The Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards happen every year at the John F. Kennedy Center, and this year I was one of many inspired audience members.  Essentially these awards honor extraordinary global leaders who are working to protect and strengthen women’s rights across the world.  Their vital voices are speaking out on topics ranging from increasing economic opportunity to ending gender-based violence, so of course they deserve a night of recognition and praise.  Perhaps you’ve heard of some of this year’s presenters, which included Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Nicholas Kristof, Ann Curry, and America Ferrera…?

I don’t have to tell you about the epic-ness of the presenters.  They are all fantastic people whom you’ve already heard of and their vast accomplishments are known.  However, I’d like to tell you about some of the people I learned about.  The lesser known, new faces from all over the world. This year’s honorees were Malala Yousafzai, the Kant brothers, Dr. Hawa Abdi, Sandra Gomes Melo, Manai Yaish Zraiq, and Tep Vanny.  These amazing people are all making a difference for women rights globally, and therefore should absolutely be on your radar.

Introduced by Joe Biden were the Kant brothers, whom are changing the tides of violence against women and girls in India.  They formed their organization Shakti Vahini in 2001, and it has become a platform for combating gender-based violence.  It is largely because of Shakti Vahini that there have been legal and policy changes in India to include these issues.  Much of what they do too is sensitivity training for the police, and they have reached thousands.  With all of the news of gang rapes that comes out of India, I am glad to know that the Kant brothers are there and are leading the fight to change a culture of violence:

Among many of the other trailblazing honorees was Manal Yaish Zraiq from Palestine, who’s a businesswoman building economic opportunities for women of her country.  She is leading the way with the Rawabi project, which will be the first planned city in Palestine.  The Rawabi project is estimated to provide 10,000 jobs, which is crucial when Palestine has an unemployment rate of 24%.  Manal is also responsible for creating the Business Women Forum- Palestine, which supports female entrepreneurs at every step of their business.  It’s only been around a few years, and the organization has expanded impressively from 70 members to 800:

I encourage you to learn more about all of this year’s honorees and, if you’re feeling inspired, consider making a direct donation towards their vital work today.

Cover Photo Credit: VITAL VOICES

Videos Photo Credit VITAL VOICES

What makes a relationship healthy?  What are the warning signs of abuse?  How can you help someone you know is in an abusive relationship?  If you’d like to start these conversations with yourself or someone you know, now’s the time because February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.  The stats show that 33% of teens in abusive relationships aren’t talking about the abuse, so we must all do something to support teens.  It’s estimated that 1.5 million high school students experience abuse from a partner in one year.

On Monday February 11, we hope teens, parents of teens, young adults, and all who care about ending dating violence will join Fem2pt0, Spark Summit, and the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence for a #HealthyLove tweetchat.  Our chat will be from 1-2pm EST, and we’ll be sparking a dialogue on healthy relationships and healthy sexuality for teens and young adults.

We hope you can join us and share your crucial stories, advice, knowledge, and overall enthusiasm!  Just use the hashtag #healthylove to join us.

Photo credit: Alfonsina Blyde » via photopin cc.

Who inspires me?  I could answer this question at the moment with Anne Hathaway.  Of course this might just be the Les Mis high talking, but I did feel inspired by her remarkable performance in film that as Fantine.  If you haven’t seen the film yet, and are not a musical theatre nerd; Fantine is a mother who devotes herself completely to her daughter’s survival.  She basically gives up everything in order to financially support her daughter.  This tragically includes selling her body as a prostitute.  The agony she conveyed in those scenes as a woman given no other options was truly heartbreaking and also incredible.

Anne said in a few interviews that she researched issues surrounding sexual slavery for the role, and honestly I could tell from her performance.  The truth she portrayed was the pain of women who have been forced into sexual slavery throughout time.  Both back in 19th century France, and in modern day.  As she explained in one interview,

“…I had been thinking about Fantine as someone who lived in the past, but she doesn’t. She’s living in New York City right now, probably less than a block away.  This injustice exists in our world.  So every day that I was her, I just thought ‘This isn’t an invention. This isn’t me acting. This is me honoring that this pain lives in this world.’ I hope that in all our lifetimes, we see it end.”

