Deirdra‏@birdofparadox

#YesAllWomen does not mean Yes, All Men. Thank you to the men who get that, and are standing in witness to women’s experiences.

I’ve been cooking down my feelings, and plain and simple, it goes like this. When confronted with unspeakable violence toward women (and a subsequent outpouring of women’s similar experiences), I wish our bros were more prone to think about how they would confront the next friend who started down a degrading path, rather than telling a woman they’re crazy/stupid/absurd for feeling threatened in their lives.

FEMINIST HULK‏@feministhulk

IF YOU AN ALLY, PROVE IT BY TRUSTING THAT #YesAllWomen ARE NOT ATTACKING YOU, FOCUS INSTEAD ON MAN WHO GAVE EXPLICIT REASONS FOR HATING US.

It is far easier to say, HEY, I’M NOT THAT GUY, than to look around and think, Jesus, this was terrible. How can I make my corner of the world less tolerant of this societal cancer?

A dear friend observed that he can’t do anything about what happened at Isla Vista, but he could intervene when his clientele called women “bitches.”

I just wish I saw more “I really hope I’ve never done anything to wind up on #YesAllWomen, but if I have, I want to understand/fix it.”

Dear Mississippi, how should I begin?

Water: In heavy rain, cats yowling, the lightning in the sky giving me a glimpse of the Chunky River’s churning. A sudden doom fell upon my shoulders: I was moving somewhere they would name a river Chunky without a trace of irony. Hot on the heels of a life-altering breakup, storm season in Mississippi was the perfect accompaniment to my unraveling. I moved here for love, a love lost 19 days before my entry to the state. I would stand in the rain or at the edge of the Reservoir howling, crying big fat tears, not yet realizing that I had freed myself.

A year later, the rains rolled in, and I was a different person: worn like riverstone, I stood in the deluge, trading kisses. While we adamantly told everyone we weren’t dating, we were slowly building a marriage.

Fire: I lived in Miami, where I would burn through long sleeve tee-shirts, I lived in the Dutch Oven of pollution that encapsulates Atlanta. Nothing prepared me for Mississippi’s summer swelter. I suddenly understood the concept of braising on a whole new level. I was able to truly appreciate my newfound friends’ investments in deep, covered porches. Fire: do any mosquitos burn quite like Mississippi?

Mississippi is where I took my anger and turned it into passion. I have always been outspoken, but Mississippi helped me to hone my candor into a useful tool. I have always been opinionated, but Mississippi made an advocate out of me. I had aways written, but Mississippi made a writer out of me.

I had carried so much anger within me, that proverbial hot stone, and in Mississippi,  the hottest part of the forge for so very many social struggles, I shaped that anger into an instrument for activism and growth.

Air: As a child, I would spread my arms wide and let the wind catch my whole body like a sail. I still do this. Everyone notices the wind in Mississippi: I think everyone holds deep gratitude for the breeze that slices through soupy August, just as we steel ourselves for the icy barrage that whips through January.

The lightning in Mississippi is superior to any other place I have seen: the way it splits the sky, that primal beauty, laden with wonder, awe, and fear. Unburdened by decades of old habits and reputations, I let the lightning split me, let the air move me, spiraling me deeper into my own self. I came to an accord with my intellect, embraced my nerdiness, and allowed the air to bear away the tatters of an old life long outlived.

Earth: I had grown plants, but never had a garden. I am still in no hurry: the trees in Mississippi are incredible. Jackson is an anomaly: after years of asphalt, limestone and pure red clay, to be able to have wild animals afoot, and sensory reassurance of happenstance nature around me in the middle of a city was overwhelming. During a nasty storm, a wild goose took refuge on my apartment porch: we weathered the storm together, he on one side of the glass, me on the other. I sighted a deer across the street from the mall. I have seen a living armadillo trundling alongside Pear Orchard Road.  In Fondren, there is a tomato plant that crawls out of a crack in the sidewalk each year, bearing fruit against all odds. I have seen a red-tailed hawk snatch a jay out of the sky, and a community of bluejays rise up to exact vengeance. All my life, I would listen to Stevie Nicks and sway: she made me feel like a gypsy, a stray cat. I wanted to be untethered, easy to transplant. I put down wide but shallow roots.

Suddenly, I had a home. When my love and I bought a house, we knew it was ours because of the massive grove of trees… the trees that bent nearly to the ground, but did not break in Katrina… but played dervishes in a tornado and dropped most of their branches in a large, interlocking spiral. We thought we had lost them, but in the end, their deep roots saved them. They taught me that we must be willing to root deeply and reach out to one another to have security; that others will shelter your broken, tender body with their own limbs.

