an alternative security tactic if you're threatened with rape

warning, this entry may leave you with disturbing mental images!

So the odd alternative security advice I got for a sexual attack, and it would seem this is only useful for women, is to pee on yourself - and TELL your attacker that you just did.  The idea is to gross them out.  

Thankfully I've never had to try this, so I can't say if it works, but these are the sorts of strategies women share with each other, and the sorts of things women accompaniers have to think about. 

civilian peacekeeping in Burma

The Nonviolent Peaceforce just signed an agreement with the government of Burma (Myanmar) to support initiatives of the official Myanmar Peace Center.  In their announcement they make no mention of the long history of military rule in Burma, or their take on the elections that many question.  Presumably they see the elections as legitimate, even though they were run by the military and the military won 80% of the vote.  I certainly support the moves towards democracy in Burma, but working directly for a government so closely tied to the military seems an odd move to me.  But then the Nonviolent Peaceforce has been very interested in working officially with governments (they serve in an official capacity in Mindanao).  The NP  calls what they do 'civilian peacekeeping' rather than protective accompaniment, and accompaniment seems to be only one small piece of what they do for peace. 

an anti-empathy campaign?

The video above is part of the "not in her shoes" campaign by Planned Parenthood.  The video ends by calling for conversations based on "mutual respect and empathy".  But I think many viewers will think that the slogan "not in her shoes" is an argument that you can NOT empathize - that there is no way you can understand what a woman who chooses an abortion is going through.  I think what they are trying to go for instead in the video is that you should not make decisions for her, but because the phrase 'in her shoes' has been so closely tied to empathy, it causes confusion and I was surprised when they then ended with a call for empathy.

I've blogged repeatedly before about how this turn of phrase 'in her shoes' is problematic. To play with the metaphor, if you are in someone else's shoes, there is no room for them  - you put your reality on top of theirs, you step on them.  That is to say, you run the risk of thinking you really know what it's like to be them, of engaging in appropriative empathy.  I agree with planned parenthood, you are not in her shoes.  But rather than emphasize that, I continue to think it's more powerful to imagine walking alongside her, in your own shoes - in this case, working together for safe and legal access to all reproductive health services for all. 

a very different empathy video

Thanks to Craig Jones for pointing me to this video, which is one of those attempts to help you imagine yourself in the shoes of a war victim.  I like it more than most of these because the juxtaposition of the words and the images are such that you are always reminded that you can´t entirely know what it´s like.  The video is also unusual in that after trying to get you identify with the victim, it then turns to listening to the humanity of the victimizer. 

another take on empathy

I love this animated lecture series, but some of the arguments by Roman Krznaric in this talk on empathy bug me.  Yes, I do think that some sort of 'feeling-with' plays an important role in building connections across distance and difference and motivating people to work for social change.  But I don't think the answer is to 'feel as', and much less to try to 'be the other'.   Pretending to be homeless seems disrespectful to me, and I am disturbed that here George Orwell is yet again simplistically held up for doing this.  There is certainly power in living with the poor, living simply, and in other ways 'being with' those who are different than you, in ways that help you understand their reality, feel-with, and motivate you to walk with and struggle with them.  But pretending to be someone you are not is not only disrespectful of those you would walk with, it diminishes the power of your solidarity. 

Ways of feeling-with

In the fantastic article “Sympathy and Solidarity: On a Tightrope with Scheler” (1997) Sandra Bartky draws of Max Scheler’s work on sympathy (from 1913).  He argues that there are four forms of fellow-feeling, or feeling-with.  We tend to call these empathy today, though she argues they are sympathy.  Those four forms are:

1)    true fellow-feeling: shared feeling due to the same cause like the death of a child (though I would argue that even the same cause can lead to different feelings)

2)    emotional infection: shared emotion through contagion, like mass hysteria

3)    emotional identification: ‘psychic contagion’ where you are lost in the other and imagine you can see and feel with them

4)    “genuine fellow-feeling”: where you react to the other’s feeling, but are aware of the distance between hers and yours.  She feels, and you feel with her.

As you might imagine, Bartky and Scheler argue that it is the fourth that is most useful.  I would call this walking with her, rather than in her shoes.  Bartky argues that this is not a comparison of my feelings to hers, or a projection of my experience onto hers, and not a matter of imagining what if this happened to me. None of these allow us to really appreciate her life, to reach out, to go beyond our own experience.  Bartky does see imagination as important, but without ourselves as the star of the show.  You don’t have to imagine as it would happen to you, you can imagine it as happening to her.  You don’t have to have felt it, or something like it, before yourself to imagine it (though I think it is of course easier to imagine those emotions, a matter she does not address).  She does argue that it is easier to imagine when we get more details, not simply about the scene, but also the feelings of the teller.  I certainly agree.   

Bartky, S. L. “Sympathy and Solidarity: On a Tightrope with Scheler.” In Feminists Rethink the Self, edited by Diana Tietjens Meyers, 177–96. Westview Press, 1997.

How To Talk To Someone About Privilege Who Doesn’t Know What That Is

I'm still settling in to Bogotá, so forgive me for reposting again.  Over on everyday feminism, Jamie Utt, wrote an article on how to do this.  His key points are excerpted below:

1. Start By Appealing To the Ways In Which They Don’t Have Privilege

One of the fastest ways to disarm a person’s defensiveness about their own privilege is to take some time to listen to the ways in which they legitimately do not have privilege and validate those frustrations.

I once attended a workshop with Peggy McIntosh, the original author of “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” The goal of the workshop was to give people tools for leading workshops of their own on privilege and oppression that get past the defensiveness.

One of her suggestions was to have people divide a paper in half. Have every person start on the left side of the paper and write down all of the ways in which they do not have identity privilege. They can include everything from being left handed and having to drag your hand through the ink to being a woman and having to deal with the gender wage gap. Then folks would write on the opposite side all of the ways in which their identity does afford them privilege that they did not earn.

