26 December 2014

"Change" -- Sixteen Days: Art and Reflection on Ending Gender-based Violence




Shared on Human Rights Day -- 10 Dec 2014

In the final video of our three-part series "Sixteen Days," we are thinking through community-based solutions and restorative justice as we continue to raise awareness about different forms of gender-based violence. Prisons and incarceration are not the answer. We need revolutionary solutions with visionary transformation of our communities and consciousness. Deep Rooted Change.

"Today the reactionary calls for more and more laws to create order. The revolutionary should be able to conceive of struggling for a society which is based more on the wisdom of men and women than on laws. Fighting for more laws is like fighting for better jails. We believe in prison reform, but those who concentrate their energies on struggling for prison reform are not revolutionaries. They have no vision of a new society in which we will need fewer jails. Today, the more you try to reform institutions rather than to change people, the worse things become. All you are doing is increasing human dependence upon institutions; you are multiplying bureaucracies and diverting human energies and attention from the changes that people have to make in themselves." 
- From Conversations in Maine (1978) by James and Grace Lee Boggs, Freddy and Lyman Paine

06 December 2014

BodyPower -- Sixteen Days: Art and Reflection on Ending Gender-Based Violence





"BodyPower" -- Sixteen Days: Art and Reflection on Ending Gender-based Violence by Angelique V Nixon and Krystal Ghisyawan. This video of Days 6 to 10 focuses on erotic autonomy and body power in the face of gender-based violence. Women and girls are not the only victims of violence. We remember trans-bodies, gender-queer bodies, male bodies, racialised bodies in our call to end violence. Our bodies matter.
from Beloved by Toni Morrison -- may we sing these words in our hearts today and everyday:
“In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”


We have a right to breathe. We have a right to dignity and justice. We rage for our lives. We rage for the future. We rage with our hearts, our voices, our spirits. We will not rest. We will not be silent. We rage more. Make Furious Our Survival. 

*~*~*

Our first video of Days 1-5 -- "Outrage" - Sixteen Days: Art and Reflection on Ending Gender-Based Violence.