Questioning, Witnessing, Teaching

I wonder what it means to be called into action.
To turn an apathetic understanding of an issue and move it into an activation of energy and resources.
I read once that 'people are not moved to action by information alone'. We can hear of devastating things, but the fact alone will not produce change. We have to be 'moved' emotionally or physically. This is why 'Save the Children' campaigns show pictures of a lonely and sad looking child in the dirt- the point is to move us into feeling into action. It works. Affect is effective.

We do things because they feel good, or because they prick us, it hurts, and we think our action will make it feel better. I believe it is hard not be apathetic about issues that are 'larger' than us our outside of our immediate control. I have spent most of the time our country has been at war 'not really thinking or feeling' about it. It doesn't effect me personally, so I tend to ignore it except for the occasional "this has to stop" statement to no one in particular.... and of course, I plan to vote for Obama who also wants to stop the war, but ultimately this remains outside of my control and outside of my feeling place.

I have been pricked. Not by our war but by another countries war. Maybe the objectivity of the other makes it an easier entry into compassionate engagement than my feelings about the Iraq war, which quite frankly just brings up feelings of disgust and shame.
I have been an active witness to the effects of the war in Northern Uganda. Working with, breathing with, struggling with women giving birth. It was not romantic or pretty. Women were traumatized, terrorized. The pain and pressure of pushing a child out is often mirror like to that of being raped.
The hospital has no resources (no running water, watered down and re-used bleach, limited glove supply) and a staff of midwives who are victims of war themselves, traumatized and often apathetic since it is the only way to get through the day. At the time, my partner and I thought this was the way in. To work within the hospital system in an exchange of ideas and practice. The result was that we were traumatized and exhausted at the end of each day and the failing system did not shift. We were outsiders coming in and we would leave. This was the very thing I tried to avoid, instead of accepting its inevitability.

Upon my return I struggled with a number of questions.
Was my presence as an outsider an act of violence unto itself?
Had we really 'exchanged' anything at all?
My fear was that with the power dynamics such that they are, we really hadn't.

With Earth Birth trip the entry is different. I the point to facilitate spaces of safety in which culturally appropriate linkages and exchanges of information/best practices naturally occur. We all become simultaneously outsiders and insiders to the process of building as women, sisters, mothers, daughters, etc.
I guess the larger question is how does one stand active witness to WAR itself. I am now teaching an undergraduate class at Rutgers University on women's health issues in areas of war and terror.
The first question I asked the students was:

How does war effect women?

The answers were insightful and sparked a great discussion.

When women's bodies become political weapons.
When rape becomes a tool for political gain.
When children are bred to be turned into soldiers- women still must carry, birth and nurture.
When there is no food, women still have milk.
When shame and stigma are attached to forced sexual acts and reproduction is the evidence.
When resources are so low and poverty and malnutrition is so high that giving birth is truly risking life.
When trauma becomes set into the body and is ignored, sedimented.

The war in Northern Uganda has been a reproductive war.
It is literally about creating a new generation to fit the rebel armies vision and plan.
That creation takes place at women's reproductive cores and therefore the physical and emotional toll of giving birth and raising babies cannot be overlooked.

I think the next question is one for the women who are victims of war : What would radical intervention look like?
Feel like?

I don't think it's a question I can answer- but it's certainly been done before- the madres in Argentinas Dirty War, or the Women in Black in Israel/Serbia. Sustainable interventions created and led by women- I think the first step is to create a space in which it is safe enough to even begin the conversation. Apathy and silence are symptoms of trauma, violence and oppression.