Feminist Peace Network

Most days I somehow manage to maintain a functional level of distancing that enables me to post to this blog. Today wasn’t one of those days. The proverbial last straw was a Letter to the Editor in the Boulder Daily Camera from Janine D’Anniballe, the Executive Director of Moving to End Sexual Assault discussing the denial of federal funding for their prevention education programs. Why? Because there is a whopping total of $236,000 in such funds for the entire state of Colorado. As D’Anniballe points out, a minute of the war in Iraq costs $380,000. In otherwords, if you stop the effing war for a minute and a half, you could fund the entire state of Colorado at current levels for 2 years! Imagine what you could do if you stopped the war for an entire day… She writes,

“Something is horribly wrong with our country’s sense of priorities and our collective definition of the term “homeland security.” While we occupy Iraq and wage a war about control of oil, our infrastructure is literally (the bridge in Minneapolis) and figuratively (cuts for essential anti-violence programming) crumbling.”

She ends with this plea:

“The federal government’s priorities are elsewhere; where are yours? Go to our Web site, www.movingtoendsexualassault.org, to donate.”

It is rare that I use this space to ask for funds, there are so many organizations who desperately need help, I trust that the readers of this blog wisely give to those in their own universe. But in this case, I am urging you to donate if you can. And then get mad, very mad. Songwriter Patti Smith got it right when she wrote, “People have the power to redeem the work of fools.” We need to start exercising that power…stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Action Alerts, Sheroes, Commentary