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Women
Warriors:
Our
Stories, Our Lives as Immigrant Women
By M. Brinton Lykes
An exhibition of photography and stories by the women
of the Center for Immigrant Families was the centerpiece of an event
held on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at Boston College. During the evening,
the Martín-Baró Fund was also honored to accept a posthumous lifetime
achievement award given to Ignacio Martin-Baró, SJ, PhD, by the American
Psychological Association's Division of Peace and Conflict. The award
was presented by Dr. Herbert Kelman, Professor Emeritus of Harvard University,
who described the significant contributions that Martín-Baró made to
critical and applied social psychology, as well as to the peacemaking
processes in El Salvador. For more information, see page 7 of the Summer,
2007, The Just Word.
 Four
members of the Center for Immigrant Families, whose work over the past
two years has been supported, in part, by the Martín-Baró Fund, traveled
from New York to present their exhibit and to describe the Center's
collaborative literacy and empowerment program. The women displayed
photographs of their daily lives as mothers, grandmothers, workers,
and community members, alongside short descriptive stories.
Through
its outreach programs to women in the Lower Manhattan Valley neighborhood
of New York City, the Center for Immigrant Families has expanded its
membership and continued to promote psychological well-being, health,
development, and organizing for justice among low-income immigrant women
of color, many of whom have come to the U.S. from countries deeply affected
by the wars of recent decades. See Amanda Del Balso's article on
this event from the Boston College magazine, The
Heights.
News
& Special Events
| Reports
on Past Fund
Activities |
 |
Bowlathon
2007 "Strike for Justice," April 1, 2007 |
|
2005
Fall Event "Involvement by Mental Health Professionals
in Military Interrogations at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib," a
public panel and film screening. |
|
2004
Fall Event "Human Rights in an Era of Terror: El Salvador
Remembered," with former U.S. Ambassador Robert White |
|
2001
Fall Event "El Salvador to September 11th: A Personal Journey"with
U.S. Representative
James P. McGovern: |
|
1999
Fall Event Honoring Father Roy
Bourgeois, School of the Americas Watch |
In
the News
 Anti-Torture
Campaign
Profiled by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
A new report, Psychology
and Human Rights, by Lauren Chow profiles the Martín-Baró Fund
and its ongoing campaign against the involvement of mental health professionals
in abusive interrogation and torture. The article appears in
the online newsletter of the
Science and Human Rights Program
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AAAS
is one of the largest scientific organizations in the world, serving
some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, and more than
10 million individual members.
Student Activists
Help to Promote
Fund's Petition CAmpaign
A number of Boston-area student activists attended the Fund's fall,
2005, Public Forum on the involvement of psychologists
and other medical and mental health professionals in military interrogations.
Following the event MBF volunteer Ann Brian Murphy was asked to contribute
a feature
article on the event to the increasingly popular local newspaper/website,
The
Student Underground.
Brian's article
has also been distributed over the internet via The
Boston Independent Media Center.
Sales
of Sloan's Critical Psychology
will Benefit Martín-Baró Fund
 Revenues
from the sale of Critical Psychology: Voices for Change (2000),
edited by Tod Stratton Sloan, will be donated to the Martín-Baró Fund
by Sloan, a long-time friend and supporter of the Fund.
Critical Psychology "collects the thoughts and experiences
of psychologists from around the world who have come to challenge the
dominant frameworks and practices of their discipline. In twenty hard-hitting
chapters, scholar/activists develop critiques of psychology's scientism
and individualism, and argue for a reinvention of psychology as a discipline
committed to the struggle against social injustice and oppression."
Editor Tod Sloan is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University
of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
and the author of Life Choices and Damaged Life.
In
the United States the book is currently available in hardcover ($65)
from bookstores or from vendors like Amazon;
a paperback edition (Ł17.99) can be ordered from Palgrave
in Great Britain.
Parade
Article Inspires Young People
A mention of the Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund in a February, 1999, Parade
Magazine article on human rights workers generated a significant
number of donations and letters of support. One letter came from Janet
Bralove, of the First Unitarian Church in Rhode Island:
"Our
fifth grade class was very impressed by the article. We want to donate
money we have earned to help the world, by asking you to use it to
help young people scarred by war and violence. We like the idea of
young people helping each other and themselves. We have a lot of respect
for all involved in this work, especially young people…"
New Guide
to Progressive Philanthropy
Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving your Money for Social
Change: By Chuck Collins and Pam Rogers, with
Joan
P. Garner; Preface by Alfre Woodard. W.W. Norton & Company, New York,
2000 (visit
website for more information.) Released in March, this newly
revised edition of the classic guide to progressive philanthropy is
a project of our "parent" organization, the Funding Exchange, and its
member group, the Haymarket
People’s Fund.
An
indispensable handbook for those seeking to ensure that their investments
and charitable contributions achieve socially progressive goals, it
deals with a range of issues from financial and tax planning to socially
responsible investing. It’s anchored throughout by an impressive array
of concrete, real-world examples, and includes comprehensive listings
of other resources.
"At a time
when the gap between the rich and the poor in our country has become
enormous, here is a refreshing antidote: a book that gives those of
us who are not poor some practical advice on how to help narrow that
gap. The authors’ objective is long-term and fundamental: to change
the social conditions responsible for poverty and other forms of social
injustice."
--
Howard Zinn
Fund Hosts
Reading by Activist Poet
In June, 2000, the Fund had the honor of presenting activist and poet
Renny Golden, reading from her new book of poetry, The Hour of
the Furnaces (Mid-List
Press). In his forward to the book, Daniel Berrigan writes:
"Her poetry is an act of compassion. The nuns, the cotton pickers, the
Jesuits, the madres, the catechists – their memories, their stories
must somehow, against all odds, reach us." Golden has traveled and worked
extensively in El Salvador and Guatemala. "I have learned," she says,
"that insurgent hope, even in the midst of hideous repression, is a
weapon that the powerful always underestimate."
"Just as a
theology of liberation exists, so too exists a poetry of liberation,
inspired by that theology, which has recently emerged in the two Americas.
And one of the best representatives of this poetry is Renny Golden."
–
Ernesto Cardenal, poet and former Nicaraguan
Minister
of Culture
Voices
and Images: Maya Ixil Women of Chajul
One of the Martín-Baró Fund’s recent grantees, the Association of Maya
Ixil Women – New Dawn (ADMI),  has
released Voces e imágenes: Mujeres Maya Ixiles de Chajul
(2000) a new book of photos with Spanish and English text, documenting
the effects of war and political repression on themselves, their families,
and their communities. The book is the result of a two-year project
called PhotoVoice, during which the women took photos around which they
wove stories based on the people and social realities shown. Voces
e imágenes was co-authored by M. Brinton Lykes, and translated by
Catherine M. Mooney, both long-time Martín-Baró Fund Program Committee
members. The book is distributed by Epica
Books, and all proceeds from its sale go to ADMI. Visit the site
of the Boston
College Chronicle for a recent background article on this project,
and on Voces e imágenes.
South
African Commemoration
Focuses on Psychology of Liberation
On November 4, 1999, Martín-Baró Fund Committee members Brinton Lykes
and Cathy Mooney hosted a commemoration of the life of Ignacio Martín-Baró
at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. The presentation
began with the moving video on Ignacio’s life made for the Fund’s Commemorative
Event in Boston.
The
formidable physical and psychological violence that people have suffered
over the past decades in South Africa is still a palpable reality. Many
people have vivid memories of physical torture, the disappearances of
loved ones, and the psychological terror fomented by the white Nationalist
Party police state. While western-style individualistically-oriented
psychotherapy has its place in helping some to heal the wounds consequent
upon state-sponsored violence and oppression, it is inadequate to address
the pain inflicted on many individuals – and entire communities – in
this culturally diverse country.
Many
of the cultures of South Africa possess a stronger notion of community
solidarity than is the case in western industrialized countries. And
across these diverse cultures, there is a need for community healing
as people try to forge a new South Africa. Martín-Baró’s psychology
of liberation is a welcome guide for the growing number of community-led
grassroots projects aimed at healing the wounds of apartheid and creating
a non-racial and inclusive society.
Return
to Top
English
to Spanish translations
courtesy
of Melisa Flores
©
2007, Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health & Human Rights
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