The Face of Human Rights and Feminism: Melissa Roxas

Melissa Roxas' Press Conference: Statement by Melissa Roxas from Habi Arts on Vimeo.

Melissa Roxas is a Filipina US citizen. With family in Quezon City, she went to the Philippines to do research as a health volunteer for her writing project.

She is a writer. An activist. She was combining her commitment to human rights and social justice with her writing. It led her home to the Philippines where on May 19, 2009 she was captured and tortured for 6 days before being released.

In a press conference, she describes the abduction and torture she was subject to from the Philippine military.

Roxas is the first known US citizen to be abducted and tortured in the Philippines during the Obama administration and is seeking justice. The Arroyo presidency in the Philippines has overseen several hundred kidnapping, disappearances, torture, murder, and rape of activists, students, scholars, and educators in the name of the military which is funded by US dollars.

One year ago, I was with my family in Quezon City. I was doing research at local universities and non-profits to better understand the sexual violence against Filipino women in the Philippines. In my time there, the threat of abduction or torture was a far fear from my mind because, as everyone pointed out, I am a US citizen and, therefore, untouchable.

Roxas is the living proof that no one is untouchable and citizenship protects no one. Not even when you are doing research for a writing project. It does not protect you from beatings, being suffocated, tortured, blindfolded, or psychologically tortured.

There are no words to describe these on-going human rights violations in the Philippines. It is happening here, there, and no matter where you are, what your name is, violence, it seems, is only a knock on the door away from your house.

On a personal note, I am more than stunned by her account of what happened. Even as I write this, I don't quite know what to write except that her story needs to be told and spread far and wide. There is no way to describe the horror of what she went through. What I can do, what you can, at the very least, is listen and be informed.

This the face of human rights. This is the face of feminism. This if the front line of writers, volunteers, educators, and dreamers who want a world of peace and are willing to go to the ends of the earth to understand the reality of others. Melissa Roxas is the face.

How Imperfection and Accountability Mix: Part I

The topic of accountability has always been an incredibly important one for me. As a feminist, as a writer, as a person who tries to be wise before I leap, accountability is never far from my hand as I write.

What does it mean to be accountable anyway? Following in the linguistic footsteps of "love," "radical," and "liberation," the word "accountable" is often thrown around for weight and at times, I feel, drama.

I write about accountability because I think it is a very complicated project of self-awareness and growth. Lately, I've been thinking about the two kinds of accountability I have had struggles with - online accountability and offline accountability.

Let's dive first into offline accountability...

Roughly 16 months ago, I came to a startling epiphany that I needed to go the Philippines. It was a pilgrimage of self-discovery, ethnic pride, family tradition, and confusion. The Philippines was the native homeland of my parents. It's image had soft, billowy clouds around it. It remained, for 30 years, an elusive link to my identity. A dangling key swinging thousands of miles from my reach.

That is, until, I decided to go. Alone.

I felt a sense of accountability to myself, my parents, to the people I had never made an effort to know and yet think about so much. The Philippines. It was there that I found a grounding peace. It came from meeting family. It came from researching sexual violence against Filipinas. It came from meeting activists, scholars, farmers, and artists who welcomed me as a Balikbayan, "one who returns home."

It was there that my sense of accountability grew. It grew, specifically, to Filipino women who were abused, trafficked, raped, kidnapped, tortured, and tossed into ditches, shallow graves, and death without justice.

I was gone for June through August of 2008.

* * * *

Today I received a heartfelt and difficult letter. It was from a dear friend whom I have loved for a long time. He and I exchange writings, poems, rainy talks without umbrellas, and stories. When I looked at the rain, I thought of G*. We had more differences than similarities but our similarities were powerful. We had similar concepts of spirituality, justice, and the agonizing waves of darkness that come with passionate loving. We loved our lovers fiercely and our friendship was connected with thick cable chords wrapped in understanding. Thickly, tightly wrapped.

G* wrote me a letter about two things: his joy and his disappointment. He wrote me about the joy of marrying the love of his life, his unfolding career, and New England -- the city of Boston we both loved so much.

And then he wrote of his disappointment. He referenced the time period of when I was deciding to go on my trip to the Philippines, except he didn't write it explicitly. He wrote how I, essentially, disappeared and never told him to his face that I was moving, leaving Boston and our friendship, and never returning. After the Philippines, I would be moving to Cleveland to start anew, write more, and lead a life of quiet purpose. The problem was that I never told him. In the last months of my stay in Boston were the same months he was preparing for marriage. And I never called. Never wrote. Never said good-bye. I was focused on other Things, see? Things like accountability, justice, and human rights.

This letter came to me with dried disappointment. The kind of disappointment that you can almost feel in your hands. It was as if the letter had been dipped in river of hurt and then left on a desk to dry before it arrived for me to read. It was dreadful to read because it was so true.

I left Boston and my life there without saying a word to this man, my friend, someone to whom I was accountable and, quite simply, forgot about. In some of the most forming and exciting months of his life, I vanished. Left town. Let news get to him via friends and old gossip.

