Seeing the chamber pot

I was recently asked to write about a memory of my mentor and friend Buzz Alexander for a book being compiled for his upcoming birthday.  (I don't believe he reads this blog so I'm not worried about it spoiling the surprise!)  Buzz is the founder of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), whose mission is to collaborate with incarcerated adults, incarcerated youth, urban youth and the formerly incarcerated to strengthen our community through creative expression.  I know them as the organization that gave me the gift of being a part of workshops working with women in a prison and girls in a juvenile detention center to create theater art.

Here is my Buzz memory.  Happy birthday, Buzz.

I can't remember the exact moment I first met Buzz Alexander, but I do know that by the time I met him, he'd already been way talked up by my friends Megan and Molly.  And he definitely exceeded expectations, which is usually hard to do. 

I had just joined PCAP for the summer, since I had found out I didn't need to be a University of Michigan student to join in a training session to lead workshops in Michigan prisons and juvenile detention centers.  Molly and Megan told me all about their experiences and I knew I wanted in.  I participated in an orientation and training session and the next step was to shadow an existing workshop and I would then be assigned my own workshop as a co-facilitator for the summer season.

For my shadowing session--the first time I'd ever entered a prison and the first time experiencing a PCAP workshop, I had the good fortune of being placed with Buzz and Suzanne's group, and then I think someone dropped out or they needed a third person for some other reason and... I got to stay in their group, in addition to working with another workshop at Vista Maria.  It was incredible. 

I experienced not only what I'd expected--Buzz as skilled workshop facilitator, but also all of the less tangible things.  The things you can't learn from reading a handout or hearing someone lecture.  I witnessed the care Buzz showed and enacted with each and every participant in our workshop.  The way he clearly demonstrated that none of us was better than another, whether we were incarcerated or not, whether we were "leading" the workshop or "participating" and no matter our gender, race, class or age.  We were all participants and all bringing genuine pieces of ourselves to the work.  This experience has influenced me in everything I've done since.

During that summer workshop, the play "Urinalysis" came into being.  The play focused on a group of aging people in a nursing home who realize their urine was being secretly collected and sold to a manufacturing plant, after the head of the home stumbled upon it's value as a radioactive fuel.  The nursing home residents quickly realized they were being exploited and given no part of the proceeds.   It was hilarious.  It was allegorical.  It was deep.  And most importantly, it was good. 

On the day before the play was to be performed in the prison rec room for other prisoners and a few select people from outside the prison, we found out the warden was reversing a ruling that we could bring in props, all of which had been meticulously sorted and approved by the prison.  We faced a dilemma of what to do.  We'd planned on those props and rehearsed with them in mind, from mumus to chamber pots.  Could the show go on? 

No one who has ever been involved in PCAP will be surprised to hear that of course the show went on.  And it went on stronger and ever more heartfelt.  There was a sense of emotion in the air from all of us performing that day because we knew we were creating together.  We could all see the mumus and chamber pots and I feel confident our audience could too.

And this is what Buzz is all about.  The ability to inspire each of us to bring the pieces of ourselves to the fore who can see the chamber pot even when systems of oppression have taken them away.

Thank you Buzz.  And happy birthday!

With love,
Heidi Rosbe (PCAP, summer of 2004)

Women and issues in the international forum

The New York Times came out with an article today "The Internationalization of Women's Issues". In the article Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and current executive director of UN Women, is quoted as saying: "Women issues are world issues... Today there is greater awareness than ever before that women’s full participation is essential for peace, democracy and sustainable development." What does it mean to frame "women's issues" as "world issues"? And is there a difference between "women's issues" and "women issues"?  Bachelet may have misspoken or been misquoted but may can also be a distinction here: the difference between issues that are only relevant to women and issues that are related to women but relevant to all.

Take the issue of violence against women or femicide. Increasingly, groups of women and men are speaking out against it. This is evident in the reaction in India against the recent brutal gang rape of a young college student in Delhi. And crucial work is being done in Jordan by journalist Rana Husseini, who has made incredible strides in educating both women and young men--who are often called upon by their families to commit the acts of violence--about rights and laws, teaming up with local imams to spread the message.

What will we herald next year as we usher in 2014? Perhaps that we no longer need to even have this conversation, because it is a given that women issues are issues of importance to all.

Women and early warning: An unequal and missed opportunity

The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue just put out a report Women's involvement in conflict early warning systems by Mary Ann M. Arnado.  The report argues that despite the forward movement involving women in peace process after the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325, women and women's work has still be generally ignored in conflict prevention and early warning systems. In practice, this means that most early warning systems, which rely on collection, analysis and dissemination of data on conflict factors, have not provided women with equal opportunity to contribute.  The result is that crucial data is missing from the analysis and what is determined a "security threat" ignores some threats to women. Notably, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines have specifically designed their early warning systems as gender inclusive and the benefit has been clear. However, Arnado writes, "The involvement of women in conflict early warning systems is more pronounced and defined at the community level than in prevailing formal structures." Unsurprising since this is the case in so many instances.

The main arguments for calling for women’s participation in arenas like this one hinge on one of two tenets—the basic right of women to be included and the idea that women are actually better at anything related to peace simply because women are more peaceful. The first argument is absolutely true that we women should have the equal right to participate in all walks of life, and particularly in those that affect our lives. However, asserting that one has the right does not always bring about change.

Moving to the second argument, I find the idea that women are inherently more peaceful to be unhelpful, but also not true. There are numerous cases in which women have actually fueled conflict, often from behind, supplying materials, food, housing to combatants and sometimes using rhetoric to goad men around them to take up arms. Some women actually take up arms themselves and fight among the ranks. In fact, in the United States, women have fought hard for the right to join the military. And we don’t have to reach far to come up with examples of women heads of state who were just as hawkish as their male counterparts. So it’s an unhelpful assertion that women are just better at being peaceful and one I feel it largely based on and fed by stereotypes of women and of their perceived role in the home.

This is not to say that there are no differences between men and women (excuse the binary for the sake of this argument), as clearly there are both biological and cultural factors that impact the way our genders manifest themselves. And of course to some extent, stereotypes can be self-reinforcing and culture plays a huge part in laying out the rules for our spheres of influence as well as our expected roles in all aspects of life, including conflict. My main problem with this arguments is that it’s grossly oversimplified and often serves to pit genders against one another, getting us into the game of who is better than who, which is not helpful. All this said, because of the clear delineation of women’s and men’s roles in many societies, excluding women and the data they would bring into the early warning process means missing whole parts of the picture. All areas of society in which men are the ones excluded would be discounted in the early warning analysis, a dangerous omission.

What is needed?  A resolution for women's participation in early warning?  When will the men in power realize they're missing the important and unique potential of the women in their community?  What is most effective in affecting change?