Monthly Archives: July 2013

 
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Without Papers, Without Fear


photo of Dream 9 marching to the US-Mexico borderOn July 21, nine Mexican nationals openly defied US immigration policy, and more than ten thousand people watched the event unfold through a live, global webcast. I held my breath as activists from the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA) — who are now known as the “Dream 9” — walked arm-in-arm through the streets of Nogales, Mexico. I felt the squeeze of anxiety in my chest as they neared the US-Mexico border. And I sent a silent wish into the universe that the gamble these young people are bravely taking won’t be in vain.

The Dream 9 are all longstanding residents of the United States. Six of them — Rosie Rojas, Maria Peniche, Adriana Gil Diaz, Luis Gustavo Leon, Claudia Amaro, and Ceferino Santiago — had been deported or left of their own accord prior to last Monday’s action. The other three — Marco Saavedra, Lulu Martinez, and Lizbeth Mateo — are prominent leaders of America’s undocumented youth movement. Before making her way to Mexico, Mateo paid her tuition for Santa Clara Law School, where classes begin in August. Martinez also expected to return to school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is majoring in gender and women’s studies.

If the Dream 9’s plan fails, each member will be deported. They will be separated from their families, and the lives they’ve built in the United States will be irrevocably changed. The danger they face is significant. Under President Barack Obama more people have been deported than any other president in US history. Still, they each chose to take the risk.

“In the United States, undocumented immigrants run the risk of being taken from their home, no matter where we are,” Mateo wrote in The Huffington Post. “We have won many fights against deportation, but not all of them. It’s time to take away the power deportation has over us.”

NIYA is a radical, youth-led organization working to ensure justice for undocumented young people living in the United States. Its members routinely participate in acts of civil disobedience to resist threats of detention and deportation that terrorize their communities. They also take cues from past social movement successes by conceiving and executing actions that will attract national media.

Last summer NIYA made headlines when Saavedra and fellow organizer Viridiana Martinez were intentionally arrested in order to infiltrate the Broward Detention Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. Once inside, the young activists began collecting the stories of dozens of detainees who qualified for release under President Obama’s 2011 prosecutorial discretionary guidelines, yet continued to be held for several months. When NIYA released their findings in a press conference, Saavedra and Martinez were swiftly released.

“My son is a warrior,” Saavedra’s mother, Natalia, told Colorlines. Despite her courageous words, Natalia fears the treatment her son will receive now that he has been transferred from Florence Detention Center to Arizona’s notorious Eloy Detention Center.

Although the Dream 9 knew they would be detained — the US Border Patrol had informed NIYA that the young people would be arrested and deported as soon as they reached the border — they did not anticipate having their phone calls restricted. (An Eloy representative has denied restricting the activists’ calls.) On Thursday, the six Dream 9 women began a hunger strike. Now, all of them are refusing food until they are released. Mateo, Amaro, Santiago, Martinez, Saavedra, and Felix have been placed in solitary confinement for refusing to eat.

NIYA’s strategy for the Dream 9 is to request humanitarian parole for the detainees. According to US Citizen and Immigration Services, “humanitarian parole is used sparingly to bring someone who is otherwise inadmissible into the United States for a temporary period of time due to a compelling emergency.” In an interview with NBC Latino, Kiran Savage-Sangwan, a member of the Dream 9′s policy team, explained that a humanitarian parole request is required to prevent the activists from becoming targets of kidnapping or other harmful criminal activity.

“Each will be interviewed by an asylum officer to establish each has a credible fear of persecution if they are denied admittance to the US,” said Savage-Sangwan. “These young people are certainly not a threat of public danger. They are not going to flee. They knocked on the door of the US to re-enter, so they should be released pending litigation of their asylum claims.”

A collective action this bold is unprecedented in the undocumented immigrant movement. If successful, it will establish a path for others who have been deported from and would like to return to the US. According to NIYA spokesperson Mohammad Abdolahi, the organization has a list of people willing to replicate this strategy. Just hours after the Dream 9 were detained, thirty people gathered at the US-Mexico border hoping to enter the country.

It’s been said that this is a publicity stunt, and the Dream 9 have been called audacious, disrespectful, silly, and petulant. But the young people are responding to an immigration system to which these words could be equally applied. People who have been torn from their families undertake perilous journeys in order to be reunited with their loved ones. As a result, hundreds of migrants die every year while attempting to cross the US-Mexico border.

photo of eight of the Dream 9 activistsDuring their march through the streets of Nogales, Saavedra shouted, “When President Obama is deporting our families, what do we do?” His eight companions yelled in unison, “Stand up! Fight back!” This is what fighting back for the Dream 9 looks like. And to my eyes, it is a radical demonstration of the love they have for their community.

For the Dream 9, it’s not enough that undocumented students are provided with a pathway to citizenship. They won’t wait for Congress to gut and pass a toothless and elitist comprehensive immigration reform bill. Instead, they are fearlessly putting their own lives on the line to highlight the flaws of the system. They are holding the Obama administration and other politicians accountable for their unfulfilled promises.

