Posts From April 2012

Cohort StoriesApril 25, 2012

Acts of Power

By Corrine Sanchez

I have been to India and India is still with me. 

Columbus set sail to find India, instead he landed on the homelands of my peoples. We are connected. Our history and fates intertwined. Dissimilar, yet mirrors into each other. Our Souls weep and Our Mother aches, yet Our Spirits move forward. Threads of strength weave through generations.

Strategies of murder, rape, assault, biological warfare, laws, legislation and policies written by a government…meant to eradicate and erase us, to “Kill the Indian”. Genocidal practices enforced by 21 U.S. Presidents.

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Cohort StoriesApril 25, 2012

I have been to India...

By Anonymous

I’ve been to India
And walked down narrow winding streets as a ghost
Flour mills shops tended by elders and prayer
Sit side by side with precious beings huddled and waiting to get through this night.
Can I be one with all of this?
The deep pain and brilliance that resides in every single being
Knowing this is our way, our path, to heal the world

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Cohort StoriesApril 24, 2012

The Rebirth of Activists

By Joanne Smith

Throughout my 14-year career as an activist I have worked with and supported many civil rights institutions, initiatives and gender rights advocates, but nothing prepared me for our advocacy work in India.

For 10 days we were guided by and learned from ally organizations and activists working to end child sex trafficking and exploitation as a “great experiment” (approaching the work as an experiment creates space for risk taking and innovation).

Together, we visited Sonagachi, the largest red light district in India and all of Asia —a place that betrays Gandhi’s theory with no principles of Ahimsa (nonviolence, or the resistance of violence to the self and to others), and Antodaya (the upliftment of the last person/girl, or the empowerment of those who are most marginalized and vulnerable).

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Cohort StoriesApril 23, 2012

I have been to India...

By Anonymous

I’ve been to India
And received a firsthand education of this great experiment to uplift humanity
Healing, seeing, reading words from an evolved Gandhian philosophy to
Hearing, seeing, reading the simple words from a 9-year old girl asking “will you walk with me?”
I’ve been to India and it calls to me sounding like the Streets of Brownsville, DC, Minnesota, Florida, New Orleans, where girls walk the beat.
There’s work to be done daily
My friends and I conspire
We’ve been to India

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Cohort StoriesApril 17, 2012

The Last Girl and Boy

By Neil Irvin

Neil Irvin, MEV Pilot Cohort Member and Executive Director of Men Can Stop Rape, reflects on how the cohort's journey to India is influencing his work, particularly around the upcoming Healthy Masculinity Action Project.

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Cohort StoriesApril 12, 2012

A New View

By Ted Bunch

We at A CALL TO MEN are extremely proud to say that our organization was born out of the Battered Women’s Movement. Over the years we have had the privilege and honor to be at the table and learn from countless women leaders, visionaries, and activists. This education has helped shape our analysis and empowered us to create an organization and a message that is universal and – we believe – transformational.

As I reflect on my participation in Move to End Violence and our recent trip to India, I am eternally grateful for my time with the cohort members and the visionary leaders of India that took the time to pour their brilliance into us. As the time passes since our journey, I continue to gain insight into my work, social justice, and even manhood. I have seen my own growth and evolution as an activist and a leader. I feel as though I am perched a little higher on the branches of the tree that is in our beloved community, and I am able to see with a new and broader vision and perspective.

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Cohort StoriesApril 10, 2012

Every Last Girl

By Beckie Masaki

As I walked through the narrow streets of Sonagachi in Kolkata, she and I caught each other’s glances. Sunita?

I could have sworn this was the teen that lived with us at Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco after she had spent most of her childhood enduring sexual abuse, forced labor, and imprisonment as a victim of human trafficking. At first, I felt a moment of relief to realize that this girl was, in fact, not Sunita. Then, a sinking feeling of guilt and despair set in as I reminded myself that this girl, as much as Sunita and every girl, deserves a life free from abuse. 

The next day we sat in circles together with woman and girls who were part of Apne Aap, our host NGO in India. Apne Aap organizes women and girls in small circles of 10, where they come together to support one another, make change for themselves and the next generation. The power of these groups coming together and then joining with other circles in regional and national advocacy:  it is the power of the last women and the last girls.

MEV cohort members join in an Apne Aap motherhood circle

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Cohort StoriesApril 05, 2012

What we have inherited / A time to imagine a new way of life

By Nancy Nguyen

“I have been to India…” and there found traces of another place, a shadow that follows, a history of pain and dislocation that bled into me, like ink on paper. Days melted into each other, modes of transportation bookended deep and intense conversations, reflections were captured and condensed into “Ah-hah moments” on Post-its. At times I had to resist the constant motion and be, instead, still and silent in an effort to hold the emotions and ideas in place. I needed to experience them this way so that the dust could settle in my thoughts and in my heart.

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Cohort StoriesApril 03, 2012

Identifying Our Philosophy and Methods

By Aimee Thompson Arevalo

"It is an axiom of social change that no revolution can take place without a methodology suited to the circumstances of the period." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

In a few weeks, I will give birth to my first child, a son. Because of the pregnancy I did not travel with the rest of the MEV Pilot Cohort to India. Instead, I followed their journey through this blog and their messages home. I have also checked in with some colleagues one-on-one as they processed the experience and shared how they are bringing their lessons learned back to the U.S.

In a recent conversation with unassuming and sage-like cohort member Priscilla Gonzalez, she commented on how impressed she was that everyone the cohort met with in India strove to embody the Gandhian philosophy of non-violence in their work at all levels. This ranged from their high-level philosophy to their practical analysis, which included the last, most marginalized person in their program and policy design decisions. Priscilla then went on to reflect on fact that we don’t have that same sort of common grounding in our movement work here in the U.S. She pointed out that while Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. serves a similar inspiration, we have not integrated his wisdom in the same way that our activist colleagues in India embody the values that Gandhi lived and taught.

I agree.

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