From there, folks pair up and do a listening exercise where they listen intently to the other person talk about both sides of their list. Doing so allows people to air their frustrations at being denied privilege while also acknowledging that they do, indeed, have privilege.

From that place, it is a lot easier to help folks understand the power of privilege in creating a system of oppression and how eliminating that system is liberatory and transformative for everyone.
Now, to do this, you don’t need to turn it into a workshop. Just try asking the other person to talk about the ways in which they don’t have identity privilege and validate those hurts and frustrations.
Simply listening can go a long way! Plus, it’s a starting point for helping them build empathy for those who do not have their same privileges.

2. Stress That Privilege Is Relative

Each person experiences their privilege and lack thereof within the context of their own community and the people they interact with at the time.

As such, privilege is relative, and we need to talk about it that way.

Does that mean that all privileges are equal? No. I’m right handed and in turn, don’t have to drag my palm through the ink when I write. That’s a privilege I have by the nature of my birth.

That is not to say, though, that my right-handed privilege bears the same weight or social responsibility as the privilege that my skin color, gender, wealth, or sexual orientation afford me.
The point is that our identities are complex and intersectional.

Some folks get defensive about discussing privilege because they fear such a conversation will not address the real and powerful ways in which they do not have privilege. So they deflect by only talking about those things.

Just because we benefit from one form of privilege doesn’t mean that we benefit from all forms of privilege.

When we realize that, we can work together with people who share our privileges and those who don’t to build something better!

3. A System of Privilege and Oppression Hurts Us All

What we most need to stress in conversations about privilege is that this system doesn’t just hurt the people who cannot boast one form of identity privilege or another.

It hurts everyone. Until we understand that, we’re not getting anywhere because the only people of privilege who will ever act to end the system are the ones acting strictly from paternalistic guilt.
Take white privilege, for instance. White privilege is, essentially, a social construction whereby wealthy Europeans wanted to make sure that they could consolidate their wealth by pitting poor people from Europe against poor Africans and Indigenous people.

White folks were made to feel better about themselves and were given paltry privileges over people of color in order to divide the white proletariat.

All that meant, though, is that the white folks got to be the lords over people of color while the wealthy whites still had their boots on the necks of poor whites!

These privileges don’t help us as white people nearly as much as they hurt us!

Similarly, male privilege may benefit men tremendously in certain ways. But in others, it restricts us into a tiny box of masculinity. I don’t know about you, but I am sick of trying to fit into my gendered box, the “Act Like a Man” box.

I want my gender expression to be free and independent of those aspects of masculinity that hurt men and women – violence is acceptable for solving problems, boys don’t cry, men are the lords of their household, men must know everything even when they don’t, etc.

The privileges are marginal when we look at the system of justice that can be built on the other side of this struggle!

 

4. Privilege Does Not Have To Mean Guilt!

....

5. Offer Concrete Ways That They Can Undermine the System of Privilege and Oppression In Their Own Life

....

6. Make It a Conversation of Actions, Not Character

 ...

 - read his full take on the last three here, and more from Jamie over at his change from within blog

I am in the midst of moving to Bogotá, so I will cheat and repost in its entirety this super relevant article by Harsha, published in briarpatch.

Decolonizing together

Moving beyond a politics of solidarity toward a practice of decolonization

by Harsha Walia • Jan 1, 2012 •

Illustrations by Afuwa

Canada’s state and corporate wealth is largely based on subsidies gained from the theft of Indigenous lands and resources. Conquest in Canada was designed to ensure forced displacement of Indigenous peoples from their territories, the destruction of autonomy and self-determination in Indigenous self-governance and the assimilation of Indigenous peoples’ cultures and traditions. Given the devastating cultural, spiritual, economic, linguistic and political impacts of colonialism on Indigenous people in Canada, any serious attempt by non-natives at allying with Indigenous struggles must entail solidarity in the fight against colonization.
Non-natives must be able to position ourselves as active and integral participants in a decolonization movement for political liberation, social transformation, renewed cultural kinships and the development of an economic system that serves rather than threatens our collective life on this planet. Decolonization is as much a process as a goal. It requires a profound recentring on Indigenous worldviews. Syed Hussan, a Toronto-based activist, states: “Decolonization is a dramatic reimagining of relationships with land, people and the state. Much of this requires study. It requires conversation. It is a practice; it is an unlearning.”

Indigenous solidarity on its own terms

A growing number of social movements are recognizing that Indigenous self-determination must become the foundation for all our broader social justice mobilizing. Indigenous peoples in Canada are the most impacted by the pillage of lands, experience disproportionate poverty and homelessness, are overrepresented in statistics of missing and murdered women and are the primary targets of repressive policing and prosecutions in the criminal injustice system. Rather than being treated as a single issue within a laundry list of demands, Indigenous self-determination is increasingly understood as intertwined with struggles against racism, poverty, police violence, war and occupation, violence against women and environmental justice.
Incorporating Indigenous self-determination into these movements can, however, subordinate and compartmentalize Indigenous struggle within the machinery of existing Leftist narratives. Anarchists point to the antiauthoritarian tendencies within Indigenous communities, environmentalists highlight the connection to land that Indigenous communities have, anti-racists subsume Indigenous people into the broader discourse about systemic oppression in Canada, and women’s organizations point to the relentless violence inflicted on Indigenous women in discussions about patriarchy.
We have to be cautious not to replicate the Canadian state’s assimilationist model of liberal pluralism, forcing Indigenous identities to fit within our existing groups and narratives. The inherent right to traditional lands and to self-determination is expressed collectively and should not be subsumed within the discourse of individual or human rights. Furthermore, it is imperative to understand that being Indigenous is not just an identity but a way of life, which is intricately connected to Indigenous peoples’ relationship to the land and all its inhabitants. Indigenous struggle cannot simply be accommodated within other struggles; it demands solidarity on its own terms.

