India Site Visits and Volunteer Trip, Jan. 2010

it will take time, i realize, for me to fully digest the images and text i've just witnessed in the powerpoint images of the volunteer trip to India. i am amazed at the artwork--the tree of life is the perfect symbol, as it reminds us how we all are created as trees, with our feet rooted to the earth and arms able to reach for the heavens. the girls and women i witness in the images, working together and making art, inspire me to continue my own work on my side of the world to try to empower myself and others. i am especially devoted to creating a world where girls and women do not need to live in fear of being exploited, abused, or violated by anyone. this means empowering women but it also means helping to socialize men to perceive women as substantial, significant individual people, and not as sexual objects or commodities or bodies to be used or broken. sad to say, my culture in the US is as mired as ever before in the violent objectification of girls and women through the internet, pop culture, and of course, the porn industry.
the struggle for the dignity of women and girls everywhere takes many forms, and i am grateful to be part of this one. i also see this as a struggle against the global imbalance of wealth that leaves some people so vulnerable to being sold, or "disposable," as Kevin Bales says. to imagine a human as "disposable" is an obscenity and i continue to try to work on my own consumption habits to be sure that i am not contributing to a global economy that enslaves and degrades others so that i can buy cheap things.