Responding to Orlando

By Craig Hovey

We at the Ashland Center for Nonviolence join with so many others throughout the world in mourning the shooting in Orlando, the worst mass shooting in US history. There is just too much to mourn at once: the 49 lives lost, the 53 additional wounded, the terror felt especially by LGBT people, the inevitable backlash against Muslims in the US, the increasingly shrill tone of the debate about assault rifles, and the opportunistic political responses that jump on one or the other of these facets.

What is the meaning of nonviolence at times like this? I remain convinced that nonviolence is never just about ending violence; it is also a spirit that seeks justice through peaceful means. There are competing ideas about justice in our world, of course. After all, it appears that the gunman in Orlando was motivated by a version of “justice” understood as punishment and moral condemnation. But this separates justice and peace; we must hold them together. “There is no way to peace,” said A.J. Muste. “Peace is the way.”

I am aware that quoting Muste’s famous words risks sounding like a platitude, especially at a time like this.

Why Obama Won't Apologize for Hiroshima

By Craig Hovey

President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima is historic—he is the first sitting president to visit there—and he spoke movingly and philosophically about the desire for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to mark the “start of our own moral awakening.” But observers also noted that Japan should not expect an apology for America’s actions 71 years ago. Why not?

Hiroshima Peace Memorial - Wikipedia

According to Stanley Hauerwas, war is a sacrificial system which, like anthropologists have long noted about religion, sacralizes violence through ritual. Even when surrounded by the most rigorously secular discourse, war often takes on a quasi-religious significance for a society, especially in how it is remembered. It is very difficult for a society to admit that an entire war was wrong (Vietnam) or that particular acts within a war otherwise thought justified might be wrong (Hiroshima) because admitting this calls into question all of the sacrifices that that society asked of its people when it waged those wars in the first place.

ACN receives Outstanding Award for MLK Day 2015

The Ashland Center for Nonviolence was recently honored at the Ashland University Service and Leadership Awards ceremony for our 2015 Martin Luther King Day event featuring civil rights legend C. T. Vivian.

In case you missed it, watch C.T. Vivian's address on YouTube.

For Martin Luther King Day 2015, the Ashland Center for Nonviolence bridged the AU campus and the wider community through an event featuring the civil rights legend, C.T. Vivian. At 91 years old, Dr. Vivian addressed a crowd of 650 attendees in Upper Convo, discussing his personal friendship with Martin Luther King, as well as his impressive involvement in pioneering activities for desegregation and civil rights such as the famous 1965 march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery.

Faith & Ferguson: Coming soon to Ashland

The Ashland Center for Nonviolence is joining with the Ashland University's Religion Department to host musician and activist Michelle Higgins on April 20-21. She will have a full schedule preaching, teaching and conducting workshops with Ashland students. A number of the events are free and open to the public:

Wednesday, April 20
12:00-1:30	Workshop: Nonviolent de-escalation in the midst of crisis,  Eagle’s Landing, Hawkins-Conard Student Center
7:00-8:30	“Last” Lecture: Your Faith for Justice, Ridenour Room, College of Business
Thursday, April 21
10:50-12:05	Conversation: The New Civil Rights Movement After Ferguson, Ronk Lecture Theater, College of Education
8:00-9:30	Sermon: Praying with your Feet, The Well, Miller Chapel

"It is exciting for us to have Michelle Higgins coming to campus," said Peter Slade, chair of the Religion Department. "Here at Ashland University we are always trying to make connections between our faith and the communities we live in and serve. Michelle will bring her wealth of experience and wisdom and help us understand the responsibilities and opportunities we have as Christians to engage with these issues of justice and race." Michelle will be speaking in Dr. Slade's class Religion and the Civil Rights Movement. "It is important for us to realize that the movement didn't stop with the passage of the Civil Rights Act or the assassination of Dr. King," Slade said. "This is a living history that calls people of faith to action today."

The Director of Worship and Outreach at South City Church  in the Shaw neighborhood of south St. Louis, Michelle is actively engaged in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. She has participated in civil disobedience, leadership development, logistics and administrative support in both sacred and secular spaces.

Michelle is the Director of Faith for Justice, a Christian advocacy group founded in 2014 dedicated to continuing the biblical story of activism. Faith for Justice promotes and leads public justice actions and events that connect faith communities to the movements that seek to dignify and humanize Black lives.