Mother Mississippi is no doting mother. She exacts a hefty toll from each of us. The rivers… they go where they want. Tornadoes rake our land like animal claws. The sun is brutal, and Yazoo clay is a trickster spirit of its own. Let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

I have an elevator speech for the many people who ask me, “WHY MISSISSIPPI?”

I tell them i live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. I stay because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside. Jackson, my slice of earth, is an elemental convergence.

But there is more. Mississippi is a great teacher. I stay because the heat reminds me to kindle my own blazing courage; I stay because the air reminds me to use my breath as fuel for the body and lasting change; I stay because the water reminds me that we ourselves are ever-changing, capable of changing course; and I stay because the earth reminds me that we who choose to stay are interwoven, inextricable… sovereign unto ourselves, but supported by so many.

Today is not Earth Day, but we celebrate it anyway. We can choose to celebrate it daily, to remind us we can make tiny changes in our lives to live more gently; that we can revel in the beauty even as we mourn the injustices done to our habitat and the souls of our neighbors; and that we can fall in love with a place that is prickly, harsh, and perhaps difficult to love…

It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

How many modern org charts would nurture these minds? How many would tell them their ideas were too big, to start smaller, to work in how-it’s-been-done for a few years, and then they could talk about their big idea?

There are people here in Mississippi who fight the good fight, some who have lived here since before James Meredith became an Ole Miss student. I have met civil rights activists who endured horrific indignities to their souls at the hands of their government and neighbors. Instead of fleeing, they–with more courage and integrity than I have ever possessed in my life–stayed to fight tooth and nail to nudge Mississippi forward.

Faulkner (or Willie Morris… depending on whose story is best for the occasion) said you had to first understand Mississippi in order to understand the world. I don’t understand it tonight, and sometimes I think I never will. Sometimes, it’s scary to advocate for equality, agency, progress in Mississippi. Sometimes you feel like nothing you ever do will scab over the pain we inflict upon one another. Please don’t pile hate upon hate.

When I was a kid, my dad’s parents would marvel over their nerdy granddaughter like a strange bug. They’d tell my mother how smart I was, like she was too blonde to know. They’d tell my parents I would be so rich, I could support them in their dotage. I hated it, because I felt less a girl, more of a redeemable asset. Just sit on it for 25 years, and you’ll be RICH!

I remember a time when they were arguing about whether I’d be a doctor or a lawyer. For the record, of the two Rich Professions my grandparents selected, I’d probably be a lawyer: I like to argue, and I like to win.

At the time, I wanted to be an astronaut, or an oceanographer. Someone eventually told me there was a lot of maths involved in aeronautics,  and that dream died. Oceanography lost its charm when I narrowly avoided a barracuda (WAY scarier than Sarah Palin, FYI). I almost piped up, but remembered I was eavesdropping. My silence rewarded me with one of my most vivid memories of my mom.

She  sighed. Evidently, she was as tired of these conversations as I was. She said, “I don’t care about any of that bullshit. I hope she grows up to be a humanitarian.”

My grandparents were skeptical. I took it to heart. The next year, I became a Girl Scout.

Nothing I do at my new job will ever be in the history books. I will be promoting the actions of ordinary people engaged in the extraordinary act of bettering their communities, and telling those stories will lead to bigger things. More funding, more visibility, and more recognition for their work. All of this is exciting, but none of it is more humbling than this: my new job revolves around engaging people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to live in service to their neighbors, their communities and the world.

When we were finishing my hugely long second interview, the director (MY NEW BOSS, GUYS!) told me they  hire individuals who not only have the drive to make the world a better place, but idealists with a track record to prove it. He said that it was obvious that I was one of those people. Afterward, I told Matthew that even if I lost out on the job, the experience was worth it for that precious moment.

My life has been far from perfect, but I learn from mistakes.  I have worked to align the Things I Do with the Things I Do For A Living. I know that’s a tricky line to walk; that money changes things, but I’m thrilled to put my Hanuman Heart to its purpose: conscious service.

I wish I could call my mom and let her know she was right. That she was right about everything.

That’s really where this post could end, but allow me to continue. Every 15 seconds, a woman is beaten. 4.8 million intimate partner-related acts of violence annually, and less than 20% of them receive medical care post-assault. A recent social experiment showed that many people still consider a certain amount of violence as acceptable when dealing with a perceived lower class of people.

From an early age, we’re taught not to stare, not to make a fuss, to mind our own damn business. We want to believe the best of the people we encounter in our day to day lives. We want our friends and relatives to be happy, so we believe them when they say they’re “Fine.”