The practice of solidarity

One of the basic principles of Indigenous solidarity organizing is the notion of taking leadership. According to this principle, non-natives must be accountable and responsive to the experiences, voices, needs and political perspectives of Indigenous people themselves. From an anti-oppression perspective, meaningful support for Indigenous struggles cannot be directed by non-natives. Taking leadership means being humble and honouring front-line voices of resistance as well as offering tangible solidarity as needed and requested. Specifically, this translates to taking initiative for self-education about the specific histories of the lands we reside upon, organizing support with the clear consent and guidance of an Indigenous community or group, building long-term relationships of accountability and never assuming or taking for granted the personal and political trust that non-natives may earn from Indigenous peoples over time.
In offering support to a specific community in the defence of their land, non-natives should organize with a mandate from the community and an understanding of the parameters of the support being sought. Once these guidelines are established, non-natives should be proactive in offering logistical, fundraising and campaign support. Clear lines of communication must always be maintained, and a commitment should be made for long-term support. This means not just being present for blockades or in moments of crisis, but developing an ongoing commitment to the well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities.
Organizing in accordance with these principles is not always straightforward. Respecting Indigenous leadership is not the same as doing nothing while waiting around to be told what to do. “I am waiting to be told exactly what to do” should not be an excuse for inaction, and seeking guidance must be weighed against the possibility of further burdening Indigenous people with questions. A willingness to decentre oneself and to learn and act from a place of responsibility rather than guilt are helpful in determining the line between being too interventionist and being paralyzed.
Cultivating an ethic of responsibility within the Indigenous solidarity movement begins with non-natives understanding ourselves as beneficiaries of the illegal settlement of Indigenous peoples’ land and unjust appropriation of Indigenous peoples’ resources and jurisdiction. When faced with this truth, it is common for activists to get stuck in their feelings of guilt, which I would argue is a state of self-absorption that actually upholds privilege. While guilt is often a sign of a much-needed shift in consciousness, in itself it does nothing to motivate the responsibility necessary to actively dismantle entrenched systems of oppression. In a movement-building round table, long-time Montreal activist Jaggi Singh said: “The only way to escape complicity with settlement is active opposition to it. That only happens in the context of on-the-ground, day-to-day organizing, and creating and cultivating the spaces where we can begin dialogues and discussions as natives and non-natives.”

Sustained alliance building

Sustaining a multiplicity of meaningful and diverse relationships with Indigenous peoples is critical in building a non-native movement for Indigenous self-determination. “Solidarity is not the same as support,” says feminist writer bell hooks. “To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood. Support can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment.”
Who exactly one takes direction from while building networks of ongoing solidarity can be complicated. As in any community, a diversity of political opinions often exists within Indigenous communities. How do we determine whose leadership to follow and which alliances to build? I take leadership from and offer tangible support to grassroots Indigenous peoples who are exercising traditional governance and customs in the face of state control and bureaucratization, who are seeking redress and reparations for acts of genocide and assimilation, such as residential schools, who are opposing corporate development on their lands. I support those who are pushing back against the oppressions of hetero-patriarchy imposed by settler society, who are struggling against poverty and systemic marginalization in urban areas, who are criticizing unjust land claims and treaty processes and who are affirming their own languages, customs, traditions, creative expression and spiritual practices.
Alliances with Indigenous communities should be based on shared values, principles and analysis. For example, during the anti-Olympics campaign in 2010, activists chose not to align with the Four Host First Nations, a pro-corporate body created in conjunction with the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee. Instead, we took leadership from and strengthened alliances with land defenders in the Secwepemc and St’át’imc nations and Indigenous people being directly impacted by homelessness and poverty in the Downtown Eastside. In general, however, differences surrounding strategy within a community should be for community members to discuss and resolve. We should be cautious of a persistent dynamic where solidarity activists start to fixate on the internal politics of an oppressed community. Allies should avoid trying to intrude and interfere in struggles within and between communities, which perpetuates the civilizing ideology of the white man’s burden and violates the basic principles of self-determination.
Building intentional alliances should also avoid devolution into tokenization. Non-natives often choose which Indigenous voices to privilege by defaulting to Indigenous activists they determine to be better known, easier-to-contact or “less hostile.” This selectivity distorts the diversity present in Indigenous communities and can exacerbate tensions and colonially imposed divisions between Indigenous peoples. In opposing the colonialism of the state and settler society, non-natives must recognize our own role in perpetuating colonialism within our solidarity efforts. We can actively counter this by theorizing about and discussing the nuanced issues of solidarity, leadership, strategy and analysis – not in abstraction, but within our real and informed and sustained relationships with Indigenous peoples.

