[migrawatch-public] [Fwd: [watsonvillebrownberets] Fwd: NAM Wire: The Littlest Deportees]
> Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 12:01:46 -0800
> To: nefertiti altan <mysnefertiti@yahoo.com>
> From: New America Media
> <dailystories@newamericamedia.org>
> Subject: NAM Wire: The Littlest Deportees
>
> NEW AMERICA MEDIA DAILY NEWSLETTER
>
> TODAY'S HEADLINES
>
> March 9, 2007
>
> The Littlest Deportees
>
> New America Media, News Feature, Camille Taiara,
> Posted: Mar 09, 2007
>
> Editor's Note: Immigrant advocates suspect that
> Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is deporting a
> growing number of unaccompanied minors who've been
> caught trying to reunite with their parents already
> in the U.S., even when the parents have status, as
> in the case of one 9 year-old Honduran girl. The
> child is under deportation orders as an undocumented
> alien. Camille Taiara writes for NAM's column
> Disappeared in America.
>
> SAN FRANCISCO--The plight of seven-year-old refugee
> Elián González riveted the nation when he was
> forcibly returned to Cuba in 2000. Today, thousands
> of children, some as young as five, travel north
> every day desperate to reconnect with their
> families, some of whom are in the U.S. legally. Many
> of these child refugees wind up being detained,
> deported, or temporarily reunited with family while
> under the threat of deportation. There is no home
> for them either here or back in their own
> countries.Dilcia
>
> Dilcia Rodriguez is one such case.
>
> Two years ago, the seven-year-old Dilcia made the
> 3,000-mile trek from southwestern Honduras, across
> El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, with a
> nine-year-old cousin and a 16-year-old uncle. Border
> Patrol agents apprehended them after they crossed
> the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas. When the
> agents learned that the children had family in San
> Francisco, they were transferred to California and
> reunited with relatives. Dilcia
>
> Their reunion, however, was overshadowed by formal
> deportation orders against the three migrants.
> Dilcia's 16-year-old uncle eventually returned to
> Honduras. Her cousin was reunited with his mother
> who, like Dilcia's parents, is fighting to keep him
> with her in the U.S. Dilcia
>
> Dilcia, now nine, likes her life in San Francisco.
> She has been going to school, making new friends and
> feels truly safe for the first time, her parents
> say. So far, Dilcia's parents have managed to stave
> off her deportation by filing legal appeals, asking
> Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to drop
> the case. ICE attorneys have denied the appeals.
> Attorney Lisa Frydman of Legal Services for Children
> isn't surprised. "It definitely seems like there's
> some kind of trend to deny requests to forego
> deportation proceedings against children with
> extremely compelling cases like Dilcia's," says
> Frydman, who filed the second appeal on her behalf.
>
> Frydman says she has seen two similar cases denied
> in the past year involving minors whose parents are
> in the U.S. legally. "I'm in touch with advocates in
> different regions of the country where it's also
> been a problem," she says.
>
> ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice would not say what
> standards ICE uses when considering such appeals, or
> if there has been a change in policy. "We have a
> system of immigration courts and it's appropriate to
> use them," says Kice.
>
> The Rodriguezes now plan to file an asylum claim for
> Dilcia.
>
> In the spring of 1998, Dilcia's parents fled
> Honduras and left her—only a few months old--behind.
> They say they were the targets of gang violence.
> "They killed my brother," explains Dilcia's mother,
> also named Dilcia, who was 19 at the time. "I was
> afraid they'd come after me. I left her behind with
> great pain in my soul."
>
> "Honduras is overwhelmed by gangs," says her
> husband, Candido. "When they attack someone, they
> also go after the family, because they think the
> family will make problems for them."
>
> Honduran sociologist Ernesto Bardales, who has
> testified in more than a dozen asylum hearings on
> behalf of Hondurans fleeing gang violence,
> corroborates Candido's account. The gang problem
> exploded in Honduras beginning in the early 1990's,
> when the U.S. began deporting large numbers of
> Honduran youth who had become exposed to gangs in
> Los Angeles and elsewhere. Residents of
> poverty-stricken areas of Honduras, like the
> Rodriguezes were, are among the most vulnerable to
> victimization.
