists around the world and organizations like Change.org to urge Facebook to remove all pages that employ sexual intimidation, threat or terrorism expressed in either serious or jocular language.
These pages make Facebook an unsafe place for women and normalize rape and violence against women further traumatizing women and girls in a climate where one out of three are already beaten or raped in their lifetime. Facebook should police pages like these with the same fervor and priority that they have so swiftly removed other pages in the past.
As a movement, V-Day celebrates free speech (we did after all grow out of the play The Vagina Monologues) however Facebook needs to monitor the difference between self-expression and self-expression that violates another being. If we have learned anything in the last 14 years, we know the power of language.
We believe Facebook has a rare opportunity to enhance the current dialogue as you have access to so many users. A nuanced conversation about context, content, and the ramifications of rape-language on women’s safety and security could have deep and lasting impact on the ways in which online users communicate globally.
V-Day founder Eve Ensler states, “V-Day calls on Facebook to facilitate a community where women’s voices and beings are not muted and traumatized but instead liberated and cherished. Let these terrible pages be where the future of women gets rewritten and let Facebook lead the way.”
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-matousek/the-paterno-effect-keep-y_b_…
Now that Joe Paterno has been canned for keeping quiet about the serial rape taking place on his watch at Penn State, a troubling question is burning anew in the public conscience: How guilty are we for crimes we do not commit but fail to report? Are we, as innocent bystanders, responsible for bad things we know about? Or is See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil a conscientious M.O. in morally complex situations?
The answer is: Hell no. As we’ve seen in the fall of Saint Joe, even when you’re the winningest coach in major college football history — 409 victories at Penn State, (more than any other major college football coach), two national titles, 62 years of exemplary service, and more than $5 million of personal donations to Penn (enough to build a university library and a spiritual center) — even when you’re on the brink of retirement at 84 and have spent your career standing for “integrity, family, and principle,” as a recent New York Times piece claimed — even then, when the public thinks you’re a saint, there’s no free pass on the right thing to do.
When Joe Paterno failed to act aggressively on a report that his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was serially molesting underprivileged boys in the football facility — some as young as eight years old — he sacrificed his integrity for the sake of his school’s reputation. (It has been alleged that Paterno was told about at least one of the accusations). Though Paterno is rumored to be resigning shortly and is now publically calling for prayers for the victims, this does nothing to mitigate the guilt of his silence before these serial rapes were exposed. Paterno has just as much smut on his hands as Tim Curly and Gary Shultz, the university officials who’ve charged with failing to report the crimes and lying to a grand jury during an investigation.
The Paterno Effect — the soft-minded notion that bystanders are anything less than culpable for crimes they know about — is an ethical dinosaur that must die. When we turn our eyes from injustice and suffering, we actively participate in evil. We become “willing executioners,” as Daniel Goldhagen wrote in his book about how ordinary Germans turned their eyes from the horrors of the Holocaust; we enable crime to continue through laxness. There is no such thing as an innocent bystander. The cop out of “it’s none of my business” — practiced every day, in every country, by witnesses of domestic violence, for example — is a moral scourge whose passive damage saps our humanity of strength and defeats our purpose as social animals: to be our brother’s keepers, indeed (and in deed); to help maintain — together — the equilibrium of moral order and the preservation of what we hold sacred.
This is not highfalutin’ or abstract: Without exposing the Paterno Effect (which could go by a number of other names: The DSK Effect works equally nicely), we cannot grow as an ethical culture. The wheel of suffering will keep on turning. I’ve spent the past two years interviewing men about rape (as part of a play I’m helping to write for Eve Ensler’s organization, V-Day) and seen firsthand how the Paterno Effect eats away at families, neighborhoods, churches. I’ve heard men weep over crimes not reported and listened as victims of sexual violence — male and female, young and old — blamed those who knew what was happening but chose to look the other way. “How could you not say anything?” an abused boy demanded of the ex-school principal who failed to fire the fourth-grade teacher who sodomized him. The principal, a pleasant-looking man of 60, actually shrugged off the oversight, blaming the school’s chain of command for his silence and what he pretended not to know. His excuse was as hollow as his conviction and reminded me of how little has changed in the centuries since Edmund Burke issued his famous warning: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Every time a DSK walks free, a Herman Cain lies through his teeth, or a Catholic bishop fails to report the misconduct of a priest in his parish, evil scores a point in the public arena. Because sexual abuse is evil. Silence and collusion are criminal. Turning a blind eye does handicap a society trying to make itself better.
When we know about something and do not act — as Joe Paterno appears to have done — we imitate the crime we ignore. We become like the rapist, the con man, the thief. We become willing executioners, even if we never lay hands on a soul. Joe Paterno should have known that. Even for a public hero, there’s no free pass on the right thing to do.
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164535/penn-state-and-berkeley-tale-two-pr…
Penn State and Berkeley: A Tale of Two Protests
By Dave Zirin
Student activists interlock arms as police in riot gear move in to clear a field of grass in front of Sproul Hall on the University of California at Berkeley campus Wednesday, November 9, 2011.
