Because I give a damn

I stumbled on the videos for the We Give A Damn campaign. The videos feature wellknown singers, actors, actresses... well, see for yourselves:





Having been more or less openly bisexual since my mid-teens, and openly lesbian since almost a year back – although I might for some reasons more aptly call myself queer, but that's for another post – LGBT rights and true equality lie very close to my heart, privately as well as politically.

I'm sad that at this day and age, in the 21st century, people are still being persecuted, fired, discriminated against, abused, condemned, beaten, and murdered for their sexual orientation. Hate crimes are still a fact. A group of people, our sisters and brothers, are denied the rights many people take for granted – the rights to marry, have children, live with their partner in peace and acceptance – just for who we love. If we are ever to achieve equality, this must change.

Equality matters. Who I love shouldn't matter. I give a damn. Do you?

A Safe World for Women

In preparation of the centenary of the International Women's Day, The Women for A Change network has launched the 2011 campaign A Safe World for Women. The 99 years that have passed have seen great achievements and major progress, but there is still much left to be done.

In 1993 the UN adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women:

States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination. States should pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating violence against women

17 years later, 1 in 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Why the silence?

Every year, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across borders. 80% are women and girls. Buying and selling women and girls is the fastest growing criminal industry and fast becoming more lucrative than the drugs trade - and just as corrupt. Why don't our governments do more?

Female genital mutilation/cutting affects an estimated 130 million women and girls. Each year 2 million more undergo the practice. Why no action?

Up to 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male partners. Why don't people talk about it?

The world spends 300,000 times more on weapons than the UN spends on eliminating violence against women. Why?

It's time to break the circle. It's time to demand that women are valued equally as human beings, rather than commodities.

Together we can make a difference. Together we can build the largest ever movement to abolish all forms of abuse against women & girls:

trafficking, slavery, forced prostitution, rape including marital rape, battering, domestic violence, dowry-related violence, female genital mutilation, sexual abuse and harassment; torture, psychological, physical and sexual violence perpetrated by the State.

A Safe World for Women is a safe world for all. Visit A Safe World for Women, see the video above, react and take action.

The girl who silenced the world

If you don’t know how to fix it, stop breaking it

You've got to be inspired by any child who dares do this, when so many adults keep quiet.

This video is from the UN Earth Summit in Brazil 1992. The speaker in this video is the then 12-year-old Canadian girl Severn Cullis-Suzuki.

I am only a child. Yet I know that if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this would be. In school you teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? You grownups say you love us, but I challenge you, please, to make your actions reflect your words.

1992. 16 years ago and every single word is just as valid today. Really, nothing has changed. Growing awareness over environmental issues, a much bigger climate change with far worse effects, and yet... nothing has changed. For all the nice words, politicians have done precious little apart from talking.

10 years after the Rio Earth Summit, Severn Cullis-Suzuki wrote a piece in Time Magazine, no longer a child but a young adult, who had learned that the world is a lot more complicated than it looks as a child. But complicated does not mean impossible.

Real environmental change depends on us. We can't wait for our leaders. We have to focus on what our own responsibilities are and how we can make the change happen.

...

[I]n the 10 years since Rio, I have learned that addressing our leaders is not enough. As Gandhi said many years ago, "We must become the change we want to see." I know change is possible, because I am changing, still figuring out what I think. I am still deciding how to live my life. The challenges are great, but if we accept individual responsibility and make sustainable choices, we will rise to the challenges, and we will become part of the positive tide of change.

In three weeks, the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15) starts in Copenhagen. It is already a disappointment. It is already clear that the summit cannot lead to a binding treaty. Instead, it can be at the most the first step to such a treaty. World leaders are still stalling.

It is still unclear whether President Obama will attend the summit, even though he will most likely be in Northern Europe for the Nobel Peace Price ceremony on the 10th of December. I cannot think of any reason for him not to attend the COP15.

Last week, November 10, he said to Reuters (from Telegraph.co.uk) : "If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over edge then certainly that's something that I will do" Well, after the weekend's clear message that there can be no binding treaty from the COP15, this still remains to be seen.

I refuse to give up hope in our ability to change our ways and work for the environment instead of as against it, but I know this: We cannot wait for leaders and legislation. We cannot wait for politicians to tell us to change. We have to be the change. "We must become the change we want to see."

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin: "Drill, drill, drill"

Eve Ensler, American playwright, writer, activist, performer and feminist, perhaps best known for her Vagina Monologues, wrote the following about republican vice president candidate Sarah Palin (from the Huffington Post, link to article here.)

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

I am afraid of the state of the US and the world and this presidential election worries me, and the choice of Sarah Palin more than anything. Not all women politicians are feminists, not all women politicians are progressive and modern and for an society based on equality and modern ideas.
This is a woman who could very likely end up as President of the United States. I am not too happy about senator McCain either, but less worried than about his vice president candidate. And there's absolutely nothing I can do...