If the Dream 9 are released, and this action is successful, it won’t be because President Obama and other elected officials came to their aid. It will be because undocumented activists and their allies demanded these politicians make good on their assurances to those at risk of deportation.

As I write this, petitions are circulating that call for the Dream 9’s release. Allies are sending letters to their state and national representatives. Sit-ins and vigils are cropping up across the country. The nationwide outpouring of support demonstrates the direct correlation between increased mobilization and progress. It was undocumented activists and their allies who demanded the passage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the DREAM Act in twelve states. Don’t let politicians rob them of these victories by claiming otherwise.

As the daughter of a Mexican immigrant who was undocumented in the US for more than twenty years, I feel an overwhelming connection to the Dream 9. I’ve thought of them several times a day since watching their march to the border last week. I wonder if they are worried or if they are in high spirits. I wonder if they can sense the deluge of gratitude and appreciation through the walls of their confinement. Most of all, I wonder when the American government will allow them to reunite with their families.

So, let’s bring them home.

UPDATE: On Tuesday, August 6, each member of the Dream 9 has successfully established the “credible fear” aspect of humanitarian parole.  Their cases now be heard by an immigration judge, who will decide whether to grant asylum.

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His Eyes

The expression of a male stranger catches a coffee shop patron by surprise. His eyes remind the young woman of her late father’s, leading her mind to drift between the past and present.

By Shannon Schaefer Perri

photo of Shannon at the coffee shop

For a little girl, I had many big questions while growing up. My mother usually recommended I write them down, so I wouldn’t forget, and then ask my father. No matter my age, my father always treated my questions with awe and philosophical fascination. I remember sitting in our downstairs living room — the one without the TV — me in my pajama set with my wet hair freshly combed, while my father sipped a glass of red wine. I’d feel so grown up, my mom in their bedroom, my younger sisters already upstairs asleep, and my father and I speculating.

I’d ask him greedily: What happens when we die? Do animals have feelings? Does he prefer to be awake or asleep? He’d tell me he secretly wondered if our whole universe was just a cell on the body of a giant creature — the moon an amoeba. I’d ask him if time really exists because sometimes it didn’t seem to. His eyes would widen while the skin around his brown eyes, the same ones I have, would stretch as he spoke and listened.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop, still heartbroken over my father’s death four and half years ago. I’m trying to write, pursue my dreams and all, because my father would have liked that. Yet, I can’t write because an elderly, plumpish man without much hair is distracting me with every lift of his silver eyebrows. He looks nothing like my wavy-haired, spirited father, but something about his eyes, or maybe the thin skin around his eyes, reminds me of him. I try not to stare at this man while he speaks to his friend, but I feel as though he’s flicking pieces of my father at me with every shift in his facial movements. How can this be? It’s like dreaming of my father only to wake up and realize he is dead. Yet, seconds ago he seemed so alive.

It’s trickery for this man to reach into my deepest ache with his eyes and confuse me. I am startled by this man and must remember he’s not my father. And that my father is not here.

I remember getting the call. That particular night I had been studying for a test the next day, books sprawled across my kitchen table. I missed the first few calls, as I had put my phone on silent to concentrate.

When my mother finally got through, she said my father had had some sort of seizure and the paramedics were sending him via STAR Flight to Seton Medical Center Austin. My mother and sisters were driving the hour-long distance. I was already there in the city for college.

I arrived at the hospital before my family, but for more than twenty minutes the doctors wouldn’t let me see him. I paced in the white-tiled waiting room. I wondered if I should have emailed my teacher to cancel my test for the next day. I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but I walked around, overwrought that my father could be feeling all alone when I was only a few rooms away.

When I finally did see him, he was talking loudly, but his voice had no variation. He sounded like a robot. He hadn’t had a seizure, but a massive stroke, and his brain was swelling. He kept asking me to squeeze his hand. He wanted to feel his hand on his right side, but he couldn’t because his right side had gone paralyzed.

photo of Shannon as a child with her fatherHis left eye darted around, panicked. “Squeeze my hand, Shannon.”

“Daddy, I’m squeezing it.”

“Squeeze harder.”

“Daddy, can’t you feel that?”

I try not to look back at the man in the coffee shop. I could hear his voice soften. My father’s voice used to soften. My father had the most booming, charismatic voice. It was also the most gentle. I’d like to stop thinking about my father now. I’d like to write and get on with my life.

Yet against my better judgment, I begin to study the wrinkly face and protruding gut of the man in the coffee shop. My skin begins to radiate heat. I bite my lip and begin typing furiously — about nothing — on my old yellow laptop my father had bought me.

How come this man gets to live? My father was young and healthy. I want his soft voice, not this stranger’s. Why couldn’t it have been the other way around?