Last night, two proud universities saw student demonstrations that spiraled into violence. On the campus of Penn State University in State College Pennsylvania, several hundred students rioted in anger after the firing of legendary 84-year-old head football coach Joe Paterno. At the University of California at Berkeley, 1,000 students, part of the Occupy USA movement, attempted to maintain their protest encampment in the face of police orders to clear them out.
At Penn State, students overturned a media truck, hit an ESPN reporter in the head with a rock and made every effort at arson, attempting to set aflame the very heart of their campus. They raised their fists in defense of a man fired for allegedly covering up the actions of a revered assistant who doubled as a serial child rapist. The almost entirely male student mob was given the space by police to seethe and destroy without restraint.
At Berkeley, the police had a much different response. Defenseless students were struck repeatedly with batons, as efforts were made to disperse their occupation by Sproul Hall, the site of the famed Mario Savio–led free speech battles of the 1960s.
Two coasts and two riots: a frat riot and a cop riot. Each riot, an indelible mark of shame on their respective institutions.
The difference is that at Berkeley, the Occupiers—a diverse assemblage of students, linking arms—pushed back and displayed true courage in the face of state violence. They would not be moved. These students are a credit to their school and represent the absolute best of a young generation who are refusing to accept the world as it is.
At Penn State, we saw the worst of this generation: the flotsam and the fools; the dregs and the Droogs; young men of entitlement who rage for the machine.
No matter how many police officers raised their sticks, the students of Berkeley stood their ground, empowered by a deeper set of commitments to economic and social justice.
No matter how many children come forward to testify how Joe Paterno’s dear friend Jerry Sandusky brutally sodomized them on their very campus, the students at Penn State stood their ground. They stood committed to a man whose statue adorns their campus, whose salary exceeds $1.5 million and whose name for years was whispered to them like he was a benevolent Russian czar and they were the burgeoning Black Hundreds.
Theirs was a tragic statement that proud Penn State has become little more than a company town that’s been in the lucrative business of nursing Joe Paterno’s legend for far too long.
I spoke this morning to a student who was at Sproul Hall and another resident who was a bystander at State College. The word that peppered both of their accounts was “fear:” fear that those with the space and means to be violent—the police at Berkeley and the rioters at Penn State—would take it to, as Anne, a Berkeley student said to me, “a frightening point of no return.”
I would argue that this “point of no return” has now actually been reached, spurred by Wednesday night’s study in contrasts.
November 9 was a generational wake-up call to every student on every campus in this country. Which side are you on? Do you defend the ugliest manifestations of unchecked power or do you fight for a better world with an altogether different set of values? Do you stand with the Thugs of Penn State or do you stand with Occupiers of Berkeley? It’s fear vs. hope, and the stakes are a hell of a lot higher than a BCS bowl.
Published at thenation.com
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
Originally published in:
www.kevinpowell.net/blog/
http://www.kevinpowell.net/blog/2011/11/joe-paterno-herman-cain-men-sex-…
Joe Paterno, Herman Cain, Men, Sex and Power
By Kevin Powell
Joe Paterno. Herman Cain. Penn State football. Presidential campaigns. Men. Sex. Power. Women. Harassed. Children. Abused.
These are some of the hash tags that have tweeted through my mind nonstop, these past several days, as multiple sexual harassment charges have been hurled at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain; as Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator for Penn State’s storied football program, was arrested on 40 counts related to allegations of sexual abuse of eight young boys over a 15-year period. Sandusky’s alleged indiscretions have not only brought back very ugly and unsettling memories of the Catholic Church sexual abuse mania a few short years ago, but has led to the firing of legendary coach Joe Paterno and Penn State president Graham Spanier, plus the indictments of athletic director Tim Curley and a vice president, Gary Schultz, for failing to report a grad assistant’s eyewitness account of Sandusky allegedly having anal sex with a ten-year-old boy in a shower on the university’s campus in 2002.
In the matter of Mr. Herman Cain I cringed, to be blunt, as I watched his press conference this week denying accusations of sexual harassment against him, which has swelled to four different women, two identified and two anonymous, for now. I was not there, so I don’t know, only he and the women know the truth. But what was telling in Mr. Cain’s remarks is that he was visibly defensive and defiant, rambled quite a bit about the media’s smear campaign and, most curious, only once mentioned sexual harassment as a major problem in America, and it was just one quick, passing sentence. Then he went back to discussing himself, which he is particularly adept at doing.
What Herman Cain and the disgraced male leaders of Penn State have in common is the issue of power and privilege we men not only wield like our birthright, but which has come to be so inextricably linked to our identities. So much so, in fact, that many of us, regardless of race, class, religion and, in some cases, even sexual orientation or physical abilities, don’t even realize what a disaster manhood is when it is unapologetically invested in power, privilege, patriarchy, sexism, and a reckless disregard for the safety and sanity of others, especially women and children.
