For those who missed it, organizers of the campaign are asking Facebook to take action about gender-based violent imagery and pages that proliferate on the site, while its moderators act quickly to remove similarly graphic and hurtful content that is racist or homophobic. Examples of these pages include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus and Violently Raping Your Friends Just for Laughs. This is not new. Back in November 2011, I wrote about several pages on Facebook, including It’s Not Rape if you Yell Surprise and Kicking Sluts in the Vagina Because it’s Funny Watching Your Foot Disappear. When you combine this with tolerance, or even implied approval, of photo memes that depict violence against women with taglines like, “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up,” it adds up to a long history of a corporate culture that is a willing participant in spreading gender-based hate speech and rape culture.

As the coalition explains in an official statement:

Specifically, the group demands that the social media giant take three specific actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that Facebook will not tolerate this content.
2. Train Facebook’s content moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

The message to Facebook is accompanied by a massive social media campaign, calling on advertisers such as Dove and American Express to pull their advertising from Facebook until they can be assured it won’t appear next to content that promotes rape or domestic violence.

And so far, several advertisers are not just listening, but reacting to the campaign. Half-a-dozen companies, including Candyopolis and Nissan UK, have pulled their ads after receiving campaign information released on May 21. At least as many companies have responded and have said they are looking into the situation, one of which being American Express. Unfortunately, a few companies including Dove, VistaPrint, and Audible, have declined to take action.

It’s time for Facebook to change and we’re glad to see that so many advertisers agree! (You can get updates on where companies stand on the Women, Action & the Media campaign page.)

We at Feminism 2.0 are proud to have signed on to this campaign (as well as this author, as The Sin City Siren) and we want to thank the campaign organizers for their diligence and hard work to launch and follow through with this seminal campaign, which may just change the landscape of Facebook and social media.

Follow the latest on the facebook campaign here and by using the hashtag #FBrape on twitter.

It’s time for a leadership over-haul. I nominate Sen. Pat Spearman to take over as the new party leader in the Senate!

I mean, look at what Denis did. He sold out the Democrats, the progressives who have been canvassing/phonebanking/lobbying for the Democratic agenda, and he sold out Nevada’s youth. For what? For some “political strategy” for the next elections. (PS: You might want to check your “math” on that one. How you gonna win without the women, Mo?)

He sold out every Democratic Legislator — like Assemblywoman Lucy Flores who faced personal danger for her testimony and work for AB230 — who sponsored and fought for this bill. He sold out every person who took time to testify about being raped, getting beaten, being abused and neglected. He sold out every canvasser. He sold out every volunteer who made calls for the Democrats who were supposed to have our backs.

It’s bullshit. I’m done. Bring on the New Day! It’s time for new leadership! It’s time for Sen. Spearman!

The comprehensive sex education bill, AB230, has died.

It was pulled from the floor late last night after Democratic leadership worried it may hurt Sen. Justin Jones’ reelection chances. This, after women helped get Jones elected, canvassing and phone banking tirelessly to get him the few hundred votes he needed to cross the finish line. Guess where we will be in 2016, Sen. Jones? Not working for you.

Let’s be sure to contact Sen. Jones and let him know just how disappointed we are with his cowardly actions to put his career before Nevada’s youth. Email him at Justin.Jones@sen.state.nv.us Or why not call him at 775-684-1421?

But this failure is not Sen. Jones’ to bear alone. The fact that Sen. Mo Denis was unwilling to fight for AB230 and opted instead to use his power to kill the bill, is something I will not soon forget.

How many times have I worked to get Democrats elected in this state? How can we come so close to the line, only to be sold out by our own?

Nevada needs comprehensive sex education, and the cowardice of these legislators does not diminish that need. We have the fourth highest rate of teen pregnancy. We have a high rate of STDs. A high rate of sexual assault and domestic violence (both of which are diminished when young people learn about consent, boundaries, and how to recognize the warning signs for violence).