Anne Hathaway has amplified her voice on violence against women not only with her performance as Fantine, but she’s also come out in full support of the One Billion Rising Movement.

What’s not to be inspired by with the One Billion Rising campaign?  People all over the world gathering on February 14th to dance, and to shake the world to end violence.  It’s something I am looking forward to participating in.  And upon noticing the latest issue of Glamour (a magazine I have never purchased in my life), I was psyched that Anne Hathaway was wearing a One Billion Rising shirt.  Also, the entire interview in the magazine is with Eve Ensler talking about why she supports the cause and of course connecting it to Les Mis.  I just love how she is using her voice in a women’s magazine that probably has never previously had a feature interview addressing global violence against women.

It’s not something new that Anne Hathaway is amazing, but lately she has been stellar.  In an interview with Matt Lauer, who made it his job to slut-shame her, Anne Hathaway would not cave and instead commented on the culture of exploiting sexuality as a commodity.  She also then turned her answer back to Les Mis.  You didn’t expect critical commentary on culture with your morning interview, did you Lauer?

I hope that 2013 will be the year that all of us do more to end sexual exploitation and violence against women.

Image credit One Billion Rising United Kingdom.

I was born in 1989, while the AIDS epidemic in the US was in full force.  I’ve never lived in a world where learning about HIV/AIDS wasn’t a part of my school health classes.  I know that I’m lucky to have been taught an unbigoted view of how HIV/AIDS could happen to anyone, no matter your sexual orientation or gender.  But I’ve had to be caught up on the how we’ve gotten to this point, and I still learn more and more all the time about how much more we need to do in order to end AIDS.  And with HIV/ AIDS affecting 33.3 million people on this planet, we have no choice to not care about this.

Last week, on the day before World AIDS Day, I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of “How To Survive A Plague.”  It was an incredibly moving documentary that details essentially how a group can mobilize change and be effective activists.  The film takes you through a crucial moment in recent history, 1987-1996.  It centers around the efforts of the grassroots groups ACT UP and TAG, and the men who were at the forefront of these groups.  Hours and hours of raw footage of protests, stand-ins, marches, passionate speeches, and compelling images are all compiled into a very powerful film that brings you back in time.  The anger is palpable in every scene, and the fuel for the AIDS activism revolution.  It was just so inspiring, saddening, and then uplifting to see all that they accomplished leading up to the 90’s Clinton-era.  By the end of 1996, with new drug distributions, the AIDS deaths in New York City decline by 50%.  It’s incredible to see the whole journey from a president totally ignoring the epidemic, to AID/HIV plans being a huge part of a presidential campaign, and access to life-saving drugs happening.  All of that and more was because of the activists’ efforts, because of grassroots activism, because “Silence = Death.”

Today there is a lot less silence about HIV/AIDS.  There are heroes, like Hillary Clinton, who continue to fight just as hard as all of the ACT UP folks did in the 90’s.  She has elevated national policy surrounding AIDS/HIV to new levels.  On Thursday last week, Hillary unveiled the new PEPFAR Blueprint for an AIDS-Free Generation.  The blueprint’s data shows, among many things, how many countries have brought down their death rates and also saved money, incredibly.  She began by saying, “Now, make no mistake about it: HIV may well be with us into the future. But the disease that it causes need not be…”  She outlined how through PEPFAR in this year alone they have directly supported about 5.1 million people on antiretroviral treatment.  This is a 200% increase since 2008!  She touched on how the blueprint provides financial plans for how to support treatment and prevention programs worldwide, but that stigma and discrimination are still making this disease harder to fight.  Of course, she also addressed the unique concerns of women and girls living with HIV/AIDS:

“…we are focusing even more intently on women and girls, because they are still at higher risk than men of acquiring HIV because of gender inequity and violence. So we are working to ensure that HIV/AIDS programs recognize the particular needs of women and girls, for example, by integrating these efforts with family planning and reproductive health services.  We are also working to prevent and respond to gender-based violence, invest in girls’ education, address gender inequality, and take other steps that have been proven to lower their risk of contracting the virus.”

Essentially, we cannot eliminate AIDS without addressing specific gender equality related problems for women and girls.

