Angela Kelsey

Tell the Story

Story

Filed in Dating Violence, Domestic Violence, Stories, voices :: February 23, 2012

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES/AP PHOTO

I can’t stop thinking about journalist Marie Colvin, who died in Syria yesterday.  You can read about her here and here and here.

She risked, and gave, her life to tell the story of people who are being oppressed, people whose government attempts to hide its violence by not allowing foreign reporters access for nearly a year, people whose story might not be told but for her and others like her.

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In violent intimate relationships, as long as the victim is willing to be subject to the power and control of the batterer, she may well survive with intermittent violence.  She faces the greatest level of danger when she breaks her silence to say “Enough.”

The Assad government’s response to its citizens’ quest for freedom, its citizens’ “Enough,” repeats the response of the batterer who says to his partner, “If I can’t have you, no one will,” and then inflicts brutality on the victim and everyone who tries to help her or give her voice.

It is up to all of us to take personal risks, great and small, to tell our stories and the stories of those who cannot tell their own, those who risk everything to gain freedom from their oppressors.

RIP Marie Colvin

 

 

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