from Black Looks:
The 16 days will run from November 25th to December 10th and will incorporate the following:
November 25th: The International Day Against Violence Against Women
November 29th: International Women Human Rights Defenders Day
December 1st: World Aids Day
December 10th: International Human Rights Day
To participate please fill in the Carnival form or email me at info at blacklooks dot org with the link to your post before December 6th. The post can be anything from a personal story, images, thoughts, a link anything that highlights and informs violence against women.
This year’s theme is “Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence Against Women”
Challenges and obstacles have been identified by activists in all regions of the world, and we have chosen to highlight a few of those here. These can be addressed both as demands to be made on the state or other institutions and as actions that we must take in our own work in order to achieve better results. A few suggestions for focusing advocacy in this year’s campaign include:
* Demanding and securing adequate funding for work against VAW;
* Calling for greater accountability and political commitment from states to prevent and punish all forms of violence against
women in practice not just words
* Increasing awareness of the impact of violence against women, including engaging in measures to end it by men and boys;
* Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of work to prevent violence against women;
Today, like any other day should be, is a day of solidarity with women of color. But today is a specifically organized day of action to support women of color in the fight against violence. Today, you can show your solidarity by wearing red, attending an event, or otherwise taking action. You can find out more at Document the Silence. Here’s a snippet from that site:
Recent events in the United States have moved us to action. Violence against women is sadly, not a new phenomenon in our country or in the world, however, in the last year women of color have experienced brutal forms of violence, torture, rape and injustice which have gone unnoticed, received little to no media coverage, or a limited community response. We are responding to:
- The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.
- Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.
- A 13 year old native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling “white power” outside of her home
- Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were latter charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences
In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color’s stories of violence. We are asking for community groups, grass-root organizations, college campus students and groups, communities of faith, online communities, and individuals to join us in speaking out against violence against women of color. If we speak, we cannot be invisible.
I was also excited to find this poem from Ursula Rucker on the site (she been a favorite of mine for a number of years now).
