Sue Rock Originals Everyone, Inc. is a textile and needlecraft charity that is committed to supporting the lives of domestic violence survivors through the donation of new and clothing.  An unnecessary amount of women die as a result of domestic violence each year, this leaves a small percentage of women who actually leave domestic violence situations.

“Our goal is to provide support to the women who have made the courageous first steps toward changing their lives”  says Executive Director, Susan Rock. As a creative nonprofit enterprise, Sue Rock Originals Everyone enlists the help of volunteers who design NEW clothing from donated fabric and yarn. Volunteers craft hand knit and crocheted sweaters, shrugs, bags, tops and so much more! Often, women leave the cycle of violence with only have the clothes on their back. To help, we distribute clothing to women living in transitional housing three times a year.  It is our desire to do more! October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. This October marks the 22nd official observance.  It’s important now more than ever to get involved. 1400 women die as a result of incidents of violence each year.  Close to one million incidence of violence occur against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend per year and three  million women are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend each year.   Sue Rock Originals needs your help.  We are located at 1069 Bergen Street, between Rogers and Norstrand. Contact suerockoriginals@yahoo.com to donate or volunteer. Follow us on Twitter for the latest news and updates. acs

Playwright and actor Eisa Davis gently reminds us of the challenges of growing up while confronted with issues of identity, race, history and family. Especially challenging when you are the niece of activist Angela Davis and her namesake. “Am I living up to my name” Eisa asks? Here is how she discovers the answer. Angela’s Mixtape is an inspiring combination of music and a history this country prefers to ignore – the years following the civil rights movement. Eisa’s honest and vibrant sense of humor, rattles our memories of house bombings, unjust killings and the fight against oppression, neglect and ignorance. This autobiographical evening (Eisa’s full name is Angela Eisa Davis) is perfectly balanced with moments when the laughter in the theater is contagious. The cast includes Linda Powell, Kim Brockington, Denise Burse, and Ayesha Ngaujah. Liesl Tommy is the director. Performed in the intimate Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster Street, Angela’s Mixtape reminds us about growing up and becoming exactly who we’re supposed to be. Tickets are $20.00.

Modern day slavery is a life that most Americans cannot begin to imagine. For women in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, modern day slavery defines every moment of their lives. Cambodia, is known for its epidemic sex trade industry.

Cambodian girls, as young as six years old are sold into prostitution, often by their parents for as little as $10.00. The poverty rate in Cambodia reaches toward one million people; most families exist on less than 50 cents a day. Selling children is a means of survival. In addition, girls are also lured into prostitution because they have nowhere else to turn or they are kidnapped. To ensure their cooperation, they remain drugged or are controlled through threats of physical abuse. Their lives are defined by harsh living conditions, discipline by rape and constant humiliation. The psychological damage is devastating. Their world, created in brothels and bars is defined by pimps, male and female. The hope of escape is impossible; the promise of more than 15 sexual partners each day is a reality.

Documentary photographer Jennifer Macfarlane has visited the brothels of Cambodia and captures the lives of women in the sex trade. She is a passionate advocate on behalf women living in Cambodia’s sex trade industry and is committed telling their stories. Jennifer’s photos reveal the despair that exists within this urgent situation. To help raise awareness, her photos will be shown in an evening of photography and music at the Chelsea Art Museum, in New York City on Thursday, March 26. The event, Dance for Freedom is sponsored by Janera.com and begins at 9:00 p.m. All proceeds will go to the Somaly Mam Foundation, an organization committed to ending slavery and preventing human trafficking.  acs

RECESSION SURVIVAL SKILLS …AND THE THINGS MY GODMOTHER ALWAYS TOLD ME

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “grow, grow.” -the Talmud.

