V-Day Blog Archive

Read Eve’s Latest Huffington Post piece “The Other Face of Pakistan”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/the-other-face-of-pakista_b_374…

I have just returned from Pakistan where I was invited to support the efforts of women on the ground who are refusing to be terrified and silenced in the face of recent bombings and attacks. This was my fifth trip to Pakistan over the last fifteen years. I was there in 1994 when I followed a group of 500 Bosnian refugees who were promised swimming pools, bungalows and jobs, and ended up essentially stranded for five years at the Haji Complex, a barren site in Rawalpindi for pilgrims on the way to Mecca. That support offered by the Pakistani government to the Bosnian refugees was more than most were offering at the time. I went back to Pakistan in 1999 when I first met RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) and traveled with them into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, leaving from Peshawar, through the Khyber Pass. I have made this trip several times since then. I was there in 2003 when women activists and artists presented the first production of The Vagina Monologues, a clandestine production in Islamabad that afterwards moved to public performances in Lahore and Karachi.

I was not prepared for the new Islamabad that I met, a city essentially under siege. A maze of 50 check points. People hardly leaving their houses. Schools closed for a month at a time. The fancy Serena Hotel surrounded, a fortress. The U.S. embassy an enclave, protected by miles of stone barricades and elaborate barbed wire. Inside the embassy is another world, a getaway, a club, a café, Pilates classes, and a shopping bazaar imported for the 800 or so American employees the day I was there. No one allowed out. A resident of Islamabad told me, “There weren’t barricades and now there are. We’re appalled. We’re under threat…Because they’re targets, we’re targets. There were bomb blasts near us and all the windows were blown out of my house. My sister refuses to sleep in a room alone.”

There is sense of musical chairs. If you move fast enough and are clever enough, the suicide bomber will not land on you. Every place is a target. One woman told me that she has come to make arbitrary decisions. She doesn’t go to the Jinnah market. It feels central. This constant guessing and not knowing makes for terrible and constant anxiety. Everyone seems traumatized in one way or another.

I did a survey, asking people who they thought was doing the bombing and I got many answers. Most people said they had no idea. They did not know the political intentions of the bombings, didn’t know who the bombers were or what they wanted. One person told me “…with the Contras [in Nicaragua] and the Tamils [in Sri Lanka], their intent was clear. Here it is an invisible evil. No one is claming it.” Many thought it was the work of the Pakistani Taliban although no one thought all the bombings were done by them (the Taliban itself has only claimed responsibility for some of the bombings). There were many rumors and conspiracy theories. Since there is now talk of Blackwater operating in Pakistan, there are those who believe the U.S. is in cahoots with the Taliban (the theory is that if the U.S. has a deliberate foreign policy to keep the streets destabilized, they would have an excuse to intervene and occupy), or that the ISI (the Pakistani intelligence agency) is in cahoots with the U.S. and they are behind the bombings to turn the population against the Taliban. Some thought it was the Pakistani army, or the Taliban within the army. Several people talked about the fact they when they arrest people for the bombings, the stories die quickly and when there is a bomb blast police hose down the area and erase the evidence. Some thought the violence was sponsored by the Indian government. One woman from Swat told me, “We, the common people don’t know what’s going on. We are pawns. We are suffering at their hands. Whatever their plan is we wish they would get on with it.”

I traveled to Rawalpindi, a bustling and madly crowded town right next to the capital. Once outside Islamabad, where the international groups and embassies are stationed and where western hotels exist, there is hardly a checkpoint. No security, no protection for the majority of the population who seem to be on the frontlines of the killing. It is very reminiscent of Iraq and the Green Zone. I go to visit a safe house run by a long time activist Shahnaz Bukhari. The house provides support and refuge for women who have been acid burned – usually by their husbands. I meet Fauzia*, a 48-year-old woman, who is fully covered in a black chador. After we talk for a while and she begins to trust me, she removes the black veil and her face is a monstrous vision, melted and swollen, no ears, no eyes, she is completely blind. When she was young she married a man who did not like to work. She was working many jobs to support him and their family. She discovered he secretly got married to another women using her money. Eventually she asked for a divorce. After six years of being separated, he started blackmailing her to give him their kids or money. She had bought a plot of land. He was after it. She finally gave it to him, thinking he would leave her alone. She brought him the documents for the land. He said he was satisfied and wouldn’t take the kids. He sent them out to have sodas to celebrate. Then he burnt her with acid. Threw it in her face. She told me, “When I say my prayers, I pray that he has been crippled. I don’t want him to die. I want him to suffer.” She brought her case to court. Her husband came once and then he vanished. She is now speaking out, standing up, showing her face. She wants other women to punish these perpetrators. There are 2,000 burn cases a year. The government is not supporting these cases or women. She is trying to create a network to pressure hospitals and everyone involved to support the women.