Shame breaks my anger down.

This man seems nice enough. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I hear his voice. Its familiar cadence starts to soothe me. My mind drifts to another memory of my father. I was twenty years old, and for the first time I saw raw despair in my father’s eyes — or at least it was the first time I was able to identify it.

We met for dinner at a small-town Mexican food chain called Margarita’s, halfway between my college and home. My father ordered a top-shelf margarita on the rocks, while I daringly ordered a Negra Modelo to impress him, two months shy of my twenty-first birthday. I wasn’t carded, and my father didn’t even care.

His face wore a hardened look of intensity that scared me. He wasn’t doing well at work. He and my mother were struggling. He wasn’t where he wanted to be, and he said that time was running out. He wanted to be happy, he was fifty-six, and he wanted to do the best with the time he had left, he said.

“Daddy! Stop! Fifty-six is young these days.”

“I have a lot of life to live. I’m not ready to die, Shannon.”

“Well, of course you’re not.”

But he did, shockingly, just one month later.

I wonder if the fatal blood clot that traveled up to my father’s brain had already started clumping then. I wonder if a part of him knew what was coming.

It reminds me of when I visited Wyoming. I walked along several rivers, and occasionally I’d see natural debris cluster together, clogging the waterway. I guess this is what was happening inside of my father, to the point that his brain couldn’t take it.

photo of Shannon as a teen with her dadAs the eyes of the man in the coffee shop widen, I see my father clearly. I now understand why this man reminds me so much of him. It’s a very specific facial expression — the same one my father wore when in meaningful conversation, usually about something existential.

I want my father back every day. I see him and feel him, and I’m unsure that he could actually be gone. I have all the same questions as when I was a little girl. Yet, I am stuck. If there are answers, do I really want to know them?

I’d rather be tormented like this, unsure where he is, than to be certain he’s gone. I’d rather be lost and searching than in a place he’ll never be.

Shannon Schaefer Perri is a writer with a background in social work. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her dog, birds, cats, and husband. She is one of the cofounders of the upcoming literary magazine, the Austin Review. This essay is her first published work. Twitter: @ShannonPerri1

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Still in Search of Justice for Trayvon Martin


photo of protestor holding a "Justice for Trayvon Martin" signI was never confident that a jury comprised almost exclusively of white women would convict George Zimmerman of second-degree murder, but last night’s not guilty verdict still left me breathless. I had wanted to believe that my worst fears weren’t true, that I am not living in a country where a man can get away with killing a seventeen-year-old child because that child is black. But the verdict sent a clear message: black people’s lives are not valued in America.

This case has been rife with racial tension from the beginning. It took Florida police six weeks to arrest George Zimmerman after he shot and killed Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012. Their inaction brought to mind similar examples of legal injustice in US history, and many began to draw parallels between Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till.

During the summer of 1955, two white men brutally tortured and shot fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi because he whistled at a white woman while buying bubble gum at the local grocery. The white woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, enlisted the help of his half-brother, J.W. Milam, and the two men kidnapped and murdered the black child before dumping his body into a river. In a gross miscarriage of justice, which many credit as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, both men were acquitted by an all-white jury.

When I learned the story of Emmett Till’s lynching, I didn’t understand how it was possible for these two men to get away with murder. After all, America’s foundational philosophy is “liberty and justice for all.” But when a victim is black, and the accused and their jurors are white, accountability can be elusive. We learned that lesson fifty-seven years ago, and we are still learning it today.

The morning before the Zimmerman verdict was reached, journalist Aura Bogado appeared on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry show and pointed out that, although the Zimmerman trial is not about gender, the all-female jury is getting a lot of attention in the media. “It’s actually five white people and one person of color,” Bogado said. “They’re seen as women; their whiteness is not seen.”

This sentiment was echoed by Maya Wiley, president of the Center for Social Inclusion and another commentator on that episode of the show. Wiley pointed out that Zimmerman’s lawyers played to the racial fears they believed the white women jurors would possess by calling Olivia Bertalan as a witness for Zimmerman. Bertalan, a white woman, conveyed her appreciation of Zimmerman’s efforts to help her feel safe — including giving her a dog — after two black teenagers broke into her home.

“They called a white woman to talk about the two black men who terrorized her in her home,” commented Wiley. “That was to reinforce to white women on that jury that [they] need to be afraid [of black men].”

Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother, understood the climate of race-based fear in a time of Jim Crow laws and legal segregation. To help white people understand the brutality that had been inflicted upon her son, she insisted on having an open casket at the funeral. Mamie Till is reported to have said, “There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see.”

The world did see what was done to Emmett Till. Photographs of his bloated body and severely mangled face were featured in newspapers internationally.

Unlike Mamie Till, Trayvon Martin’s mother wasn’t given the courtesy of choosing whether her son’s dead body would be displayed publicly. Instead, MSNBC and Gawker made the choice for her. (Warning: This link contains graphic violence.) As a result, millions of people have seen Trayvon Martin’s lifeless body. Like the photographs of Emmett Till, the image haunts me.

