Errol Elumir Acapella Video For NaNoWriMo

I'll post one one video on the last day of VloMo10 but I got time crunched toward the end. To make it up to you I present a one man cheerleader squad of four part harmony goodness.



Salud to our writing compatriots as well as those in the VlogNation. Special shout out to those that did 30 Pies in 30 Days. My hips forbade me from even contemplating such a crusty adventure but props just the same.

No Means No PSA - PSA Project

This is a text based video on helping folks remember that "No" does not require a reason when it comes to deciding if you want to have sex with another person. Some people are under the impression that no is a prelude to yes. I found a good source of ideas at http://www.clotheslineproject.org and that is the organization I imagined could benefit from created the PSA

No. It is not. She may have tacky underwear she doesn't want you to see. You might have really bad breath. You might be a nice guy. You might be a self-centered inconsiderate bore. She might have other things to do and having sex with you isn't on the list.



When in doubt back up and stop. The inspiration for this came from a line text in the UCLA Freshman Handbook. There was a section on Date Rape and in the section for men it said that men should not take it personal that a woman does not want to have sex with them.

I do agree with that sentence but there wasn't an equivalent statement for the women. For the women it was all pro-active self defense and awareness. So if all it takes is to spread the word that men need to know that no having sex from someone who says no to them is not a bad thing then heck yeah, pass the word.

(Yes, I know it is about self esteem, power and a bunch of other stuff. But if we can stop one guy from doing something seriously wrong with a few words let's put the thought in his head.)

Process and Tools:

• Swish Max a very easy to use Flash animation program.
  
• Slide screen PNG image. I used Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 to make transparent
  
• Sound Loops from FlashKit.com
• Assembled in Serif Movie Plus X3
  

This week I wanted to keep it really simple and play with text and music. I am learning to focus on one idea and express that idea.

Domestic Violence Tombstone PSA

Using music, a tombstone and text I made a simple PSA on three statistics about women and violence. In the video I linked to Violence UnSilenced, a place where people can go to share or read stories about people in domestic violence situations.

People who are abused may not be able to talk about what is happening but in a private safe community place, web site or blog there can be a connection made to their personal danger.


Process:

I used Tombstone Builder. I started out with Tombstone Generator. Created a bunch of markers 15 to 20 or so. When I tried open them they wouldn't open. Grievous. This is no reflection on Tombstone Generator, I've used it before. I just was too upset to figure out the problem.

I then thought ok, I'll make my own but all of the real world tombstone makers have their logo or other watermark on the headstones. Understandable and because they are facing foreign mechanical knock-offs, I don't blame them.

I still needed a headstone. I found Tombstone Builder and I'm good to go. The music is from the Internet Archive, The Negro Prison Songs from Mississippi State Penitentiary. I assembled it in Serif Movie Plus X3.

My point in describing the process is that using basic tools and technology you can tell a story or convey information. Music helps a lot too.

Thoughts and Concerns

This was harder than I anticipated. I initially wanted to have parts of faces showing bruises. I did find those, most regrettably. I needed women of color. There is one recent woman of color who was assaulted by her partner.

Here is where the ethics kick in. I could make the case that this woman is a public figure and the photos have become public record. I could crop or distort the photos. I could focus on just the bruises.

To change factual photographs is not a good thing. It is dishonest. Damn me for taking a photo-journalism class but there you go, it is not a good practice to distort the actual recorded experience.

The second issue is that I don't know who took the original photos. I don't know who owns them. They look like police photos. Either way, I don't have permission until I find that out. Since I don't want to it is ok.

I decided not to use those photos. There is a real live person involved. I don't know this woman. I don't know the truth about her situation but I do not want to be perceived as benefiting from her sorrow.

It seems others have no problem doing so but I do. So yes, it would have been a better piece with photos but the ethical costs was much too high.

Emotional Rollercoaster on the Finally Friday Freakout

Yes, indeed life can turn you into confusion central. You think you got it scope out. You are clear on your intent and words. Bam, up jumps the reality you cannot turn away from. It is in your face, in your eyes and your back is up against the wall. No room for lies or self deception. This is it.

I mention no celebrities or people in the news. I mention no woman who was just found dead caused by a spouse or domestic partner. I ain't even talking about the women who have learned to be silent in order to keep the peace in the household because it is easier than catching the back hand of hell. Not that it will stop it from coming. It is a delay tactic at best.

Before I get rolling on this topic you should know that the performer in the video is Vivian Green and this name of the song is Emotional Rollercoaster.



So long as there is a foot on the throat of a single women we will all be damned. What shames us is that so many have asked heart breaking questions like, "What did she do?" or "You know those skirts were kinda short, she was asking for it?" or "She should have just shut up, she took it too far and this is what you get."