>
> Fearing the trip to the U.S. without money or papers
> would be too dangerous for an infant, the
> Rodriguezes left Dilcia in the care of her maternal
> grandmother. The young couple settled in San
> Francisco, where their second daughter Seidis (now
> six) was born. In 1998 they received Temporary
> Protected Status (TPS), a benefit the Clinton
> Administration extended to Hondurans already in the
> U.S. after Hurricane Mitch ravaged the country, and
> which first Clinton and now Bush have renewed every
> year since then.
>
> Only those Hondurans already living in the U.S. by
> Dec. 30, 1998, are eligible for TPS. The benefit
> doesn't allow them to travel outside the country, to
> apply for permanent residency, or to bring relatives
> – even dependent children – into the U.S.
>
> In November 2004, another of Dilcia's uncles was
> murdered, in this case, with machetes. Dilcia saw
> his body. Two months later, her aunt was killed.
> The Rodriguezes say Dilcia's grandmother – the
> girl's caretaker – was overcome by grief.
>
> The grandmother sent Dilcia on the journey north
> without telling her parents. The arduous trip north
> and the killing she witnessed have taken its toll. A
> therapist at Mission Family Center recently
> diagnosed Dilcia with post-traumatic stress
> disorder.
>
> "Sometimes she walks in her sleep and she screams,"
> says Candido. "She's always nervous."
>
> Dilcia's case may seem dramatic. But Gregory Chen of
> the DC-based U.S. Committee for Refugees and
> Immigrants says that the increasing number of
> undocumented children coming to the U.S. has become
> "a serious humanitarian crisis."
>
> More than 122,000 minors were apprehended by Customs
> and Border Protection agents in 2004, according to a
> report published by the Department of Homeland
> Security's Inspector General. All but 20,000 were
> Mexican, and the vast majority were simply sent back
> across the border.
>
> According to Chen, after 72 hours, unaccompanied
> children who remain are placed in long-term
> facilities run by the Office of Refugee
> Resettlement. In 2004, there were 6,200 children.
> Today, Chen estimates the number to be closer to
> 8,000. Between 80 and 90 percent of them are from
> Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador.
>
> "Most have suffered trauma, either in their home
> country or on the trip here, and come from extremely
> poor backgrounds," says Chen. Two-thirds of these
> children are eventually reunited with family members
> in the U.S. – but still face deportation orders.
>
> Many have suffered abuse or neglect, gang violence,
> or government prosecution, according to Chen. Often
> their parents had fled here earlier as the only way
> to escape abject poverty and violence as well as
> survive and earn money to support their families
> back home, he adds.
>
> "The basic question is, should the government be
> expending limited resources to go through the full
> deportation process for these children,,,who've
> simply come here to be with their parents?" asks
> Chen.
>
> Sitting on the sofa of her parents' small apartment,
> donning her best dress, shiny white shoes and
> flashing a big grin, it's hard to imagine everything
> Dilcia has been through.
>
> These days, Dilcia sings at church and is an honor
> student at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in San
> Francisco's Mission District. She likes to jump rope
> and play soccer. But when the time comes for her to
> go to an immigration court hearing, she can't sleep.
> "She cries a lot. She thinks they're going to send
> her back," her mother says.
>
> "She's afraid she'll be killed."
>
> (03092007) ***END*** (C) COPYRIGHT PNS. ALL RIGHTS
> RESERVED
>
> Standing Their Ground: Public Art in India Puts
> Women on the Streets
>
> New America Media, News Feature + Video, Words:
> Neelanjana Banerjee//Video: Neelanjana Banerjee and
> Cliff Parker, Posted: Mar 08, 2007
>
> Editor's Note: One of the most subversive thing
> women can do in India is occupy public space.
> Neelanjana Banerjee is editor-in-chief of YO! Youth
> Outlook Multimedia. Cliff Parker is the director of
> video production at New America Media.
>
> blank noise projectBANGALORE – The sun is setting on
> Bangalore's Brigade Road, a short but busy stretch
> of up-market shopping located in the city center.
> Shoppers stream in and out of businesses ranging
> from a glossy two-story Puma store to no-name
> storefronts selling discount luggage.
>
> The narrow sidewalks on either side of Brigade Road
> are flanked by railings, keeping pedestrians
> corralled in a tight space. On most days, men
> outnumber women at least three to one. While the
> women rush towards their destinations, large groups
> of men loiter about, standing in front of businesses
> and leaning against walls.
>
> But today, there's something different going on.