My godmother’s antique lamps. Imagine twin lamps, with hand painted roses, gold trim and the original paper lampshades, made in 1940 and still radiating exquisite light. With this light, my godmother taught me to read and write at age three. Just the basics, she made sure I could spell my name, recite my phone number, the alphabet and count – from one to ten. Sleep over nights at her house were spent reading Dick and Jane books, lit by her beautiful lamps. I wrote the alphabet with thick coal pencils, sharpened with the tip of a small knife. My godmother, (the first black teacher in my hometown) was born in 1898. During the past few months, I’ve thought of her often and wonder how she survived the depression. I may have witnessed a few remnants of her survival skills growing up. She wrapped everything in brown paper bags and secured the package with string; often re-using the same piece of string, many many times. The wooden cupboards in the basement were stocked tomatoes, peaches, pickles, peppers and jam in dusty mason jars. The tops were rusted and impossible to open. Maybe she was saving them for the next “hard times”. She was a great cook and fried fish, perfectly (in an ancient cask iron skillet), baked cornbread and created “drip down the side of your mouth” all butter corn on the cob. Which, when finished was wrapped in squares of newspaper, saved in a corner pile. The pile was tall enough for me to sit on. My godmother also taught me the meaning of respect and grace. She encouraged me to think carefully, and to make choices that are—-”beautiful“. I imagine this is how she said “I love you”. These lessons are probably ephemeral and maybe impractical. But they just might help me make make it through our current dramatic and heartbreaking recession. Here is my list of survival skills: I promise to ask friends-how are you doing & then stop & listen. No one really asks any more. I will look at my life; knowing I’ve made the best choices and move forward with even more faith. I hope to save money and time by slowing down, and planning carefully for each day. And at the end of the day, I’ll ask myself, have I followed my values today? …and will keep moving forward, peacefully. I will cook for friends in their home or mine – renewing what may be a lost way of communicating, having fun or just saying I love you. My godmother (Irene Ambers Hill) passed away in 1984, at the age of 86. Every night, (especially after a challenging day), I turn on her beautiful lamps, take a deep breath and count to ten while preparing for another day.

Where clean water is a pipedream
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

For nearly one billion people, clean drinking water is still a mirage

If you want a graphic demonstration of the health impacts of poor drinking water, look no further than Zimbabwe. Three thousand people dead, at least 60,000 ill – all from a disease that is almost completely preventable.
In general, with very few exceptions, people simply do not get cholera when the water supply works. It is almost unknown in the west for that single, simple reason. As the World Health Organization (WHO) puts it: “Measures for the prevention of cholera have not changed much in recent decades, and mostly consist of providing clean water and proper sanitation.”

The provision of safe water and sanitation… remains the critical factor in reducing the impact of cholera outbreaks. In Zimbabwe, political and economic circumstances have created a situation where the availability of clean water and proper sanitation is no longer routine.
People are now feeling the impacts of that lack of investment – investment that research shows is well worthwhile. “Research shows that if you invest $1 in clean water and sanitation, the return is between $5 and $28,” says Yves Chartier of WHO’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health unit.
The cholera bacterium is far from being the only infectious microbe lurking in dirty water. Typhoid, cryptosporidium, giardia… the list continues.
“About 10% of the total global burden of disease is down to poor water, sanitation and hygiene,” says Dr Chartier.It was this kind of statistic that led governments to sign up in the year 2000 to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a set of targets on issues such as maternal health, education and poverty.The water target is straightforward – to halve the proportion of the world’s population without access to clean water and proper sanitation by 2015.
THE WATER TARGET
Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
Millennium Development Goal 7.C

In the years immediately following the signing of the MDGs, water and sanitation were seen as “poor cousins”, attracting less aid money and interest than some of the other issues. But on water, at least, that has changed.
“The world as a whole is now on target to meet the water MDG, but a number of countries and regions are still off track,” says Andrew Hudson of the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) water governance programme.
“Most of the countries that have made impressive progress were poor countries, and that to me is a tremendous message because it shows it’s less about the money and much more about the political will.”
Protect and survive Statistics are compiled on the basis of “reasonable” access to “improved” supplies of drinking water. This means that within a kilometre or so there should be a source such as a standpipe, a borehole, a protected well or spring – or, of course, it can come straight into your house.
The “protection” element is aimed at making sure that unwanted things including the cholera bacterium do not get into the water source – especially preventing people and animals from defecating in the vicinity.
There’s still a stigma of talking about sanitation
Andrew Hudson, UNDP

Millennium goals: Down the pan?

That is sometimes easier said than done, especially in city slums, where the sheer lack of space often means latrines have to sit next to supply streams – or even, in extreme cases, that the outflow from the latrines becomes the supply stream. UNDP data shows that in many countries, as the urban population increases, the proportion of that urban population with access to safe water declines; infrastructure investment does not keep up with a growing urban population.
And whereas investment in water has put the world on target for the water element of MDG 7, sanitation is a different matter. “There’s still a stigma of talking about sanitation,” comments Dr Hudson.
“But countries such as India, that have mounted massive community-led campaigns on things like elimination of open defecation, have made really big strides.”
Underground movement
In eastern India, however, and in neighbouring Bangladesh, another way that poor water causes poor health has come into dramatic relief in recent years.
In the 1980s, tales of illness in Bangladeshi villages began circulating – an illness that was eventually traced to arsenic in the water they were drinking.
With surface water sources likely to harbour disease-causing microbes, aid agencies had initiated a programme of digging wells to provide safer drinking water – not realising that the water would bring with it enough arsenic to constitute a chronic poison.
The problem has now been detected in other countries, and according to one recent estimate, about 140 million people are at risk from drinking water containing the toxic metal, which causes cancers and lung disease.

