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Darfur’s Invisible Women

Published on by Susan Burgess-LentLeave a comment

[I wrote this essay in July 2007 while working for Darfur Peace and Development Organization in North Darfur, Sudan. There I helped the women develop the first Women’s Centers. The latest news from Sudan suggests that Darfur is again becoming the target of genocidal ambitions. Here’s was happened the last time around – and in the same town of Kutum.]

            Her name is Saadia, or Fatiah, or Amena.  In her vividly hued tobe, she is strikingly beautiful, even elegant, amidst the desolation of her new home, a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs). 

            She has lost her father or brother(s) or husband to murder or soldiering. Her home has been torched to ashy ruin.  Violence has driven her from the land she once farmed to feed her family. She hasn’t eaten a normal meal in two or three years. Her children are malnourished. She has watched some of them die from diseases that medical intervention easily could have prevented. And she has been raped.

            The IDP women of Darfur have been primary targets of the genocide that has ravaged the western region of Sudan. It is nearly impossible to overstate their needs in the face of massive violence.

            Like their violated sisters throughout the world, they endure physical injuries, unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, psychological illness, ostracism by their husbands and families, and accusations of adultery.

            An estimated 85% of Darfuri women have been subjected to Female Genital Cutting, making them more vulnerable to injury, AIDS infection and other diseases from sexual assault.

            Most survivors suffer the debilitating effects of rape in silence, isolation and depression.

            Humanitarian groups estimate that tens of thousands of women have been raped. No comprehensive statistics exist. And, as is common in the US, many women do not report these crimes.

            Violence against Darfuri women has produced the most severe crisis in women’s health and human rights in the world today.

            Yet no systematic treatment response been established. Nor have Sudanese women in community-based organizations been prepared, by culture or circumstance, to provide effective rape crisis intervention on the scale required in the camps. Women and their needs remain nearly invisible in the humanitarian and political landscape of the Darfur crisis.

            The long struggle in developed countries to provide assistance to rape victims has produced many effective tools.  Darfur Peace and Development Organization is adapting these tools in a pilot program called the Kassab Women’s Center.

            The Center is being established in phases in Kassab IDP camp near Kuttum in North Darfur. At full deployment, it will offer integrated programs to support women’s protection, family income, and health recovery – both physical and psychological.

            The Solar Cooker program provides locally available materials for construction of low-tech stoves and training in their use – reducing the risk of rape while gathering firewood.

            The Women’s Handcrafts Cooperative gives women the opportunity to create their traditional baskets for sale in the U.S and regionally in Africa

            In the context of addressing household needs, the women receive professional guidance through the thorny terrain of trauma resolution – the “stitch and bitch” model of women’s group problem solving. Reproductive health professionals are part of the team.

            Although the number of potential clients is enormous, we can begin serving only a core group of 200-300 women.  In time, they will be sufficiently enabled and trained to be agents for change — supporting the recovery of their sisters throughout the region.

            In Darfur, logistics challenge every positive initiative. Funding arrives unpredictably. Each element moves forward in baby steps.  However, the operation of the center is fueled by the belief that women are the hope of Darfur.  Without their wisdom and energy, no lasting peace is possible.             

We privileged women of the West have a unique opportunity to help lift our sister in need from sorrow so that they can refashion their lives and their homeland.  It’s a summons we cannot ignore.

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Reporting for Duty, Mam

Published on by Susan Burgess-Lent2 Comments

We’d imagined decades ago that our army of bra-burning feministas had achieved rights for women that were unassailable, correcting a gender imbalance that had festered for centuries.

We have a vote. We get to shatter glass ceilings here and there, as long as we play by the rules. But we live in a country where abortion is banned and women prison inmates are sterilized without consent. Despite fifty+ years of re-stating that birth control is not just a “woman’s issue,” millions of women and girls cannot obtain a simple, effective method of preventing pregnancy without jeopardizing the chemistry of their entire bodies.

Prominent men believe it is their God-ordained right and duty to judge and harass women about the use of their reproductive gift. Rape is a weapon wielded in every community on the planet, often with impunity. Domestic abuse claims thousands of women’s lives and splinters the future of their children. We’ve not gotten far.

I’m on the lucky side of menopause, when neither a monthly choice of toxin-tainted, non-biodegradable “feminine products” nor an ill-timed pregnancy poses a threat to my equilibrium. My 35-year-old mind, however, cannot grasp the slow erosion of my decades-older body. I have succumbed in the war deftly prosecuted by gravity. My silver-white hair, that I happen to like and am too cheap constantly to ”restore” to its original chestnut brown, sometimes feels like public evidence that I have traveled tragically beyond the definition of useful in the Land of the Free.

The salve for this attrition is an evolving understanding of my own genius. I refer not to the high-IQ sort of genius, but the grace of knowing –  the wisdom to act on my purpose. I prefer to believe that my life is no accident. I’ve weathered the slaughter of every sacred cow I’d once naively admired – the largess of government, the virtue of the world’s purported governing body, the public service ethos of media – and wrestled my outrage into a serviceable toolkit.

Relative to the 700 million women and their children living in egregious poverty, I live a privileged life, as do most Americans who are not yet homeless. I resist the delusion, enforced by all the subliminally seductive media chatter, that our private lives present all the drama we need to know or care about.

The strategic plan is clear to me. I’ve laid it out in the mission of Women’s Centers International. We reach out to women least equipped with the tools – education, skills and access to capital – to fight for their futures. They’ve learned to survive in formidable environment – urban slums and refugee camps. We nurture and focus their resilience and ingenuity with a new toolkit for growth. It’s working at Baraka Center in Nairobi. It will work in every environment where women are challenged to the breaking point.

The tactical maneuvers take shape as we deploy further afield.

For starters, I’d like to make a case for accurate language in women’s programs. Gender-Based Violence (GBV) crept in as a standard label for all things related to violence against women among the international aid community. What so-called ‘developed’ country uses such obfuscation of the real deal? We mean sexual violence.

