Men Stopping Violence

The Internship:

Going Deep

When the next group of Men Stopping Violence interns comes through our doors in early 2010, they will be continuing a two-decade-long tradition by engaging in intensive, life-changing work that we believe ultimately addresses our goal of ending male violence against women.

We challenge men to look honestly at their own beliefs and behaviors, gives them ways of holding themselves and other men accountable for abuse and violence, and asks them to go out into their communities, into their everyday lives, and be agents of change.

The men who have experienced MSV's Internship know all too well how deep it can get.

“The most challenging thing about the Internship was learning that I was contributing to the violence by doing nothing to change it,” said Bernard Ellis, who heard about the Internship after Men Stopping Violence brought its Because We Have Daughters ® program to his church.

Bernard was part of the Internship group that worked together in the spring of 2009. It included men who had already done work on the issue of violence against women as well as those who had not done any work at all. The Internship is an intense experience that combines theory and practice. Interns participate in classes and discussion groups with other men and work on projects that are designed to eduate and inspire themselves and others to create safer communities. MSV provides mentors -- male and female -- who challenge and support participants as they do the hard work of self-examination and advocacy.

Much of that work focused on how culture is taught and supported and how standard definitions of manhood fit within that culture. Ultimately, women's safety depends on how we all define culture and teach it.

Although often it was a personal experience – either with a loved one who was victimized or through someone who was already working for the cause – that brought interns to Men Stopping Violence, what they found here were ways to interact with community and bring about cultural change. Through choices about what information to consume and absorb, through opportunities for teaching moments with friends, family, co-workers, fellow people of faith, and through examination of our individual power to create and destroy, the culture can be shifted, moved, changed. Each intern acknolwedged a profound shift in his thinking by the time the Internship ended.

“I thought of myself as a child of the new millenium who didn't have negative prejudices toward women,” said Leif Patterson, 25. “The reality is that those beliefs are as present as ever and even the most enlightened of us is impacted. Those beliefs innudate our world and reach us through every aspect of our daily lives.

“Men holding other men accountable is one of the most powerful tools I have witnessed for combating domestic violence and it can be used in the fight against debasement of women in the media as well,” he said.

Many of the men who have finished the Internship over the years have gone on to devote a significant portion of their day-to-day lives to working on this issue.

Internship graduate David Asher Burke works as Family Violence Intervention Program Manager at the Georgia Commission on Family Violence.

“My involvement with MSV led me to the job I currently have,” he said. “I now conduct statewide trainings on the issue of batterers' intervention and violence against women. I hope some of what I do at these trainings inspires.”

“My involvement with MSV has taught me that choice is the most powerful quality I posess,” said Langston Walker, now coordinator of MSV's Commuinity Restoration Program. “I always have a choice ...in how I respond when I'm driving in traffic and someone cuts me off, in how I deal with a colleague physically threatening me at work, my supervisor being verbally abusive during a performance review, or practicing self care when dealing with friends or women I am dating. MSV has taught me that I am 100% responsible for my response.”

Shyam K. Sriram, a college instructor, used his work as coordinator of the newly established Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence (MMADV) as his Internship community project.

“In Islam, we believe that it is not about numbers; the ability to even save one life is very dear to our Maker,” said Shyam. “I hope and pray that if I can either prevent a woman from ever being abused or stop the violence in a woman's life, then I will feel content. Now, if that can be magnified and multiplied, then I feel like I will have a larger role to play.”

“I noticed that participants, even though they were trained as social workers, nurses to support patients and clients in crisis situations, appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable with this issue,” said Andre Scott. “Also during the discussions, I heard participants … making excuses for the abusive individual – minimizing, blaming – to take emphasis off of what took place in the story.”

The opportunities for this shift are in their families, their campuses, their workplaces, and their faith communities – and in their relationship with themselves. The power of the Men Stopping Violence Internship is in its ability to do many things at once: educate men about the pervasiveness of abuse of women, challenge them to look within themselves for the keys to culture change, provide tools and strategies for holding themselves and other men accountable for a culture of violence, and helping to create a community of men who are willing to continue to work long after the internship ends.

Muslim Men

Against Domestic Violence

Internship Grad

Directs Group

Shyam K. Sriram, coordinator of Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence (MMADV), was recently featured in a Baltimore Examiner article.

Sriram, who completed the Men Stopping Violence Internship in the spring of 2009, helped form MMADV in partnership with Baitul Salaam Network, a domestic violence prevention advocacy organization in Georgia for Muslim women.

"We need groups of Muslim men in every state and every major city taking on the responsibility of educating other Muslim men about their responsibilities," he said in the article. "I echo again the motto of Men Stopping Violence; we, Muslim men, are the work.”

The Art of Change

Benefit Acknowledges

Work of Co-Founder

Photo by: Al Viola

The sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta became a repository for music, movement, musings and memories on Saturday, May 2, as the Men Stopping Violence community of allies gathered to pay tribute to co-founder Dick Bathrick (above).

MSV's annual benefit concert featured singer and songwriter Doria Roberts, The Chorus of Bet Haverim, Old Enough to Know Better, percussion emsemble Sehwe Village, and spoken-word artists Yolo Akili and Theresa Davis. The show was emceed by Khaatim Sherrer El and Leslie Fredman.

We dare not use the word "retire" around Dick, who will leave the staff of Men Stopping Violence later this year. He will continue his justice-making and anti-violence activities through his private counseling practice and his work with various other groups, both locally and nationally.

Special thanks to:

and

Jackie and

Jeffrey Toney

for their support of this event.

Article Describes

MSV Model

for Mobilizing

Men to End VAW

Community accountability is the foundation of the work that Men Stopping Violence does to help increase the safety of women and girls. An article published in the February 2008 issue of the journal Violence Against Women explains the philosophical framework MSV uses to do this work and that framework's relationship to the organization's programs.

The article, "Deconstructing Male Violence Against Women: The Men Stopping Violence Community-Accountability Model" was written by MSV staffers Dick Bathrick, Ulester Douglas and Phyllis Alesia Perry.

Read the article.

Men Stopping Violence Contributes to Book on Work With Men of Color

Men Stopping Violence has contributed a chapter to the recently published second edition of Family Violence and Men of Color: Healing the Wounded Male Spirit, edited by Ricardo Carrillo and Jerry Tello.

The book's editors compiled writings that examine the interplay between ethnic and cultural identification, sexism and violence against women. In the chapter "African American Men Who Batter: A Community-Centered Approach to Prevention and Intervention," Ulester Douglas, Sulaiman Nuriddin and Phyllis Alesia Perry of Men Stopping Violence discuss in detail the intersection of racism and male violence against women.

They write:

"MSV asserts that violence against women is not an individual pathology, but a systemic control tactic that cannot be uncoupled from other oppressive systems of control, such as racial discrimination or heterosexism. The work of MSV is based on the premise that these systems are integrated and, therefore, should be addressed as parts of a whole."

Read the book chapter here.