Sally Shelton-Colby, former diplomat, has worked all over the world—literally. After her Fulbright in Paris, she worked for the US Senate and then for the Department of State as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Latin America. Shelton-Colby moved back to Paris to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, then moved to Mexico to work with President Vicente Fox’s anti-corruption program. She returned to Washington to teach in the School of International Service. AWOL’s Ashley Dejean sat down with the world traveler to discuss international relations and vodka.

Can you talk about your work with the Bureau for Global Programs?
One of my assistants told me my middle name has got to be “I never met an issue I didn’t like.” He was right about that, because there’s nothing I’m not interested in. All of the technical expertise in AID who worked for me: the economists, the doctors, the egronomists, the environmental scientists, the human rights experts—we all provided this technical assistance to the 84 aid missions around the world. So one minute I’d be worried about HIV/AIDS in Russia, the next about climate change in India, the next about education reform in Egypt. So the range of issues and countries was fantastic, and I loved every minute of it. The higher up you go up the professional ladder, the more responsibilities you have. So sometimes I felt I was doing nothing but management: personnel issues and budget issues and so on.  The people working for me were having all the fun developing the education and agriculture and economic programs, etcetera. But I absolutely loved it. During that time I spent a lot of time in the Middle East, I was practically commuting to Egypt. I spent a fair amount of time in Russia, as well. I’ve been blessed to have had a fair amount of wonderful jobs that I’ve learned from. I always encourage students not to take a job that’s going to be easy, find the job that’s going to be hard. Look for the job that’s just a little bit beyond your grasp, because that will stretch you intellectually. Most of us are happier when we’re learning and growing intellectually.

And then you worked with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development?

The organization that oversaw the Marshall Plan after World War II subsequently morphed into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It’s composed of 33 of the most industrialized countries in the world, and there’s a staff of about 2,500 economists and other sets of skills that try to coordinate the economic and social policies of the 33 members. It develops best practices and norms for the member countries, and any non-member countries that want to adopt those practices. For example, it works on a broad range of issues: fiscal policy, monetary policy, economic policy, agriculture, governance, education, health, and so on. I was Deputy Secretary General, and I was responsible for the development portfolio, governance and regulatory reform. Again, it was a huge amount of management.

You said you were frustrated when you worked with Mexican President Vicente Fox on anti-corruption. What do you mean by that?

I got very frustrated because the Mexican legal system is badly in need of reform. So we would discover evidence of corruption, it would go into the judicial system, and judges would do nothing because they were in the pockets of the politicians. So the constraints of an inadequate legal system got to me, and I finally decided to give it up.
One day I was being driven to work and my driver was really irritated because he had been listening to the news while he was waiting for me. The radio broadcasted a story on the cabinet’s salaries. He was just irritated that they were getting paid so much. Some enterprising journalist had requested, under the Freedom of Information Act that we had helped get passed, and here was my driver irritated about this news. He said, “I’m not voting for that party next time, I’ll vote for the opposition.” And I thought, this is democracy at work. This is one small example of something we were doing. Here was someone who had never voted who was now energized to take a part in the process because of a law that we helped get passed.

What about your famous Reagan story?

It was when the National Endowment for Democracy was established during the Reagan administration. Since I was the youngest person on the board, and a woman, I was pushed to the front of the receiving line at the White House to shake hands with the President at the launch. So President Reagan walked in, and I was at the front of the line, so we both put our hands out, and he was talking to me. Then what seemed like hours passed, and he kept holding my hand and talking to me. After a while the Congressman behind me began to giggle quietly and the Senator standing behind him started to giggle, and I could vaguely hear the head of the AFL/CIO standing behind him start to sort of make some noise. I tried to relax my grip, but he didn’t relax his. So I retightened my grip and he kept talking. I think even the audience was tittering at that point. This must have gone on for four or five minutes—a long time, particularly when it’s the president of the United States. To this day I do not know what he said; I was too focused on the handholding. How do you extricate yourself from the grip of the president of the United States? To this day that Senator still teases me about it.

Can you tell me about your work with human rights in the Panama Canal?

The chairman of the House Committee on the Merchant Marine called me into his office. I had been testifying about the need for political change in Nicaragua, and we had been putting pressure on the Nicaraguan government to open up a very closed, controlled system. I was also involved with the selling of the Panama Canal. I strongly believed if we wanted access to the Panama Canal, we better return it to the Panamanians. This Congressman said, “The Panama Canal Treaty is up for approval in the Senate, and it needs approval legislation, which has to go through both chambers of Congress. So you need to take this message back to the administration, you need to make a choice: you keep beating up on my friend, President Somoza of Nicaragua, and you don’t get any legislation for the Panama Canal Treaty or you stop beating up on him, and you get the implementing legislation. So I took the decision back, and it went all the way to the White House. The decision was to put the priority on the Panama Canal Treaty. We then softened our pressure on Somoza, and the rest is history. The center in Nicaragua threw its lot in with the Sandanistas, and war resulted. These are the kinds of really tough decisions you constantly make in government. You have to always keep in mind, what is in the US national interest. All these years later I wonder if we made the right decision. I think we did.