After the verdict was announced, many Americans took to Facebook and Twitter to express their devastation, outrage, horror, and shame. Some pointed out the hypocrisy of Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict in comparison with last year’s verdict in the Marissa Alexander case. A 31-year-old, black mother of three, Alexander was found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for firing a warning shot to scare off her abusive husband as he threatened her. No one was harmed, except Alexander and her children; she received a mandatory minimum sentence of twenty years in prison.

Amid talk of possible rioting after the verdict was reached, blogger Jay Smooth made this comment on Twitter: “The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George Zimmermans.” His comment made me wonder whether they were saying the same thing nearly six decades ago when Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam got away with murder in Mississippi.

No parent wants their son to be the next Emmett Till. Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin now share Mamie Till’s pain of losing a beloved child in a national tragedy. After the verdict was announced, Tracy Martin tweeted this emotional response: “Even in his death, I know my baby is proud of the fight we, along with all of you, put up for him.… Even though I am brokenhearted, my faith is unshattered.”

For me, I will continue fighting until it is no longer the case that a man can walk free after killing a black child in America. Hoodies up!

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Commentary

Looking Back on Abortion in America

In this excerpt from her recently published book Generation Roe, pro-choice activist Sarah Erdreich talks with women who had an abortion and discusses the complicated set of emotions they bring to the abortion debate — even decades after the procedure.

By Sarah Erdreich

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of Sarah Erdreich’s book, Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement. See the accompanying blog post by Mandy Van Deven, In The Fray’s managing editor.

When people know you work in the pro-choice movement, the stories come out. All of the sudden, you’re a safe person. You can be trusted to hear personal stories about terminating a pregnancy because you won’t judge or criticize. When you go through life hearing such stories, one thing becomes quite clear to you: all kinds of women have abortions. According to the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute, one in three American women will have an abortion before the age of forty-five.

Rachel (not her real name) is one of my mother’s oldest friends. I have known her and her husband practically all of my life. But it wasn’t until I told them I was writing a book about reproductive rights that Rachel opened up about her own experience with abortion, back in the mid-seventies.

Several years into her marriage, Rachel became pregnant. She had already had two healthy pregnancies, but this pregnancy didn’t progress normally. Rachel was vague on the details when she recounted her story to me, but she made it clear the abortion was medically necessary.

Had I not been offered that option, I very well could have lost my life.… There will always be doubts if I did right or I did wrong, but the right thing is that people can make the choice. I was fortunate that I had good medical care, and I was able to understand my options. But not everyone has that liberty.

“I’m not the least bit ashamed of what I did,” Rachel added. “In fact, I feel somewhat empowered by the choice because that was my right.” Yet Rachel only agreed to be interviewed if her real name was not used.

The day after I spoke with Rachel, I spent some time with a longtime friend of my father’s family. Toward the end of our visit, she mentioned that she had had an abortion many years earlier. Months later, Vicki (also a pseudonym) told me the whole story.

In the early seventies, Vicki became pregnant. Her husband threatened to leave her unless she had an abortion. They were living in a city that was hundreds of miles from her parents, siblings, and closest friends – and in one of the few states that had liberalized its abortion laws by then. “It was [the state’s] law to first see a psychiatrist,” Vicki said. “I remember I told the psychiatrist that if my husband wasn’t in the picture I would not consider abortion, but I guess obtaining the husband’s approval was routine.”

The entire procedure was covered by Vicki’s health insurance. After it was done, her husband — who, she said, had “badgered” her to get the abortion — called her a murderer. She later divorced him.

Vicki never told her family about her abortion.

My ex-husband is the only one who knows. I wanted to tell my mother, but that wasn’t news I wanted to break in a long-distance telephone call. That was back when long-distance calls meant something.… If I’d had more confidence to trust my feelings, and realized I was capable of supporting and raising a child on my own, I would not have had an abortion.

When I worked for the National Abortion Federation, I heard many women express gratitude that they could legally have an abortion, even as they regretted the particular circumstances — an unstable relationship, economic hardship, age, or a lack of education — that made abortion their best choice. To appreciate the right to make your own decision, even as you deplore the circumstances that led to that decision, is a complicated set of emotions that established pro-choice organizations haven’t always successfully addressed.

Groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Abortion Federation generally stick to messages about how common and safe abortion is, but they don’t offer a great deal of in-depth discussion about the range of emotions women may experience after having an abortion. Instead, they offer first-person stories, which overwhelmingly talk about abortion in positive terms. While studies have shown that most women feel relief after their abortions, women who have more ambivalent feelings afterward may not find comfort or support in these stories and messages.