But today we saw Nevada Senate Democrats’ true colors. I expect to be vexed and blocked by Republicans, but et tu Democrats?

So many people worked ridiculously long hours, canvassed, phone banked, wrote op-eds, testified, lobbied within their personal networks, and more. So many hours, days, weeks, months — hell, years — have gone into this. It is not just disappointing to be sold out by Democrats this close to the goal line, it’s heartbreaking.

But lest I leave this on a solely sour note, I want to encourage folks to give bill sponsors Assemblyman David Bobzien, Sen. Pat Spearman, and Assemblywoman Lucy Flores some well-deserved pats on the back. They worked hard. They put their hearts and careers on the line to fight for Nevada’s youth — for Nevada’s very future. And we will not forget that, either.

Women are watching. Indeed, 67 percent of all Nevadans support comprehensive sex education. So a lot more than just women are watching this inglorious clusterfuck.

The fight continues…

Most notably:

• A big step for marriage equality: Senate Joint Resolution 13 (SJR13) passed out of the Assembly today with a vote 27-14. The resolution would repeal the existing law in the Nevada Constitution that states that marriage is only between a man and a woman. This is the first step of a three-part process to repeal that amendment and allow marriage equality. The next step will be getting the resolution ratified again through the Legislature in 2015, and then by a vote of the people in 2016.
• Stripping the mining tax cap: The Assembly has voted 26-15 to approve Senate Joint Resolution 15 (SJR15), which will remove a constitutionally protected cap on taxing Nevada’s second biggest industry. (Currently, they pay only a percentage tax on royalties, or a pittance compared to the taxes on Nevada’s biggest industry or pretty much anyone else.) This is a huge win for several progressive organizations who have been working tirelessly on this issue for years! This being the second passage by the Legislature, the matter will now go to the people for a vote next year.

What a day for Nevada!

Hopefully, by the time you read this, AB230, the comprehensive sex education bill will be passed in the Senate!

What’s really amazing about this story is that rather than it being another tale about how Reddit upholds patriarchal systems of oppression and is used to degrade women or apologize for rape culture, this time the object of the joke answered back:

Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. I actually didn’t know about this until one of my friends told on facebook. If the OP wanted a picture, they could have just asked and I could have smiled However, I’m not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it’s who I am. Yes, I’m a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body – it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn’t reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. By crying ‘mine, mine’ and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating a seperateness between ourselves and the divinity within us. By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. So, to me, my face isn’t important but the smile and the happiness that lie behind the face are.

Now that’s a class-act! And it’s a brilliant response to social mores that would rather deny Balpreet’s essential being, her identity, and her religious convictions.

What’s really amazing is that the original poster, who perhaps fittingly goes by “european_douchebag”, not only responded, but seemed to learn something:

I know that this post ISN’T a funny post but I felt the need to apologize to the Sikhs, Balpreet, and anyone else I offended when I posted that picture. Put simply it was stupid. Making fun of people is funny to some but incredibly degrading to the people you’re making fun of. It was an incredibly rude, judgmental, and ignorant thing to post.

/r/Funny wasn’t the proper place to post this. Maybe /r/racism or /r/douchebagsofreddit or /r/intolerance would have been more appropriate. Reddit shouldn’t be about putting people down, but a group of people sending cool, interesting, or funny things. Reddit’s been in the news alot lately about a lot of cool things we’ve done, like a freaking AMA by the president. I’m sorry for being the part of reddit that is intolerant and douchebaggy. This isn’t 4chan, or 9gag, or some other stupid website where people post things like I did. It’s fucking reddit. Where some pretty amazing stuff has happened.

I’ve read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

So reddit I’m sorry for being an asshole and for giving you negative publicity.
Balpreet, I’m sorry for being a closed minded individual. You are a much better person than I am
Sikhs, I’m sorry for insulting your culture and way of life.
Balpreet’s faith in what she believes is astounding.

Whaaat! It’s like I’m seeing colors I’ve never seen before!

