Citizen Brand

Click for Respect

 

Want an easy way to help fund the fight against family violence?  Go to GiveRespect.org and join the Geoffrey Beene Challenge. All you have to do is click where it tells you and Geoffrey Beene will donate $5 in honor of your visit to the site.

A world full of respect can be a world with a lot less violence.

Show some Respect

We could all use a little more respect in the world today.  The economic crisis, a war that won't end and a presidential campaign that is growing bitter is wearing us all down.  We are scared, tired, worried and a tad mad right now.  We are a little more testy than usual and probably looking on at others who might not agree with our point of view as being out of touch if not down right dumb for not seeing things our way.

So we need to all dig down a little deeper and find it in our hearts, heads and souls to show the people around us a little respect.  Respect is the foundation for the campaign now underway from our client, the Family Violence Prevention Fund.  It's easy to get involved.  Go to GiveRespect.org and join others at a rally; text respect to others; donate at the site; or, go to Macy's, the campaign's lead corporate sponsor, and buy Respect bracelets for the people in your life that matter to you.

Let's hope our presidential candidates can show us some leadership in the Respect arena during the rest of their campaign.

Campaign for Respect

It has been two years since Barkley begin working with the Family Violence Prevention Fund  to help start a movement.  A movement that would make it easier for all of us to become involved in fighting violence against women and children.  This week, the movement takes its first steps.

Friday is National Respect Day.  The home for this movement can be found at giverespect.org.  Or you can get involved by texting respect to the people you care about via six major mobile carriers.  Or you can buy a Respect bracelet at Macy's.  The Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco 49'ers will celebrate Respect at games this weekend.  There are many ways to get involved.

At the core of this campaign is a simple idea.  If we each stop and think about how we can show another person a small sign of respect each day, will the collaborative result of all of us showing respect become the beginning of an antidote to violence?

Go to the website and listen and begin to understand how your simple act of respect can be the beginning of a movement.

Early warning signs

So many have said so much about the horrid events at Virginia Tech.  One important fact I want to focus on is the information that has emerged about the gunman having stalked female students in the past.  We need to learn from this tragedy that people who stalk other people need to be viewed as serious threats to society.  Esta Soler, the founder and president of our client the Family Violence Prevention Fund , explains it better than I can in a statement on their website today.

"The Murders at Virginia Tech
April 17, 2007

"There are still many unanswered questions about the horrific violence Monday at Virginia Tech," Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler said Tuesday, "and troubling indications that the shooter had stalked women and that the first murder may have been a domestic homicide. That would be no surprise; the Justice Department tells us that, on average, three women are murdered each day in this country by their husbands or boyfriends. We saw a brutal domestic homicide of a pregnant woman at the CNN Center in Atlanta just this month. We aren't doing nearly enough to stop domestic violence, which frequently escalates to homicide and often involves bystanders and children."

"We need answers about what happened at Virginia Tech," Soler continued. "We need to know whether the shooter had stalked or committed violence in the past, if he had a legal right to have a gun, and whether the police discounted the danger because they thought the first murder was a domestic homicide. Whatever the answers, there is no question that we need more research and more prevention, to keep guns out of the hands of batterers, to understand what causes violence against women to occur and to escalate, and to change attitudes."

"The last Congress failed to fund the new programs in the Violence Against Women Act -- campus-based initiatives, support for children who witness abuse, programs to train health care providers to recognize batterers and victims and intervene to help them, and prevention programs aimed at changing attitudes toward women," Soler concluded. "The new Congress must do better. We need full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, and to do much more to stop violence and change attitudes."

Well said.  Let's tell Congress that one way to honor the lives of those that died at Virginia Tech is to step up and fully fund the Violence Against Women Act.