* * * *

Even those who pride themselves on loving and justice fuck up. In major ways, we forget some of the most simple concepts of compassion. God, that's humiliating and so painful to remember that our scarred human skin is entirely capable of scarring someone's unblemished arms. Don't you hate being graphically reminded that you're not a perfect person? Worse than that reminder is the vile acid in your stomach when you see a wound on another person that you are completely responsible for and, to make matters worse, the wound is a settled scar that was clearly left untreated.

* * * *

The letter was simple and short. It was honest and humble, hurt and truthful. Those are the best and worst words to read. Real friends are the ones who get the truth to you, no matter how long it takes or how sick it makes you feel. I read it a few times.
Went downstairs to sit. Ate dinner. Scarfed it down because somehow the raw shame had famished me.

* * * *

I wrote back. I offered a reply coated with insufficient apology. There's no usefulness in remorse one year later. I wanted to honor his honesty. A simple apology was not enough. I forgot him. What's more - I LET myself forget him. I wasn't looking for self-flagellation, but I was looking to learn how to be accountable to a friend after I so clearly let him down. And so brashly abandoned someone who was and is dear to me.

* * * *

Even when we let Love lead our actions, we somehow manage to follow imperfectly. Even in our most pure efforts to create justice, art, connection and amendments, we somehow rip the roses when we meant the weeds. In a year since I left, in a year since I've been thinking, writing, and wondering about accountability to women and gender analysis, accountability to family and friends in my life vanished.

* * * *

What does accountability look like with, despite, because of our imperfections?

No Country for Men and Fathers?

I've been thinking about fatherhood. For as much as I think about motherhood, I think about the absence of fatherhood.

That wasn't MY story, per se.

My father, still the same funny, hard-working, and insanely generous person, has been with me for 30 years.

Still, I am thinking about fatherhood.

In pop and mainstream culture, US feminism is branded and re-branded with the same ingredients, westernized notions, and colonial/racial/able-isms that have plagued it in the past. Let's get real, here. While I emphatically believe that multiple forms of feminism exist, most folks still think of mainstream feminism as the only Feminism alive.

How wrong, and how unfortunate, that is...especially for men.

It was just Father's Day on Sunday, two days ago, and nowhere, other than fleeting greetings did I find any substantial feminist-centered articles or op-eds about fathers, their place, significance, impact on their lives. In general, there rarely are any feminist bloggers who write about their fathers. There are countless reflections, dedications, and ruminations about motherhood, but it seems the feminist=women only/women-centered ideology has become so fascist, that men and fathers are not even recognized. Not even on Father's Day.

The way feminism came to me was through activism and identity politics. Feminist language and thought has equipped me to centralize my own experiences to organize my thoughts of the world and more clearly under the systematic kyriarchy that hold womyn under siege. Through the lens of gender, I am more apt to dissecting the critical role of women AND men in the vision of radical justice and equality.

Including, inviting, teaching, loving, needing, welcoming men and fathers into feminisms is not the same as centralizing them. Men do not threaten feminism, false ideologies of gender, power, and "natural" order do. Most people confuse the oppression tactics with the men who exercise it. I'm not advocating these men - or any persons who abuse positions of power - are innocent or anything, but I think it's good to remember, using the adage of 80s and 90s feminists, men aren't the enemy. Far from it.

I think one of the saddest corners of many feminisms is ignoring men and fathers. It's as if the concept of centralizing womyn, valuing womyn, and studying the global trends affecting womyn has isolated men from the concerns of feminists. And while, yes, women constitute the majority of the world, the close second half of the population needs to be equally considered as we fight for justice, advocate for freedom. What freedom looks like for women will not be the same for men, but that difference doesn't automatically cause friction, or even conflict.

The world feminists need is not simply a reordering of numbers so women hold the same positions as men, so CEOs and business partners, and professionals all have equal footing. That might be nice and have good value in changing the landscape a bit, but I don't think it'll solve our problems which run much deeper than just a numbers game of equality. I'm not minimizing representation or the necessity to provide equal access for girls and women to hold the same opportunities as boys and men, but why is that representation so often becomes the measuring stick of progress for mainstream feminism? Why is that - "men can and therefore, I can too" mentality resonating in the same sphere as freedom?

What if the "men can" way is a path that leads to dissonance, destruction, violence, and brokenness? Restructuring the path, I believe, is just, if not more, important than filling that path with the feet of women.

For example, our military could one day be half and half, but if the philosophies of our military stayed the same, would that 50/50 really represent radical change? Wouldn't it be more radical to hear that our military had taken a more serious stance toward sexism, the rapes occurring within, sexual violence used as a tool of torture and genocide?

* * *

So what does feminism look like with men and fathers with us? What does a Father's Day sound like in the feminist blogosphere?

Silence.

What kind of lessons have we learned from our fathers, surrogate fathers, the men, transmen, male-identified individuals who changed our perspectives with love, bravery, vulnerability, and support?

Silence.

And what are our strategies for mobilizing men and fathers?

Silence.

And how do we get past the ridiculous notion that men and fathers are more than just "allies" in the movements for radical love and justice?

Silence.