The PEPFAR Blueprint is an excellent plan that could bring down millions more infections.  Obamacare is also crucial for people living with HIV/AIDS in the US, because through it nobody can be denied health care coverage.  But we can’t be complacent, because when AIDS programs are in danger of budget cuts, people could lose their lives.  What should AIDS activists be doing?  Taking their clothes off, like the nude protesters in Boehner’s office?  That’s definitely one way to make some noise.  But really it doesn’t matter what form the activism takes, as long as voices are heard.  And there is hope.  As Hillary said at the end of her speech:

“So if we have any doubt about the importance of this work, just think of the joy and that big smile on Florence’s face when she told us about giving birth to her two healthy HIV-negative sons. And think of that same sense of joy rippling out across an entire generation, tens of millions of mothers and fathers whose children will be born free of this disease, who will not know the horror of AIDS. That is the world we are working for, and nothing could be more exciting, more inspiring, more deserving of our dedication than that.”

The end of AIDS could be near, but programs must be fully funded. Make sure you urge the President and Congress to support them.

Photo credit Rory Finneren via the Creative Commons License.

Besides the obvious things like family, friends, food, and shelter, there’s one more thing I am incredibly thankful for this year; FemEx.  Signing up for FemEx, a 16-week women’s empowerment course, has been the most meaningful and best decision I’ve made since moving to DC.  There’s so much about FemEx that I’m thankful for, especially the chance to get to know the unique and wonderful women in my class.  I feel so lucky and relieved every Thursday evening as I walk over to class.  We get the chance to share a totally safe space with amazing women, while engaging in very personal and thought-provoking feminist conversations.  I know that my voice, everyone’s voice, matters in our judgment-free space.  What could be better?  We’ve discussed topics like reproductive health, power & privilege, body image, sexual health, communication, sexual orientation, and more.

How did I find out about such a wonderful class?  Well, the funny thing is that I first Iearned about it through an article on Fem2pt0!  Which coincidentally was written by Nikki Nesbary, who’s now one of my FemEx facilitators!  I remember reading about Nikki’s FemEx experience and my interest was immediately piqued.  There’s a class for weekly feminist discussion AND the chance to make new friends at the same time?  I was sold…

The class has been everything I’d hoped it would be first when I first learned about it, and more.  I’ve had revelations and or new ideas about each topic we’ve discussed, and from our homework assignments.  Recently our homework was to tell three people, “You’re beautiful.”  One person had to be someone you knew well, one someone you sort of knew, and one a total stranger.  Most people couldn’t do the last part of the assignment, I couldn’t do any of it.  I was worried about possible bewildered or otherwise negative reactions I would receive.  I was also worried about heterosexism, even though I wouldn’t be hitting on three women but only telling them they were beautiful.  Even though I couldn’t do the assignment, I think it spoke to a lot of my own fears and assumptions, as well as to the fact that most people do not know they’re beautiful.  We also asked ourselves, “When was the last time you told yourself you were beautiful?”

I’ve never had a full handle on what women’s empowerment could mean.  But I think that FemEx has gotten me closer to that.  As someone who is automatically anxious walking into a room full of strangers, it has amazed me how comfortable I am in class now.  It’s a place where I am truly a participant.  I’m never going to be someone who doesn’t over-think most of what I say before I say it, but I still have something to contribute each class.  I am visible and my voice is heard in FemEx.  I feel like my stories are just as valued and important as everyone else’s.  And each one of my shared secrets and more personal stories haven’t been met with negativity, but with immediate acceptance and encouragement in the form of snaps.  (Side note, I’m really going to miss people snapping when they appreciate what I’ve said…)  It’s always nice to be appreciated and validated.  That is simply a huge part of what empowerment means, for me.  It’s also empowering to hear other women’s stories, and to have those stories resonate.

I can’t help but notice how FemEx has also filled my post-college women’s studies classes void.  I also notice a difference, I felt eye-opened from my women’s studies classes, but honestly not empowered.  Although my women’s studies classes in college were life-changing and I learned that I always should have identified as a feminist, I never participated.  Except for through written assignments, I rarely ever raised my hand.  I always felt that essentially everyone else’s ideas were more important than my own.  And that is the opposite of empowerment.  FemEx is like a do-over women’s studies class in that regard.