Reproductive health – another cumbersome phrase. Contraception (including abortion), access to competent pre-natal care, and reduction of egregious rates of maternal mortality indeed represent vast battle lines in many cultures, including our own, but this phrase does no service to the broader issue of freedom from fear that is the daily reality of millions of females. ‘Body rights’ nails the point.

It’s easy but short sighted to regard men as the enemy. Many of the most malevolent warrior men surely deserve to be kicked to the curb in rush hour traffic. Still, we women have raised them. Many of their fathers have not. This remains the fundamental wound to heal.. Lots of territory must be re-charted and reclaimed. The question grows more urgent: How many women can rally? What sort of crew is on deck to steer the legacy of our era? 

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Comms, Cursively

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Can you remember the last time you received a handwritten letter or card from someone you care about? A sadly rare occurrence these days. It’s troubling evidence that we’re losing not only personal paper correspondence but the very skill of cursive writing. I remember learning cursive in fourth grade from a very patient nun, Sister Virginia Mary, who deployed an inspiring talent for penwomanship. For a while, I did my best to preserve that skill when called upon to produce test answers or essays, long before computers entered the fray.

As an adult, I allowed my cursive writing to deteriorate because I always was ‘busy’ and evidently felt I could not spare the extra seconds to render the letters with some grace. I’ve returned to taking that extra moment with notes to people I love. The tactility of handwriting lends itself to quiet disclosure, to vulnerability and tenderness, to humor and playfulness. It’s reviewable and thus ‘hotter’ than the spoken word. The habit makes me happy.

In all written communication we reach for human connection, but each delivery medium offers a different texture of experience. Light years beyond the speed of a handwritten and posted note or letter, there’s email. We get rapid delivery of epistles whether or not the parties are viewing their emails at the same time. My prime directives: Never ever send an email in anger. Beware of cc’s.

Then we’ve got speed-of-light comms: texting. I’d resisted texting for a while, preferring to sort out life logistics with a conversation rather than five to six back-and-forths on my phone screen. Texting bullied its way into common use, like saturation bombing, with cloying iconography. Do symbols convey emotions better than words? I still prefer simple one- or two- line information bullets, mainly because I never got the hang of typing on my phone’s tiny keyboard with more than one finger. (I know!)

Uneasily, I await awaiting speed-of-thought comms, something like the Vulcan ‘mind-meld’, that dispels interpersonal confusion, even fosters empathy, at least until our monkey-minds swirl it away with spontaneous new thoughts and feelings. At least this connection would relieve me of illiteracy in the scores of non-English languages I’ve not learned.

A ‘meld’ still would be second best to a finely handwritten letter, preferably subtly scented.   On inhale you conjure a full-blooded memory of the loved sender. Truly those comms soothe the soul. They remain reassuringly accessible – at least until the Post Office goes the way of the drive-in movie. Mittere litteras.

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Women’s Equality When?

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Early this ‘Women’s History’ month,  I collected bits of news and opinion, most from Devex News, that kinda slapped me, for a minute, out of my inveterate optimism.  To wit:

  • U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said this week that global progress on women’s rights is “vanishing before our eyes” and that gender equality will take another three centuries to achieve. “Gender equality is growing more distant,” he warned.
  • This week, after a winter break, Afghanistan reopened its universities — without women.
  • Iran is planning to execute those who protested the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, battered to death by the morality police for wearing her headscarf the wrong way.
  • And in the United States, women’s self-determination to control their bodies has turned back decades.
  • A recent World Bank report found that young women entering the labor force right now will likely retire before realizing the same rights as men in many countries and that the pace of reforms on women’s rights has dropped to a 20-year low.
  • Although workplace opportunities have undoubtedly improved since World War II, a new study found that in the development world, women have held just 12% of the top jobs at 33 of the biggest multilateral institutions. Of 382 leaders since 1945, only 47 were women — and the World Bank and United Nations have never had a woman at the top.
  • Women account for nearly 70% of the global health workforce, yet men still dominate positions of power.
  • And this about data collection:
    “So much of the research that our projects and our programs are built upon is informed by male respondents speaking on behalf of humanity,” said Mara Bolis, a gender justice advocate. She believes the ‘default to male’ approach undermines global development outcomes and hurts women.
    Without gender-disaggregated data, which distinguishes between men and women, women and girls are effectively invisible.  Collecting information about women’s lived experience from women is how governments and service organizations understand and meet their needs.

Building data collection capacity is a major focus of WCI’s expanding network of Women’s Centers.

In terms of the other dismal bullet point inequalities, we have to double down on investment in our Centers. That’s where thousands of women can step into their unique power. That’s were grassroots power ripples into the gender equality we need for humankind to survive. Yeah, it’s that serious.

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Immobilized or Lost?

Published on by Susan Burgess-LentLeave a comment

Why are we – as cultures and societies – so disinclined to pursue and so slow to deliver what is good for women?

Is a woman’s capacity to create a human so terrifying that we cannot rally ourselves to end the violence and diminishment that have characterized the circumstances of women for millennia? 

If men had the ability to gestate and deliver human babies, wouldn’t reproductive privilege be enshrined in our laws and institutions. Would there not be world class maternity care, generous parental leave, well subsidized, convenient, professional childcare.

Would not abortion be legal, easy to access, and  free?

Would not rape and domestic violence be treated as preventable, healable afflictions for perpetrator and survivor?

We denizens of half the sky are the answer. The rub is that too many of us are either caged by privilege (immobilized) or stranded in destitution (lost).  Both groups – and all the company living in between – can drive their own beautiful ripples into sea change.  We’ve got a job to do together.

Our contribution to the effort:  Women’s Centers International. Come ripple with us! Here’s how.

From Miriam A., Nairobi, Kenya

“Baraka Women Center became the springboard of my second chance in life. I can’t believe what is happening to me and my baby girl! I am only counting blessings one by one from the day I joined Baraka Women Center. KEEP THE CANDLE LIT FOR THE VOICELESS GIRLS AND WOMEN!”