* * *

My father raised me the only way he knew how - with love. That love might have been patriarchal, ageist, and sexist, but feminism taught me how to receive and give love, not shun, my father. Every father/daughter relationship is different. I'm not blanketing my experience of the only father I've known with yours or others. But, more often than not, feminists overlook the need for justice seeking men who know and practice radical love beyond boundaries.

The answer to unpacking my childhood was not lashing, ignoring, or not sharing my life with my father. The answer was looking into his past, understanding the context of his life and upbringing and then loving him more so I could show him the colors of my life.

There were cultural differences. There were disagreements. Miscommunication galore. And it was hard. Damn hard.

But for my father to know me and how important these issues are to me, to have my father send me articles and magazines he hopes I like that center women and justice solidifies my belief that the community of feminism will and must include our fathers, the men we claim to love, and the young boys we hope will help transform the world.

CALL TO ACTION: Reunite a Baby with Birth Mother

I normally don't post alerts or campaigns on my blog, but this is unspeakably important.

As a pregnant womyn, the story of Cirila Baltazar Cruz is unbearable. The past three months have altered my perspective. Standing at the threshold of a new unfolding of responsibility, love, fear, and acceptance has been a journey of unbelievable difficulty. The fact that this - illegal adoption from immigrants - is happening REPEATEDLY is unthinkably barbaric. IT'S TIME TO ACT. Write a letter to the folks at the bottom of this email. FORWARD THIS WIDELY. Repost on your blog. The denial of basic rights, the denial of a mother's rights is taking on new monstrous faces and it's enraging. I cannot imagine what this mother must be feeling. Perhaps I do not want to imagine what she's feeling and getting this story out, getting this atrocity to the public to ACT and REACT with calls and letters is the least I can do as a womyn of color, an expecting mother, as a daughter of immigrant parents.

Don't just read - MOVE.

h/t to Flip Flopping Joy

Request for Action from the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA):

Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to her baby girl in November of 2008 at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, MS. She speaks very little Spanish and no English, as her native language is Chatino, an Indigenous language from Oaxaca, Mexico that is spoken by some 50,000 people.

The hospital provided her with an “interpreter” who is from Puerto Rico and does not speak Chatino, the language of the mother. Because of the language barrier and the misunderstanding by the hospital’s interpreter who only spoke Spanish and English, a social worker was called in.

The hospital’s social worker reported “evidence” of abuse and neglect based on the following:

* The “baby was born to an illegal [sic] immigrant;”
* The “mother had not purchased a crib, clothes, food or formula.” (Most Latina mothers breast feed their babies).
* “She does not speak English which puts baby in danger.”

Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s baby was snatched from her after birth at the hospital and given to an affluent attorney couple from the posh Ocean Springs who cannot have children.

The authorities made no effort to locate an interpreter in her native tongue. MIRA located an interpreter who is fluent in Chatino in Los Angeles CA and has interviewed the mother extensively with the interpreters help. The mother has been accused of being poor and not being able to provide for this child. No one has asked the mother to provide evidence of support. She owns a home in Mexico and a store which provides both secure shelter and financial support, not counting the nurturing of a loving family of two other siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and other extended family.

Meanwhile, there is word in the Gulf Coast community that the “parents to be,” have already had a baby shower celebrating the “blessed arrival” of this STOLEN child!

PLEASE MAKE CALLS & WRITE LETTERS DEMANDING THE SAFE RETURN OF BABY & REUNITE WITH HER MOTHER

If you believe this is unjust and outrageous and goes against all moral and religious beliefs and values, please call or write to the presiding Judge and the MS Department of Human Services to STOP this ILLEGAL ADOPTION! Stealing US born babies from immigrant parents is a growing epidemic in the United States. Many Latino parents have lost their children this way!

Honorable Judge Sharon Sigalas
Youth Justice Court of Jackson County
4903 Telephone Rd.
Pascagoula, MS 39567
(228)762-7370

Children’s Justice Act Program
MS Dept. of Human Services
750 North State Street
Jackson, MS 39202
Call (601)359-4499 and ask for Barbara Proctor

For more information please call MIRA at: (601) 968-5182

MIRA Organizing Coordinator
Victoria Cintra at (228) 234-1697 or Organizer Socorro Leos at(228) 731-0831

Digital Poetry

Sometimes my passion for photography, art, and poetry collide on Fridays and I make some digital collage with poems on them. Lately, I've been ruminating about technology and connection. The way Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, and online communities have brought energy, community, and information to my life.

And, with some unexplained twinge of sadness, I think about how my offline relationships are so scattered because of proximity, time zone differences, and growing up and away.

I watch people wherever I go. On the bus, at a Fish Fry, in New York, at a protest, at church, at a children's birthday party and wonder if technology has enabled us to share our stories more with the world and less with those in our everyday lives. As my writing grows with disciplined practice and immersion into the internet, I often wonder if there's a correlation to my growing need for human touch; face to face conversation; body language accessibility, and audible laughter.

Has digital technology enhanced your relationships? Has it changed the way you see people, including strangers on the street? Where do you see us heading with all this media advancement?

