Friday Philosophy: testimony

As some of you have probably heard, I’ve been fairly ill for the past week.  I’ll include an update about that at the end of this piece.

But being ill…and it being the end of finals week, I had a difficult time generating a brand new topic.  Where are Bob and Doug when you need them?

So…like Felix…I reached into my bag of tricks and searched around for something to put together for tonight, even if it had to be somewhat hastily.

I remembered that I took some photographs at the end of the April, of the Bloomfield College 2009 observation of the Clothesline Project.

The Clothesline Project started in 1990 on Cape Code.  It has since continued to be presented as testimony against violence against women.  For a little more back story, please visit here.

We have observed it at Bloomfield College.  We’ve been struggling with our campus website all day, which is really annoying since this is supposedly the last day my students could submit final projects…except that the servers they would be submitting them too and/or from have been down.  But if you can get there, if by some miracle it comes back up photographs of past testimonials are available, including the year in which we collaborated on a project with the women of the Mathare Gender Learning Resource Centre in Kenya.

Violence against women knows no national, continental, or cultural barriers, unfortunately.

Besides providing opportunities for students, male (such as the student in the lower center) as well as female, to create their own pieces of testimony, we display the pieces in public.  We like to do that outdoors, where the bright light of sunshine can help disinfect the dirty laundry.  Unfortunately this year they day we scheduled on was a rainy day, so we ended up confined to our student union.  The men playing pool on the tables in the right rear were probably mostly annoyed.  I absolutely do know that that the people working at the Nathan’s at the back left were annoyed.

So the students…and faculty and staff…can create the t-shirts that they think best expresses their thoughts, we cure them and hang them when they are dry.

Oh, bother.  I probably neglected to point out that if you click on any of the photos, a larger version will appear in a separate tab.  Please be my guest.

I’ll plead amateur about both the quality of the photos and the fact that I failed as a photojournalist because I did not transcribe exactly what the shirts said.

But I think people should be able to get the drift.  At least I hope so.  And maybe some people would like to share in someway.  Testimony is good for those who make it and also those who hear it.

I’ve got one more.  On the last day one of our creative art and technology majors picked up a blank shirt and said he would be back with a finished product.  I hope you appreciate it as much as I did.

Credit where it is due:  although I am one of the Women’s Studies faculty, I’m really just there to mostly give my opinions from time to time and whatever help I can.  The motivating forces behind this year’s events were my life partner, Debora Adler and a senior student named Jasmine Vance.  This was pretty much her capstone in sociology, as I understand it.

Spindled and Mutilated Female Her scars were burned deep when she was young and she was told they were her fault Or was she branded when she was older and became mere domestic property Was she even still alive when there finally came a opening for her freedom? –Robyn Elaine Serven –May 8, 2009

I invite you to add your own word-pictures as testimony, if you feel up to it.