Every single year, it seems, some well-known man somewhere gets into trouble because of sex, money, drugs, or violence, or some combination thereof (and God only knows how many unknown males do likewise). It is always the same themes, just with a new cast of characters. Yesterday it was priests of the Catholic Church. Today it is the male leadership of Penn State. Yesterday it was Anthony Weiner and Charlie Sheen. Today it is Herman Cain. I remember earlier this year, in fact, in the wake of Mr. Weiner’s sudden and rapid fall from grace, a report was published that said over 90 percent of sex scandals in America feature us men as the culprits. That very few women engage in that mode of self-destructive behavior.
The question begs itself: Why not? I feel it has to do with how we construct manhood from birth. Most of us boys are taught, basically from the time we can talk and walk, to be strong, tough, loud, dominating, aggressive, and, yes, even violent, even if that violence is masked in tales of war or Saturday afternoon college football games. Without anything to counteract that mindset like, say, that it is okay for boys and men to tell the truth, to show raw emotions and vulnerability, to cry, to view girls and women as our equals on every level, we are left with so many of us, far into adulthood, as fully formed physically but incredibly undeveloped emotionally. And if you are a male who happens to have been sexually assaulted or abused yourself, and never got any real help in any form, highly likely you will at some point become a sexual predator yourself. And if you are a man who still thinks we are in pre-feminist movement America where it was once okay to, well, touch, massage, or caress a female colleague inappropriately, to talk sex to her, as she is either working for you or attempting to secure a job (and has not given you permission to do so), then you are also likely to be the kind of male who will deny any of it ever happened. Again and again and again—
The bottom line is that our notions of manhood are totally and embarrassingly out of control, and some of us have got to stand up and say enough, that we’ve got to redefine what it is to be a man, even as we, myself included, are unfailingly forthright about our shortcomings and our failures as men, and how some of us have even engaged in the behaviors splashed across the national news this year alone.
But to get to that new kind of manhood means we’ve got to really dig into our souls and admit the old ways are not only not working, but they are so painfully hurtful to women, to children, to communities, businesses, institutions, and government, to sport and play, and to ourselves. Looking in the mirror is never easy but if not now, when? And if not us in these times, then we can surely expect the vicious cycles of manhood gone mad to continue for generations to come, as evidenced by a recent report in the New York Times of a steadily climbing number of American teen boys already engaging in lewd sexual conduct toward girls. Where are these boys learning these attitudes if not from the men around them, in person, in the media, on television and in film, in video games, or from their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, older brothers, teachers, and, yes, coaches?
For sure, nothing sadder and more tragic than to see 84-year-old Coach Joe Paterno, who I’ve admired since I was a child, throwing away 46 years of coaching heroism and worship (and 62 total years on the school’s football staff) because the power, glory, and symbolism of Penn State football was above protecting the boys allegedly touched and molested by Sandusky. Equally sad and tragic when Mr. Cain’s supporters are quick to call what is happening to him a lynching when this man, this Black man, has never been tarred and feathered, never been hung from a tree, never had his testicles cut from his body, never been set on fire, as many Black men were, in America, in the days when lynching was as big a national sport as college football is today. Anything, it seems, to refute the very graphic and detailed stories of the women accusing Mr. Cain of profoundly wrong, unprofessional, and inhuman conduct.
But, as I stated, when our sense of manhood has gone mad, completely mad, anything goes, and anything will be said (or nothing said at all), or done, to protect the guilty, at the expense of the innocent. We’ve got to do better than this, gentlemen, brothers, boys, for the sake of ourselves, for the sake of our nation and our world. It was Albert Einstein who famously stated that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Then insanity may also mean men and boys doing the same things over and over again, for the sake of warped and damaged manhood, and expecting forward progress to happen, but then it all crumbles, once more, in a heap of facts, finger-pointing, and forgetful memories when convenient.
If any good can come of the Cain and Penn State disasters it is my sincere hope that spaces and movements are created, finally, where we men can really begin to rethink what manhood can be, what manhood might be. Manhood that is not about power, privilege, and the almighty penis, but instead rooted in a sense of humanity, in peace, in love, in nonviolence, in honesty and transparency, in constant self-criticism and self-reflection, and in respect and honor of women and girls, again, as our equals; in spaces and movements where men and boys who might not be hyper-macho and sports fanatics like some us are not treated as outcasts, as freaks, as less than men or boys. A manhood where if we see something bad happening, we say something, and not simply stick our heads in the sand and pretend that something did not happen. Or worse, yet, do something wrong ourselves, and when confronted with that wrongness, rather than confess, acknowledge, grow, heal, evolve, we instead dig in our heels and imagine ourselves in an all-out war, proclaiming our innocence to any who will listen, even as truth grows, like tall and daunting trees in a distant and darkened woods, about us.
A manhood, alas, where we men and boys understand that we must be allies to women and girls, allies to all children, and be much louder, visible, and outspoken about sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence, sexual abuse and molestation. Knowing that if we are on the frontlines of these human tragedies then we can surely help to make them end once and for all, for the good of us all.