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Revolution Rising on Cat’s Feet

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Our busy lives, our much-loved comforts, seem to invite amnesia or indifference or denial about the fact that women everywhere are in the fight of their lives, as we always have been.

The biggest battles – for control of our bodies and freedom from sexual violence – are a long way from won. And so we come to the impact of a network to advance women’s power.

I often ponder the transformations occurring among the members of  Baraka Women’s Center. When I speak with them or read their stories, their rising hope is palpable. They’ve found a place with the tools that make shiny possibilities come within their grasp.

The guidance offered in the Entrepreneur and Leadership Program is one of the most significant contributions, helping women find their core of self-worth – lost or never found in the fray of surviving extreme poverty.

Reminding a woman that she has intrinsic value is a subtle and continuous process. Little things add up: a warm welcome to a place where women gather, a clear message that ‘you belong’, and spontaneous connections with other women working to reshape their lives.

That’s what a Women’s Center does best.

Women’s Centers International now is supporting eight Women’s Centers: six in African, one in the Middle East, and one in California USA. We ‘call in’ those with not far to fall: women excluded from society’s wealth, women who grew up in poverty or were downed by a twist of violence, who subsist on starchy foods, wear second-hand clothes, and love their kids so much they have to scramble too damn hard to keep them fed and clothed and educated. That’s where the revolution rises on cat’s feet.

There’s nothing noble in brutal alchemy of poverty. There is, however, great power in poverty-honed instincts for survival. Those who possess them belong in the ’situation room’ as women resuscitate and reshape a kinder world. Yeah, we get clean up duty. But we’re the ones with the best and fiercest instinct to make life better.

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Philanthro-Speak

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Any conscious human can be a philanthropist, defined as “a person who seeks to promote the welfare of others.”  In my experience, some of the most generous people have been those with virtually nothing.  The mushrooming selection of ‘causes’ challenge those with “a little something to give”  to find one that resonates with their personal ethos of social responsibility.

The most effective helping organization tend to be firmly rooted in a community. These small organizations, usually with limited cash, create some of the most effective ways to serve people in need. Their budgets, duly planned and carefully calculated, often remain wish lists, forcing continual decisions about what can’t be done.

Philanthro-humanitarian finance is a sprawling realm of big institutions rubbing bellies with other big institutions. In this complex transnational web, egregious amounts of money sometimes go missing, clever accounting hides waste and losses, sexual harassment allegation rise and fall, and still The Club – long-established foundations, government institutions, and international aid organizations – The Club churns along.

One of the best insights into this phenomenon came from a black woman philanthropist: If after 20 years, you [an international humanitarian organization] are still here [in a developing country], I have to wonder what you’ve accomplished.

These long-term ‘occupations’ suggest that many humanitarian INGOs have not equipped locals to run their own show. No question it’s a tricky calculus. Knowledge transfers are always received through cultural filters. Assessing the long-term impact of training one woman to earn income that elevates her life requires a capacity to monitor her progress over time. Expectations of impact presuppose that data technology is available, training have occurred, and the system is being utilized effectively. These necessary costs are seldom considered.

The language accompanying some new grant opportunities appears to be rooted in thorough unfamiliarity with realities on the ground in favor of making ‘impact investors’ comfortable. To wit: “Catalytic capital seeks to address capital gaps, i.e., investment opportunities that mainstream commercial investment markets fail to reach, partially or fully, because they do not fit the risk-return profile or other conventional investment norms and expectations that such markets require.”

Increasingly, foundations accept proposals ‘by invitation only.’ I’m guessing they have search mechanisms to determine ‘whom to invite’ but firewalls usually prevent direct contact that might encourage an invitation.

Online proposals often contain tediously repetitive questions, evidently created and formatted by gremlins, and require days to complete. It’s rare to find a grant exceeding $50,000, or to receive a rejection that does not cite ‘hundreds of applicants.’

Melinda Gates, ever refining her message, has said: “The agenda of our lifetime is making sure that women can take their full power in society.” In response, one Black woman CEO responded: “…then why do funders and major donors still not see that we are worthy of sustained, significant investment?” I’m sayin’!

Women’s Centers Network locations

I had believed Women’s Centers International (WCI) would (and still may) draw the interest of major funders. That would indeed spare the accustomed bootstrapping to achieve baby steps forward.  So far in my extensive outreach, stonewalling has been a usual response. For an old woman in a hurry, that’s pitifully suboptimal. Hence, WCI’s trickle-up approach.

In 2022,  WCI’s network grew organically from international connections sustained over many years. We’re nurturing the development and/or operation of six Women’s Centers (see map; does not include Oakland Women’s Center USA), serving war-displaced women, widows, survivors of violence, young single moms and of course, their children – because as the moms go, so go the children.

WCI helps local organizations build their capacity to assist the women of their community. We advise, send what funding we can, and trust their commitment to produce the best outcomes. With an investment of $50,000 – $75,000, one Center in a not-wealthy country can build and thrive for a year. Costs increase by a factor of three for Centers in wealthier countries. In all cases, a modest annual commitment of capital produces extraordinary impact. Imagine a fully funded global network!

I’ve long envisioned WCI as a foundation, investing only in Women’s Center start-ups and operating costs. I believe this to be a legacy-defining channel for achieving women’s equality. 

This is my open call to movers and shakers – join us.

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laNGɡwij

Published on by Susan Burgess-LentLeave a comment

At a recent meeting, I was introduced to the term rematriation. Hearing the word sparked the further realization of how steeped in patriarchal terms our language is. The backlash resonates. Only fairly recently we’ve seen the inclusion of a gender designation after name on various online platforms. However that may solve somebody’s issues, I don’t need to know – and why would anyone insist I do?

We’ve accepted a culture of aggressive winning, with attendant violent words and phrases: conquer, annihilate, slap down, beat, vanquish. Sports in particular relish this vocabulary. There are no friendly competitions.  Too much money and power at stake.

