38 Comments | Posted November 8, 2011 | 08:49:11 (EST)
89 Comments | Posted October 20, 2011 | 16:04:34 (EST)

This past Sunday we had our second Ambiguous UpSparkle Story group at Occupy Wall Street. This time there were hundreds of people who came to tell of what brought...
95 Comments | Posted October 10, 2011 | 16:49:30 (EST)
I have been watching and listening to all kinds of views and takes on Occupy Wall Street. Some say it's backed by the Democratic Party. Some say it's the emergence of a third party. Some say the protesters have no goals, no demands, no stated call. Some say it's too...
Posted August 26, 2011 | 18:05:07 (EST)
The day DSK was dismissed I sent this out via Twitter: I am so OVER women being put on trial when they get raped, leaving their houses when they get beaten, quitting jobs after they get harassed.
Within seconds, emails, tweets and Facebook responses began to pour in....
Posted March 8, 2011 | 00:00:00 (EST)
On this, the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I want to take a minute to honor grassroots women's activists across the planet -- women, like those working tirelessly in Haiti, who have inspired their communities, united their communities, and led their communities, holding them together and pushing them forward.
...Posted December 2, 2010 | 17:05:33 (EST)
Vagina is the most terrifying word, the most threatening word, in any language of any country I have ever been to. Even when the vagina is worshiped in theory, as the yoni is in India, it is denigrated in practice. It is more reviled and feared than words like plutonium,...
Posted November 23, 2010 | 17:59:32 (EST)
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo -- I have been back in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for two weeks now meeting with leaders, activists, social workers, therapists, recent survivors, business owners, UN officials. There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that the situation on the...
Posted October 27, 2010 | 11:24:31 (EST)
I gave this speech on Tuesday, October 26 at The Women's Conference in Long Beach, CA.
It happens like this
The doctor walks towards me
His face is ashen
He says we have found something
It does not look good
There is a trap...
Posted June 14, 2010 | 06:08:27 (EST)
Some people may think that being diagnosed with uterine cancer, followed by an extensive surgery that led to a month of debilitating infections, rounded off by months of chemotherapy, might get a girl down. But, in truth, this has not been my poison. This has not been what pulses through...
Posted February 19, 2010 | 10:25:19 (EST)
The following excerpt is from the new work "I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE: The Secret Life of Girls around the World", which debuted in book form (Villard/Random House) on February 9.
I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE
I love being a girl.
I can feel what you're feeling
as...
Posted January 11, 2010 | 10:34:58 (EST)
Having just been in the Congo for the last month, it is evident that the more than 12-year economic war in the Democratic Republic of Congo rages on. Almost 6 million dead. Almost 500 thousand raped. Here is what I propose:
1. Please stop endlessly repeating these phrases:
• "The...
Posted December 29, 2009 | 17:12:27 (EST)
I have been in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo for the month of December. Christmas at Panzi Hospital was overflowing with raped and tortured women. Many young girls, several under 14, carrying babies. Every day at least 13 new women arrive seeking care to repair the damage done to their...
Posted November 30, 2009 | 20:23:56 (EST)
I have just returned from Pakistan where I was invited to support the efforts of women on the ground who are refusing to be terrified and silenced in the face of recent bombings and attacks. This was my fifth trip to Pakistan over the last fifteen years. I was there...
Posted September 30, 2009 | 19:33:10 (EST)
When I saw the petition protesting the recent arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland was signed by some of my most cherished artists -- the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Ariel Dorfman, Costa Gavras, Jonathan Demme, Sam Mendes -- men who I believed to be champions of women's and human rights,...
Posted August 19, 2009 | 18:37:02 (EST)
What governor - once an actor, then a Terminator, married to a major women's leader - has the chutzpah to wipe out 100 percent of the domestic violence budget of California, the biggest state in the country, with a single grope of his veto pen?
What same...
Posted June 19, 2009 | 16:18:43 (EST)
In 1996, I was sitting with twenty thousand grieving women in a stadium in Tuzla, Bosnia. The women were holding photographs of husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and boyfriends who had been disappeared a year earlier in a place called Srebrenica, a UN enclave where Bosnian refugees had turned over their...
Posted May 18, 2009 | 20:33:11 (EST)
I write today on behalf of countless V-Day activists worldwide, and in solidarity with my many Congolese sisters and brothers who demand justice and an end to rape and war.
It is my hope that these words and those of others will break the silence and break open a sea...
Posted October 30, 2008 | 18:53:53 (EST)
I spent the last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), much of my time in Goma. There, I was privileged to be part of the first public testimonies where women survivors of rape and sexual torture came forward in front hundreds to bravely break the silence on the...

1585 Comments | Posted November 11, 2011 | 16:37:53 (EST)