Stand With Sotomayor

I stand with her

because she's committed to marginalized communities
because she hasn't forgotten where she's from
because she was raised by a single mother and rocked Princeton and Yale

Speak! and "I Will Survive" Book/ Listening Party

It's A Boy, It's a Girl

There's no better dumping ground for socialized gender stereotypes than the ears of a pregnant woman. For a womyn like myself, it raises my blood pressure to listen to all the gendered talk and so I see writing about my pregnancy as one of the necessary exercises to stay sane and keep the kid healthy.

Sharing your pregnancy with others is like an invitation for the worst gender assumptions to pass through my ears. There's nothing, I repeat nothing, more annoying to me right now than the comments that sound like misogyny on steroids.

"It's just better to have a boy. You'll worry less."

"I wanted my first born to be a boy. 'Cause after that, you can just relax and not worry about what the others will be."

"Girls just are too much."

"It'll be better if you have a boy. With a girl, it's just, it's so...it's so much more worrying."

What is this equation in birth? Labor + boy = relief
while Labor + girl = stress

Let's go past all the generalizations (all BS in my opinion anyway) about girls spending more money when they grow up, you'll have to deal with more emotional crises, you'll worry more about violence, etc...

I see both boys and girls as precious and vulnerable little things who will look up at me and not know left from right, evil from good, right from wrong...and they'll learn what from me? --> That because she was born female, I will worry more about her being a victim of violence? That the world will treat her less, pay her, view her less because she was born with a vagina? What impact does that have on how she confronts the world? Will she fight it or believe it?

And what will I teach my son? I presumably don't worry about him because he was born with a penis and we all know that the world prizes that much more than if he were born my daughter. Maybe he'll have it tough from time to time, but he'll never worry about his safety or getting raped or drugged because he's a male.

The reality of the world is not hidden from me. I see misogyny, I see the violence, I see who takes the brunt of poverty, brutality, trafficking, and abuse. I understand how the world will treat my child differently based on its genitalia. I get it. But how does knowing how the world mistreats girls and women lead to the thought it's better to parent a boy?


How radical is my mothering if I just walk the stereotyped line and accept the world as it is, not as I want it to be? Am I more of a mother if I protect more, worry more if it's a girl? Or does that make me a coward?

My deepest fear is not in having a girl. I feel like I would know how to raise a girl because I identify womyn. I've never been a boy, I've never been a man. I don't know how to teach masculinity in healthy, loving ways except in what I imagine it SHOULD be. My fear is that I do have a son and he grows up, eating the garbage available from media, peers, and school. And instead of regurgitation, he'll swallow it, whole. And in my naivety of not knowing how to raise a man, he'll grow to eventually be one of those fathers telling a young mother that it's best to first have a son than to ever have a daughter.

That's more terrifying to me than having a daughter.

It's 1994: Do You Know What the Internet Is?

The Great Wall of Mainstream Feminism

There are few things in the world I hate more than when the words "prominent," "feminist," "icon," and "won" are jumbled together in a feminist context.

I don't know why I do this to myself. I have long sworn off mainstream feminism and yet, like a moth to a flame where I know I shall burn myself to death, still, I am drawn to read articles that ponder whether Angelina Jolie is "the next feminist icon."

According to "prominent feminist," Naomi Wolf, Jolie "is hot" and "has it all."

Let's skip the whole song and Hollywood dance of her celebrity and take a closer look at what Naomi Wolf says of her,

"Against every Western convention, she has managed to draw together all of these kinds of female liberation and empowerment. And her gestures determinedly transgress social boundaries — boundaries of convention, race, class, and gender — giving many of us a vicarious thrill."

Um, pardon me, but am I the only one that nearly puked up colonialism when I saw her adopt children all over the world, bringing more wind to the Oprah theory that we, those with money and in industrialized countries, should feel free to "save" these other children from the violence and poverty they would be otherwise subject to?

It's not as if I expect Bazaar or Forbes to take that kind of approach to celebrity analysis. Far from it, I expect mainstream media to further confuse the notions of liberation with colonialist domination. But from writers, thinkers, and philosophers teaching from the walls of feminisms (yes, read it, again my friends - it's plural) -- in what orbit are you circling where you think Ange-freaking-lina Jolie is the "next feminist icon?" What kind of sound minded, socially-just conscience gets a "vicarious thrill" through ethnocentric, heteronormative practices and then sings ignorant praises and files it under Liberation, Best Practices?

From the same brand that said Sex and the City was a cultural phenomenon that further liberated US women, that also denounced Obama during the primaries because Hillary Clinton was the first women to potentially clinch the White House, which also says NOTHING in celebration of or in defense of Sotomayer -- comes the newest installation of mainstream feminism: the (slightly) nuanced message that tells women that, YES, we CAN have it all. By golly, if a big boobed and heavy lipped white actress who makes millions off of her sex appeal can fly a plane, snag a handsome and doting beau, and have her pick of the world's poorest children, well, shit! I CAN HAVE IT ALL TOO!

Ah, mainstream feminism...how many times must I say this? The demise of our efforts will not be neoconservative right-wing bats who look an awful like Dick Cheney. It won't even be the machismo. I'll even go as far to say the collapse won't come from a thousand reincarnations of Ann Coulter.

