Thoughts from Empty Place at the Table 2019

National Office- Kansas P.O. Box 647 | Hays, KS 67601 | 785-656-0324 janascampaign@gmail.com www.janascampaign.org

Thoughts from Empty Place at the Table 2019 I was glad to make it to Hays, Kansas earlier this month to attend the Jana’s Campaign Empty Place at the Table annual fundraiser. The community has truly rallied around this organization. Jana’s Campaign raised nearly $80,000 at this event!

I’m a proud Jana’s Campaign board member. I’m involved, because I want to be a part of creating a violence free world for my daughters. Reaching youth with gender and relationship violence and healthy relationship education are key to eradication of the domestic violence epidemic. I’m also involved because I knew Jana and as the event name indicates, her place at the table was empty. Her place was empty, because in 2008 Jana was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. I was seated at the table with her symbolic empty chair.

Jana and I were board members of another nonprofit together. She and I often sat around other tables together talking about how to make Kansas a more just and equitable place. So, it’s easy for me to imagine her taking her seat at Jana’s Campaign board meetings providing direction to us to devise how to reach the next phase of the organization’s growth and development.

Jana would urge us to continue reaching and teaching the next young man before society’s ceaseless images and unhealthy misperceptions of masculinity develop from percolating thoughts into resentments, all too often culminating with violent action. She would have us tell him that there is abundant love in this world and that he will gain strength and emotional intelligence from leaning into that love, allowing his softness and vulnerabilities to be a part of every relationship he fosters. Most importantly, she would advise, are those relationships he will hold with other men throughout his life. She would also see the young women who benefit from our educational programming, learning about the “red flags” of unhealthy relationships. The young women who frequently lack awareness of the dynamics of power and control and the increasing role of technology within these dynamics. She would recognize this fertile ground is where lasting societal change will occur.

She would hold seats at many other tables too, no doubt. As a second year law school student at KU, it is easy to imagine her having a seat in a courtroom using her confident voice speaking

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truth to power. She might eventually have a seat behind a judicial bench, listening to both sides and exacting justice, always with intelligence, empathy and heart.

The truth is that we can’t know what would have been and while all these seats are empty for Jana due to her tragic loss, her legacy is boundless. Jana’s Campaign has worked with 602 middle and high schools across Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska and continues to expand our gender and relationship violence prevention education. We will reach thresholds of 70,000 students in 2020 and 500 teachers, counselors, advocates, and social workers trained in curriculum that reaches hundreds, if not thousands of others.

Her seat across from me may have been empty at that event, but my plate and the plates of the rest of the board of directors and staff is full of her love and our devotion to the mission she spawned. She will continue to propel us into action in 2020 and beyond, doing our best to prevent the unnecessary loss of over 90 lives due to domestic violence in Kansas/Nebraska/Colorado (on average). These kinds of alarming numbers prove that we live in a world desperately in need of the benefits of Jana Mackey’s lasting legacy.

-Kari Ann Rinker, Jana’s Campaign Board of Directors