Pussies Unite!

The Vagina Monologues performance was last week, and it was AWESOME. Even more awesome was the fact that I remembered all my lines, didn't trip/pass out/vomit on stage. Go me!

All-in-all, through ticket sales and merch sales (and by merchandise, I mean chocolate vagina lollipops), IC Players and IC Feminists raised over $2,400 dollars. 90 percent of the proceeds are going to the local womens advocacy center, while the other ten percent are going to the V-Day Movement to help women in the DRC.

I had so much fun doing the show. It was amazing to be able to act in a play for the first time since high school, and have actual lines. And to play an adult. Not a sick child or Scrooge's corpse (they built the bed too small for anyone else. So my big role in "A Christmas Carol" was to lie under a black sheet for 20 minutes and breathe as little as possible).

But I digress. The show was amazing, and IC Human Rights was there to table for women's rights in Congo. We had fliers with facts, lists of things people can do to help end the violence, and a letter to Hillary Clinton people could sign. We got over 80 signatures! Not too shabby.

The members of IC Human Rights are so amazing. We got asked to table at the show pretty suddenly, and even though the civil war in Congo wasn't originally on the semester's agenda, the members really studied up and took to the challenge with open arms.

We're now planning a teach-in, a bake sale (Cookies for Congo!), and a benefit concert to help the V-Day Movement build a City of Joy in eastern Congo. The City of Joy will help female victims of sexual assault heal both mentally and physically, and train them to become independent leaders. It's a pretty amazing project and I hope it's successful.

An ex-marine came up to one of the ICHR e-board members during tabling. He said he had been to Congo, and it was a mess. But that our letter to Hillary Clinton won't do shit to help the situation. He might be right. There are so many reasons why the United Nations and the United States have failed to act. Cultural, economic, etc. But we have to put at least a little hope in the American Dream, that our elected leaders would stand up for the things we, the citizens, believe in and respectfully represent us abroad. Sure, Hillary Clinton might read our letter and wipe her ass with it. I don't know. But at least IC Human Rights and the signers of the letter tried through legitimate channels to make a change in the world.

And letter writing campaigns have been proven to work. Go ask Amnesty International.

We know the likelihood of our letter ending the civil war in Congo. That's why ICHR is doing other things as well, like raise money for the City of Joy. We're not putting all our fragile human rights eggs in one basket.