Also consider the rampant use of negatives, from the quotidian “Don’t forget”, “Don’t be late” to the more chastising: “Don’t quit” or “Never Leave a Fallen Comrade Behind”.  Our brains withdraw from warnings and shaming but tend to hold on to positive input like “Stay Safe” and “I know you’ll do your best” and “Bring everyone home.” See Woman Warrior Code.

It’s a life practice to examine our words. They have enormous power. Wielding that power for better or for worse is our choice.

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Buzzword: Girls

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I love girls.  I used to be one. It was a time not particularly festooned with lovely experiences, but one thing that defined it: the presence or absence of mom. The role of adult women in shaping girls’ lives can never be understated.

In the non-profit and philanthropic universe, ‘Girls’ has become the latest buzzword.  Do we have a shared definition of the word ‘girl’? For me, a girl is a female age 3 through 12 years. A child. Do current trends indicate teens should now be included? Consider also the expression ‘one of the girls’, usually referring to adult females and used either pejoratively or affectionately depending on source.

This – and society’s – often fawning obsession with youth ignores certain realities.

  • Girls don’t know what they don’t know. 

They haven’t lived very long but may have seen more than a child should. That doesn’t infer understanding. If they’re smart, they find answers from women –  mothers, grandmothers, aunties, older sisters – with wisdom based on lived experience. Women’s Centers uniquely serve this role.

Mom sewing African bags with young daughter at Baraka Women’s Center, Nairobi, Kenya
  • Girlhood delivers different experiences depending on culture.

These tender years ideally would be the realm of unimpeded curiosity, of playful explorations that reveal innate gifts, and of gilded dreams to use those talents. In less privileged places, girlhood is a forced march, a time of repression, with limited opportunities for the flowering of femaleness.

  • Expectations for girls  to assume adult responsibilities can hobble or destroy aspirations.

While some girls possess natural instincts for leadership and activism, most must be guided by the hackles that rise over injustices they see or experience. Their leadership skills emerge with compassionate and patient coaching.

‘Young females’ doesn’t fall easily from the lips, but ‘youth’ offers less of an ambiguous pigeonhole than ‘girls.’  I love the idea of promoting and celebrating girls, especially feisty ones. But we gain little by seeing them as standard bearers for the gender justice struggle that requires the power of women’s wisdom.

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Reparations and Absolution

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Anyone with even an introductory understanding of the egregious predations of racism in American culture would conclude that we have a collective duty to engage – now – in the repair effort.

Financial reparations will acknowledge and redress the Black/White wealth gap – the denial of opportunity, the theft of assets – beginning with slavery through succeeding generations of Black families. The vast scale of the debt puts it squarely in the domain of the federal government.

For many Americans, the challenge is to know how to contribute to ensuring payment of that long-overdue bill within a movement riven by militant disputes.

Closure is another matter. After four centuries of relentless systemic marginalization of Black people, our society cannot pretend that closure can be fully achieved.

In the face of such profound damage, absolution may neither be given – nor received.

Perhaps closure is not about forgiveness.

It’s about transforming our relationships going forward.

It’s about welcoming those connections we can have, where trust is the fragile bridge we all must cross, where the paths that open are maintained with humility and courage.

It’s about allowing our knee-jerk attitudes to be laid bare, and taking our lumps, and moving ahead wiser and more loving for the effort.

As with so many critical human endeavors, women can and should lead.  The bond we share derives from withstanding the millennia-old subtle, overt, violent, disorienting, undermining, objectifying ways of men. The cultural encoding exempts no one.

Women are uniquely capable of achieving the scale and depth of such a cultural change. But only if we gather ourselves together. Only if we agree that no more time will pass without validating our lived and spoken truths in the endeavors we jointly create.

We can sit back and wait for the haters to die off, or we can seize the opportunities conferred by joining and elevating a sisterhood. Therein lies our power. It’s high time to gear up.

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Howl We Do It Revisited

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The Howl We Do It / Full Moon Sisters Movement has not caught on (yet), probably a tad too visceral in 2012. But here I am, ten years later, revisiting the idea because it’s in-your-face enough to gain traction.

Excerpts from the first blog post in 2012:

A young mother in Congo, the “rape capital of the world,” offers a detailed account of a horrendous gang rape in front of her husband, who is then murdered. The trauma ends her early-term pregnancy. Her legs are shot so many times that one must be amputated.

This woman, made a penniless beggar by the horrific assault, painfully tells her story with no likelihood of receiving emotional support. A note at the end of the article states that her “identity has been concealed for security reasons and because rape carries strong social stigma in the region.”1 As if there is a place in world where rape does not carry a stigma.

And, from around the world, statistics that vary widely from source to source:

  • A woman born in South Africa stands a greater chance of being raped than of learning how to read.
  • A UK study concluded that between 75 and 95 percent of rape crimes are never reported to the police.
  • In the US, victims 12-years and older survived a total of 125,910 rapes or sexual assaults. (2009 statistics). At least 50% of victims never report to police.

My question: Why haven’t women taken to the streets, raging en masse to end the trauma meted out to them and their sisters around the world?  How could we possibly be cowed into silence?

It makes me wanna howl. I tried it one night. Alone on the rooftop, I ended up whimpering quietly like a wounded pup. To be honest, it scared me to summon that primal noise.  But, when I got with a few other women, at night, at the beach, we could let go. Out there, maybe nobody heard us but we could hear ourselves growling, yipping, barking and howling our pain, our protest. It felt like releasing a grievance that, unspoken, would eventually main my soul.

Think of The Howl as pro-woman activism, as public theater, a compelling aural reminder that women will not suffer quietly the violence inflicted on them. 

The full moon, the symbol of women’s rhythms, is the perfect occasion for The Howl.

Imagine the reaction of urban (or suburban or rural) neighbors to a few minutes of women howling every time the full moon rises. Then, The Howl ripples through time zones around the world.

The first couple times, folks are wondering WTF and perhaps feeling a little nervous. We state our message clearly through public media and blogs and social media and even on street corners: The Full Moon Sisters – a global movement – howls every full moon around the planet until the violence and rape and laws controlling our bodies stop. 

