Welcome to Tools for Justice Website
Welcome to the Tools for Justice Website
This website is the landing page for:
- LIVES ON THE CLOTHESLINE: Our newest website, chronicles the beginning of the Clothesline Project, created in 1990 by Rachel Carey-Harper in collaboration with the Cape Cod Women’s Agenda to bear witness to violence against women. This website about the Project documents the first eight years and includes excerpts from the book Lives on the Line, pictures, and resources such as a bibliography of dissertations that have been written about the Clothesline’s effectiveness, as well as books and articles about the Project. It could also be a place for people to share things like best practices, resources, and events being planned, such as “It’s a Wrap,” a Christo-style art installation about justice that brings together a wide variety of like-minded initiatives.
- HEALING RACISM TOOLKIT: For White people in North America to understand and begin to heal the racism we carry. Racism is a chronic spiritual disease born out of a false sense of racial entitlement, egotism, and superiority. It prevents the building of healthy community.
- JOURNEY OF HEALING: Learning about the current situation for all the Indigenous people who are very much alive today; from the Eastern Woodland people to the Plains to the Southwest. (North America was inhabited and the native population did not die out soon after it was “discovered” by Europeans.)
Lives on the Clothesline
Healing Racism Toolkit
Journey of Healing
Beginnings – Resources – Events
This website chronicles the 1st 8 years of The Clothesline Project, including pictures, resources, and events. This includes “It’s a Wrap” – a Christo-style art installation that brings together a wide variety of like-minded initiatives bringing awareness to violence against specific segments of the US population.
Beginnings – Understanding – Acting – Becoming
This website is quite large and one of the best places to start is with the study guide. These resources are designed with the goal of creating the ability for everyone to equally realize their full potential.
Harm – Healing – Wholeness
This website takes you through learning about the past harm, the current situation for Indigenous people in the US, and how to enter into the process which only after learning, can lead to wholeness which is an aspirational hope for tomorrow.
WHAT CONNECTS THE HEALING RACISM TOOLKIT, LIVES ON THE CLOTHESLINE, and THE JOURNEY OF HEALING together?
Supremacy –– Racism, Sexism
The primary thing that racism and sexism have in common that is not shared with other “isms” is that assumptions of inferiority affect virtually all aspects of life and are immutable. White, male, supremacy allows automatic negative assessment of mental, physical, psychological, emotional, cultural, artistic, moral, and ethical capacity, whether through overt, covert, subliminal or just subtle messages entrenched since childhood. Women and people of color are not only considered inferior in the above categories but made invisible if their actions contradict this basic fundamental bedrock principle. Obviously BIPOC women are doubly impacted especially as white women have colluded with their oppression. (see The Problem with White Women for a deeper explanation of that phenomena: https://tools4racialjustice.net/problem-with-white-women/)
HOW DID THIS EVOLVE?
The learning and work for racial and social justice that developed the material for these websites started in the late 1980s with a focus on violence against women. After creating the Clothesline Project in 1990 to bear witness to this violence, a close friendship developed between the Clothesline Project’s creator and the Wampanoag linguist (Jessie Little Doe).
Little Doe spoke about how the concept of all types of violence against women and girls (rape, domestic violence, incest, etc.), including that perpetrated by strangers, was so foreign to indigenous women that there wasn’t even a word in their language for any of that behavior. So, the logical question was, given their recent ancestral memory of the world we are visioning, why weren’t they and other women of color in feminist leadership? Why were they so infrequent in feminist circles? The obvious reason was racism, both systemically and that which is embedded in white women, even liberal white women.
This led to over 4 decades of extensive educational efforts. It is vitally important to understand that the root of all justice work, whether for climate, for women, for LGBTQ+, or for BIPOC people of all genders and or working class, all stems from a particular way of thinking. This is a mindset of perpetrating or protecting white supremacy and privilege, often also linked with male, straight or ultra-rich classifications. The 40 years it has taken to gather and understand these issues shared on these sites is only a small step in a much longer journey, but it is a beginning.
The Dragon Panel Project being displayed specific to violence against women of color, at the Worcester State Clothesline Project display, April 20, 2023
We are all part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. — Albert Einstein
Please Click this Banner to Visit “Lives on the Clothesline Project”
The Lives on the Clothesline Project Website is one of three components of the Tools for Racial Justice. This site chronicles the beginning of the Clothesline Project, created in 1990 to bear witness to violence against women.
Please Click this Banner to Visit “The Healing Racism Toolkit”
The Healing Racism Toolkit is a separate component of the Tools for Racial Justice which deals with issues facing People of Color in the US and how white folks can begin the process to travel toward racial healing.
Click here (or the eagle) to visit “The Journey of Healing”
The Journey of Healing is a separate component of the Tools for Racial Justice which highlights issues facing Indigenous People of the US and how white folks can begin the process to travel toward healing past wrongs.