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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, January 30, 2005

Afghan cause draws in a women's activist

 •  Land left behind

By Zenaida Serrano
Advertiser Staff Writer

Activist Mavis Leno, an advocate for the rights of Afghan women and wife of talk-show host Jay Leno, will be a keynote speaker at An Evening in Solidarity with Afghan Women and Girls, a fund-raiser Feb. 12 at College Hill.

In Solidarity with AFghan Women

An Evening in Solidarity with Afghan Women and Girls

6-9 p.m. Feb. 12

College Hill, 2234 Kamehameha Ave., Manoa

Admission is a $100 donation, $85 of which is tax-deductible. Reserve by Feb. 7. Checks should be made payable to

the Feminist Majority Foundation, and mailed to: Afghan Women's Hui, 1750 Kalakaua Ave. No. 1009, Honolulu, HI 96826.

Information: afghanwomenshui@yahoo.com, 741-1141 or 782-3201

Leno is chairwoman of the Feminist Majority Foundation's campaign to help Afghan women and girls. The foundation is a nonprofit national women's-rights organization collaborating on relief efforts with Afghanistan's Shuhada Organization, which will benefit from the event proceeds.

In a phone call from Los Angeles, Leno talked about her involvement with the foundation and her passion for the Afghan cause:

Q. Why did you become involved with the Feminist Majority Foundation?

A. I got involved with the organization toward the end of 1997. I'm a lifelong feminist, and I was active in feminism in the '70s. Then, you know, life comes in and you get swept up with the things you're trying to do with work and so on. Then I had reached a point in my life in the '90s where I was ready to go back to activism again. I thought I could come back at a different level, because before I had been pretty much of a foot soldier.

When I met Peg Yorkin (the foundation's co-founder and chairwoman of the board) at a luncheon and she told me about the Feminist Majority, I realized this was exactly what I was looking for, because I'm not a 'joiner' and I didn't want to belong to some big organization where you have to go through a hundred people to try to get anything done. The Feminist Majority is a relatively small, very proactive feminist organization.

... One of the things that I had wanted to do going back into active feminism was to try and do something for women in other countries, rather than just keep everything centered on our progress here. I thought we were strong enough now to reach a hand out to women in other countries who aren't as far along the road.

Q. What will you address at the Feb. 12 event here in Hawai'i?

A. I think I'm going to talk about the reason that things that are happening halfway around the world will arrive on our doorstep eventually, as this situation did in 9/11. ... I'm very concerned with the precariousness of ... (Afghanistan's) situation. They're hanging on to everything that they've been able to get back (since the fall of the Taliban in 2001) by the skin of their teeth. It's a very unstable situation, and it's so profoundly in the interest of our children and our children's children that we not let this country sink back into chaos again.

Q. What is this "chaos" that Afghan women and girls face?

A. The biggest challenges are simply for them to go out in a very risky and unstable environment, and try and utilize the rights that they have been theoretically returned to. They now have the right to work, to go to school, to vote, but if when you go out of your house you stand a very good chance of being kidnapped by a warlord and sold into human trafficking, how likely are you to go out of your house to continue your studies? It's a very risky environment.

For their sake, for our sake, for humanity's sake, we need to make sure that this country returns to stability so it can grow its democracy. And you know, people have no chance, male or female, to obtain their dreams in a country in chaos.