This past week, the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Awareness Committee, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about intimate partner violence, sexual assault and gender-based violence, hosted the Five College Clothesline Project in the Blanchard Art Gallery.

Racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia: the world is full of fears and prejudices, and we are all, no matter how hard we try, guilty of one or two at some point in our lives. Humans are sponges; we absorb and internalize everything we experience-for good or for bad.

In considering the recent economic downturn, we tend to only look at the United States and other first-world nations, nations that were already power players in the world market. What we rarely consider is the effect our economic situation at home is having on impoverished third-world countries, especially nations in which we have some sort of commanding presence.

Americans like to define themselves. We like to be the best, the biggest, the strongest, the first, the fastest. We like to come out on top, conquer the competition, save the world. We like to be safe.

We don’t like to examine tragedy.

On Sept. 19, 2009, a 12-year-old Yemeni bride, Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, died in childbirth after struggling through labor for three days.