Here’s a little secret:
I <3 fall.
Not THE Fall with Mark E. Smith (although I do adore them), or the falls I often make because I'm clumsy, but fall as in autumn.
Today I went to the woods and tromped around in pigtails with some friends and we drank coffee from a flask and ate vegan muffins and satsumas. Fall is the time of year that makes me want to run around and create create create til my hands bleed.
Fall makes me want to howl at the moon, take walks through downtown London holding hands, fling myself into huge piles of raked leaves, wear bright colours, go to the Battersea Dogs Home and cuddle with abandoned puppies, pull out my old Minor Threat and Operation Ivy tapes and sing outloud offkey.
Also of note, the following information was passed along to me and maybe you’ll find it meaningful, too:
16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is a worldwide campaign that provides opportunities to take a stand against gender-based violence and to mobilize around women’s human rights. The 16 Days Campaign, initiated in 1991 by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, runs from International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25th) through International Human Rights Day (December 10th). The campaign makes explicit the connection between women’s rights and human rights. Over one thousand organizations in approximately one hundred and thirty countries are participating this year.
AIUSA’s Women’s Human Rights Program is once again participating in this worldwide campaign and encourages each of you to do the same. AIUSA’s campaign theme this year focuses on the murders and “disappearances” of women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City, Mexico.
Background on 16 Days
In June of 1993, representatives of nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world gathered in Vienna, Austria for the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights. Women’s human rights advocates had worked for two years nationally, regionally and globally to ensure that women’s rights were recognized as human rights at the conference and that violence against women was included in the discussion. The resulting document, the Vienna Declaration and Platform of Action signed by 171 states, was historic in its emphasis on the global pervasiveness of gender-based violence and in its compelling appeal to governments and to the United Nations to take action to eliminate such violence. The document declared:
The human rights of women and the girl-child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. Gender-based violence and all forms of sexual harassment and exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudice and international trafficking, are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person, and must be eliminated.
Since the Conference, significant gains have been made on the international level for the movement to end violence against women. In December of 1993, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW). In 1994, the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Its Causes and Consequences to monitor the various manifestations of gender violence on a worldwide scale
In 1995, the UN held the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing where women’s human rights advocates again demanded that governments take concrete measures to improve the status of women. The resulting Beijing Platform for Action included a chapter devoted to eliminating violence against women. In 2000, the Beijing Platform for Action was reviewed by the UN General Assembly and the resulting document sought to strengthen governments’ commitments to fulfilling the human rights of women worldwide.
The murders and “disappearances” in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City are but one illustration of the rampant gender-based violence that persists around the world today. Join with Amnesty International and help end violence against women in Ciudad Juarez and around the world.
For more information about how to get involved with the 16 days campaign, visit here.
Screw summer, fall makes me happy. So go do good things as the weather gets cooler and you have to pull out the mittens and you can start to see your breath.
Rock on fall!