And no fellas, I'm not leaving you out of the picture. I know that some of you have been assaulted by women as well.

Educated women have said these things. Hood Rats have said these things. Women who have been beat within an inch of their lives have said these things. Women who don't know just how the use of power can blind a woman to her rightful nature as a human being. It is not love if he beats you like an enemy combatant. True love does not leave bruise marks on your soul.

There is an old line that Black men use to say to Black women. " I do you like I do you cuz I thought you could take it."

In the old days that line was sometimes met by Black women with hot grease, oatmeal in the lap or the ringing chimes of a cast iron skillet. I am not advocating violence, except in the case of self-defense. I'm just telling you what was tolerated and what was not. Let it be know, that I have two cast iron skillets, a really big one and a small camping one.

I know my history. It will not be repeated.

I write this not for the victims. But for the people that asked the questions that hurt. They do not understand the deadly seriousness of domestic and partner violence. For people that are taking up sides when in fact this is a multi-layered problem. I write this for people who think it is a man's prerogative to make a woman suffer because it is his god given rights.

No. it is not. It is a crime when the first slap, punch or kick is delivered.

I write this for those misguided and misinformed people that believe that a woman should be punished if she did something wrong is acceptable.

No. Never. It is and always has been wrong.

If you know somebody like that read them a page of two from one of the resources listed. Start to move the conversation away from dehumanizing to coming to consciousness. Save a mind. Save a life.

Resources:

• Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community http://dvinstitute.org
  
• Domestic Violence Awareness Handbook http://www.da.usda.gov/shmd/aware.htm
  
• Feminist.org 911 page http://feminist.org/911/crisis.html
• Women's Health Page http://www.4woman.gov/violence
  
• Women Lawyers Resource page http://www.womenlawyers.com/domestic.htm
• Medline Plus Information page http://medlineplus.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/domesticviolence.html

Thinking About Violence Against Women and Men

It is time for an edutainment type quiz. I’m going to show you a 41 second clip from a movie called The Public Enemy. In this scene, James Cagney and Mae Clarke are at the breakfast table.  It starts with a question.

 

Here are your questions:

• Who did you focus on, the man or the woman?
• Who did you identify with, the man or the woman?
• Was this an act of violence or of restraint by the man?
• Did you connect with the woman and her concerns?
• Did you think it was funny or did you have a pang of recognition?

You might have to watch the video again to catch everything that happened at that breakfast table. Violence is hard to write about. If you have experienced it or witnessed it is even more difficult. It is ok if you don’t want to read any further.

Violence is the use of physical force to injure somebody or damage something. Violence does not have to be physical; you can verbally or emotionally damage a person. You can kill a person’s spirit by word or deed. It is about power and control. It has always been about power and control.

I have got stacks of paper on the mind numbing ways women are assaulted, children are sexually abused and yes, men are victims of domestic and community supported violence. Sadly, women are not exempt from displaying violent behavior. Men can be emotionally, financially and physically assaulted by women as well.

I do believe that women are the overwhelming recipients of violent actions. However it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that there are a percentage of women who are abusers to both men and women. It is the behaviors, embedded permissions and beliefs that need to be recognized and understood before any change can take place.

You see, when a woman who wants an education get hydrochloric acid thrown in her face by a man and that action is supported by a culture, religion or governmental laws there is a deeply ingrained permission to control and assault another human being, if that person is considered human being.

Understanding that violence is the use of force to injure somebody or damage something is important. A segment of the world’s population of women are considered things or property. In other countries many women do not have the right of self-determination and autonomy. There are men in villages, tribes and communities that do not have that equal rights as well.

Before The Wheel – Violence As A Survival Tool

Dr. Gerda Lerner is a historian. She was one of the first people to begin the documentation of the history of women. Dr. Lerner is the author of The Creation of Patriarchy. Learner does point out that there were communities that did have cooperative non-violence existence. However if there was a hungry alpha male in the neighborhood there was probably trouble. Some of my understandings of her findings are:

• Rape was used to build or destroy communities. Men and women initially were cooperative with each other. Women knew how to find food, shelter and could reproduce. If you were a man that did not have a woman or access to one your survival was in question. What to do? Take a woman, rape her and force her dependency on you for survival.
• Women as property or vessels of commerce. Love had nothing to do with it.  It was a mater of supply, demand and allocation of resources. If you had too many mouths to feed, unproductive members (children) along with limited resources it might be decided that there would be an exchange with other groups to rid yourself of surplus women and children for goods and services. Or you might just get rid of the excess by killing them.
• Pre-religious codification of quality. As time moved forward and the concept of ownership was developed there had to be a way to control who had access to the woman and the children she could birth. Long before organized religion the control over which man could impregnate a woman first was an issue that had to be resolved. For some communities there were ceremonies that permitted the men in the village to sexually dominate over a group of women. Later it evolves in to the concept of property and slavery.

