NAACP

The fourth quarterly featured quest speakers at the Otero County NAACP business meeting were  Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE)  Tina Godby-Ware;  Otero County Sexual Assault Coordinator, Sandra Wilder, of the Counseling Center of Alamogordo;  and Detective Lt. Lee Wilder, Response Team Coordinator, of Alamogordo Department of Public Safety.  All are members of the  Sexual Assault Response Team  (SART) in New Mexico’s Twelfth Judicial District.

The coordinated sexual assault response team  is designed to ensure that victims are provided with a broad range of necessary care and services (legal, medical, social services) and to increase the likelihood that an assault can be successfully prosecuted. The SART team includes a nurse examiner, a sexual assault advocate, a prosecutor, and a law enforcement officer. All responding actors follow specific protocols that set out their responsibilities in treating and providing services sensitive to the needs of victims of sexual assault.

You can contact members of the response team at the following numbers:

Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner,  Tina Godby-Ware:  575 430-9485
Otero County Sexual Assault Coordinator, Sandra Wilder:  575 437-7404
Response Team Coordinator,  Detective Lt. Lee Wilder:  575 439-4300

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The SART presentation was  followed by a showing of  “V-Day, Until the Violence Stops”. “V-Day” is an international movement to stop violence against women (and men).  An Alamogordo stage presentation of “The Vagina Monologues” is slated for February of 2010.  Men are encouraged to attend.

Retired Maj. Nancy C. Leftenant-Colon addresses the audience with Brig. Gen. Stayce D. Harris during the 38th Annual Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., convention Aug. 7 in Las Vegas.

Historic promotion evokes reflection, bridges generations

8/17/2009 - LAS VEGAS (AFNS)– The Air Force’s highest ranking black female aviator held off on making history — ceremoniously, anyway — so she could share the occasion with her heroes, military trailblazers in their own right.

Though Brig. Gen. Stayce D. Harris officially donned her first star in April, she synchronized the pin-on ceremony with the 38th Annual Tuskegee Airmen Inc., convention here Aug. 7 as homage to the famed black aviators who trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field, Ala., and helped assure U.S. victory during World War II.

“Two words describe me this evening: blessed and grateful,” said General Harris, the Pentagon-based assistant to the U.S. Africa Command commander. (more…)

Michael Kimmel argues that it is in men’s interest to work for gender equality.

© New Internationalist

Over the past three generations, women’s lives have been utterly and completely transformed – in politics, the military, the workplace, professions and education. But during that time, the ideology of masculinity has remained relatively intact. The notions we have about what it means to be a man remain locked in a pattern set decades ago, when the world looked very different. The single greatest obstacle to women’s equality today remains the behaviour and attitudes of men.

In the mid-1970s, an American psychologist offered what he called the four basic rules of masculinity:

1 No Sissy Stuff. Masculinity is based on the relentless repudiation of the feminine.

2 Be a Big Wheel. Masculinity is measured by the size of your paycheck, and marked by wealth, power and status. As a US bumper sticker put it: ‘He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.’ (more…)