The Creative Nonviolence Project evolved from the Men's Leadership Council, a discussion group at the Santa Fe Rape Crisis and Trauma Treatment Center. Ray Lopez leads the 12-part workshop series as a means of confronting male violence, and blogs at
creativenonviolence.typepad.com
. The next seminar,
"The Functioning Dysfunctional Male," is 7 pm, Wednesday, May 14 . It's free, but only open to men.
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SFR: So you've been doing this for 10 weeks now. How's it been going?
RL:
It's been going great. I sucked at the first one. There were eight guys there and I was rattling on about family of origin and basically giving my history. Fortunately, there was some interest. I had a demographic from 25 years old to a guy that was 72. Three of them stepped up and told their stories about their experience with violence. A lot happens in the sixth and seventh grade. They either got into a fight or were bullied or had to defend themselves in some way. The second one was a little better, but by the third time I was ready to cash it in. I couldn't sleep the night before and then I couldn't sleep the night afterwards. I told Director Barbara Goldman, 'I really don't feel effective here.' Barbara was a cheerleader in high school and that's what she did. She just cheered me on. 'Give me an R. Give me an A. Give me a Y.' Fifteen minutes later, I walked out of there and said I'd continue to do it.
What is your back story in this context?
My mom and dad fought physically and verbally. I used to watch my parents fight up until the point where, when I was 9, my Dad called the cops on my mom and she got hauled away. Then I had my first fight in the third grade. Somebody just started razzing me and I remember just wailing on them. The school was two blocks away, the principal came up and walked me to my dad's service station and told my dad what had happened and I could tell that my dad was proud of me. He didn't take it seriously. That was the first time I actually sensed some sort of approval from him.
Is there a connection between male-on-male violence, domestic violence and child abuse?
Yeah, there is. Violence is violence to begin with. I learned violence within my family of origin and then I carried that onto my relationships because that's all I knew. When I got married, I never hit my wife, but I slapped my youngest son when he was 3.
If the workshops you're leading now were available back then, in what sort of outlet for creative non-violence do you think you might have found release?
After that happened, I got the ultimatum from my wife: 'You either get help or this marriage is over.' So I went into therapy. That was 17 years ago. That's what the purpose is. Violence is within you; it's always going to be there, but here are the options. Here's what other men have done. Martin Luther King said: You have to walk in the shoes of your oppressor and that's how you develop compassion. When I put myself in my wife's shoes and my kids' shoes, my perspective changed.
I understand there's a Web element to your workshops.
I started a blog called Struggling for Purchase. I started that in January, tried to get my head into the workshops. I wanted to sort some stuff out, so I started writing my personal story on there not knowing what I was doing. I had a mailing list of about 254 people, so I sent it out to them. I started getting reactions from my friends and people that I know. Good reactions. Then they started passing it on and I started getting responses from LA to New York to Israel to Ecuador. Right before a workshop I would sit down and put my ideas together.
I feel like the last seven years or so have been some very violent times, globally. The US is involved in two wars, every few months there's some sort of school shooting and there are threats being made over missile defense systems. Does this larger culture of violence have an effect on the local individual in New Mexico?
It does on me. I can speak personally to that because after Sept. 11, I remember going back to Manhattan a year after the attacks. I always enjoyed going to the city; people were more friendly, the cab drivers and storekeepers were super nice. But after that year passed and we went into Iraq to get that revenge, to get those bastards, to start the war on terrorism, I started thinking, 'Yeah, that's what we need to do. We've got to kick some ass and straighten that country out, then get out.' Well, it didn't happen. In the guys I've gotten to know, this has had a profound effect on them because we see it, we read it, we experience it, it's part of our immediate history and thinking back, we thought, 'Yeah, that was the right thing to do.' But now we wonder what the alternatives might've been.
As you were talking, I looked back and realized I don't think I've ever been in a fight. Does that say anything about me?
Yeah, that says a lot about you. I think it says that somebody raised you right. It's about nonviolence, it's called the Creative Nonviolence Project. The idea is, within myself, I have a creative way to not lose my dignity, not appear vulnerable, but do it in a nonviolent way. Somehow you figured out how to do it.
I almost regret not getting into fights. Maybe it's part of the male experience, this violence.
It has been for the majority of men that I've talked to. It shouldn't be. I mean, why? OK, testosterone, hormones are raging, there's rivalries, there's sports, that sort of stuff. I was never a big guy. I was a skinny little kid and I used to get the crap beat out of me. I don't want to do it again. There are ways where you can grow up as a man and be nonviolent and still maintain your manhood.