>
> A number of women stand placidly by the railings.
> For more than two hours, these women – members of
> the Blank Noise Project, a public art project
> concerning sexual street harassment – will do one of
> the most subversive things they can do as women in
> India: occupy public space.
>
> This is a streaming MP4 video - you'll need
> Quicktime 6 or later to view it.
>
> In a rapidly changing India, traditions such as
> purdah (keeping women secluded inside the house) are
> no longer in effect. Women are an important part of
> the growing middle class, with jobs in call centers,
> technology firms and at the coffee shops and malls
> that are entertaining this new generation. But as
> women hit the streets in greater numbers, often in
> Western clothing, their vulnerability to street
> harassment — including physical assaults — has
> increased.
>
> "'Eve-teasing,' or street sexual harassment, is
> something that we experience every day," says
> 27-year-old Jasmeen Patheja, the founder of the
> Blank Noise Project. We've learned to deal with it
> mostly by not dealing with it — by ignoring it."
>
> Dressed casually in a kurta top over jeans, Patheja
> is articulate and unassuming, but when she starts
> talking about her work, a fierce streak shines
> through. She developed the idea for Blank Noise in
> her final year of university at Bangalore's Srishti
> School of Art, Design and Technology. Patheja had
> studied artists like the Guerilla Girls – an
> anonymous artist collective famous for a series of
> billboards and actions in the 1980s and 1990s that
> challenged discrimination against women artists —
> and was interested in the intersection of art and
> community in India.
>
> "Plus, I was filled to the top with experiences
> every day of street sexual harassment," Patheja
> says. "When I would share my experiences with my
> peers, they would just disregard it, saying: 'Yeah,
> it happens.' "
>
> "At some point, I started thinking that maybe I was
> asking for it," she recalls. Over time, Patheja
> changed her entire wardrobe to protect herself,
> replacing Western clothing with more traditional
> garments.
>
> While women suffer from street harassment all over
> the world, what is known as "eve-teasing" in India
> is frequent and extreme. On New Year's Eve in
> Mumbai, a young woman had her dress torn off by some
> 60 men while her male companion was violently shoved
> out of the way. Many of Patheja's friends have
> experienced both verbal harassment and physical
> intrusions.
>
> Since its inception in 2005, the Blank Noise Web
> site has become a virtual space for the
> documentation of street harassment. In an early
> post, Patheja described a tailor intentionally
> rubbing his hands across her breasts, then denying
> it when confronted.
>
> Gayathri Raghavendra wrote about taking an overnight
> train with friends. The young women felt "hands
> groping … through the narrow gap between the seat
> back and bottom." When Raghavendra looked over to
> the other seats, the men acted as though they were
> fast asleep. Raghavendra complained to the conductor
> and asked if the men could be moved, but the
> conductor "refused to do anything and … tried to
> make me feel guilty that I had made a big deal of
> nothing and had woken up a bus full of people with
> my complaining."
>
> Another woman, Annie Zaidi, writes about trying to
> get off of a Mumbai train: "Suddenly, there were
> men's crotches pressing into my face, my knees and
> my shoulders. I stood up and fought my way to the
> door, only to be surrounded by half a dozen men
> offering to 'get me out safely.' As the train
> stopped, half a dozen men got on, half a dozen got
> off. Trapped between them, I lost count of how many
> hands felt me up."
>
> To kick off the project, Patheja brought together
> some 60 women ranging in age from 17 to 23 and asked
> them to brainstorm on the words "public space."
> Immediately, the women came up with words like
> "fear, vulnerable, insecure, groping, invasion,
> anger."
>
> Despite this powerful response, once she tried to
> get her project going, Patheja faced discouragement
> at every step.
>
> "Of the 60 women from my initial workshop, only nine
> of them responded with interest when I told them
> about plans to move on," she remembers. "Most of
> them said: 'Why are you making a big deal out of
> this? Why don't you talk about domestic violence
> instead? What about child sexual abuse?' I realized
> that this itself is the problem — street harassment
> is not even given the status of an 'issue.'"
>
> Patheja held workshops with the nine women and
> created a multimedia installation around the
> experiences of these women in public space. She
> started a blog, and began posting pictures of people
> who had harassed her. Through the Internet, Blank
> Noise connected with groups like Hollaback – a New
> York City-based blog that also posts pictures of
> street harassers. Blank Noise held a blog-a-thon
> where they asked women from all over India – and the
> world – to post about their own experiences with
> eve-teasing.