The damning crack in the great wall of feminisms is caused by the mainstream feminists, the "prominent" writers and thinkers who jump and down on the wall, throwing praise to other White women who have money, small waists, and heterosexual sex. They continuously and knowingly break the backs of the women and daughters who need more advocacy than they need to hear about a wealthy, country-jetting actress. This wall will certainly cave from the Utah-sized egos that ignore race and colonial theories and teachings, who offer their souls to Hillary Clinton and nothing to Sonia Sotomayer. And when this wall crumbles, the dust will settle and reveal two things that mainstream feminism has caused: the majority of women are trapped under the wall and are dead while the women who walked the the top and caused the crack are still alive.

Letter # 8

Dear Veronica,

I've been thinking about how these letters will be if I find out you are, in fact, a boy, not a girl as I have been thinking.

I don't think it will matter much. You'll be either Veronica or Isaiah and what I have to share with you is the same, regardless of what sex you happen to be.

I'm about to enter my second trimester with you and I can scarcely believe it. The picture Dr. David gave me yesterday of you nearly took my breath away. You LOOK like a baby. A head, limbs, and the outline of a body...I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe how I already thought you looked so cute. You're, literally, a picture of shadows and, to me and your Pops, you looked simply adorable.

I've been thinking about what kind of world you are about to come into when January 2010 strikes and what captives me most is you are in me, yet not of the knowledge that I have. You have no knowledge of what evil looks like, or how it will pain you once you come into this world. You have no knowledge of what kindness looks like. The only thing you know is peace inside a floating sac of my blood, nourishing you with no disturbances or worry. All of that will change soon.

I shared with your father yesterday that I have observed how protective of children I feel these days. Suddenly, the world seems like a cold, cold place. An unloving and precarious playground with sharks in the pond, strangers leering at the fences, and untrustworthy mystery figures walking about. Isn't it clear? I'm afraid to bring you into this world and the responsibility I will have to protect you as best as I can. So far, the only person I've really looked out for is myself. Selfishly, I sometimes think I will be a good protector because I don't know if I can handle any amount of harm done to you. A selfish mother, indeed.

The wonder and innocence you symbolize to me right now cannot be adequately communicated. You are life, a breathing life waiting to grow and come into the world through my body and I find myself writing about the rights of women's bodies, the rights of our voice and the place of our humanity. Your mom's writing is often misunderstood and I hope you can learn from me. There is nothing wrong with being misunderstood. Actually, it only confirms that the more you speak your own way, the more of your own path you'll find, the more others will misunderstand your ways.

I spoke to you this morning of individuality and trusting the voice you will develop inside you. The voice may not always be certain, but it will be strong in curiosity and wanting to do the most loving thing. That will lead you to where you will need to go. I don't know if you can hear me, let alone understand the little talks we have in the car, but I hope you can soon understand that individuality can and should only exist in the context of community, accountability, and justice. Never, in all the days you will live, should you ever think you are alone in this world or this world was made just for your path. It is a beautiful, intimidating mudball where you will be pressed to find your own path. If it resembles anything like mine, it should be crooked with lots of uneasy turns that are hard to navigate. But it'll be your path.

And then you are to share it with others. Should you ever be misunderstood along the way, know these letters serve as my companionship in your journey. To be misunderstood, my dear Child, is a blessed thing.

Love,
Mama

Class, Race, and Privilege in the 'Central Park Jogger' Story

This essay is written with nothing but the deepest respect of Trisha Meili's story and her compassion to share herself with the world and aid those in despair. In the tangled web of examining privilege that comes with race and class, and scrutinizing the judicial system, difficult questions arise about the background of the survivor and the wrongly convicted. Looking at how privilege impacts the crime and conviction is not a strike against Meili. It's an attempt to take a cold, hard look at the judicial system.

In 2004, I read I Am the Central Park Jogger, a best-selling memoir about the healing road to recovery of Trisha Meili, a Wall Street Investment Banker who in 1989, was brutally raped and beaten in Central Park. The story lit up the nation in outrage.

Her book, released fourteen years after her attack, focuses on the neurological and spiritual healing of the violent crime that nearly took her life. Now a motivational speaker, Trisha Meili has been recognized as a leader and advocate for brain trauma, sexual assault, and survivor rights.

I remember reading it in graduate school. Counseling sexual assault survivors, doing group work, and individual therapy peaked my interest in her memoir. I remember telling a friend, "There's no criticism after reading a memoir of survival. What am I going to focus on -- how the writing wasn't that sophisticated or the strength of coming out to share her story or rape and recovery after she nearly died? Some stories are not about the writing, it's about the lives underneath it."

As is with sexual assault, there's always more to the story.

One thing I know about sexual assault is that the judicial system often deepens the wrongs and violence of the crime. Usually, it's implicating the survivor. The system is often a jungle, an impassable jungle of victim-blaming, terrorizing, disbelief, and sexism from the moment a womyn admits she has been sexually violated.

The story of Trisha Meili is different.

The truth is that a convicted rapist and murder, Matias Reyes, would eventually confess that he alone had raped, tortured and beaten Trisha Meili. That truth would not surface, though, for thirteen years after the attack and not until five other Black and Latino young men, known as the Central Park 5, would be wrongfully interrogated and convicted for the crime.