Decolonizing relationships

While centring and honouring Indigenous voices and leadership, the obligation for decolonization rests on all of us. In “Building a ‘Canadian’ Decolonization Movement: Fighting the Occupation at ‘Home,’” Nora Burke says: “A decolonisation movement cannot be comprised solely of solidarity and support for Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and self-determination. If we are in support of self-determination, we too need to be self-determining. It is time to cut the state out of this relationship, and to replace it with a new relationship, one which is mutually negotiated, and premised on a core respect for autonomy and freedom.”
Being responsible for decolonization can require us to locate ourselves within the context of colonization in complicated ways, often as simultaneously oppressed and complicit. This is true, for example, for racialized migrants in Canada. Within the anticolonial migrant justice movement of No One Is Illegal, we go beyond demanding citizenship rights for racialized migrants as that would lend false legitimacy to a settler state. We challenge the official state discourse of multiculturalism that undermines the autonomy of Indigenous communities by granting and mediating rights through the imposed structures of the state and that seeks to assimilate diversities into a singular Canadian identity. Andrea Smith, Indigenous feminist intellectual, says: “All non-Native peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. In all of these cases, we would check our aspirations against the aspirations of other communities to ensure that our model of liberation does not become the model of oppression for others.” In B.C., immigrants and refugees have participated in several delegations to Indigenous blockades, while Indigenous communities have offered protection and refuge for migrants facing deportation.
Decolonization is the process whereby we create the conditions in which we want to live and the social relations we wish to have. We have to commit ourselves to supplanting the colonial logic of the state itself. Almost a hundred years ago, German anarchist Gustav Landauer wrote: “The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships.” Decolonization requires us to exercise our sovereignties differently and to reconfigure our communities based on shared experiences, ideals and visions. Almost all Indigenous formulations of sovereignty – such as the Two Row Wampum agreement of peace, friendship and respect between the Haudenosaunee nations and settlers – are premised on revolutionary notions of respectful coexistence and stewardship of the land, which goes far beyond any Western liberal democratic ideal.
I have been encouraged to think of human interconnectedness and kinship in building alliances with Indigenous communities. Black-Cherokee writer Zainab Amadahy uses the term “relationship framework” to describe how our activism should be grounded. “Understanding the world through a Relationship Framework … we don’t see ourselves, our communities, or our species as inherently superior to any other, but rather see our roles and responsibilities to each other as inherent to enjoying our life experiences,” says Amadahy. From Turtle Island to Palestine, striving toward decolonization and walking together toward transformation requires us to challenge a dehumanizing social organization that perpetuates our isolation from each other and normalizes a lack of responsibility to one another and the Earth.
This is an altered and condensed version of a chapter from the 2012 forthcoming book Organize! Building From the Local for Global Justice, edited by Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley and Eric Shragge.

Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. She is active in a variety of social movements, particularly migrant justice, anti-racism, Indigenous solidarity, Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialist struggles. In her organizing over the past decade, she has prioritized support for Indigenous communities. Her writings have appeared in alternative and mainstream magazines, journals and newspapers.

Liza Long is not Adam Lanza's mother

I have posted here several times before about the dangers of 'I am x person' solidarity slogans, most recently in relation to the 'I am Malala' campaign.  It's a bit odd to me to show you are in solidarity with someone by claiming you are that someone.  It's like trying to be the one you're with.  If you stand in their shoes, where are they supposed to stand? Why not walk alongside them instead?  Wouldn't it be more empowering for both of you that way? I do get that saying 'I am with Malala' does not have the same sort of rhetorical impact - but in the long run it is more respectful and can build more powerful and meaningful solidarity.

Well, by now you've probably already seen the "I am Adam Lanza's mother" post by Liza Long that went viral last weekend. It is a gripping description of one woman's experience as the mother of a mentally ill boy in the US.  We can easily imagine that Adam's mother might have experienced something like this.  That other parent's with mentally ill children face similar nightmares.  And, I would hope, it moves us to act for meaningful mental health treatment in the US.  So perhaps it is effective at rallying solidarity with parents of mentally ill children, though it does not ask for any specific action (like health care reform that would force health insurers to cover mental health treatment). 

So is Liza Long appropriating Adam's mother's voice?  Well, yes. The thing is, Adam Lanza's mother is dead.  He killed her.  With her own guns.  There is no sign that she reached out for help with her mentally ill son.  Instead she stocked up, bought five guns, and took her son to the shooting range to practice with them.   It appears she may have had her own mental health issues.  None of this makes it ok to speak in her name.  And now the real mother's life story is even less heard, as so many read Liza Long's post instead.

But what is more disturbing about Liza Long's post is that it is most certainly not going to generate solidarity with the mentally ill - if anything it stigmatizes them even more and puts them at greater risk.  Most notably it stigmatizes her own son, who is given no privacy since she does not even use a pseudonym!  For a great review of how Liza's post does injustice to both her son and others with mental health issues see the post You are NOT Adam Lanza's mother.

PBI's fantastic christmas campaign

Peace Brigades seems to be doing a story a day for their Christmas fundraising campaign, and the first few have been great.  I particularly liked this photo story, that the picture here is the first of.  I've been on some bad roads in Colombia, but I think this wins the prize!
They're also posting great videos, including this one interviewing Iván Madero Vergel of Credhos in Barrancaermeja about what accompaniment means to him.  

all women peacekeeping teams

The only all women team of international accompaniers is the International Women's Peace Service, but the Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international team, has been supporting the development of local women only peacekeeping teams in Sudan.  Their article about this work is below.

Women Taking the Lead in South Sudan

NP is pioneering the formation of Women Peacekeeping Teams (WPTs) in South Sudan. These are teams of local women who monitor incidents of conflict-related Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and help create safe spaces for women to address these in their local communities. There are between 10 and 25 women on each team and the first one was set up by NP in November 2011 in Juba. There are now five WPTs covering two districts in Central Equatoria State and three districts in Western Equatoria State. As we demonstrate the effectiveness of this model, there will hopefully be many more WPTs to come!

Photo: This picture was taken on 23 November 2011, in Ibba Central payam in Ibba county, and displays the members of the WPT as they had just officially formed their team that very day, together with one of NP Nzara's staff named Brenda Floors

The WPTs formed in Central Equatoria State were able to draw from a large pool of women who were willing to volunteer, including educated and skilled women of whom some even hold positions in county or state government. In Western Equatoria State, however, many of the women courageous enough to join a WPT have never had a formal job, and the majority are housewives, working in and around the house, raising the children as well as often working on their land as agriculturalists and/or selling their crops at the market. Some of them work (informally) at local restaurants as cooks or dishwashers. For many of these women, their participation in the WPT is the first time they have had an active, recognized role in a group of this kind.

“There has never been an international organization to come to Ezo before us to talk about women’s issues. (...) It will be our pleasure to receive NP and have them build our capacity and raise our voices.”
- Anna Lakim Nalurgura, Mid-wife and member of the WPT in Ezo Central Payam

The day to day work of the Women Peacekeeping Teams involves helping with the registration of cases of GBV, reporting these to the Ministry of Social Development and finding ways to address these issues through weekly meetings to discuss threats to themselves and other women in the community. At the same time they are being given more and more tools to increase the security of those most vulnerable to GBV and supporting the survivors in connecting them to police, social workers and health service providers. This will greatly improve awareness of GBV at these locations, as well as improve the capacity of local formal and official duty bearers in their increased experience in dealing with such cases. This increased awareness and capacity at the community and respective administrative levels will in turn greatly help reduce Gender-Based Violence in these locations.