At the shelter, I am surprised to find a very handsome young man, Naeem*, and his very adorable son. They are dressed in matching gray cotton suits. It is only a few minutes into the interview that I realize Naeem is really Abaaz*, a 24-year-old woman. Abaaz was married off when she was 13 to a man who was 26. He abused her, tortured her mentally. He threw her out when she was 17 because he took another woman. Abaaz was left on her own with a child on the streets. She had to find a way to survive. She went to a men’s barber and had her hair cut. Then she found suitable clothing, lowered her voice and changed her name. She got a vending stand and sells fruits and vegetables. She has achieved success with her business and her identity and is able to support herself and son. I asked her if she is happy living like this. “No, I do not like living as a man. My heart knows how I feel. But I am more secure. No one harasses me. I have learned street slang like the boys use. I mainly have male friends.” I ask her son how he feels. “I call my mother brother Naeem in the streets, but I do not like that she can’t be a woman. I want her to be in the house. At home she is different. She can be my mother.” I ask if she will get married again. She says, “I can’t be that fool again.” She worries about money. She wants her son to go to school. She tells me it’s embarrassing to be a boy. “When things are favorable, I’ll be a girl again. The shawl, the symbol of my pride, I had to leave. I’ll be happy when my son grows up and I can sit at home in my chair and wear my shawl. I will be happy then when I can live my last years as a woman.”

I return that evening to Islamabad and am joined by a group of very powerful women. We talk for hours. I meet Zainab – an activist, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker. She focuses primarily on highlighting problems of women in the Northwest Province of Pakistan. She has been fighting a practice called “retribution” where girls are traded to resolve conflict between men. Recently she was involved in a case where a man killed another man’s dog and instead of a fight ensuing, the man who killed the dog gave the aggrieved man 15 girls between the ages of six months to seven years old. These girls then became the aggrieved man’s possessions, to be raped, enslaved, treated in any way the man desired. Fifteen girls for one dead dog. This is a common practice. A practice Zainab has been fighting against. In the case of the dog, she called the father of the girls and asked if it was true. She recorded the conversation. The father proudly announced that he had traded his daughters. Zainab went to the human rights commission of Pakistan. She reported the case to a policeman. The father called Zainab’s son and told him “Your mother is going to die very soon.” Fortunately, Zainab was able to prosecute the case and the man went to jail. She then told me of the story that has put her life in much bigger jeopardy.

“I live in Swat. In April, I was told that a 16-year-old girl had been flogged by the Taliban. Beating women has nothing to do with our culture or religion. The girl had come from a far off village in Swat. She had refused a marriage proposal from a good for nothing Taliban boy. The boy then claimed the girl had an illicit relationship with her father-in-law. The woman was flogged publicly. Many photographed and videoed the flogging on their mobile phones and sent it around.” Zainab took the video and posted it on Facebook. She posted it with her name and email. She attached a message, “If you don’t wake up today, this will happen to you.” Because she identified herself, her life was immediately endangered. When I asked her why she took such a risk, she said “No one is taking responsibility for anything. There is no credibility or impact if you do not sign your name or take responsibility.” The Taliban told Zainab they were sending five suicide bombers to her house. This did not stop her. They tried to discredit her. They said it was a 14 year old video, said she manufactured it in her house. They said she was a known mad woman. Certain people stopped taking her phone calls. Some people removed her from their Facebook. She went on Pakistani TV. Zainab did not use a drone or an AK-47, but she put the Taliban on the defensive. They demanded she be handed over, (like the 15 girls) but her actions spurred a revulsion and Pakistan people mobilized in the streets to protest. The Taliban claimed Zainab had damaged their reputation in the international press. They put a fatwa against her. “I was shattered because of my children. I cried on the phone afraid for my children. I had the option of leaving Pakistan. To leave for me would have been death. I have a role to play in the theater against women’s rights violations. A few embassies called and asked if I wanted asylum. I would never leave Pakistan. My daughter was crying because she couldn’t leave her cats. I felt guilty I had done this to my kids. My friends gave us refuge.” Zainab stopped talking publicly for three months. Now she is back at it, fighting the cases. “I’m in a make shift home now. No landline. It’s not just the Taliban I am afraid of. It is the Taliban mind set. Most suicide bombers are clean-shaven, look just like us. I am still getting horrible emails from people I don’t know. People will get brownie points in heaven for killing me. Of course I am afraid of getting picked up, abused, raped, tortured. That is the most terrifying, not death. There are hundreds of missing people in Pakistan. But how can I stop. How can I let them win?”

The condition of women has never been elevated in Pakistan (I do not single Pakistan out as I have yet to find a country where the status of women is elevated), but the current climate of terror, militarism, and Talibanization has escalated and licensed a brutal gender oppression, inhumanity and violence. A male leader from Chitral, a formerly progressive town in the frontier told me, “The Taliban hasn’t arrived yet physically, but they have mentally. Already women are not going out of the house, leaving jobs, covering themselves when they have never been covered.”

Religious extremism is a kind of plague. It seizes the mind, body and soul. It creates a kind of slow terror that invades cell by cell and feeds off the preexisting patriarchal traditions and conditioning in women. Then, there are the various practices that enforce that conditioning: acid burning, retribution, honor killing, flogging, burying women alive, etc. Some of these stories get out to the West from time to time; but, what rarely gets out are the stories of women who are resisting this violence and fighting with their lives for human rights.

After listening to many women’s stories, I am struck with their brilliance in constructing strategies that are not rooted in war or violence, but rather in courage, enabling justice, transformation and real security. There is another Pakistan – the Pakistan of women academics running women studies programs, women demonstrating in front of the judiciary, speaking out on television, fighting law suits in protection of women’s rights, harboring and giving refuge to women who are acid burned. There is the mother obsessively seeking justice for her daughter who she believes was poisoned by a Mullah after he raped her, the woman fighting off the Taliban after they murdered her husband in Swat. Activists like Tahira Addullan, who has been in the human rights and women’s movement 30 years, always threatened, arrested twice, fiercely fighting for the restoration of an independent judiciary. And, Nighat Rizvi, who produced a sold out event to raise awareness about violence against women in the middle of a paralyzed city, and who screened her documentary on the inhumane conditions for women in the recent IDP camps.

These women understand that the major threat to Pakistan is not terrorism but poverty, malnutrition, (60 percent of the children are now born moderately stunted) lack of education, HIV, violence against women, and corruption of the government. Women who know that the U.S. war in Afghanistan escalates violence in Pakistan, that computer driven drones killing hundreds of innocent people enrages those who lose their loved ones and that creates more terrorists. They know their lives are being manipulated, that the millions of dollars the U.S. sends never reaches them or the people (but goes to the corrupt leaders and elites). That the future of their country is essentially in their hands, as the government, the army, the security forces are not focused on the struggles that occupy their daily existence.

As I leave Pakistan, I think of Fauzia, Abaaz and Zainab. One reveals her destroyed face to stop the burning of others, one disguises her face to support her child and protect her security, one uploads an explosive video on Facebook to expose and stop a hideous practice. Each one of these strategies involved creativity, originality, bravery and very little money. I think the U.S. government and the military, the Pakistani government and army could all take heed from the vision and bravery and work of women like these. The change needs to come from the ground. Religious extremism is a virus. It feeds on poverty, malnutrition, humiliation, sexism and fear. As President Obama gets ready to formally announce his plans for a troop increase in Afghanistan, we must recognize that putting more US troops on the ground will only increase the violence, bombings and terror in the region. Our strongest methods of inoculation are to feed, help educate and honor the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan and to support the women, providing them with resources to do what they need to do, what they know how to do.

*Names have been changed to protect their identity.

Congo Army Helps Rebels Get Arms, U.N. Finds (New York Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/world/africa/25congo.html

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

KHARTOUM, Sudan — A new United Nations report says that the Congolese Army continues to funnel weapons to rebel groups that are smuggling millions of dollars in gold and other minerals out of Congo, helping sustain one of Africa’s bloodiest and most complicated wars.