Now, Raymond Santana, Khary Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson and Yusuf Salaam, are still seeking damages for wrongful convictions and time served, ranging from 6 years to 14 years by different members of the Central Park 5.

While this story bears no surprise to anyone familiar with the judicial system, the lives of all of those involved have a horrendous twist of irony.

Trisha Meili, the strong survivor of this terrible and unthinkable crime, has no memory of that night. The brain trauma suffered rendered her memory blank. She does not even remember going out for the run that night. Her story and pain left me speechless, but I also know that the story of Trisha Meili is not the usual case of rape.

The majority of rapes are perpetrated by known acquaintances, friends, and partners. The majority of rapes are not reported, go to trial or have a named, guilty rapist sentenced. The majority of sexual assault survivors do not have the privilege of attending ivy league schools or working at prestigious Wall Street banks. Yet most speakers who circulate public speeches about rape are White women. After working at *University and being in the field for a while, I've observed that most paid speakers who openly share their lives, are White women and are accepted as the face of strength, resilience, and courage. They are some of the faces of strength, but most women, particularly women of color and women of low-income do not have the freedom, ability, or support to seek services, publicly speak, or even share their story of sexual violation.

I am speechless once again, this time for the five young men, teenagers back then, who were guilty of many crimes, but not the rape and beating of Trisha Meili. The unthinkable waste of 20 years, a lifetime, for them and their families...are there any words?

How do race and class factor into this horrible crime? This White, Yale grad has been able to miraculously recover and inspire others after a barbaric shredding of her body and humanity. These men of color, tortured in a completely different way, and forced to admit a crime they never committed, endured an injustice that stole their lives and families for two decades. And now, the city is "dragging its feet" when responding to the request to compensate $50 million each to the wrongly convicted and their families.

In the background, New York City, the city of dreams, and of horror. The place of reality which illustrates that racial division and class differences still don't mix well in the law.

The Central Park 5. Some stories are not about the writing, but about the lives underneath it. I wonder if these young men will have best-selling memoirs.

To Whom You Are Accountable

Filipinos have a cultural trademark of slapping nicknames on folks which have absolutely nothing to do with their real names. For example, my full first name is Ana Lisa, but growing up, my parents had a slew of nicknames for me that slid in and out of my life. I never questioned it, just knew they were terms of endearment and I embraced my cultural names.

My father called me Shouloo [SHAO-loo], which typically meant, "little one." The youngest of four, it seemed appropriate and a sign of affection. "Shouloo! Get me my tsinelas [sandals]!" My nickname always softened the request to get my father whatever he was requesting.

My mother had a few names for me. "Anak," [ah-NAHK] means "dear" or "child" as she also frequently called me "Ming," which I never completely understood. But they were always said lovingly so I had a feeling they were similar in nature.

As a child, they told me stories of the Philippines and I imagined a faraway place of paradox. A tropical paradise. Unthinkable poverty. Dirt. Spirit. Malls. A home.

* * * *

Last year, I went to the Philippines for multiple reasons. One reason was to academically immerse myself in history, economics, language, and the arts. I was also researching the history of the women's movement in the Philippines and was to study under a professor who had endured political trauma - kidnapping and torture - during the martial law under then president Ferdinand Marcos. Dr. T* was an excellent teacher and I often felt confounded by her life experiece that she used in her teaching college students.

I studied at the University of the Philippines (UP) and quickly absorbed the political tension on campus. I was to attend a rally in one of my first afternoons at the campus. The rally was to raise awareness about the missing Sociology professor and student who disappeared during a research project they had been conducting in the mountains. These young women - Karen* and Carolyn* - were intent on researching the trials and life of rural agricultural workers in the mountains.

They disappeared.

Like so many other philosophers, teachers, activists, and thinkers in the Philippines. Disappeared.

Gone.

* * * *

No one was as interested in my research as they were about my personal story, however. Most of the feedback I received when folks learned of my trip mostly centralized on either one of two assumptions. I actually 1) "abandoned my husband" to learn and conduct independent research OR 2) defiantly traveled alone to the other side of the world without him

* * * *

My parents never taught me or my siblings Tagalog, or any other dialect of the Philippines. Language, its sole function so often understood as the train of understanding, is the carrier of so much more in the Philippines. Being able to speak Tagalog is a marker of cultural acceptance, of union. Stuttering in half English (though nearly all urban areas speak English) is a billboard of westernized upbringing.

The latter. That was me.

* * * *

I meet with all kinds of human rights groups that talk about the many struggles of the bleeding nation. Without filters or softeners, the reality of the corrupt violence makes me afraid. I tell a native that I am afraid. She laughs in my face. "You are an American citizen, yes?"

I nod.

"Just show your passport. No one will ever touch you." She dismisses me.

Feeling slighted and awkwardly untouchable, I turn to a friend for a brief processing. She is from New York. "Yeah, Leese, I mean, come on. We lead different lives. It doesn't matter if we're Filipino, we don't live the same danger these other women do. Janice* just survived her first round of chemo therapy while she spent the night in her office, advocating for justice. She's committed. Why? Because her friends, her actual friends, have been kidnapped, murdered and raped. She's allowed to laugh at us because we don't live that. We can take her bitter laughter if we understand what she goes through."

