Passion Life Magazine | NO! The Rape Documentary
June 12, 2008
Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Independent Documentary Filmmaker interviewed by Sonya Shields
“Aishah Shahidah Simmons and I met over ten years ago in Washington, DC when she was dating an old friend. We spent a Saturday night with friends dancing at the Hung Jury and talking about our future goals. I remember thinking that she was intensely passionate and I followed her career. I had not seen Aishah since that fun night until I ran into her this past fall when she attended the event to celebrate Katherine Acey’s 20th Anniversary with the Astraea Foundation. I knew that I wanted to talk with Aishah about her work and journey to becoming an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, television and radio producer, published writer, international lecturer, and activist living in Philadelphia…
What is your passion?
My passion is centralizing the margins of society. Making the invisible, visible. Documenting the lives of women of color globally. I am an activist. The camera lens is my medium to make social change irresistible.
What motivates you to do your work? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this work?
Injustice in the world motivates me. Injustice fuels my passion to make change. Anytime when I feel that I can’t do it, there is an issue that I feel needs to be addressed. An issue very dear to my heart is violence against WOMEN.
I am survivor of violence. It is personal. I know more women here in the United States and abroad who have been impacted by violence than those who have not. Whether it was being the victim of violence or witnessing domestic violence and other forms of violence. It has impacted so many women…
Click here to read the interview in its entirety. http://www.passionlife.net/artmay08.html
Kevin Powell’s Poem “NO!” Addresses Violence Against Women
May 1, 2008
NO!
for Aishah Shahidah Simmons
By Kevin Powell*
Will us boys ever learn that power
can’t be pulled from the meat of our third leg
like the last taste of malt liquor sucked from the
bottom of a bottle? Will we ever cease to find
our torsos slow-dragging with death, our dance
a series of grenades aimed at the bellies of our
mothers’ daughters? Will us boys ever break ranks
with the devil, his bible telling us it is mad cool
to rape women because the master does it, and
don’t we, too, yearn to be masters? Will we ever
be able to glue back the hair, unswell the eye,
dab away the blood, and stitch up the holes of the women
we have knifed, repeatedly, with our hatred and
fear? Will us boys ever be able to admit that
some of us have become predators, our prey the
neighbor, the girlfriend, the wife, the sister,
the niece, the granddaughter whose life is an
unguarded prison cell loaded with screams,
paranoia, and a body unsure why it now eats itself?
Friday, December 31, 1999
*Kevin Powell is a political activist, poet, journalist, essayist, hiphop historian, public speaker, and entrepreneur. He is running, as a Democrat, for a seat in the United States Congress in the 10th Congressional District here in Brooklyn, New York.
Shout Out Women of Color Respond To Violence
April 15, 2008
Women of Color Shout Out Against Violence Against Women of Color in Powerful Anthology
Shout Out: Women of Color Respond To Violence
Maria Ochoa & Barbara K. Ige
Seal Press ©2008
“How do so many women survive the violence of their daily lives? Where do they find hope? How can this violence be allowed to continue? Shout Out address these troubling questions and more. This powerful collection provides a range of responses to the injustices that women sustain in their dialy lives through critical examiniations, creative non fiction, visual art, and poetry. Shout Out provides living testimony for the need to put an end to Oppression and violence.”
In January 2008, Seal Press released the powerful anthology Shout Out: Women of Color Respond To Violence. Shout Out doesn’t allow readers to be passive spectators. No, this compelling anthology will take you on a transformational journey that challenges you to be involved in the multi racial, anti colonialist, transnational movements to end all forms of violence perpetuated against women.
Aishah Shahidah Simmons’ choreopoem, “A State of Rage” which was conceived in 1994, in a Toni Cade Bambara scriptwriting workshop at Scribe Video Center, is featured in Shout Out. This choreopoem served as the literal roadmap on my eleven year journey to make my documentary NO!.
As with Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence, is another ground breaking, riveting, anthology, which creates the critically needed space for women of color activists, cultural workers, scholars, and practitioners, to document the violence we face everyday, while celebrating our resistance, expressed in a myriad of ways, against all of the odds.
