Resurrection After Rape Community Group
Discussion, question-and-answer, general social support, and journal processing for progress-oriented rape survivors. No crisis, no damaging or triggering conflicts--this is for individuals who want to contribute to collective, cooperative action toward the goal of making actual PROGRESS through rape trauma. Much of this work is based on the book "Resurrection After...
Lucky me, I am being flown to Washington, D.C. as part of a workshop on sexual assault! The Fed is putting me up in a VERY posh hotel suite directly up the street from the Capitol Building, paying for the travel, per diem, etc. It's like I hit the big time!
Matt,
Director of How Ya Like Me Now?
:)
Matt,
Director of How Ya Like Me Now?
:)
Word of caution: Neighborhoods in the capital hill area are very patchy - check at the hotel desk before you wander too far at night in any direction. DC is a lot safer than when I was a kid, but If you wander too far in the wrong direction, there are still some very bad neighborhoods not too far away from where you are staying.
Praying for your safe travel! Have fun and learn lots :)
Wonder if they'll give you "freebie" toiletries?!! ;) P.S. If they do..please can I have some?
It's a $380/night hotel, so I'm sure there'll be some "freebie toiletries." Here's the place:
http://www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-3293-sofitel-washington-dc-lafayette-square/index.shtml
I won't be there through the weekend. I'll fly back Friday night.
K ill send you a shipment address. Just something pretty and makes it look like ive been there..since its closest ill ever get :)
Lol about someone harrassing you..you never know I hear the people down there are like 7ft these days..so watch out ;)
Whoa victim blamer..settle down...HAHA I've always wanted to say that to you.
No, I'm saying the opposite: there's something about ME that KEEPS ME from being harassed! The rest of you short folks just have to keep writing out stuck point essays. Mwaah hah haaaaa!
"Matt,
Director of How Ya Like Me Now?" Line... that made me laugh!!! You deserve this and so much more.
Short People Stuck Point Essays eh...I think I am stuck on writing that one :P
So you can cross off at least one bad neighborhood.
A bit of history. The area around capital hill extending down 14th and U street was particularly badly hit by riots in 1968 - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Washington,_D.C._riots. It was just beginning to turn around in the 80's (my mother had an office on 13th and Vermont ) and seems well on its way. Getting rid of a mayor (Marion Barry) who was a coke-head probably did its own bit to make prosecuting the trade easier and end the drive-bys as well.
Behind the hill in SE/NE Washington is also a fascinating area. It is home to some of the worst poverty in DC but also some of the most powerful social justice churches in the area.
The summer after my freshman year of college I did some volunteer work for One Ministries, a charity sponsored by the 3rd Street Church of God in NE.
At the time they had a really innovative program whereby they paired up inner city churches with suburban churches. It sounds like it would have been a one way relationship but it wasn't. Turned out that they had lots of lessons to share with each other - come to think of it - not too different from what I'd like to see one day with more collaboration between survivors and artists, musicians, researchers, etc. One side had more skills and resources. The other side had hope refined by hard realities, leadership, ground level understanding of why it was important to use those resources, and wisdom about how best to apply them.
The program I was involved in also involved partnering, in this case young people in a summer jobs program with college students. There the idea was to help young people think a bit bigger about themselves and to give us college students an understanding of a part of the world we might not otherwise have. I remember waiting at the bus-stop with one teen and talking about how I came from NJ. His world was so small he just assumed I meant NJ avenue, When I said I meant the actual state he was in awe. He'd never left DC in his entire life (I'd been to Africa, Japan, India, Korea, Thailand, Europe, Alaska, and Hawaii all by the time I was 6). I think until that point I also always thought poverty was about having nothing (my family was fairly well off).
I also learned through that program poverty, at least in the USA, wasn't about having nothing or too litlle to survive. Most people had the basics, but nothing in working order, no control over the environment, and great difficulty seeing beyond it. In one apartment the front hallway had a huge hole in the ceiling and the entire ceiling was covered with cockroaches before we roach bombed and painted it - the landlord had completely ignored complaints.
There are applications here for survivors as well. One reason why things like the retreat and on-line groups like RAR are so important is that we really do need each other to see possibilities. If we only look at our own little world we can easily lose hope and get lost.
Have a lot of fun. Let the suits in your old job drool :-)
I'm looking at a book called "Sacred Activism" and this is it.