* * * *

"Tell them we're beyond poverty. We're not even allowed to eat the garbage. We're even charged for the remains no one wants," a Filipina tells me as my research project ends. I say nothing, remembering the communities I met who are charged $60 USD for a truckload of garbage to sift through.

* * * *

"Please, don't forget us. Please, tell others our stories so others will understand what we're living through." I hold the hand of a widow whose husband, a union rights organizer, was assassinated two years ago with no one brought to justice.

* * * *

My parents call me Ming and Shouloo, names of love. Lately, though, I notice they don't call me those names anymore. I realize it's because they were all names for a little girl.

I am no longer.

* * * *

It has been almost a year since I left for my first trip to my parents homeland and I have written nothing but scratches about its impact on my life. My notes, my research sits out waiting for me, waiting for my commitment to travel back in my memory and relive some of the most gorgeous moments of my life, and also some of the most horrific.

I realize, with sadness, as I nurse this plum of a life inside me, s/he will likely not receive the cultural division that I experienced growing up. The intense confusion, and resulting drive, that came with growing up Ming and Shouloo in the United States will not be present for my child.

But the stories I have, the memories still burning in my mind will shape this child into understanding a certain part of the world to where s/he will always have a connection. With connection, comes accountability. Loving accountability.

* * * *

With a picture of the growing Plum on my desk, I reach for overstuffed notebooks with handouts and maps as bookmarks, reeking with the smell of dust and dried sweat.

I remember. I begin writing.



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Salamat to Tanglad for your inspiration, companionship, support, and incivise writing.

The Relationship: Pregnancy, Abortion, Faith, Violence

I attended my first pro-life rally when I was 10 or 11 years old. With my mother on a back breaking smelly bus, we traveled through the night to D.C., arrived, marched with our church group, and boarded the bus to drive home. I barely slept.

The pro-life march was my first trip the our nation's capital and the magnificent sites were shadowed by the thousands of pro-life marchers I walked with. Huddled under a tent from the dripping rain, I listened to stories of guilt-ridden women who'd had abortions and realized their mistake.

I held a sign of some sort. I don't remember what it said, but I'm sure it was something along the lines of "Love them both. Choose life." As I held my mother's hand, I smiled at a group of women in business suits who I thought looked like congresswomen. They smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up sign, my heart soared.

I was ten when I walked down the pro-life avenue and clung close to my mother as pro-choice advocates stood with their signs on the outskirts of the march. As I passed a group of pro-choice ralliers, one said to me and my group of walkers, "You all make me sick. I want to spit on you." I buried my face into my mothers stomach, afraid of what might happen.

My mother whispered into my ear, "You pray."

I thought she meant for my safety so I threw a prayer skyward that sounded something like, "Please God, I don't want to be attacked. I don't want to be spit on. I just want to walk."

* * * * *

I was 25 when I moved in with Katie*. She worked at the local Planned Parenthood and though we went to the same undergraduate university, I'd never met her before. We got along swimmingly. I worked at a university's women's center, she at Planned Parenthood and we mostly talked women's issues, feminism, and the differences that lay between us.

One night, over a tiny wooden table with crowded plates of rice and chicken, Katie asked me, "So, where do stand on abortion? Does your faith steer you pro-life or the women's center steer you pro-choice?"

I slowly swallowed my food, hating that question, and deliberately delayed because I wanted my heart beat to slow before I answered. A shot of adrenaline always pulsed through me when I spoke of issues of reproductive health, abortion, life, and faith.

"I don't think you'll like what I have to say. No one does. I don't identify pro-life and I don't identify pro-choice. I don't think either 'side' has the vision for what women in this world need."

I moved my eyes from her face, knowing the line of questions that were coming.

"But do you believe in a women's right to an abortion?" Katie wasn't eating anymore.

"I believe in women. I believe that all this crap and dialogue is bullshit. I believe we haven't been given the funding, education, and means to even think beyond having a baby or having it terminated. We don't even envision the kind of LIFE women should be given and so we aren't given the options we deserve, the resources we need, or even the chance to consider what else is possible with our lives. So when you ask whether a women has a right to an abortion, all I think of are ALL the things, all the basic things that women don't have that lead to make her choose between 'life' and 'choice.' It's not that simple."

Katie resumed munching on her rice and chicken, "Well, yeah. I mean, women don't have access to the education and resources they need in general, but that's a whole other conversation."

I looked up, "Is it?"

* * * * *
A few months have passed since that discussion and I come home to find Katie watching Desperate Housewives. I made a snide comment about trashy evening programs that do little for our brains and notice she is not throwing back any signature sarcasm. I ask her what's wrong.

Katie tells me a long story. She tells me a long story on the slashed tires she's endured. The man who photographs her car license plates. The daily protesters outside her office. The security measures when she walks into work everyday.