I’m hoping I will continue participating, beyond FemEx.  I am hoping that I can harness what I’ve learned in FemEx and that it can extend to dipping my feet into the larger DC feminist community.  I really hope to become more directly involved in causes I care about.  I feel like this class has also reaffirmed the importance of women supporting other women, learning that it’s okay to be yourself, and of an inclusive feminist community.

I’m starting to worry about what my life will be like once the class ends in December.  What will I do when I don’t have Thursdays to look forward to?   Or maybe we could keep it going post-class, with mandatory at least once a month hangouts?  I don’t really want to think about any of that yet anyway…  I hope that I have made friends who will stay my friends after class ends.  That would be the best thing to take away from the class anyway.

Our upcoming last month of classes are on masturbation, boundaries/violations, porn/ erotica, and then a final women’s empowerment class.  I can’t wait and I’m so thankful.

Check out the FemEx website and FB page for more information.

Image via FemEx FB page.

It’s here!  I can’t believe tomorrow is finally Election Day.  By now you’re probably exhausted from all of the pleas for your vote.  I know I am.  But hopefully you’ve already registered and, if you didn’t vote early or by absentee, you plan to vote tomorrow at a polling station.  Well if you’re tired of being asked to vote and already plan to, ask someone else to vote!  You could also volunteer to knock on doors, tweet, post an article to Facebook, make phones calls, do whatever you can.  The possibilities for activism are endless, and crucial when there are still people out there who are apathetic, discouraged, or not making it a priority to vote for whatever reason.  I couldn’t convince my 19-year-old brother to vote, but maybe there’s still time to convince the undecided 19-year-old you know!  Every vote counts.

Women and all who love women seriously need to rock the vote tomorrow and protect our rights!  We know what’s at stake.  If you’re still convincing someone to vote, and also don’t forget to vote for marriage equality in the states where it’s on the ballot, here are a plethora of posts from Fem2pt0 for you to share with someone right now:

• Undecided Women, Don’t be Fooled: Your Control of Birth IS ABOUT Jobs
• What Women Want 2012: A YWCA USA National Survey of Priorities and Concerns
• Do Women’s Reasons for Having Abortions Matter? No…and Yes, and Here’s Why
• Pandering and Lip Service Not Required: Romney Isn’t A Mystery On Women’s Issues
• Is it Your Body or Not? Draw The Line, People
• #Motherfkd: Economy Will Suffer If People Cannot Plan Parenthood
• Women: A Helpful Chart for Determining What to Trade Your Fundamental Rights For
• Legislators: Women Are Not Cows and Pigs
• Todd Akin: It’s Not a War on Women. It’s a War on Critical Thinking and Democracy
• 10 Tips for Avoiding Jail When You’re Pregnant

And one more time… VOTE!

Photo credit Theresa Thompson via the Creative Commons License.

Last weekend during the Olympics Closing Ceremony performance, five taxicabs with the license plate “SPICE” pulled up, to turn me into a giddy child again…  The Spice Girls were back!  As a 90’s kid, the Spice Girls were the soundtrack to most of my favorite childhood memories.  They were the five best friends and heroes who decorated my bedroom walls.  They were the songs that I would sing, dance, and laugh to with my own best friends.  The Spice Girls told us that friendship was forever, to stay positive, and that Girl Power was all we needed.  If those strong, sassy, independent women could take over the world, why couldn’t all girls do the same?

Having not taken over the world like the Spice Girls, and grown up (somewhat) I’ve become more cynical.  I’ve taken college women’s studies classes and learned about feminism.  My view of the Spice Girls should probably be far more negative, as I have a deeper understanding of the media’s effect on me.  There are plenty of feminist critiques out there of the Spice Girls.  I do see the problems and agree with a lot of it…  For example, it’s problematic that they were all given one adjective to boil themselves down to as a nickname.  These women were all so much more than just “Scary” or “Sporty.”  The nicknames were certainly diminishing and somewhat demeaning, especially “Baby.”  Talk about infantilizing, I could probably write a whole other blog post just on Emma Bunton’s choices of wardrobe.  With a critical eye I see a lot about the Spice Girls I never would have noticed as a kid.  However I also see that with their Girl Power, they gave me the kind of feminism that I needed as a kid.