This is the rare moment when we actually get evidence that all this social change that we try to effect with all these campaigns to educate and bring awareness to damaging content that perpetuate unrealistic and even hurtful messaging is actually working!

Beyond that, it is a refreshing reminder about our assumptions about people that are based on the constructs and restrictions of a strict gender binary. How we define “woman” and “man” as well as “masculine” and “feminine” are really just cultural constructs. (We only have to look to how different cultures define male and female gender roles or to the evolution of what it means to be a man or woman throughout time to see evidence that these identities are constructs and archetypes, not unassailable facts.) No matter what our social indoctrination tells us, they are not rooted in biology. They are rooted in patriarchy and used as a way to define people without their permission. (This is why transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming identities are so threatening to the dominant paradigm and why transphobia is so dangerous.)

The fact is, as a society, we collectively agree that Woman = X and Man = Y. Or, in Balpreet’s case, we see an example of an attempt to mock someone for their failure to conform to their assigned gender identity. In other words: Women don’t have facial hair, silly! Except that a lot of women do have facial hair (and hair in their armpits and hair on their legs…) but because society has deemed that facial hair is an exclusively “masculine” trait, then it becomes socially acceptable to punish, by mockery and implied social scorn, Balpreet for her failure to conform.

Perhaps the story of Balpreet can enlighten some people today and illuminate the veil that we collectively keep over our eyes when we deny that gender is a construct. And, in fact, that gender and a strict gender-binary system, is a tool of oppression that is worthy of not just scrutiny, but of dismantling. Because wouldn’t it be a nicer world if we honored each other’s smiles rather than wasted our lives following strict gender rules that limit our experience?

Bravo Balpreet! And bravo for the many micro-revolutions of social change we can effect in our daily lives!

Reblogged from Make Me a Sammich:

Reblogged from sisters of resistance:

We wrote this brief self-care guide for people who have experienced trauma, especially rape and sexual assault. It suggests a number of practical ways to cope with the day-to-day stresses of being a survivor. Please take it, share it, and tailor it to your own needs. We hope it is helpful to you on your journey towards healing. 

1.    Clear your space of the things that will trigger you.

Read more… 655 more words

Starting on May 21, a coalition of more than two dozen organizations — including Led by Women, Action & the Media, The Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are calling on Facebook to end its complicit approval of memes and pages that promote violence against women and gender-based hate speech.

As the coalition explains in an official statement released today:

Specifically, the group demands that the social media giant take three specific actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that Facebook will not tolerate this content.
2. Train Facebook’s content moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

The message to Facebook is accompanied by a massive social media campaign, calling on advertisers such as Dove and American Express to pull their advertising from Facebook until they can be assured it won’t appear next to content that promotes rape or domestic violence.

Examples of these pages include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus and Violently Raping Your Friends Just for Laughs. This is not new. Back in November 2011, I wrote about several pages on Facebook, including It’s Not Rape if you Yell Surprise and Kicking Sluts in the Vagina Because it’s Funny Watching Your Foot Disappear. When you combine this with tolerance, or even implied approval, of photo memes that depict violence against women with taglines like, “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up,” it adds up to a long history of a corporate culture that is a willing participant in spreading gender-based hate speech and rape culture.

Indeed, the ubiquitous nature and incredible cultural power of Facebook has been leveraged as a unique tool for rape culture and to promote violence against women. Last month, Retaeh Parsons killed herself after more than a year of cyber bullying following her sexual assault in 2011. Her very attackers posted photos of the incident on Facebook and proceeded to use that evidence to mock and harass her for months on end until, finally, she could take no more and ended her life. And she is not the only one.

That alone would be enough. The very fact that the power of social media sites — Facebook being nearly the king of the hill, so to speak — can be harnessed for such malevolence is a testament to its power to harm. So, when a brand like Facebook allows the “humor” sites like What’s 10 Inches and Gets Girls to Have Sex With Me? My Knife to proliferate, there is a very real consequence to that act.