That means time for some of us to grow, and to grow up. Time for some of us to let go of the ego trips and the pissing contests to protect bruised and battered egos of boys masquerading as men. Before it is too late, before some of us hurt more women, more children, and more of ourselves, yet again—
Kevin Powell is an activist, public speaker, and author or editor of 10 books. His 11th book, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and The Ghost of Dr. King: And Other Blogs and Essays, will be published by lulu.com in January 2012. You can reach him at kevin@kevinpowell.net, or follow him on Twitter @kevin_powell
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
This June, Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, CA, will present the world premiere of Eve’s newest show, Emotional Creature. We’re inviting V-Activists everywhere to reserve seats now for a show that gives full expression to our secret voices and innermost thoughts, highlighting the diversity and commonality of the issues we face. Emotional Creature is a call, a reckoning, an education, an act of empowerment for girls, and an illumination for us all.
Claim your space! Visit Berkeley Rep’s website to learn about the show, watch a video intro by Eve, and to buy tickets (starting at only $29 – half that if you’re under 30). You can even win free tickets to opening night!
LEARN more & BUY tickets >
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
5×15 CHARITY FUNDRAISER In aid of V-Day’s
City of Joy in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo
November 23, 2011
7pm
The Tabernacle, Powis Square, London W11
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in a systematic attempt to use sexual violence to destroy families and communities. The City of Joy is a revolutionary new community for women survivors of rape, a place for turning pain to power. Created from a vision of Congolese women, City of Joy is run, operated and directed by Congolese women. It offers group therapy, self-defence training, sexuality education, storytelling, and economic empowerment. Please join us to help support them and the future of the Congo.
The 5×15 format: 5 speakers have 15 minutes to tell the story of their work, passion or great achievement. For this special evening, we will divide the 5 slots into talks about the Congo, City of Joy and civil liberties, an auction, picnic and raffle.
Featuring:
- Eve Ensler – Tony award winning playwright and founder of V-Day and City of Joy
- Christine Schuler Deschryver – V-Day Congo Director and Director of City of Joy
- Helena Kennedy – one of the UK’s great defenders of civil liberties and leading QC’s
- Vava Tampa – founder of Save the Congo UK and one of V-Day’s V-men
- Sandi Toksvig – comedian, radio and television presenter who will be the brilliant auctioneer
Charity Auction:
It won’t be long, just a few fantastic lots to give you a head start on your Christmas shopping. Luxury holidays in Marrakech, pampering getaways in the UK, a film directing class with Stephen Frears, or creative writing with Hanif Kureishi, there’s something for everyone.
Raffle:
So many people from the community have pitched in to help including: doggie heaven Purple Bone, jeweler Sylvie Franquet, Grayshott Hall, Riad el Fenn, Jnane Tamsna, Kasbah de Toubkhal, Bloomsbury Publishers…There are wonderful prizes you won’t want to miss.
Tickets:
400 GBP per table of eight or
50 GBP for individual tickets
Prices include entrance, picnic and wine.
For more information please contact eleanor@5x15speakers.com
BUY TICKETS >
WATCH Eve speak about the Congo at her recent 5×15 appearance >
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
For over ten years, V-Day and Vosges Haut-Chocolat have partnered to raise funds and awareness to end violence against women and girls worldwide. In this time Vosges Haut-Chocolat has raised over $100,000 for V-Day’s efforts through the sales of certain chocolate collections. Today, V-Day is proud to announce the continuation of this partnership through the Vosges Haut-Chocolat V-Day Cause Collection, which will run from November 7 – 18, 2011. During this time, Vosges Haut-Chocolat will donate $1 for every product purchased from this collection to support V-Day’s City of Joy.
SHOP Vosges Haut-Chocolat V-Day Cause Collection >
LEARN More about City of Joy >
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ambiguous-upsparkles-from_2_b_1…
This is the third post in this series. Read part one here and part two here.
It was cold in Zuccotti Park this week for our Ambiguous Upsparkles group. Particularly late into it as the sun went down and a wet Autumn wind rose up in the yellow orange trees from the bottom of Manhattan. It was cold and so we huddled together on the concrete steps for warmth, to make it easier to hear, to allow the stories to pass amongst us and through us. We repeated each line of each person’s story and the repeating kept us warm.
There was a core of us who stayed for the whole two hours. Many had been there before for each group, some new people stopped by, joined or listened or told a story and then moved on. At the height of the story telling there were hundreds leaning in. There was drumming in the distance, There were tents everywhere. There was a new large green tent just erected for women to make them safe as there had been a sexual assault during the week. There was talk before the group about the violence. Women were worried and they were clear. Things had to change. There was talk about safety and honoring women and listening to their concerns and making space for their voices. There was talk of how drunks and disturbed people were being intentionally sent to the park. There was talk of how the sexual violence was down played so it wouldn’t badly impact the movement. The older women activists were disturbed. This was a story they knew all too well from past movements, from past silences.
We introduced the group, explained how we told stories each week so people could share what brought them to the park and what they dreamed of. We said we wanted an alternative to the media who kept telling the public that the movement is disjointed and rudderless because it has no leaders or a clear message or one specific set of demands. We said we started the group because everyone who came to the park seemed to know exactly why they were there and the only lack of clarity seemed to be on the part of the people reporting it.
It was a gorgeous group. Somehow the cold made people braver and more generous. There was more anger in the stories, more sorrow.
One woman had just arrived from Boston. She had lost her job. Her husband was out of work. She had never been an activist. But just standing next to the Wall Street towers made her shake with fury. She wanted the fat cats to explain how they took all those bonuses while she and so many were barely getting by. A young woman from Vermont talked about working with teenage girls and taking them into the woods to learn nature and how they walked barefoot and went wild and learned to make fire without matches and pee standing up to put out the fire. She started crying when she described how the ridge where she lived was being destroyed by industrialization and how there was so much rape in the world and so much murdering of the earth. Her voice cracked and when she cried everyone human mics her tears so we were all crying about rape in the camp, in the world, rape of women, rape of the earth, rape of the economy. She said she had camped all her life in the woods and was never afraid but how camping in Manhattan terrified her.
There was an Iraq veteran who was trained not to have an opinion or ever speak up or back but when his brother veteran got beaten by the Oakland police at Occupy Oakland. He knew he had to find his way here.
There was a young man in a handmade sweater who had just arrived from Chicago who had waited until he could come with something to offer and he finally had figured out what to give — 1,500 harmonicas so that people could learn how to make music by breathing out and breathing in.
There was the man who was a designer and an artist who wanted to make jobs instead of looking for them and there was a refugee from Lebanon with a beard in a wool hat who was put out of his local video business by Blockbuster who had come to help the homeless even though he lived in his van.
There was a fierce woman from occupy Philly who worked with the traumatized and the abused and she talked about how there was no place for them. They were invisible in the culture and abandoned and I thought about how everyone in our circle felt that way about themselves or someone they loved. How in the corporate story you either rise or fall and if you fall it’s your fault just like if you’re raped you made it happen. You shouldn’t have been in the park, you shouldn’t have worn that short skirt or those tight jeans. You should have figured out how to get a job even though there are no jobs. You should have figured out how to win even though the game is rigged for the 1 per cent. If you had been smarter or studied harder or knew the right people or had what it takes.
I thought of rape. How we still blame the victim. How the burden of proof is on the person who is ripped apart. How if it hasn’t happened to you, you don’t get that it robs you forever. I thought of an economy that has destroyed every single American river and gutted the trees and poisoned the sky and eviscerated people so that the very few can get what they want. How if you are the one per cent you are entitled to take everything. This made me think about the men who grab women because they can. Who do what they want and then after the woman is made to feel its her fault. That she is dirty. I thought about rape — how we still expect it. We make a place for it. We say “it’s just the way men are. Its part of the human condition.” Like greed. Like rich and poor, it’s the way it’s always been.
What’s happening in the park is not about demands although there are plenty. It’s mainly the young but not just the young in the midst of one of the worst decades of corporate avarice, who are saddled with unpayable college loans, no way to get their parents medical care, who are experiencing snow before Halloween while wearing tank tops earlier that same month, who have come in the face of all that to lay their bodies down on the freezing floor of the city, in the cracks between the towering buildings of greed.
They are saying, take my body, make me uncomfortable, I am ready to do what I can. They have a knowing only the open-hearted have that the future is perilous. They love life. They want it. They don’t want to hurt anyone but they will travel as far as it takes. They understand it’s about changing the whole story, the story of rape. The violent destructive treatment of women or people of color or the indigenous or the earth or the poor or queers.
Near the end of the group there was one very energized woman with a bouquet of flowers in her blonde hair who said she came because she saw a little message on the Internet in early September inviting 20 thousand to show up at Wall Street. She knew she had to come. She knew she had to get on a plane from San Francisco and after a few days of finding her way in the park, she knew she had come home. Her friends asked how she knew this and she said she wasn’t exactly sure. It was a feeling, here, she said rubbing her stomach or womb and I thought of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and how all the people in that film started making cones preparing to meet the aliens, but here we came preparing to meet ourselves.
If we are not afraid, if we open ourselves, we all know everything has to change. We need places to announce and actualize this change. Places are crucial. The ingredients involve stepping out of your comfort zone, giving up more than your share, telling your story and listening to others, not thinking in an obvious linear way, trusting the collective imagination to be more empowered and visionary than your own, refusing to participate in the violent destruction of anything. That includes taking anything that isn’t yours, taking more than you need, believing you have a right to dismiss or ignore or belittle anyone with less power or money or education. Believers will always be marginalized and made to feel stupid. They will be beaten with batons and pepper sprayed and dragged off. But no one can evict or silence what is emerging in Zuccotti Park.
Those who have come are the brave ones willing to feel how precarious this corporate system is. They have already passed over. They understand that it takes one bad investment, one ugly divorce, one devastating loss of a loved on, one company or factory gone under and we fall. They know there is no net, no one to catch us here in this fast-paced world of capital and consumption.
Lets breathe into the harmonicas and make winter music, let’s protect women and trust the invisible workings of the collective imagination. Lets free the parks and palaces and streets and invite everyone in. There won’t be more winners maybe, but I can happily live in a world without losers. There may not be anymore rich, but I’m so up for a world where everyone has something. Let’s huddle together on the cold stairs in early November and hear and see each other and be in awe of the miracle that is each person. Let’s celebrate how each one of us has survived something so hard, so impossible and we still found our way here. Let’s just be people in a park who came because we were terrified that we and everything we love was going to die and disappear. Let’s do that, ok? And keep doing it until the towers become monuments to a barely remembered hideous time of greed and we are all together on the ground.
Carol Lipton
I am a lawyer, painter, and writer, member of the National Lawyers guild, and veteran activist. My first night @ Liberty Plaza was Tuesday, 2 weeks ago. I had come down with a huge amount of macrobiotic-style noodles that I had cooked for people.
I was walking around when my eyes saw a very interesting freshly painted sign in orange neon, that read “Student debt = Slavery”. Behind the sign were 2 men, & I started speaking with both of them, as I have practiced bankruptcy law and many of my clients were saddled with debt from credit cards and student loans, which under the Bankruptcy Code, are non-dischargeable. It turned out that one graduated from my law school, Catholic University in Washington, DC, 20 years after I graduated. He was excited to have met Susan Sarandon, probably the most famous CU alumnus, who had stopped by to visit that night.
I was very moved by his story, and amazed at how many things we had in common in our perspectives on the culture. The son of working-class Haitian immigrants, he was first generation American, and had remarkably had gotten three advanced degrees, including a masters from the New School, a law degree, and a Masters in Law (LLM). I was astounded to hear that he was having difficulty finding work, while saddled with debt, and feeling that he would become tied to whatever job he could find. He had done several internships overseas, including one in Morocco, and he spoke of that experience in the context of what is wrong with American culture, and how it started to decline. We both spoke of the quality of our food supply, largely from corporate agriculture, where carrots can taste wooden, & fruits barely have flavor. He described fruit in Morocco as misshapen, even ugly, with blotches and blemishes, including bright-red blood oranges, but which tasted like nothing he’d ever had in America, and as food should taste. He and I both acknowledged the sensory deprivation Americans experience, eating mass-produced, denatured, chemicalized food from cradle to grave. We also spoke of the loss of community, of a shared culture.
Like me, he had loved the movie Amelie, which I thought portrayed a community as an organic whole, inseparable from the culture of the outdoor food market, and sense of caring for individuals. The most memorable scene in “Amelie” was when she gives a blind man a tour of the farmer’s market, allowing him to experience all of the sights. He spoke of the huge, outdoor gatherings of people, in cafes or homes, that he had experienced in Morocco, and the wonderful sense of belonging. We both realized that this was what we felt at Occupy Wall Street, and had never felt before in America. There was almost a pastoral quality in the space people have created, an organic, living, breathing, and vital community, which aimed at providing for everyone’s needs, whether food, medical care, self-expression, music, art-making, education, communication, and caring. It was amazing to be part of this right in the belly of the beast. I spoke with both men about what it was like for them in the job market, and what it was like feeling one’s dreams could never be actualized, and that existence would be tethered to a bank loan. This was a far cry from the sense of unfettered opportunity most of us felt as graduates during the 60’s and 70’s, the last era of economic prosperity.
We all spoke on subjects as diverse as food, culture, and the war on Iraq, the wasting of the federal budget, and the gross inequality of our current tax structure. At some point, some of the neon orange from James’s sign accidentally rubbed off on my carryall, & both of them immediately rushed to get some water & vigorously rubbed it off.
I’ve been back 3 times since then, and each time the feeling of optimism, solidarity and connection with others grows, as I’ve spoken with people from all over the country. It is truly an amazing space. A shaman who I went to in the 80’s, Andrew Ramer, said to me in 1988 “We are creating the culture of the 21st Century”. I feel that this culture and a new political order is beginning to take root at Occupy Wall Street. I want to see it grow and flourish.
Dan Crisp
What we have here… because you want to know…
I am an occupier. My name is Dan Crisp. I have a master’s degree, i am twenty-eight and i am unemployed. i am upset. I (like many other occupiers and Americans all over the country) want to be proud of my country and my government. Before this occupation, I had feigned that pride for years. I was a self-diluted Patriot. I feel less diluted these days.
I have spent the last week living on the cold and honest cement squares of Liberty Plaza and I have come to realize a few things. People want to know what THIS is and what WE want. Well, THIS is reclamation of America and WE are YOU. WE want what YOU want. We want what WE were promised by our fore fathers: a government of the people, for the people and by the people. WE want a government that has OUR interests in mind, not Wall Street’s. People over Profit. Simply.
For the people that don’t understand what this is, I will tell you:
Liberty Plaza is a true direct democracy. We have a General Assembly where we collectively vote on all agenda items. We are all inclusive and we are leaderless. We have working groups that collectively design our structure and movement. We have working groups that focus on Education and Empowerment in order to better our community. We run seminars and trainings on a variety of issues in order to strengthen our community. We believe in Community and each other.
We, unlike American’s outside of this park, have doctors that we can consult for free. We have free legal advice. We are all fed. We march. We rally. We make noise and we have moments of silence. We wonder about the best ways to do things, and because it is a true democracy, we disagree.
It is a move back to Community. We eat together, we sleep together and we dream together. We are not investing in Financial Capital. We are investing in Social Capital. We are all shareholders in a vision, a feeling, but it is more than just that.
As much as it is reclamation, it is also a proclamation. That WE are important. That WE deserve shelter not foreclosure. That WE deserve health care and education, not massive debt. That WE deserve community, not isolation.
We will sleep in the rain for this vision. We will yell into the people’s mic until we cannot speak, to try to right this ship. We will risk our health and safety for America.
I am homeless and sleeping on the street for the first time in my life and I can’t remember the last time I have been smiled at so frequently.
At worst, this is a beautiful lesson in civics. At best, this is the beginning of an America that represents and supports OUR interests, yours and mine.
I implore you to come and see us. We are bigger every single day. We need you… because WE, are YOU.
Makeba Judge
#OWS Inspires the Hidden Activist In Me.
Sept 22nd, This Occupy Wall Street thing is growing and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Every piece of hope I could muster in my body sensed this thing would be something big. I had high hopes from the very beginning. I thought, could it be? Did someone finally decide to stick it to “The Man”? Did these kids actually have the audacity to set up camp right in the front yard of the Wall Street bigwigs and give them a piece of their minds?! Of our minds?! The nerve!! How amazingly incredible! I’ve been an armchair activist for years, and these kids were expressing the same sentiment I have held for a long time, greed is the source of the world’s ills. What they were protesting precisely was still a mystery, but whatever it was, they chose the right venue! I needed to get down there! I searched every thread that had “Occupy Wall Street” in the title. The pictures I saw were incredible, angry young men and women holding up signs and banners crafted out of pizza boxes, construction paper, and pieces of wood. This didn’t look like your average “prepackaged protest”. It was spontaneous, organic, and wonderful!
After a day of searching through pictures and reading articles, I realized something was apparent. There was a lack of brown and black faces. Where were all my colored people? Did they not realize how high our rates of unemployment, incarceration, poverty, and homelessness were? If they didn’t know that then I’m sure they didn’t know that the term “Wall Street” came about because African slaves were brought in to construct a “wall” to protect the Dutch settlers from the “hostile natives” they had previously failed to enslave in 1625. My goodness, 300 years of free labor is how these plutocrats built their fortunes, where were the colored faces! All one needed to do is drive through the streets of predominately Black towns and see how poorly wealth had been distributed in this country. Now is our chance to stand up and speak out against this injustice!
I decided to go to Zuccotti Park with my boyfriend after crafting the perfect protest sign it read, “African Americans Against Corporate Greed”. He had just as much reason to be there, as a NYC Public School teacher from East Harlem, he’s seen his share of socioeconomic inequality. What I saw when I arrived at the park was indescribable, the energy of protest mixed with the sound of a drum circle was intoxicating. People democratically exchanging ideas, hungry people being served food, children reading books next to veterans, looked like some pseudo-world I wanted to live in. I noticed one common thing about these protestors; they were the most educated group of protestors I had seen in my lifetime. There was no shortage of eloquent voices here, no misspelled signs, no easy way for a politician or any other charlatan to come in here and take advantage of the momentum they had going on. I knew I was in the right place. One thing was certain, my life had changed forever. If nothing else came out of this, the movement would inspire a new generation of young activists and change was inevitable.
Maxine Schoefer-Wulf
My Sparkle
I come to Wall Street from a place of privilege. I always come from a place of privilege. I didn’t decide to go because I’m hungry or because I’m unemployed. I have a nice apartment, an education, a job, and a support network for which I am boundlessly grateful. I come to Wall Street because I have to. My conscience, my heart, the very core of my being demand it. When I watch the news, when I look around me, I feel like I’m being crushed. We all are. Some more overtly and ruthlessly than others, but none of us are as numb and disconnected as they make us out to be.
The other day, I thought about how, less than 600 years ago, people drank out of rivers. Now, worried parents scold their kids for catching raindrops on their tongues and we can’t even swim in the ocean on certain days. Now, everything is radioactive, including our main means of communication with one another. And the State Department supports the approval of an XL oil pipeline that would run through one of our earth’s lungs.
Sometimes life touches me, the utter magic of it, the love, the connectedness, the potential. When it hits me, I’ve always been with close friends and family, making thanks-giving toasts or gathering to share stories and music on warm nights. Yet here I was, as dusk was falling, alone in Zuccotti Park with a mass of strangers gathered under those tall, isolated corporate buildings, in a city I moved to 3 months ago without much of a plan. And I was feeling one of these magical life moments. I was speaking in unison with everyone around me. Perhaps more strongly than ever before, I sensed I was exactly where I wanted to be. 100 percent. Life was sparkling. “They’ve been lying to us,” a woman said, with tears in her eyes, “we, all of us, do care.”
