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Text Version

Affiliated with Men for HAWC
and The Men's Initiative for Jane Doe
www.strongmendontbully.com ©2002
All rights reserved.

We worked to find a way to balance our serious messages with celebrating and having fun in the spirit of the Parade. We carry signs with messages against abuse and we also carry large, friendly, waving papier-mache hands mounted on 10' lengths of PVC pipe. We emphasize positive things hands can be used for-- building, giving, uplifting, comforting, holding, praying, - as well as what we shouldn't be doing with them.An old dump truck carries signs including "Take the Violence Out of Our Voices" and "Take the Violence Out of Our Words.” We play upbeat music, including a love aria by Pavoratti, the lead song from The Big Night, and songs by Elvis Costello, Hootie and the Blowfish, Richie Havens, and others.

The first year we worried about whether people would respond to what we were doing, but the minute we turned the first corner people started cheering, applauding, crying, and shouting "Thank you". Women were readier to respond in these ways than men, but there were plenty of men who got it right away and gave us the thumbs up, and their numbers have increased each year. .

The event was moving for everyone who walked. The hands, the truck, the signs and 89 of us walking gave the whole community a chance to feel its longings for there to be less violence between men and women. None of us anticipated just how meaningful this would turn out to be. A noted photographer who had planned to film the city from inside the Parade ended up so awed by people’s positive, emotional responses that he didn't want to miss a minute of it and never took a single picture.