NP works with both the WPTs and with the community at large to ensure the space for this work is safe. While it has been important to create an environment for women to participate in, it is equally important to engage the men in finding solutions for violence in the communities. Much encouragement and support is needed to have women realize the contribution they can make to change their own fate, and that of so many others.

Despite the commitment under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) for women to be represented in all levels of government, there are in fact very few opportunities for women to participate in public life. The WPTs are a unique opportunity to engage local women in the wider peacebuilding process. Women are generally the constants in their communities – they do not travel for work, they do not have multiple spouses in different places, and they often have the best sense of the protection issues in their communities.  Additionally, they are amongst the most affected by violence.

 “Through the existence of WPTs we can penetrate into society. It is the women who are at home all day and see what problems there are in society. It is them who stay with their children and maintain their communities when the men are out fighting.”
– Juba Team Leader Kudzanai Mativirira

The active presence of these local women within the broader peacekeeping effort in South Sudan promotes equal representation and women’s leadership, facilitates the approach of those women who are affected by conflict, and favours the participation of local women and their organizations in post-conflict situations and in the prevention of conflict. The Women Peacekeeping Teams have a unique opportunity to respond to the needs of an especially marginalized population and to showcase the vital role of women as actors in the long and difficult road towards peace, both in the world and in the home.

Photo: This picture was taken on November 25 2011 in Terkeka County, and displays the inauguration ceremony of the WPT formed that very day, together with the NP Juba team's leader Kudzanai Mativirira.

Even Those Who Chose Peace Suffer in this War Zone

 a Letter from the Colombian Peace Community of San José de Apartadó By FOR accompanier there, Gina Spigarelli

[this is reposted entirely from the FOR wesite - La Unión is an outlying hamlet of the peace community where the FOR accompaniers are based.  photos are Gina's photos of the peace community from flickr]

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

"On some days in La Unión, the war is a faint pulse in the background — a far-off helicopter heard but not seen, or a military troop walking by on their way to a distant destination. On those days, to an outsider, La Unión is like any small town in the world. Neighbors talk about their days — about the cake being baked down the road or the baby with a cold. They work their fields in the hot sun and convene in the center of town when it sets.

On other days, the war permeates every moment. There are days when the war is so close that there is nothing else. When the jungle right around the peace community heats up with combat, the primary concern is generally for the unarmed civilians, particularly peace community members themselves. Our neighbors don’t go work the fields — they stay near the FOR house, pay close attention to what other civilians say when they are coming up or down from the hills, and make sure that they are safe. Things get quiet and tense in the village.

This is not only due to fear for their own safety. The peace community is only 15 years old, after all, and many members have family members who left home before the process began to join the FARC guerrillas or the military or the paramilitaries. When combat occupies the troops close by, many families in the community worry that their sons or brothers or cousins or friends may be killed in the fighting. In the village where we live, there are mothers who have one child in the peace community, one in the military and one in the FARC. It’s hard to even imagine what neutrality means to them.

The peace community respects every individual’s decision to choose his or her own path. The fact that the community is not old enough for a generation of children to be raised in the culture of neutrality means that all sides of the war permeate the existence of the families here. There is no good or bad guy, there is no right or wrong choice. There is only the simple reality that war is deadly.
In mid-November there was combat near La Unión between the FARC and a local paramilitary group which violently demonstrated that simple reality. The fighting lasted from 5:00 a.m. to early afternoon, and many soldiers died on both sides. Because this combat was so close and the troops were local, the community knew several fallen soldiers. And so it was that, like with so many firefights before, the community listened and worried for the people they love.

Then the community was contacted by the International Red Cross about the wounded and the dead. And so it was that brothers went with hammocks to pick up their siblings from the jungle and bring them home, dead, to their mothers. And so it was that the whole peace community mourned, on the same day, young men who believed different things and chose to kill for those beliefs; young men who came from the same background and left the same villages to go into the same jungle and kill one another on different sides of the same conflict. And so it was that even those who chose neutrality were once again affected by all sides of the war around them.

In theory, neutrality to the war sounds easy. Peace seems like an obvious answer. Sometimes I hear myself talking with my family about peace and the peace community process and I think it even sounds utopian. The community seems serene — some pretty picture of how to make a better world after so much suffering. The community always seems strong, of course. There is no comparable organization that I have ever known. The rules and regulations that these people follow in order to be unarmed, peaceful, non-collaborative civilians in a war zone are severe, but on days when the war is a faint pulse in the background, these sacrifices seem simple enough.

However, there is nothing simple about living in a war zone. Even the people who choose peace, live in community, are neutral to the armed groups, who forgive their neighbors for the crimes committed against them and respect all people in their death, even these people acutely suffer. They suffer from the violence they see and the way the different armed groups involve them in the war - even if the only way they manage to involve them is by a son choosing a different life path than his mother and coming home to his family dead in a hammock. Their choice or not, the peace community is left to mourn the effects of the war as long as it goes on."

- by Gina Spigarelli, a member of the FOR accompaniment team in Colombia. Gina blogs at Let's peace our world, together.  I am in the midst of creating a digital archive of accompaniers' blogs as part of a process of thinking with accompaniers about best practices in storytelling across borders for peace. For now there are many blogs by accompaniers listed in the blogroll on the right.

inspired by Yolanda

This video actually starts at around minute four, and Yolanda starts talking at around minute 14 after a great short Guatemala context intro from Kathryn of the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission.  I am her interpreter, in the red interpreter vest.  For many years I have been a lead interpreter (and organizer of the interpreting) at the vigil to close the US Army's School of the Americas - the largest ongoing protest in the US against US militarism in Latin America .  This year, in mid-November I had the huge honor and responsibility of interpreting for many speakers at the vigil, many videos of which are online.  The video of the stage on Saturday is good for getting fired up, but the most inspiring experience for me was interpreting for Yolanda Oqueli, in the video above. 

Yolanda is a nonviolent resistance hero.  She has helped to organize her community (San Jose del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc) in Guatemala to stop a polluting gold mine that wants to come in and continually worked to keep the resistance peaceful.  They have maintained a round the clock blockade for 9 months and kept the mining company trucks out.  The company tried to break through in the middle of the night when there were only 20 people on shift - and thanks to the miracle of cell phones and great community organizing they managed to turn out 4,000 people in half an hour to stop them!  

So then the company increased the pressure.  They kidnapped Yolanda's husband, also a community leader, and gave him the option of fleeing the country or having his family hurt - and then when he fled they went ahead and tried to kill Yolanda anyways two weeks later! She survived the attempt, but has a bullet left lodged too close to her spine to safely remove.  Amazingly, her first words to her community when they found her shot were to please not be provoked into responding with violence.  And she has gone back to the blockade, and faced large gangs of "private security" thugs (former Guatemalan military) who have come to the blockade and specifically targeted her for harassment.  She continues to be a strong voice in her community for remaining peaceful in the face of these provocations, as she describes in this video.  She has even been brave enough to go on tour in the US and tell her story - even telling it in front of the gates of Fort Benning (minute 8 here).

Please, will you join me in walking with Yolanda and her community as part of our larger struggle for justice?  You can take quick action here to send emails to the US embassy and to the mining company itself.  It helps if you can take a minute to change the first line or two of the letters so that they stand out as different. 

Please also hold Yolanda in the light, send her love, pray for her, or however you think of these things, and ask for her body to move the bullet away from her spine so that it can be removed.  This can take from months to years, and it is causing her great pain while it is there.

I was disturbed, at the vigil, to see people reaching out to touch Yolanda after she gave her testimony on stage in a way that reminded me of how people reached out to touch Rufina Amaya, as if she were somehow saintly.  I wrote about how Rufina, the only survivor of the El Mozote massacre, found this disturbing at the vigil in my article about colonial patterns in the movement to close the SOA, and solidarity movement more broadly - and how survivors are distanced when they are put on a pedestal.  But I continue to work inside the movement to do solidarity differently.

half the sky? more on the ways white saviourism screws us all up

The above is a trailer for Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.   This is the official site for it.  It's a four-hour pbs special that aired in the US in early October and was shot in 10 countries: Cambodia, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia and the U.S.

Sayantani DasGupta has a great post over on Racalicious titled:

“Your Women Are Oppressed, But Ours Are Awesome”: How Nicholas Kristof And Half The Sky Use Women Against Each Other" 

Apparently Kristof says at one point in the documentary, “When you have won the lottery of life there is some obligation some responsibility we have to discharge.” Obligation?! Discharge?! Wow,  I hope that my calling to use my various privileges to work in solidarity across the Americas and build the power of our movements to build a better world never comes across as anything like that! (though note that I have often heard international solidarity activists say things along this line in much nicer sounding ways, like 'to whom much is given, much is expected')

It's worth reading the whole post on Racialicious, but here are some highlights:

"Perhaps reflecting this sense of noblesse oblige, the film is based on an amazingly problematic premise: the camera crew follows Kristof as he travels to various countries in the Global South to examine issues of violence against women–from rape in Sierra Leone, to sex trafficking in Cambodia, from maternal mortality and female genital cutting in Somaliland, to intergenerational prostitution in India. Because, hey, all the histories and cultures and situations of these countries are alike, right? (Um, no.) Oh, and he doesn’t go alone! Kristof travels with famous American actresses like Eva Mendez, Meg Ryan, Diane Lane, Gabrielle Union, and America Ferrera on this bizarre whirlwind global tour of gender violence.

There are plenty of critiques I could make of Kristof’s reporting (in this film and beyond, see this great round-up of critiques for more). Critiques about voyeurism and exotification: the way that global gender violence gets made pornographic, akin to what has been in other contexts called “poverty porn.”

For example, would Kristof, a middle-aged male reporter, so blithely ask a 14-year-old U.S. rape survivor to describe her experiences in front of cameras, her family, and other onlookers? Would he sit smilingly in a European woman’s house asking her to describe the state of her genitals to him? Yet, somehow, the fact that the rape survivor is from Sierra Leone and that the woman being asked about her genital cutting is from Somaliland, seems to make this behavior acceptable in Kristof’s book. And more importantly, the goal of such exhibition is unclear. What is the viewer supposed to receive–other than titillation and a sense of “oh, we’re so lucky, those women’s lives are so bad”?

In her book Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag suggested that images of distant, suffering bodies in fact inure the watcher, limiting as opposed to inspiring action:

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do — but who is that ‘we’? — and nothing ‘they’ can do either — and who are ‘they’ — then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic."

That was my bolding - this is is so essential! So many organizations share intense stories without clear action steps the readers can then take.  This is one of the things I am going to be tracking in my postdoc, which focuses specifically on the stories that accompaniers share and what works well for building solidarity.  How can accompaniers, and others doing human rights and humanitarian work in conflict zones, avoid falling in to traps like these?

The article goes on to raise another issue I'll be looking at in my postdoc:

"The issue of agency is also paramount. In the graduate seminar I teach on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice in the Master’s Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, I often ask my students to evaluate a text’s ethical stance by asking themselves–“whose story is it?” For example, are people of color acting or being acted upon? Although the film does highlight fantastic on-the-ground activists such as maternal-health activist Edna Adan of Somaliland, the point of entry–the people with whom we, the (presumably) Western watchers, are supposed to identify–are Kristof and his actress sidekick-du-jour.