Today – Ten years later:

Howling sounds threatening if you mean it to.  And that’s good, considering the egregious violations imposed on women. Howling rises from the locked room in women’s hearts, the place where we are worthless. Howling asserts we are more valuable than all the shit we endure.

It’s not over when we lose, it’s over when we quit. New tactics required.

Are we ready yet?  Howl We Do It!

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The Obvious in Detail

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I often make the mistake of believing that something obvious to me is just as obvious to others, especially those working in the field of women’s equality. But often the obvious is missed. The Women’s Centers Model is a prime example.

How to describe the enormous impact of Baraka Women’s Center (BWC)? Nearly 1,200 women are members.  If you read any of the Success Stories, you’ll understand how vital BWC is to poorest women living in Nairobi’s slums.

Baraka Women’s will celebrate its tenth anniversary in October. Teresia Njora, the Center Director, Wanjiru Ngigi, Program Director, and their 10-member Board of Directors – all of them are on fire to meet the challenges so many women bring to the Center. They are uniquely gifted with shauku (passion) for healing and elevating the young single moms, the undereducated older moms, the struggling elders. They see needs and do as much as they can to ease a woman’s crisis. The crises are many: living on the streets with children, parenting at age 15, addiction, fleeing domestic violence, scratching for capital to boost a small business, unemployed with no marketable skills.

Poverty’s effect is universally the same:  chronic trauma from the unrelieved dismantling of self-worth and aspirations. When a Women’s Centers brings resources to ease the struggle, a woman can make her first leap to the “other side” – the place where she has what she needs with a sense of control over her choices.

BWC deserves to thrive.  To see what the Center is and does watch:  Amazing Place.

Women’s Centers should be opened and sustained in every major city, in every refugee camp, in every rural area where women’s education, health, livelihoods, and protection have not been considered, much less nurtured.

After years of effort, I’ve detailed the process in The Women’s Centers Guide: Best Practices for Creating and Sustaining a Women’s Resource Center

WCI is building an affiliate network of community-based organizations using the Guide as their roadmap. The Guide will be available also to large NGOs interested in elegantly integrating gender in global programming. 

On June 30th, find it here: Women’s Centers International 

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Brown and Beige

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Some tribes in Sudan have skin the color of deep night.  Some Asians and Scandinavians have skin the color of pure porcelain.  But the vast majority of humans are wrapped in an epidermis that runs an amazing gamut of hues from brown to beige.

We have no choice in the matter of our color. It is our inheritance, no more alterable, except for the travesty of skin bleaching, than our ancestral lines, all of which trace back to the first humans in Africa.

Our cultures enforce attitudes about skin color. In her extraordinary book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson argues convincingly that this identifier is arbitrary. Nonetheless, It defines whether our lives are privileged or marginalized.

One identifier transcends – or could transcend – these limits.  Throughout history, most women have been relegated to “second class” status. In our deepest selves, we share doubts and fears about our value and adequacy, despite all the evidence of women’s innate and unique power. Most of us share some of the traumas of rape, domestic violence, ill treatment at the hands of health providers, barriers of abortion, and disparities of pay. We know the prevalence and persistence of these traumas across all female-dom. Our dark side – competitiveness  – has been no small part of keeping us stuck. Women of all colors have much more to gain as allies, but too often that seems a bridge too far.

In  their book From Here to Equality, Kirsten Mullen and William (Sandy )Darity Jr. set forth in harrowing detail all the missed opportunities to define and instill racial equality in America, particularly after the Civil War. The endless predations arising from white supremacist thinking are unforgiveable, and they persist.

We’ve made glacial progress in refuting American’s original sin of slavery. Action for reparations – achieving acknowledgement, redress, and closure – is the only way we can salvage a sane society.

In my life, as a beige woman, I find myself standing back as I watch the discovery and consolidation of power among my brown sisters. It’s damn well time. Their rejection of alliances is, however, often grieves me.

I’m committed to finding my place in achieving women’s ascendance, most particularly, for women of color. A quote from a forgotten source is one touchstone:  “Hate your oppressors and you’ll be forever enslaved by your memories.” But what is more  difficult: forgiving or forgetting?

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A Survivor’s Guide to Depression: Passage Two – Grey Tide

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In the Company of Millions

SSRIs are the most widely prescribed antidepressants in many countries. with sales of $14.3 billion in 2019, expected to reach $15.98 Bn by 2023.

Depression is a notoriously expensive disease, costing society $210 billion per year, according to new data published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Depression is an epidemic with approximately one in six Americans on antidepressants,  and more than a quarter of those long-term users,

It’s not reassuring to know I have lots of company.

The Grey Tide Wanes and Waxes

Thanks to pharmaceuticals, I’ve had remarkable runs of freedom from serious or lengthy depressive episodes – passages I refer to as ‘donating my brain to science.’

For the past ninety-five days – for the first time in nearly thirty years – I’ve been taking no medication for depression. Stopped cold. Since I hate most kinds of drugs, this was liberation. A few situational episodes of feeling defeated rolled in, but that’s part of the challenge of this passage in my life. For most of these days, my spirit has been doing well. I fancied that my brain had rebooted, free from chemical interference. Of course, as with all experiments, one has to wait for the other shoe to fall.

I used to think of it as ‘the abyss,’ a chaos of black despair. I’ve renamed it ‘the black tide’ and I’m now swimming in the grey part of that tide. My shine’s gone dim. I hunger to be back the sun, fully engaged with all the strange and wonderful and confounding ideas and people and events that life serves up. I’m looking at all sorts of alternatives to return to stable ground.

It amazes me how little science can tell us about brain function. Psychiatrists and psychologists have evidence only of trends in effectiveness and possible side-effects, not that any individual will have these experiences or if, in fact, any given drug will have good outcome without too many bad side effects. We may be years away from knowing the best way forward in the treatment of depression.

