Opposition to CEDAW and I-VAWA Campaign Continues

Beginning this coming Monday, March 12, 2007, RADAR will pull out all the stops, and launch a Pre-emptive Strike on I-VAWA.

For a solid week RADAR will be visiting every US Senator’s Washington DC office, special focus on Senator Richard Lugar.

As we stated in our last email, this critical part of our alliance’s ongoing campaign to oppose CEDAW and I-VAWA. This effort will be lead, staffed, and managed by; RADAR – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting.

Our role is now is to focus on the education Senator Richard Lugar’s staff and show them the support for the opposition to I-VAWA in advance of RADAR’s personal visits.

For the rest of this week we need everyone to focus on contacting Senator Lugar’s Washington DC office and the White House and voicing their opposition to I-VAWA.

Email:
senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov

Staff Contacts:
VAWA: Joseph O’Donnell joe_o’donnell@lugar.senate.gov

Foreign Relations: Chris Ann Keener

Call his office and ask for the above staff members by name.

What should you do?

Call Senators Lugar’s Washington DC office today.

Tell his staff:

• Your name and the city and state you live in.
• “Please oppose CEDAW and the funding proposed through I-VAWA until these programs operate under these laws don’t deny half the victims of abuse of support and services and hearings are held to deal with the abuses and waste in our existing systems.”
• Tell them how these programs hurt the victims by turning them away when the need help the most or how they refuse to serve victims in your communities because they say the law requires them to.

Send letters, faxes, and email. Here is where we will show our unity. Our research has discovered that the groups that supported the likes of VAWA do one very simple thing, they all use the exact same subject line in their letters, faxes and emails and follow on very simple rule.

The subject line we are asking you to use, verbatim is:

• I oppose US support for CEDAW and I-VAWA.

Follow this one simple rule; make your message short and to the point. Keep your letters and faxes under one page long. A sample letter is on our web site here.

For even more tips on how to improve the chance that they’ll pay attention to your letter click here.

1. Personalize the sample letter. Include information about your community and the programs that deny abuse victims service. Describe your successes in helping those abandoned by a multi-billion dollar funding source and the unmet needs male victims and their child face everyday. Print this on your personal letterhead (if you have one or make one if you don’t). These personalized touches are very important to members of Congress and their staff. Looks are everything!
2. Fax this letter to Senator Lugar’s DC office and copy your Senators. For contact information for your Senator, visit www.senate.gov or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
3. Finally, mail the hard copy with your signature, full legal name typed or printed, home address, city, state, zip code and your home phone number to both of your Senator Lugar’s Washington, D.C. office.

Let’s Review a Few Details

CEDAW is the acronym for the “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,” adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. It is often described as an international bill of rights for women.

CEDAW consists of a preamble and 30 articles, it defines what constitutes discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination.

However, within its dialog are countless contradictory statements, such as:

• to incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws and adopt appropriate ones prohibiting discrimination against women;

In order to “incorporate the principle of equality of men and women” appropriate laws must include both men and women.

As we have seen in our own domestic violence laws, dealing with the concerns of only one gender where where the problems exist for both is harmful to both genders, destroys family, and risks the health, safety, and wellbeing of children.

I-VAWA stands for, “the International Violence Against Women Act,” which is a legislative action being developed. This effort is being supported by a campaign sponsored by the Women’s Edge Coalition, Amnesty International USA and the Family Violence Prevention Fund. The legislation is planned to be introduced in 2007.

Although the development of this legislation is widely attributed to Senator Joseph R. Biden (D-DE) on numerous web sites, including the Democratic Party’s site, reference to it on the Senator’s own web site is mysteriously absent.

I-VAWA would provide United States funding to the United Nations to implement international gender bias. The American public has seen the colossal failure of the domestic version of this plan in our own country, yet members of our Congress are preparing to inflict these same damages on the entire world using our tax dollars.

Now is the time to contact your Senators and urge them oppose CEDAW and I-VAWA.

I-VAWA also carries the proposed United States funding to the international programs that will discriminate against abuse victims based solely on gender, while failing to serve those they claim it does.

Just Like VAWA Does here at Home!

The important question to ask the designers and supporters of CEDAW and I-VAWA is:

What are the scientific, ethical, and moral bases being used to justify supporting a system that knowingly excludes the majority of abuse victims and their children from receiving any support or services, while ignoring the majority of the perpetrators?

What Next?

Keep calling your Senators’ local constituents office and tell their staff to let your Senators know you want them to oppose CEDAW and I-VAWA. For contact information for your Members of Congress, visit www.senate.gov or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

The details and extended contact list are at www.true-equality.org/true_alert_cedaw.htm

Follow the plan:

What else will help?

Let’s Help the People Who are
Putting The Facts-to-Faces in DC!

Donate to RADAR

This effort will begin in just a few short days. In support of these visits will be the development of hand-outs, flyers, reprints of ours and others Op-Eds and educational materials designed to educate the Senators’ staff members.

We need to help fund the costs of this development, printing and some of the logistics costs of this work. The RADAR people will be donating their time and energies, as we all do.

Thanks in advance for taking action!

Yours truly,
Terri Lynn Tersak
C.E.O. – True Equality Network
 
Equal Protection Under the Law is True Equality

For more information, contact:

True Equality Information Center, at info@true-equality.org.