Though working primarily as a local organizer, Michelle’s work is challenging the wider church. She rose to national prominence with her plenary speech at Urbana 2015, the annual InterVarsity Student Missions Conference. The New York Times commented “in her wide-ranging comments about social justice, Ms. Higgins did little to make her speech more palatable.” The Washington Post concurred,“Michelle Higgins has been making waves.” The Evangelical publication Christianity Today “described her historic speech as "powerful and prophetic testimony.”

Michelle holds an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis and lives in North City with her husband Sean Loftin, and their two children - Moses and Matilda

InterVarsity made this short video introduction to Michelle and her work:

The Possibility of Peace

By Emily Wirtz

I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting with Miki, who was a guest in my American Literature IV class with Dr. Jayne Waterman, for what I thought would be a brief, perhaps 30-minute discussion over dinner. What happened was a two-hour discussion (getting us scolded out of Convo) about our own experiences of culture. We talked about television and the perception of anime and movies, politics and the voting process—in the light of the upcoming election—the perceptions of violence and control, history, and the perception of foreigners, among a plethora of other topics.

It’s incredible, and I think very important, to be able to see and understand how vastly different we all are. Miki also works as an intern for International Student Services on campus, and it was equally intriguing to get her own insights. She expressed that while she is aware of her own uniqueness as an international student, there is also an incredible amount of diversity our national resident students may not even realize. As a full-time international student (as opposed to partaking in a semester- or year-long exchange program), Miki is able to develop lasting relationships with the students she helps, even with a clear language and cultural barrier.

Joe Ehrmann - Coming soon to Ashland!

Nonviolence is always a team effort. At the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, we're constantly looking for ways to join forces with friends working in areas that matter. We're especially excited to team up with the Ashland County Community Foundation Women's Fund and the Ashland University Gridiron Club in order to bring Joe Ehrmann to town this March to talk about sports, masculinity, and violence against women.

Joe Ehrmann is a former NFL defensive lineman who is now an educator, author, activist, minister and motivational speaker. He was an All-American football player at Syracuse University, was selected to the Syracuse All-Century Football Team and went on to play professional football for 13 years. He was named the Baltimore Colts “Man of the Year” and was the NFL’s first Ed Block Courage Award winner. Parade Magazine featured him on its cover, naming him “The Most Important Coach in America” because of his work to transform the culture of sports. In addition, he was selected as one of the “Most Influential Sport Educators in America” by the Institute for International Sport and was awarded the Frederick Douglas National Man of the Year for empowering youth to prevent rape and other forms of male violence.

We are delighted to have Joe speaking on two occasions. Join us for both!

• Friday, March 18 @ 7:00 pm in the Alumni Room, Myers Convocation Center [This event is free and open to the public.]
• Saturday, March 19, Keynote address for the Sports and Violence Conference [This event is for conference attendees. Click here to register for the conference.]

 Check out Joe's TED Talk, "Be A Man"

Many thanks to our sponsors:

Ashland County Community Foundation Women's Fund 

Ashland University Gridiron Club

Identities: I Am.

By Emily Wirtz

One of the final projects Traci discussed focuses on diversity in identity. “Our Lives Matter,” a play on the Black Lives Matter campaign withheld the same values, but broadened to encompass an entire student body—not just the black students. “Headshots” were black and white portrait paintings with punches of color—showing the obscured identities of students in the Bronx, while also representing emotions. A collaboration series she is currently working on is entitled “I Am, I Will, I’m Afraid.” This is a collaboration she brought with her.

Ashland University is a predominantly female campus. This was apparent in our first meeting with Molloy. She allowed AU students the opportunity to collaborate with her in a project of our own. The morning before her presentation, we gathered in a CFA art room, filling it with female students. Dr. Cynthia Petry introduced her, and she then introduced her collaboration. Each “I Am” piece preceding had encompassed some trait of the students within it. Portraits were taken and overlapped, creating a single image of multiple people. Quotes beginning with “I am…” “I will…” or “I’m afraid…” were also taken and layered into the portrait, looking something like this (her piece from Wellsville, NY). This then became our “assignment.”