Later, on my train ride back to Brooklyn, I was reading the Occupied Wall Street Journal. The passing subway stations revealed steadily and predictably changing demographics as we left Manhattan and the physical center of the movement. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the black woman sitting next to me had taken out her Occupied Wall Street Journal. We sat there, reading side by side, immersed in our respective afterglows. I wonder whether the people across from us noticed what we were reading. It could have been any other paper, from the way we were sitting there, apparently disconnected from one another. I smiled to myself: “this is really happening.” It’s deep. And big. And sweetly subtle. All at once
Paula Jo Allen
I have marched for peace and civil rights, against nuclear missiles and the war in Iraq. I have felt exhilarated in the midst of thousands of people demanding justice and after I have often felt disappointed, even guilty. I have ended up eating sushi, going home, having a bath and watching the news to see the number count and commentary on the demonstration – making the media response into something that really mattered.
I believe in Occupying, in refusing to go home, to be silenced, shut down. I believe in visibility, declaring that THIS matters enough to forfeit one’s comfort, one’s life style until the world does change – until the missiles are not deployed, until violence against women is unthinkable, until the only choice is not to wage war.
The more I stay in Zuccotti Park, the harder it is to accept the structures of what is acceptable between having and not having in the world. This has always been hard for me, which may explain, in part, why it is so easy, so comfortable, so necessary for me to be an actual physical part of Occupy Wall Street.
Over the past 24 hours, one of the primary conversations that I have been listening to and participating in is about the “homeless problem” in the park. “Should the homeless be there when they are not really part of the movement?”
To answer this: Yes. Isn’t this obvious? Odd isn’t it that I have a home (in fact two) and I am welcome there (given a tent, gloves, food) because I am an “activist,” but those who need the support are deemed a liability to the movement.
What doesn’t make sense about this: Hundreds of people are camping in a public park where people without homes can be more secure, receive shelter and medical care, and it is being suggested that they should return to a public shelter where they are less safe, receive shitty food, and are thrown out during the day until the doors open again at night. I have met at least three women (one transgendered) who are at the park because they were raped in the shelters. This is horrifically common.
Zuccotti Park is not trying to be a utopian community. It is a very raw, strange, passionate, scary, creative, divine experiment in living. A real viable, powerful political movement grew out of people’s willingness to not leave. I see people learning how to respond to every kind of situation non-violently, to form one unified human body when faced with both fellow occupiers and police violence.
I think that the camp will continue and at the same time, I don’t know that. We don’t know what is being planned to dismantle the camp. I trust the conviction of the majority of the occupiers to stay through the winter. There are more tents this week. There are stationary bikes generating the electricity for the camp (since the fire department removed all the generators). The “people’s library” has hundreds of books. More and more volunteers are walking through the park with brooms and dustpans keeping the park clean. Last night I lay in the tent and listened to conversations outside. It was 2am and people were telling their stories, those sweet connecting stories of where we are from and why we are there.
I see what is developing around the world in support of the Occupy Movement. I see how representative this movement is of humankind. I see what we have learned and where we became connected and engaged with each other and how we became more powerful. I don’t feel a conflict in the contradictions or “mistakes” of the movement, but in fact, I feel deeply excited and hopeful, and kind.
Follow Eve Ensler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eveensler
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
On October 22, V-Girls South Africa took to the streets in Johannesburg in the first ever “Refuser” March. V-Girls South Africa leaders Mbali Khumalo, Busi Mkumbuzi, and Samu Khumalo Madonsela led a team of girl activists to plan the event, galvanize their friends, publicize the event, and ensure people got to the event, which necessitated organizing free bus rides for girls all over Johannesburg to join the march. The leaders shared, “The march is about saying enough, I have had enough. We are going to be singing, chanting, we are going to be girls. We are refusers!” Hundreds of girls marched in home-made “Eco/Emo” recycled short skirts emblazoned with the declaration “MINE”. The Refuser March was envisioned and organized by girls, for girls to uplift and empower young people and sound a call to action with their message, “When one girls suffers, we all suffer.”
WATCH – Refuser March South Africa (Footage by Tony Stroebel) >
Posted — Filed under
V-Day
Tagged — No Comments
Eve Ensler announced to a sold-out audience at Berkeley Rep Theatre on October 21 that her new play Emotional Creature will premiere at the Rep’s Roda Theatre in June 2012. Emotional Creature, based on Eve’s bestselling book I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls, was developed in workshops in Johannesburg and Paris and inspired V-Day’s newest initiative, V-Girls – a global network of girl activists empowering themselves and one another to change the world, one girl at a time. “Emotional Creature is about being a girl in the world in 2011 and about discovering the girl in each of us,” says Eve. “It is about changing the verb from ‘please’ to ‘create’ or ‘defy’ or ‘resist’ or ‘imagine.’ Where else would we begin this in America than Berkeley, in what other theatre than Berkeley Rep, which has a gorgeous history of pushing the edge, engaging in social issues, and conjuring community.”
To purchase tickets, or for more information, call (510) 647-2949 or toll-free at (888) 4-BRT-TIX or visit www.berkeleyrep.org
Press/Links
– Mercury News
– Playbill
– TheaterMania
– Broadway World