And let’s be clear. For all its hand-wringing and cries of First Amendment rights, Facebook has a history of acting to remove anti-Semetic, Islamophobic, and homophobic speech. Facebook is a public forum, yes. But it is governed by the same rules and laws that prohibit me from walking into a crowded movie theater and shouting, “Fire!” when there is none. We have Freedom of Speech, but speech is not free.

Further evidence to the misogynistic culture that Facebook is either willfully or indirectly complicit in is the fact that the company has a long history of removing another kind of page and photo memes: That of breast-feeding women. It’s a curious thing that the Facebook will protect the rights of misogynists who want to promote rape culture but not the rights of women who want to promote a biological act which feeds infants.

This is a fight we can win. Facebook is not too big to listen, just ask the UFC. Two years ago, I joined a coalition of organizations to take on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to get them to enact a code of conduct to address rape jokes and homophobic speech that fighters were proliferating on social media. There was a lot of resistance from UFC CEO Dana White, until advertisers like the US Marines started pulling their ads and support for the organization until they cleaned up their act. Earlier this year, the UFC enacted a code of conduct, and used it to suspend a fighter for transphobic comments. If a brand like the UFC, which has built itself partially on a kind of hyper-masculinity that tends to dovetail into rape culture, can change its ways, so can Facebook.

In an open letter to Facebook, feminist coalition partners said the following:

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence. We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Be a part of the solution, Facebook.

UPDATE: Link to coalition website with more information. And please use hashtag #FBrape so we can all follow conversation.

Cross-posted from Feminism 2.0.

I am of the generation that has had to navigate the strange days of the internet revolution from the ground up. Between my freshman year of college to the time I graduated, I had to learn how to put a paper together by exacto-knife and paste on a light-board and then by mouse clicks on a computer screen. (In the early days, I focused on editing, because I never really fancied myself a reporter, if you can believe it.)

And then came the rise of websites and blogs and twitter and so on… All the while, I have tried to stay nimble and understand the serpentine flow and evolution of the beast known as journalism. I have loved it. I have gotten angry at it. I have broken up with it. And I’ve fallen right back in love with it. Many times over.

The one thing that has remained seemingly immutable in my time in the trenches has been that journalism can be a kind of front-line in the battle for gender equality and of tearing down outdated gender roles and stereotypes that are the lynchpins of misogyny and patriarchy. As journalists, how we frame a story and the words we choose matter. They can be a micro-level revolution on the page, shifting consciousness and contextualizing situations like never before. Likewise, within the newsroom, there is the constant tug-and-pull of women asserting their equality even as (I have often experienced) we are tokened or shunted to the “female friendly” features department rather than hard news like politics and crime beats.

And of course, there’s no crying in journalism.

There’s no crying when one of my first bosses suggested a short skirt would go miles with him deciding to give me a shot at writing something more than an obit. There’s no crying when a reader called me up and yelled into the phone for nearly a half an hour, calling me every foul name in the book. There’s no crying when an editor dressed down my work in front of all all my colleagues. There’s no crying when a source told me that I have nice tits and shouldn’t waste them as a reporter when I could make good money on a pole. I’ve been called a hack and a whore and a bitch and been threatened with rape and violence — all in a day’s work.

But I just let all that shit roll right off my back. I let it drive me to be a better journalist. And I let it sink into my skin, making it thick as armor. Bring it on.

In 15 years, I daresay that many of my colleagues, and especially my bosses (almost all of whom have been men), never saw me cry once until I gave my testimony in favor of AB230, the comprehensive sex education bill, at a Senate hearing earlier this month. And I will admit that it was a tweet from my former boss that made me blush as the tears were drying on my cheeks. He commended my testimony but all I could think was, “Damn it, Steve saw me cry.”

I say all this as a kind of prelude to the real show. I want you to know that, for all the righteous indignation I use here at The Siren, it actually takes a lot to get truly under my skin.

As regular readers know, I’ve been writing a lot about AB230 — some of it even getting national attention. There’s been a lot of debate about the bill. There’s been some red herrings. And then there’s been a string of strange op-eds by former Review Journal publisher Sherman Frederick.

I should have listened to Jon Ralston, after I wrote about Sherm’s first op-ed about the sex ed bill (in which he called all Nevada girls, and specifically Hispanic girls, “easy”). Ralston warned me, tweeting on May 12, ” I now find it’s best to ignore voices of ignorance with small followings, lest they get larger. You can’t fix dumb.”

Hindsight, 20/20, and all that.

Yesterday, Sherm again wrote about AB230 but this time he warned that proponents of “comprehensive” sex ed are actually seeking to “promote” homosexuality and “transgender sex.” I’m sorry, but this was just begging for a rebuttal, not just because it was blatantly false, but because it propagated the kind of gay-panic thinking that actually gets people killed. You can’t run into a crowded theater and yell “Fire!” when there is none, because you incite fear and panic. Likewise, you can’t just go around telling people that teaching kids comprehensive sex education will turn kids gay. It’s wrong. And it’s dangerous.

So, as I’m wont to do, I spoke my mind. I tried to have a sense of humor about it, too, when I made this:

A bit crass, perhaps. Certainly, I am no photoshop wiz. (Give me a light-board, exacto-knife and some paste and watch me tear it up!)

But I never could have predicted what was going to happen after I tweeted the photo to @MemeNVLeg, a twitter account that has been poking fun at many politicians and bills during this session of the Nevada Legislature. (Those who follow Nevada Legislature business follow the hashtag #nvleg, for those who aren’t twitter-savvy.)

Now, Sherm really did say those words in blue. And I really did say those words in white. I do think that Sherm could use some remedial sex education. In the space of two weeks, he’s talked about putting Ziploc bags on cucumbers (as stand-ins for condoms on penises, I presume), the idea that girls are easy if they have sex, and that creating a safe classroom environment to talk about human sexuality is tantamount to “teaching homosexual and transgender sex.”

I guess Sherm isn’t laughing. Because this happened:

@memenvleg @thesincitysiren If she’s offering … I will pass.

— Sherman Frederick (@shermfrederick) May 21, 2013

And then this happened:

@memenvleg @thesincitysiren Drunk or sober, I’m passing.

— Sherman Frederick (@shermfrederick) May 21, 2013

And this:

@memenvleg @thesincitysiren But hey, maybe you and she could …

— Sherman Frederick (@shermfrederick) May 21, 2013

Sigh. Then this:

@shermfrederick<— #ClosetCase They make the worst kind of homophobes.@thesincitysiren

— Meme #NVLEG (@MemeNVLeg) May 21, 2013

And then some other garbage and back-and-forths and some other twitter folks jumped in … and so on.

Let me just take a deep breath here.

Okay, so if I understand this right (and I’m really not sure I do), Sherm’s point is that since I talked about sex education and about him, that means I want to have sex with him. And he wants to be sure to let everyone know that not only does he not want to do that, but not even if he were drunk. Even sitting here now as I type this out, I keep stopping and thinking this through. I am flummoxed. I am angry. And I am insulted — but not for the reason you think.

I am insulted because two people were discussing having sex with me on twitter — like I am some object that has no agency — which, by the way, is at least one very real facet of misogyny and rape culture. (The central tenet of rape culture, of course, is that rape is inevitable. Rape is inevitable because women have no agency or ability to consent to sex in a rape culture.) I am insulted because Sherm Frederick is (was?) a person of stature in Las Vegas — one who has talked about being a leader in his Christian-based church and one who often talks about being a voice for the moral high-ground in his op-eds — and for nearly seven years was my boss. In fact, he was not just my boss, he was the boss of all my bosses. There was a time in my career that crossing Sherm would have been the end of my career. Maybe he thinks he’s flattering me or letting me down easy. I can assure you that I have not now nor have I ever had any intention of having sex with Sherman Frederick — no intention and no actual sex of any kind with Sherman Frederick. Period. The end. And I think it’s disgusting and beyond inappropriate that he would take the conversation to that gutter-level. We have certainly been passionately disagreeing and debating the merits of AB230. I’ve made plenty of jokes at Sherm’s expense when it comes to his writing ability and what I consider to be out-dated social mores on sex education. But at no time did I ever insult Sherm on a personal level that comes close to what he did tonight.