>
> "In 10 days, we had more than 300 bloggers sign up,"
> Patheja recalls. "There was a mass catharsis
> happening on the Internet. That is when Blank Noise
> became participatory and public."
>
> After the blog-a-thon, Patheja felt ready to make
> the leap to the public sphere. "We have different
> kinds of actions, usually confrontational or
> provocative," Patheja says. "The people who
> participate are non-performers. They are challenging
> their own levels of comfort with public space."
>
> Back on Brigade Road, the presence of the women
> causes an observable stir in the legions of men
> loitering about the street. One speaks excitedly to
> his group of friends, then approaches the women,
> trying to engage them in conversation, taking
> pictures of them with his camera phone. Yamimi Deen,
> one of the Blank Noise participants, moves away from
> her place against the railing and stands barely a
> foot away from the young man. The other women follow
> until the man is surrounded by women — not quite
> menacing, but watchful. He tries to ignore them,
> crossing his arms and looking towards the sky with
> much bluster, but in the end he retreats back to the
> safety of his friends.
>
> Afterwards, the participants meet up in a Subway
> sandwich shop and discuss the action over bottles of
> water and iced tea.
>
> "It was incredible," says Surabhi Kukke, an
> Indian-American woman living in Bangalore. "Just the
> fact that women were taking up space was a threat to
> the authorities. Facing off with the guy in the
> square was an empowering feeling for me."
>
> Patheja says the goal of the action was simply to
> engage people in a public discourse about street
> harassment. "I wanted to make it an issue," she
> says. "The exciting thing is that a project that
> began with just nine voices has become so large.
> It's no longer just my project." Blank Noise now has
> chapters that conduct their own street actions in
> the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and
> Hyderabad.
>
> The project's most powerful effect may be the
> changes it inspires in the women who participate.
> Yamini Deen says that simply "standing by the
> railings, without any fear, has changed the way I
> feel. Even if men are staring at me, I don't feel
> threatened. I don't blame myself. Even I'm walking
> alone on the road, I feel confident now."
>
> (03092007) ***END*** (C) COPYRIGHT PNS. ALL RIGHTS
> RESERVED
>
>
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> To: nefertiti altan <mysnefertiti@yahoo.com>
> From: New America Media
> <dailystories@newamericamedia.org>
> Subject: NAM Wire: The Littlest Deportees
>
> NEW AMERICA MEDIA DAILY NEWSLETTER
>
> TODAY'S HEADLINES
>
> March 9, 2007
>
> The Littlest Deportees
>
> New America Media, News Feature, Camille Taiara,
> Posted: Mar 09, 2007
>
> Editor's Note: Immigrant advocates suspect that
> Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is deporting a
> growing number of unaccompanied minors who've been
> caught trying to reunite with their parents already
> in the U.S., even when the parents have status, as
> in the case of one 9 year-old Honduran girl. The
> child is under deportation orders as an undocumented
> alien. Camille Taiara writes for NAM's column
> Disappeared in America.
>
> SAN FRANCISCO--The plight of seven-year-old refugee
> Elián González riveted the nation when he was
> forcibly returned to Cuba in 2000. Today, thousands
> of children, some as young as five, travel north
> every day desperate to reconnect with their
> families, some of whom are in the U.S. legally. Many
> of these child refugees wind up being detained,
> deported, or temporarily reunited with family while
> under the threat of deportation. There is no home
> for them either here or back in their own
> countries.Dilcia
>
> Dilcia Rodriguez is one such case.
>
> Two years ago, the seven-year-old Dilcia made the
> 3,000-mile trek from southwestern Honduras, across
> El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, with a
> nine-year-old cousin and a 16-year-old uncle. Border
> Patrol agents apprehended them after they crossed
> the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas. When the
> agents learned that the children had family in San
> Francisco, they were transferred to California and
> reunited with relatives. Dilcia
>
> Their reunion, however, was overshadowed by formal
> deportation orders against the three migrants.
> Dilcia's 16-year-old uncle eventually returned to
> Honduras. Her cousin was reunited with his mother
> who, like Dilcia's parents, is fighting to keep him
> with her in the U.S. Dilcia
>
> Dilcia, now nine, likes her life in San Francisco.