Everything about the Spice Girls was very loud and very feminine; their voices, their themed skimpy outfits, and of course the music itself.  You had to blast their music, and you still have to blast it to fully revel in it’s fun, catchy tunes.  I always felt like the Spice Girls gave their fans permission to be as loud as they were, and that there was no shame in it.  Maybe shouting, “Girl Power,” or singing their songs wasn’t code for smashing the patriarchy, but it was still meaningful.  In a brilliant article for Rookie Magazine, Sady Doyle writes:

“There was lots of giggling, with the Spice Girls; there was lots of hugging; there were a lot of bright, colorful outfits; there was a lot of hyper, bubbly silliness, and sometimes it would just wear a cynical person right out. But the Spice Girls weren’t for cynical people. They were for very young girls—sometimes girls who were still in grade school. (Those Spice Girl dolls weren’t selling to 22-year-old gender-studies majors. At least not unironically.) And in the moment that those girls were starting to figure out what “girlhood” meant, to them, they were relying on an image of ladies having fun together and supporting one another.”

Those confident, fun, talented, independent women with their silly platform sneakers loved and supported each other.  And they were exactly the right image for me and my friends.

Our culture continues to promote snark, competition, and to and make women feel bad about themselves, and the Spice Girls countered that.  Where’s anything like that message in today’s media culture?

Doyle goes on to say that, “We were scared that the Spice Girls would make feminism too mainstream and commercial. Well, good news: feminism is totally unpopular now, hurray!”  This is, of course, true as well.  The Spice Girls were a phenomenon, and it’s probably safe to say the most popular all-women music group of all time.  They were the closest thing media culture has gotten to mainstream feminism.

Many of the Spice Girls songs were also simply about respect.  Respecting yourself, your friends, and even one song about respecting your mother.  When I think of every women’s issue, this may be simplifying but a lot of it does boil down to a disrespect of women.  Women are disrespected when they aren’t given their right to reproductive choices.  Women are disrespected when they are treated like objects by the media.  Women are disrespected when they are dehumanized by Republicans.  Maybe I’m too much of an idealist, but I like to think that most of the boys and girls who loved the Spice Girls in the 90’s, grew up to have some respect for women.

If the Spice Girls were a brand new band today, I’m not sure how I’d feel about them or if the media would portray them differently.  All I know is that I grew up with their Girl Power, and I’m glad that I did.

Photo Credit garybembridge via the Creative Commons License.

As an Anglophile, I was very excited to hear that the Olympics would be in London this year.  However recently I have become less enthused, upon hearing that the Olympics committee has refused to address violence against women.  Specifically they are refusing to address the proven increased instances of sexual violence that occur along with major sporting events.  Why is there not a whole campaign built around raising awareness about violence against women?  Why don’t they care?

When the advocacy group End Violence Against Women came to the Olympics committee group, Locog, they had planned to collaborate.  End Violence Against Women had recently published research that sighted alarming results including:

“…incidents of violence between partners increased by as much as 30% during England’s fixtures during the 2006 Fifa World Cup. On the day England were beaten 4-1 by Germany in the Football World Cup in 2010, there were record numbers of assaults against sexual partners in Greater Manchester, for example – 350 in a single day.”

Following these disturbing findings, End Violence Against Women lobbied for information about sexual violence to be included for all visitors to the Olympics as well as for all of the athletes.  The group thought that they had reached an agreement with Locog.  Now Locog has gone back on their promise to include multiple types of hotlines for different issues such as rape, domestic violence, trafficking, and sexual assault.  They will instead only provide one hotline for general “victim support.”  The Olympics committee won’t host any further campaign to address these issues, or provide further information, and it is incredibly disappointing.

It’s better than nothing at all, but the problem with only a general “victim support” hotline is that it just won’t be called.  It’s too general and callers will never know which issues the counselors on the other end of the line are mainly trained in. And what about those who feel shame and do not wish to be labeled as a victim?  A victim support hotline could make them feel further shame and discomfort, as opposed to giving them strength and the agency to help themselves heal.  There are different types of violence and all should be addressed as per specific needs.