Deciding on our own identities was not a long process. We were all women, many of us in our late adolescent years, and there was one issue that seemed to stick with all of us: gender-based violence. We talked about ourselves and other women we knew who had been through abusive relationships—whether verbal or physical—sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape, cat-calling, slut-shaming, and the list goes on. The shocking thing? There wasn’t a single person in the room who didn’t raise her hand when the question “Do you know someone who’s been sexually assaulted?” was asked. That’s a problem, and for whatever reason, as women, that has become our identity. We are targets and victims because we are women. This project became our own personal solution. We are queens of our own lives and our photographs were to look as such. We chose to represent the strength and power that we have as women, even though we are not perceived this way. An image of feminine power? Katy Perry. Granted we didn’t have a crown or scepter, we had the attitude and the pose.

As we await the results of the final project, I think it’s important for us women to live through this strength. We should not have to carry mace or fake a phone call in order to feel safe walking down the side walk. Even Traci expressed her sincere concern for us as young women: “We need to pay attention to violence on women. We need to take back the night…and become inspired to do something more. This piece when it’s finished will have a life. I hope it has power.”

Every one of us has an identity. Every one of us also has an ethnicity, a race, a gender, a class, and a past. How we choose to identify ourselves may or may not be one of those categories. Unfortunately, all too often a stereotype arises from something that makes us who we are. Our race becomes our label, or our gender, sexuality, class, etc. and those labels become how we are identified—not how we identify ourselves. All too often a black man is perceived to have a gun in his pocket instead of a checkbook. A woman dressed in old sweats is perceived to have a food stamps card instead of a teaching license. A man on the streets is seen as a lazy addict instead of a man with a Ph.D. and a family to feed.


Emily Wirtz is an intern and Peace Scholar with the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.

When Did I Become A Latina Caricature?

By María Cardona

I have always been very proud to be Latina. To be Puerto Rican has always seemed liked the highest honor for me. However, I’d never truly been aware of my race, that is, until I came to the states. Between jokes about how I probably live and participate in a drug cartel to people questioning my lack of an accent I suddenly found myself aware of my race and becoming a caricature of what it means to be Hispanic in the eyes of some Americans.

It seems as if everyone wants me to speak with an accent or imitate an American trying to speak Spanish. People clamor for me to say “something in Spanish,” they wonder if I like spicy foods, if I dance. If I’m a little too loud or sassy “It must be that Puerto Rican blood.” Every time the topic of drugs comes up it seems as if all eyes are on me, because as the Hispanic I must know all about it. They seem to think my country is filled with famine, poverty and sickness. It’s a shock to some that we are, indeed, part of the 21st Century.

Loving Our Enemies

By John Stratton

When Jesus challenged us to love our enemies, I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to carpet bomb them.

It is tough to love people we fear, our enemies. Do we even know what the word love means in this context? Are we required to like our enemies? Are we being asked to buy them cotton candy at the county fair? 

Certainly we are not required to be “know” them in the Biblical sense, in the current version of the word “love.” So is this love some kind of Agape love, a distant god-like love?

It’s all very nice to quote Jesus hypothetically, but it is tough to consider what “love our enemies” means when we are talking about actual people and actual fear, people who actually want to hurt us.

Identities: Parents

By Emily Wirtz

Visiting artist Traci Malloy's presentation on Oct. 8 continued with her work on collaborative art. After September 11th, a significant amount of young children were left without a parent, and many of them didn’t know why. How was a mother to tell her kindergartener that daddy was killed at work by a hijacked plane? It’s not an easy conversation to have, and it’s not an easy concept for a child to grasp. For this reason, America’s Camp was started.

She explains how difficult it was to see these kids, devastated and confused by a tragedy so far beyond their understanding, trying to cope. Her collaboration with these children was eye-opening, if hard on the heart. During the years of America’s Camp, she and the children created a quilt, postcards, a paper mache phoenix and a variety of drawings. One of her projects opened up to be an incredibly powerful piece of artwork, surprising even her.

In introducing this piece, she first delved into a bit of Greek mythology. Pandora’s Box is quite often a misinterpreted story. The first woman on earth was given a box by Zeus. Pandora opened the box, letting forth all of the evils and death of the world. Frantically closing it, Pandora unknowingly trapped hope inside. “Pandora’s Lantern” is based off of this story. Like a giant Chinese lantern, the panels of this piece of artwork fold in and out, containing the drawings of the kids of America’s Camp. Within the lantern is light, showing the hope these children have for their own futures, along with a recording of the children’s voices, naming their parents and their hopes. The hope left in Pandora’s Box is exposed and radiating in these kids.