Property can be abused and destroyed. If women, children and men are thought as property then yes, they are prone to be violated. The question is why did this happen to women? This is an extract from a conversation at Intuition.org with Jeffrey Mishlove, Ph.D:

MISHLOVE: And certainly there are many groups of people who have been oppressed throughout human history, but the fundamental division of the human race between men and women, and the oppression, the neglect of women that occurs across all cultures and all levels of society, is very, very deep, and in your work you point out that it goes to the very earliest beginnings of history itself.

LERNER: Well, you see, I asked myself the question, which I think most women ask themselves sometimes in their lives, "How come that we did not even know that we were subordinated for such a long time?" Other groups that were subordinated in history -- peasants, slaves, colonials, any kind of group, ethnic minorities -- all of those groups knew very quickly that they were subordinated, and they developed theories about their liberation, about their rights as human beings, about what kind of struggle to conduct in order to emancipate themselves. But women did not, and so that was the question that I really wanted to explore. And in order to understand it I had to understand really whether patriarchy was, as most of us have been taught, a natural, almost God-given condition, or whether it was a human invention coming out of a specific historic period. Well, in Creation of Patriarchy I think I show that it was indeed a human invention; it was created by human beings, it was created by men and women, at a certain given point in the historical development of the human race. It was probably appropriate as a solution for the problems of that time, which was the Bronze Age, but it's no longer appropriate, all right? And the reason we find it so hard, and we have found it so hard, to understand it and to combat it, is that it was institutionalized before Western civilization really, as we know it, was, so to speak, invented, and the process of creating patriarchy was really well completed by the time that the idea systems of Western civilization were formed.

I wanted to share Dr. Lerner’s research with you because so much energy is spent talking about acts of violence and not enough understanding the roots of violence. This ancient programming is not the only reason for human violence; there maybe a biological factor. There may be genetic reasons for some forms of human violence.

Once you know that violence we now see embedded as laws, rights and passages of faith was actually a survival mechanism that we have brought forward, the more we can begin to release the old ways and truly establish 21st century level human rights.

More Academic Thinking About Violence

Lilith Feminist History Journal (Australia) has an paper by Angela Woollacott that continues the discussion about the relationship between violence, war and domestic violence used as a tool of control.

Psychoanalyst Eric Fromm’s The Nature of Violence in 1969 asked some tough questions such as is violence inherent in human nature?  He has a passage that talks about if “leaders” make a man believe there is a threat then could that be as real as an actual threat? Could it be that some men are threatened by a woman who dares to question them?

If you want to go even deeper download Philip L. Walkers 30 page report on A Bioarcheological Perspective on the History of Violence. He attempt to refine the definition of violence, it is depended on what a particular culture believes it to be, and what is consistent with violence in the past and the present time.

Bloggers and Others Asking Questions About Violence

Hanna at Emotional Abuse and Faith is asking questions about the connection between faith and the lack of willingness to deal abuse issues. She has posted a powerful video by a woman who tried to seek help and was told to sweep it under the rug.

Hanna’s blog led me to Scott at iChalice who posted a sermon he recently delivered about domestic violence.

We are not immune. I have had people, when I talk about this sermon, react with surprise that there are women in our congregations who need this message. I have had people tell me that we should focus on how we can support groups and shelters for women without acknowledging the very real fact that before we can give money to the local group we must give our ears and hearts to the local parishioner. We must give ears to the stories that are so often unspoken.

Maria at http://4survivors.blogspot.com/ write about her own experiences but also of the larger world where violence is condoned or efforts to deal with it are underfunded or ignored. LY Marlow at Color Me Butterfly also has words about the desire to hush but also speaks about male victims of domestic violence as well.

Speaking of male victims of domestic violence, there is a page on Menstuff.org that has articles and resources for male domestic violence victims. I have some concerns about some of the articles and essays posted but there may be information that could be helpful to an undeserved population. 

The answers to the questions on the pop quiz? There is no right or wrong answer. These are questions of awareness.  I welcome your answers in the comments.

This post originally appeared on BlogHer where I am a Contributing Editor.

Daliah Setareh Talks About Domestic Violence

Daliah Setareh is from the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation and she gives her prospective on the assistance that can be obtained through her organization. She tells a riveting story of a woman brought into the United States by her husband and lived as a battered undocumented person.