Celebrating Toni Cade Bambara
April 12, 2008
New Anthology Celebrates Toni Cade Bambara
Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara
Linda Janet Holmes & Cheryl A. Wall, editors
Temple University Press ©2008
“I was fortunate…blessed to have Toni’s presence in my life at such a critical time in my life. In February 1990, at the very ripe age of 20, I shared my feelings of alienation, and inadequacy at Swarthmore College combined with my frustration with the racist and sexist Eurocentric film department at Temple University– things like watching and critiquing camera techniques, without any social commentary, of films like “Birth of A Nation” and “Imitation of Life with Toni.” After hearing my frustration and disappointment with my undergraduate studies at Temple University, Toni told me to come to a place called Scribe Video Center to take her scriptwriting workshop. I told Toni I didn’t have any additional money to take a scriptwriting workshop. Her response was “I didn’t ask you if you had any money, I told you to come to Scribe Video Center and take my scriptwriting workshop.” Toni’s response forever changed my life…” -Aishah Shahidah Simmons-
From 1990, when I was 21 years old, through 1995, I had the absolute privilege to know and learn from Toni Cade Bambara who was an award-winning author, screenwriter, organizer, activist, teacher. Her “hands on” influence on some of the most prominent writers and filmmakers spans two generations. Personally, were it not for Toni’s profound presence in my life at a critical period in my life, I don’t know if I would be a documentary filmmaker today. I wrote about my herstory with Toni and her pivotal role in my becoming a documentary filmmaker, in my featured essay “Asserting My In(ter)dependence: The Evolution of NO!”
As the editors the timeless and celebratory Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, Linda Janet Holmes and Cheryl Wall have done a magnificent job of gathering a chorus of well known and lesser known diverse voices who sing a praise song for Toni Cade Bambara, one of the preeminent cultural workers.
BUY YOUR COPY OF “SAVORING THE SALT” TODAY!!!!
“Brilliance, courage and joy are what I knew of Toni Cade Bambara. Savoring the Salt mirrors her exhilarating intellect and the reach of her incomparable talents. Clearly, in these pages, the impact of her life and work—on family, friends, artists, students, colleagues—is as profound as it is forever”
—Toni Morrison
The extraordinary spirit of Toni Cade Bambara lives on in Savoring the Salt, a vibrant and appreciative recollection of the work and legacy of the multi-talented, African American writer, teacher, filmmaker, and activist. Among the contributors who remember Bambara, reflect on her work, and examine its meaning today are Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage, Ruby Dee, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Nikki Giovanni, Avery Gordon, Audre Lorde, and Sonia Sanchez.
“This is a moving tribute to a seminal figure of American literature whose work continues to resonate.”
—Booklist
“Toni Cade Bambara is one of the great literary figures of the late 20th century. She deserves more serious attention and sustained scrutiny. This magnificent volume is a first step toward this necessary effort!”— Cornel West
“Toni Cade Bambara was a genius of language, an artist of connectedness, a lucid, inspired artisan of human freedom. This collection in many voices, hers threaded throughout, is a gift to her memory, a continuing rediscovery of her visionary work, and an important historical document.”
— Adrienne Rich
“Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage and other African American luminaries remember the late writer and activist [Toni Cade Bambara]. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant wordsmith and tireless revolutionary who 10 years after her death, is missed, says Cleage, ‘each and every day.’”
— “Ms.” Magazine
“The breadth of outstanding contributors to this collection is evidence of Toni Cade Bambara’s enormous influence on writers, filmmakers, scholars, and community activists. Bambara’s artistry, insight, and lived example create a directive for 21st century artists: Tap into the genius within, stay rooted in local communities, and use culture as a tool for progressive social change.”
— Louis Massiah
BUY YOUR COPY OF “SAVORING THE SALT” TODAY!!!!
About the Author(s)
Linda Janet Holmes is a writer, independent scholar, and activist. She is also co-author of Listen To Me Good: The Story of An Alabama Midwife.