Traci reflected that the drawings the campers made for each project grew more and more vibrant and visually hopeful throughout the years and until America’s Camp was no longer—victims’ children were no longer children. Her artwork brought joy and life back into the hearts of tragedy. The children were no longer the children of victims, but the children of mothers and fathers. They were not labeled as victims of tragedy, but were identified as bearers of light and hope.

Every one of us has an identity. Every one of us also has an ethnicity, a race, a gender, a class, and a past. How we choose to identify ourselves may or may not be one of those categories. Unfortunately, all too often a stereotype arises from something that makes us who we are. Our race becomes our label, or our gender, sexuality, class, etc. and those labels become how we are identified—not how we identify ourselves. All too often a black man is perceived to have a gun in his pocket instead of a checkbook. A woman dressed in old sweats is perceived to have a food stamps card instead of a teaching license. A man on the streets is seen as a lazy addict instead of a man with a Ph.D. and a family to feed. 

Emily Wirtz is an intern and Peace Scholar with the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.

Fourteen Going on 40: An Open Letter to the First Man to Call Me Beautiful

By Anonymous

“Mia bella,” you said. “I love you.”

It made me uneasy. When you told me to say it back, I was afraid. When you told me not to tell, I was terrified. If I said five years later I’m not scared anymore, I would be lying. I’m suspicious of any man who’s not significantly younger than I am. 

For five years now, plus one day, you’ve overtaken me. You’ve bitten my nails and gritted my teeth and carved deep into my skin. 

You taught me that love was controlling. Love was fear and anxiety and depression. It was giving in and giving up. It was lying and fake smiles and falling grades. Love was hating myself. It was falling asleep on the bathroom floor. It was shamefully leaving every meal to bow down to the toilet bowl and watch the numbers on the scale go up and down.

You taught me that keeping secrets was better than walking into school to get shoved into lockers and called a slut and a whore and a home-wrecker. Keeping secrets was better than getting dumped. Keeping secrets was better than watching myself become a news story.

Keeping secrets was better than being blamed for my stupidity. Keeping secrets was better than watching my dad cry.

You taught me what a sociopath was. You taught me how a predator’s eyes shine with insatiable hunger.

You taught me a lot of things that I didn’t know yet.

But you also taught me empathy.

You taught me how to see past another person’s defenses because I had built up so many of my own. Fighting back was not an option, at least not a good one. You taught me that it is better to meet insults with kind words, anger with happiness, and stubbornness with patience.

Working myself up to bring someone else down isn’t worth it.

You taught me to see fear behind bright eyes. But you also taught me to see light and naivety behind dark suspicion.

Most importantly, you taught me to teach myself.

I’ve learned how to be the bigger, better person. I’ve learned how to cry and not feel ashamed. I’ve learned that I’m not fighting this battle alone; I’m striving for a world without fight.

I’ve learned that wounds heal, and while scars don’t disappear, they certainly fade and there comes a time when they’re no longer a reminder of the past, but of the future I chose to have.

I’ve learned to stand up for myself. I’ve learned to be myself.

I’ve learned that you taught me the wrong meaning of “I love you.” He’s kind, and caring, and sees beyond the countless walls I’ve built up. He knows my past and who I am. He taught me the meaning of “I love you,” and it is not full of shame and secrets.

I’ve learned to open up. It’s not so bad to put myself out there sometimes. As horribly cliché as it is, every time the sun sets it promises to rise again in the morning. Darkness doesn’t last forever. I’ve learned that.

Life should not be a power struggle, but it often is. The thing is though, I have to have power over myself. My life is not about you, it’s about me. Growing up isn’t easy on the calendar’s time. It’s even harder when forced to grow up faster. Even then…maturity isn’t such a bad thing. Sometimes bad things aren’t always bad things. They’re opportunities to grow and see the strength that was already there. You’ve given me opportunities not to fight the world, but to try and save it.

Peace means Community

By John Stratton

Last night (Dec 8) about fifty people—students and community members—gathered around the flag pole on the AU campus for a silent vigil remembering the victims of mass shootings. It was mostly silent. There was some chatting, some singing, and a little speaking, but it was a time of reflection on the shootings that are filing the newscasts and the headlines.

