Flawed, yes, but out there fighting.
Accepting nominations. . . .
Hanan Ashrawi, educator, Palestinian activist on behalf of peace and freedom, participant in and critic of Palestinian politics, attacked by extremists on all sides.
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate (2003). At the end of Dec 2008, the Iranian government closed her human rights center and raided her law office.
Alieh Eghdamdoust, Sussan Tahmasebi, and the entire Campaign for One Million Signatures in Iran, for pressing for women’s equality in Iran, especially in laws regarding marriage, adultery, polygamy, and divorce.
Mukhtar Mai. Used compensation money from a gang-rape to open a number of schools, a legal clinic, women’s shelter, women’s crisis center, school bus, and ambulance service in the southern Punjab of Pakistan.
Somaly Mam, sold, tortured, and forced to work for a Cambodian brothel, now working against forced prostitution.
Justina Mukoko, head of Zimbabwe Peace Project, which documents human rights abuses by Mugabe’s government and attacks on opposition supporters. In the past few months, she and many others were abducted, held in secret locations, and tortured by Mugabe’s agents. She’s currently (as of January 2009) imprisoned in Harare.
Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, founders of Women of Zimbabwe Arise. Repeatedly imprisoned by Robert Mugabe’s government, most recently in fall 2008.
A number of these names are courtesy of Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. Yeah, he can be insufferable, but good for him for highlighting all that people—often women—are doing to liberate themselves and others.
EMERITI: Kicking beyond the grave
Emma Goldman, 1869-1940. Left-anarchist, ‘the most dangerous woman in America’, midwife, women’s and human rights activist, deportee, early opponent of Bolshevism, early proponent of gay rights, and inspiration for the t-shirt: ‘If I can ‘t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’ Importantly, she later renounced the kind of consequentialist politics which had led her to champion violence as a means to just ends.
Rosa Luxemburg, 1871-1919. Anarcho-socialist, activist, writer, fierce thinker, both early sympathizer and critic of Bolshevik Revolution, murdered by the right-wing Freikorps in Germany.
Anna Politkovskaya, 1958-2006. Journalist, refused to be cowed by oligarchs and new rulers of Russia. Murdered in October 2006; Russian officials are widely suspected of involvement in her death.
Helen Suzman, 1917-2008. Anti-apartheid activist, lone representative of the Progressive Party in apartheid-era South Africa. Pain in the ass to all the right people.
updated: 2.12.09