In the meantime, drugs that tinker with neurochemistry must stand in as the best-guess response to psychological distress. We accept the little tortures of trial-and-error:  which drug, at what dose?  Sometimes a med does well by you. But if your brain is hardwired for ‘instability,’ are these work-arounds the only option? 

Admitting that depression claims occasional dominion over my life still feels a bit like copping to a secret flaw. How do we make Depression, and mental health in general, part of the wider social conversation – or at least the family conversation?  For so many, depression is the elephant on the coffee table of life. You, dear reader, or someone you love, is needing that elephant to stand down. This is my small contribution to that conversation. Comments welcome.

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How We Live Now

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When I make the time to reflect on the kind of living that surrounds me, forebodings creep forward about our collective future. Noticing and commenting is a kind of resistance to what doesn’t work. Here are a few callouts.

Prancing Pronouns

The custom (when and where did it start?) of including a gender designation after your name seems to be tightening its throat-hold on Zoom and other video conferencing platforms.

Why would one feel the need to advertise their gender identity?  Why would anyone care to know?  It’s become one more socially ‘correct’ but useless affectation.

Self-induced Deafness

Our body’s auditory apparatus delivers delights and aggravation.  For me, the delights include birdsong and odd, sometimes hilarious, bits of conversation by passers-by. City-life aggravations abound:  infernal leaf-blowers, jackhammers, garbage trucks, ranters. Often these aural intrusions are mercifully short-lived. Part of the package.

Our hearing also delivers early warnings with survival implications. Who might be approaching from behind? Who might be calling for help?  Why would anyone impose relative deafness on themselves walking in an urban environment?  Earbuds worn in public disable the user. Possibly this is an inadvertent technological instrument for clearing the gene pool.

I Won’t Know You

When I walk my neighborhood, I usually greet passersby – a simple “Hi” or ‘Good Morning.’ In most cases, people look away or do not respond.  Sometimes this a result of the earbud phenomenon. Other times it’s a human whose mind it stranded elsewhere.

We are drifting a long way from vaunted notions of – or aspirations to – community when acknowledging another’s presence is too much effort.  We’ll remain isolated strangers until we make even the smallest efforts to connect.

Urban Trash Pit

The City of Oakland (California), where I live, gets trashier by the day. People can be standing a few steps from a trash bin and still drop their fast-food and packaging on the sidewalk or street or park. Entire streets are festooned with human detritus. Our central-city lake, a major bird habitat, reveals, especially at low tide, all sorts of careless leavings, from scooters and clothing to the ubiquitous plastic bottles and beer cans.

Even primitive societies employed designated trash pits. How have we managed to devolve to this level of sprawling trashiness?

Oh, and graffiti: Most of it looks like miserable artless attempts to say “Look at me! I’m here.” How do we motivate taggers to consider more productive direction for their inclinations with paint?

Our Human Tribe

These details of living add up to either a buy-in or a rejection of community. Though I admit to liking humans less and less, I recognize that we are ‘stuck’ with each other. We have to live with the living.

We can choose grace and accountability in strengthening our human tribe. Those qualities prefigure intelligent responses to events we carelessly believe won’t happen here:  food and water shortages, riots, looting, and war. With Trump and the pandemic, we got a scary preview. We have to be and do better. It’ll work if women lead the way.

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Inertial Navigation for Life

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Building a life in early 21st century seems to come down to the on-board navigation systems we inherit via a series of dice rolls:  the chance of surviving our birth, in the place of our birth, in the technology created in the last 100 years. Most of us had no conscious choice regarding any of these, yet they determine the opportunities and obstacles that make us who we become.

Cultural traditions, the wisdom, pain, courage, and stupidity of all previous generations of our bloodline make up our inheritance. They enhance or limit our exposure to education and income-generating know-how. They determine where we live, how healthy we are, and if we feel safe in our neighborhood.

A life navigation system is what we grasp for. Consider the Inertial Navigation System (INS) used in the maritime and aviation worlds. INS uses a computer integrated with motion sensors and rotation sensors to calculate continuously the position, orientation, and velocity of moving objects.

Think of our personal INS components as Mind (the thought integrator), Body (motion/cues sensors), and Spirit (rotation (upset) sensor.)  All of them give us the opportunity to make sense of the people and opportunities moving, at overwhelm speed, through our lives. We’ve got a lot to track. If our baseline INS was set among abusive, drug dependent, angry, depressed people, we’ve got a very limited view of human potential and a major navigation disability to dig out of. The earlier, the better. Because, if we carry the INS analogy a step further, the really scary part shows up.

INS uses dead reckoning – a process of estimating the value of any variable relative to an earlier value, then adding whatever changes have occurred in the meantime.  The rub: errors are cumulative. 

The process of setting a child’s so-called ‘moral compass’– the values by which to live – is easily neglected and highly susceptible to twisted malpractice based on their parents’ crappy dice rolls.

Parenting is about teaching, in word and deed, a style of interpersonal behavior that enables a child to succeed in this world, and in the world we wish to create for them out of the current mess.

Fairness or injustice; compassion or indifference, generosity or greed; humility or arrogance, courage to change or fear of change. Never easy values to sort out. But what of those who never got well ‘set’ in the early goings?

If by age of five, a child has experienced only chaotic, negative relationships – and thus has seldom been assured of their intrinsic worth as a human being – their estimate of ‘position’ in the world has accumulated an egregious number of errors.

How do we course correct? We direct our best energy and resources to the elevation of women, particularly those denied early access to adept parenting and with a keen ability to survive.

Women will always be the best change agents. We know how to clean up a mess. And we know how to ennoble love.

These have always been the guiding values of Women’s Centers.

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Innate Beauty

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“We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom.  We are responsible for ourselves and our deeds or misdeeds in our time and in our own space and will be judged accordingly by succeeding generations.” Isabel Wilkerson Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

Ultimately we are all bozos on the same bus, chained and enveloped by values and beliefs we inherited at birth.  We had no say in the early goings of our life, but we were deeply imprinted with messages that pierced our sense of self. 