The anti-abortion movement has been incredibly persuasive in its insistence that if a woman has mixed feelings following an abortion, then abortion itself must be unethical. In testimony before Congress in 1981, pro-life advocate and therapist Vincent Rue coined the term “post-abortion syndrome” to refer to an adverse physical or emotional response to abortion. While neither the American Psychological Association nor the American Psychiatric Association recognize post-abortion syndrome as an official diagnosis, the term quickly gained traction in the anti-abortion community.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan asked his surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, to write a report about the effects of abortion on women. An avowed opponent of abortion, Koop believed that the procedure traumatized women. He had even coauthored a book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race, which discussed post-abortion trauma. Even so, he was reluctant to do as Reagan asked. Koop was careful to distinguish between his personal beliefs and scientific evidence, and he refused to let ideology pressure him into taking a stance that the available evidence did not support. Answering Reagan in a January 1989 letter, Koop wrote that he could not conclude one way or another whether abortion was harmful to women.

Koop’s position shocked and incensed his fellow conservatives. President George H. W. Bush declined to appoint him secretary of health and human services in the new administration, and Koop left office one month before the end of his second term as surgeon general.

In 1988, the American Psychological Association commissioned a study to review the research on the psychological effects of abortion. After a survey of over two hundred studies, a panel of six experts found that only nineteen or twenty met what they considered reliable scientific standards. Based on those studies, the panel concluded that “legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester does not pose a psychological hazard for most women.”

While some women did experience distress, they were in the minority. One study found that “seventy-six percent of women [who had a first-trimester abortion] reported feeling relief two weeks after an abortion, and only seventeen percent reported feeling guilt.”

It is important to note that women seeking later abortions reported more distress after their abortion, as did women who had difficulty making their decisions. While eighty-eight percent of abortions are performed within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, women who have the procedure done in the second or third trimester overwhelmingly say that the timing was due to a delay in making the necessary arrangements — including raising money and securing an appointment. Fetal abnormality is another reason: many birth defects that are incompatible with life are not discovered until the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, or even later.

My college years were shaped by the experiences of several close friends who chose to have an abortion following unplanned pregnancies. I learned from their situations that no matter how deeply pro-choice someone might be, it is still normal to have mixed feelings about having an abortion.

“I would never fault a woman who had an abortion for not wanting to share that with other people, because it’s too difficult,” Shannon Connolly, a medical student at the University of Southern California, told me. “But I hope they would be able to. Until abortion is normalized and people are able to say it’s just another part of health care, we won’t be able to talk about it in a meaningful way.”

Sarah Erdreich is a women’s health advocate, writer, and pro-choice activist. Her work has appeared in On The Issues, Lilith, Feminists For Choice, and RH Reality Check.

This excerpt has been slightly edited to adhere to In The Fray‘s style. 

Read the accompanying blog post by managing editor Mandy Van Deven.

Correction, July 15, 2013: Due to an editing error, the writer’s name was misspelled in several references.

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Changing the Conversation on Abortion


photos of pro-choice and pro-life abortion protestors
Photos by John Pisciotta (top) and UTSFL.

The first job I got out of college was at a health center that performs abortions in Atlanta. This was just after September 11, when abortion clinics across the country were receiving threatening notes in envelopes containing a white powder that the senders claimed (it turned out, falsely) was anthrax. The health center where I worked received one of these letters. For the first time, I had to grapple with the fact that the work I was doing put me in danger. I made the choice to put principle over fear and have been an outspoken advocate of abortion rights ever since.

For a long time, I toed the line on abortion. I had little patience for people who identified as pro-life, especially when they were members of my own family. Holiday dinners were ruined when I stormed self-righteously from the table after arguing with my sister. I cared more about getting my politics across than getting along with the people I loved.

As I learned to value community more than ideology, I became less certain that dogmatism creates a better world. Now, I no longer use abortion as a litmus test for determining whether someone’s perspective is “right” or “wrong.” To me, abortion is a health-care necessity, it is a human right, and sometimes, it is a heartbreaking tragedy.

Yet the national abortion debate continues, polarizing Americans more than perhaps any other political issue. Democratic state senator Wendy Davis was catapulted to instant celebrity last month as a result of her thirteen-hour filibuster of a proposed law to heavily restrict abortion access in Texas. In the end, the bill was voted on and passed, and the filibuster served little purpose beyond spectacle for reproductive health advocates, clinic workers, and the people they both serve.

It is lamentable that America — and, to some degree, the world — keeps having the same fruitlessly hyperbolic scrabbles over abortion that rarely effect meaningful change, much less bring about greater understanding across the issue’s battle lines. But there are some who seek to change the conversation.

In last month’s New York Times, medical student Joshua Lang wrote about what happens to women who are denied abortions. Lang provided a nuanced view of recent research on the outcomes these women, and their children, experience. He coupled this analysis with an affecting story that shows the complex reality of unexpected — and unwanted — motherhood.