In fact, many have critiqued Kristof for his repeated focus on himself as “liberator” of oppressed women. As Laura Augustín points out in her essay “The Soft Side of Imperialism”:

Here he is beaming down at obedient-looking Cambodian girls, or smiling broadly beside a dour, unclothed black man with a spear, whilst there he is with Ashton and Demi, Brad and Angelina, George Clooney. He professes humility, but his approach to journalistic advocacy makes himself a celebrity. He is the news story: Kristof is visiting, Kristof is doing something.

Beyond his self-promotion, there remains the issue of whose story Kristof is telling. He has, in fact, answered critiques of his reporting style–which often focuses on white outsiders going to Asian or African countries–by saying that this choice is purposeful. When asked why he often portrays “black Africans as victims” and “white foreigners as their saviors,” he has answered, “One way to get people to read…is to have some sort of American they can identify with as a bridge character.” A presumption which assumes that all New York Times readers are white, of course, but I won’t get into that now."

One of the things I am curious to look at in the stories told by accompaniers is how accompaniers can function as an 'in', or as she puts it here a 'bridge' for the reader, in ways that are less oppressive and build respectful solidarity. 

DasGupta goes on to make other important points, and ends by citing one of my favorite articles:

As feminist philosopher Linda Martín Alcoff argues in her essay “The Problem Of Speaking For Others,” that part of the problem of speaking for others is that none of us can transcend our social and cultural location: “The practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reinforcing the oppression of the group spoken for." 

I think there are actually careful ways of speaking with that can make our voices louder, but more on that later. 

I am NOT Malala

I am not Troy Davis, and I am NOT Malala.  The "I am 'x person who is oppressed'" meme has been growing fast, but seems to have reached a high pitch with the "I am Malala" campaign being promoted by no less than the The Office of the UN Special Envoy for Global Education. 

OF COURSE I am horrified by the attack Malala faced, and of course, I totally support education for all, and the work of the special envoy.  I just don't get why we have to pretend to BE Malala to STAND with Malala, and to support the campaign for education for all.  I have so many more privileges, that I am clearly NOT Malala, and it seems appriopriative to say so.  Maybe the intent is to be a version of the labor solidarity slogan, 'an injury to one is an injury to all', which of course I agree with, but it seems to deny and elide the huge gulfs of difference between me and Malala.  The video on the I am Malala website (below) does not in any way try to build solidarity by showing HOW I might be like Malala, or how an attack on Malala is also an injury against me. 

accompaniers key to the new peace agreement in Mindanao

Great news came out on Monday - a peace agreement was signed in Mindanao! Here is The Guardian's take on it.

I've been following the conflict in Mindanao more closely in the last few years because there are international accompaniers there with the Nonviolent Peaceforce.  That team is particularly interesting because they have played an official role in the peace process in a way that accompaniers never have before. 

Here is the announcement the Peaceforce posted explaining the peace agreement and their role:

Philippines Peace Agreement – Why This One is Different*

(*and why this is a truly historic moment for all of us at Nonviolent Peaceforce)

Peace Agreements are a dime a dozen these days. With an average of 25 wars going on around the world at any given time, there are peace agreements about to be signed almost every other week. No wonder the world ceases to take much interest anymore! Another Peace Agreement is signed in the Philippines yesterday – yawn.

Over half of the world’s peace agreements are broken within a few years anyway, that’s the official record. Remember that historic peace pact between the Israelis and the Palestinians – see how long that one lasted! And you may not even have noticed that just a few years before the Sri Lankan military destroyed the last remains of the Tamil Tigers on the battlefield, the two parties had also signed a comprehensive peace agreement, brokered by the Norwegians.

Sadly, this is the case for so many of the peace agreements that make it onto paper. And some don’t even get that far – the last peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro guerrillas was quashed by a Supreme Court decision in 2008 just moments before the two parties were about to sign the document.

So now we have a new peace agreement in the Philippines. Why should we be interested and why should we expect this one to last or to be any different from all the others? Well, as it happens, this one is different, and may just foreshadow a whole new era in peace agreements, not just for the Philippines, but for the rest of the world.

When the last peace agreement failed and the ceasefire broke down on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines in 2008, fighting broke out across the island, there were some particularly nasty massacres and over 600,000 people were displaced from their homes. But there was one new element in the equation that had not been there before: the presence of international unarmed civil society observers from a little-known group called the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

These Nonviolent Peaceforce observers had been quietly working away on the island, building relationships with both sides of the conflict, establishing their credentials as a neutral, independent, impartial actor willing to help both parties to find solutions to practical problems they faced on the ground – like how to avoid unnecessary bloodshed without appearing to be weak or to be seen to be backing down; how to ensure safe passage for civilians caught in the crossfire without losing ground militarily; how to maintain contact with the ‘enemy’ and avoid misunderstandings while at the same waging a war against them; how to put out feelers for a ceasefire without appearing to give in…

Nonviolent Peaceforce helped both sides of this war to be more civilised and more respectful of civilians and as a result, when a ceasefire was finally agreed, both sides asked Nonviolent Peaceforce to play an official role in the ceasefire mechanism that would hold both sides to their commitments and obligations under the ceasefire. It is not that unusual for two sides to appoint an intermediary to monitor a ceasefire. Often the UN plays that role, other times another country or set of countries will be invited to do it. But never before in the history of war has a non-governmental organisation made up of unarmed civilians from civil society been asked to play a role quite like this. This was – and is – historic, and is why the peace agreement just signed in the Philippines is also historic.

There have been many other innovations associated with this particular peace agreement, and they all deserve attention because this is a new way of making peace in the 21st century. As well as using a non-governmental organisation to help monitor the ceasefire on the ground, the parties to this conflict also agreed to have non-governmental organisations supporting the negotiations in Kuala Lumpur, as part of the ‘International Contact Group’1. This is unprecedented for a peace process like this. And on the ground, local organisations were also given official status in support of the ceasefire monitoring and protection of civilians2. Other countries have of course played an important role, but the really significant innovation has been having unarmed, international civilian ‘peacekeepers’ on the ground monitoring a ceasefire. Why?