Ms Wilkerson writes that In a world without caste, being male or female, light or dark, immigrant or native born, would have no bearing on what anyone was perceived as being capable of.  I was astounded by her adept and moving interweave of stories, most of which wrenched my soul.  Her insights offer incentive to engage in vibrantly re-crafting of how we see and relate to our fellow humans.

The experience of being ‘woke’ both terrifies and liberates. It requires becoming, daily, a devoted seeker of understanding. Rather than calling people out, we learn how to welcome them into our presence in this world. Inevitably that leads beyond acceptance to a kind of love.

Understanding our unique purpose, a place at which we feel no threat, disposes us to empathy, a catalyst for ‘woke.’  The courage to take that path we means we manifest the innate beauty of living together on an astonishing planet.

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Imagine My Surprise!

Published on by Susan Burgess-Lent2 Comments

Fifteen years ago, I worked with a young woman named Fatiah in Darfur, Sudan. In a simple statement1, she revealed to me my life’s purpose.  Since then, I have understood, with increasing clarity and urgency, the value of Women’s Centers.

The seeds I’ve planted and vigorously tended have taken root in at least two places in Sudan (a third failed due to internal squabbling), and at the ‘mothership’ in Nairobi Kenya, Baraka Women’s Center. My efforts in Oakland, CA died prematurely because the money stopped flowing. But the women’s needs never did. The pandemic deepened them. My goal is to reopen Oakland Women’s Center within four months.

Of course these years-long efforts have not been mine alone. Many remarkable allies have stepped up. Only one possessed the means and commitment to deliver serious money (water for the seeds). God bless Grant Williams.

The tradition of women gathering for mutual support spans millennia. The Women’s Center Model provides a holistic application of that tradition in environments where Conflict, and its evil twin Poverty, are newly introduced or painfully endemic.

I believe the Women’s Centers Model will revolutionize humanitarian assistance to refugees and internally displaced people.  I’m convinced that most urban destitution would reverse at a steady pace with the establishment of Women’s Centers. Every city deserves at least one. That’s because women are the best movers and shakers when it comes to community transformation.

But we women cannot do it if we find no relief from the burdens of being born females. First we must rise from deep craters of internalized insignificance, insane taboos, virulent restrictions, predatory marketing, and soul-depleting violence.

We do that best when we gather in a safe place.

We do that best when key resources– previously denied– are brought to our place.

We do that best when we’re seen and treated as complex beings with vast capacity for healing and creativity.

We do that best when our unique kinds of leadership are given full rein.

A Women’s Center is the ‘base camp’ for that redemption to happen.

Tony Benn, a now-deceased UK Member of Parliament, once opined: “It’s the same each time with progress;  first they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.” 

My shock at the slow uptake of Women’s Center Model has exceeded my own imagining.  Why is this surpassingly elegant Model dismissed without comment by major foundations, international humanitarian organizations, and even (especially!) women’s funding networks?

“It’s the same each time with progress: first they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.” 

After fifteen years, I believe I’ve arrived at ‘dangerous.’ Surely poor women, especially those of color, who will rise to kick ass through engagement with a Women’s Center, qualify as ‘dangerous.’ A Women’s Center would be a lot less messy way forward than howling riots in the streets. If humanity is to thrive, to say nothing of survive, they must come into their full power.

I’m inescapably aware that my stamina and ‘time remaining’ in this life is spooling out. I’d be ecstatic to see the full flowering of the Women’s Centers Model: the global network!  A Movement of undeniable authority and joy.  If I’m not blessed with that experience, I will leave behind the full instruction manual.  The young ones can continue the forward surge, adding their unique grace notes to an indomitable design.

___________________

I In answer to my question “What will you do, inshallah, when you leave [Kassab Women’s Center in North Darfur] and go home?” She said:  “We will build Women’s Centers.”

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Invisible Maze Runners

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To be snared in the social services system is ‘punishment by process’ in a machine that quit working long before the crush of the pandemic. Being a client usually means you are old, disabled, or chronically poor.  God help you if all three.

I’ve been devoting some energy to assisting a couple of women who had been members of Oakland Women’s Center.  Georgia (not her real name) used to weigh over 300 pounds. A stomach-stapling procedure has been instrumental in losing about 200 pounds, all the while producing various bleeding and pain that put her in the hospital more than a dozen times.

She’s been homeless, surrounded by abusive men and women, druggies and 5150s.

She’s living temporarily in a strange half-way hotel where stuff gets stolen, and people die in their beds. After many years of grief-filled homelessness, she is ready for – working for – placement in low-income housing. The paperwork is onerous and threatening in tone. She needs it to work out.  Desperately.

And then there’s Tina (not her real name), a professional caregiver whose previous work environments generated enough stress to put her in the hospital with a stroke on Christmas Eve two years ago. She lost 80% of her vision. Since then she has been homeless periodically and on SSDI.  She is not eligible for food stamps. By the end of each month, she struggles through a ‘hunger week’ when there’s nothing left to buy food before the next benefit arrives. She wants to work, but first she has to learn how to live blind. Training for admission to blind school delivered her an instructor who verbally abued her for not being quick on the keyboard.  She freely admits that she’s not computer fluent; being blind makes another mountain to climb.

Medicare has not been helpful in providing info about local health care providers. Tina must take a number of meds which are not covered. Recently, her Direct Express card (into which her monthly benefit are transferred), was charged for a set of meds.  Alarmed, she called Direct Express to stop the charge. They cancelled her card and sent a new one – to a post office box in a town where’ she’s never lived and at a charge of $13.50  (a couple days food if she’s lucky).  Her benefits come at the beginning of the month. Until the second new card arrives (in 3-10 business days) she has no cash. Nada.

I’ve wondered if some people just draw bad luck. But then I realized that these women share a certain vulnerability. Their common denominator is poverty. And most government benefits enforce that poverty. Solutions?  Is anyone looking at how to revamp the complex maze of ‘entitlements.’ The fate of the poor remains invisible until we reset the way they are ‘helped.’

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On Being a Woman Elder

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This year as of 29 July, I will have inhabited this earth and sky and seas for 70 years. I’ve led an adventurous life that’s produced books full of stories. 