Violence survivor hotlines are frequently used and are really helpful to those who need it.  The NYC based Safe Horizon, the largest victim’s services agency in the US, reaches more than 250,000 people affected by violence each year.  Safe Horizon provides anonymous hotlines for survivors of domestic violence, crime, rape, sexual assault, and incest.  Anonymous hotlines are very ideal for those who need it.  It is a way to receive immediate and tailored assistance to a crisis.  It might even be easier for some people than going to any sort of therapist, because it’s much more immediate.  Through calling specific crisis hotlines, like the Safe Horizon hotlines, callers can be directed to emergency housing, counseling, legal services, and other support that they may need.  The Olympics committee should look to Safe Horizon’s example, as they have a responsibility to provide similar crisis hotlines with these crucial services for callers.

I just don’t understand why any organization or anyone would back out of an opportunity to raise awareness and help so many women.  It could only make them look better for their consumers to see that they are interested in helping women who are affected by sexual assault.  The Olympics committee also has the capability to do more than just a hotline, they could have done a whole ad campaign to raise awareness.  Now the Olympics committee is sending the message that they don’t care about violence against women, it’s that simple.  With the money they’ve spent advertising on Coke cans, magazine spreads, commercials for every unrelated product, it’s insulting that they would discount End Violence Against Women’s campaign.  Especially when they clearly have the capability to do a lot with it.

For more information about End Violence Against Women and their London 2012 campaign: http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/london-olympics-2012

Photo credit secretlondon123 via the Creative Commons License.

Last week the Supreme Court declared that Obamacare was constitutional and this was a huge victory for women’s health.  Once Obamacare goes into effect health insurance companies won’t charge women more money and birth control will be covered.  But the fight for women’s health does not end here, as other health issues affecting women need to be addressed too, including HIV/AIDS.

I’ll be honest: I’m a Feminist, but on a daily basis I don’t think about how HIV/ AIDS affects women.  That isn’t to say that I don’t understand the severity of the AIDS epidemic.  It’s just that this issue hasn’t been on my radar like other women’s issues have been.  That’s why I hoped to learn a lot last Thursday when I went to an event at the ICRW entitled, “AIDS-Free Generation?  Not Without Women.”

The event featured nine speakers from noted women’s organizations, all working to fight AIDS.  The speakers opened up a discussion about the severity of the spread of this disease, and more crucially about its effect on women, both here in DC and across the globe.  Most importantly the conversation stressed what I hadn’t been considering: HIV/ AIDS and gender inequality are deeply and problematically connected.

Katherine Fritz of the ICRW argued that researching AIDS helps us to see the “linkages between social inequality and poor health.”  Of course, the most universal form of social inequality is gender inequality.  Through discussing gender inequality, we can see many ways that women tend to be affected by HIV/ AIDS differently from how men are, such as via gender based violence.  Pat Nalls of the Women’s Collective, a survivor living with AIDS, discussed how it is apparent that many women are infected with HIV through rape.  She also explained that women with HIV are not being given the attention they need because we can’t just solve this problem with medicine.  In addition to looking at violence against women, we must also consider how the problems of discrimination, economic empowerment, reproductive health, and poverty all connect with HIV/ AIDS.

Another issue which connects with gender inequality was of women and care giving.  Of course women globally are more often the caregivers.  Pat Nalls discussed how many women living with HIV/ AIDS will spend so much time taking care of their children, they will forget to care for themselves.  This can mean forgetting to take their medicine even if they have the economic access to it.  There is also the issue of mothers passing the virus onto their unborn children.  Essentially, we cannot eliminate AIDS without addressing to specific problems for women.  Deborah Smith, an ObGyn at the Whitman Walker Clinic, urged that we must have gender specific data about HIV/AIDS as well as gender specific outreach and engagement.  It is important to always contextualize this issue, one example being with poverty.  Many women cannot afford the expensive medication for HIV/AIDS, and we must do what we can to help make it more accessible.

