Morning after the one billion rising ..

The bus was full of people from school - teachers, students.. mostly women. The music was clear.. the singer saying 'Girls bend ovah ' and 'back onto de man' and so on. I am on the way to Guyana's 1 Billion Rising event in the Promenade Gardens , organised by the S4 Foundation .


Eve Ensler's brainchild gained momentum around the world and involved many organisations and celebrities. In Guyana, the Facebook mobilisation was fascinating as many people, especially young people, seemed to read and engage even if fleetingly with the idea of 'doing something'.


The event featured presentations about the different kinds of violence. The presentations from Ms Broomes from the Guyana Women Miners' Association and Dr Raquel Thomas-Caesar on the rage at rape were the most striking.

I missed the speech from First Lady Deolatchmie Ramotaur. In her presentation, according to Guyana Times, "

Addressing the many women and girls who were backed by men, First Lady Deolatchmee Ramotar posited that the experience of being “violated, beaten and traumatised” is so terrifying that it leaves scars for life. However, she warned that violence against women must not be met with violence, stressing that the cycle must be broken.  “We must not be tolerant to violence, but we must avoid cultivating a culture of hatred because hatred would only cause more violence. Violence, retributions perpetuate a cycle of violence. It is necessary for the cycle to be broken,” the first lady said.

She admonished abused and violated women to seek justice, and justice, she said, must be served, if Guyanese are to produce a society that is free from violent men, women and children."

Ironically, the story of Michelle Lynch, pregnant and forced to sleep in a police station after not attending court as a witness, is on the same day that Mrs Ramotar asks women to go to the same police.

Former First Lady Varshinie Singh's address also spoke to ideas of peace and harmony and building caring communities and according to the Stabroek News report "employ non-violence tactics in one’s everyday life"

Strike..

The Guyana event did not really talk much about striking.  
The strike idea is important and the idea of women striking as a form of oppression is radical. The Global Women's Strike    is a "network for recognition & payment for all caring work, and the return of military spending to the community starting with women the main carers everywhere."
Red Thread in Guyana is part of the network, and on International Women's Day and other times, sought to raise awareness of the value of women's work.

Eve Ensler, even though she did not mention the Global Women's Strike, probably had an idea that women (and men who cared) would walk out of their work places (including homes?) and strike.

Many of the women who are trapped in abusive relationships face poverty on their own. So calling for valuing of women's work and ensuring women are not further impoverished by seeking the justice which Mrs Ramotar must be critical to any movement against violence.


Dance..

 In many parts of the world, women cannot dance in public. In many parts of the world, women who dance in public are stigmatised. In Guyana next week, Mashramani will see many women dancing.. and the dancing will be questioned in the light of what obtains in terms of sexual violence and the unspoken beliefs about who is dominant and who is submissive in (hetero?) sexual relations.

Dancing as protest is good. In some cultures, dancing as part of mourning or to relieve mourning is also good. 
The Guyana event, like others around the world had dancing.

Some of us at the event did not want to dance. A dance teacher who left the event said to me that she could have trained more people to dance and brought them.   
However, the case which Ms Broomes spoke about, the case in court.. 
the testimony about dancing which comes up.

“Abigale told us we have to do striptease. I told her no. I told her that I was seeing ‘my period’. There were two other girls at Oko. One of them advised me to take a panty liner and insert it in my vagina. I went into a room. Abigale brought a bottle each of Guinness Stout and Banko wine. She said, if we did not drink it we will have to walk to Itaballi. I drank the mixed drinks. The other girls drank too. My head started to swing,” the witness related.
Continuing, she said: “I had on a short pants and a brassiere. Another girl joined me. She had on a panty and a brassiere. We were on a stage dancing to music. There were lots of men near the stage. They were drinking and smoking. One of the men was coming close. He was coming to touch me. But one of the girls stopped him. After dancing for a hour, I went to my bed. The following day, one of the girls knocked at my door, saying someone came to have sex with me. I told her I am having my health.”

And this is the reality of dancing for many of the women and girls who could not rise with the Billion.


Rise
The call to rise is not clear. It seems on the one hand to 'rise above the violence'  which for any person who is a survivor, is an important part of recovery. But on the other hand, is it rising against the violence and the perpetrators of violence?

And it is not clear.. and this criticism of the Billion Rising speaks to the absence of the confrontation with the patriarchy and the culture of misogyny, to the impunity of politicians.
How does Mrs Ramotar feel about Mr Lumumba's attack on a woman on Elections Day? And her Government's belief that bringing Chris Brown to Guyana is a good thing.

Gandhi, often used to talk about non-violent resistance.. apparently also said ""It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.""  This view could probably be discussed at length, but what I seemed to hear from the current First Lady and former First Lady, was that .. no violence please.. seek justice.. but nothing really about what is supposed to happen when justice seeking does not work , as happens to many in Guyana. What happens when the doctor who botches the abortion kills the woman and is allowed to practice? What happens when the police is inconsistent in their reforms and there is no attempt to reform the police?



What happens to the women who protest the desecration of their environment (the mining rights are sacrosant) and are told by others that they have no right to clean water and a home which is not polluted by mining?


A long time ago, I joined up with Help & Shelter as a nice middle class charitable thing to do.. spend two or three hours which I could afford a week to do computer things I thought. I remember when I was called out to protest about the violence against women and girls and then being told that I was a trouble maker and realizing really, that unless we are going to be repeating, enduring the violence, there has to be a challenge to the systemic causes of that violence.


At the Gardens, in the dusk, I remembered another time.. when we were protesting the rape committed by Commissioner Henry Greene and the Government's tolerance of that rape.
When men cussed up and said that the woman was a bad woman, and her story came out in the court.

Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues were being performed, but the director and the cast did not address the issue of this pressing, visible acceptance of a rapist .   One of the women told me that they could not be political, she had a Government job which meant she could be in the safety of the Theatre , but on the road.

The Billion Rising had the sanction of the Government, of the United Nations, of the diplomatic community. It brought out many persons who wanted to identify with the issue and who would not have done so ordinarily.  The protests against the rape committed by Commissioner Henry Greene and the Government's acceptance of that rape did not have the blessings of the Government, the United Nations or the diplomatic community.

1 Billion Rising in my mind though was not protest. 1 Billion Rising should not have been only in the peaceful Promenade Gardens. 1 Billion Rising should also be in the Parliament , where the barricades are put up to protect the National Assembly from the people who elected them.

1 Billion Rising should also be in the police stations and the courts where seeking justice is a further violation for many victims.




1 Billion Rising does not end on V-Day, should not stop when people are tired of dancing and in Guyana, should be part of the liberation from the acceptance that it would be possible to create change by not confronting those who believe that women are inferior to men.