Industries such as tanning can leave their trace in water

Compared with water-borne microbes, water-borne pollution has received little attention, according to the Blacksmith Institute, a charity whose aim is to clean up pollution hotspots in developing countries.
Cleaning up the India/Bangladesh arsenic problem is probably beyond anyone’s capacity right now – although agencies are looking at it – but industrial pollution is a different matter.
In the slums of many developing world cities, you find water of hues that water does not naturally assume – blues, yellows, purples and greens that speak of industrial outflows not very far upstream.
“So we’ve been running pilot projects in India trying to clean up hexavalent chromium, which is produced by the country’s huge tanning industry,” says Blacksmith’s executive director Meredith Block.
(Hexavalent chromium, the pollutant involved in the Erin Brockovich case in the US that was immortalised on celluloid by Julia Roberts, is a known carcinogen.)
“And by injecting a chemical (an “electron donor” into the groundwater we could turn it to the [non-toxic] trivalent form; analysis suggests it’s working, with no side-effects.”
One of these pilot projects, in Kanpur, was on a site that Ms Block says is typical of many developing world cities – an industrial estate, home to perhaps 50 or more small factories, working with or producing a mix of hazardous substances such as heavy metals and pesticides.
The health impact of water pollution globally is unknown.
A 2007 study from Cornell University estimated that 40% of deaths worldwide were associated with some kind of pollution – though how much of this is water-borne is another question.
WATER TRENDS
How availability, use and needs are changing across the world

In graphics

But, says Ms Block, it is proving hard to interest agencies in polluted water.
“The environmental causes aren’t related to climate change or global warming,” she says. “And it seems that people in the US couldn’t care less if you can’t relate an issue to global warming.”
Diseases such as cholera, by contrast, do have a climate link. The cholera bacterium (Vibrio cholerae) appears to survive better in warmer waters, leading to fears that it could emerge in regions such as the southern coasts of the US as sea temperatures increase.
But for the mass of humanity, climate is likely to be a minor determinant of the water quality they get, and the disease burden that implies.
To quote the WHO on cholera: “Since 2005, the re-emergence of cholera has been noted in parallel with the ever-increasing size of vulnerable populations living in unsanitary conditions.
“The provision of safe water and sanitation… remains the critical factor in reducing the impact of cholera outbreaks” – as it does for many other diseases of water.
It sounds easy – but for the 100 or so countries off target with MDG 7, most spectacularly Zimbabwe, it is proving anything but.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

photo credit Lynsey Addario: Congo/Women Portraits of War

In a current  exhibit: Congo/Women Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo, the legacy of war and violence against women is portrayed through a visual, spacial and audio approach.  The exhibit featuring photography by Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv and James Nachtwey exposes the experience of women in the DRC through larger than life and emotionally charged photos.  Each deeply affecting image informs viewers about the difficult, heartbreaking and most vulnerable moments in the lives of these women and the legacy of Africa’s worst war.  Included in the exhibit is poetry created from interviews with the women and read by Chicago actor, Cheryl Lynn Bruce.  The exhibit opens on Thursday January 5th, 2009 at Columbia College Chicago.  The exhibit tour moves to Washington, D.C. and the James Cohan Gallery in New York in March, 2009.  The exhibit is also scheduled to open in the United Nations Lobby in the Fall of 2009.  Congo/Women Portraits of War is curated by Leslie Thomas, curator of the Darfur/ Darfur Project.

From President-elect Obama’s November 4th acceptance speech. “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep”. We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful that we will get there”. In three days we will have a new President, First Lady and first family. After the inauguration on January 20th, there will be many promises for our new President to keep. It’s an impossible task. A new economy. Tax reductions. More jobs. Relief. Hope. Change. Everyone says “it’s all going to get worse before it gets better”. This is probably true. But if we gain anything over the next four years, I hope it includes the presence of quiet and calm while we interpret our new lives and a true definition of family, the American Dream and love. Cause the old ways of thinking are raggedy and breathless. I love this photo…and from this interpretation it all begins.  Here is information about the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. The swearing in ceremony begins at 11:30am est.   For online viewing information visit this blog:NewTeeVee.com.  acs

Women for Women International helps women in war torn countries to change their lives by providing financial and emotional support. This humanitarian organization founded in 1993 advances women from being victims to attaining stability as survivors and active citizens in their communities. Since its founding in 1993, Women for Women International has served more than 120,000 women and distributed approximately $33 million in direct aid and microcredit loans. Women for Women International now serves women in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan and builds one-to-one connections with more than 23,000 sponsors in all 50 states of the U.S. and 55 other countries. Encourage change. You can join this organization by sponsoring a woman or by contributing today. Here is more information .

