AnaYelsi Sanchez

A graduate of The DART Organizer’s Institute, AnaYelsi is a trained inter-faith community organizer. She is the former Director of Communications and Development for Florida Abolitionist, an anti-human trafficking agency, co-founded the Omaha Rescue and Restore Coalition and coordinated two Human Trafficking Awareness Days [Central Florida’s largest anti-trafficking event]. An independent artist and a freelance public speaker, AnaYelsi specializes in presentations to businesses, faith communities, and service providers about social justice and the subversive power of the arts. As well as being a trained anti-slavery activist, AnaYelsi is a passionate women and LGBT rights advocate. These passions seep into her creative endeavors – resulting in art that strives to push people beyond observation into engagement. The desire is to challenge the observer to change a world that is too often steeped in injustice, imbalances, and harsh realities.

Posts Written by AnaYelsi
By AnaYelsi Sanchez • 9 years ago

W.W.B. – Worshipping While Brown

“Absolute hospitality would in no way amount to the absence of violence. To the contrary, it would enthrone violence precisely under the guise of nonviolence because it would leave the violators unchanged and the consequences of violence unremedied.” – Miroslav Volf

It’s exhausting to be the brown girl at church.

The evangelical church.
The progressive church.
The non-denominational church.
Seemingly, any church.

I’ve spent 12 years volleying between these church traditions; bobbing and weaving but never quite being able to avoid the race-based offenses.

Each of us carries our own stories of what Miroslav Volf would call “exclusion and embrace”.  This includes white people and people of color alike. The commonality ends there though. Our world runs on a system that sanctions racism and that system favors white people over people of color. Rather than being a prophetic voice for change the Church is often guilty of reflecting this unjust system. There are the overt acts but more common, and more insidious, are the unintentional microaggressions.

I’ve recently moved to a new city and have found a new church but with that has come the same coded language and well-meaning ignorance.

My name is unique to white people. I get that. Hell, it’s even unique among people who are Venezuelan. I know it takes a few tries before you’re going to get the pronunciation right. I know you’re going to want to know the origins. But there are ways that you ask and there are ways that you don’t.

Last week at my new bible ...
By AnaYelsi Sanchez • 9 years ago

Am I a whore then?

I love the idea of protecting our children. We need to. Desperately. From rape and sexual assault. From trafficking. From child abuse and intimate violence. Never from their own bodies. That is some flipped upside down, turned inside out and got it all backwards kind of s*** that teaches “blame the victim” early on.

If the choices were to raise a daughter whom society had so deeply shamed that she rejected her own body or one who was so bold in her acceptance of self that she would willingly run down the street stark naked, I would choose the latter and pray I was bold enough to run alongside her.

I love the idea of protecting our children. We need to. Desperately. From rape and sexual assault. From trafficking. From child abuse and intimate violence. Never from their own bodies. That is some flipped upside down, turned ...