be bold, be red: october 30.

mil gracias a nezua for posting this on umx, and reminding me to begin with!

Be Bold Be Red Goes Viral Loco Visual

Beloved Survivors, Warriors, Allies, Activists, Organizers, Artists, Healers, Visionaries, Sisters and Friends,

In October 2007 people all over the United States gathered physically and in spirit to speak out against violence against women of color. Some of us wore red all day and explained that we were reclaiming and reframing our bodies as a challenge to the widespread acceptance of violence against women of color. Some of us wrote powerful essays about why we were wearing red and posted them on the internet. Some of us gathered with bold and like-minded folks and took pictures, shared poetry and expressed solidarity.

This year, on the first anniversary of the Be Bold Be Red Campaign, we invite you to make your bold stance against the violence enacted on women and girls of color in our society visible. In D.C., Chicago, Durham, Atlanta and Detroit women of color will be gathering to renew our commitment to creating a world free from racialized and gendered violence, and this time, we’ll be using a new technology called CyberQuilting to connect all of these gatherings in real time. To learn more about CyberQuilting, which is a women of color led project to stitch movements together using new web technologies and old traditions of love and nurturing, visit www.cyberquilt.wordpress.com.

This letter is an invitation for you and yours to participate in a gathering in your city on Thursday, October 30th that will be webcast to similar gatherings in other cities. We are calling on you because we recognize and appreciate the work that you and the organizations you work with are doing everyday to make this a more loving and less violent world for women and girls in oppressed communities. Please join us on October 30th so that other warriors in this struggle can be strengthened and affirmed by the energy of our collective ferocity!

If you are not located in D.C., Chicago, Durham, Atlanta and Detroit for the webcast, you can still participate by wearing Red on October 30, 2008 and send us your pictures to beboldbered@gmail.com

Also we are asking once again that people wear Red on October 30, 2008 and send us your pictures to beboldbered@gmail.com

As we receive them we will upload your pictures under “Red Pictures Today.”

Also, as well as to share your stories of Red on this website under “Why are you wearing Red on October 30, 2008.”

So, are you ready?!

safety is neither a luxury nor a privilege.

** TRIGGER ALERT * *
if you are sensitive to mentions of rape, molestation, or other violent acts you may not want to read this post.

he was her first boyfriend. she wasn't really a fan of the boys we'd gone to high school with, so college created a new opportunity: an abundance of black men to admire and possibly date. but she didn't even take it that far. this one was a neighbor. we grew up jumping rope with his sister. i didn't like him. thought he was a know-it-all dickhead with poor fashion sense and no knowledge of when to shut the fuck up. but she's my sister; i'm never gonna like anyone for her.
so they dated. she spent lots of time at his father's house across the street, walked with him to his mom's house about a mile away, and i tried to ignore the whole fucking thing. i told our friends "i don't like him," but they just assumed that i was being protective as big sister. i wasn't. i genuinely did not believe that anything good could come from the two of them dating for the year or so that they did.

i was right. i didn't know how right i was until this past december, when my sister told me that this foolish boy raped her. i stopped dead in my tracks and started crying. it all made sense: her uncharacteristic and constant uneasiness, the brooding, the slight touch of OCD, the near-fundamentalist ways in which she worshipped christ, flying headfirst into work instead of allowing herself to kick back or goof off . . . my loving, bright, kind, just, fair, beautiful sister . . . shattered
by someone who himself was the product of abuse & dysfunction, someone who did not respect the safety of another human being enough to leave well enough alone and believe in no when she said no.

i was livid, hurt, sad, tired, angry, shocked . . . all those things. and i still am. i never felt inadequate as an elder sibling, not through my college dropout situation or my towering financial woes, not through the shacking up w/ an ex-boyfriend to the chagrin of my entire family . . . none of it. but i wished at that exact moment that she had reached out to me 7 years ago. i wished at that exact moment that i had been able to read the terror in her face when she could not speak of it. i wished at that exact moment for the chance to travel back and take her out of that equation -- not to share the pain with any other woman, but simply to save my sister. i never had to defend her, she always fought for herself
and here she was telling me that her light was nearly stomped out.
i told her she didn't ever have to apologize. "i haven't told anyone except my therapist because . . ."
in my head, i was screaming. no. fuck the therapist. call mommy. call every grimy person you know. let's do this. his ppl still live across the street, all we need is to catch him coming out of the fucking house . . . . so what he's got a girl and a baby -- they ain't got shit to do with it! i want to kill him with my bare hands. he doesn't deserve air in his fucking punk ass lungs! why should this piece of shit have the luxury of going unpunished for raping my sister? who else has he done this to? why is he alive?

i resigned myself to doing and saying nothing. i nodded and told her i loved her. i went to the house that night. she asked me to come over, because of something else that happened to her which was a trigger. i was thankful for and resentful of the situation all at once. i stood beside her as her sister, and played the role she wanted me to. she never made a rumble for fear of upsetting something/ someone. she didn't want to have to explain that she had already had sex w/ this bastard and that he didn't understand her desire not to do so; she didn't want to be blamed; she didn't want the weight that often comes with speaking the truth. she thought she would have to stand alone. she did not know that she could stand tall and strong. she didn't know . . . my sister did not know that coercion was the source of my first sexual experience with a man. she didn't know how many women experience that (as adults, adolescents, as elders and especially as children) and swallow it up . . . and how likely it was that she'd not be shamed for something that was not in any way her fault. that she was not less of a woman or less of a human being because of something she could not stop, that she is not presently less of a woman or human being because of his wish to destroy the part of her that shone brightest.

and it is because of her story, the stories of so many women i do and don't know that i say safety is neither a luxury nor a privilege. it is a right.