Violence begets violence – we all know that. We may not always think of it or want to accept it, but every child who has ever scrapped on the playground, every parent who has ever dealt with an unruly teenager, every teacher, every social worker, every police officer has seen the effects of using force or violence on someone else. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s basic physics! In the field of human affairs, the reaction may not always be equal or opposite (often the reaction is much worse than the action, as in the case of terrorist atrocities committed to avenge some petty grievance), but it is as surely a law of life as it is a law of physics that if you use violence against someone or some group of people, you will sooner or later get violence thrown back at you. It is a lesson not just from science but also from art, as portrayed so consistently in Shakespeare’s plays, for instance…

So when peace agreements and ceasefires are managed or monitored by soldiers, UN or otherwise, who come complete with guns and tanks and helicopters, what is the message that sends out to the combatants and to the civilians who are most affected? Surely the deployment of soldiers, even for ‘peace’, simply reinforces the age-old assumption that military might, violence and force is what solves problems, whether the problem is war or the problem is peace.

No wonder so many peace agreements don’t last! No wonder so many ceasefires break down! How can we even begin to challenge the war mentality and change the way people try to handle their problems when we simply send in more military personnel to deal with a problem caused by two militaries fighting each other? Nonviolent Peaceforce throws a new dimension into this mix which totally confounds this way of thinking and turns it on its head. Actually, says NP, you are safer in a warzone as a civilian than you are as a soldier. Actually, you are more able to protect innocent civilians as a civilian than you are as a military officer. Actually, you are more likely to help reduce violence – to break the cycle of violence – by intervening as an unarmed civilian than by intervening with military force.

This is ground-breaking stuff, and it has been going on largely unnoticed but with huge success in the Philippines for these past two years. And it is what has made possible a peace agreement which has the real possibility of standing the test of time and giving the people of this war-torn island what they most want and deserve – a true and lasting peace.

And the reason it is so critical to the peace agreement which has just been signed is that peace at the negotiating table is only ever possible when there is real peace on the ground. Most ceasefires are broken the day they are agreed, and they continue to be broken every day because both sides are continually testing the other, reigning in their forces only enough to get the best deal they can at the negotiating table and if they don’t get it, are ready to go back to fighting until they do. More traditional ceasefire monitors know all this and they know that their job is merely to keep the belligerents at bay long enough to give the negotiations a fighting chance – never to actually address the problems and flashpoints and incidents and violations that are going on by both sides. That is not how the game has been played – until now.

Nonviolent Peaceforce has not just been ‘monitoring’ the ceasefire in Mindanao. NP teams have been out there every day actually ‘peacekeeping’ in the true sense of that word: addressing concrete problems on the ground, de-escalating tensions, getting both sides to back off, preventing displacement and disruption of normal life, helping people get used to real peace and encouraging them to expect it! This is the new dynamic at play in this new peace agreement. The people of Mindanao have already had two years of peace and they will not accept anything less at this point. They – the ordinary civilians, the people who bear the brunt of war when it happens – demand peace, and the belligerents now have to give it to them.

And what about the belligerents? Maybe they have also been somewhat affected by the ‘civilising’ presence of these unarmed civilian peacekeepers. They have been treated throughout this conflict with dignity and respect by the Nonviolent Peaceforce. They have been helped to see that is in their own interest to treat the civilians caught up in this conflict also with dignity and respect. And they have been helped to do the right thing when it comes to respecting the ceasefire and the norms of international humanitarian law and the accepted laws of war.

Nonviolent Peaceforce has not turned soldiers into pacifists, and has no ambition to do so, but it has helped to make sure that no soldier who believes he or she is fighting for a cause, whether it’s the defence of one’s country or the right to self-determination, forgets that he or she is also responsible for how that fight is fought and how, in particular, non-combatant civilians - especially women and children – are treated.  If they are now more likely to be treated with dignity and respect and their rights and lives protected from the abuses and violations of war, then this really is a very important peace agreement and a turning point in the history of war.

For full text of speeches by the President of the Republic of the Philippines and Chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on the occasion of signing the peace agreement on 15th October 2012:


Speech of President Aquino during the signing of the GPH MILF framework agreement

Speech of the Chairman of the MILF during the signing of the framework agreement on the Bangsamoro


Dr. Timmon Wallis, Executive Director, Nonviolent Peaceforce

This article was originally published in the independent online magazine www.opendemocracy.net

empathy test

My apologies for the long radio silence - I am in the midst of major life transitions.

I do, however, continue to think about the benefits and dangers of empathy and am thrilled that my friends remember this obsession of mine.  Thanks to Teo for sending the link to this wired article:

"Fend Off Trolls, Bots and Jerks With ‘Empathy’ Test

• BY RYAN SINGEL

A human rights group is introducing a new take on CAPTCHAs, those little boxes that make you type in a word to prove you are human before you can comment or register for a site. Their version doesn’t just present a scrambled word to be deciphered, but instead forces a person to choose the right word to unscramble based on the proper emotional response to a human rights violation.

Civil Rights Defenders, the Swedish-based group that developed the tool, hopes the Civil Rights Captcha will help sites block spiders and bots, while letting humans in — and hopefully educating the humans at the same time.

One hopes that being required to choose “Terrible” rather than “Fascinated” when asked how you feel about gay people being beaten will keep out the trolls — but that’s probably asking too much.

But perhaps forcing a troll to repeatedly choose an empathetic response will, over time, soothe the ravages of comment sections around the net. Okay, that might also be asking too much, but at the very least spreading information about human rights abuses certainly can’t hurt, even if the jerks of the internet (see, for example, YouTube comments) remain beyond help."

Well it's a simplistic definition of empathy, and I doubt that it will build solidarity, but I guess if they use it to share information about particular incidents, like the one in the example, it could.