“Bonds That Seem Cruel Can Be Kind”

NEW YORK TIMES  By MICHIKO KAKUTANI Published: November 3, 2008

A horrifying act stood at the center of Toni Morrison’s 1987 masterwork, “Beloved”: a runaway slave, caught in her effort to escape, cuts the throat of her baby daughter with a handsaw, determined to spare the girl the fate she herself has suffered as a slave. A similarly indelible act stands at the center of Ms. Morrison’s remarkable new novella, “A Mercy,” a small, plangent gem of a story that is, at once, a kind of prelude to “Beloved” and a variation on that earlier book’s exploration of the personal costs of slavery — a system that moves men and women and children around “like checkers” and casts a looming shadow over both parental and romantic love.

Set some 200 years before “Beloved,” “A Mercy” conjures up the beautiful, untamed, lawless world that was America in the 17th century with the same sort of lyrical, verdant prose that distinguished that earlier novel. Gone are the didactic language and schematic architecture that hobbled the author’s 1998 novel, “Paradise”; gone are the cartoonish characters that marred her 2003 novel, “Love.” Instead Ms. Morrison has rediscovered an urgent, poetic voice that enables her to move back and forth with immediacy and ease between the worlds of history and myth, between ordinary daily life and the realm of fable.

All the central characters in this story are orphans, cast off by their parents or swept away from their families by acts of God or nature or human cruelty — literal or figurative exiles susceptible to the centrifugal forces of history. There is Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader, whose memories of his own parentless years on the streets “stealing food and cadging gratuities for errands” have left him with a “pulse of pity for orphans and strays.” There is his wife, Rebekka, who as a girl of 16 was sent abroad to America by her father, who, happy to have one less mouth to feed, readily accepted Jacob’s offer of “ ‘reimbursement’ for clothing, expenses and a few supplies” in exchange for a “healthy, chaste wife willing to travel abroad.” And there is Florens, whose mother sees the kindness in Jacob’s heart and begs him to take her young daughter (as payment for a debt owed by their domineering owner) in the hopes that the trader will give her a better life and the possibility of a future as a free woman, not a slave.

But what is “a mercy” to Florens’s mother is experienced by the girl as an act of abandonment, and it will leave her with a hole in her heart and an abiding need for love and approval. For a time Florens finds a sense of belonging on Jacob’s farm — the illusion, even, of family. Jacob is often away from home doing business, and Rebekka and Lina, the American Indian slave who helped Jacob get the farm started, find the daily hardships of frontier life bringing them together in an alliance of survival that slowly turns into friendship.

Both are wary of the first waif Jacob brings home: a strange, daft girl named Sorrow, who was found half-drowned in a river. Rebekka regards Sorrow as useless around the farm, while Lina, who has survived the devastation of her own tribe by a plague, sees the stranger as “bad luck in the flesh” and blames her for the early deaths of Rebekka’s children.

Florens, in contrast, awakens a maternal instinct in Lina, and she embraces the girl as if she were long-lost kin: “A frightened, long-necked child who did not speak for weeks but when she did, her light, singsong voice was lovely to hear. Some how, some way, the child assuaged the tiny yet eternal yearning for the home Lina once knew, where everyone had anything, and no one had everything.”

Years later Florens falls passionately in love with a visiting blacksmith, a free black man who has come to work on a fancy gate for Jacob’s new house, and who miraculously cures Sorrow of a deathly illness. Lina warns her of the perils of giving away her heart — “You are one leaf on his tree,” she says — but Florens insists she is “his tree.”

When his work is done, however, the blacksmith leaves without even troubling to say goodbye, and like so many earlier Morrison characters, Florens learns the perils of caring too much — and the legacy of loss and leaving bequeathed to her by her mother.

As long as Jacob is alive, Ms. Morrison writes, “it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family — not even a like-minded group.” But when he suddenly dies of the pox, and Rebekka, too, falls gravely ill, Lina, Florens and Sorrow realize their precarious position.

“Three unmastered women,” alone, “belonging to no one, became wild game for anyone”: “Female and illegal, they would be interlopers, squatters, if they stayed on after Mistress died, subject to purchase, hire, assault, abduction, exile.” Their one hope is to find the blacksmith and persuade him to return to work his magic on Rebekka. It is Florens who is sent on this quest, her passion for the man both a spur and a hazard to her mission.

The main storyteller in this volume is Florens, who, abandoned by the blacksmith, feels herself “an ice floe cut away from the riverbank.” But her voice is just one in this choral tale — a tale that not only emerges as a heartbreaking account of lost innocence and fractured dreams, but also stands, with “Beloved,” as one of Ms. Morrison’s most haunting works yet.