This is a little gem I remember from my childhood of watching Sesame Street:

All this time I thought the goat was saying “Everybody get maa-a-a-a-ad!” but it turns out it’s “It ain’t bad to get maa-a-a-a-ad!” It’s also a hilariously retro clip – would we show someone lighting a firecracker beneath a goat these days? It lacks any kind of distinction between just getting mad and actually expressing it in an appropriate way, but it’s nice and affirming anyway as far as setting boundaries goes. Which is kind of the point.

I just got home from work and on the way, I passed a guy a few blocks from my house with two young kids. As I sat at a red light, I heard him yell at the kids to stop fighting across him (he was on a cell phone, which I’m sure made it even more annoying) and turned just in time to see him slap one of them across the head. The kid fell over and lay on the sidewalk, crying.

I full-on leaned on my horn. They turned to look at me and I yelled, “No!! It is NOT OKAY TO HIT KIDS!!”
*sings* I got mad, I got mad, I got mad; it ain’t bad to get maa-a-a-ad.

I always used to be afraid of confronting parents – or other adults – who I see abusing kids in public. I was afraid that they’d turn on me, or that it would embarrass the kids and add to their pain (instead of making them see that not everyone condones or ignores what’s happening to them?!), or that I would turn out somehow to be wrong about what they were doing not being okay. And then I’d start fantasizing about what I wished I had said or done. And as my own recovery progressed, I’d start fantasizing about it sooner and sooner after the moment passed. And then while it was still happening, while I still had time to debate about whether or not to act on it. And now I find that it just comes right out.

The guy hurriedly picked up the kid and brushed him off and tried to comfort him. I heard him saying, at one point, not to cry. Now I kind of wish I had honked again and yelled, “It’s okay to cry!!” That amuses me. The other kid, incidentally, was staring at me just flabbergasted throughout. What really pisses me off is that a few blocks later I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that there was a police car behind me. That car had better have come along well after that incident, because that is some terrible, negligent policing otherwise – not that that’s anything new.

The funny thing is I think this was the same exact intersection I was at the last time I confronted someone by honking. That time, a few years ago, I was at that stop light again when the passenger in the car in front of me casually threw the garbage from an entire fast-food meal out the window. In several loads. All over the road. I honked long and loud in protest and the guy got out of the car and tried to menace me. I was like, seriously? I am in a car. I could probably smush you between our cars. I just honked louder and his friend in the driver’s seat, visibly freaking out, managed to talk him into getting back into the car and drove off very hastily.

I swear I don’t normally antagonize others; in fact, I almost never even use my horn. But sometimes it’s a convenient way to object loudly to what other people are doing. I just try to keep that on the “don’t abuse your child” side of things instead of the “drive faster darn it” side of things.

Which reminds me that I was going to post about another example of people confronting abusers. Apparently there’s a woman named Wendy Williams, who has her own radio show on WBLS in New York where she and her husband abuse people. Including Williams herself. The wonderful thing is that finally one of their staff members, talent booker Nicole Spence, is doing the right thing: speaking out and filing a lawsuit. Spence says:

“Mr. Hunter repeatedly sexually propositioned me at work in the most crude and vulgar ways, telling me over and over that he wanted to ‘fuck’ me. I also feared Mr. Hunter because he repeatedly physically assaulted Ms. Williams at or near the WBLS studio. In one instance, Mr. Hunter stormed into the studio, demanded that other employees leave and openly physically abused Ms. Williams, pinning her against the wall with his hand around her neck, choking her while repeatedly pounding his fist into the wall directly by her head.“

Spence filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and – as often happens when one person breaks the silence around abuse – many more staff members have now come forward with their own experiences of workplace violence. According to the New York Daily News,

“Others have come forward since we filed the complaint to support Nicole’s claims,” said Karen Webber, a partner in the prestigious law firm Thompson, Wigdor & Gilly, which is preparing a federal lawsuit on Spence’s behalf. “They say he often called women bitches and used alcohol, and they describe his violent outbursts against Ms. Williams.”

Amazingly, Spence has continued to show up and try to do her job at the station, despite so far having been thrown out of the station on the air, moved out of her office, and had her duties taken away. Williams’ way of dealing with her husband’s abuse of her and of her staff, besides attacking staff members and listeners herself, has been to tell the media, “Her allegations are totally false. This bitch is out of her mind.” Convincing words, no? SOHH claims to have inside information that Williams will be suspended when the station finishes its investigations.

There’s a rising roar against abuse… I think I’ll have to organize a blog carnival where people share about ways they have confronted abusers in their own lives.