Grassroots Movement

Here is my own attempt at a grassroots movement. I have recently been acquainted with an organization called Equality Now. Equality Now works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through the mobilization of public pressure. This is important. I'm asking bloggers to include the button you will find in my sidebar as part of their blog page to increase awareness of this organization and their initiatives. I'm not asking you to make a financial contribution (of course, you can if you want). I'm just asking you to include this button in the hope that people will check them out. I have gotten their permission to do this.

Please save the image on your own photo server or service. If you need the HTML I used to set it up, just let me know and I'll send it to you. Also, if you could ask other blogger friends to do this, I would really appreciate it. Let's take the world by storm and take a stand, one blog at a time. Here's the information from the 'About' page at Equality Now:

Equality Now was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support their efforts to stop these human rights abuses. Through its Women’s Action Network of concerned groups and individuals around the world, Equality Now:

• distributes information about human rights violations
• takes action to protest these violations
• brings public attention to human rights violations against women

The Women’s Action Network is committed to voicing a worldwide call for justice and equality for women. Issues of urgent concern to Equality Now include rape, domestic violence, reproductive rights, trafficking of women, female genital mutilation, and the denial of equal access to economic opportunity and political participation.

Human rights violations against women have historically been denied the attention and concern of international organizations, national governments, traditional human rights groups and the media. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of girls and women around the globe continue to endure debilitating and often fatal human rights abuses.

• India: A 10-year-old girl is rescued by a flight attendant who notices her crying. Her father has sold her to the 60-year-old Saudi Arabian man sitting next to her for the equivalent of US$240.
• Kenya: At a boarding school, 300 boys attack the girls' dormitory. Seventy-one girls are raped. Nineteen are trampled to death in the stampede to escape. The school's vice principal remarks, "The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just wanted to rape."
• Brazil: A man who confessed to stabbing his wife and her lover to death is for the second time acquitted of murder by an all-male jury. The acquittal is based on the argument that he acted in legitimate defense of his wronged honor.
• United States: A 51-year-old woman is stabbed 19 times and killed by her former boyfriend as she waits inside a courthouse to extend an order of protection. Twice before he had been charged with harassment. Both times the charges were dropped.These are only a few instances of abuses which occur every single day.

Human rights violations against women must be documented, publicized--and stopped. We need Equality Now.