Cheryl A. Wall is Professor of English at Rutgers University, and the author of Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition
Rape is a Crisis in Black Communities by Salamishah Tillet
April 10, 2008
It’s A Crisis
April 10, 2008 — Given the staggeringly high incidence of sexual violence in black communities it is fair to ask why this problem has not risen to the level of a crisis in the public consciousness
Type Size
Perhaps one of the truest and most tragic lines in American film is spoken by the character Yellow Mary in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust(1991) when she sadly declares that “the rape of the colored woman is as common as fish in the sea.” As a rape survivor, I speak on behalf of the 1 in 4 women who will experience sexual assault in her lifetime.
Moreover, since April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I hope to bring awareness to the fact that even though African-American women make up about 7% of the U.S. population, we currently constitute 18.8% to 28% of the reported sexual assault victims. These women are ,and have always been, our grandmothers,our daughters, our partners. And our friends.
Given the staggering statistics, I cannot help but wonder why this pandemic does not constitute a crisis within both African-American communities and the larger American body politic. African-American women have consistently spoken out against social ills such as the War in Iraq and racial injustices experienced by black men — from lynching to police brutality to racial profiling.
And yet, they have had to confront their own experiences with race and gender-related sexual violence without the support of many African-American leaders. Today, most rapes are intra-racial. The vast majority of rape victims, almost ninety-percent, report that a member of their same racial or ethnic group sexually assaulted them.
Unfortunately, because many African-American female rape victims do not want to perpetuate racial stereotypes about the black male rapist (created and used by white mobs to justify the lynching of economically and politically mobile black men) and the black male criminal (now used to maintain racial disparities in the criminal justice system), they often do not press charges against their assailants because they fear further criminalizing African-American men.
Like most rape victims, many African-American women understand that public disbelief, sexual double standards, and sexist stereotypes such as the “gold-digger” will greet their accusations of rape. But even more egregiously, African-American women know that they risk being labeled a race traitor by some who view their actions as airing “dirty laundry.”
And yet, there is a long tradition of African-American women speaking out about sexual violence, and mixing their anti-rape discourse with anti-racist activism. In 1866, a group of African-American women testified before Congress about white mobs who sexually assaulted them during the infamous Memphis race riots. Following suit, African-American activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett continually linked her anti-lynching crusade with her clarion call to end sexual violence.
Today, we can turn to African-American women novelists such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, entertainers such as Oprah Winfrey and Gabrielle Union, writers such as Charlotte Pierce-Baker’s Surviving the Silence(2000) and Lori Robinson’s I Will Survive (2003) to locate models of anti-rape activism.
We should look at filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons’s groundbreaking film NO! The Rape Documentary which details the history of African-American women and sexual violence and watch photographer Scheherazade Tillet’s [Full disclosure: She's my sister] multimedia performance SOARS (Story of A Rape Survivor) which brilliantly uses the visual and performing arts to document the journey of recovering from and healing after rape.
In order to end the sexual violence experienced by African-American women, we need to recognize sexual abuse as one of the most important issues facing black America today. We need to encourage and include the voices of African-American women in mainstream activism against rape. And we need ensure that our demands for political and racial justice include calls for an end to sexism, sexual violence and homophobia. Until we begin supporting and believing African-American rape victims, we will always be engaged in a half-hearted fight for racial equality.
Salamishah Tillet is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of the non-profit organization, A Long Walk Home, Inc., which uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to document and to end violence against underserved women and children.
Remixing the Rule of Racial Silence by Melissa Harris-Lacewell
April 10, 2008
Rape and Race: We have to talk about it.
April 10, 2008 — Remixing the racial rule of silence.
I witnessed something truly astonishing on Monday night: a public discussion of black women’s experiences of sexual violence at the hands of black men. It was an intergenerational group of black men and women, gay and straight, survivors and perpetrators, all grappling with the legacy of rape and race.
The experience was unusual because black people rarely talk about sisters being raped. We talk about all kinds of things: trivial, critical, humorous, serious, political, painful and frivolous. But as we observe Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April, I am reminded that there are things we don’t talk about.
We are silent about black women as victims and survivors of sexual assault by black men.
In African American communities rape narratives are not women’s stories. They are men’s stories. Rape is tied to the historical legacy of white terror. Strange fruit hanging from Southern trees has led to a legacy of disbelieving women who report sexual violence and intimidation.
Black women raped by black male perpetrators often remain silent because they are alone. They don’t want to confirm white racial stereotypes; their own families and communities tell them to shut up; they have little reason to think that authorities will take their cases seriously; they fear the devastating ramifications of a manhunt in black communities if they are believed; and in the history of lynching white women have been adversaries, not allies, on the question of rape.
Recovering from rape is burden enough without having to shoulder this vicious legacy.
I do not want to diminish or deny the pain, agony, recovery and triumph of survivors who are not black women. I do not want to claim that all black women survivors have parallel experiences or that all black women experience the same traumas in the aftermath of rape. I only want to claim there is often a different dynamic that operates for black women who have been violated by black men.
As a sexual assault survivor and advocate I know the debilitating effects of silence. That is why I was so moved by Monday night’s gathering in Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY. Together we watched Aishah Shahidah Simmons’ NO! The Rape Documentary. Then Simmons, who is herself a rape and incest survivor, talked with us and answered questions to help us process the grief, anger and confusion that her exquisite film provoked.
But here was the most surprising part of all: the gathering was organized by a community group called Black and Male in America. Under the leadership of writer, activist and Congressional candidate Kevin Powell, this group of men arranged a screening of Simmons’ powerful film. Let me say this again. A group of black men arranged for an honest, difficult, intense, public discussion of intra-racial rape.
Filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons revealed that it has been difficult to find wide distribution for her film because so few people want to grapple with black women’s sexual victimization. Simmons was joined on the panel by Kevin Powell and Quentin Walcott from ConnectNYC. Sitting next to these men, Simmons acknowledged that brothers from the hip-hop generation, a generation that has been critiqued as universally commercial and misogynist, have been among her strongest supporters.
Simmons said, “It’s also very important for me to note that this and many other community-based screenings that have been organized by Black men are men from the hip-hop generation. I share this because there are many justifiable critiques of hip-hop. However, hands down, the overwhelming majority of the men who have supported NO! and spread the word about NO! are from the hip-hop generation.”
Organizer Kevin Powell is certainly a central figure of the hip-hop generation. As a first season Real World cast member, Powell helped usher in the age of reality TV. As a writer and poet he has reflected on and critiqued hip-hop. Powell also has his own difficult past as a perpetrator of domestic violence. But rather than being silent and demanding silence from others, Powell has written movingly about his own awakening from violence. On Monday night he and other men of this Brooklyn organization helped provide space for sexual assault survivors to speak and be heard.
We are right to focus on and criticize the elements of hip-hop that are complicit in the violence, abuse and degradation of black women. But we are also compelled to acknowledge the possibility that some men of the hip-hop generation just might have something to teach their elders about passing the mic and being quiet while sisters share their stories. Maybe, just maybe, this generation of men will create a different path.
Reflecting on what this new path might look like Powell said, “What we’ve found in our work with black males is that many of us brothers are completely clueless about what manhood should be. So we swallow whole what society, our communities, our families, our fathers, and, yes, our mothers, tell us it is, even if that definition leads us to hurt or destroy black females or other black males. Or ourselves. There is a growing recognition, now, among many hip-hop generation black women thinkers, leaders, and artists, and a growing number of us black male counterparts, that if we do not deal with the multiple insanities we as a community have internalized, then we are doomed as a community. It is really that serious.”
Monday night’s event helped us to remember that rape is complicated by race. For many black women there is a sense of betrayal that exists alongside the personal humiliation, pain and fear. Intra-racial rape can feel like a rift between a woman and her people. The survivor is cast into silence not so much a by a desire to protect those men who perpetrated, but to protect the black men in her life who she loves, respects and trusts. As Simmons’ NO! reminds us, survivors often feel that by fingering the attacker we might somehow accuse our own fathers, husbands, friends and sons of possessing this same capacity for violence.
So it makes a huge difference for black men to stand with us and encourage us to tell. The Brooklyn gathering was a model of how black men can help create safe spaces for us. It was a reminder that men can exert power and reclaim manhood by standing with black women, bearing witness to our stories and holding one another accountable. It was a testament to the reality that men can stop rape by saying NO!
Melissa Harris-Lacewell is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University.
NO! The Rape Documentary & Aishah Shahidah Simmons on Joy of Resistance Multicultural Feminist Radio
April 10, 2008
Violence Against Women Documentary Featured on Joy of Resistance Program on WBAI Pacifica Radio Network | Women’s History Month
On Thursday, March 27, 2008, NO! The Rape Documentary and Aishah Shahidah Simmons were featured guests on Joy of Resistance Multi-Cultural Feminist Radio, WBAI Pacifica Radio Network in New York, with co-hosts Fran Luck and NOW-NJ President, Maretta Short, to raise awareness about rape, other forms of sexual violence, healing and feminist activism during Women’s History Month. Monica Dillon’s powerful song “No,” which is a call to action to end violence against women is featured throughout the program. Please download the audio or listen to it, here on the blog.
length - 61 min
right click to download here
NO! The Rape Documentary Featured on WBAI Pacifica Radio Network in New York
April 8, 2008
Sexual Assault Documentary Featured On WBAI, New York
On Monday, April 7, 2008 Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Kevin Powell were featured guests Wake Up Call with host Esther Armah on WBAI, 99.5 in New York to promote the screening of NO! at Browne Memorial Baptist Church. It was a wonderful turn-out and an amazingly intense evening. There will be additional posts about that powerful event soon. Please download the audio or listen to it, here on the blog.
length - 37 min
right click to download here
NO! The Rape Documentary at Filmmor Women’s Film Festival in Turkey
March 15, 2008
NO! The Rape Documentary will have her Turkish premiere at the 6th International Filmmor Women’s Film Festival on Wheels. Featuring 46 films from 13 countries, The festival’s theme this year is “Women’s History: Obedience, Rebellion, Feminism.”
The festival will be held in Istanbul from the 14th through the 22nd of March. Afterwards, the festival will travel to 28th-29th of March at Eski?ehir, 4th-5th of April at Tunceli and 11th-12th of April at Van, after Istanbul, making the festival more accessible to audiences in Turkey.
Read a March 15, 2008, article, in the Turkish newspaper “Today’s Zaman” about the festival, which features a photograph of Aishah Shahidah Simmons and mentions NO! along with several other featured feminist films and documentaries from around the world.
Click here to read the article online.
Click here to download a pdf of the article.
Black History Month | Screening of NO! The Rape Documentary @ The Brecht Forum
March 12, 2008
Black History Month | Screening of NO! The Rape Documentary @ The Brecht Forum
On February 7, 2008, there was an almost standing room only screening NO! The Rape Documentary at the Brecht Forum. Immediately following the screening there was a very lively panel discussion with Ejeris Dixon, the Program Coordinator of the Safe OUTside the System Collective, Ebony Noelle Golden, poet and organizer, who is a founding member of UBUNTU and other groups in the Durham area after the Duke lacrosse case, and Michael Simmons, who is an international human rights activist and a featured interviewee in NO!. Unfortunately, due to illness, Salamishah Tillet, who was scheduled to moderate the discussion, wasn’t able to participate in the conversation.
One of the people who attended is a member of an organization called “SAFER (Students Active for Ending Rape)“, an advocacy group in the US which works to improve universities’ response to sexual assaults in the campus environment. After attending the event, she wrote two reaction pieces on the SAFER organization’s blog, which you can read by clicking the following two links.
NO! A Documentary about Rape
NO! Part 2
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