One Billion Rising V-Day

 Today is V-Day, founded by Eve Ensler to stop violence against women. This year V-Day is called One Billion Rising to say, in honor of the one in three women on the planet who during their lives are beaten or raped, ENOUGH! “One billion women violated is an atrocity. One billion women DANCING is a revolution!”

Listen to poet Alice Walker urging all of us to rise, strike, dance! http://youtu.be/BU6CdOpIFAg and please, find an event to attend where you live. I will be at the YWCA in Asheville North Carolina where the One Billion Rising event features poetry (by the incomparable Annelinde Metzner) and dance!

According to a new book by American professor Valerie Hudson, Sex and World Peace:  If a country focuses on reducing its rates of violence against girls and women, it also lowers its own propensity for engaging in military conflict. The author finds a close relationship between rape, domestic violence and all social issues on one side, and the so-called manly national security issues on the other. As war is a manifestation of a state’s sense of insecurity vis-à-vis the “other” — the enemy —, violence against women is the manifestation of a man’s insecurity vis-à-vis the “other”, that is, the woman. It is this perception of the gender equation that demands a change! www.zubeidamustafa.com

Sisters and Brothers, it’s time for the true meaning of security to emerge.