Looking back, what things do you see differently?

I feel conflicted about humanitarian assistance. I now am feeling that I should not have argued for suspending humanitarian assistance to a “bad guy” government, because people should not pay the price for the sins of their government. So I think as one gets more experience in life and thinks about these issues, one’s opinions often evolve. Looking back, are there things that I think the US should have done differently? Yes, Egypt is a big example: we should have leaned much harder on Mubarak. We should have threatened to reduce military assistance, even though that was the price US paid for Camp David, the peace between the US and Israel. But I wish I had pushed harder.

Tell me about your late husband, former director of the CIA during the Nixon administration.

I have this story: We went to the Soviet Union for our first trip. He sent a note ahead to the KGB to say he was coming, as a courtesy. We flew into Leningrad, this was at a time when food was very scarce. We’d skipped lunch, and we were going to the ballet that night. Afterwards, we had a midnight train to Moscow. We ran to the station after the ballet, thinking we could get a sandwich at the station. But there was no food for miles. So we got into our couchette and we hear a knock on the door. There at our door was a six foot tall Russian grinning from ear to ear, holding in his hands two bottles of vodka. Turns out he was our KGB handler, who heard we were thirsty. We had a very nice evening.

Photo by Lori McCue.

“I think with these sexual assault education programs, what we can prevent is a scared girl lying under someone and trying to convince him what he’s doing is illegal.”

These words echoed through the megaphone and onto the American University quad as Nicole Wisler relived her experience as that scared girl. She and many others were protesting the university’s decision to pass up a grant application that could have provided $300,000 to address domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. Wisler’s story illustrated the need for such programs. She explained that while the student who assaulted her understood the most basic definition of rape, “it’s rape if she doesn’t say yes,” he didn’t know the full meaning of the word or its implications.

“He used all kinds of force and very coercive measures to try to convince me to say yes because he thought that this would equal consent, even if it was out of fear for my own safety,” Wisler said.

After saying no and pushing back, she explained to him that if he had sex with her, it wouldn’t be consensual. If he had sex with her, she would take action against him. He continued to pursue her, but finally stopped. Wisler believes he realized she was being serious­—it finally sunk in that his actions fell under the definition of sexual assault.

Wisler’s story is only one of many. It’s estimated that about 1 in 4 college students are raped or are survivors of attempted rape. According to the 2008 Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, 6.8 percent of AU students—a number that rounds to about 400—experienced “forced sexual touching or fondling.” And 4.1 percent—roughly 200—experienced “unwanted sexual intercourse” in the previous year. The survey, administered to 37 classes, claims to represent the undergraduate student body in terms of “gender, racial and ethnic composition, and class status.” Next year, the survey will be conducted again.

On that chilly March day last year, protesting students occupied the quad before marching to confront Gail Hanson, Vice President of the Office of Campus Life. Hanson had refused to sign the application for the Campus Grant funded by the Office of Violence Against Women (OVA), a component of the Department of Justice. Without her signature, AU would not be considered for the funding. Hanson said that other university officials higher up than her, like University President Neil Kerwin, had concerns about the grant—namely that it would require mandatory sexual assault education and failure to take part in the education would result in a stop on the student’s account.

Thus, the application students had been working on for months, keeping university officials like Hanson in the loop through the entire process, never made it to the Department of Justice. Campus Grants were eventually awarded to 26 universities, totaling $7,231,923. Many of these grants were given to universities with a significantly more conservative culture than AU, yet these university’s gave the necessary approval.

As previously reported by AWOL, students provided Hanson with an alternative document to sign, asking for her to guarantee that the university would meet major goals outlined in the Campus Grant application with university funds. After editing it heftily, she signed the bottom fifth of the document. Hanson did not make any firm commitments; however, she did agree to meet with students in a forum “if possible.”

A Recent History of Sexual Assault Controversy at AU

During the 2009-2010 school year, The Eagle received some fairly bad press for two contentious articles regarding sexual assault. These articles ignited a discussion about sexual assault on AU’s campus.

A column entitled, “‘Sex’-perimentation defines Welcome Week” described The Eagle’s perspective of a drunken hook-up, but Women’s Initiative said the scenario “normalize[d] sexual assault” and Students for Choice said the article described “an explicit rape.”

It’s three in the morning. You have it inside you right now. It kind of hurts. You’ve had one too many cups of jungle juice. You think his name is Andrew, but you’re not really sure. You thought you would never be that girl, but there you are, in your drunken haze.

The rest of the article continued to explain that the girl should not consider this boy to be relationship material or feel guilty about her “drunken romp” because “everyone does it.” An editorial in response to the article’s controversy described the outrage as “confusing.” Rob Hradsky, Dean of Students, then gave AU students a quick lesson on the university’s sexual assault policy in a Letter to the Editor. He explained that “sexual assault is a more accurate description of this scenario” than a “drunken hook-up.”

