While I walked from the mail center back to my dorm, I couldn’t help but notice at 7 palms the double-lining of colorful shirts that were assembled with closed pins. On each of the shirts was written a story or saying from women or relatives of women that have suffered from violence. My heart was moved as I read each shirt today and saw how each were designed in their own beautiful way. Each voice that was shared through those shirts was heard as students read them and as they were displayed there in own uniqueness on the clothes line.
The expression of women victims voices calling out to God through these shirts is a beautiful sight as they swayed on the lining. This act of writing and designing on shirts and hanging them up though wasn’t just some random act, but was set up by the Clothesline Project. It is a national movement to help address the violence against women. By honoring survivors and victims of intimate violence, the Clothesline Project had a table set up with stacked shirts and sharpie pens to be used in helping display the shirts. It gave a chance for students at Azusa Pacific University to participate in writing and designing a shirt to share their story or relatives’ story of either surviving violence or revealing their struggles.
I love the symbolical view of women doing laundry by hanging up clothes on a clothesline with this movement, giving the sense of these women victims hanging up their burdens and sharing their voice with the world, or at least the campus of Azusa Pacific University.