Overview

When this occurs, we will have changed the human mindset so profoundly that everyone will find any and all kinds of violence abhorrent, grotesque, sick, an anomaly and completely unacceptable. I believe that this is our future. Women all over the globe are starting to realize just how powerful we truly are. We are realizing our strength, courage, and intelligence. We are realizing our incredible potential. We will no longer be silent. We will no longer be docile.

We are the agents of change as together we facilitate a global experience with each of us, individually and collectively, bringing the world back into balance. A balanced world in which female wisdom, vision, and energy have equal authority and power. However, I think that it is highly unlikely that it is a future that any us will see in our, or probably even in our children’s children’s lifetime. If we are lucky, we might be able to see small changes. It is essential that we think long-term. We must work today for the future 250 years from now. Cosmically, 250 years is half a blink of an eye.

I am not a spokesperson or any sort of ultimate authority. Rather, I write in the hope that I can find the words to access the energy within each of you to follow where your heart, your soul is leading you. What is it that you are going to plant, and how will you encourage its growth? Some people feel that a great change is imminent, that we stand at a crossroads. One path leads to deterioration, destruction, and annihilation. The other way leads to rejuvenation and rebirth. Our relationship with the earth and to each other during this period could undergo a fundamental realignment. Here and now each of us has choices.

In the Summer of 1990, the idea for a multi-colored clothesline took hold of my mind and spirit, telling of pain, promise, and survival. I have a dream of a Christo-type artistic endeavor with the emotional impact of the Vietnam Wall and the pathos and interconnectedness of the AIDS quilt. I shared the idea with the other women at the July meeting of the Cape Cod Women’s Agenda, a group focused on stopping violence against women. On October 8, 1990, The Cape Cod Women’s Agenda launched the Clothesline Project, with the first display on the village green in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

My concept for the Clothesline Project was to ask women to send shirts with personalized messages to be hung on the Clothesline (preferably) with the following color codes:

*yellow or beige—for women battered or assaulted;
*red, pink, or orange—for women raped or sexually assaulted;
*blue or green—for women survivors of incest or child sexual abuse;
*white—for women who have died of violence (although at first at first I wasn’t sure if it should be black of white) and later
*purple or lavender—for women attacked because they are lesbian.

The object of the Clothesline Project is to bear witness to survivors and victims of violence against women. Many women have been killed. They are the victims. However, the Clothesline Project is also about our wounded, the survivors. With their incredible strength, determination, and courage, these women are transforming themselves from simply survivors into thrivers. The Clothesline Project helps this process.

I began the Clothesline Project because I wanted to raise society’s awareness of the extent of violence against women. I want men and women to learn more than just statistics. I also want them to know the magnitude of the impact that these experiences have on the lives of women and children. I want them to realize the impact this violence has on our whole society. My goal was to break through the wall that people build between knowing something in their minds and having an issue touch their hearts.

Sometimes it appeared to me as if thoughts in people’s head failed to connect to the feelings in their hearts. The Clothesline Project can cut through this, as most individuals cannot view the “Clothesline” without an intense emotional reaction. I believe that if the problem touches people’s hearts, then real change can occur. Violence will end when perpetrators face their behavior and when we take their hands and, with our hearts, bring them from darkness to light.

One of the primary strengths of the Clothesline Project is that it is so simple: line, pins, and imagination (as well as some old t-shirts, markers, etc.). The Clothesline Project weaves itself into the process of emotional health and personal empowerment for women. It is a national, collective movement that has established the importance of understanding the cycle of violence against women in all its forms. It shows how violence has a far-reaching impact on women’s lives and our society as a whole. In addition, we make the connection between this violence and violence perpetrated against the “other,” regardless of whether the “other” is defined as people of color, lesbians, gays, the physically challenged, the environment, etc.

As earthquakes tear the fabric of the land, so physical violence and the violence of oppression and injustice cause misery and shred the harmony of inner peace. Violence is like a pebble that is dropped in a pond; it ripples out and affects everything around it. Ultimately, the perpetrator and society suffer spiritually in immense proportions. Violence is essentially a spiritual dis-ease born from emotional and physical hurt, trauma, and oppression. It alienates us from the roots of our being. By proclaiming the agony of pain and the joy of healing with programs such as the Clothesline Project, we cut through some of the alienating aspects of tour culture. This work makes it possible to weave ourselves into the process of transformation from victim to survivor to thriver. Through this work, it is possible to build communities on foundations of balance, love, and spiritual harmony.

Consider for a moment a revolution toward love, justice, and harmony. What would it look like? In the past, history seems to tell us that all revolutions replace one oppressive system for another. This revolution could be different, one that does not consider violence as a means to an end. We see over and over again that one war provokes the next because it is based on a foundation of destruction. Instead, through sharing our love and honoring the Spirit as it is manifested in its many forms, we could change basic ways in which we think and act.

Our work could be to change violence into love, greed into justice, fear into security, selfishness into compassion, competition into cooperation, complexity and chaos into simplicity and harmony.  We need to consider our differences as assets and celebrate the richness that they bring to our communities. Our diversity is similar to the ingredients in a stew. If we make a stew with only carrots and water, it is going to be flat and somewhat unappetizing. When we add other vegetables, salt, spices, and whatnot and each maintains its integrity, is respected and honored for what they are, it takes on characteristics that make eating the stew a much more enjoyable experience. Our goal must not be to create a melting pot, a meat stew smoothy. This means we do not lose sight of the intrinsic value of each separate component, we refuse to fall into co-option and appropriation, rather we maintain and recognize the need for complete self-determination (see: Steven Newcomb’s Pagans in the Promised Land).  Like eating the stew, we can experience diversity in our lives as wonderful, exciting, and joyous.

To bring a peaceable world into existence, we must learn to detach from a crisis mentality. Today, many of us are afraid for our personal survival, no matter how much we have. We can arrive at a place where we are mindful of the present reality and move from reacting to external circumstances to being the initiators of the change we want. We need to model peace, respect, and justice; a revolution based upon ideals of love, and harmony.  The ultimate test of every revolution is not found in the beauty or strength of its ideals but rather in how these ideals are put into practice, the process that is used. It is useful to examine elements from our past that encourage the positive and those elements that distract us from our purpose. It is also useful for people to know the background and underlying philosophy of the movements that are working for change. This is one of the goals of this book.

This book is not intended as a self-help manual for survivors of abuse. There are many excellent texts for that purpose. This book is written for the hundreds of thousands of people every year involved in some way with the Clothesline Project. These are the lives that, in small and large ways, are “on the Line.” These people might have had contact with the Project through seeing a display, contributing a shirt to the Project, working on a display with an organizing group, or supporting a friend who is involved. The book answers the what, why, how, where, when, and who of the origin of the Clothesline Project.

This book is an attempt to provide a resource for anyone who is organizing on the grassroots level, as other organizers might find useful the story of how one movement began, its daily routines, struggles, pains, and successes. Another purpose of this book is to share with the hundreds of Projects around the country the diversity of the many lines. It also shares the diversity of styles of organizing and the commonality of commitment. Finally, the book shares my personal view as the woman who initiated the Clothesline Project, I am conveying an aspect of my personal journey.

Many of us have a dream of a world of peace and harmony, free of the violence and oppression that many people in the world experience daily. A dream of a world free of violence against the earth, against the creatures, against every woman, every child, every man. While this might seem an unattainable utopia, if we consider the changes that have occurred in people’s lives in the past 250 years, it is not so farfetched. Building a violence-free society is no more radical than the industrial revolution. A mere two hundred and fifty years ago, wood stoves had not been invented, neither was the process of canning food, refrigeration, or many other tools that improved the quality (or at least quantity) of our material lives. Then, people with imagination, energy, and vision dared to challenge the so-called normal way of life. They worked to create the consumer world we know today, a world that, in that era, most people considered a pipe dream. Having reached this false utopia, we must move beyond it.

May we all thrive and realize our dreams.

Where the Clothesline Project was born