Hello WILPF Community,

Today I met with Pastor Chrsitine Osongo and Mr. Alexander Hamilton in a friendly meeting about organizing Congolese pastors to go into rural areas in Congo to teach about HIV/AIDS and the connections to corporatism, militias, and sexual violence. There's an event coming up in August where we'll screen films, have discussions, table, and train about 60 Congolese reps to take this message into the villages. Metro will be an official endorser and anyone that wants to join the effort is more than welcome to do so. By the way, it is being held in Brooklyn!That means Brooklynites have an excuse to participate for a change.

Well, the struggle continues and we're moving upwards. Hooray!

Jen

JOIN
...WILPF & the Coalition for Women's Rights in Conflict Situations.

EDUCATE
...yourself and others. Contact us for articles, resources and info on film screenings, or host your own screening
at a local church or club.

CHALLENGE
...the media with letters to the editor (call WILPF NY Metro for a FREE “how to” guide);
...World Court and the International Criminal Court to prosecute the perpetrators through lobbying (call the office
for resources)
...corporations through boycotts and exposing their lack of social responsibility.

DONATE
...to WILPF's Project Congo Fund to keep the work of raising awareness and ending the sexual violence in Congo.

Books:
The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality
Thomas Turner

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
Adam Hochschild

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
Michela Wrong

The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila, A People's History
George Nzongola-Ntalaja

Articles, Interviews and Reports:

Women Left for Dead -- and the Man Who's Saving Them
Eve Ensler
Glamour Magazine

Kabila forces blamed for killings
BBC, 25 October 2007

DRC:Hospital's Tale Reveals Missing Children, Brutalised Women
Anuradha Kher, 24 October 2007

Stephen Lewis Interview on WHYY Radio on The War On Women in East Congo

"They Are Destroying the Female Species in Congo": Congolese Human Rights Activist Christine Schuler Deschryver on Sexual Terrorism and Africa's Forgotten War
Interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (streaming audio)

Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War
Jeffrey Gettleman
The New York Times

A Conversation with Eve Ensler and Christine Schuler Deschryver: Ending Femicide in the Congo
PBS Podcast

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1960: After almost a century of colonization, the Congo declares independence from Belgium on June 30. The charismatic Patrice Lumumba is elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu becomes president of the Congo. Shortly after Lumumba takes office, he is dismissed and arrested soon after. Moise Tshombe declares Katanga an independent province and is elected president.

1961: Belgian- and U.S.-backed troops arrange Lumumba’s assassination. Later that year, Mobutu Sese Seko, an army general favored by the United States, seizes power in a coup, propping up a Kasavubu-led government, and begins disarming Katangese soldiers. That coup paves the way for what would be 32 years of corrupt anti-Communist rule.

1962: In the wake of Rwandan independence from Belgium, the majority Hutus seize power from the minority Tutsis, effectively switching roles of oppressor and oppressed. Tens of thousands of Tutsis flee to neighboring countries, with some forming a guerrilla army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Lying to Rwanda’s west, the Congo becomes entangled in the conflict between the two groups as refugees and rebels alike flee to the Congo’s eastern cities.

Since its independence from Belgium in 1960, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the Congo) formerly known as Zaire, has been a hotbed of violence and conflict. Straddling the equator, the central African country has a tropical and humid climate. The Congo is surrounded by the countries of Angola, Zambia, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.

The Congo’s population, which is 56 million, comprises more than 200 ethnic groups. An estimated 65 percent of the population can read and write in French, the official language. The proportion of people who have entered primary school has decreased steadily since the wars began in 1993.

From the glamour and rarity of diamonds to the common cell phone, African resources flow out of the country through multi-national funnels. This heinous mechanism benefits foreign interests and, meanwhile, guts the local economy. This project raises awareness about sexual violence in the CONGO and connecting unbridled brutality to externalized controls.

What We Do:

Within the U.S., we partner with various organizations to host film screenings and teach-ins in grassroots community organizations, civic and religious groups, and college campuses. Within the D.R.C., we partner with V-Day, Panzi Hospital and grassroots women organizations to spread the word about sexual violence, advocate for women victims of violence, and foster economic regrowth.

We Partner With:

Congolese Women’s Campaign Against Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

In The Making

This page will describe in an overview sense the Project Congo and it's goals.

Images will be added to this page once the text is outlined and first drafted.

Pardon our construction, but come back soon.

This project, the Militarization of Fashion, focuses on our wholesale buy-in to the Warfare Economy.

If Fashion is supposed to express our individuality
and uniforms to homogenize us,
then dressing in a uniform,
as a statement of style,
hardly expresses the unique;
rather, the wearing of camouflage states
that we accept dressing to kill; daily.

This project challenges us to find ways
to expose this trend and
encourage others to notice
the banal prevalence
of military culture
in civilian life.

WILPF NY Metro is in
the process of working with
design students to create
a Peace Fashion line.

Keep visiting this site for more info.