Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

The case of Noura Hussein has brought the controversial subject of forced and child marriages to the forefront once again on the world stage. Noura is a Sudanese youth, now nineteen, who was given away in marriage by her family when she was only 15. Shortly after the marriage took place—against the teen’s will—Noura escaped but eventually, after a three-year hiatus, was returned to the custody of her legal husband by the hand of her own father. Once locked up again in her husband’s home, Noura continued to refuse the physical advances of her imposed spouse. In order to consummate the marriage, according to the young woman’s defense, members of the husband’s family held Noura down while he raped her. When he tried to rape her again on his own the next day, Noura stabbed him to death. Seeking help, Noura returned to her own home, but her family turned her in to the authorities. Sudan is one of a large number of countries in the world where marital rape is not considered a cr...

There is a revolution afoot and there may well be more to it than first meets the eye. In just the last few months and days since October of last year, the MeToo and NeverAgain movements have mushroomed up and flourished in the United States, in the face of stubborn indifference and intentional inaction at the highest levels of political power. A sign of the times? Clearly. And a probable healthy reaction to the previous trend toward diminishing democracy and growing authoritarianism. Like the spark of all revolutions, this one could well kindle replications throughout the rest of the world as well. Especially throughout the West, where reactionaries have emerged victorious in Washington, while gaining a level of still minority but no less troubling strength in Europe, a trend not witnessed since the fascist prelude to World War II. These brand new liberal democratic movements are, then, an acute and immediate answer to attempted mob rule and to the undermining of individual ri...

It is called NOW, and that’s no coincidence. Clearly, its members have long been tired of being told to wait, to be patient, that their day will come. NOW stands for National Organization for Women, and it is the largest organization of feminist grassroots activists in the United States today. The activists in NOW weren’t “born yesterday”. The organization was founded half a century ago, at the height of the sixties protest era by civil rights firebrands Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray. Friedan (1921-2006) would gain a well-deserved reputation as a leading US writer, activist and feminist, whose book, The Feminine Mystique , was considered by many to have sparked the second big wave of feminist activism in the turbulent 20 th century. She would continue to be a major voice for women’s rights throughout her life, although she would step down as the president of NOW in 1970, after serving at the head of the organization for a four-year term. She would go on to help establish the N...

This month marks the 97 th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States of America. Although long considered the framework model for much of Western democracy, the US only granted the vote to its female citizens in 1920, ratifying a women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution on August 18 th of that year. And it was hardly a right justly recognized and bestowed upon women out of a progressive sense of democratic constitutional correctness. It was, rather, a hard-fought right won through the tenacity and sacrifice of a handful of women leaders who little by little convinced a huge following to back their demands for what should have been rightfully theirs from the outset: the right to an equal voice in choosing those who would govern and make the country’s laws. It would take eight decades of struggle for American women to win the right to vote. And the means by which they pursued that civil right provides an exemplary case study of peaceful protest and non-violent c...