I’ve been that person, who politely looked away, didn’t notice my friend’s injuries, believed flimsy excuses.  Society makes it easy for us to look away from violence, even when it’s happening under our noses. Much later, she showed me the body-sized hole in her drywall, and it made my stomach turn. I wanted to put my fist through the wall alongside the spot where she’d landed, to go to the hardware store and patch over the place where love and trust had failed her, to do anything except stand mutely in front of the hole.

I was so angry for my friend. I was so deeply ashamed of myself for not recognizing abuse, for being so ill-equipped to help her.

This is my fourth year volunteering with the Chick Ball. I have a lot of reasons why I volunteer, but the most important reason is because I have seen too many wonderful people beaten and emotionally decimated by loved ones. I’ve heard too many excuses from strong, brilliant people about why their parent, sibling or partner is justified in treating them abominably.

Last year, the Chick Ball raised nearly $16,000 to help the CVP found a batterer’s  intervention program (the first of its kind in Jackson) to work with abusers who want to make good on their promises of “never again.” Studies have shown 15 percent of those who completed an abuse intervention program were rearrested for domestic violence, compared with 37 percent of those who dropped out of the program.

2010′s efforts will provide seed money for a Victim’s Legal Fund. Justice may be blind, but toll is steep. When victims leave their abusers, their resources are stretched thin. Victims often don’t have the money necessary to take their abusers to court:  to fight for full custody of their children.

All seriousness aside, the Chick Ball is hugely fun without diminishing the gravity of the issue at hand.  We need volunteers in all aspects of planning and execution of the event (JULY 24), and you meet amazing, motivated, formidable women. If you can’t volunteer, please consider donating artwork or goods for door prizes and silent auction pieces, or even sponsorship ($50 is our base level of sponsorship.) Above all, just come and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

It’s an easy thing to say, “The first time a man hits me, I’m out the door.” It’s an automatic, brainless and rational reaction to the idea of violence, but it does not encompass all the factors that can influence a situation: children, pets, finances, vows, shame, pride, fear and love.  It doesn’t take into account the gradual whittling away of self-worth that usually precludes a violent act. The hard-and-fast rule we’re taught doesn’t account for an abuser’s remorse, apologies or promises.

We often focus on the families and aftermath of abuse. This year, the Chick Ball is raising money to help fund an intervention program (the first of its kind in Jackson) to work with abusers who want to make good on their promises of “never again.” Personal change and growth is rough, but it’s doable, especially with help. Studies have shown 15 percent of those who completed an abuse intervention program were rearrested for domestic violence, compared with 37 percent of those who dropped out of the program.

All seriousness aside, the Chick Ball is hugely fun without diminishing the gravity of the issue at hand.  We need volunteers in all aspects of planning and execution of the event, and you meet amazing, motivated, formidable women. If you can’t volunteer, please consider donating artwork or goods for door prizes and silent auction pieces, or even sponsorship ($50 is our base level of sponsorship.) Above all, just come and enjoy the fruits of our hard work.

2009 Chick Ball Poster (please print and distribute!)

2009 Chick Ball Sponsorship Sheet

And feel free to repost this little press release anywhere you like!

SATURDAY, July 25, 2009

6 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Hal & Mal’s Red Room

WHAT:

The Jackson Free Press will present its 5th Annual JFP Chick Ball, an affordable night of music, art, spoken word and performance that has raised thousands of dollars in the last two years to honor the Center for Violence Prevention. All proceeds from the door, art auction and direct donations will be presented to the center following the event. Sign up for our Twitter feed @jfpchickball so you don’t miss anything.

This year, the event will be bigger than ever, with dozens of businesses and artists in and around Jackson donating door prizes and artwork for the art auction. Our cause is more ambitious as well: instead of concentrating on the aftermath, we’re going for the root of the problem. We’re looking to raise some of the initial funding for a program to help abusers stop being abusers. This will be the only domestic abuse intervention program of its kind in and around Jackson.

Specifics: Learn more about the Duluth Model, the most replicated woman abuse intervention model in the country.

WHO:

The line-up of female musical, visual and performance artists is headlined every year by a diverse group of women. We’ll be sure to make a big announcement when the lineup is finalized.

WHEN:

Saturday, July 25th, 6 p.m. Admission is only $5 – and only $10 to get your chance at a door prize.

WHERE:

Hal and Mal’s Red Room

WHY:

Because we want to help the CVP works for their important cause – putting a stop to domestic violence in our community.

Sponsorships Available:

• Diva – $2,500+
• Goddess – $1,000
• Queen – $500
• Princess – $250
• Chick/Rooster – $50

Call 601.362.6121 ext. 2, or e-mail chickball@jacksonfreepress.com with questions about volunteering, sponsorships and donations for silent auction.