> She has been going to school, making new friends and
> feels truly safe for the first time, her parents
> say. So far, Dilcia's parents have managed to stave
> off her deportation by filing legal appeals, asking
> Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to drop
> the case. ICE attorneys have denied the appeals.
> Attorney Lisa Frydman of Legal Services for Children
> isn't surprised. "It definitely seems like there's
> some kind of trend to deny requests to forego
> deportation proceedings against children with
> extremely compelling cases like Dilcia's," says
> Frydman, who filed the second appeal on her behalf.
>
> Frydman says she has seen two similar cases denied
> in the past year involving minors whose parents are
> in the U.S. legally. "I'm in touch with advocates in
> different regions of the country where it's also
> been a problem," she says.
>
> ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice would not say what
> standards ICE uses when considering such appeals, or
> if there has been a change in policy. "We have a
> system of immigration courts and it's appropriate to
> use them," says Kice.
>
> The Rodriguezes now plan to file an asylum claim for
> Dilcia.
>
> In the spring of 1998, Dilcia's parents fled
> Honduras and left her—only a few months old--behind.
> They say they were the targets of gang violence.
> "They killed my brother," explains Dilcia's mother,
> also named Dilcia, who was 19 at the time. "I was
> afraid they'd come after me. I left her behind with
> great pain in my soul."
>
> "Honduras is overwhelmed by gangs," says her
> husband, Candido. "When they attack someone, they
> also go after the family, because they think the
> family will make problems for them."
>
> Honduran sociologist Ernesto Bardales, who has
> testified in more than a dozen asylum hearings on
> behalf of Hondurans fleeing gang violence,
> corroborates Candido's account. The gang problem
> exploded in Honduras beginning in the early 1990's,
> when the U.S. began deporting large numbers of
> Honduran youth who had become exposed to gangs in
> Los Angeles and elsewhere. Residents of
> poverty-stricken areas of Honduras, like the
> Rodriguezes were, are among the most vulnerable to
> victimization.
>
> Fearing the trip to the U.S. without money or papers
> would be too dangerous for an infant, the
> Rodriguezes left Dilcia in the care of her maternal
> grandmother. The young couple settled in San
> Francisco, where their second daughter Seidis (now
> six) was born. In 1998 they received Temporary
> Protected Status (TPS), a benefit the Clinton
> Administration extended to Hondurans already in the
> U.S. after Hurricane Mitch ravaged the country, and
> which first Clinton and now Bush have renewed every
> year since then.
>
> Only those Hondurans already living in the U.S. by
> Dec. 30, 1998, are eligible for TPS. The benefit
> doesn't allow them to travel outside the country, to
> apply for permanent residency, or to bring relatives
> – even dependent children – into the U.S.
>
> In November 2004, another of Dilcia's uncles was
> murdered, in this case, with machetes. Dilcia saw
> his body. Two months later, her aunt was killed.
> The Rodriguezes say Dilcia's grandmother – the
> girl's caretaker – was overcome by grief.
>
> The grandmother sent Dilcia on the journey north
> without telling her parents. The arduous trip north
> and the killing she witnessed have taken its toll. A
> therapist at Mission Family Center recently
> diagnosed Dilcia with post-traumatic stress
> disorder.
>
> "Sometimes she walks in her sleep and she screams,"
> says Candido. "She's always nervous."
>
> Dilcia's case may seem dramatic. But Gregory Chen of
> the DC-based U.S. Committee for Refugees and
> Immigrants says that the increasing number of
> undocumented children coming to the U.S. has become
> "a serious humanitarian crisis."
>
> More than 122,000 minors were apprehended by Customs
> and Border Protection agents in 2004, according to a
> report published by the Department of Homeland
> Security's Inspector General. All but 20,000 were
> Mexican, and the vast majority were simply sent back
> across the border.
>
> According to Chen, after 72 hours, unaccompanied
> children who remain are placed in long-term
> facilities run by the Office of Refugee
> Resettlement. In 2004, there were 6,200 children.
> Today, Chen estimates the number to be closer to
> 8,000. Between 80 and 90 percent of them are from
> Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador.
>
> "Most have suffered trauma, either in their home
> country or on the trip here, and come from extremely
> poor backgrounds," says Chen. Two-thirds of these
> children are eventually reunited with family members
> in the U.S. – but still face deportation orders.