We lit candles, but it was hard to keep them lit in the chilly breeze. We turned to each other to relight them, and often the candle that had just been relit was used to relight the other candle that had itself just gone out.

That lighting, relighting, and relighting of the candles is a powerful metaphor for community. We lit and relit each other's candles without thinking that in another moment our candle would need to be relit. We kept the community bright, not by building a single giant candle but by keeping all the candles lit. We held back the darkness because we each were holding candles and helping others keep their candles going.

We were a small group acting out, in a small way, the meaning of community. It is a model for all us—to light and relight each other's candles, while knowing that someone will relight ours if we need it.


John Stratton is a member of the steering committee and emeritus director of ACN.

Prerequisite for Peace

By Andrew Kinney

Tonight, on Ashland University’s quad, we’ll gather to honor the victims of violence and make silent protest to recent threats of violence. Prayer and community can be powerful strategies in times of terror.

The recent uproar over “prayer shaming” (we would do well to recognize our own constant struggles moving from good intention to appropriate action) misunderstands the purpose and function of prayer. Still, in this time of social upheaval and national angst, those of us who pray may wonder if we’re doing it right. We may wonder if we are talking, like Ginsberg, to ourselves again.

Let's Come Together for a Vigil for Peace

The Ashland Center for Nonviolence is planning a candlelight vigil for tomorrow 

in response to recent mass shootings.

Everyone is welcome.

Tuesday, 12/8 at 8pm

Meet at the Flagpole in the Ashland University Quad

Understanding Our Gun Culture: 2017 Conference Theme Announced

The United States reportedly has more gun deaths and more guns per capita than any other developed country. It is also estimated that there are now more guns than people in the U.S. Now, as mass shootings seem to have become routine, the political climate has settled into clear camps of those who advocate stricter gun controls and those who oppose them. ACN hopes to improve and enrich these and other discussions through its 2017 annual conference, "Understanding Our Gun Culture."

"Something clearly has to change," says Craig Hovey, executive director of the Ashland Center for Nonviolence. "Everyone agrees that there's too much gun violence in the United States. But we're deeply divided on how to address it. I don't think we should be afraid of disagreement, but as H. Richard Niebuhr once said, the first question isn't 'What should we do?' but 'What is going on?' The conference is meant to lead to a smarter discourse about American gun culture by helping us understand it."

Understanding Our Gun Culture conference

March 31 - April 1, 2017

Ashland University

More details will follow. 

Don't forget to REGISTER for our 2016 conference on Sports and Violence. 

ACN Intern Maria Cardona discusses her "Know Violence, No Violence" series

Images from Maria Cardona's graphic art series "Know Violence, No Violence" are currently circulating on campus plasma screens. We wanted to hear about what inspired Maria, an ACN intern, to address the many ways we encounter violence, including issues of race and stereotyping, using graphic media.

ACN: What inspired you to create the "Know Violence. No Violence" series?

Maria Cardona: There are multiple factors that went into the creation of the Know Violence, No Violence series. The first was artist Traci Molloy's visit to Ashland in October. Her artwork really showed me the impact that images can have and how art can be used as a way to combat violence and ignorance. 

Aside from Molloy's presentation, the idea of microagressions and racism played a huge role in the series. I wanted to represent the harsh stereotypes people of various races have to deal with on a daily basis and how these stereotypes dehumanize people into caricatures of who they really are. Sometimes stereotypes and generalizations make us miss the opportunity to really get to know people for who they are and not who they are "supposed" to be. As a minority, it is such a struggle to debunk these stereotypes, because sometimes we get so caught up in not being a stereotype that we can't really show every part of who we are. 

Other than race, mental violence also helped me to create this series and to focus on the idea that violence isn't always physical or perpetrated by someone else. Mental health issues, especially anxiety and depression, inspired me to show the inner war many of us fight daily with our own selves. We don't think of these attacks on ourselves as violence but the long-lasting effects they leave on us and our self-esteem are proof that it is a type of violence--and that it is important for us to recognize it as this in order to combat it. 

The final element that inspired me to create the series was the massive issue of rape. After reading the play "I Dream Before I Take the Stand" by Arlene Hutton, I was frustrated by how widespread victim-blaming is in this play and how ten years after this play was written our society seems to continue to hold the same beliefs. Reading this amazing play was what really inspired me to do something against victim-blaming and show that instead of silencing victims, we need to encourage them to seek help and justice.

