Yesterday the Women's Tribunal heard testimonies from a group of women who spoke about the unspeakable crimes and violence done to girls and women. We want to honor their pain and celebrate their triumph as survivors. They are battered women suffering from years of abuse from their husbands. They are victims of incest and child abuse. They are welfare mothers left through the cracks of our systems. They are homeless and depressed women struggling against the bureaucracy that is supposed to help them. They are children who suffer from environmental degradation we have created. They are women forced to be sex workers, providing service to the lobbyists. They live in our cities, in our suburbs. They are brown, white, black, and yellow. They are our sisters, our mothers, our friends, our children, and our neighbors.

Every year there are approximately 69 million newborn girls. Assuming one out of five will encounter domestic violence some time in their lives. 14 million newborn girls worldwide will suffer from domestic violence. There are about 2.1 million newborn girls in the United States per year, and among them 425,000 will suffer from domestic violence during their best years. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States. Yet, it is our best-kept secret.

Violence against women cannot be eliminated without addressing the interlocking oppressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice. As we struggle against violence in the United States, we also remember our sisters suffering from war and atrocities in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, and other places in the world.

The Council of Wise Women indicts the federal government and the state for failing to put violence against women and girls as a top priority. The fight against terrorism must start with terror at home, at our workplace, and in our communities. We condemn the perpetrators who maim women's bodies, and break women's spirits. We call for a bipartisan effort to pass necessary legislations, devise appropriate policies, and provide adequate means to ensure the safety of women and girls so that they will live with dignity and hope. Our tax dollars must not go to war and to prepare for war, while our women are left to live in fear and despair. Instead this money should be used to prevent the perpetration of domestic violence and sexual violence in our houses, on the streets, and in our institutions.

We call upon colleagues in the Boston Social Forum, the Democratic National Committee and people of goodwill to stand in solidarity with women and girls who suffer from all forms of violence and to work for a future that women everywhere will live, and live abundantly.

Women's Web Council of Wise Women

Christina Brinkley is a demographer and sociologist and professor of Africana Women's Studies at Simmons College in Boston whose research combines narrative with statistical data.

Vinie Burrows is an award winning Broadway actress who has served as the Permanent Representative for the Women's International Democratic Federation with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and on the NGO Committee on Southern Africa for the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council, the Commission on the Status of Women.

Julia Perez Kennedy is a community organizer in the Cambridge Public Schools and a member of the Sojourner Feminist Institute and of the William Joyner Center for the Study of War and its Consequences.

Kwok Pui Lan is Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, and the author of Introducing Asian Feminist Theology. She was an advisor to the Asian Task Force against Domestic Violence in Boston, volunteer for the Massachusetts Conference on Women Bringing Beijing Home, and is active in promoting civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

Artist, filmmaker, and activist Grace Poore has worked for the US-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in Sri Lanka. She is from Malaysia and has lived in the US for over 20 years.

Eva Quistorp helped start the new women's movement, the anti-nuclear power campaign, and the peace movement in Europe in the 1970s. She was a founding member of the German Greens and a member of their presidency from 1986-88, and served as a member of the European Parliament from 1989-1994. She is the co-author of the Beijing Platform of Action, the Agenda 21 in the field on environment and peace and of the Resolution 1325 of the UN.