I remember when personal computers were new and exciting technology.

I’ve created a home in at least fifteen different neighborhoods of the San Francisco Bay Area and in Washington, DC.

I’ve traveled throughout Europe and Scandinavia. Italy seduced my soul. Four African countries – Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, and Rwanda – are lodged indelibly in my mind and heart.

SBL waiting for a ride at Kutum airstrip, North Darfur, Sudan 2009

In my lifetime,  sixteen genocides have desecrated the human landscape – after we’d solemnly promised ‘never again.’ I studied in depth only two of these cataclysms: Rwanda and Sudan. Two was more than enough exposure to the darkest human impulses that have cost the planet nearly 10 million souls.

Blooming late, I created and manage an organization, Women’s Centers International,  from my heart’s mandate to help unleash the power of all women.  Our biggest battles are yet to be won: control of our own bodies, freedom from sexual violence, parity in pay, and elimination of exploitative images in the media.

The revolt worth supporting is rising among those with not far to fall: the poor. Women who grew up that way or were downed by a twist of fate, who subsist on starchy foods in second-hand clothes and love their kids and scramble too damn hard to keep them fed and clothed and educated.

There’s nothing noble in poverty. There is, however, great power in poverty-honed instincts for survival. 

I’ve become a woman in a hurry with a lot to do in much less time than I’ve already lived. Curiosity drives me. I know very quickly when I’m with someone whose energy inspires exuberance.

I despise the word ‘senior.’  I plan never to be a ‘retiree.’  I’m an Elder, a designation that implies wisdom; it’s what comes of surviving long and well enough.

Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, I remain optimistic about our collective ability to rescue our world from the mess we’ve created.

I know that acknowledging people when they do well can transform a day. 

I know our world adores youth. And I am not immune to the siren call of ‘stuff you can do if you have endless energy.” But I’m at the juncture that points toward mining the inner treasures.

A legacy requires a lifetime to build. I hope mine will endure.

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Taming the Beast of Poverty

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Poverty preys on the human soul.  Its predations are hard to understand fully without having experienced destitution.  The most pernicious damage is the erosion of hope – the belief that opportunities come not to oneself but to others.

Beneath hopelessness dwells a kind of psychological lassitude born of chronic effort simply to survive.  While this bedrock instinct may allow certain cleverness in exploiting random good luck, it muffles incentive like a heavy quilt. In the long term, ‘working the system’ or waiting for what you need to fall off a truck does not build momentum for plans of real consequence. 

The burden of poverty falls most heavily on women, and women of color in particular. In every area of life – education, livelihood, health, housing, personal safety – ways to improve life circumstances are systematically and routinely denied by the complexity of the qualification process, by overburden providers, and by the indifference of those who could afford to help in meaningful ways but prefer to look away.

Not knowing one’s purpose, ‘hanging on’ through days of no consequence, inflicts the sort of hollowness that leads women to drugs, alcohol and/or other destructive habits. These painkilling survival strategies are often misread as character flaws. Their descending vortex is hard to notice, much less to escape.

A thoughtful look at the range of services offered to low-income people in Oakland argues that the 34% of West Oaklanders who live below the federal poverty level should not be living below the federal poverty level. Why does this situation seem intractable?

Even the most miserable woman will not capitalize on opportunities to change her circumstances without a belief that her life matters. There are no quick fixes to poverty’s psychological damage.  A disabled sense of self-worth is a deep and abiding wound. 

While handing out food may stave off hunger, it does not make a self-reliant woman. What does?

Women’s self-reliance comes from belonging to a group. One of the best things a woman can do for her mental and physical health is to nurture her relationships with other women.

A Women’s Center provides this opportunity. I have not been able to understand how this important Model is consistently overlooked by funders, especially those who profess to support ‘women’s issues.’ 

The elegance and utility of the Women’s Center Model derives from it use by women who understand how much it allows them to accomplish in their community. Baraka Women’s Center in Nairobi, Kenya continues to play the edge in this regard, uplifting nearly 1,200 women living in extreme poverty. Women’s Centers International is ready to support their initiative to establish two new Centers in Kenya. Who is ready to step up and support this ambitious initiative by a women-led community-based organization?

Just as important: when will Oaklanders rally to support the re-establishment of Oakland Women’s Center? 

Women’s Centers are all about taming the beast of poverty. It’s time to open this toolkit in service to women – locally and globally.

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How Resilient Must Women Be?

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In every region of the world, “Ending Violence, Harassment, and Abuse” is the most prominently chosen (48%) response to the question: “Which three issues are most critical for you as a person? From Global Count Interim Findings.

The challenge: not only for the violence to be ended, but that all women who’ve survived violence have the opportunity to heal. It is not a solo activity. It requires a sisterhood of help and support. That’s why Women’s Centers matter more than ever. A Center is a haven, a ‘base camp’ for healing. It’s where women gather strength together.

Ironically, nothing has been a bigger challenge than to gather funds to work this magic of the Women’s Center Model.

Philanthropically inclined Americans gave somewhere around 4% of all donations specifically to initiatives that strengthen women and girls. Four percent. Animal ‘causes’ get more donations. Women and girls remain few people’s special focus.

The profound damage of rape and domestic abuse, and the bottomless self-doubt they generate, requires a major commitment of resources to rectify.

Hands-on engagement has always mattered much more to me than advocacy, especially in such a polarized political system.  WCI’s place is seeding local managed grassroots organizations to create effective Women’s Centers.

We need to get with ALL our sisters, especially those who’ve been invisible on the margins, and steadily help to free more women from all the damage wrought in the prisons of poverty and exclusion.

We have precious little time to nurture a badass united front that can redirect humankind’s current mad dash to oblivion. We don’t have another decade, much less another century to wait it out.

At Women’s Centers, rage for change sings a bold new tune. We deserve the support of everyone who cares about achieving not just gender parity but the ascendence of the women’s genius for the path ahead.

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Source: Women Deliver