With Dr David Satcher

Dr David Satcher was the nation’s Surgeon General during the Clinton administration and is now at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta where he heads the Satcher Health Leadership Institute and the Center of Excellence for Sexual Health. In 2001 Dr Satcher issued a remarkable Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior. This Call to Action recognized that sexuality and religion are profoundly intertwined in the U.S. Religious institutions are critical to public understanding of sexuality and sexual health and how these things are essential to a person’s mental, spiritual, physical and relational health. We are not a sexually mature nation. This is partly why 19 million Americans annually are infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STD); 1 In 4 teenagers have an STD which can lead to grave complications and infertility; 1.1 million are infected with HIV; 1 in 4 teenagers are victims of sexual abuse.

I know from personal experience over the past 16 years working in Georgia through my organization, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP), that adults are not trained in these matters. Parents, ministers, teachers, rabbis, the very adults youngsters should be able to go to for guidance and answers to questions about sexuality, are clueless for the most part.

With Reverend Bill Stayton

My friend, Baptist minister Rev Bill Stayton, was unable to answer the complex questions about sexuality that his parishioners asked him and so —early in his ministry–he did something very unusual for a minister, he became a therapist in family life and sex education and was a founder of The Center for Religion and Sexuality. Several years ago, Dr Satcher invited Rev Stayton to move the Institute to Morehouse School of Medicine.

Bill Stayton and me with Dr Linda Mona who works with veterans

Last night’s fundraiser was to support the endowed Chair in Sexuality and Religion at Morehouse, a position that will provide national and international leadership for sexual health and religion. There were many fascinating people who toil in this same vineyard: a catholic priest, a rabbi, sex therapists, teachers, politicians. Dr Linda Mona, for instance, is a clinical psychologist for the Department of Veteran Affairs at the Long Beach VA hospital. She provides services for the Spinal Cord Injury Service and told me that a good part of her work addresses issues of sexual dysfunction experienced by returning veterans. I was proud when she told me how useful my film, “Coming Home,” is in her work with veterans. James Griffin Jr, also at Morehouse School of Medicine, was there and commented on the fine program created by the Jane Fonda Center, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to stop dating violence. If you are interested in knowing more about all the amazing programs, trainings and curricula we have created, I encourage you to look at the Jane Fonda Center website which you can access on the front page of this blog or by clicking here. And, check out G-CAPP’s website. We are working in school districts in many parts of Georgia helping schools choose the appropriate health and sexuality curricula for their needs and training teachers in how to present these curricula. G-CAPP is the non-profit that will benefit from The First Annual World Fitness Day on May 1st.

From the Huffington Post:
Ten Radical Acts for Congo in the New Year
by Eve Ensler

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 Congo has been like this forever.”

• “There is nothing we can do.”

• “It’s too complicated. I just don’t understand.”

• “It’s a cultural thing.”

A. Violence against women and girls is rampant across the entire planet.

B. Sexual terrorism was imported into the DRC like a plague about 12 years ago years ago, after a 1996 military operation know as Operation Turquoise — a plan supported and implemented by the international community which allowed murdering Hutu militias of Rwanda (FDLR) into Eastern Congo. Since then, this sexual terrorism has been sustained by these and other parties interested in the minerals, (coltan, gold, tin), that are serving you. Like a plague, this rape and sexual violence has spread infecting the Congolese Army and even the UN peacekeepers who are there to “protect” the women. Put pressure on the international community to remove all outside militias. They brought them there, they are responsible for getting them out.

2. Stop asking women survivors in the Congo to tell their stories over and over

A woman activist told me yesterday they were going to shut up now.
“There is no reason to keep telling the story or paying expats lots of money
to research the story of women and girls in the Congo. We all know the story.”

Visit these sites:
Read the latest U.N. human rights reports from the NYT
AFEM
Friends of Congo
Read the recent Human Rights Watch reports
Read the history

We know what is happening in the DRC. Now is the time for action.

3. Deconstruct and abolish subterranean and learned racism

Deconstruct and abolish subterranean and learned racism that lies at the bedrock of human consciousness and arranges and expects and accepts the doom of black and brown people. Undo the brutal and evil indifference to the suffering of the people of Congo, the women in particular.

4. Shoes, shoes, shoes, for everyone who needs them

5. Insist on support for thousands of trained Congolese women police officers

Insist on support for thousands of trained Congolese women police officers who can protect their sisters in the bush. Don’t let Security Council resolutions 1820 and 1325 continue to be random insider numbers UN policy bureaucrats refer to when they are trying to prove they are doing something about sexual violence. Insist they be resolutions with grit that get applied regularly with sincerity and substance. Begin application by insisting that the UN not collaborate with rapists and former warlords in military operations.

Write to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ask her to allocate funding for a women’s police force in the Congo:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

6. Serve the Congolese and take their lead

Support their initiatives. Get out of the way. Support the local groups and campaigns that already exist, that have existed. They need your support to continue to exist. Fight to make sure the money headed for Eastern Congo actually gets to the women on the ground – the grassroots groups who need it most. Believe in grassroots women and men. Send them your confidence, your solidarity, and your money.

Give to V-Day’s Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource campaign as it continues to support local groups on the ground like AFEM, the South Kivu Women’s Media Association, Panzi Hospital in Bukavu and Heal Africa Hospital in Goma, women’s collectives like I Will Not Kill Myself Today and AFECOD, and the Women’s Ministry and Laissez l’Afrique Vivre.

Click here to donate.

7. Tell President Obama to step up to femicide

Insist that as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Obama ask questions about the history of the conflict in the Congo. Ask him to find out how and when this war began. Ask him to put his attention to what’s happening to the women in the Congo, to femicide — the destruction of the female species that is spreading to other countries and will continue to spread if he, himself does not make this a front and center issue. The Congo needs to be more than a phrase reference in one of his speeches. He needs to come to the Congo. He needs to meet the women and bring them to the table with himself and leaders of Rwanda and Uganda and Burundi. He needs to help facilitate a diplomatic plan for peace that does not involve more violence.

Write to President Obama and ask him to make finding a non-military solution to the war in Congo a priority in his foreign policy agenda.

8. Acknowledge what’s fueling this war and your part in it

Educate yourself about how conflict minerals are illegally and inhumanely pillaged from the Congo and make their way into your cell phones and the computer you are using to read this post right now. Demand that electronics companies alter their mining and trade policies so that conflict-free minerals are used in our electronics. Until this happens, we all literally have blood on our hands.

Investigate where and how your electronics companies are purchasing their materials. As a consumer, demand that they use conflict-free minerals in their parts.

9. Talk about the Congo everywhere you go

Be a pain in the ass. Ruin cocktail parties. Stop traffic. Give sermons. Insert facts about Congo in every possible occasion, i.e., in response to “How are you today?,” you might say: “Well, I would be okay if women weren’t being raped in the DRC….”

Host teach-ins and screen V-Day’s film Turning Pain to Power. Visit vday.org to access both.

10. Get angry and stop being polite

Feel what your sister, mother, grandmother, daughter, wife, girlfriend would be feeling if she were being gang raped or held as a sex slave for years or if her insides were destroyed by sticks and guns and she could never have another baby.

Feel feel feel.

Open yourself to feeling.

Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

CLICK HERE TO SEE COMPLETE ARTICLE ON HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Mike sent me a comment on the blog I posted recently—Eve Ensler’s powerful Huffington Post article about what’s being done to women in Eastern Congo. He wanted to knowhow men could do such things. I decided to make my answer to him a blog for all my readers:

Thanks for asking this question, Mike, it’s a central one and complex. The men who are raping and mutilating the women and girls (and babies!!!) in eastern Congo have been turned into crazed, maniacal killers by the genocidal war in Rwanda. Maybe you saw “Hotel Rwanda” which was about that war. This is not to excuse what they have become and there are other factors as well. Do remember that in some parts of the world, girls can be purchased for less than a cow. Women and girls, in the most extreme patriarchal cultures, have no power, no respect and are seen as sub human. A documentary about this situation said that some of these men believe if they rape women their families will be protected; if they rub certain oils on themselves bullets cannot hurt them. They are crazed and sick and beyond redemption and there MUST be consequences. Right now there are none, as Eve’s Huffington Post so powerfully exposed. Eve just wrote me that those who want to do something to help should go onto the V-DAY website and hit the registry for “City of Joy.” She will have a piece coming out monday that will have specifics about what to do. City of Joy, by the way, is a “city” that V-Day, in partnership with UNICEF, is building. The women there are doing the construction and Eve says they sing and dance with joy because they know someone is paying attention, someone is trying to help, not just showing up, handing out cards, making promises and never being heard from again. The “city” was designed by a Chicago architect where 100 women can come when they leave the hospital (to make room for the hundreds more that continue to pour in.) There, they can be cleaned, can heal their bodies, can receive emotional therapy, can earn job skills and can move from victimhood to being warriors for non-violence—as Eve likes to say. And I’ve seen it happen. It CAN happen. Thanks for your concern and for trying to help.

Thanks to any and all of you who want to help. It’s what gives life meaning—to know you are making a difference.

See you next time.

By Gracie Bonds Staples
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
5:23 p.m. Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Elizabeth Cardenas watched her friend’s boyfriend verbally and physically abuse her for two years.

It was one of the most difficult times in her life, Cardenas said.

“She didn’t know how to get out and I didn’t know how to help her,” said Cardenas.

The experience motivated the 17-year-old Tri-Cities High School senior to join other metro Atlanta teens for Wednesday’s launch of Start Strong Atlanta, a program aimed at stopping teen dating violence and abuse.

The launch coincides with Domestic Violence Awareness Month and is part of a national initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Hopefully if we’re successful Domestic Violence Month will become a thing of the past,” said Dr. Melissa Kottke, assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Jane Fonda Center.

The Fonda Center is one of 11 community organizations nationwide chosen to receive $1 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s national Start Strong initiative.

The healthy dating awareness program is the largest national public health initiative ever funded that is aimed at 11-to-14-year-olds.

“What’s more alarming is dating violence occurs at an even younger age,” said Fonda, founder of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

Marie Mitchell, director of the program, said one in six high school students in Georgia report having been hit, slapped or physically hurt by their boyfriend or girlfriend in the past year.

“That’s higher than the national rate, which is one in 10,” said Mitchell.

After her friend’s mother intervened, Cardenas said the girl finally broke up with her boyfriend and has since moved away.

Start Strong Atlanta, will target an estimated 2,000 seventh graders in Atlanta public schools, Mitchell said. More teenagers will be reached through the program’s community partners, which include Grady Health System and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

“We hope to reach over 10,000 youths over the next four years,” said Mitchell.

Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/atlanta-program-aims-to-151210.html

Please help stop the Bohemian Club from cutting old-growth redwood trees in the Bohemian Grove in CA.

Left, an undated photograph from inside the Bohemian Grove. Right, John “Jock” Hooper, club member turned redwood crusader. Portrait by Karen Kuehn.

Bohemian Tragedy
Members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club—2,500 of America’s richest, most conservative men, including Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, and a passel of Bechtels, Basses, and Rockefellers—are known to urinate freely against the ancient redwoods that cover their 2,700-acre property. Have they been chopping down the trees as well? According to one former member turned whistle-blower, the San Francisco–based society may have logged some of its old-growth forest. Drawing on his own Ivy League ties, the author investigates, with a daring sortie into the ceremonial kickoff of the Bohemians’ annual encampment.
Click here for the complete article in Vanity Fair

To get involved and for more information please visit these links:

http://www.bohemiangrovelogging.org

The Author of the Bohemian Tragedy Article Alex Shoumatoff’s site http://DispatchesFromTheVanishingWorld.com

About The Women’s Media Center

click for the web site: www.womensmediacenter.com

The Women’s Media Center makes women visible and powerful in the media. Led by our president, the Emmy-winning journalist, writer, and producer Carol Jenkins, the WMC works with the media to ensure that women’s stories are told and women’s voices are heard. We do this in three ways: through our media advocacy campaigns; by creating our own media; and by training women to participate directly in media. We are directly engaged with the media at all levels to ensure that a diverse group of women is present in newsrooms, on air, in print and online, as sources and subjects.

The Women’s Media Center was founded in 2005 as a non-profit progressive women’s media organization by writers/activists Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem.

Why Is It Important?
Simply put, there is a crisis of representation in the media. We live in a racially and ethnically diverse nation which is 51% female, but the news media itself remains staggeringly limited to a single demographic. While women hold less than 3% of decision-making “clout” positions in media, they also earned only 25% of all new media jobs created from 1990 -2005, despite constituting 65% of all undergraduate and graduate journalism and mass communications students.

The media should reflect the reality of our lives and can also help to determine the political policies and elections that shape our lives. The underrepresentation of women and people of color is at its most acute on the influential Sunday morning political talk shows where male guests outnumber female guests four to one, and white guests outnumber guests who are people of color by seven to one. Our work in diversifying the media landscape is critical to the health of our culture and democracy.

Media Advocacy
The Women’s Media Center convenes panels, issues reports, organizes grassroots campaigns, and meets behind the scenes with members of the media to address issues of women’s representation and general diversity. Our video documenting sexism in the primary election, “Sexism Sells But We’re Not Buying It,” garnered national attention, spawned a petition campaign, and received hundreds of thousands of hits on You Tube. Our 2008 panels, “From Soundbites to Solutions,” brought together top journalists like Christiane Amanpour, Juan Gonzalez, Michel Martin, Rebecca Traister and others in New York and at the Democratic National Convention. We also produced a report from these panels’ findings; “Bias, Punditry, and the Press.” Through our “Show Me The Women” campaign, we were active in critiquing and engaging with the Presidential debates. The WMC is conducting an ongoing effort to push for more diverse, inclusive moderation and format in the next electoral cycle, so that we can all enjoy a real exchange of ideas from journalists who should represent us all. For more detailed information on any of these or to learn about our other media advocacy work, check our Programs page.

Creating Our Own Media
Each week, The Women’s Media Center publishes 2-3 pieces of original writing and journalism on our website. These pieces “tell the untold story” through reporting, first-person narratives, and analysis of existing news trends. The WMC invites women to write for us. For more information, please email rebekah@womensmediacenter.com. We also produce a “Daily News Brief,” an aggregate of the day’s top news stories on women and media. To subscribe to our communications, which include WMC Exclusives, the Daily News Brief, and our newsletter, click here.

Media Training
The Progressive Women’s Voices program provides media training and support for progressive women so they can develop robust media strategies that have greater impact. Now in its second year, the WMC’s Progressive Women’s Voices program has launched an incredible group of women sources, experts, authors and commentators. The WMC provides its PWV classes with training and practice in broadcast, radio, print, blogging, writing, and more. Most importantly, we train women to craft and articulate their own messages in any media environment. With our training and support, in 2008 our PWV women appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Elle, New York, USA Today, Forbes, Variety, Mother Jones, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, The Huffington Post, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, on the Associated Press and Reuters wires, on “Good Morning America,” CNN, MSNBC, CBS Nightly News, Fox News, ABC News, CNBC, The Tyra Banks Show, PBS’s “To The Contrary,” Bill Moyers, on numerous NPR shows, and in hundreds of other significant media outlets.

Join Us
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