Your body is the start and end of most things in your life.

But over time, your body has become a subject of conversation

It has become a topic of arguments and wars.

You wake up everyday in this vessel that carries you

And you carry it

To face this world that carries your body

And your body, that bares the weight of this world

Is the center of the politics and people that tell you

If your skin is too dark for you to be deemed

Beautiful, or competent or, worthy,

If the curls on your head are too tight and

If your hair is too “intense” or “bold” for the “normal” people

And deny it to be fit for the crown you deserve,

Condemn your wrists for handcuffs and

Your body for prison cells,

And decide

If your image is a product that can be tweaked and appropriated and sold

For those who can do so simply because they can.

You wake up to face the people who dictate

Whether you,

A woman,

Can make your own choices for your body,

And question the strength of your soul and body because

They are unaware of how many stories are written and carried on your back.

You wake to face the system,

The system that fails to educate those who violate your body

Because these violators are “great student athletes”

And your violation was simply “20 minutes of action”,

The very system that then fails to punish those who invade your temple

Because what the violation “technically” was, or was not.

The system that preaches that, your complacency and fragility

Is what defines you as a woman.

The system that justifies your gender expression or who you choose to love

 To be grounds for suspicion

Of you being… A threat.

But when are you not a threat?

You’re a threat when you’re educated and aware,

A threat when you’re appreciated or praised,

A threat when you’re trying to change the system that keeps you drowning,

A threat when you’re even just at your home, which is why you’re killed countless times

With “no knock raids”  and searches…

As if they were going to knock and tell you that your fate was going to be another unjust death

That will be overlooked like the thousands before you.

So you wake up

And remind yourself that if you fight for whatever cause,

Your

Body

Is

On

The

Line.

So as soon as you wake up,

You are reminded of the woman you are.

not

A woman,

A woman who is beyond the reach of any combination of words to be painted,

A woman whose beauty could not be limited to numbers and measurements

A woman whose story carries a thousand more, of all she has touched

A woman with courage, resilience, strength and fire in her soul

A woman full of color and life for the world to witness

A woman whose love could heal age old scars

A woman of wisdom and advice

A woman of leadership

A woman of balance

A woman.

But

A woman

Who has had to

Shirk herself beyond belief;

Because her body was her weakness.

Her body no longer felt like hers because it was not.

Her body was everyone’s and she no longer had claim to it.

A woman whose temple was legislated, policed, brutalized, beaten,

Objectified, simplified,

Labeled, sold, re-sold, painted, smoothed, defined,

Appropriated, criminalized, judged, observed

Thrown and never caught.

This is the woman you are….

Or believed to be.

But as Coates said it,

“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.”

Better yet, you must find a way to live above it.

Forget the standards and expectations and fight.

Fight for the words that were taken from you,

Fight for the love from which you were forbidden, fight for the rights that were torn away

For the life that was taken from you, for the family that was robbed of you, and

For the power to your own body.

Fight with the knowledge that even if you don’t see your promise land,

Those who do, will do so because of you.

So wake up and face this world,

And let it face you.

5 new restaurants tried, 4 blisters, 3 days of sleep deprivation, 2 weeks in New York City, 1 radically different view of reproductive justice: these are just some of the things I have to show from my Moxie experience thus far.

Sure it’s been fun and exciting and new and confusing, but it’s also been hard, physically and mentally. My first two weeks at Choices have been a whirlwind of emotions, assignments, and people. You’re just not quite sure what to expect when your internship supervisor tells you that she’s throwing you into the shark tank, but not to worry, she won’t let you get bitten.

The first thing I noticed about Choices is just how different it is than all the other Moxie placements. It’s the only for-profit organization, the only one located in Queens, and the only one that directly addresses healthcare. But it soon became clear that their mission and work is not so different than that of the other 5 organizations. This week, as a group we studied reproductive justice and the rest of the Moxie group visited Choices on Friday. Their visit helped me bring into focus the rather unique way in which Choices battles for feminism in the capitalistic, private sector.

As a society, we often have a disapproving view of capitalism and it might at first seem selfish for Choices to profit off the hardship of its patients, but as our founder Merle Hoffman pointed out, the value of capitalism lies in how those profits are used. Do they line the pockets of rich executives or are they invested back into the work of the organization? At Choices, that profit is used to benefit its patients, by expanding and creating new programs like TransCare or funding terminations for women who cannot afford an uninsured abortion. So I guess what I’m saying is, for any reader out there who thinks that social justice work can only happen through a non-profit model, consider the benefits not of using capitalism as the end game, but as a tool.

Now I’d like to talk about reproductive justice and why it does not equal reproductive rights. The main concern of reproductive rights is the legal right to have an abortion. Reproductive justice on the other hand is concerned with much more. While it does encompass the pro-choice movement, it goes beyond to suggest the intersectionality between race, gender, class and sexuality, and how those aspects interact to grant or deny access to reproductive privilege in the realms of pregnancy, availability of healthcare, child-rearing, and expression of sexuality. Bottom line: reproductive justice is about trusting women with their own bodies.

I may not have said anything particularly profound in the above paragraphs, but I think it’s necessary to identify capitalism and the reproductive justice framework as two of the largest actors in my experience at Choices. I could talk for hours about all of the things I did the past two weeks, like following a patient through her counseling and abortion procedure, escorting patients inside through a crowd of protestors, or researching standards of care for transgender individuals, and I hope I have the chance to tell you all about those soon, but for now, let’s think about how and why I am even doing those things. Fundamentally, why are women in these situations, who is benefitting, and how do we put reproductive power over women’s bodies into their hands alone?

Your security clearance still hasn’t come through. Folks around the Bronx Family Justice Center are running out of projects to give you in the meantime. So you jump at the chance to help out with the biannual Share the Love Food Drive that the BxFJC puts on in order to restock their food pantry. Clients can take what they need from it if they’re short on food. Because of the high demand, it’s always dwindling, and this drive is their chosen method of stocking up to critical mass. The concept is rather ingenious; bring in canned goods or other nonperishable food items, and get access to a sumptuous spread of baked goods. Sophia, who heads up the food drive with a purple apron and a steady hand, tells you that recently the Center had an awakening. “The lawyers,” she says, referring to those who work in the DA’s office next to the Center, advocating for clients in court, “were telling us that they didn’t have time to go and buy food, and could they just donate money instead? So we have a box. You have a box, I mean. I’m not allowed to touch money, it’s a conflict of interest.”

So you hold your blue donation box under the table and you think on that. You know New York is tireless and you have spent plenty of time waiting in Trader Joe’s lines that seem endless, but is there truly no time to pick up a few cans of soup from a bodega? Logistically, you know that donating money achieves much the same effect; all of it is directly taken over to the grocery store and used to round out the landslide of nonperishables. Still, it seems less personal, less connected to the cause. You have been thinking about donations and money and ethics, ever since A) the Zero Tolerance benefit that you attended as a volunteer for Sanctuary for Families and B) a choice reading about where nonprofits get their resources from. It is something you cannot quite solidify your feelings on.

You hardly have time to think in the moment. You rip a contact at nine-thirty AM and spend the rest of the day in a soft haze of half-blur and quiet pain. One blink of your blurry eyes, though, and there are two tables set up in the lobby of the Center’s office building, visible to all the lawyers and guards and others who come through to get to the elevators. Another blink and there are baked goods, both handmade and store-bought, covering the entire surface area. You sit sandwiched by the table and the food drive’s banner, explaining the process to formally-dressed folks who come by, give you a dollar, and then demur when you offer the baked goods, patting their (usually pretty flat) stomachs and saying that they can’t afford the calories. The fruit and coffee go the fastest. Someone hands you a fifty-dollar bill, and you can’t say you’ve ever held one before. You thank folks ubiquitously as the box in your lap gets heavier and heavier.

And then there are the Center’s clients that come to the table before or after their appointments, and these encounters are so different they won’t stop sticking to the sides of your mind, especially in contrast to those described previously. Many of them riffle around in purses and pockets and pull out a crumpled dollar or two, or just a handful of change. Everyone working at the table with you tacitly agrees on a course of action, and the lot of you fill plate after plate at the client’s suggestion, wrapping things up in foil, handing out stacks of little desserts to bring home to their children or to save to eat later. A second after a young mother moves off towards the elevator with two balanced plates (one of fruit, one of pound cakes and cookies), a man in grey pinstripes carelessly drops you a five and moves off, taking nothing, hardly even looking at the food under his notes. These interactions hang so differently in the air, next to each other in odd discordance.

You have many wonderful conversations with lawyers; you don’t mean to suggest that they care less about the cause. In fact, all of them have dedicated their work to advocating for the very clients that came by the table. Regardless, it makes you think about the different faces of support, and what it looks like for different people. At then end of the day, you have a heavy donation box and a heavy cart full of goods to restock the pantry, a tangible, visible outcome of objective good. You load things into the food pantry and eat a leftover slice of angel food cake, rubbing your blurry eyes, ruining your makeup, and letting these thoughts weigh in your mind.

21 moments that have made the first week of Autumn in New York™memorable:

1. When after successfully finding my way to work two days in a row, my overconfidence brought me two whole train stops in the wrong direction.
2. When I unashamedly changed from my business flats into Sperry’s on the train home (every day).
3. When I saw my first rat in the city an managed to keep a straight face.
4. When I concluded that no one really knows exhaustion until they’ve woken up at 5am, stood in line, gone on an intense scavenger hunt, and been rained out of an outdoor play.
5. When the Moxies made people watching into a competitive sport.
6. When I fell on the subway for a good 14 consecutive seconds, to the extreme dismay of the man in front of me who’s personal space I unintentionally intruded.
7. When I confidently led the entire Moxie group 3-4 blocks in the wrong direction because I put the address in as New York and not Brooklyn.
8. When I walked right past the door to our building on the way home – but totally passed it off as though I was looking for someone, then I gave up and turned back.
9. When my budget was so ingrained in me, I chose to walk home completely soaked rather than part with $15 for an overpriced poncho at Shakespeare in the Park.
10. When I successfully used the “Find my Friends” app to stalk a friend onto the train and scare/surprise her (sorry Amanda).
11. When you know you’ve found your people when you start singing the “F-U-N” song from Spongebob and everyone else chimes in.
12. When I accepted my fate and went 7 for 7 on turkey and cheese sandwiches every day since last Sunday.
13. When I successfully managed to leave a message for someone at work, using a translator, in a language completely foreign to me… Only to realize I’d left the wrong callback number.
14. When I got this great shot at “The Promenade,” an area I will most definitely be returning to for another sunset.
15. When, seconds after this picture was taken, I splurged and wasted a whole 50 cents of my DukeEngage stipend on a telescope that just didn’t work.
16. When I ordered my first Amazon package – only to realize the city and state were still set in Texas.
17. When my no one judged me for having stopped at two different .99 pizza joints on the way home… I had to compare them, y’know?
18. When I passed by the theater Hamilton happens at, and managed (mostly) not to cry.
19. When, for the literal hundredth time, my frantic babbling and stupid questions at work were met with understanding smiles and genuine willingness to help.
20. When I proudly grocery shopped in the city for the first time, then got outside and remembered I now had to carry several heavy bags all the way home.
21. Managed to get myself so busy that I sort of forgot that tomorrow is my 21st birthday.  Wanna know what gifts I really want? A long nap, a park full of dogs I can pet, and to be able to eat as many honey oat bagels with strawberry cream cheese as I want without gaining a single pound.

My first week of Moxie? Check. And I have absolutely loved it.

In just one week, I have been extremely impressed by what all my organization does. Observing the countless ways that Sanctuary serves the NYC area has left me in awe.

Yet, for me, I am conflicted with the nonprofit sector. Not on their work, but on this entire infrastructure. I am pushed to question what is Sanctuary, and other nonprofits like it, actually working towards? Meaningful change or only temporary aid, which in the end will only perpetuate this system of inequality? I feel like sometimes these shelters and centers can just continue the cycle. As Gilmore questioned, why aren’t organizations working towards liberation?

In my work learning more about grants and nonprofit funding, I have seen how organizations can be so limited by their endless pursuit of funding, which is why long-term change and the liberation of which Gilmore speaks, can seem almost impossible. Nonprofits are coerced into being extremely program-focused in order to receive money and continue to function as a whole.

Essentially, this structure of nonprofits renders organizations somewhat of an arm to the government, forced to cater to this system which perpetuates these issues in the first place. If Sanctuary was able to work towards liberation, rather than temporary relief, I can only imagine the change that this organization would be able to accomplish. They have the vision, the drive, and the change-makers, yet their fight for funding limits their ability to collectively act to solve these problems.

The more I learn, the more negative I begin to feel toward society and the system within which we are all forced to accept. But relief in the moment and having people in this world that genuinely want to help this community is better than not having nonprofits at all, right? #Confused

Content warning: sexual assault, domestic violence

Once you’ve seen something through a different lens or in a unique light, there’s no turning back. That’s the power of education; everything you read, see, talk about, and say becomes colored by the knowledge you’ve gained, for better or for worse. For me, this experience meant feeling angry on multiple occasions this week about events and media portrayals that might have passed under the radar. It’s no secret to me that society often silences victims’ voices, blames them for the most heinous of crimes perpetrated against them, and discredits their experiences. But how we think about sexual assault and domestic violence (and thus, how we talk about them) is so normalized that I had lacked the terminology to discuss them properly without even realizing it.

My first assignment as an intern for Legal Momentum’s National Judicial Education Program (NJEP) was to read its publication about the language used to describe sexual assault and domestic violence (found here). The text highlights 3 problems with our word choice that have serious implications for victims/survivors whose voices lack adequate representation in the media and judicial system because of how language perpetuates false myths and stereotypes about sexual violence.

1. Using the language of consensual sex to describe acts of sexual violence.
You might have read an article or viewed a trending post this week about a Houston middle school teacher who was arrested because she “had sex” with one of her students. This language doesn’t seem unusual because it isn’t. The media frequently employs eroticized language (“they hugged and kissed”) or language that otherwise implies consent (“she performed oral sex” or “they had vaginal intercourse”) because in minimizing the violence and coerciveness of assaultive acts, readers find ways to rationalize and even justify the violence without confronting it in its actuality.

2. Using language that blames the victim/survivor.
A billboard ad for the movie X-Men: Apocalypse has been criticized for trivializing violence against women through its depiction of the villain Apocalypse strangling Mystique. As if the image doesn’t say enough, sometimes it is joined with the tagline “Only the strong will survive.” In a society that lauds strength, power and control as virtues while questioning victims/survivors about what they wore, how much they had to drink, and who they were with when they were sexually assaulted, our language frequently blames the victim/survivor for acts committed by a perpetrator who seldom bears responsibility for them.

*Did nobody find this problematic?*

3. Using language that makes the perpetrator “invisible.”
The media coverage surrounding Brock Turner’s conviction for sexual assault brought on a tornado of emotions for me. I was incredibly moved by the letter that the victim/survivor read to him because she confronted Turner so directly, depicting his violence for exactly what it was and hiding none of the pain he caused her. But shortly after it went viral, so did a statement from Turner’s father that claims his son’s dream to become an Olympic swimmer was ruined by “20 minutes of action,” a phrase so distant from reality that I don’t quite know what more to say about it. To further erase Turner’s culpability, his father also refers to the sexual assault that Turner perpetrated as “the events.” When we say a rape “occurred” or employ passive voice to describe how a person “was raped,” we remove the perpetrator from the picture. When we make the perpetrator “invisible,” we make the victim/survivor invisible, too.

It’s much easier to sit with the idea that maybe “it was just a misunderstanding” than it is to believe not only that people perpetrate sexual violence constantly, but also that perpetrators can look like anyone. Dinner-table conversation can continue at its typical cadence without somebody feeling uncomfortable.

I challenge you to feel uncomfortable. What if we all stopped representing non-consensual sex acts as normal, expected, deserved, or natural? What if our dinner-table conversation reflected the prevalence of sexual violence instead of euphemizing it or avoiding its existence altogether? To live in a world where everyone’s voice is heard, we must first be willing to listen. Despite my recent anger, disillusionment, and sadness, I wouldn’t trade this newfound knowledge for anything.

As a kid I dreamt of living in New York City. I wanted to experience the city that never sleeps. The bright lights, the massive stores, the artistic energy…NYC was the place to be.

Now, one week into the Moxie program, while I’m loving the city, I must admit the fantasy is starting to wear off… I’ve already learned some vital lessons about the realities of actually living in a big city

1) Getting the Metro card to work on the first try is nearly impossible

2)You will encounter rats, there is no avoiding them

3) Half of your day will be spent waiting for subways

4) Never go to Trader Joe’s at 7pm. You will regret all life decisions

5) Do not go to Times Square unless you have mentally prepared yourself for hell on Earth

(case in point)

6) If you’re in a rush, the train you need WILL be delayed or simply not running

7) Be prepared to be perpetually exhausted.

But when I dreamt of living in the city as a kid, I didn’t imagine that I would actually be spending the majority of each day outside of the heart of city, away from the craziness of Manhattan. And I really, really didn’t expect that this would be my favorite part.

Before starting my internship with Girls for Gender Equity, I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. I mostly expected to be doing office work, but when my supervisor emailed me and said we’d be “jumping right in,” she really wasn’t kidding. The first day on the job, I was brought to one of the middle schools GGE works with way out in Brooklyn. Everyday since, I’ve spent half of my workday at the schools assisting with the after school program, the Urban Leaders Academy.

The kids I’ve had the chance to meet are fun and goofy and will sing Beyoncé lyrics any chance they get. They have so much energy it almost wears me out just watching them. But, what I’ve really found amazing is how much I can already see the effects GGE has had on them. Just in my first few days I’ve watched these 11 to 13 year olds learn about/reflect on topics like food justice, conflict resolution, gender identities, relationships, and mental health. I even had the chance to interview some of the students, and I’m so impressed with how much GGE has impacted their lives, allowing them to reflect on personal issues, build relationships, and improve their performance in school. ULA also incorporates a peer mentorship program where high school students organize and facilitate a weekly workshop with the middle schoolers. It’s amazing how dedicated the students, mentors, and staff are to the program. I am sad to think that ULA will be ending in just a week and a half when school lets out, but I’m so excited to continue my work with GGE and to hopefully contribute to making this program even more impactful.

So, while living in the big apple might not be exactly the fantasy I’d imagined as a prepubescent teen, I love the city and the work I’m doing and I can’t wait to see what’s in store next!

Ney York City was everything I expected and more. These are just a few pictures I was able to capture within my first week here.