Abuse Unchecked: A Husband Shoots Wife as a Community Watches By Byron Hurt

On Tuesday, September 1, I spoke to more than 2,000 incoming freshman students at Montclair State University in New Jersey. As part of their New Student orientation, the Department of Student Development and Campus Life invited me to campus to show clips from my documentary film Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and to address the issue of men's physical and sexual violence against women. In my speech, I spoke about the urgent need for men to act as proactive bystanders in the face of such violence.

As I spoke to the students about gender-based violence in north Jersey, Lenox Ramsey, 25, taunted, chased, and then finally shot his wife, Kaidan Ramsey, 22, in broad daylight in Brooklyn, NY near Medgar Evers College. Surveillance tapes show a terrified Kaidan running for her life as people on the street watched, doing nothing.

As a man, I know how easy it is look the other way and ignore male abusive behavior when it happens, especially when it happens publicly. I’ve been in situations like this and I know how paralyzing one can feel – not knowing exactly what to do. I have been in situations where I have failed to act and remember feeling horrible for lacking the courage to raise my voice. I have also been in situations when I have acted, and fellas, it’s not as difficult or scary as you might imagine. I understand the fear people feel when faced with intervening when a man is abusing a woman on a busy street. We are afraid the abuser will turn his rage onto us. This fear is real and has to be acknowledged. But as a community, we cannot remain silent and tolerate this kind of violence. We must speak up loudly and boldly when men physically or sexually assault women. Honk your car horn, yell and shout, call 911, or try to somehow distract the abuser from attacking his victim - even if it is for an instant. But please, do not remain silent. Help the woman out.

Please understand that I am not suggesting that you jump in front of a bullet to save someone’s life. You must be street smart and use wise judgment at all times. I am, however, suggesting that you do something as opposed to doing nothing at all. At the end of the day, we all have to look ourselves in the mirror knowing that we did the right thing when it mattered most to someone else.

As a nation, it is vital that we ramp up efforts to educate boys and men about patriarchy, sexism, male privilege, and how men's violence against women is ultimately about men maintaining power and control over female bodies. Men and women working in the gender violence prevention field have long called for men and women in positions of leadership to make gender violence prevention a priority in schools, churches, corporations, and in the military. Educating boys and men in prevention programs is one key step to drastically reducing all forms of gender violence.

Men, this has to stop. Men's violence against women is pervasive worldwide, and we can no longer deflect this issue onto women as if they are the cause of the problem and should fix it by themselves. Each day, new stories emerge about men who abduct, rape, beat, harass, and kill women. We do not need any more statistics to prove that men's violence against women is a real problem. It is real and it happens each and every day, all over the world.

We cannot be silent anymore. Non-abusive men who respect women and who are against men who abuse women have to speak up when incidents like this occur. You do not have to be an expert or know the latest statistics. All you have to do is care, have courage, and speak up in defense of the women you love. (Read Jackson Katz' Ten Things Men Can Do to Prevent Gender Violence at www.jacksonkatz.com)

Through my filmmaking, writing, and community outreach, I will continue to do all that I can to ally with women and educate as many non-abusive men as humanly possible. By raising our voices, men and women can use our influence to collectively send the message to other men that the abuse of women is not cool and should not go unchecked within our communities. If you have a mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, aunt, or female friend that you love and care about, then you should be an advocate for them and tune in to the issues that affect them daily. Men’s violence against women is one such issue that affects the women you love.

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Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, a published writer, and an anti-sexist activist. Learn more at www.bhurt.com.

NOTE TO READERS: Feel free to cut and paste my statement and forward widely along with the link to the article and disturbing video footage of the shooting: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/09/02/2009-09-02_brooklyn_gun_horror.html

I also recommend that you Google, buy, and read these five books to learn more about what we as men can do to help end violence against women:

• The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, by Jackson Katz

• Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, edited by Shira Tarrant

• The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life

• NewBlackMan, by Mark Anthony Neal

• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks