I gave this speech on Tuesday, October 26 at The Women’s Conference in Long Beach, CA.
It happens like this
The doctor walks towards me
His face is ashen
He says we have found something
It does not look good
There is a trap door in the seat of the waiting room
And I am falling
And as I fall I hear
The echo of him saying
Cat scan
As big as a mango
We can’t be sure
This falling goes on for days
Even though I appear to be walking
And giving speeches and riding on airplanes
I am falling
As the new doctor at the new hospital
says it
says CANCER
As I wait to hear where it’s coming from
And where it’s gone
As I get pricked and probed and punctured
I am falling
As they first say it is not in my liver
And then later they can’t be sure
Falling
Until they drug me and wheel me off
For nine hours
And when I wake up
I am in a new country
Nothing is familiar
Because the possibility of not dying
Is gone
Because I am now living in the land of the sick
Turns out my being a vegetarian-sober-nonsmoker-activist has not protected me at all
The surgeon tells me he has done 1,000 operations and he has never seen anything like it
Then he uses the word fistula
And uterus
First thing I think of course is
Congo
I knew from the first time I went to Panzi hospital in Bukavu
I stood in the place that felt like an open barn
In the place where 200 women sat on benches
Their wounded heads
Their canes
Their sweat
The strong smell of pee and shit from their fistulae
From the holes their rapist pierced into their bodies, tearing them apart
I knew from that first moment
When I looked into their faces
And saw the crimes of this century burning in their eyes
500,000 raped women
500,000 vaginas violated
500,000 bodies massacred
500,000 wombs destroyed
I had no way to protect myself
From the hugeness of the atrocity
From the insanity of this disgrace
It rolled over me like a tsunami of pain and took me
Took me took me
I have never come back
And I never will
And I knew those women now owned me
Have me
There is no other place I could ever be
No other fight that is not this fight
It’s in your uterus
The tumor of rape
That is wild across the world
The tumor of rape
That exchanges women’s bodies for the price of a cell phone
Or gold or diamonds
Or anything that can be extracted and stolen from their land
The tumor of rape that began growing in me when I was only five and now has matured into something the size of a mango
That’s what the doctor said
Which of course is the fruit of the Congo
The most delicious in the world
The women of Congo are in my body
First gift I realize — I am not alone
I have imagined what it feels like to lose your uterus or your ovaries
And inside the emptiness of my missing womb
There is space
There is a hunger
To just be still
Cancer stopped me
From running
Striving
Trying to prove my worth
It stopped me
From apologizing for the truth
It made me stay in one place
For 6 months
It brought me back my sister
It allowed me to commune with my friends
It forced me to take in love
And be cared for, which made me human
It took away the privilege of the well
And made me a patient
It taught me a new kind of pain
And now I see even more clearly the sick, the poor, the raped and the oppressed and I know we are family
And the majority
And that what divides us is illusion
Created by our refusal to feel
Maintained and manipulated by those in power
And I know I almost died and that it was only a couple of inches
And a few months that kept me here
And I now live with death as my companion
And sometimes she scares me and sometimes
she comforts me
But mainly she inspires me to be braver
And I no longer have any desire to be invincible
Because it isn’t possible
Or accurate
I am vulnerable and porous
And outraged and crazy-happy and alive
And I know what care is
And what it isn’t
How someone can stick you with a needle
And never see you
Or they can stick you and take the time so it doesn’t hurt
And I fell in love with nurses
And I know that everything is ass-backwards
That we idolize people who steal our money and own everything, rather than those who get paid very little
To serve
And I know that chemo can be a metaphor
As well as a physical treatment
And that the poison is not meant for me
But the cancer
The perpetrators
The rapists
And it’s okay to imagine them dead, mutilated and destroyed
Because we need an outlet for our rage
I know that after I was battered for years by my father and raped by him I held his badness, as if it were my own
And that the surgery finally removed it
And the chemo burned it off
And I know that no one will ever again
Convince me I am bad
Nor will I tolerate being undermined
And undone
I know that the abscess that grew around my wound
After the operation
The 16 ounces of puss
Became the contaminated Gulf of Mexico
And the catheters they shoved into me without proper medication made me scream the way the earth cries out from the drilling
I know that everything is connected
And the scar that runs the length of my torso is the markings of an earthquake
And I am there with the 3 million
Who are living in the streets of Port au Prince
And the fire that burns in me on day 3 through 6 of treatment is the fire that is burning the forests of so much of the world
Cancer made it clear
That time is short
And we must decide
If we devote ourselves to wrestling power inside the crumbling walls of patriarchy
or
If we are ready and brave enough to build the new world
And after searching for so many years to figure out what we are doing here
I finally get that we are being alive
Alive
Alive
And there must be time to linger
And time to enjoy
And time to remember
And time for nothing
And everything is precious
The Indian sari curtains glittering in late summer sun
The man petting his ugly dog in the park
The morning fog
The coconut popsicle
And I know that avoiding suffering is impossible
Stop defending against what is being done
Stop pretending you don’t see the ragged man with his arm outstretched
Or hearing the cries of the earth being slaughtered
Or rationalizing the immoral war being fought in your name
Or finding ways to let famous rapists off the hook
Stop spending 900 billion dollars on unjust wars
While 30 million Americans are unemployed
Or justifying one genocide by another
Or burying your own story because you think you can’t bear how much it hurts
Dying is the only way of being born
My cancer is blessedly gone now
My hair is growing back
I have a scar
A warrior track that runs down
My 57-year-old body
Each time I look at it I am reminded that I was opened up in order to remove the darkness
I was laid bare in order to be free of the pain
I surrendered in order to find my power
Each time I see my scar
I am reminded that I was lucky
That I had insurance
That I could afford the most extraordinary and loving surgeons and doctors
That I was surrounded by an embarrassment of love and friends and family who bought me soup and presents
And rubbed my feet and made me eggs at 6 in the morning when I was ready to throw up
I am reminded that I mattered
And because of that I recovered
I know that every single person deserves this attention
Every single person
And so my scar has become a permanent tattoo
Calling for inclusion and joy
I know that what truly kept me alive is the women of Congo
Whenever I grew despondent
Or sorry for myself
I would think of the women and girls
Who still dance after 6 million
Of their brothers and sisters have perished from the earth
Who still dance even after the international power elite has forsaken them for 13 years
Who dance now knowing that V-Day’s City of Joy will open February 4th
And they will have their place, their fields
Their village to turn their pain to power
And become leaders in their world
How blessed I am to be forever linked with their destiny
I could not die
Simply until they were safe and free and running things
I bow to the women of Congo and thank them for saving my life
Sexual violence against women occurs everywhere in the world, yet a strife-torn pocket of the Democratic Republic of Congo has recently become a global focal point for such attacks as incidents of rape, violence and brutality have skyrocketed.
The scale of sexual violence in the Congo right now is the worst in the world. There were more than 15,000 rapes recorded in the Congo in the past year, according to the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission there. In a four-day period at the end of July alone, 303 civilians were reportedly raped in 13 villages along the eastern border. In the province of South Kivu local health centers report that an average of 40 women are raped daily, according to the U.N.’s 2010 State of World Population Report.
Much of the violence has occurred in and around mining communities, where rebel groups and government troops clash for control of lucrative gold and coltan deposits.
Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues” and founder of the advocacy group V-Day, recently toured the region, speaking with women about the attacks. She told Big Think that rape and brutality have become tools of war that are now used to destroy and scatter communities from around these mines. The brutality is an “incredibly inexpensive tool for controlling and eviscerating the population,” she says. The result, says Ensler, is a systematic pogrom against women to destroy the Congolese communities so that rebel groups and outsiders from Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda can take over the mines.
“I think the Congo has always been a place where women have been severely repressed, where they have not had access or a realization of their rights,” says Ensler. “This desecration on top of this has further impeded women’s confidence.”
What becomes apparent about Congo, as well as about such attacks everywhere, is that the sexual violence isn’t about sex, but rather is about power. “Sexual violence is there for one thing and one thing alone, which is to keep patriarchy in place,” says Ensler. Without such violence, she says, “there would be no threat to women, no way of controlling women, and no way of undermining women.”
Ensler also points out that while each act of violence has unique qualities, there are similar undercurrents common to all brutality against women. “The variation of the violence changes from place to place,” she says, “but the mechanism and the reason for it is the same.”
The U.N. has attempted to gain ground in the region and stop the violence, but its gains have been slow. Margot Wallström, the U.N.’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence and Conflict, visited the Congo in October and came away with the conclusion that such rampant sexual violence “brutalizes the whole society.” Rape destroys communities by stigmatizing the victim, she says, and then becomes a legacy issue as the following generation of young men and boys come to believe that such acts are natural.
As the destruction ripples from each individual through the whole society, it starves opportunity at each stage. Women are, in many ways, the backbone of the Congolese economy and society, says Wallström. Since the violence began, the economic and social structures framed by women, from familial roles to labor, have been fractured. In the fight to control resources and their wealth, the violence has hobbled economic development in the country.
Opportunity fails as well on the individual level. Drawing from work by the U.N. and from stories heard during her visit, Wallström compares the ongoing sexual violence to killing a person without taking their life. Often, she says, when a woman has been raped she is rejected by her husband and family and she is marginalized and stigmatized without income or resource.
“A dead rat is worth more than the body of a woman,” one victim told Wallström.
During her visit, Wallström asked a Congolese woman what “normal” would be if she had not been brutalized. “She didn’t seem to understand the question,” Wallström says. “She said that the life of the woman is to work. … to give birth to children and then to sort of please your husband and do whatever he tells you sexually at night. That’s the life of a woman. And there was sort of no joy, no love, no concept of what we would think was a dignified life.”
Even amid such unconscionable violence, Ensler believes the future of Congo is found in its women. Through her organization’s work she sees “more women coming into their power, more women coming into their voice, more women believing they have a right to be.” If current gains are sustained and many new gains made, Ensler says, “the women in Congo in the next five years will indeed rise up, and will indeed take over, and will indeed come into a voice of power.”
“What I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians.”
Author and activist Arundhati Roy could be arrested for ‘sedition’ over her call for Kashmir’s independence. Roy’s comments have brought to light an increase in sexual violence and civilian death in Kashmir under the current military occupation. Upon hearing of her impending charges Roy released the following statement:
STATEMENT BY ARUNDHATI ROY
I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.
Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get insaf-justice-from India, and now believed that Azadi-freedom-was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.
In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.
Arundhati Roy
October 26 2010
* Arundhati Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. Her newest book, published by Haymarket, is Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.
Since the floods began to ravage Pakistan in early August, V-Day has been working closely with AMAL Human Development Network and longtime V-Day activist Nighat Rizvi on a project designed to bring urgently needed supplies to families in extremely vulnerable priority areas in the region. During the first phase (August – October 2010), AMAL has already distributed relief goods to 160 families, built trust and advocated results.
AMAL is now entering Phase 2 of the project, and has determined, with its network partners, that winterization needs, energy supply, food & hygiene kits and women & new-borns supplies are most needed in a pro-active gender sensitive manner.
To meet these challenges, AMAL will dispense four types of kits to 180 families, including:
Winterization kits – with the onset of winter and keeping in mind the low temperatures in the area, those affected need beddings and warm cloths urgently. AMAL will prepare a winterization kit which will include shawls, quilt/blankets, beddings etc. AMAL volunteers will also help in collecting shoes and warm cloths from their friends and relatives.
Food kits – the food kit will include essential food items that can feed a family of approximate six members for one month. Assessment has shown a severe shortage of these items and women and children are the most affected among all
Hygiene kits – hygiene kits are on the lower side of the supply in relief work and women remain in the constant need of this. Children are usually their responsibility in the local culture and in the absence of hygiene material; children are likely to suffer more. Sickness in disasters adds to the burden of women’s role of care to be provided to the family members
Women supplies kits – so far, no separate supplies were provided for women. Women have specific needs which are mostly ignored in such emergency situations. AMAL will develop a women supplies kits that includes basic items for women including torch
Primary beneficiaries – 180 families, especially women and children, of the targeted area will be the primary beneficiaries of the project.
AMAL volunteers will physically verify receipt of goods with women and conduct focus groups to ensure feedback is received and use as evidence for the advocacy effort.
WE NEED YOUR HELP! In the face of such a massive natural disaster, women and children are at increased risk of sexual violence. Our sisters in Pakistan need our help now more then ever. PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN!
Any amount of money you can donate will help save lives by contributing to the supply of urgently needed kits that will provide essential items to get women and their families through the upcoming winter.
Pakistan is facing the worst floods in its history due to the heaviest monsoon rains seen in the country for more than 80 years. At least 35 districts in north-west Pakistan have been severely affected by the floods, affecting the lives of an estimated over 1.5 million people, while nine other districts have been moderately affected. Some 1,500 people are reported dead, with this number likely to rise as the waters recede.
Assessment studies revealed that women and children are the most affected among all. According to the Reproductive Health Response in Crises Consortium (RHRC), 85 percent of persons displaced by the flood are women and children. As the floodwaters rise, they are at acute risk from starvation, exposure, sexual assault, and water-borne “winterization” diseases.
Assessment and follow-up study conducted by AMAL in district Charsaddah (Khyber Pakhtunkhaw) revealed that women and children are the most affected. Due to the strict “Pardah” culture of the Province, women cannot ask for their essentials and have no permission to go out of their filthy smelly camps / rooms which are packed to capacity (average 5-6 families per camp / room) with no electricity. They are facing shortage of blankets, warm clothing, food, water, hygiene items, beddings, baby food, utensils, separate toilets and fresh air. One of the respondents mentioned that “a woman delivered two babies few days back but due to the shortage of facilities and conservative culture, she was not treated properly which resulted in death of one baby and her own condition was very critical. Several pregnant women are also present in project location site”. He added that “one woman had a surgery just before the floods, her wounds were oozing and infected. The environment is entirely infected with flies and mosquitoes”.
Study also revealed that in darkness women and girl children run a high risk of getting sexually assaulted, mothers are unable to properly feed infants, they cannot go to washroom because of fear of snake bites, sexual abuse and harassment; they cannot properly give medication to sick family members, especially infants, and children and they are unable to find material for specific needs especially related to menstruation and personal cleanliness. The loss of homes and livelihoods is a further strain and cause of stress; for women, access to their needs becomes even more precarious as their support systems have been eroded. In this environment of constant fear, immobility and lack of hygiene related material, skin diseases and other diseases are prevalent. So, in order to meet the challenges of GBV, food security and disease, women need protection mechanisms from GBV and winterization related materials.
V-Day’s newest staff member, Europe Director Karin Heisecke, has been featured on Most Interesting Person for her continued activism and work to end violence against women and girls. Karin first joined the V-Day movement in 2001 when she won the V-Day Stop Rape Contest and in 2010 was hired as V-Day’s Europe Director to oversee and expand the V-Day movement in Europe.
Most Interesting Person is a self-generative film archive. Each documentary presents the most interesting person of the previous. It is limitless, built through the respect, inspiration, admiration or awe that connects one person to the next.
Bukavu, Democratic Republic Of Congo (CNN) — Many of Congo’s rape survivors took to the streets Sunday to speak out against sexual violence in a country where it has become a weapon of war.
“My heart is in pain, why are you raping me?” sang the rape victims, many of whom left hospital beds to join the march in eastern Congo.
“They have had enough, enough, enough, enough,” said Nita Vielle, a Congolese women’s activist, of the women marching. “Enough of the war, of the rape, of nobody paying attention to what’s happening to them.”
The United Nations has named the Democratic Republic of Congo the “rape capital of the world,” with 15,000 women raped in eastern Congo last year. The attacks occurred in parts of the country where armed rebel groups moved into areas considered to be pro-government but lacking in army or police protection, according to the U.N.
Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said recently that one distraught Congolese woman had told her that “a dead rat is worth more than the body of a woman.”
“It was an expression of how human rights violations against women are still the lowest on a fool’s hierarchy of war time horrors,” she said.
Sunday’s march was organized by the World March of Women in association with local women’s groups. Organizers hoped the march would combat the stigma attached to rape victims and draw international attention to the problem of rape as a war tactic.
“It’s just great to have so many women out on the streets,” said Celia Alldridge, a representative from World March of Women. “We believe that women should not be made prisoners in their own homes.”
Among throngs of marchers, many clad in bright traditional garb and carrying homemade signs, one Congolese marcher echoed that sentiment.
Video: Women march against rape in DRC
“I tell you, it’s a wonderful thing to see all the women together, just for one reason — for the peace of the women of Congo,” said Mary Georges. “This is the freedom of the Congo women.”
Last month, a U.N. report slammed Congo’s security forces for failing to prevent a wave of mass rapes over several days during the summer.
The preliminary report confirms the rape of at least 303 civilians between July 30 and August 2 in the Walikale region of Congo’s North Kivu province.
The report points to serious shortcomings in the preparedness and response of the local detachments of the Congolese army and the police stationed in the area.
It also notes that their failure to prevent or stop the attacks was compounded by subsequent failings on the part of U.N. stabilization mission forces in Congo.
The report said the force had not received any specific training in the protection of civilians, and suffered from a number of operational constraints, including a limited capacity to gather information, as well as the lack of a telecommunications system in the area.
“The scale and viciousness of these mass rapes defy belief,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
“Even in the eastern part of DRC where rape has been a perennial and massive problem for the past 15 years, this incident stands out,” Pillay said, “because of the extraordinarily cold-blooded and systematic way in which it appears to have been planned and executed.”
On Friday October 22, Eve will be honored at Breakthrough’s ten-year anniversary Let’s Breakthrough Together Gala. Eve, along with Peter Ackerman, founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict will receive the Breakthrough Inspiration Award, given to activists who embody the spirit of human rights and leadership.
Breakthrough is an innovative, international human rights organization using the power of popular culture, media, and community mobilization to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity.
I just want to first say, Namaste – and how profoundly, profoundly grateful I am to be alive. Just need to say that, and voice that – the gratitude of life.
And I’m utterly moved by Cynthia, and Sam, and that performance, and their words, and … I love Mallika Dutt – I love Breakthrough – I love what this movement, this organization does. I love the creativity; I love the vision; I love the originality – I love Mallika’s bossiness, I love her passion; I love her refusal to take a ‘No’ – I love the way she keeps putting things in front of people whether they want to see it or not. She is what we call in V-Day a true Vagina Warrior – and has been fighting as long as I can remember for the invisible. For the people who matter deeply, but are unseen – who get dismissed, who get scapegoated, who get discarded: and those are the people we all should be fighting for, every minute of every hour of every day.
So I just want to honor her – her gorgeous ten years – and may there be … may there NOT be many more years. May we get to the point where we don’t have to keep fighting these fights; and triumphing over the desecration of human rights.
I just want to say – tonight, I put on this necklace – and it’s a necklace of Indian goddesses. And all through this experience, I feel like Indian goddesses have been directing me – Kali, particularly. Because when I went through chemo [therapy] I was given a really brilliant directive – which is to see the chemo not killing me, but killing the perpetrators, and the rapists, and the people who violate rights of people – and that when it would be over I would be clean, and my body would be clean. And it was a brilliant directive.
So – every chemo I had, I would Kali in front of me, and I would say, ‘OK – burn it off! – just burn it off’ – and it made me stronger, and it gave me a vision and a metaphor. And I want to say that … I just want to say one thing tonight, about kind of the coming together and the correlation between building a world where people are valued and are given their dignity and given their power, and given their rights … and sickness.
You know, we see cancer as this terrible, terrible thing that’s going to do us in, and kill us, and it can. It can – so can anything! But it can also be a huge opportunity to go deep in our souls, and to shed all that keeps us from each other, and keeps us from opening our hearts and living as vulnerable, open people so that each person we miss, enters us in a true way. So we can’t discard people, or ignore people – the man with his arm outstretched, or the women in Congo who are being raped – or the people who have a cholera outbreak, today, in Haiti. That we can’t ignore them – that they fill us, every moment, and compel us to act on their behalf.
So – I bless my cancer. Because it has broken down so much in me that kept me from you. And I hope all of you will continue to break all those things inside you that keep you above, or below, rather than ‘a part of’ – and I want to honor Mallika for building that world, and for building it with kindness, and heart, and depth, and courage – and I am with her forever on this journey, thank you all, very much.
It was announced this morning that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to line-item veto $965 million from the recently passed budget bill to bring the reserve above the $1 billion mark.
This means that domestic violence funding is againAT RISK of being partially or fully eliminated, a step that would yield drastic consequences for the women and children escaping domestic violence in the state of California.
V-Day is pleased to support Congo in Harlem 2 in its second annual series of Congo-related films and events at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem. This year’s program showcases a wide range of films by Congolese and international directors, representing the most important issues facing the Democratic Republic of Congo today. Most screenings will be followed by panel discussions, special events, performances, and receptions. Congo in Harlem 2 will provide audiences with more than the traditional movie-going experience — it will offer opportunities celebrate Congolese culture, learn about the ongoing humanitarian crisis, engage in dialogue, and get involved.
Welcome back. Welcome for the first time. Thank you for caring about women and girls. Thank you for loving your community. Thank you for giving your time and energy and talent and leadership and wild vagina and vagina-friendly selves. Thank you for being brave and stepping up and knowing you can change what is happening and knowing we are all responsible for protecting women and girls, which leads to empowering them. Thank you for knowing that when women are free and safe, life itself is protected, as is our future. Thank you for being on this journey and bringing others with you. Thank you for doing all this in such difficult times across the planet, a time when so many are unemployed and living in poverty, when our precious earth is imperiled. Thank you for not succumbing to cynicism and hopelessness. We know that for over 13 years V-Day has, through you, moved into 140 countries, and raised 75 million dollars for grassroots groups. We know you have created a vagina revolution around the world, broken taboos, given women opportunities to find their voice, educated and welcomed men.
Last year alone you raised 255 thousand for the women of Congo and City of Joy. Thousands of you signed up on the Congo wall and many of you brought gifts for the City of Joy through the registry. You did hundreds of Congo teach-ins. You put on performances of Memory, Monologue, Rant and a Prayer and got lots of men to be involved. You put on performances of Any One of Us and raised consciousness about the thousands of women in prison because of violence committed against them. You raised nearly 5 million dollars which stayed in your communities. You helped shelters stay open and kept hotlines running, and you supported the small but powerful groups in your neighborhoods that work every day to keep women safe. You allowed and encouraged women to tell their stories, to release their pain, to find their joy and pleasure. You supported our sisters throughout the world. You dressed in red and pink and spiced up over 900 college campuses. You did 5000 performances in over 1400 places and even where there was danger you kept going with grace and humor. You helped keep open our safe houses in Kenya where girls are no longer being cut and are going to school. You helped open a second house so more girls are being saved. You gave much aid and support to our sisters in Haiti and Pakistan. You educated girls in Sri Lanka, Congo, Kenya and the US, and you were audience and support to Swimming Upstream, a glorious piece of theater written by the women of New Orleans about what really happened in the flood after Katrina. You supported Afghan girls who will grow up to be empowered activists, and who will one day lead their country, You piloted readings of I am An Emotional Creature from Mumbai to Los Angeles. You launched V-Girls, the next step of the V-Day movement.
You V-rocked the world.
So now the work continues. Let’s go further this year. Let’s be bolder and more daring. Let’s take V-Day to more places, places where women and girls are most invisible and in the greatest need. Let’s raise more money for our local groups and be more inclusive in our casting and networking. Let’s support those who have lost their jobs and homes and those who are suffering financial abuse as well as physical and sexual abuse. Let’s continue to raise funds for those still reeling from the flood in Pakistan. Lets keep our focus on the women of Congo as we are poised to open the City of Joy on Feburary 4, 2011. Lets keep our eyes and hearts on this victory and see it as the turning point where women of Congo begin to rise up and take back their power.
This year our spotlight is on the women of Haiti. V-Day supported 67 Haitian women leaders who came together in July to create a plan to end violence against women and girls there. It is ambitious and brilliant. Lets support their plan and raise money and consciousness as we know that before the earthquake nearly 74 % of the women of Haiti were suffering rape or battery and it has escalated in the wake of the disaster. Let’s give them our full attention and educate ourselves about the history of Haiti so we can change the future.
Let’s put on more productions and wear our reds and pinks and take to the streets and speak truth to power, and while we are doing all of this let’s be very sure to take care of ourselves and take time to linger and love the earth and love our bodies and find pleasure and beauty and rest and dream.
Your love and support and activism has inspired me and made me better. Let’s make this our most powerful, transformational, outrageous year yet.
My love and deepest gratitude,
Eve Ensler
V-Day Founder & Artistic Director, playwright, activist
On Friday October 22, Eve will be honored at Breakthrough’s ten-year anniversary Let’s Breakthrough Together Gala. Eve, along with Peter Ackerman, founding chair of the 
V-Day is pleased to support Congo in Harlem 2 in its second annual series of Congo-related films and events at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem. This year’s program showcases a wide range of films by Congolese and international directors, representing the most important issues facing the Democratic Republic of Congo today. Most screenings will be followed by panel discussions, special events, performances, and receptions. Congo in Harlem 2 will provide audiences with more than the traditional movie-going experience — it will offer opportunities celebrate Congolese culture, learn about the ongoing humanitarian crisis, engage in dialogue, and get involved.
Welcome back. Welcome for the first time. Thank you for caring about women and girls. Thank you for loving your community. Thank you for giving your time and energy and talent and leadership and wild vagina and vagina-friendly selves. Thank you for being brave and stepping up and knowing you can change what is happening and knowing we are all responsible for protecting women and girls, which leads to empowering them. Thank you for knowing that when women are free and safe, life itself is protected, as is our future. Thank you for being on this journey and bringing others with you. Thank you for doing all this in such difficult times across the planet, a time when so many are unemployed and living in poverty, when our precious earth is imperiled. Thank you for not succumbing to cynicism and hopelessness. We know that for over 13 years V-Day has, through you, moved into 140 countries, and raised 75 million dollars for grassroots groups. We know you have created a vagina revolution around the world, broken taboos, given women opportunities to find their voice, educated and welcomed men.