"The women fighting, organising, feeding and healing Libya’s revolution "

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/africa/the-women-fighting-organising-feeding-and-healing-libya-s-revolution

There is much more about the women of Libya at the link. Salwa Bugaighis said that for over 40 years of the rule of Ghaddafi, women weren't able to speak freely. Now the women are meeting together and gaining political experience.

The women fighting, organising, feeding and healing Libya’s revolution
Sarah Birke
Last Updated: Mar 25, 2011


In a bare, shabby side room in Benghazi's central courthouse, the hub of pro-democracy Libyan operations, Salwa Bugaighis talks animatedly, hardly flinching as gunshots ring out from the raucous crowds outside. They, like her, are in a mood that veers between celebration and defiance to anxiety. They flood the area of the seafront, which is littered with boards displaying caricatures of the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and stalls selling souvenirs since the eastern part of the country was liberated on February 20.

The 44-year-old lawyer, an elegant woman dressed in black trousers and jacket, her eyes neatly lined with kohl, was on the steps of the courthouse at the first protest on February 15, when a group of legal professionals and academics gathered to protest the arrest of a colleague and to call for legal reforms, including a constitution. She has barely left the building since. By February 17 the government's vicious reaction had led to calls for regime change, and just three days later rebels claimed control of the city, Libya's second largest after the capital Tripoli.

(snip)

For her, that means an amorphous job running logistical operations and acting as a liaison between the street and the National Transitional Council, the interim governing body led by Qaddafi's former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, that heads a number of city councils around the east. This morning she has been talking to young people on the street, relaying their messages to the council's members. Later, she will meet with the military committee to discuss how to prepare Benghazi against an attack - government forces were then quickly heading east, though the new UN-imposed no-fly zone has lessened the threat - while fielding calls about arriving food shipments.

(snip)

Day jobs have been shed, replaced by a spirit of volunteerism that has led to ad hoc committees and fledgling democratic institutions. Some, like Bugaighis, are members of the organisational institutions centred in the courthouse. She is joined by her sister Iman Bugaighis, a professor-turned-spokeswoman for the rebels, and by Salwa el Deghali, the women's representative on the council. But, as was the case in Egypt and Tunisia, women were involved in the protests from the start, and Libyan women across all classes and levels of education are now playing a role from providing food to keeping up numbers in the streets, regardless of the outcome of the rebellion.

I have always believed this and still....

K&R

brain than men have, and I think that is one very powerful avenue for evolution!

K&R I read it in the Libya blog, but it does deserve special notice. I am really struck by the talented people - both men and women - who have been covered in the reports on Libya and Egypt. On twitter, there are so many bright Middle Eastern women. They impress the heck out of me, and it's interesting to see what they're into and what they have to say about things.

I'm hoping, and I believe it will be so, that there will be a lot of good cross-pollination of ideas coming out of this whole Arab crisis or transformation or struggle, whatever it is. But I think good ideas are going both ways, and that's the point. Lots of entrepreurship going on too, I notice, new ideas emerging, new opportunities. You never know, the whole thing could be very good and not something to fear or recover from so much as we think.

2 cents fwiw.

You should come hang out with us in the Libya revolution thread - the underground of the underground. :)

BTW - latest news on Twitter is that the women in Benghazi are having a huge demonstration in support of the woman who told the journalists about being gang-raped and was taken away by state security.

HUGE turning point!

Any late news about whether she has been released?????

~~praying for her... and all the other Libyan women!~~~~

"Women want to have their voice heard so we have a special area to make sure everyone is comfortable enough to come out," she says. But the protests have broken down barriers in a way never seen before. Girls say they are allowed out until late and are working together with men. "We all have the same ideas and are one right now," says Ramadan. "I think this will transform the lot for women afterwards when all of Libya is free."

The thing about living through history is that we don't know the outcome, as opposed to when we read about history and KNOW the outcome before we get started on it.

What will happen is still a question, but I read so many things like that in bold, and I have hard time believing that these brave people will let themselves be taken in one more time.

They have lost so much, I sincerely doubt they will allow themselves to be pawns.

enjoy knowing more about the people.

I look forward to your sharing those!

:pals:

Thanks, Bobbie!:hi:

It was women coming out of the home to share the work of WW2 that put the process of women's liberation into overdrive in the west. I suspect the revolutions in the mideast are providing the same platform for women in that region.

support.

It is also reminding me of my dirtyhippiecommiepinkobum days, protesting the Vietnam war. For those who are old enough to remember, is was us women being shunted to the background by the male politicos that prompted us women to revolt... against the male rule!

We kinda let them have it. Nonviolently, of course.

the voices of women in the Arab world have been kept from us, not by tradition or their own silence as we've been led to believe, but by the dictators who oppressed them. And I have to say, that now that I've heard a few of their voices and their stories, I want to hear more.

Yes! Now that some journalists have "discovered" them, maybe we will hear more.

Which means... maybe we should let these sources know we read and appreciated the coverage. Thanks to your reminder of this, I'm going to write when I finish this message.

These women are phenomenal, and while I know that a lot of their courage is fueled by desperation, I also know that it is inspiring me to forge ahead.

Libya Hurra!

....people power is a beautiful thing....

The courage these women show is inspiring.

CNN just showed footage of the Libyan woman who ran into the hotel to report being raped, and was then forced into a car by Gs goons. It was very graphic. It also showed one of the goons at the car shoving a reporter away.

What a very smart woman to run into that hotel.. it may have saved her life, and the courage it must have taken to do that.... I can't even imagine. :cry: BEautiful, indeed!

for incredible bravery and spirit!

I was the first rec on the OP. :)

:hug:

Turnabout is fairplay,right? :rofl:

:hi:

They want want most women in the world want - stability, and chance to help and to live a decent life.