The rush to write profound things about Boston is now under way, but the week of April 15, 2013 was a shit week for humanity. Devastating earthquakes occurred in both Iran and China. A portion of Waco, Texas was decimated due to a fertilizer factory explosion. And dare we acknowledge the continued mass violence that marred elections in “post-conflict” Iraq. Yet despite the fact that these other events caused more death, injury, and destruction, they will barely penetrate the national conversation in the United States. Other events will creep through the media screen only to take a backseat as pundits and politicians argue about just how much Islam makes for a proper terrorist. It seems we have a new one-drop rule. Instead of speculating about the political content (or lack thereof) of the Brothers Tsarnaev atrocious actions, it seems more appropriate to focus on what we learned about the new normal – that is life in the United States after 9/11.
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The testimonies of these 13 women from different parts of Colombia strikingly reveal how the country’s ongoing armed conflict has affected the bodies, spirits and lives of its women and girls. It is an effort to make the conditions these women cope with visible, reflecting their faces, their words and the places where they currently live, and showing the fear and pain that Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict has made them endure. In these pages, 13 indigenous, urban, peasant, artisan and Afro-descendant women weave a tapestry of women’s history in times of bitter confrontations.
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For the better part of 2011, I have, due to much self-interest, bugged Roi Ben-Yehuda to write a piece for Unrest. Roi is a colleague and a fantastic writer who even when I firmly disagree with him, still manages to push the boundaries of my own assumptions about the meaning, purpose, and practice of conflict resolution. You can imagine my excitement then when Roi proposed publishing a piece he had co-written with Andrea Bartoli, world-renowned scholar, practitioner, and now Dean of The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. You can also imagine my, shall we call it surprise, when I read the following article on the creation and deployment of conflict resolution commandos (or CRCs). Were they serious? I felt like I had walked in on the middle of a joke and was about to make Unrest the butt of it by publishing a piece that sits uncomfortably between deadly seriousness and total absurdity.
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My most recent journey outside the United States was to Syria. Syria, as you may recall was one of the states added to the “axis of evil” by John Bolton in a speech cleverly called “Beyond the Axis of Evil.” The fact that Bolton has a history of questionable activities that includes blocking information and using forged information to invade other countries (Iraq) did little to stop many Americans from remembering that speech, or fearing Syria and its people. Furthermore, due to this back story, I was asked before going two major questions:
Why are you going? (To study and learn from Marc Gopin.)
And are you scared? (No.)
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