V-Day Blog Archive

READ: “I Write From the Sky Between Mexico City and Guatemala City” by Eve

I write from the sky between Mexico City and Guatemala City. I write as Eastern Congo is being occupied and overtaken by M23 militias and the world – well a very small section of it – passively watches. I write as my sisters in Goma flee and others tend the wounded with bare resources, as thousands are displaced with nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat and danger and terror in every direction. I write as my sister Christine Schuler Deschryver, who directs City of Joy, spends another sleepless night worrying whether M23 troops will be descending on Bukavu, experiencing anxiety, chaos and escalating violence around her. I write as she bravely stays to protect the women at City of Joy and attempts to give them hope when she herself is totally in the dark. I write as we wait and wait and wait, as we have year after year for the Security Council, the Secretary General, the 19 thousand UN peacekeepers to protect the people. As we wait for the power players behind the scenes – the U.S. and Great Britain and France – to put pressure on Rwanda (who they greatly support) and Uganda to withdraw the M23 and stop supporting armies lead by war criminals.

I write after days of reading devastating blogs, stories and emails arriving from women on the ground in Palestine and Israel and Syria. Women who have been fighting for peace and an end to occupation and violence. Women who report the terror of bombs landing around them and the tremors and explosions and loss of limbs and lives and hope. Women who are burying the small bodies of children and who report feeling manipulated and controlled by politicians who do not see them, who use them merely as pawns in their game of power and rage.

I write after the storm Sandy flooded New York and New Jersey – 23 US states in total – and the Caribbean, from Haiti to Jamaica to Cuba. I write in its aftermath, leaving neighborhoods and houses and lives destroyed. I write as drought and fires and extreme and unusual temperatures rage across the planet. I write as fossil fuel companies continue their drilling and plundering knowing that if this excavating of oil does not stop, it will soon be too late.

I write after women survivors of Mexico talk about rape and domestic violence and human trafficking and being sold for less than a bicycle. I write after holding an 18-year-old Mexican girl in my arms who was recently freed from a pimp who had kidnapped her for years and forced her to be raped, sometimes 60 times a day. I write knowing that sex trafficking is becoming one of the leading industries of the world and each day poor women’s bodies become more objectified and violated in the so-called free market.

The future seems bleak. This is the 2012 the fortune tellers have been predicting.

But I have also have spent my last days in a theater where miraculous young women are performing Emotional Creature with their full hearts and talents and where other young women are discovering they have meaning and value and can make an impact. I have spent my days reading the plans of activists in 177 countries who are joined with One Billion Rising, organizing festivals, holding workshops writing new laws and enforcing old ones, holding perpetrators accountable and planning where and who and what they will dance to, linking our issues so that we come to see the intersection of violence against women and racism, climate change, poverty, war, homophobia. I write with the energy of the billion infused in me, as I begin to circle the planet inviting women and men to rise for a future where we honor and cherish and protect our mother earth and the bodies and souls of our mothers, sisters, daughters, lovers and wives. Where we protect the people and insist on diplomatic and fair solutions rather than dropping drones and bombs and rockets. I write because in spite of every sign indicating we could be doomed I feel the heartbeat of women pressed against my chest, I feel their hunger to live and to create a world where their children live in peace and prosperity. I write because I know the time of rape and male domination can and will come to an end and the energy of hoarding and pillaging and hurting will be transformed into sharing and including and feeling the heart inside each heart.

There is a wonderful Nicaraguan expression that says “Struggle is the highest form of song.” Struggle gives life meaning and it keeps one in a state of perpetual love. We all know what is possible in both directions. I am opting for life. I am opting for the many having the resources and respecting the resources. I know we can turn this around, there is still time. I know we can rise out of this cage, this tyranny of domination and hierarchy and exclusion. I know we can through the movement of our bodies and our collective envisioning push past the perpetrators, the war criminals, the rapists, the exploiters of the earth and women. I can feel this energy. It is in the billion and more who will rise and dance on 14 February 2013.

– Eve Ensler

WATCH: Activist Climbs World’s Highest Mountains in Support of Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Climb Take Action is an online community and initiative founded by Georgina Miranda with the goal of climbing The Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. Georgina has dedicated herself to this challenge in the hopes of raising awareness and funds to help the women and children in Democratic Republic of Congo. Funds raised through Climb Take Action benefit V-Day’s work in Congo and City of Joy, as well as International Medical Corps.

“I embarked on this journey…not only to fulfill my personal dream to climb the seven summits in the world, but also to bring awareness to the harsh conditions and realities women experience daily in DRC,” says Miranda. “These women inspire me to climb and to take action and I hope that my work will also inspire others to help the people of DRC.”

LEARN MORE & DONATE >

FATHER’S DAY IS THIS SUNDAY!! Celebrate Your V-Man With A V-Card!

Your V-Gift will be put to work to end violence against women and girls, addressing the most critical issues facing women around the world.

Click here to give this gift!

V-Day distributes funds to grassroots, national and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls. Violence against women affects one in three women in the U.S. and the world, your tax deductible donation of $25, $50, $100, $500, or more will help V-Day end violence against women!

Click here to give this gift!

To send a V-Card on the donate page, check the box next to “Donate on behalf of a loved one?” labeled “Yes, I would like to send a V-Day e-card” and fill in the rest of the information to finish designing your gift.

Malalai Joya: A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan (The Guardian)

A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan
If Barack Obama heralds an escalation of the war, he will betray his own message of hope and deepen my people’s pain
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/30/obama-afg…

By Malalai Joya

After months of waiting, President Obama is about to announce the new US strategy for Afghanistan. His speech may be long awaited, but few are expecting any surprise: it seems clear he will herald a major escalation of the war. In doing so he will be making something worse than a mistake. It is a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country.

I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week’s announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.

Already this year we have seen the impact of an increase in troops occupying Afghanistan: more violence, and more civilian deaths. My people, the poor of Afghanistan who have known only war and the domination of fundamentalism, are today squashed between two enemies: the US/Nato occupation forces on one hand and warlords and the Taliban on the other.

While we want the withdrawal of one enemy, we don’t believe it is a matter of choosing between two evils. There is an alternative: the democratic-minded parties and intellectuals are our hope for the future of Afghanistan.

It will not be easy, but if we have a little bit of peace we will be better able to fight our own internal enemies – Afghans know what to do with our destiny. We are not a backward people, and we are capable of fighting for democracy, human and women’s rights in Afghanistan. In fact the only way these values will be achieved is if we struggle for them and win them ourselves.

After eight years of war, the situation is as bad as ever for ordinary Afghans, and women in particular. The reality is that only the drug traffickers and warlords have been helped under this corrupt and illegitimate Karzai government. Karzai’s promises of reform are laughable. His own vice-president is the notorious warlord Fahim, whom Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch describes as “one of the most notorious warlords in the country, with the blood of many Afghans on his hands”.

Transparency International reports that this regime is the second most corrupt in the world. The UN Development Programme reports Afghanistan is second last – 181st out of 182 countries – in terms of human development. That is why we no longer want this kind of “help” from the west.

Like many around the world, I am wondering what kind of “peace” prize can be awarded to a leader who continues the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and starts a new war in Pakistan, all while supporting Israel?

Throughout my recent tour of the US, I had the chance to meet many military families and veterans who are working to put an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They understand that it is not a case of a “bad war” and a “good war” – there is no difference, war is war.

Members of Iraq Veterans Against War even accompanied me to meet members of Congress in Washington DC. Together we tried to explain the terrible human cost of this war, in terms of Afghan, US and Nato lives. Unfortunately, only a few representatives really offered their support to our struggle for peace.

While the government was not responsive, the people of the US did offer me their support. And polls confirm that the US public wants peace, not an escalated war. Many also want Obama to hold Bush and his administration to account for war crimes. Everywhere I spoke, people responded strongly when I said that if Obama really wanted peace he would first of all try to prosecute Bush and have him tried before the international criminal court. Replacing Bush’s man in the Pentagon, Robert Gates, would have been a good start – but Obama chose not to.

Unfortunately, the UK government shamefully follows the path of the US in Afghanistan. Even though opinion polls show that more than 70% of the population is against the war, Gordon Brown has announced the deployment of more UK troops. It is sad that more taxpayers’ money will be wasted on this war, while Britain’s poor continue to suffer from a lack of basic services.

The UK government has also tried to silence dissent, for instance by arresting Joe Glenton, a British soldier who has refused to return to Afghanistan. I had a chance to meet Glenton when I was in London last summer, and together we spoke out against the war. My message to him is that, in times of great injustice, it is sometimes better to go to jail than be part of committing war crimes.

Facing a difficult choice, Glenton made a courageous decision, while Obama and Brown have chosen to follow the Bush administration. Instead of hope and change, in foreign policy Obama is delivering more of the same. But I still have hope because, as our history teaches, the people of Afghanistan will never accept occupation.

Eve Ensler on “Good” Bodies and Bad Politics

http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2004/11/11_100.html
It’s hard not to admire a woman who looks you in the eye and says with a beatific smile, “I love the word ‘vagina.’” Yet if you’re familiar with Eve Ensler’s work, the statement hardly comes as a surprise — her play The Vagina Monologues has, since its first staging in 1996, become a phenomenon in the worlds of both theater and feminism. Every year around Valentine’s Day, activists worldwide mount V-Day benefit performances to raise money and awareness to stop violence against women. Ensler’s most recent Monologues spin-off has been the “V Is for Vote” campaign, which registers single women and pressures politicians to make ending the abuse of women a central — rather than special-interest — issue.

Meanwhile Ensler’s new one-woman play, The Good Body, shifts the focus north by inches, taking on post-40 belly sags, spreading hips, and other bodily “imperfections.” In a series of vignettes, Ensler adopts the role of a teenager at fat camp, a bride transformed by her plastic-surgeon husband, and even former Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown. The play’s literal navel-gazing suggests that women’s obsessive attention to their outsides diminishes their potential to create larger change in the world.

Mother Jones spoke with Ensler after The Good Body’s world premiere in San Francisco; it opens on Broadway in November.

Mother Jones: Do you think you’ll ever get sick of vaginas?
Eve Ensler: No. You know we’ve had such an impact in the last seven years with V-Day. We’ve raised $25 million, we’re everywhere in the world, we’re growing. And we’ve had some amazing victories.

There’s a woman, Agnes Pareyio, in Kenya, who I met five or six years ago. She had been genitally mutilated as a child, and had made a decision to stop it. She had devoted her life for eight years to walking from village to village on foot, educating boys and girls and mothers and fathers about the dangers of FGM [female genital mutilation]. In her eight years, she stopped 1,500 girls from being cut. When we met her, we said, “What can we do for you?” She said, “Well, I could use a Jeep.” We got her a Jeep. Forty-five hundred girls. Then we got her money, and she opened the first safe house in Africa. Two months ago, she was elected deputy mayor of Nura. And there’s a good chance she’ll become the mayor. That, to me, is my vision of V-Day. She said, “I am winning. I won this election because of the work I did in stopping FGM.” That, to me, is the dream.

MJ: With things like genital mutilation going on elsewhere, do you think violence against women in the U.S. gets overlooked?
EE: I think violence against women in America has become ordinary — it’s been made absolutely acceptable. Battery and rape are such a part of the framework of our culture that we don’t see them as outrageous. Just even trying to get candidates to talk about violence against women, it would be like getting them to talk about air. It’s so basic, and how do you get people to see that it’s extraordinary and unacceptable?

MJ: Let’s talk about The Good Body. Many of the ideas of body image in the play—like Cosmo and fat camps—come from a very American place. But isn’t part of your point that those have become the world’s idea of bodily perfection?
EE: You go anywhere in the world and you see how we’ve exported this idea of what women are supposed to look like, and it’s having a devastating impact.

I think what all of us have in common is that we’ve been taught and trained and programmed to focus on fixing and mutilating ourselves. That’s a core reason why women do not have power in the world. It’s this huge distractor. It’s gotten us off the path. The only way you can undo it is by looking at the insanity of the obsession of it.

How do we, as a culture, stop buying in? I think activism is the cure — the more you focus on people who are really in need, the harder it is to hate your body. I think it’s a huge antidote.

MJ: Doing research for the play, did you find anyone who said, “You know what? I love my body!” and were confused about your intentions?
EE: I didn’t find many women in this country who liked their bodies, I have to tell you. I actually found a woman who said, “I love my body.” I said, “Really?” She said, “Well, I hate my face.” [Laughs.] I thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. She didn’t even get that that was a contradiction. I’m doing this play to say, “Do the most radical thing you can possibly do — love your body, and get on with it.”

MJ: How did “V Is for Vote” get started?
EE: The idea of the “V Is for Vote” campaign was to say, “Let’s take what we’ve built as a vision of ending violence against women and begin to translate it into having an impact on the political system.” But it goes beyond this election; I hope it will get political candidates to see that violence against women is an issue that needs to be brought into focus, that violence against women is at the center of everything.

MJ: When you say center of everything–
EE: We are the majority of the population, we raise the children, we keep the culture and the communities together, our bodies give birth to the future. When you’ve been violated, you don’t feel a future in your body, so you translate that to your children. Society just breaks down.

MJ: Do you worry that slogans like “Vote Your Vagina” could marginalize the cause?
EE: I believe in irony. And if V-Day has taught me anything, it’s that if you go out with artistic, outrageous irony and humor, people are drawn to it. Look, who would have ever thought, seven years ago, that a play called The Vagina Monologues would be done in 76 countries, with 35 translations, in places like Karachi and New Delhi and Cairo? And if they don’t have a sense of irony, I think, “Good, let people get a little shaken up by the Vagina Vote.”

MJ: Do you ever get frustrated by people who claim we live in a postfeminist world?
EE: I don’t even know what that means, “a postfeminist world.” Did we die?

MJ: It’s the idea that feminism happened, and that anything we ask for on top of that is just so much bellyaching.
EE: Well, first of all, that we’re “bellyaching” implies that we’re demanding something from someone — as opposed to living in the equal world.

MJ: But that’s the way feminism is still understood in the world.
EE: Well, there’s a reason for that! Patriarchy has a great spin on it and keeps that spin on it in order to make feminism not as powerful and palpable as it could be. You know, those muthas, they know what they’re doing! [Laughs.]

MJ: What would be the ideal outcomes of The Good Body and V-Day?
EE: There are two things going on. There’s the violence that comes toward us, and there’s violence we do to ourselves — we’re picking up the magazines, we’re dieting, we’re getting the lipo. Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, “You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission.”

The first seven years, The Vagina Monologues and V-Day were about stopping violence from outside, and part of that was empowering ourselves so we know we weren’t deserving of that violence. This new piece is about loving our bodies. We have to give ourselves permission, and live with the determination that people may not like us for it — but so what? We’re going to move forward anyway.

MJ: Are you optimistic about the future?
EE: I think of Agnes Pareyio becoming mayor. Or I look at India, where we’re opening a sanctuary in Himachal Pradesh where they can be safe from abuse. And I think, “What more would I want to be doing in this life?” And I don’t get tired, because every time a woman doesn’t die or doesn’t get beaten or doesn’t get raped or doesn’t get honor-killed or doesn’t get acid-burned, it’s a huge victory. And you know, I find that aspect of it particularly thrilling, and I find the world horribly depressing. And so both of those live together every single minute.