After Beirut & Paris: Justice without Mercy?

By Craig Hovey

Last week’s horrific and deadly attacks in Beirut and Paris call first and foremost for silence. After Pearl Harbor, Dorothy Day began her column in the Catholic Worker by asking “shall we keep silent, or shall we speak? And if we speak, what shall we say?” Like the commendable silence of Job’s friends when they saw that his suffering was great, human tragedy of this sort and on this scale shocks us — the most human thing we can do is suffer with the sufferers and mourn with the mourners.

Source

In the last few days we have been seeing a lot of different forms this solidarity takes. I was struck by this account in which a Parisian tells NPR’s David Greene how she opened her apartment to frightened mourners who had gathered in the street outside but who became alarmed when a loud sound went off:

DAVID GREENE: You brought 40 strangers into your apartment… who were just very afraid? 

JULIE MARKS: Yeah … I said, of course, come in. I mean, being friendly is all we have now. Having compassion, it's all we have now because if we just keep being afraid and being lonely and alone, you know, an individual, we have lost everything.

This initial burst of spontaneous mutual support and compassion for strangers, born of the mayhem of the last few days, is impressive. It is the spirit of nonviolence: discovering the community-building alternatives that meet needs and build people up.

But it also contrasts with the long-term war-planning coming out of the French government. Inevitably, it seems—as with Job’s friends—the talk will change from openness and solidarity to explanations and calls for justice, punishment, and revenge. Dorothy Day went on from her initial silence to affirm her organization’s commitment to nonviolence in the remainder of her column, “Our Country Passes from Undeclared War to Declared War; We Continue Our Christian Pacifist Stand.”

The nonviolence tradition with which I most identify is a faith tradition that, in an earlier time, preferred the language of nonresistance to nonviolence, peace, and even justice. Nonresistance was a way of talking about refusing to respond in kind: hatred for hatred, violence for violence. The cycles of reprisal and revenge, it was acknowledged, would go on indefinitely until they are decisively and peaceably broken when one side embraces an alternative instead.

This tradition, and ones like it, have always faced their toughest opposition when nonresistance appears simply to be inadequate to some injustice, usually in wartime. Speaking about nonresistance in times like this feels a lot like speaking as Job’s friends: unwelcome and ill-timed.

Yet I believe it is necessary to speak, primarily since others are speaking too. French president François Hollande has called these terrorist attacks “an act of war” against France. The decision to call these acts “war” is the choice to respond to violence with violence rather than find other ways, ways to break the cycle. Hollande, we have heard, has promised a “merciless response” to the attacks.

War may not only be waged mercilessly, but it is also itself a response devoid of mercy. After Pearl Harbor, Dorothy Day acknowledged that war is a place and a circumstance where mercy is most needed. “Our works of mercy may take us into the midst of war.” She urged members of her organization to refuse to contribute to the fighting, but instead to look for ways to continue works of mercy where there are especially great risks because the needs are also so great.

Nonviolence does not mean being passive in the face of violence and injustice. It requires our greatest innovation and creativity in addressing the serious troubles endured by victims and which threaten to make victims out of yet others. What it will not do is withhold mercy in order to accomplish its ends.


Craig Hovey is executive director of the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.

Identities: Murderer

By Emily Wirtz

Every one of us has an identity. Every one of us also has an ethnicity, a race, a gender, a class, and a past. How we choose to identify ourselves may or may not be one of those categories. Unfortunately, all too often a stereotype arises from something that makes us who we are. Our race becomes our label, or our gender, sexuality, class, etc. and those labels become how we are identified—not how we identify ourselves. All too often a black man is perceived to have a gun in his pocket instead of a checkbook. A woman dressed in old sweats is perceived to have a food stamps card instead of a teaching license. A man on the streets is seen as a lazy addict instead of a man with a Ph.D. and a family to feed.

On October 8, visiting artist Traci Molloy spoke in the Ridenour lecture hall—and she filled the house. As her presentation went on, it was clear that the information she was sharing with us was a powerful message she shared through her art. She considers herself as much a social activist as an artist, and I would have to agree. One of the first pieces she shared was a series entitled “Kids that Kill Kids.”