Put simply, if someone is under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, as the article portrayed, they cannot give consent. If both parties can’t give consent, any sexual activity can be defined as sexual assault.

Fast-forward to March 2010, almost exactly a year before the VAWA grant protest, when AU found itself in the national spotlight, thanks to Alex Knepper’s column in The Eagle. In “Dealing with AU’s anti-sex brigade.” Knepper described date rape “as an incoherent concept” and stated that if a girl gets drunk at a frat party and goes home with a guy, she’s asking for it.

Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an  anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of putting a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

The rest of the article’s tone was equally antagonistic and provocative.

The column sparked an outcry that received national attention, prompting The Eagle staff to apologize for publishing the article and to revise its editorial policies. Needless to say, the controversy surrounding both articles and the discussions they stirred revealed a lack of understanding in the campus community, suggesting a need for an increase in sexual assault and rape education.

Student Efforts against Sexual Assault

Student efforts to address issues surrounding consensual sex and sexual assault started long before last year’s protest.

In fact, since 2004, AU students have participated in Take Back the Night, an international event aimed at ending sexual violence. Last year, Anna Sebastian was so moved by the event she became one of the planners.

“I attended Take Back the Night last year as a freshman and was incredibly moved by the experience,” Sebastian wrote in an email. “I found solace in the community created within that space and I can honestly say it was a life-changing event for me. I looked into get more involved with it almost immediately afterward.”

The event, held on April 9, was among several others in observance of Sexual Assault Awareness month. Another effort students have been working on is the Clothesline Project. For this, statistics, testimonials and moving messages are written on t-shirts and displayed around campus.

Carmen Rios, the current director of Women’s Initiative, created the (con)sensual campaign in 2009, which “works to create safe spaces for dialogue on consent, educate college students about consent and their sexual rights, and encourage young people to integrate consent into their sexual practices.”

Nefertiti Abeja is directing the campaign this year and is currently working on making it more relevant and applicable to AU’s student population. She’s also been working to make the campaign more inclusive.

“We’ve been focusing on queering consensual because when it first started, this was never intentional, but it always tended to take this very heteronormative spin,” Abeja said. “You know, girl at a party, possible male attacker, and so it’s kind of addressing consent in queer relationships.”

Sexual Assault Prevention & Resources for Survivors at AU

Although AU still is not applying for the Campus Grant this year, the protest did not fall on deaf ears. The university has made significant progress in addressing sexual assault issues.

Before the end of the semester of the protest, the part-time sexual assault health educator position became a full-time position renamed Sexual Assault Prevention Coordinator.

On November 1, Daniel Rappaport, AU’s Sexual Assault Prevention Coordinator, and Courtney Brooks, coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center, became victim advocates for students. In this position, they are not required to report instances of sexual assault. Students who seek their support have complete confidentiality.

“Our responsibility is to meet with [students] as many times as they want, as frequently as they want,” Brooks said. “We can accompany them through the legal and judicial process, we can go with them to get off campus resources. The whole point of having a confidential advocate is so they don’t have to go through the process alone, they don’t have to have these conversations alone, they don’t have to figure out where to go. Our job is not to put them in one direction, but to present options and support them through that no matter what.”

Even statistics reporting how many students approach them with instances of sexual assault are confidential. Anna Sebastian, co-director of Women’s Initiative Stopping Violence Against Women, says this is a step forward for the community.

“The university has definitely made progress regarding their sexual assault policies since last year,” Sebastian explained. “It appears that a sexual assault education component will be included in the new student programming for the upcoming class. This is a wonderful step forward, but, at the same time, to think that we did not have this before is a humbling factor to this victory.”

University officials have been working towards including a Sexual Assault Education component in next year’s orientation. Exactly what that will look like is unclear.

“I can say that in terms of more, we absolutely intend for sexual assault to have its own piece of orientation,” Rappaport said. “We’re still looking around to try to make what we feel is the best choice for right now and doing the best that we can under the circumstances, but it’s not going to be a five minutes sort of deal. It’ll be it’s own piece of orientation. I’d like for it to be an hour.”

AlcoholEdu has included a brief section dealing with sexual assault for the past three years.

Rappaport fairly notes that, “considering it being the circumstance of an online education piece, it was pretty good for what it was worth. Do I think that that is all of the education students should receive coming in? Absolutely not.”

Gail Hanson is also on board and agrees that educating students in their first year is important. She has concerns, however, about guaranteeing the program’s effectiveness and students’ information retention.

“When you get to the last session, I say it’s like drinking out of a firehose,” she said. “You’re blown back from all the stuff. Imagine tucking into that thirty minutes, an hour on sexual assault that focuses on what defines sexual assault, what constitutes consent and maybe something on bystander information. That’s in a day and a half of hourly information briefings.”

Despite Hanson’s concerns about overloading students with information, she understands the need for education about sexual assault to begin at orientation.

“Everyone says ‘Orientation, it has to be at orientation.’ Well it does, but what it has to be is effective,” she said.

One student shared her own story during orientation because she thought it was important to give incoming students exposure to the issue of sexual assault. The forum Hanson agreed to attend “if possible” occurred in September. During this forum, the student who shared her story spoke out because she was offended it was listed under the university’s progress, but she made the decision to share due to the university’s lack of progress.

While the university isn’t quite ready to check orientation education off its list, it is likely that next year’s incoming class will receive at least some level of sexual assault education—whether it’s adequate remains to be seen.

Another effort called Green Dot, a bystander intervention awareness program, is gaining traction. “The basic premise is green dots are good, red dots are bad,” Rappaport said. “A red dot is anything that contributes to violence or culture of violence, any action, behavior, conversation that promotes violence. Whereas green dot is the opposite. Any action, behavior, word, discussion that shows intolerance for violence and promotes a culture of safety.” These dots are a symbolic way of mentally visualizing actions, words and other behaviors that create either a safe or more hostile environment.

The program is about awareness and empowering observers to take action when they see a potentially harmful situation.

“Everyone has obstacles to intervening. We’ve all seen situations where ‘Do we act? Should I act? What should I do? I don’t know.’ And then the situation will go on or something’s happened and we tell ourselves whatever we need and for the next five days we’re like ‘Oh, I should’ve done this, I should’ve done that.’”

Rappaport says a “reactive green dot” or a response to a potentially negative situation can either be directly confronting someone, encouraging someone else to confront them or simply distracting them from the situation. Examples of distractions he lists are asking where the bathroom is, saying you thought you saw the police or spilling your drink on the person.
“So it’s not changing the world, but the idea of green dot is to change the culture by these small, tiny incidences,” Rappaport said.

All RAs have gone through bystander intervention and Green Dot training.

“We partnered with housing and dining programs in January and they set aside an entire day of the RA training program to put the RAs through the bystander intervention training,” said Michelle Espinosa, Associate Dean of Students. “It’s a seven hour workshop that they go through. It actually teaches them the skills of when you are intervening as a bystander, what you can do and how you can do that.” Espinosa says a training session with some of Greek Life is planned during Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April.

Brooks and Rappaport were also the driving force behind an educational event geared towards Greek Life and athletics, which occurred earlier in April.

“We’re bringing in Don McPherson, he’s a former NFL player and college football hall of fame member and he works directly with men on the prevention of relationship violence,” Brooks said. “For all students, but particularly he good at working with athletics and Greek Life because that was his experience, so he can speak to that experience from his time as a student all the way into adulthood.”

Greek Life and AU athletes were required to attend this event, which Brooks hopes helps facilitate conversation and build bridges with these communities.

“I wasn’t in Greek life in college,” Brooks said. “I went to an institution that did not have Greek life. And so I don’t necessarily understand that language. [McPherson] does, and it’s important to have someone here who can address that. So we’re really hoping that will craft a new conversation on campus and really open the door to have a dialogue because I think a lot of time these particular groups are stereotyped and marginalized for either being perpetrators or creating a culture of silence, and I think a lot of time people feel isolated because of that and feel like they can’t be part of a conversation. We want to change that and break down those walls.”

To further facilitate education and discussion, the Wellness Center has peer educators who work closely with Rappaport. Members of this group, Peer Educators for the Elimination of Relationship and Sexual Violence (PEERS), have received 40 hours of training based on the curriculum that’s used for student advocates at the University of Maryland and conducted 15 workshops for various groups on campus.

Rappaport also works with the Men of Strength (MOST) group on campus.

“It’s a place where we look at men, masculinity, violence, sexual violence, and things like that,” he said. “It’s as informal as it sounds. That’s a great way to allow men who are at different points not only to learn more, but get involved in terms of dating violence.”

Public Safety officers also received basic first responder training from Rappaport over spring break.

“He did some basic baseline training in terms of first responder,” Espinosa said. “For more of a customer service slash advocate role. And the Public Safety officers are in an interesting situation in that respect because they want to be an advocate, they want to support the victim who might be reporting. They also need to be very cognizant of the criminal aspect that might be in play there. So they have to kind of walk that thin line. Daniel did some training with them to talk about the language that we use when we’re working with a victim who’s just responding and just reporting something in.”

Faculty and staff will also be required to take an online sexual harassment training program starting fall 2012.

While many steps have been made, Rappaport notes an obstacle that still needs to be addressed: getting to a hospital that has a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, or SANE program, which specially trains nurses in examining and collecting evidence in instances of sexual assault.

“We definitely can improve on transportation to Washington Hospital Center in addition to discount vouchers,” Rappaport said. “Public safety is more than happy to drive students there, but obviously that creates other obstacles, and that’s something we constantly are working on improving.”

Brooks noted there’s always room for improvement.

“Even if we think we’re doing it well, we want to go in and we want to look at it and figure out how can we make it better,” Brooks said. “Our responsibility is to never to be satisfied. We always want to keep pushing it to the next level because the individual’s experience of being supported and feeling advocated for in the process is so critical. It can really impact how they heal from the process.”

Provoking Change

While some of these changes would have come about with or without the protest, and there’s still progress to be made, last year’s loud call for improved resources and education made an impact. Hanson said the university has been conscientious of the protesters’ agenda.

“I certainly understood what their priorities are,” Hanson said. “I think we’ve done a good job of marching along that priority list and paying attention to most of those things and doing them on our own resources.”

But Hanson says they’re still seeking student input for ways to improve.

“We’ll probably have another open meeting this spring,” Hanson said. “Probably during Sexual Assault Awareness [month] and we’ll see what students think of what’s in place and where we have opportunities to do better, but I think we’re doing reasonably well.”

Despite public backlash against the protests last year and other more recent disruptive, non-violent action, the university’s response to the protest displays the effectiveness of these democratic, time-tested tools. Some argued these voices were disrespectful, but using these tactics appropriately can prove a successful method to initiate change, inform the public, and bring about much-needed discussion. While the university didn’t sign the grant and may not be addressing the grievances brought up during the protest as quickly as some would like, student voices were taken into account, and their agenda is moving forward.

Illustrations by Hannah Karl and Carolyn Becker.

Whether it’s composting with worms or taking care of AU’s beehive (yes, we have bees!), International Development Professor Eve Bratman is always looking for ways to live more sustainability. This “green pirate” makes a yearly pilgrimage to Brazil for her research. Earlier this year, she asked the provocative question, “Is DC a Third World City?” But don’t take our word for it, let the woman speak!

How did you get into beekeeping?

Joe [Clapper, an Assistant Dean in SIS,] offered a Dean’s Discretionary Grant to me in the spring of last year to get started bee keeping. It was largely a result of having joked with him. I kept saying, “Joe, if you guys don’t have the resources for a full green roof, we might as well start with bees. What’s a couple of hives up on the roof? No big deal.” The resources for a green roof are hopefully going to come and we’re starting where we can—with a bee hive.

What do you find really interesting about bees?

There are a million factoids. They spend 98 percent of their life spans in total darkness. When they go out foraging, it’s all based on the waggle dance bees do inside of the hive, which tells the bees the direction of the flowers or the trees they should go forage in as well as the distance. They forage within a three mile radius of wherever their hive is and know by the smell of their queen and because they have good memories for directions, how to go off three miles away and then all the way back to their hive.

Have you ever been stung?

Oh, yes. Many a time. And it’s okay—I’m here to tell the tale. At first I wasn’t using any protective gear because when bees are very young, you don’t need to because their stingers aren’t fully developed yet. It’s actually a pretty miraculous thing that you can actually just scoop up a bunch of buzzing honey bees and not really worry much about getting stung. They’re quite docile as a species, so they’ll only sting when they feel threatened or when they’ve got something to defend. The hive started on the SIS roof, and quickly thereafter we got funding together and started two additional hives here on campus, the honey co-op hives. Those hives were struggling a lot during the tropical storm. When I went to go check the hives right after the storm, I got stung on my lip, and I looked like Shrek. Literally my lip was flopping in the wind, it was so swollen.

Do you have any long term plans for the bees?

I hope that we can harvest some honey. Also, as part of this Green Eagle Grant we have funding for a hive camera so that we could potentially stream images of what’s going on just outside the beehives into the Davenport Coffee Lounge. That’s part of the vision for raising awareness about the bees. A lot of what I aim to do as a professor is to get students to think about the international issues in ways that are tangible and personal. As I see it, a lot of my work around the bees here on campus is a way of giving real-life practical examples in what is otherwise an area that can often seem theoretical and abstract or never personal—never right here at home. A lot of what I write about in my scholarship is not just the problems of sustainability, but also about the problems of urban development and inequality and representation right here in Washington DC.

Can you elaborate on some of that local scholarship?

A paper I just wrote for Third World Quarterly is drawing attention to the paradox in international development that we’re always focused on outsiders. My paper is called “Is Washington D.C. A Third World City?” I look at environmental problems, representation, inequality and social exclusion in the city and talk about the ways in which we might actually reconsider this so-called heart of the first world in ways that challenge international development practitioners and policy makers across the board to consider DC as a city that’s still very much in need of attention as well as greater political representation.

What’s living on a houseboat like?

I live on my boat year round. It’s a 1971 houseboat. The engines don’t work anymore, so it rocks, but it does not move on its own power. It’s a very comfortable living space. In the wintertime I use space heaters to stay warm. I’m trying to be as eco-friendly as possible on the boat. There was a story about me in the Earth Day issue of Politico in 2010 that talked about me as a green pirate. I live small. You kind of have to have a thick skin for all the stuff that can go wrong on a boat. My pumps can break or my plumbing can not be as smooth as it would be if it was connected to the main city system. I’ve developed quite a lot of handywoman skills throughout the course of living on a boat. I’ve been there for three years.

Can you talk about your research in the Amazon?

My research was taking place as the Brazilian government was about to create one of the world’s largest biodiversity corridors. And this had come on the heels of a very high profile assassination of a nun for her work in favor of land reform. When I went to do my field research, it was a very tense time with a lot of uncertainty. Since that time, Brazil has kind of continued to go back and forth in making progress against deforestation and then really backsliding. And currently, the Brazilian Forest Code is looking like it’s going to be basically gutted. I think it’ll mean really sad things for the region and its people in terms of protection of the forest as well as for smaller scale agriculturists. The government also seems to be disturbingly moving ahead on a dam, which is right in the middle of my field site. It’s projected to be the world’s third largest dam in terms of it’s energy production, and it’s going to flood out about 18 different indigenous communities as well as portions of the city nearby. So I’ve been following that very closely and developing a research project on activism around the dam.

Are there any experiences or interactions with people that really stick out to you?

Well, there was the death threat. I got very close with people there and, in the course of my research, I had a lot of institutional support from an organization that was very clearly on the side of the small-scale agriculturalists. Because of that, the people who were the vested interest of the illegal landholders, the land speculators, were not happy with the activism towards creating these conservation areas. Their tried and often untrue technique was to try to stop people who asked too many questions from going into these areas. But aside from the bad, there was just a lot of good in it. I now have a whole Brazilian network of contacts and friends. There’s someone there who I adopted as my surrogate mom and she thinks of me as her surrogate daughter.

What have you learned from Brazil?

I think some lessons are about the strength of community action and community organization around sustainability issues. A lot of what I saw in Brazil was not people waiting for a progressive national policy on any particular issue, but rather about communities deciding what they wanted for themselves and working to try to find ways to make it happen.

Photos by Aaron Berkovich & Eve Bratman

A group called Cati-patang-poeira teaches capoeira, a playful Brazilian martial art, to kids in the Bainganwadi slum in Mumbai. Bainganwadi holds the largest landfill in the city and mounds and mounds of trash surround the slums. Many of the kids in the capoeira class have either lost their parents to or have parents suffering from tuberculosis or leprosy

These capoeira lessons are about more than just learning to dance—they’re about empowering the kids to reach higher and exposing them to new ideas. Before last year, many of the children had never traveled outside of the slums. On New Year’s Day, they took the kids to a beach in Mumbai. Most of the kids had never seen so much open space in their lives.

All of the kids are given nicknames in Brazilian, a tradition that comes from the original capoeiristas— African slaves in Brazil. Capoeira was a crime back in the colonial days, and all the capoeiristas had nicknames so they wouldn’t be identified even under torture if caught by the police. The nicknames often teasingly or playfully describe a characteristics of the capoeirista. The girl pictured is named Raposa, meaning “fox.”

The class room is too small for everyone to learn at the same time. Fortunately, music is a major part of capoeira. Typically, half of the students make music while the others dance.

The kids grow up beating each other all the time. Violence is something of a game in these slums. When capoeira instructors Shantanu (or Chico, Brazilian Boy) and Sunil (or Sucuri, anaconda) visited the school the kids attend, they broke up a fight between two students. When they looked up at the playground afterwards, they saw eight other groups of kids fighting. Initially, the kids used violence against one another when there was conflict. Since the start of the program, the students have learned to work together and solve their problems in less aggressive ways.

The teachers work to build trust with the students and connect. They don’t want to come in from the outside and just teach, but form meaningful relationships with the kids and improve their lives by inspiring and empowering them.

In October, the students had their first performance in Bainganwadi. They worked on a Dandiya routine for the Navratri festival, a celebration of the Hindu goddess Durga, and performed it for over 500 people. Dandiya is a dance performed with two sticks called dandiyas that represent the swords of Durga. The dance itself was representative of the violence in Bainganwadi slums. It began with the girls dancing peacefully, representing the neighborhood during the day, where the air is playful and light. As night falls, the boys come in violently with their dandiyas. This represents the hostility prevalent in this slum, mostly brought on by the men of the community. After an aggressive Maculele (Brazilian war dance) routine, a bigger and more aggressive boy comes in to overpower the others, and a fight amongst them ensues. By the end, all of them have fallen, showing that violence vanquishes all who use it. In the end, the women revive the fallen boys and do an Afro-dance routine together, symbolizing the relationship the men and women of this community share—how one cannot survive without the other, and how peace is sustained by the balance they maintain in the society to show the importance of peace and harmony.

As we’re sleeping soundly in bed or buckling down in the library for an all-nighter, the city we know undergoes a transformation. Streets that Metro travelers frequent by day become boulevards for sex workers by night.

Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, commonly known as HIPS, sends an outreach van down those streets at night, providing sex workers with safe sex materials, harm reduction tips, hot chocolate, candy and a friendly face.

HIPS meets sex workers “where they’re at” and does not pass judgement on the individuals they work with. They exist to give the workers support in the decisions they make whether they continue to engage in sex work or try to get off the streets.

However, some sex workers find themselves in a cycle of structural violence that makes getting off the streets almost impossible. Cyndee Clay, executive director of HIPS, spoke to this reality.

“One individual actually had a misdemeanor of prostitution 12 years ago who got fired from a food service job,” Clay said. “What we’re looking at is a tragic cycle of incarceration, being back on the streets and not being able to find employment, but still being faced with some way they have to pay their bills, some way to feed their children, some way to feed themselves.”

The transgender community is particularly prone to unemployment due to discrimination. “Trans people also face self-reinforcing cycles of poverty leading to disparities in the areas of employment, education, healthcare and housing,” said Alison Gill, a member of the DC Trans Coalition. “This is particularly true for trans women of color. An unfortunate number of trans women find that the only way they can survive is by engaging in sex work.”

***

This world isn’t far removed from the residents near and around Eastern Avenue. Andina Keith, member of Citizens Against Prostitution, is tired of the prostitution that spills over from Eastern Avenue into her community of Fairmont Heights. She says residents have barricaded their driveways with chains and trashcans to discourage prostitution in their yards.

“We are not a truck stop that you see in the movies, we’re not a red light district, we’re not a warehouse community,” Keith said. “We are a small community with a very small police department that has to deal with all of the ills that flow from Washington DC. Church lots, front yards, back yards, sides of homes, steps, backs of alleys are all used as an open motel.”

Keith says one girl had to have her bus stop changed off Eastern Avenue because she was asked by a “john,” the name used for men who hire prostitutes, if she was for hire. Families raising children in the neighborhood such as Nakkiyah Gant in Ward 7 have voiced particular concern about prostitution in their community. Understandably, families are concerned about what their children might be exposed to.

DC City Councilmember Yvette Alexander is tired of hearing about the prostitution problem in Ward 7 she says affects her constituents’ quality of life. In response, she’s proposed an amendment that seeks to give the Chief of Police for the Metropolitan Police Department the power to declare permanent prostitution-free zones, or PFZ’s.

The Chief of Police was given the power to declare PFZ’s for a maximum of 10 days in 2006, the same year the Council criminalized prostitution. Prior to 2006, only solicitation was illegal. PFZ’s give the police department the power to order two or more people to disperse who they reasonably believe are congregating “for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or prostitution-related activities.” If those congregating fail to disperse, the MPD has the power to arrest them. To date, no arrests have been made for failure to disperse, and PFZ’s can now last up to 20 days.

While the entire District is technically supposed to be prostitution-free, Councilmember Phil Mendelson explains the purpose of the zones.

“These are specific areas where there has been a chronic problem of street prostitution,” Mendelson said. “Once the prostitution free zone is declared and posted, the police have the ability to prevent prostitutes from congregating or having discussions with potential customers.”

The idea behind PFZ’s is that if police control and put more resources into that area for a short period of time, business will be disrupted. Alexander says she doesn’t believe it has been successful in her ward and complains it can take a whole year to get another PFZ declared.

“Twenty days is not long enough,” she said. “As soon as that 20 days is up, that activity happens again.”

Alexander’s measure is unlikely to pass though, due to constitutional concerns. The DC Attorney General’s office has “substantial concerns” about the constitutionality of the law already in place, and making the zones permanent could exacerbate these concerns according to Ariel Levinson-Waldman, senior counsel to the DC Attorney General. The reason for this concern—which the Attorney General’s office addressed before the act passed in 2006—is that under the current legislation, intent to violate the law is not an element of the offense.

Alexander’s proposed amendment does not remedy this.

“Without specifying as an element of the crime that the defendant have intent to engage in a specific criminal act, such as solicitation of prostitution, courts have generally held the statue to be unconstitutionally vague,” Levinson-Waldman said. If brought to court, Alexander’s amendment would almost certainly not hold up and the American Civil Liberties Union would likely sue, according to Rick Rosendall of Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance. In an interview with The Washington Post, Alexander all but conceded defeat.

The transgender community and its allies believe the issue of profiling is another concern with legal implications.

“There is a very widespread reporting that we’re getting from the community that members of the community feel profiled,” Rosendall said. “I began this conversation with the police department in the late 90’s about the fact that we’re continually hearing from transgender individuals that they are presumed by officers to be prostitutes merely because of their personal appearance, which is a violation of the DC Human Rights Act.”

Alison Gill, a member of the DC Trans Coalition, thinks PFZ’s allow officers to unfairly target the trans community.

“Many trans people gather in areas frequented by other trans people including sex workers and think of these areas as spaces of work, community organization and organizational outreach,” Gill said. “These areas are especially likely to be named PFZ’s since the police often equate trans women with sex workers. This leads to persecution of trans communities, pushing them to less safe areas of the city.”

***

Constitutional and legal concerns aren’t the only reasons opponents object to PFZ’s and their expansion. Some argue PFZ’s don’t work and only push sex workers to the outskirts of the city, into more dangerous neighborhoods. Cyndee Clay from HIPS says her numbers back this up. A WAMU report says the arrests in Ward 2, where downtown DC is housed, have gone down 10 percent and arrests in Ward 7, Alexander’s Ward, have more than tripled based on the District’s crime data.

“And since the enactment of the free zones, we’ve had to go out into larger areas of the community,” Clay says. “We’ve both experienced more violence that our clients have faced and also what my outreach workers have faced. Our van was shot at three or four times within a year and a half after the free zones were enacted in the center of the city.”

Clay also says a lot of the sex workers aren’t aware when a PFZ is declared.

“Another thing that we’ve found from our conversations with people out on the streets: people aren’t often entirely aware of the fact that there’s a free zone enacted,” Clay said. “When we actually tried to get testimony from people who had been affected by the free zones, many of them weren’t able to articulate when it was just regular law enforcement activity and when it was specific around free zone activity. They just knew an officer told them that they had to move on, so they had to move on.”

Peter Newsham, Assistant Chief of the Investigative Services Bureau, says the impact of the zones is hard to pinpoint, but that his arrest numbers show the opposite trend. He also says there’s an overall decrease in arrests for street prostitution, but it can’t necessarily be attributed to PFZ’s.

“Prostitution in the District of Columbia used to be more of a street level problem; however, the prevalence of the Internet and other social media has driven a lot of prostitution behind closed doors, including hotels, illegal massage parlors and brothels, where it is easier to avoid law enforcement scrutiny,” Newsham said.

***

Maybe the way to get people off the streets isn’t to increase the penalties for repeat offenders, like the DC Council did in 2009, or increase the law enforcement like some are trying to do now. Perhaps the solution has more to do with reducing barriers and increasing programs to help sex workers find other options.

“Diversion programs are being cut from the city, HIV prevention programs specifically for this population are being cut from the city, and programs that are really out there working 24/7,” Clay said. “So, you’re increasing our law enforcement response to the issue while at the same time you are decreasing the number of social services and programs that are really designed to help people off the streets. We feel like this is just a really bad investment in our community.”

Clay says one program HIPS worked on with the court had a 80 percent graduation rate and a 90 percent non-recidivism rate before it was cut about a year ago. To Clay, it doesn’t make sense to cut these resources and then ask for a greater criminal response to the issue.

Newsham agrees that the problem needs to be addressed at a deeper level.

“You have problems that the people who are involved in the conduct almost exclusively have drug, alcohol addictions and mental illness concerns,” Newsham said. “I would think that to really eliminate or to have some impact on that ongoing problem in that area, you have to address those concerns. We have at our disposal laws to address and make arrests, but I’m not necessarily convinced that arrests have [had a major impact] on the problem in that particular area.”

While Alexander says she supports a comprehensive approach, it’s not unreasonable to question that commitment. She doesn’t seem to be taking it very seriously when she leans over to whisper something in Councilmember Mendelson’s ear, laughing while an opponent testifies. It seems that policymakers are more concerned with removing sex workers from certain wards than they are with actually finding a constructive solution. It’s unlikely Alexander will drop the issue once her amendment fails to pass, but what approach she takes next will be telling to her intentions.

“In some person’s eyes, it has worked because they don’t deal with the plight in their communities where they live because the zones were put in place,” Alexander said. “So you can’t tell them that it doesn’t work. As long as you don’t see the problem in front of you then it’s fine with them.”

Illustrations by Carolyn Becker.

photo by Joe Gratz

In the issue of AWOL coming out this Tuesday, we take a look at the low female participation in AU’s student government and what it means. The article hasn’t even hit campus yet, but it’s already making waves.

At the end of Sunday’s student Senate meeting, Sophomore Senator Tim McBride rose to ask his peers to get involved in Student Government’s latest effort: starting a dialogue with clubs and organizations about how to make SG more representative of the student body.

“This goes beyond just institutional, formal equality and is something we need to address as social equality,” McBride said.

During the announcement, McBride referenced the ANC election last semester, where students sought to give voice to the AU community in neighborhood government.

“That our representative bodies reflect and look like communities that they’re trying to represent is an issue that’s inherent to the quality of a healthy organization and a democracy,” McBride said. “It was the core principle for our push to get Tyler Sadonis and Deon Jones elected to the ANC, and it should be something that we focus on here.”

The conversation about the lack of diversity within the Senate started long before the creation of the Women’s Caucus (an separate initiative led by Baxter you can read about on Tuesday) and the writing of our article, though they seem to have helped push words into action. It’s unclear how much change will occur in the Senate body this semester, but perhaps the movement to make SG more diverse has come soon enough for the upcoming executive elections in March.

*****UPDATE 10PM***** Although there’s nothing about it yet on their website, the Undergraduate Senate sent out a press release by e-mail heralding their new initiative. The Senate Committee on Student’s Rights, Academics, and University Affairs will be meeting with various student groups, hoping to “achieve gender parity for student government organizations.” Direct questions to cossenate@ausg.org.

*****UPDATE 2/15****** Here’s a link to the SG press release.