>
> Many have suffered abuse or neglect, gang violence,
> or government prosecution, according to Chen. Often
> their parents had fled here earlier as the only way
> to escape abject poverty and violence as well as
> survive and earn money to support their families
> back home, he adds.
>
> "The basic question is, should the government be
> expending limited resources to go through the full
> deportation process for these children,,,who've
> simply come here to be with their parents?" asks
> Chen.
>
> Sitting on the sofa of her parents' small apartment,
> donning her best dress, shiny white shoes and
> flashing a big grin, it's hard to imagine everything
> Dilcia has been through.
>
> These days, Dilcia sings at church and is an honor
> student at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in San
> Francisco's Mission District. She likes to jump rope
> and play soccer. But when the time comes for her to
> go to an immigration court hearing, she can't sleep.
> "She cries a lot. She thinks they're going to send
> her back," her mother says.
>
> "She's afraid she'll be killed."
>
> (03092007) ***END*** (C) COPYRIGHT PNS. ALL RIGHTS
> RESERVED
>
> Standing Their Ground: Public Art in India Puts
> Women on the Streets
>
> New America Media, News Feature + Video, Words:
> Neelanjana Banerjee//Video: Neelanjana Banerjee and
> Cliff Parker, Posted: Mar 08, 2007
>
> Editor's Note: One of the most subversive thing
> women can do in India is occupy public space.
> Neelanjana Banerjee is editor-in-chief of YO! Youth
> Outlook Multimedia. Cliff Parker is the director of
> video production at New America Media.
>
> blank noise projectBANGALORE – The sun is setting on
> Bangalore's Brigade Road, a short but busy stretch
> of up-market shopping located in the city center.
> Shoppers stream in and out of businesses ranging
> from a glossy two-story Puma store to no-name
> storefronts selling discount luggage.
>
> The narrow sidewalks on either side of Brigade Road
> are flanked by railings, keeping pedestrians
> corralled in a tight space. On most days, men
> outnumber women at least three to one. While the
> women rush towards their destinations, large groups
> of men loiter about, standing in front of businesses
> and leaning against walls.
>
> But today, there's something different going on.
>
> A number of women stand placidly by the railings.
> For more than two hours, these women – members of
> the Blank Noise Project, a public art project
> concerning sexual street harassment – will do one of
> the most subversive things they can do as women in
> India: occupy public space.
>
> This is a streaming MP4 video - you'll need
> Quicktime 6 or later to view it.
>
> In a rapidly changing India, traditions such as
> purdah (keeping women secluded inside the house) are
> no longer in effect. Women are an important part of
> the growing middle class, with jobs in call centers,
> technology firms and at the coffee shops and malls
> that are entertaining this new generation. But as
> women hit the streets in greater numbers, often in
> Western clothing, their vulnerability to street
> harassment — including physical assaults — has
> increased.
>
> "'Eve-teasing,' or street sexual harassment, is
> something that we experience every day," says
> 27-year-old Jasmeen Patheja, the founder of the
> Blank Noise Project. We've learned to deal with it
> mostly by not dealing with it — by ignoring it."
>
> Dressed casually in a kurta top over jeans, Patheja
> is articulate and unassuming, but when she starts
> talking about her work, a fierce streak shines
> through. She developed the idea for Blank Noise in
> her final year of university at Bangalore's Srishti
> School of Art, Design and Technology. Patheja had
> studied artists like the Guerilla Girls – an
> anonymous artist collective famous for a series of
> billboards and actions in the 1980s and 1990s that
> challenged discrimination against women artists —
> and was interested in the intersection of art and
> community in India.
>
> "Plus, I was filled to the top with experiences
> every day of street sexual harassment," Patheja
> says. "When I would share my experiences with my
> peers, they would just disregard it, saying: 'Yeah,
> it happens.' "
>
> "At some point, I started thinking that maybe I was
> asking for it," she recalls. Over time, Patheja
> changed her entire wardrobe to protect herself,
> replacing Western clothing with more traditional
> garments.
>
> While women suffer from street harassment all over
> the world, what is known as "eve-teasing" in India
> is frequent and extreme. On New Year's Eve in
> Mumbai, a young woman had her dress torn off by some
> 60 men while her male companion was violently shoved
> out of the way. Many of Patheja's friends have
> experienced both verbal harassment and physical
> intrusions.
