CARA VAN METER
Staff Writer
Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley compares the lack of dialogue and openness concerning sexual assault to the silence of decades past when it came to fatal diseases like cancer.
“When I was a kid, no one talked about cancer. They just died. But over the years, with awareness efforts, now we have tremendous rates of treatment, and we’re increasing the lifespan and quality of life for those who are affected by it,” Kearsley said.
According to Kearsley, sexual assault affects society in much the same way. Every community, company and university is experiencing this issue, Kearsley said, so the city’s goal is to make people aware of the problem in order to stop it. In order to achieve this goal, council members donned jeans on April 25 in support of the ninth annual Denim Day.
As the event drew nearer, Malibuites prepared to make a fashion statement with a purpose. They joined hundreds of thousands of Angelinos and Southern California residents along with countless others across the nation who pulled out their jeans and wore them proudly and with purpose.
Denim Day, traditionally hosted by Los Angeles based organization Peace Over Violence (formerly the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women), is a sexual assault awareness and rape prevention education campaign — the culmination of the events that take place throughout the month of April in recognition of the national Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
According to Deputy City Clerk Jessica Duban, the Malibu City Council has taken part in Denim Day since 2004 by wearing jeans and encouraging residents to participate. At the council’s April 9 meeting, members voted to adopt a proclamation recognizing April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month and April 25 as Denim Day for Malibu as well.
In the past, the high note of the action-packed day has usually been a large rally in Los Angeles, like last year’s strong showing at the Staples Center with more than 2,500 participants.
This year, Denim Day looked a little different. According to Peace Over Violence (POV) Director of Communication, Media and Community Outreach Kibi Anderson, although POV is still spearheading the effort and will head up a smaller rally in Pasadena, the focus has shifted from one centralized Denim Day in downtown Los Angeles to a number of individual organizations working to spread the word in several communities throughout Southern California.
“This year we’re looking to expand our presence beyond Los Angeles, to sort of expand the cooperation we have with our sister cities and organizations,” Anderson said.
With a new name, a new strategy and a new website for the event (www.denimdayinla.org), POV staff members hit the ground running and have spent the weeks on the phone, online and out in the community building on last year’s participation and seeking out newcomers as well.
“We wanted to focus more on outreach, really spending a lot more face time in the community to encourage different organizations, businesses, schools to have their own Denim Days,” Anderson said. “So, instead of having one Denim Day, we’re actually having a lot of different Denim Days across the city.”
POV provides guidance to participants by offering them event and education ideas as well as “Action Kits,” which include poster materials, flyers and buttons to help participants with their localized Denim Day efforts. Those efforts might take the form of fashion shows, educational presentations, “Dollars for Denim” fundraising campaigns or simply wearing jeans and talking about Denim Day, Anderson said.
“We don’t want to force people to do it in a certain way or follow a certain formula, because we feel that if people are empowered to do it in their own way, they will actually be more inclined to do it,” Anderson said. “So, we try and create as many ways as possible for people to get involved, and that way they feel like it’s an easy thing to do.”
With more than 500 organizations participated. Among the participants was national POV spokesperson Calista Flockhart, along with the Los Angeles and Malibu city councils. Most of the participants, Anderson said, were associated with one of the many businesses, schools and nonprofits that registered for Denim Day. Those organizations range from Southern California high schools to businesses and nonprofits in Oregon and Washington to Harvard University on the east coast and even stretch across the Atlantic to a rape crisis center in Scotland, bringing Denim Day full circle with an international significance that hearkens back to its Italian roots.
Denim Day in Los Angeles began as a local protest of an international injustice. In the late 1990s, an Italian judge overturned a jury’s conviction of a rapist based on the sole fact that the rape victim, an 18-year-old young woman who had pressed charges against her 45-year-old driving instructor in spite of his threats to kill her if she told anyone about the rape, had worn tight jeans at the time of the incident. The judge said the reason for the ruling was that victim must have helped remove the jeans, thus agreeing to consensual sex with the man.
According to the website, women in the Italian parliament were the first to speak out against this injustice by wearing jeans to work. California Senators and Assemblymembers followed suit when they heard of the incident, drawing it to the attention of Patricia Giggans, Executive Director of Peace Over Violence. Since 1999, the organization has fought to prevent similar rulings in the future, creating Denim Day to urge people to recognize that, “There is no excuse and never an invitation for rape.”
The goal of the event, according to Anderson, has always been about “breaking the silence.” Anderson said POV’s mission in Denim Day is to get the word out to anyone who has been affected and hasn’t been able to address the issue that the organization is here, there is a 24-hour hotline available and there are people who can help.
“America, although one of the most oversexed societies in the world, really has strong taboos around issues of rape and sexual assault,” Anderson said. “Denim Day is about supporting survivors and encouraging them to break the silence.”
Though Pepperdine did not register to participate in Denim Day this year, Student Leadership Development Coordinator Kerri Heath said the University’s Intercultural Affairs office is interested in possibly partnering with POV next year for Denim Day.
A student-led sexual assault awareness event, The Eve Project, which took place early in the semester, also shows a sense of solidarity with Denim Day in its slogan “The Eve Project: Breaking the Cycle of Silence.” According to senior political science major and Project Coordinator Julie Dlugokecki, the purpose of the project, which she will present at a Christian University conference this summer, was to empower men and women to break the cycle of silence that perpetuates sexual violence and to creatively express what the world could be like without fear of sexual violence.
“It’s an issue that affects all of us, but especially college age students, and being in college provides a great opportunity to mobilize as students and take advantage of the resources available to us to raise awareness,” Dlugokecki said.
According to Dr. Jeff Banks, visiting professor of humanities and teacher education and a core member of the Social Action and Justice colloquium (SAAJ), awareness is the key. Banks said he believes an important aspect of the issue of sexual assault is that many women don’t really recognize assault when it occurs, possibly due to misperceptions based on prior emotional, psychological, verbal, physical or sexual abuse in their lives.
“Often this happens without the perpetrators being confronted. It is this lack of awareness that causes much of the problem and it is not acceptable,” Banks wrote in an e-mail. “Consciousness needs to be raised, and these acts need to be confronted, dealt with and stopped.”
Banks encourages women to speak out and serve as activists for justice in spite of traditional stereotypes that may cause some women to feel that men are intimidated by honesty and independence in a woman.
“Speaking out for one’s right does not de-feminize women,” Banks said. “Healthy men are not necessarily attracted to submissive women.”
Fortunately, according to Anderson, POV has seen quite a bit of progress in the eight years since Denim Day began.
“I can’t say it has stopped it from happening,” Anderson said. “We still battle some really backwards ideas about what is OK and that there is a reason for rape, but we’ve also seen over the years, a greater willingness to talk about the issue and a greater willingness for organizations and groups to get behind it. There’s still a long way to go, but there has definitely been a big difference.”
Kearsley said he has noticed that difference as well.
“When I grew up, sexual assault was just hidden in the closet, but we know by the actual numbers now that it is a pandemic,” Kearsley said. “It’s got to be reported and stopped. We’ve got to get it out in front of everybody. That’s why the city does these things.”
05-18-2007