This is the 19.5MB Windows Media Video

This is the 10.4MB QuickTime Video

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. For more information about immigrant and undocumented domestic violence issues please visit http://www.dvalianza.org or download an Adobe.pdf file that has more information at http://www.dvalianza.org/pdfs/b_immigration.pdf

Got more stuff for you. Deaf and hearing impaired victims has additional communication challenges when it comes to reporting domestic violence. The Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy Services Community page has a listing of locations that have assistance for this specific population. http://www.adwas.org/resources/community_links.html

Det. Mike Stilton Talks About Domestic Violence

"Violence in battering relationships often follows a fairly predictable cycle consisting of the tension building phase, the battering incident itself and the calm respite, or "honeymoon" phase."*

Detective Mike Stilton from the Glendale Police Department talks about some of the misconceptions that immigrant and undocumented women face when the police arrive on a domestic violence call.

This is the 13MB Windows Media Video

This is the 7.2MB QuickTime Video

Immigrant and undocumented women will not be asked about immigration status and you will not be reported to the INS. You might be refered to a local organization for help and assistance. If there is signs of abuse the agressor will placed under arrest.

The World Health Organization has substantial information about the global impact of domestic violence; you cannot have a healthy society if the female population is consistently abused - http://www.who.int/gender/violence/en/

*Information from the Family Violence Project - Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles

Eliza - Part 2 Talks About Domestic Violence

"Domestic violence occurs among all races and socioeconomic groups. It is not alway physically violent, but it is always psychologically abusive." *

This is the second part of Eliza Karagezian talking about issues that affect not just Armenian women but all women who are experiencing some form of Domestic Violence. In this segment, she is talking about participating in a call-in show and one of the callers accused her of trying to distroy the Arminian family.

This is the 4.6MB Windows Movie Video

This is the 2.58MB QuickTime Version

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and in that spirit, I recommend that you take a visit to http://www.vday.org a site created by Eve Ensler to bring awareness of the local and global scope of battered women.

Healthy Roads Media actually has a few movies in multiple languages that explain whathttp://www.healthyroadsmedia.org/topics/abuse.htm
http://www.healthyroadsmedia.org/topics/abuse.htm

*Information from the Family Violence Project - Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.

Eliza Karagezian Talks About Domestic Violence

In this video, Eliza Kargezian talks about the problems of gettng women to report domestic violence and how the problems double with immigrant and undocumented women.

This is the 9.0MB Windowm Media Video version

This is the 7.0MB QuickTime version.

She talks about how the conversation on stopping domestic violence needs to be shared between women and men and gives an insight as to some of the cultural reasons Armenian women are most reluctant to report abuse.

To get you up to speed on some of the issues immigrant and undocumented women face check out the following:

Assista http://www.asistaonline.org

Non-Citizen Survivors of Domestic Violence

http://www.nationalimmigrationproject.org/DVPage/DomesticViolencePage.html

Thinking Loud About Domestic Violence

If each one of us is connected then what do we do about a women who is being beaten and battered? Should it matter if that woman is an undocumented person? Should it matter that the abuser is a husband or a wife?

Would Nicole Brown Simpson be alive today if the police had arrested her husband for an domestic violence?

This is the 5.63MB Windows Media Version

Here is another question for you. What would you tell a sixteen year old girl about an abusive boyfriend? These are not easy questions but since October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month you might want to take some time to think about your answers.

One in six women will be a victim of domestic violence.

For more information: National Domestic Violence Hotline http://www.ndvh.org
1-800-799-SAFE (7233) and TDD number for the hearing impaired is 1-800-787-3224

My thanks to the Glendale Commission on the Status of Women for allowing me to record the presentation. I will post excerpts from the discussion during the month of October.

Living In This Time - MLK Anti-War Video 1967

There is no question - without the activists, future thinkers, dreamers and courageous people from my historical past I would not be here today. Mother Parks, and Father King and those that walked in the paths they paved for me made me possible.

There was an enforced prohibition on renting to non-whites in the city I currently live in. I certainly wouldn't have the job that I currently have because, other than domestic workers, there were no other minority encourage employment, this was a proud "John Birch" city. Forget about shopping or siting in a park.

But I don't like to see Dr. King reduced to a twice a year icon. He was a multi-dimensional person. He understood that you couldn't ask for justice for your people but for all people. In 1967 he drew heavy criticism for participating in protesting against the Vietnam war. Some folks felt he should stick to domestic affairs, some felt he had stepped too far out, beyond his base. And then there were the "church folk."

But I promised Spirit I'd lay off pointing fingers at the "so-called" faithful and some of their leaders. They don't need my help, some of them are crashing into reality even as I type. But I am really angry at them for they know what they do can't be in alignment with their teachings and keep doing it anyway. Ugh.

I did have a point - oh yeah, over at the beloved Internet Archive there is a portion of a video shot by Universal Newsreel on a protest march to the UN with Dr. King. If he was here now I feel he would have stood against this war and the other non-legal actions that are associated with it. It is a public domain video. Everything old is new again.
http://www.archive.org/details/1967-04-18_Peace_March