 

From this series came a variety of portraits and overlapping text. One piece that stood out to me in particular was one named “Missed/Dismissed.” Its display contains a series of mugshot-style portraits of both victims and perpetrators on death row. Each portrait is equally whitewashed, and the text plaques on either side are statements made by the mother of a murdered child and by the mother of a child who committed murder. The grief is the same. It is the same humanity captured within the art and the words it speaks.

If we were to look at a portrait of a sad 17-year-old, wouldn’t our immediate thought be of a child? But, if we were to look at the mug shot of a 17-year-old on death row, knowing that he had murdered a child, would we still think of him as a child? Would we have the heart to forgive him or would we condemn him? These are the exact questions that Traci’s art seeks to make us ponder. They aren’t easy questions to answer; how much worse it must be for their mothers! Perhaps this piece deals less with stereotypes and more with morality, but “murderer” and “victim” have become these children’s labels. Those are their identities—she seeks to challenge this. Nothing is black and white. Even the portraits have grey areas.

Emily Wirtz is an ACN Peace Scholar and Intern.

What We Didn’t Talk About - Race and Diversity

By Maria Cardona

On a chilly fall Wednesday night at 7:40, 7 shots are heard in downtown Ashland. A single bullet strikes a Chinese restaurant where outside, a group of Americans and Asians stood conversing. The shots startle and frighten the group as a car drives away somewhere between the Church and West Second street intersection. Relief washes over the group; no one was harmed.

Four days go by. The buzz about the seemingly random shooting has died down quite a bit, when suddenly email alerts go off everywhere. Staff and students from the University all open up an email and concern and fear takes hold of them. The vagueness of it all inspires fright in the community worried about themselves and the rest of the student body.

It is then all revealed in multiple news reports: The shooting was not as random as previously thought but an act of racial violence. While it has become clear that the victims of this horrid crime are Asians, many questions are left unanswered. Who would do such a thing? Why would they do it in the first place? And, is everyone truly safe?

More news reports surface and suspects are taken into custody, but three words stick out from the page: charges are pending. Seph Valentine, a 32 year old and Tammy Lunsford, 54 have been apprehended and the community is alerted that once more, we are safe. But in reality, are we?

With no knowledge of charges being brought up yet, and the disconcerting revelation that Valentine had been convicted in 2010 after “making and leaving homemade bombs in public places,” (Mansfield News Journal) how could we feel truly safe? We were being pushed back into the bubble of the safe, small town dream, but this only filled us with a false sense of security.

While it is true that Valentine did serve out his sentence, and stronger charges were not pressed because the bombs were not capable of detonation, Valentine still intended for these to function properly and harm others. As I read the article from the Mansfield News Journal, an important piece of the puzzle is uncovered. Valentine is a schizophrenic which might give some insight into why he’s committed these crimes but the article concludes by stating that “during his 2010 trial, he was declared competent to stand trial.” Unsettling feelings resurface once more as it’s clear that his condition is no excuse.

Multiple articles on the shooting spread through social media like wildfire as the students vocalize their concern, yet by Wednesday/Thursday it seems as if the buzz has died down. I came into this short class week expecting students and/or professors to reference the violence that had ensued just 0.6 miles from our campus, but nothing was said.

Classes went on as normal and professors expressed that they hoped we had a “nice fall break,” but the shooting went by completely unspoken of. It was jarring to me and some of my fellow students to realize that we were apparently going to ignore this. We seemed perfectly content with the news that suspects were apprehended and we were “out of danger,” but are we truly in the clear?

If 5 years ago this man had committed a crime and after 3½ years in prison he committed another, what’s to say that Valentine won’t do it again and again? And if not Valentine, what’s to say that someone else won’t come into our small town and commit a crime of a similar nature? Our false sense of security and the fact that we keep our guard down because “it’s Ashland” paints a huge, red target on our town.

I am not suggesting that we should live in constant fear and are plagued by paranoia of crime being around the corner, but we need to stop using “it’s Ashland” as an excuse. Yes, we live in a small town. Yes, most of the time it’s calm and quiet. But we can’t ignore the days when it’s not.

Perhaps there is more to us ignoring this than just the belief that we are safe in our small town bubble. It is clear to anyone that our campus is mostly Caucasian students, and perhaps it is the lower rates in diversity that we experience that bring about this carelessness. While I do not claim that it is intentional, some students might have ignored the facts because it didn’t directly affect them.

