Young Anabaptist Radicals

Monthly Archive: September 2018

Mennonites and #MeToo: 4 Ways to Challenge Rape Culture

Three boxes of tea on the window sill with flowers

This post was originally published on my blog for The Mennonite two years ago

This week we’ve seen audio of Donald Trump’s bragging about sexual assault open up a nationwide conversation about rape culture, which is the set of beliefs and ideologies which blame victims of sexualized violence and normalize sexualized violence, often by men (for more, see this series of definitions).

U.S. Presidential elections are like conversations around a giant water cooler. For a brief time the themes in the elections shape our conversations in the U.S. (and beyond) for better or for worse. These spaces are an opportunity for us.

In the last day, three more women have stepped forward to describe Trump groping, assaulting and kissing them without consent. These accounts join a long list of existing allegations against Trump by women. Two of these stories were reported in The New York Times and one in People magazine.

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September 21, 2018 Sexism, sexual abuse, Social movements Read more >

Divisiveness and nonviolent direct action

Note: This piece was first published two years ago on my blog for The Mennonite. It was written in response to the 2016 shooting of police offers in Dallas by Michael Xavier Johnson.

In the wake of the shootings of police and civilians in Dallas, many voices are blaming the Black Lives Matter movement and the growing opposition to police violence and white supremacy. But now more than ever we need movements of committed, militant nonviolence.

Shootings like the one in Dallas grow out of what scholar Ron Mock calls corrosive grievance. These are grievances that build up over time around injustice that is not addressed: the injustice of the mass incarceration of black men in our country, racial inequality in of the U.S. education system and the healthcare system and many other layers of systemic racism. For more, watch this 2 minute video from Mennonite training organization Roots of Justice:

Grievances about these injustices become corrosive when people feel powerless and unheard. In his blog post yesterday Mennonite activist theologian Ched Myers reminded us of John F. Kennedy’s observation along these lines 55 years ago: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

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September 10, 2018 Nonviolence, Social justice, Tactics Read more >