Sarah Erdreich’s new book, Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, takes a similarly balanced approach. (The essay currently featured on our site, Looking Back on an Abortion, is an excerpt from Erdreich’s book.) Drawing from her interviews with women who have had abortions, Erdreich highlights views often left out of the intensely partisan debate. She points out that many women and men want to move beyond the stale and divisive rhetoric about the sanctity of life or a woman’s right to choose.

These ideas are not new, but they are gaining traction. Perhaps this is evidence that someday we will finally be able to call a truce in this bitter culture war.

Read an excerpt from Sarah Erdreich’s Generation Roe.

Correction, July 15, 2013: Due to an editing error, Sarah Erdreich’s name was misspelled in one reference.

Mandy Van Deven was previously In The Fray’s managing editor. Site: mandyvandeven.com | Twitter: @mandyvandeven

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Commentary

I Ran with the Bulls in Pamplona

Last July, four women undertook the life-threatening adventure of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. They did it to feel the excitement. They did it to test their bravery. They did it to inspire other women to take their chances among los toros, too.

By Jeannie Mark

photo of author preparing to run with the bulls in Spain5:30 a.m.: Oneika’s alarm bellows, dragging me from the darkness. Allowing my foggy mind to waken, I lay inert for a moment to process the reason for such an early wake up call. Today, we run with the bulls.

6:00 a.m.: The girls and I start to dress. The four of us slide on our white pants, lace up our runners, and tie red sashes around our waists. I tie my red bandana firmly against my throat. The day before a Japanese tourist was dragged by a bull when his bandana was snagged by its horn. I turn to the girls and say, “Tie up everything tight. No loose shoelaces, sashes, or bandanas.” Why do I feel the need to pretend to be brave and play mother hen? Deep down, I’m not positive of anything.

6:10 a.m.: The girls and I continue the conversation we’ve been having for days: where is it best to run? We’ve received many recommendations. The top of Estafeta. Fifty meters down Estefata. Telefonica, near the bullring. We agree that the last place we want to end up is the bullring. There’s a waft of fear about human pileups. Nicole B. jokes that she fears other runners more than the bulls. A consensus is reached. We’ll go fifty meters down Estafeta, stick to the right-hand side, and try not to leap toward a bull. Secretly, I want to touch one.

6:14 a.m.: Nicole B. vocalizes her nervousness. She says she’s always like this. I tell her that if she doesn’t want to run, she shouldn’t. It’s an individual decision. I feel the pressure though. This was my idea and backing out isn’t an option.

6:21 a.m.: Oneika reconfirms our plans. She’s been an interesting force during this trip. As we watched the bulls run on television the day before, Oneika squealed with unchecked enthusiasm. This morning she seems more sober. “Stick to the right, yes?” she asks. “Let’s not get near the bulls.” I realize she’s adventurous, but intelligent about it. I long to be like her instead of just grossly impulsive.

photo of a statue of San Fermin.6:30 a.m.: In San Fermin colors, we leave our flat to meet with a fellow runner, Jarmo Jarvi. We head down a ramp close to where the bulls are housed before the run and stand near the old city wall. A statue of San Fermin has been placed in a cubbyhole and sealed off by glass. This is where corredors sing to the divine and pray for a successful run. Daylight is beginning to trickle in. Mornings in Pamplona are chilly, yet I feel a furnace in my belly. Am I losing or gaining courage?

6:45 a.m.: Serious runners are starting to gather. The nerves among our group are beginning to swell. Oneika and Nicole B. break into hip-hop and pop songs to slice the tension. I join in. Nicole S. doesn’t display signs of cold feet. She laughs at our silliness.

7:00 a.m.: We meet a reporter and cameraman from Cuatro TV. Beatriz, the reporter, spots us easily. The proportion of female corredors is dismally low. The cameraman tells us he’s run before and asks where we plan to start. He says starting on Estafeta is unwise. It’s narrow and there are no barricade openings for us to slip through. We glance at each other nervously. He offers to show us what might be safer. At Telefonica, he says, there’s a curve. After that, it’s a straight run towards Plaza del Toros, the bullring. He leads us down Mercaderes, turns onto Estafeta, and inches closer to Telefonica. We weave through partiers, runners, and watchers. I glance up at the balconies and wonder if they pity me – or if they watch in awe.

photo of people watching the bulls run from balconies7:12 a.m.: The cameraman engages with la policía before we make it to Telefonica. Words are exchanged, and so is an understanding. He says we can’t linger here, or we’ll be shuffled off as spectators. An unease rumbles throughout the group. Do we stick to Estafeta, where any of us could become a target without escape? We begin to make our way back to the beginning of the run. I can tell Nicole B. isn’t comfortable with changing strategy midstream.

7:19 a.m.: We wait in the bosom of the crowd of runners. Male pheromones surround us. The reality is hitting me now, so I imagine how I’m going to run. Elbows out, nimble on my feet. Veterans say this is the worst part of el encierro. Beatriz reappears and interviews us in the throng of testosterone. Word spreads through Pamplona, and we become known as the four chicas – the female runners who are challenging the bulls.