However, what happens in our community happens to all of us. We need to stand together; worry together, and more importantly we can’t sweep the issues under the rug and pretend they’re not there. An important conversation needs to take place, I believe, on race and discrimination.

Many are blind to racism nowadays because they see racism as something overt, but that is not the racism of our day. While clearly the shooting was an obvious racial attack, it is microagressions that plague our world today. Unless we learn to recognize these and talk about race openly and respectfully, we will make no progress.

So let’s talk about race and racism, let’s talk about microagressions, and let’s talk about prejudice. Let’s clear up some stereotypes, let’s love each other for who we are instead of what we look like. Ashland University has a growing diversity rate and these students are not different from anyone else. We are all AU Eagles so let’s talk about this shooting and move forward, stronger and more united than ever before.

Maria Cardona is a junior at Ashland University and an intern with the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.

Professional Profile: Dr. Marc Hedrick

A new professor in Criminal Justice at Ashland University, Dr. Marc Hedrick, grew up in Naperville, just outside of Chicago. Obtaining a Bachelor’s and proceeding Master’s degree after working in the Air Force, Hedrick began work in the police force and subsequently as a teacher in North Carolina.

His work and interest in the field of restorative justice began in law school, where he was introduced to the subject. He later taught at Taylor University, a relatively small Christian university, which introduced these new and unfamiliar practices within their Justice Studies curriculum. As a Christian university, restorative justice was vital to practices in peace and justice, characteristic of Christian doctrine. This became Hedrick’s capstone project, ending his chapter at Regent and beginning a new chapter in education.

I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Hedrick personally about restorative justice and his career.

Wirtz: How do you see restorative justice being used practically outside of the classroom?
Hedrick: Restorative justice can be used in everything from vandalism to rape and murder. During my career, I was able to work with a juvenile facility, and we tried to build a restorative justice element into the system. Unfortunately that goal never got off the ground. The Real Justice Institute [now the International Institute for Restorative Practices] does a lot to teach restorative justice and does a lot of conferencing. They bring the victim and offender together, as long as both parties agree to meeting, and ask “How can we make this right?” It’s like mediation, yes, but used in criminal cases instead of civil cases.

Wirtz: Do you see mediation and other forms of restorative practices being used in the community?
Hedrick: Absolutely. Restorative justice is generally not used, but I practiced law in Mansfield for 8 years, and I know most—probably 99%—of their civil cases are resolved through mediation. These cases are usually between an insurance company and the other party and are often court-ordered. On the criminal side, prosecutors’ offices also supplied victim services outside of this, providing updates on cases and preparation for witnesses.

Wirtz: Clearly mediation dominates restorative justice practically, but do you see it coming into play in the future?
Hedrick: I think the question here is has it topped out yet? We don’t know. Restorative justice probably won’t ever abolish the current justice system, but I could see it possibly becoming some sort of hybrid between the two. Restorative justice could replace criminal justice in juvenile cases and low-level or first-time offenders, but with violent crime there’s just not that possibility for full restoration, although it’s still beneficial if the perpetrator has true repentance. The goal here is to put the victim first. The victim has the say so in whether or not these types of practices and meetings are used.

Wirtz: So what are the benefits you see in using restorative justice?
Hedrick: Obviously the victim gets some kind of resolution, maybe closure, but the offender and society also benefit, if their benefits are second. These kinds of practices would greatly reduce the law and order kind of system we’ve had in place since the ‘80s. It prevents recycling the offender through the system, which really just causes more damage and costs more money anyways. Restorative justice is repairing harm rather than creating more harm.

Wirtz: Now that you teach here in the CJ department, do you teach any restorative justice classes or incorporate these methods into your other classes?
Hedrick: Unfortunately, no, we don’t have any restorative justice classes at this time. I do incorporate some of the ideas into my Victimology class, though. We focus of the why, how, who, and history. It’s basically the rediscovery of the victim. Our criminal justice system focuses so much on the perp., we forget the victim, so much so that the wrongs went from the individual to the state. Now, with restorative justice, or even just its basic ideals, we can focus on the actual damage done to the victim. This is restorative justice.

Emily Wirtz is an ACN Peace Scholar and Intern.