As reports come in about the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis in Japan, V-Day would like to take this moment to let the people of Japan know: our thoughts are with you during these difficult times. As we receive more information in the upcoming days about the short and long term effects this disaster will have, we will update you on how best we can come together to assist relief efforts and groups working with women and girls affected by violence.
In the meantime, aid is needed on the ground urgently. Please consider helping out if you can:
JEN (Japan Emergency NGOs) puts their efforts into restoring a self-supporting livelihood both economically and mentally to those people who have been stricken with hardship due to conflicts and disasters. They utilize local human and material resources, considering this the most promising way to revitalize a society. To donate, visit:http://www.jen-npo.org/en/involved/donate1.php
Second Harvest Japan distributes food to soup kitchens, orphanages, emergency shelters, the elderly, single mothers, the homeless, migrant workers, and many others in need. To donate, visit:http://www.2hj.org/index.php/get_involved/donate_money
Peace Winds Japan (PWJ) is an organization dedicated to the support of people in distress, threatened by conflict, poverty, or other turmoil. The U.S. partner for Peace Winds Japan is Mercy Corps, and the two organizations previously collaborated after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. To donate, visit:https://www.mercycorps.org/donate/japan
ACTION ALERT: Four Things YOU Can Do About Malalai Joya’s Visa Denial
March 18, 2011
The U.S. Embassy this week denied famed Afghan women’s rights activist Malalai Joya a visa to the United States for an extensive speaking tour that was to kick off on Saturday March 19th. Americans are being denied the right to hear from an on-the-ground activist how the war is affecting ordinary Afghans, especially women.
1. Have your elected representatives sign onto a letter urging the U.S. Embassy to reconsider their decision – DEADLINE: Friday March 18th 5 pm EST.
Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) has drafted and signed a letter urging the US Embassy to grant Malalai Joya the visa. A draft of the letter can be found here.
Ask your Senator or Representative to add their names to this letter NO LATER THAN 5 pm EST on Friday March 18th. Have the staff in your Senator or Representative’s office contact Jessica Lee at Jessica.lee@mail.house.gov. (Do not contact Ms. Lee yourself).
The more elected representatives that sign onto the letter, the greater the chance of that the U.S. Embassy will reverse their visa denial.
2. Sign an online petition demanding Malalai Joya be granted a visa to the United States
Click here to sign the petition. Then, send it to all your friends and post it on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
3. Attend one of the many events organized for Malalai around the country
Whether she gets to the U.S. or not it is imperative that the events go on as scheduled. If she is unable to be physically present organizers will attempt to have her speak to the audience via live video chat. Transform the events into “free-speech” events, to affirm your right to hear from people like Malalai Joya.
Contact local and national media urging them to cover Malalai Joya’s visa exclusion. The denial of a visa to Afghanistan’s most intrepid and well known feminist should make headlines! Point them to our press release for details.
Eve has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Women by The Guardian newspaper. The list includes women role models from all over the world and working in a variety of different fields including activism, art, business, law, politics, science, sports, technology, television, and writing. “The women on this list have largely achieved astonishing feats in their own right, but most have also in some way, we hope, helped their fellow women.”
Editor’s Note: Over two years ago, Eve Ensler shared with Nation readers “Ten Things You Can Do About the War in Congo.” On the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day, we celebrate City of Joy, a community for women who survived sexual violence during the long-running conflict, founded just over a month ago by Ensler, and post the “Declarations des Femmes Congolaise,” below.
For the first time in Democratic Republic of Congo, a commanding officer was tried and prosecuted for rape. It was recently announced that Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi would serve 20 years for ordering the mass rape of the women and children of the village of Fizi during an attack. Though ground breaking this sentence and the ones to follow may seem, it does not go far enough to protect the women of DR Congo, the majority of whom suffer the unimaginable consequences of violent rape and have to see their rapist in their communities everyday. Eve Ensler, the founder of vday.org, an organization focused on sexual violence against women, has worked to set up an infrastructure that promotes justice in the war torn country. Her efforts have culminated in the opening of City of Joy, a community for women survivors of sexual violence in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, on February 4, 2011.
The following declaration was delivered by grassroots activists from Eastern Congo at V-Day’s opening of the City of Joy. As it comes directly from the hearts and mouths of women activists on the ground, it is finally time to heed their words. Read “Ten Things You Can Do About the War in Congo” and Laura Flanders’s piece on the opening of the City of Joy.
Declarations des Femmes Congolaise
1. Insecurity: We, Congolesewomen, have tired of the persistent insecurity in our communities, both urban and rural. Expectations were high at the announcement of the AMANI LEO KIMYA X, Y, but with dismay we realized that everything was wrong. Those who are supposed to protect us would rather sow desolation and terror in the same manner as foreign gangs (Interahamwe).
2. Economic violence: To the Congolese Government, we ask you to improve the legal texts relating to landownership so that the wife enjoys the right of ownership. Support our efforts to be financially independent.
3. Justice: Provide the Congolese justice system adequate means for the strict application of the law on sexual violence and other legal provisions for the advancement of women.
4. Given the weaknesses in the prosecution of rape used as weapon of war and other forms of gender-based violence in the Congolese judiciary, we request the establishment of a special international criminal court to prosecute all such crimes as “crimes against humanity committed in eastern DRC.
5. We ask the friends here, the international bodies for the defense of human rights, and especially Margot Wallstroem, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, to conduct advocacy with the Security Council of the United Nations for the effectiveness of this course.
6. Require that candidates for repatriation to their country Rwanda, the elements of foreign armed Interahamwe and others who come from backgrounds where there has been mass rape, sexual slavery, massacres, abductions, looting, etc, are brought before the people for identification before the DDRRR (disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, reintegration, and resettlement) program.
7. In order to prevent repeated rape of survivors when they return to insecure environments, we beg you to ask your respective governments to assist the DRC to take out terrorists from our villages.
Healthcare
The rapes that we have known have adverse effects on our health. Many of us have caught serious infections and even AIDS. Others have lost their genitals. Some communities will be reduced due to our inability to reproduce. Today, Population Surviving with AIDS (PVVS) do not have access to ARVs (Antiretroviral drugs) due to the deficiency.
8. A management of ARVs and other pharmaceutical products. Improve health policies for woman, giving the country specialized medical institutions for cancer, reproductive health, genital surgery, etc.
9. Support the initiative of the company Pharmakina in the production and certification of locally produced ARVs in Bukavu.
10. To the international community: Redouble efforts in support of health policy in the DRC.
11. Reinsertion and Reintegration: Develop and support mechanisms to support vulnerable women who have experienced rape to make them more independent in order to meet the needs of their survival and that of their offspring.
12. Take the issue of repressed Angola head on, and treat Angolans in an acceptable humane manner.
On this, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, I want to take a minute to honor grassroots women’s activists across the planet — women, like those working tirelessly in Haiti, who have inspired their communities, united their communities, and led their communities, holding them together and pushing them forward.
Today, I want to particularly honor the women on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have organized and worked for peace and freedom over the many years of conflict that has been fought in their country and on their bodies. On February 4, the women of Congo, in partnership with V-Day and the Fondation Panzi (République Démocratique du Congo), opened the City of Joy, a revolutionary leadership community for survivors of sexual violence that will be the headquarters of a grassroots women’s movement in Eastern, DRC.
A group of women, called “Friends of V-Day,” built the City of Joy — they were possibly the first female construction crew in Congolese history. These women mixed the cement, carried loads on their shoulders, made the bricks. They built the City of Joy with their own hands, understanding, with each careful step, that making a world and living in the world are not separate. Each day that the women built, they took time to dance and sing. It was part of the day’s work, and now that spirit is literally built into the walls of the City of Joy. These women were aware that it takes a very specific constellation of ingredients to create a community, the way water, sun and earth all come together to build a new world. In the final days before the opening, the women planted grass, blade by blade, on the grounds of the City of Joy. That is how movements are born — individual green blades, planted one by one, nurtured by water and light, protected until they have grown into grass.
Today, I dedicate my piece, REFUSER, to all the builders, all the grass planters, all the individual, green, sparkling blades of grass. I dedicate it to all the girls and women joining forces across the earth, to create change and revolution.
REFUSER
From the Lebanese mountains
To the Kenyan village of El Doret
We are practicing self-defense
Versed in Karate, Tai Chi, Judo, and Kung Foo
We are no longer surrendering to our fate.
Now, we are the ones who walk our girl friends home from school.
And we don’t do it with macho. We do it with cool.
Our mothers are the Pink Sari Gang
Fighting off the drunken men
With rose pointed fingers and sticks in
Uttar Pradesh.
The Peshmerga women
in the Kurdish mountains
with barrettes in their hair
and AK47’s instead of pocket books.
We are not waiting anymore to be taken and retaken.
We are the Liberian women sitting
in the Africa sun blockading the exits
til the men figure it out.
We are the Nigerian women
babies strapped to out backs
occupying the oil terminals of Chevron.
We are the women of Kerala
who refused to let Coca Cola
privatize our water.
We are Cindy Sheehan showing up in Crawford without a plan.
We are all those who forfeited husbands boyfriends and dates
Cause we were married to our mission.
We know love comes from all directions and in many forms.
We are Malalai who spoke back to the Afghan Loya Jurga
And told them they were “raping warlords” and
She kept speaking even when they kept
trying to blow up her house.
And we are Zoya whose radical mother was shot dead when Zoya was only a child so she was fed on revolution which was stronger than milk
And we are the ones who kept and loved our babies
even though they have the faces of our rapists.
We are the girls who stopped cutting ourselves to release the pain
And we are the girls who refused to have our clitoris cut
And give up our pleasure.
We are:
Rachel Corrie who wouldn’t couldn’t move away from the Israeli tank.
Aung San Suu Kyi who still smiles after years of not being able to leave her room.
Anne Frank who survives now cause she wrote down her story.
We are Neda Soltani gunned down by a sniper in the streets of
Tehran as she voiced a new freedom and way
And we are Asmaa Mahfouz from the April 6th movement in Egypt
Who twittered an uprising.
We are the women riding the high seas to offer
Needy women abortions on ships.
We are women documenting the atrocities
in stadiums with video cameras underneath our Burqas.
We are seventeen and living for a year in a tree
And laying down in the forests to protect wild oaks.
We are out at sea interrupting the whale murders.
We are freegans, vegans, trannies
But mainly we are refusers.
We don’t accept your world
Your rules your wars
We don’t accept your cruelty and unkindness.
We don’t believe some need to suffer for others to survive
Or that there isn’t enough to go around
Or that corporations are the only and best economic arrangement
And we don’t hate boys, okay?
That’s another bullshit story.
We are refusers
But we crave kissing.
We don’t want to do anything before we’re ready
but it could be sooner than you think
and we get to decide
and we are not afraid of what is pulsing through us.
It makes us alive.
Don’t deny us, criticize us or infantilize us.
We don’t accept checkpoints, blockades or air raids
We are obsessed with learning.
On the barren Tsunamied beaches of Sri Lanka
In the desolate and smelly remains
Of the lower ninth
We want school.
We want school.
We want school.
We know if you plan too long
Nothing happens and things get worse and that
Most everything is found in the action
and instinctively we get that the scariest thing
isn’t dying, but not trying at all.
And when we finally have our voice
and come together
when we let ourselves gather the knowledge
when we stop turning on each other
but direct our energy towards what matters
when we stop worrying about
our skinny ass stomachs or too frizzy hair
or fat thighs
when we stop caring about pleasing
and making everyone so incredibly happy-
We got the Power.
If
Janis Joplin was nominated the ugliest man on her campus
And they sent Angela Davis to jail
If Simone Weil had manly virtues
And Joan of Arc was hysterical
If Bella Abzug was eminently obnoxious
And Ellen Sirleaf Johnson is considered scary
If Arundhati Roy is totally intimidating
and Rigoberta Menchu is pathologically intense
And Julia Butterfly Hill is an extremist freak
Call us hysterical then
Fanatical
Eccentric
Delusional
Intimidating
Eminently obnoxious
Militant
Bitch
Freak
Tattoo me
Witch
Give us our broomsticks
And potions on the stove
We are the girls
who are aren’t afraid to cook.
“Refuser” is published in Eve’s newest work – I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, just released in paperback from Villard Trade Paperbacks.
Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. In conjunction with I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE, V-Day has developed a targeted pilot program, V-Girls, to engage young women in our “empowerment philanthropy” model, providing them with a platform to amplify their voices.
Today, International Women’s Day, V-Day is pleased to announce the launch of a NEW V-Day video on vday.org!
This short piece tells the story and evolution of the V-Day movement, from one event in 1998 to over 1,500 events annually in over 140 countries! We invite you all, regardless of how long you have been a V-Day activist, to watch this new video feature on vday.org and spread the word!
Celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day by supporting the global movement to end violence against women and girls. Make a donation to V-Day on behalf of friends and loved ones, and V-Day will send a specially designed 2011 International Women’s Day V-Card letting them know of their unique gift in their honor.
The V-Gift will be used to address the most critical issues of violence against women and girls around the world.
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.
Last week, Eve Ensler embarked on a multi-city speaking tour in conjunction with the paperback release of her best-selling work I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World. The tour got off to a great start in the San Francisco Bay area, with a sold out stop at the JCC of San Francisco, a standing ovation at the East Bay Women’s Conference, and visits with the staff at both Facebook and Intuit.
This week Eve heads to Los Angeles, followed by stops in Santa Fe, NYC, and Miami.
Tickets are on sale now for select events, check out vday.org/vtour2011 for more details!
V-Day would like to congratulate Eve and V-Day Board members Jennifer Buffett, Salma Hayek, Pat Mitchell, and Sheryl Sandberg who have been named to the Newsweek/The Daily Beast “150 Women Who Shake the World.”
In conversation with Barbara Lane, JCCSF Director of Lectures & Literature
Playwright (The Vagina Monologues, Necessary Targets, The Good Body) and author (Insecure At Last) Eve Ensler is the founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls that has raised more than $75 million to date and funded over 12,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic Of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. Her newest work, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, is a celebration of the authentic voice inside every girl and an inspiring call to action for girls everywhere to speak up, follow their dreams, and take agency over their minds, bodies, hearts and curiosities.
Eve has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Women by The Guardian newspaper. The list includes women role models from all over the world and working in a variety of different fields including activism, art, business, law, politics, science, sports, technology, television, and writing. “The women on this list have largely achieved astonishing feats in their own right, but most have also in some way, we hope, helped their fellow women.”
Last week, Eve Ensler embarked on a multi-city speaking tour in conjunction with the paperback release of her best-selling work I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World. The tour got off to a great start in the San Francisco Bay area, with a sold out stop at the JCC of San Francisco, a standing ovation at the East Bay Women’s Conference, and visits with the staff at both Facebook and Intuit.