Offering an instantaneous cure for this conundrum of the masses, cellphones now offer accessibility and increasingly diverse lenses on our environment; Applications are tirelessly popping up to transform our images with distinct visual effects (Hooray for Photoshop and CameraBag for the iPhone!). LENS, the New York Times photojournalism blog, solicited photographs from our very own mobile devices and received over 1,500 responses, of which 353 are featured in Call Forwarding. The results are striking.

Given the ubiquity of mobile devices equiped with cameras, we are increasingly seeing their use in the defense of human rights and awareness building. WITNESS is one such organization facilitating this movement. Born in 1992, WITNESS has since trained and partnered with hundreds of human rights activists to utilize video in their respective campaigns. In 2007, in recognition of the ubiquity of camera-enabled mobile phones and the potential for anyone to become a witness to abuse and atrocity, WITNESS launched the Hub, an online human rights video sharing community. Check it out!

Due to the incredible epidemic of rape in the military in which 1 in 3 women in the military have been raped or sexually assaulted, last week, October 12-16, was designated “Military Rape Awareness Week” by Veterans for Peace, a national veterans organization. The national campaign was kicked off at the Times Square recruiting station, and was marked by the presence of survivor, Staff Sgt. Sandra Lee, playwright Eve Ensler and local activists. You may recall the waves that Sandra’s case made in 2005; Last week was her first public appearance in which she spoke about the fact that she was raped twice while in combat duty in Iraq.

The Department of Defense report that has sparked this conscious raising movement, states the following about the increasing prevalence of violence:

“Sexual assault and rape of women and men in the US military increased so dramatically during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that in 2005 then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld formed a task force on sexual assault; however, the task force did not meet until 2008. Nearly one-third of a nationwide sample of women veterans’ report they experienced rape or attempted rape during their service. Of that group, 37 percent said they were raped multiple times and 14 percent reported they were gang-raped. Seventy-one percent of veterans reported being sexually assaulted, and a ninety percent reported having been sexually harassed.” The DoD has also been reluctant to release statistics on sexual assault of men in the military, but anecdotal evidence indicates that the statistics are alarmingly high.

The numbers are clearly disturbing. Reports of sexual assault have risen 8 percent in military as a whole since the onset of the Iraq war, and in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars collectively, they have shot up by 26 percent. The military touts pride in this number because they believe that this equates to increased reporting, not incidence. But in reality, no one can tell for certain which it is – even the Department of Defense admits that only 10 percent of assaults are reported at all. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes in the US, and this fact remains true in the military. Sixty years of US military studies and task forces since women began entering the military in larger numbers have not lessened the incidents of assault and rape.

Over the past 10 years, more than 700 US Army Recruiters have been accused of sexual misconduct or rape. The DoD’s report, unsurprisingly, did not include any information about conviction rates.  My own research revealed, however, that only 10.9 percent of all reported assaults in 2008 resulted in court-martialing. In the rare cases that were prosecuted during this year, 62 percent of perpetrators were punished with “nonjudicial punishments” or “administrative actions and discharges” – essentially equating to a slap on the wrist!

This is a national scandal. As, Helen Benedict, a profession of journalism at Columbia writes in The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, if the Pentagon was serious about preventing and prosecuting sexual assault in the military they would declare:

“We are going to address this by protecting every victim who reports, by making it a court-martial offense to intimidate anyone out of reporting or to block the investigation in any way, and by punishing any commander overseeing a unit in which assaults occur. We are also going to follow the civilian practice of putting the burden of proof on investigators, not on the victim. We are no longer going to make victims face their assailants or pay for their own rape evidence kits, as they must do now. We are going to reduce our dismissed cases dramatically. And we are going to prosecute, imprison and expel from the military anyone who is found to have committed sexual or domestic violence against fellow service members or civilians.”

Why this declaration has not been made and acted on is incomprehensible. We must make ending violence within our very military a common goal.

Sources: Veterans for Peace and Helen Benedict

In seeking to close the $24 billion dollar deficit, Mr. Schwarzeneggar has revoked $20 million from the state’s Domestic Violence Program. Luckily, lawmakers have been able to restore $16.3 million (a 20% cut) of these life-saving funds (Thank you, Senator Leland Yee), but the damage runs deep. 

The cuts to the program, which is part of the State Department of Public Health, means that the 94 nonprofit agencies charged with running the state’s domestic violence shelters have lost about $200,000 each. For most, that amounts to more than 40 percent of their anticipated annual financing. Six domestic violence shelters in California have been forced to close while dozens more are scaling back services.  Many centers are laying off staff and closing satellite offices that serve remote areas, where alternative support systems are nonexistent.  Thankfully, some organizations have received funds for other services from the federal stimulus package and the state’s emergency management agency.

Other states, including New Jersey and Illinois, have struggled to find ways to keep domestic violence centers open, but national advocacy groups say that absolutely no state has gone as far as California in (attempting to) “zeroing out” domestic vioence funds.

This act is incomprehensible, and incredibly shortsighted.

The national network, which conducts an annual survey of domestic-violence programs across the country, reported that 3,872 California victims were served during its 24-hour survey period in September 2008, more than half of them for emergency or temporary housing. Nearly 700 were denied services, often because of short-staffing. About 310 were denied access to temporary shelter because none was available, according to the Washington, D.C.-based group.  All of this in one day!  Just take a minute to think about how these budget cuts will affect the number of denied cases of assistance! It’s appalling.

According to the state attorney general’s office, 113 people died in 2008 in cases related to domestic violence, a number that had dropped from a decade-high of 187 deaths in 2003. Domestic violence reports make up the majority of 911 calls, although many victims never reach out for help from police.

Ironically, the cutbacks come as the movement to fight domestic violence marked the 15th anniversary of passage of both the federal Violence Against Women Act, which established programs and penalties in cases of abuse against women, and California’s Battered Women Protection Act, which established financing for the state’s shelter system.

This reckless act lacks an ounce of compassion, as it makes survivors of domestic violence increasingly more vulnerable, and affects women’s lives more deeply than legislators could possible imagine.

Sources: New York Times and Stop Family Violence

Prologue. Origins and Research.
Act One. Chasing Amy.
Act Two. I Am Here to Make Frenemies.
Act Three. Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace.
Act Four. The Case of the Long Lost Frenemy.

Her 2009 MacArthur Fellow Award Biography:

Lynsey Addario is a photojournalist whose powerful images are visual testimony to the most pressing conflicts and humanitarian crises of the 21st century. In a time when many readers are becoming numb to the constant flow of images of war, death, and suffering, Addario combines a rigorous journalistic approach with a keen artistic eye to render events in Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, and elsewhere in startling and unexpected ways. Her vibrant color photographs of refugee camps in Darfur reveal both the cruelties that have been perpetrated as well as the dignity and humanity of the victims. Relentless in her pursuit of images that evoke an overall narrative, she has gained access to regions and peoples often closed to outsiders. Free of a singular didactic perspective, her photographic essays from Afghanistan and Iraq depict the underlying realities of war: the pain, confusion, and exhilaration of being a soldier; the daily struggles for civilians, especially children, living in a war zone; and the lives of Taliban leaders. A regular theme in Addario’s work is capturing the lives of women in male-dominated societies. Her most recent project involves photographing survivors of gender-based violence in the Congo and is part of a traveling exhibition intended to increase awareness of the ongoing human rights abuses taking place there. Addario’s dedication to demystifying foreign cultures and exposing the tragic consequences of human conflict is drawing much-needed attention to conflict zones around the world and providing a valuable historical record for future generations.

Lynsey’s recent bodies of work include “Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jehadis” in Morocco for The New York Times Magazine, “Iran Today” for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, “Battle Company and the War in Afghanistan” for The New York Times Magazine, “Bhutan’s Experiment With Democracy” for National Geographic Magazine and “The Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo” for The New York Times.

I’ve included an image from Darfur here (for further additions soon), and will undoubtably highlight her work on survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the near future.

FYI: The MacArthur Fellow Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations, through unrestricted fellowships. In doing so, the Foundation hopes to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.

By Kristin McRae, Feminists for Choice

Almost three decades after the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced and defeated, and eighty six years after it was originally drafted by women’s rights leader, Alice Paul, the E.R.A has made its way back to Congress. This time, in hopes of FINALLY getting the votes its been needing since 1982.

Its not a difficult concept to grasp, Equal Rights. Yet, every year since 1982, the E.R.A has been re-introduced into Congress and repeatedly shot down for one reason or another. At this point in time, it has been ratified by 35 of the required 38 states needed for a Constitutional Amendment. And yet, here we are, almost thirty years since, and it seems as if we’ve all forgotten to care.

The current bill in this session of congress was introduced by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) under House Joint Resolution 61. The text of this legislation is exact to the very same E.R.A bill that was submitted to Congress in 1972 under President Richard Nixon. The only difference is that this bill, if passed through both houses, would not contain the original 7 year time limit for ratification that the original bill did. In 1979, we were still three states short of the 38 needed, and an additional bill was drafted to extend the deadline another 4 years to 1982. It was at this juncture that, under President Ronald Reagan, the E.R.A is said to have “died”. To this day, Ronald Reagan was the first and only president to actively oppose a Constitutional amendment to give equal rights to women (Chronology of the Equal Rights Amendment)

The language of the E.R.A is simple:

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.”(Huffington Post)

And yet we find that this scares people….indeed, equality for women and the constitutional grounds for making sure it is enforced….would scare me too if i was a privileged, sexist, and overall ignorant human being. Alas, while the E.R.A may be an annual attraction for lawmakers to joke about, this should be the year that joke becomes a reality that they are forced to deal with. Twenty one states currently have a version of the E.R.A drafted into their state constitutions. ( AK, CA, CO, CT, HI, IA, MD, MA, MT, NH, NJ, NM, PA, TX, WA, WY, FL, IL, LA, UT and VA.) Sixteen of those twenty one states have signed and ratified the E.R.A. However, five of those states, (FL, IL, LA, UT and VA) have chosen to not ratify the E.R.A. This is where we may begin.

Regardless of what state you live in, you have the power to contact and speak with representative and elected officials from each of these five states. Specifically, speaking with the congressional members of those states that also will have the power to push House Joint Resolution 61 through. The easiest way to pressure an elected official into action is to point out the hypocrisy of their actions; representing a state that promotes gender equality inside its borders but not on a federal level is a great example of a double standard. A simple phone call, letter, e-mail, demonstration, or protest can have a major effect on the publicity of the E.R.A in these states. I urge you to join the fight and help the E.R.A finally achieve the recognition it deserves….to become the 28th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

History of the Equal Rights Amendment

Her strength, resilience and spirit is infectious.  

Breast Cancer Facts:

• Breast cancer incidence in women in the US is 1 in 8 (13%), while 1% of breast cancers occur in men.
• Besides skin cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women. More than 1 in 4 cancers are breast cancer.
• As of 2008, there are about 2.5 million women who have survived breast cancer in the US.
• About 1.3 million new cases of breast cancer were expected to occur among women worldwide in 2007 (most recent data available). Rates of breast cancer globally vary a great deal; however, low screening and incomplete reporting can make breast cancer rates in developing countries appear much lower than they truly are.

Give women a fighting chance against breast cancer, and get involved! Find a 3-Day Walk for the Cure benefitting Susan G. Komen for the Cure near you.

“Maternal mortality is not sexy enough for most media,” Mr. Vernasci said.“I decided to put all my soul into this issue and I don’t care who’s going to publish it”

“The whole scenario was unreal to my eyes,” he said. “When the woman left the room after the suture, I saw a doctor who was covering the corpse of another woman who I had left an hour before in the pre-birth room. She had died — along with the baby she carried in her womb — while she was waiting to give birth. I had talked with her only an hour before, and she told me she was not feeling well, that this was her first son. She told me she was scared.”

The photographs make us share that fear.