Throughout the speeches, I wondered what activists really could do to help to stop the spread of HIV/ AIDS.  There were many ways discussed that need to be put into action, and one important one was access to female condoms.  Currently, there is one female condom for every six women in many African countries.  This is a serious problem because the female condom is a form of contraception that prevents the spread of STIs, pregnancy, and it is female-initiated.  Serra Sippel, of CHANGE, spoke about one of the current campaigns they support which is the UAFC Paper Doll Campaign.  This is adorably simple and yet so effective.  Through this campaign, people can write messages on paper dolls in support of female condoms and their importance.  They are attempting to break the Guinness World Record for a paper doll chain, while spreading the word about female condoms.  This reminded me that there are many simple ways to get involved with these issues and to become a supportive AIDS/ HIV activist.  It really doesn’t have to be complicated!

The speakers went on to discuss more ways that anyone can help, such as with DC’s upcoming International AIDS Convention that’s happening in July.  This will be an important gathering for HIV/ AIDS activists and survivors.  Education and spreading awareness are always crucial to this cause.  On a more personal level, the speakers reminded everyone to remember to get tested, practice safe sex, and encourage others to do so as well.  The speakers also urged us to hold huge donor organizations, like the World Bank, accountable for not putting money towards the prevention of HIV/ AIDS.  HIV/ AIDS is the leading cause of death for women around the globe, and it cannot ever be ignored.  Through addressing this problem for both women and men, together we can create hope for an AIDS-free generation.

Some of the many organizations present at the “AIDS-free Generation” event:
http://www.womensorganizations.org/
http://www.genderhealth.org/
http://www.icrw.org/
http://www.womenscollective.org/
http://www.whitman-walker.org/
http://www.commonhealthaction.org/iphi.html
http://www.unaids.org/en/
http://www.genderaction.org/
http://www.preventionnow.net/

For more information on the 2012 International AIDS Conference in DC: http://www.aids2012.org

Photo Credit schacon via The Creative Commons License.

On Wednesday morning at the Center for American Progress, I heard Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano speak about the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to combat human trafficking.  She began by reminding the audience that sexual and labor trafficking dis-proportionally affects women.  Napolitano is very passionate about this issue, and in 2010 launched her Blue Campaign.  The Blue Campaign is the first program of its kind, specifically focused on human trafficking awareness.  It has done a lot of good since its inception and will continue to grow through outreach efforts.

Napolitano went on to explain how her Blue Campaign has functioned and their goals.  First they focus in on the countries of origin.  They have worked with Central America, South America, Asia, and more.  They do not deport the victims, as victims should not be punished for being trafficked.  Dealing with the visa process for these victims has also been a priority for Napolitano.  It’s also important, she stressed, to work within the modes of traffic.  Working within the modes of traffic, besides doing thorough investigations, means training all personnel to recognize the signs of trafficking.  Her campaign has helped to train flight attendants as well, since many of the cases of human trafficking have been through air travel.  Of course it’s also important that trainings were initiated for law enforcement, but really human trafficking awareness should be universal.  This is why the next phase of the Blue Campaign has been to forge public awareness through PSA’s in the US and abroad.

Napolitano wants to educate more people about the signs of human trafficking through expanding access to trainings, as well as increasing the Blue Campaign’s online presence to become more well known.  Importantly, they will continue to work with the FBI to expand their internet reach and sources.  Many of these crimes do begin with the internet, through websites providing access to slaves.  She also wants to make sure that these incidents of human trafficking are always counted.  Napolitano explained how previously there was a serious lack of data about human trafficking globally.  It just was not counted or documented as it is now.  I found this to be the most shocking information I learned from Napolitano’s speech.

The most important thing to consider with this issue of human trafficking is simply that it is happening.  Clearly we are in 2012, over a hundred years since the Emancipation Proclamation, and it’s absolutely appalling to consider slavery still exists.  But we must be aware that it is a problem that exists, in order to stop it.  One of the most poignant anecdotes of her speech was when Napolitano recalled a local story.  She knew of a couple who recognized that a little girl in their neighborhood was rarely going outside and didn’t go to school.  These seem like easy signs to spot, but it can take guts to speak up.  But they did speak up about it, and Napolitano’s agents were able to prosecute the case as human trafficking and unpaid labor.  If everyone, all over the world, became vigilant to the common signs of human trafficking we could all help to end it.

Photo Credit The National Guard via Creative Commons License