Like I said, I’ve been in this business a long time. I’ve taken it on the chin my share of times. But I have never been insulted like I have tonight.

Let me be clear. This is not the first time that someone has made a sexual innuendo in my direction. Indeed, I have told an inappropriate and raunchy joke a time or two (even in the office — newsrooms are notoriously crass). Anyone who knows me personally or has worked with me for any length of time can attest to that. And I certainly am not prone to blushing or going prudish at a bawdy reference or joke. Bring it on.

But this twitter exchange, although relatively chaste in terms of the raunch-factor, cuts in a direction that feels a lot more dangerous than telling a joke about some strippers and such. What I felt when I saw this conversation (which happened while I was putting my daughter to bed, so I didn’t even see it until nearly an hour later) was a flush of anger that lines up a lot more closely to that time that editor asked me to hike up my skirt so I could titillate him and he could dangle the chance of career advancement over my head like a carrot. I felt sexually harassed, in public no less.

Sherman Frederick — church-going family man — was trying to slut-shame me out of talking about sex education. The implication is hard to miss. I talk about sex and sex education, so therefore, I am up for sex with anyone at any time. (You might want to steer clear of my husband of nearly 16 years, Sherm, or any member of my Northwest Community Church family.) And the not-quite-as-obvious but still present context for this is that, to use Sherm’s words, girls are “easy.” He said so again in an op-ed today that “easy, by definition is defined as being sexually available.” Obviously, to Sherm all girls are easy. All females are “sexually available” at all times to any man anywhere. That includes him. And, apparently, me.

Sorry, I literally just stopped typing to rest my head in my hands in disbelief.

You didn’t make me cry today, Sherm, but you sure as hell made me mad. I suspect that was your intention. But I wonder if you understand that in baiting me, you’ve just outed yourself as someone who is not just a misogynist but as a person who is capable of sexually harassing women. Back when I was 20-nothing and just starting out, that kind of sexist bullying would have silenced me. But I’m a grown-ass woman now. You can’t intimidate me or shush me by trying to slut-shame me in public. But it does have me wondering… Should I put out the call to see if there are others like me, who’ve been harassed by you? Perhaps some women (or men) who worked for you while you were still publisher? … I think you would rather I didn’t do that. Another time, perhaps.

I’m going to leave it at this, Sherm: Don’t ever talk about me in that way ever again. It’s not appropriate. It is repugnant. It debases the important conversation that is worth having about AB230. And not for nothing, it makes you look like an ass.

See for yourself:

The event had about 50 LGBT people — a brave thing to do in a country in which there are absolutely no protections — who were going to ride down the streets in an attempt to highlight violence. This was not an event that was trying to seek LGBT rights in the same sense that we might have here, mind you. Just an event to highlight violence. (The prime minister has said that violence against any Georgian is wrong, but not necessarily endorsing LGBT people.)

But the Georgian Orthodox Church mobilized hundreds, possibly thousands to counter-protest the event. People were hurling plants at the bus, because as one woman said, “[It is] to punish those who violate the values of Orthodox Christianity.” 28 people were injured, including two journalists.

On Saturday, LGBT activists mobilized and held a peaceful protest outside the Tbilisi government offices to highlight the previous day’s incident. Participants rallied for accountability and that guilty parties be brought to justice. Thankfully, while there was a counter-protest, the events on Saturday remained passionate but peaceful. Meanwhile, Amnesty International condemned the ineffectual police response in controlling the escalating violence.

It is an interesting reminder to me that these freedoms we are fighting for, sadly, do not come easy. And that there is a long continuum of where people are on the civil rights front. I am grateful that we have come as far as we have in our country. And I pray that those in other countries can find peace and equality.