The lengthy report, which has not been made public but was provided to The New York Times, details a vast, rebel-driven criminal network in eastern Congo with tentacles touching Spanish charities, Ukrainian arms dealers, corrupt African officials and even secretive North Korean weapons shipments.

None of this is especially shocking. For years, eastern Congo has been a steaming cauldron of ethnic tensions, competing commercial interests, land disputes and regional politics playing out at gunpoint.

Most of the fighting is not soldier versus soldier but soldier versus civilian, and millions of people are thought to have died from gunshot wounds or easily preventable diseases since the war broke out in the mid-1990s.

Women especially have borne the brunt of the conflict, with hundreds of thousands raped and mutilated, a sexual violence epidemic that has caught the eye of global figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The United Nations report lays bare exactly how various rebel groups finance their brutality, tracing the flow of illegal minerals from the lush green mountainsides of Congo, formerly Zaire, to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, and eventually to markets in Europe or smelters in the Far East.

The report charges that government officials in several African countries are working hand in hand with the rebels to help smuggle out minerals and bring in guns.

According to the report, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, one of the most notorious rebel armies, “has a far-reaching international diaspora network involved in the day-to-day running of the movement; the coordination of military and arms-trafficking activities and the management of financial activities.”

This document is likely to add momentum in the United States and elsewhere to efforts to crack down on Congo’s illicit mineral trade. Congolese officials estimate that 80,000 pounds of gold are smuggled out of the country each year, which at today’s high gold prices is worth more than $1 billion, much of it going straight into rebel hands.

Already the Enough Project, an antigenocide group based in Washington, and Eve Ensler, an American playwright who has been supporting Congolese women’s projects for years through the organization V-Day, among others, have been urging Congress to pass legislation that would bar American companies from buying Congo’s “conflict minerals,” which include gold, tin and coltan, a metallic ore used in many cellphones and laptop computers. Several bills have been proposed.

This effort is akin to a successful movement in the early years of this decade to crack down on blood diamonds, the term given to the gems unearthed in the rebel-held areas of West Africa that fueled gruesome civil wars in Liberia, Angola and Sierra Leone.

It is a bleak picture of Congo that the report paints. Despite the billions of dollars the United Nations has spent on peacekeeping, countless so-called peace treaties and pledges of regional cooperation, the eastern part of the country remains in the grip of incredibly violent criminals, some of them high-ranking officers in the national army.

Nothing seems to be working. Recent military operations to sweep out the rebels have mostly failed and instead led to widespread massacres and human rights abuses. The rebels, meanwhile, continue to seize mines and use their networks in Europe and the United States to raise cash.

Timothy Raeymaekers, a professor at the University of Ghent in Belgium, who specializes in studying Congo, said the report contained “some substantial new information.”

“It’s high time the U.N. gets serious about this criminal connection,” he said.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to discuss the Congo report this week. But the United Nations is in a difficult position. It recently cut ties to Congolese Army units accused of widespread human rights abuses. But at the United Nations headquarters in New York, diplomats are trying to delay the release of the new report because “there is a lot in there that makes us look complicit,” admitted one United Nations official, who asked for anonymity because he said he could be punished for speaking candidly.

The official called the conflict in Congo “messy and ragged.”

There is little doubt about that. Take the recently integrated rebel forces, which agreed earlier this year to join the Congolese Army. Many still have dubious loyalties. In one documented case, a commander ordered his troops to fire in the air to let rebels in the bush know the army was coming. In other cases, army commanders gave or sold weapons to the very armed groups they were supposed to be wiping out.

There is also creeping warlordism. Local army commanders are taxing timber, charcoal, tomatoes, anything that passes through their roadblocks, making $250,000 a month, the report said. Commanders are even conscripting civilians to haul wood through the forest, reminiscent of the Belgian colonial days when pith-helmeted officers whipped Congolese porters with hippopotamus hide.

Some Congo experts describe a “shadow army” within the national army, with rebels keeping their weapons to themselves and maintaining a separate chain of command, many of them still loyal to neighboring Rwanda.

Jason Stearns, a researcher who has spent extensive time in eastern Congo, said the recent integration effort “has led to a deep ethnicization of the army.”

“While I don’t see full-fledged war breaking out again,” he said, “the situation will remain extremely volatile.”

Eve Speaks at TEDIndia Saturday, November 7 in Mysore

http://blog.ted.com/2009/11/the_buzz_eve_en.php

Watch Eve Ensler Speak at The Women’s Conference, Hosted by Maria Shriver

On Tuesday, October 27, V-Day Founder/Artistic Director Eve Ensler spoke at The Women’s Conference, the nation’s premier forum for women, hosted by California First Lady Maria Shriver. You can view Eve’s speech in the opening session at the 5:20 mark of the video here >

Eve to Speak at the Women’s Conference, Hosted by Maria Shriver, October 27

Eve to speak at The Women’s Conference, hosted by Maria Shriver, Tuesday, October 27th sometime between 12:00-12:45PM EST, Tune in to the live webcast. For info, visit http://www.californiawomen.org/

Eve named one of U.S. News & World Report’s Best Leaders 2009!

U.S. News Media Group, in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School, today released the 2009 edition of America’s Best Leaders, available online at www.usnews.com/leaders and featured in the November, 2009, issue of U.S. News & World Report magazine, on newsstands Tuesday, October 27.

V-Day Founder Eve Ensler has been named Best Leader 2009 along with 22 of the country’s most exemplary individuals, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Operation Smile founders Bill and Kathy Magee, Artist Twyla Tharp, and Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin.

According to U.S. News press release, the fifth annual Best Leaders issue honors a select group of men and women from a variety of fields including business, public service, education, and arts. These inspiring professionals have contributed to industry advancements with their innovation and achievements, and through their advocacy, service, activism, and philanthropy, have dedicated their careers to improving the everyday lives of people across the globe. “The country has faced exceptional challenges in the past year,” said Brian Kelly, editor of U.S.News & World Report. “With our Best Leaders issue, we focused on individuals from a range of industries who have demonstrated unwavering leadership and a commitment to finding solutions in this difficult time.”

See the full list >

Read the article >

WATCH Eve on GRITtv with Laura Flanders Talking about Rape in Congo

Yesterday Eve joined Rose Mapendo of Mapendo International on GRITtv with Laura Flanders to discuss the way rape is used as a war crime in the Congo.

GRITtv with Laura Flanders brings participatory democracy onto your computer screen and into your living room, bridging the gap between audience and advocates.

Christine Schuler Deschryver, V-Day Congo Director, “Hillary’s Good Start” (Newsweek)

By Christine Schuler Deschryver

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216686

Since 1998 hundreds of thousands of Congolese women and children have been raped, and more than 5 million people have died. One of the first victims of the violence was my best friend—-almost a sister—and her husband. Her body was found mutilated with more than 100 bullet holes; her husband had been shot not far away from her. The incident occurred while they were traveling back to Goma from Kigali, Rwanda. At the time, I thought it was an isolated tragedy.

But in 1999 I started seeing more and more violence against women and children. And soon I started to realize that racism was to blame for the lack of global response to this humanitarian disaster. (It brought back memories from my childhood: my black, illiterate mother suffered for marrying the son of a rich, white Belgian colonialist.) In September 2000, after an 18-month-old baby, raped and with a broken body, died in my arms on our way to the hospital, I stopped believing in the promises of Western politicians and was convinced that mobilizing women might be the only way to change things.

This past August, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She placed a sharp focus on ending the sexual violence taking place here, pledging $17 million for medical care, counseling, economic assistance, and legal support. She understood that the empowerment and protection of women was essential to Congo’s future. I was encouraged by her visit and her words. But since her trip, the violence has continued. Dozens of women continue to show up at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu each week because of the horrific injuries they have endured from sexual torture. More needs to be done to address this ongoing crisis.

The West has traditionally focused its attention on treating the consequences of sexual violence, but not the causes. My fellow activists and I have long tried to show that the exploitation of Congo’s natural resources is a significant factor in the continuing atrocities. The mining industry here is driven by foreign demand, and will change only with international pressure for human rights and ethical business practices.

Nine years after that baby died in my arms, as grassroots activists within and outside Congo rally to expose the root causes of sexual violence, it’s impossible to forget that day—and all of the horrible days that came before it. But I can glimpse the future of my beloved Congo, when women will be free and safe, and hope that the ghosts in my narrative won’t repeat themselves in the memories of others.

Christine Schuler Deschryver is the Congo director of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women.

Eve in Huffington Post on Roman Polanski: Does the Brotherhood of Fame Endow You With a Lifetime Exemption From Accountability?

When I saw the petition protesting the recent arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland was signed by some of my most cherished artists — the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Ariel Dorfman, Costa Gavras, Jonathan Demme, Sam Mendes — men who I believed to be champions of women’s and human rights, frankly, I was shocked. It made it distressingly clear to me that all our years of work have not yet penetrated or changed the culture so that it understands that rape is a legal crime and a crime against the soul. As a survivor, I can attest to the fact that rape forever changes your life, robbing you of dignity, self-worth, agency over your body, and comfortability with intimacy and trust, while also escalating a pervasive sense of isolation and shame.

After 11 years of traveling the world and meeting with rape survivors across the planet I can say that the long-term consequences are multiple and far-reaching, ranging from homelessness, drug abuse, and eating disorders, to imprisonment, suicide, and early death.

The petition defending Polanski doesn’t even address his crime. Instead, it calls it a “case of morals.” That expression — a “case of morals” — takes the anti-violence movement back about a hundred years. Rape is not a question of morals. In fact it’s not even a question.

Let’s review the facts:

1. A 13-year-old girl is lured to a house by promise of a job by a famous and powerful director.

2. She finds herself in a hot tub.

3. She has an asthma attack.

4. The director says he will help relieve her asthma attack and offers her (unbeknownst to her) half a Quaalude as a remedy.

5. Once the Quaalude takes effect and the girl is sufficiently pliant, he rapes and sodomizes her without consent.

6. When charges are pressed, the director later pleads guilty to “engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.”

7. After spending 42 days in prison, the director flees the United States to avoid the threat of further imprisonment.

What about this clear-cut case isn’t criminal? Does Roman Polanski’s undeniable brilliance as a filmmaker somehow not make him a rapist? Does his talent give license to violence? Does the brotherhood of fame endow you with a lifetime exemption from accountability?

No one is arguing the genius of Roman Polanski, or even the pain and tragedy of his difficult life. But in the end, that has nothing to do with the crime he committed. Being an artist does not make any of us exempt from the laws of humanity — in fact, it actually makes us more responsible to them.

Eve Ensler is the author of “The Vagina Monologues” and the Founder of V-Day, the worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.

Eve in The Huffington Post – “The Terminator is Back” on California’s Domestic Violence Budget Cuts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/the-terminator-is-back_b_263493…

The Terminator is Back

What governor – once an actor, then a Terminator, married to a major women’s leader – has the chutzpah to wipe out 100 percent of the domestic violence budget of California, the biggest state in the country, with a single grope of his veto pen?

What same governor does this as the state economy is plummeting and violence is escalating? When the STAND Hotline, that serves Contra Costa County, fielded more than 12,500 calls for help in the first seven months of 2009, triple the number in a normal year (if violence is ever normal)? In a state where over the past six months at least five men, desperate from losing their jobs, have murdered their families and themselves? What other governor is willing to sacrifice the lives of his constituent daughters and mothers in order to protect oil corporations from paying taxes on their multi-billion-dollar profits – fair taxes that could easily fund these same programs?

I try to imagine what the governor thinks as he draws his veto pen through 40 years of women’s struggle and work, how he sleeps knowing women across his state who are exposed to brutality will be left without escape, shelter or even a friendly voice at the end of a hotline. How he justifies women having to choose between becoming homeless or staying in the midst of danger. Then I am reminded he is the Terminator – no pity, no remorse, no fear.

Fortunately, other governors do feel pity and remorse. They know that having muscle isn’t what makes a man, but it is compassion and wisdom and respect for women and girls. In New Mexico, Governor Bill Richardson has not only preserved funds for domestic violence programs, but has made a sincere and deep commitment to ending violence against women in his state.

Schwarzenegger has always had contempt for the vulnerable, or maybe it’s just his own inner girlie man he despises. But now he has gone too far.

This cut is reckless and dangerous. It could begin a wave of cuts throughout the country. It sends a message to perpetrators. It basically says no one is watching, no one is coming. All bets are off. Having just spent months in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I can tell you that this climate of free-for-all spreads violence like a California wildfire.

Governor, too many hours in your cigar smoking corporate oil drilling boy’s tent has made you think that you can get away with this. We’ve got your number. Unlike you we don’t act alone. There are thousands of us, we are organized, and we won’t be stopped by one muscle-bound veto.

Don’t terminate. Reinstate the funds. Don’t annihilate. Alleviate the suffering.

Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.