Iraqi Women Need Your Help!

WOMEN SAY NO TO WAR

By Gayle Brandeis, http://www.gaylebrandeis.com

"No" is a powerful word. Two little letters, one short syllable, have the potential to change the world. Look at a toddler who has just learned to say "No"—she is fierce with the word, gleaming and triumphant. The word "No" gives her control over her own small universe, and she wields it freely, joyously, defiantly.

As many girls grew up, however, they lost the word "No". They learned to forget its power, forget they ever owned it. Throughout history, women have often been taught to say "No" to themselves, to stay quiet, complacent, to unquestionably accept what fate and society offer them, even if this means arranged marriage or female genital mutilation or other forms of physical and emotional abuse. Women were often led to believe their bodies were not their own. They were famously told that if their desires didn't match their husbands', they should just "lie back and think of England", forgoing their own internal cues for the sake of the nation.

We are not lying back anymore. Women have steadily been reclaiming the word No, both personally and politically. Where would we be if Rosa Parks didn't say No when she was asked to give up her seat? Where would we be if women in Afghanistan didn't start underground schools to say No to the denial of education for girls and women? Where would we be if women didn't say No to unfair wage discrepancies and pollution of their neighborhoods and discriminatory voting practices and heinous anti-choice laws? Of course we still have a long way to go on all of these fronts, but if no woman ever rose up and said No to injustice, the situation for women would be a lot more grim. Now, thanks to CODEPINK, women around the world have a way to collectively say No to war.

Think of the sound of thousands upon thousands of women rising up and saying No together. That open syllable would fill the air, a beautiful chorus. By the time International Women's Day rolls around on March 8, we should be able to shake the roof right off the White House with our voices.

As the call at http://www.womensaynotowar.org states, "This is not the world we want for ourselves or our children. With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up - across borders - to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and the destruction."

When women say No to war, we are saying Yes to so much—Yes to compassion, Yes to justice, Yes to safety, Yes to a peaceful and sustainable future. Please join us in raising our voices. Let's recapture our original joyous, defiant experience of the word No, and bolster it with a healthy Yes that will resound through the ages, ringing in our great-grandchildren's ears.

--Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco) and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change.

POLITICS:
Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe
Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (IPS) - Eminent female writers, artists, lawmakers and social activists in the United States are reaching out to women leaders across the world in an attempt to forge a global alliance against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

A U.S.-based women's group has launched a global campaign to gather 100,000 signatures by Mar. 8, International Women's Day, when they will be delivered to the White House and U.S. embassies around the world.

"We are unleashing a global chorus of women's voices shouting, 'Enough!" said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, a California-based rights advocacy group that has spearheaded the global women's campaign, called "Women Say No to War".

"The administration is trying to get away with it (the war), but we won't let that happen," Jodie Evans of CODEPINK told IPS. "This campaign is amazing. This is bringing thousands of women together from across the borders -- this is creating something that we can't even see."

Describing the initial response to the group's call for signatures as "overwhelming", Benjamin says that more than 200 high-profile women from various walks of life endorsed the campaign even before it was formally launched earlier this month.

The signatories include popular film stars like Susan Sarandon, the playwright Eve Ensler and comedian Margaret Cho, and award-winning authors such as Alice Walkers, Anne Lamott, Maxine Hong Kingston and Barbara Ehrenreich.

"We, the women of the United States, Iraq, and women worldwide, have had enough of the senseless war in Iraq and cruel attack on civilians worldwide," reads the call. "We have buried too many of our loved ones. We have seen too many lives crippled forever...."

"This is not the world we want for ourselves or for our children," it says. "With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up -- across borders -- to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and destruction."

Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed fighting in Iraq, and whose subsequent vigil near U.S. President George W. Bush's Texas ranch to demand -- unsuccessfully -- a face-to-face meeting garnered widespread media attention, was one of the first signatories to the campaign.

"The pain that this war has caused for people all over the world is unimaginable," she said in a statement. "I have met women who are ready to stand together to make our leaders end this madness."

Urging a shift in the U.S. strategy in Iraq "from a military model to a conflict resolution model", the organisers say they want to see a withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq, with full representation of women in the peacemaking process in that country.

"Iraqi women are devastated now. It will take us decades of struggle to regain a peaceful and civilised life," said Yanar Mohammed, a signatory to the campaign and president of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq.

"The U.S. occupation has planted the seeds of ethno-sectarian division, preparing Iraq for a civil war, and has blessed religious supremacy over and against human and women's rights," she added in a statement.

Since the invasion of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition forces, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, have lost their lives. Despite criticism from influential human rights groups, such as the Britain-based Amnesty International and U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, the U.S. military continues to shrug off its responsibility to keep a record of civilian casualties, critics note.

However, an independent survey conducted by the British medical journal, the Lancet, last year concluded that the war has claimed at least 100,000 civilian lives in Iraq.

Some humanitarian groups that are closely working with the U.S. government have now started asking the Pentagon to compensate the families of civilian victims of the U.S. aerial bombing in Iraq.

"We have a responsibility to help the victims and their loved ones," said Sarah Holewinsky, director of the Washington-based Campaign for Innocent Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), a group founded by Maria Rouzicka, who was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq while helping civilian victims of war in that country.

But despite the administration's refusal to commit to a schedule for withdrawal, a majority of the U.S. public has turned against the war, and many former U.S. army generals and previously pro-war lawmakers are loudly demanding a concrete exit strategy.

Recent opinion polls also show a continuous decline in the popularity of Pres. Bush, who has sought to bolster his image as a "wartime president".

Meanwhile, the global women's campaign against the war is growing every day. By Monday, a week after the campaign's launch, the number of signatures on its website had already hit 21,326. (END/2006)