I listen to this woman, my friend, who tells me what it's like working at a Planned Parenthood in Cincinnati, Ohio. I think about the mild harassment endured when I tell people I work at women's center - a non-medical facility - where it is always assumed I provide information and possibly even assist abortion procedures.

It is then I realize that there are several battles going on, but one war. There are different battles of those who fight the front lines of gender equality, those of us who try to raise consciousness and educate about the damning effects of essentializing the characteristics and roles of women and men and ignore anyone else who doesn't fit our expections. And then there are those on the front lines of reproductive rights who go live an almost double life. Katie tells me how she has two resumes she sends out, one that is open about Planned Parenthood and another that softens the position and her role in its function. Katie tells me endless stories of dinner parties gone awry because of political debates, family gathers that bleed awkwardness because of her work, and the silent assumptions of acquaintances when she shares the nature of her occupation.

* * * *
Today in the news there is much talk about the murder of Dr. Tiller and even our normally calm Mr. Obama President expressed his "shock and outrage" about what has been called a"reprehensible act of domestic terror."

According to the Op-Ed in the New York Times, this is the fourth killing since 1993 of a physician who provides abortion procedures. Not to minimize this heinous and unthinkable crime, but let's look at the global picture of abortion via reproductive rights. Four murders in 16 years averages to one every four years.

Every minute of every day, a woman dies from pregnancy-related complications. Approximately 530,000 women and girls die worldwide from such complications every year, including as many as 70,000 women and girls who die from botched abortions, according to Population Action International.
* * * *

But those women dying is not a crime because most of them occur in "developing" countries. All the women who die from botched abortions do not have reactions from our President because...simply because it's women who are dead from botched abortions.

The President from D.C. says it's time to find common ground. I disagree.

It's not time to find common ground, it's time to admit there is no common ground and, still, cease fire.

It's not time to try and say pro-lifers understand pro-choicers or vice versa because the decades of divisive rhetoric has split this country into a segregation deeper than red and blue states.

There's no time to find common ground when so many women are dying from lack of education, resources, and freedom. I believe the access to healthcare, education, and information trumps the rallies and cries for choice. True freedom is full access to the knowledge of health, consequence, givings and sacrifice of our actions. Why are we so damn staunch in our fight for abortion and so up in arms when a physician is murdered? Albeit, it's a tragedy, but LOOK AT WHAT WOMEN IN THIS WORLD ARE ENDURING.

But as so many have reiterated to me, when I speak of vision and freedom in regard to reproductive health and "choice," it becomes "a whole other conversation."

As long as it remains a whole other conversation, it will never be our reality.

It Will Feel All That You Feel

My mother told me that the baby will feel all that I will feel.

In relation to a high sodium/sugar diet warning, or a lesson about high blood pressure, it seems like an appropriate lesson to understand about the effect I have on the fire growing inside me.

And then I wondereed if my baby can feel my sadness, my anger, my joy, and laughs when I laugh.

I've never had anything grow - alive - inside me before and that statement just shot a syringe of terrifying responsibility through my veins.

In my dreams last night, I dreamt I drank alcohol, fully knowing I was pregnant. I dreamt I was indulging in behaviors I never had before -- sorrid love affairs, whole loaves of bread and muffins, and cigarettes. I wake up, sighing a relief that it was just a dream.

But where is this terror coming from?

As a soon to be new mother, I am just beginning to glimpse this new world of responsibility. The world that I've heard stories about, but never stepped into. I think this is the world where I've heard so many womyn judge and compare at the highest stakes of criticism: motherhood.

I don't have much in excess. I don't have a lot of savings. I'm not in therapy. I can't buy organic. I sure as hell don't have a mini-van or buy new clothes and sandals from a name brand store. I don't know how to sew, have changed about 3 diapers in my life, and can't stand doing the laundry.

I do believe that the memory of my mother's rearing will guide me in what I need to do.

My mother entered the United States when she was 20 years old, determined to make money for her family in the Philippines. Over the course of 43 years, she's managed to raise four children with no college degree or a lick of luxury to speak of. She raised us without lollipops or ice cream trucks. She hid, literally, from her children, when the ice cream truck music sounded on our street and pressed herself into a wall because she didn't even have a quarter to spare for a popsicle.

My mother fought her way through high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep deprivation, heel spikes, thyroid problems, and bitter racism in the midwest.

She had religion. She had her faith. She brought us up, surrounding us in a protective circle of love, prayer, and simplicity. Where others had salads and desserts, we had a pot of rice, two fish sticks, and water for dessert. We were a family and didn't need much else. Not until we were told that we needed "more" by our friends and commercials. Then our conversations became more and more westernized, more Americanized.

It's only now I can begin to appreciate the decisions my mother made and how difficult times were for her, but we barely understood the stress she must have been under for so long. She raised a family in a foreign country while supporting her other family back home, sending her siblings to college, supporting her widowed mother.

It's the memories my mother has left me that gives me strength when I feel terror, when I feel I may not have "enough" to bring life into this world. When I wonder how we'll afford a crib, baby seats, strollers, changing tables and food, I remember that my mother never bought baby food, but used her big pots, hot water, an old blender, and tupperware.

It's the memory of my mother that releases any external pressure or worry that I may not "have," or am, enough.