Malika Saada Saar

I grew up loving the Village Voice. Nat Hentoff taught me how to listen to Billie Holiday. Jack Newfield politically baptized me through his stories and recollections of Bobby Kennedy. During the 80's and 90's, the Village Voice was also one of those rare mainstream publications in which the Black...

Last weekend, I talked to my daughter about the significance of the holidays, as she painted Easter eggs at a friend's house. When we discussed Passover, and the enslavement of the Jews, and then talked about the enslavement of African Americans, she asked me if slavery still existed.

My...

I am not a supporter, by any means, of Rick Santorum. He is a politician wedded to a politics of fear and divisiveness. His potential election as president would, I believe, endanger our nation's restored moral credibility.

At the same time, I am disappointed by the left's summary dismissal of...

This Women's History Month marks the long-awaited emergence of a new post-Roe generation of women who are reframing the women's rights movement and discourse. March is, quite possibly, revealing the first stirrings of our own Women's Spring.

Sandra Fluke's insistent dignity, and those who supported it, challenged what is so...

On International Women's Day, a young woman named "T" is testifying at a U.S. Senate Caucus roundtable on child sex trafficking. T was trafficked at the age of 10, and through her childhood, she endured being sold to at least 8 different men a night.

T's story is not an...

A few weeks ago, Congresswoman Maloney looked at the all male congressional panel on birth control and asked, "where are the women?" I want to ask Rush Limbaugh and those who applauded his tirade against Sandra Fluke: "where are the men?"

According to Rush,

"What...

Last week, the Rebecca Project for Human Rights and the National Women's Law Center released a State by State Report Card on the conditions of maternal confinement. And what we found out about the challenges and indignities endured by incarcerated mothers in the United States should concern all of us...

That's why it was so critical to take down what became the "Walmart" of child prostitution and sex trafficking online. It is now less convenient, easy, and normative to sell girls online.

We can obfuscate the dirty little secret in America that girls are being sold for sex on...

Dear Craig Newmark,

You finally responded to the open letter written by survivors who were trafficked for sex on your website. Thank you for reading their open letter which, as you know, we originally posted almost three months ago in the San Francisco Chronicle.

We were however very disappointed by...

This week, the American Medical Association (AMA) called for an end to one of the most draconian practices in the U.S.: the shackling of incarcerated mothers during labor, delivery and post delivery. The AMA's resolution rightly condemns the practice as "barbaric" and "medically hazardous" to both the mother and her...

Finally, the hidden issues of gendered violence and sex trafficking are getting attention on the global stage. But, in too many instances, the condition of American women and girls has been left out of the conversation, as if the shameful acts of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation do not...

Please read these words from sex trafficking survivors who were given refuge and assistance by the Fair Fund and Crittenton organizations.

Dear Craig,

Although we have not met, we are certain you would not want what happened to us or to thousands of girls like us to ever happen again.

A few weeks ago in Trenton, New Jersey, five young men were charged with gang-raping a seven-year-old girl who was sold to them by her 15-year-old stepsister. These men purchased the little girl and then raped her. They will now face prosecution for aggravated sexual assault and child endangerment.

And...

Beyond its foundational religious significance, the story of Christmas is, in so many ways, a celebration of the inherent sacredness of birth. Anyone -- Christian and non-Christian alike -- who hears the story of a pregnant Mary being turned away from the inn, who imagines Joseph frantically cleaning out a...

The Oprah Winfrey-produced movie, "Precious," which recently opened to ecstatic reviews, tells the story of a poor, abused, illiterate, and overweight African-American teen. Rarely has American popular culture bothered to fully humanize a young woman on the forgotten edges of the American experience -- or courageously unearth the injuries of...

A very rare thing happened a few weeks ago in the hallowed halls of Congress. Girls got a chance to be heard. They were not girls from elite schools or one of those prep programs for youth interested in politics. No, these were girls previously locked up for prostitution and...