>
> Since its inception in 2005, the Blank Noise Web
> site has become a virtual space for the
> documentation of street harassment. In an early
> post, Patheja described a tailor intentionally
> rubbing his hands across her breasts, then denying
> it when confronted.
>
> Gayathri Raghavendra wrote about taking an overnight
> train with friends. The young women felt "hands
> groping … through the narrow gap between the seat
> back and bottom." When Raghavendra looked over to
> the other seats, the men acted as though they were
> fast asleep. Raghavendra complained to the conductor
> and asked if the men could be moved, but the
> conductor "refused to do anything and … tried to
> make me feel guilty that I had made a big deal of
> nothing and had woken up a bus full of people with
> my complaining."
>
> Another woman, Annie Zaidi, writes about trying to
> get off of a Mumbai train: "Suddenly, there were
> men's crotches pressing into my face, my knees and
> my shoulders. I stood up and fought my way to the
> door, only to be surrounded by half a dozen men
> offering to 'get me out safely.' As the train
> stopped, half a dozen men got on, half a dozen got
> off. Trapped between them, I lost count of how many
> hands felt me up."
>
> To kick off the project, Patheja brought together
> some 60 women ranging in age from 17 to 23 and asked
> them to brainstorm on the words "public space."
> Immediately, the women came up with words like
> "fear, vulnerable, insecure, groping, invasion,
> anger."
>
> Despite this powerful response, once she tried to
> get her project going, Patheja faced discouragement
> at every step.
>
> "Of the 60 women from my initial workshop, only nine
> of them responded with interest when I told them
> about plans to move on," she remembers. "Most of
> them said: 'Why are you making a big deal out of
> this? Why don't you talk about domestic violence
> instead? What about child sexual abuse?' I realized
> that this itself is the problem — street harassment
> is not even given the status of an 'issue.'"
>
> Patheja held workshops with the nine women and
> created a multimedia installation around the
> experiences of these women in public space. She
> started a blog, and began posting pictures of people
> who had harassed her. Through the Internet, Blank
> Noise connected with groups like Hollaback – a New
> York City-based blog that also posts pictures of
> street harassers. Blank Noise held a blog-a-thon
> where they asked women from all over India – and the
> world – to post about their own experiences with
> eve-teasing.
>
> "In 10 days, we had more than 300 bloggers sign up,"
> Patheja recalls. "There was a mass catharsis
> happening on the Internet. That is when Blank Noise
> became participatory and public."
>
> After the blog-a-thon, Patheja felt ready to make
> the leap to the public sphere. "We have different
> kinds of actions, usually confrontational or
> provocative," Patheja says. "The people who
> participate are non-performers. They are challenging
> their own levels of comfort with public space."
>
> Back on Brigade Road, the presence of the women
> causes an observable stir in the legions of men
> loitering about the street. One speaks excitedly to
> his group of friends, then approaches the women,
> trying to engage them in conversation, taking
> pictures of them with his camera phone. Yamimi Deen,
> one of the Blank Noise participants, moves away from
> her place against the railing and stands barely a
> foot away from the young man. The other women follow
> until the man is surrounded by women — not quite
> menacing, but watchful. He tries to ignore them,
> crossing his arms and looking towards the sky with
> much bluster, but in the end he retreats back to the
> safety of his friends.
>
> Afterwards, the participants meet up in a Subway
> sandwich shop and discuss the action over bottles of
> water and iced tea.
>
> "It was incredible," says Surabhi Kukke, an
> Indian-American woman living in Bangalore. "Just the
> fact that women were taking up space was a threat to
> the authorities. Facing off with the guy in the
> square was an empowering feeling for me."
>
> Patheja says the goal of the action was simply to
> engage people in a public discourse about street
> harassment. "I wanted to make it an issue," she
> says. "The exciting thing is that a project that
> began with just nine voices has become so large.
> It's no longer just my project." Blank Noise now has
> chapters that conduct their own street actions in
> the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and
> Hyderabad.
>
> The project's most powerful effect may be the
> changes it inspires in the women who participate.
> Yamini Deen says that simply "standing by the
> railings, without any fear, has changed the way I
> feel. Even if men are staring at me, I don't feel
> threatened. I don't blame myself. Even I'm walking
> alone on the road, I feel confident now."
>
> (03092007) ***END*** (C) COPYRIGHT PNS. ALL RIGHTS
> RESERVED
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