7:25 a.m.: In the crowd, I talk to a small Colombian man who says he doubts he will run. Why he hasn’t left the street yet is beyond me. A tall, muscular man pushes toward me. The look on his face is pure fright. He bows out of the run. My limbs are rigid, and my head is on fire. An audible quake shakes me. It is the chant of the corredor. I join in and begin to feel looser. We are all in this fate together. Whatever happens next, we accept.

photo of young women who will run with the bulls7:45 a.m.: The mass of bodies begins to move, and we move with them. I’m worried we won’t make it to the spot we want in time. Our trotting turns into a light jog as we weave down Estafeta toward the corner of Telefonica.

7:51 a.m.: A bit breathless, we make it. I’m now fully awake to this. I feel the pulse of the crowd. I hear the screams of people trying to psych themselves up. Behind me are five young women clutching a doorway. I turn to one and yelp, “Girl power!” We all high five each other.

7:53 a.m.: Police comb the crowds, removing anyone they deem unsuitable to run. With the cobwebs cleared, we are left with a collective jangle of hopes and fears. It’s almost on and I can’t escape now.

8:00 a.m.: A rocket goes off and the mass of runners stirs. People start jumping up and down, trying to see down the street. One of the girls shouts, “What do we do? Start running?” I tell her to hold steady. I haven’t heard the second rocket. People start to rush forward, but I yell, “Wait until you see horns!”

news clipping that features the author8:01 a.m.: We see horns. I scream, “Run!” And we do. Adrenaline rips through me. All I can make out are hides of animals, blending together in shades of brown and tan. Horns swerve in lightening motion. I expect the slippery cobblestones to conspire against me, but by some miracle, I stay upright. Men and women zoom past me, elbowing me and pushing my shoulders from behind. I steel myself against them. Shouts are popping my eardrums. I swivel my head and see a tan bull shaking the earth beside me. If I angle to the right just a bit I can touch his smooth, furry skin. I’m amazed that in all the chaos I can freeze this moment in my mind. Then it’s gone and so is he.

8:02 a.m.: All I can focus on are flashes of other runners. White and red sensory overload. I see Jarmo and Nicole S. in front of me. I know Nicole B. is behind me, but I keep running. A couple is sprawled on the cobblestones ahead, but instead of tumbling with them, I jump over them. This is where my nerve fails. I spot an open barricade through which I can dive, but I don’t. I cling to my adrenaline like a strung out junkie.

8:03 a.m.: My body moves more lithely than I’d imagined. I shout at Jarmo to keep going. I see the tunnel for Plaza del Toros and realize I’m headed for the bullring, which is precisely where I don’t want to go. There is a human pileup at the entrance. I screech to a halt, unsure what to do. There are more bulls coming, and if I don’t move, things could turn bad. Before I can react, the pile of people disentangle themselves and clear the path. I shoot past them into the bullring, gasping for air. A Spanish man grabs me and plants a sloppy kiss on my eye. He exhales all the air from his lungs and laughs wildly. He’s ecstatic to be alive. I notice for the first time that I’m also intact. I made it.

photo of author after the race, being interviewed8:04 a.m.: I notice the atmosphere in the ring. The stands are overflowing. The bystanders are roaring. Some runners have hopped up onto the barriers,where they can avoid humans and bulls. Others are sitting in the stands. Flashbulbs are bursting as photographers capture the pandemonium. I find Jarmo and Nicole S. Jarmo and I embrace. His lip is slightly bleeding. We’re both sweaty, out of breath, and talking excitedly. Nicole B. flies in finally. As she hugs us, a flock of people surge into the ring. The last bull has arrived.

8:06 a.m.: We find Oneika in the stands. She had dived through a barricade after an elbow landed in her eye.

8:07 a.m.: I’m tingly, and playful like a child. When they release the cows into the ring, I leap in and start dancing. Runners with cojones do leaps over the cows. The runners congratulate each other with a handshake or a slap on the back. A woman calls to me, “I’ve been watching you. You are brave!” She anoints me with a high five.

Conclusion: So, we did it. And survived. Would I run again? For some loco reason, I’m game to try.

photo of author celebrating her successful run

Jeannie Mark officially quit her life in 2010 to pursue her dream of world exploration. You can find more about her run with the bulls on her blog, Nomadic Chick, and the website Girls Running With Bulls.

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Blog

They Cut the Fire Straight Out of Me


photo of the cat in The Beast of Times
Photo by Marisa Becerra.

When my best friend’s partner said there was a play about “queer animals” featuring an undocumented cat that I simply had to see, I was wary. Frankly, I didn’t think the play would be any good. But I agreed to go anyway, reservations be damned, because sometimes revelations occur from doing the unexpected.

My friends and I made our way to The Beast of Times on its second to last showing in Los Angeles. Written and performed by award-winning performance artist Adelina Anthony, the play’s heavy-handed description — “a satirical and queer allegory [that] explores the contradictions and pains of coming to political consciousness as ‘Other’ in a world where environmental and ethnic diversity are quickly becoming passé” — obscures the fact that Anthony’s off-kilter sensibility is actually quite accessible and incredibly funny. Similar to David Sedaris’ Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, the characters in The Beast of Times reflect the idiosyncrasies of what it means to be a human being.

Once the audience became comfortable inhabiting Anthony’s bemusing world, the play took a serious turn when the aforementioned cat reveals the scar of her ovariohysterectomy — or what we humans call ‘spaying’. “You will not be having any sex or offspring,” a turtle tells the cat. “They cut the fire straight out of you.”

The cat begins hissing, twitching, and pacing. She hacks angrily and uncontrollably, as though coughing up a hairball. Before her meltdown is complete, the audience learns she is having a “soul memory,” and the cat begins to speak:

1928: I am a Native girl, a child who will barely reach puberty when they come for me. Canadian officials will sterilize entire tribes. 1944: In Puerto Rico I will have la operación. For decades, a third of our female population will endure forced sterilization by the US Empire. 1965: I will be poor again, so you can count me among the one million women who will be sterilized by the Brazilian government …

The monologue continues to trace nearly a hundred years of international reproductive atrocities committed against poor women of color by their governments. It’s hard to explain how a woman wearing cat ears and thrashing about on stage could move me to tears, but it did. It reminded me that I had forgotten to allow myself to feel pain, but the power of art is it can break through your defenses and force you to feel once again.

Like many people, I have become desensitized to certain kinds of violence and degradation, particularly the kinds that disproportionately affect women. The cat’s affecting monologue made me feel as though I were having my own soul memory. I was experiencing the pain of things that had never happened to me, but still managed to leave deep wounds. These tragic events flooded my mind:

Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. After they’d killed her family, including her six-year-old sister, five American Army soldiers raped and killed a fourteen-year-old girl in Iraq. We call this the Mahmudiyah killings.

Jyoti Singh Pandey. On the way home from the movies, a mob of men fatally raped a twenty-three-year-old medical student on a bus in India. We call this the Delhi gang-rape case.

Anonymous victim. In Ohio, an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl was dragged from one location to another and repeatedly raped for six hours by two high school football players, while fellow students uploaded images of the assault to social media sites. We call this Steubenville.

These stories are never-ending, and they became overwhelming while watching the cat’s scene in Anthony’s play. That week, a member of the paparazzi opted to snap photos instead of intervene when millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi repeatedly choked his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, during a twenty-seven-minute altercation at an exclusive restaurant in London. The morning of the day I attended the play, a woman was chased down and stabbed to death by her estranged husband in an affluent Los Angeles suburb — the restraining order and her reports to the authorities failed to keep Michelle Kane safe. There comes a point when we simply have to shut ourselves off, but what then is the cost?

Something about Anthony’s play breathed life back into me. Her words stoked an internal fire I thought I’d lost that felt a little like rage and passion, but also like remembrance and gratitude. I don’t know if the world will ever be a safe place for women, but I do know that silence is a form of complicity, detachment, and resignation — and that is unacceptable.

When violence against women is everywhere we turn, we must choose action not apathy. According to the United Nations, up to seventy percent of women worldwide experience gender-based violence in their lifetimes — most often at the hands of her partner. Violence is the leading cause of death and disability to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four, more than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined. It is time for our stories of survival to counteract our fear. Anthony’s powerful storytelling was a catalyst for me. It broke through my catatonia and provided a vital antidote to being resigned to life in a beastly time.

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Calls for Submissions

Call for Submissions: Secrets

How does secrecy, even if well-intentioned, affect human relationships? To what extent does it undermine the credibility of government institutions? Does full transparency help or hurt us? In The Fray wants to know your secrets.


In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | July 2013: Secrets

The classified intelligence leaks by former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden threw a light on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. In response, the Obama administration has argued its methods have been legal, transparent, and successful in foiling dozens of terrorist plots.

To what extent does it undermine the credibility of government institutions? How does secrecy, even if well-intentioned, affect human relationships? Does full transparency help or hurt us?

In The Fray wants to know your secrets. This may be a photo essay on hidden places travelers could enjoy in your city or a narrative exploration of an underground community. You might tell us about a time you kept a relationship under wraps or hid a medical diagnosis. We also want to hear humorous accounts of keeping and learning secrets.

Please review our submissions guidelines and send a one-paragraph pitch or draft to the appropriate section editor NO LATER THAN JULY 31, 2013. Include three samples of your previous work (links are preferred).

We are open to submissions on any other topics that relate to the magazine’s themes: promoting global understanding and encouraging empathy.

We look forward to hearing from you.

The Editors of In The Fray Magazine
submissions@inthefray.org

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: