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I was raised to believe that the cardinal sin that any human being could commit was to abuse power – whether it’s economic power, political power, or physical power.
It was so remarkable to have the Vice President talk about the seriousness of domestic violence and of *** assault.
Domestic violence is insidious. And it’s in all of our homes, it’s in your next door neighbor’s home, it affects the workplace, it affects schools, it affects every part of our lives.
So even if it’s not affecting you personally, it’s definitely affecting someone that you know.
30 years ago my brain never could have imagined the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.
It provided federal recognition for the first time of something that women have struggled with since the beginning of time.
Sept 13, 16 years ago, this Act became law. The ugly fact that generated us writing and--with your great help--passing this legislation has not gone away nor will it go away.
It is something that is affecting everyone.
If it’s not in your own relationships, you’re bound to have friends or family members who it is happening to. You’re seeing it in your school, you’re seeing it in your community.
There’s just no way to get away from it.
The lack of knowledge that I had about domestic violence, especially being on campus, you tend to think that things like that don’t exist on your university.
And through the project I’ve come to find that it has and it is a major problem simply because people are afraid to speak about it.
I think the main thing that we’re fighting now, especially amongst students at historically black colleges and universities, is the stigma behind the discussion.
Local programs, local domestic violence and *** assault programs, frequently will talk with young teens about texting and sexting and all of those kinds of issues
And they find that no matter how young they’re going, there are already young women that are facing these situations.
It is very obvious that there is a lot of new technology that so many of us struggle to figure out.
But I also say there’s really nothing new under the sun.
It’s the same patterns of abusive behavior. It’s just using a new medium to do it.
Also, talking about personal responsibility because so much of what we hear from this generation is: everything is quick, everything is fast, everything is on the internet.
So there’s not any interpersonal relationships, and so how you deal with conflict when it comes up, because you’re going to have it.
It’s not something that one person can do alone. And no one has to do this alone.
Until we as a society decide that this isn’t going to be tolerated anymore and that we need to change our own behaviors, we have to start looking at how to keep children safe, how to keep teens safe, and how to keep adults safe.
Because if we don’t, we’ll continue to see these crimes perpetrated over and over again.
We are going to have a whole new awakening in this issue for young women and young men.