Stirring the Fire

Let's just start with Tim Wise was amazing. I thought that his speech was very well written and delivered. I think that the way he introduced the topic was very disarming, which is important when you're going to be talking about such an emotionally charged issue that people often don't particularly want to talk about. I also thought that his anecdote about his daughter was brilliant because from my privileged standpoint as a white person, it made the issue and him as a speaker more relatable. Finally, I really appreciated his sort of "disclaimer" at the end about how we will know that we've made progress when a person of color can stand up in front of a group of people and say the same exact thing that he said and be as well received as he was, as a white male. I thought that was a very appropriate observation for him to include, given that one of the criticisms of his work that we'd discussed in class was that in using his voice as a white male he might be preventing people from hearing the voices of people of color who have been saying the same things for many years. I respected him for addressing that and I feel really privileged to have gotten to hear him speak.

Since we were addressing discrimination this week, I thought I'd post about Phil Borges, a social documentarian and photographer. His work is featured in an online exhibit at http://www.stirringthefire.com/. When you first get to the website, you can choose whether you want to view the exhibit or take action. Stirring the Fire is a website devoted to telling the stories of women around the world through art (photograph and film) and then providing ways that people can get involved in the empowerment of women and girls around the world. The photography in the exhibits is made up of beautifully simple and personal portraits of women around the world, and their stories. I have a little bit of a problem with calling it an exhibit, somehow, given that it is the lives of real women that are being presented. But the stories are beautiful and I really appreciate the melding of art and the opportunity for service and involvement. And speaking for myself, before I came to college my knowledge about the oppression of women worldwide was very limited. I had no idea how oppressed women throughout the globe are, and I had no idea how incredibly strong and resilient women throughout the globe are. So I think that art that tells these stories is really important.

On a final note, something that struck me about Carl Wilkens' speech at the Holocaust Conference was his description of how the women he met at Panzi Hospital in the DR Congo, women who had been raped, many of whom multiple times, would sing and dance. Their ability to sing and dance and love and hope is absolutely incredible to me and I think that it should be celebrated just as much as the abuse and oppression of women and girls should be lamented and fought against.