There Haven’t Been This Many Conflicts Since WWII
  September 24, 2024 Queridas lectoras, Quiero desearles a todos un feliz Mes de Herencia Hispane y Latine. Sé que somos mas que un solo idioma, pero es una de las cosas que nos unen a muchos de nosotros. Eso y tambien siglos de opresión. Un tema para un día diferente 🤷🏼♀️. In today’s newsletter, we look at the attacks in Lebanon, learn more about Project 2025’s plans for the planet, and celebrate a new world record holder. In love and Spanglish, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONOne more war: According to Vision of Humanity, there are 56 ongoing armed conflicts right now around the world—more than at any time since World War II. And over the last few days, one of them, the conflict in Lebanon, has become more deadly, with strikes from the Israeli military rattling the country. Nearly 600 people have been killed, including 50 children; nearly 2000 have been injured, and thousands more are now being displaced by violence. Israel says it is targeting the militant group Hezbollah, but the casualties are mainly civilian, and this should surprise no one—90 percent of wartime deaths are. And just as in every other zone of conflict, it is the women and children of Lebanon who will endure the brunt of Israel’s latest offensive. (If Hezbollah’s threats of revenge are to be believed, Israeli women will suffer as well.) It is an endless cycle that has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 women and children since October 7, not to mention the multitude of displaced Palestinians who will soon be joined by their Lebanese counterparts in refugee camps and asylum programs across the globe. It is untenable for Israel and its allies (like the United States) to sustain all these running conflicts, not just from an economic and political perspective, but from a human cost perspective. Women are the main drivers of most economies, but they cannot do that when they’re dead, displaced, or saddled with the disproportionate “secondary and lasting effects of war and conflict,” left behind to raise the orphans, to heal the wounded, to teach at the rubble that was once a school. Last week at Free Future 2024, Dr. Salamishah Tillet explained the paradox of expecting women to end gender-based violence this way: “Women have this unfair burden of being the primary community that’s victimized and then that’s also held responsible for stopping the violence. So that paradox is impossible; it means we’re never gonna end the problem because we’re busy healing from the trauma…so if we’re going to end this epidemic, you actually need men and boys central to the movement.” She was speaking of personal assault and not war, but the analogy holds: What we all need now is for the men and boys sitting in war rooms to finally come to the decision that human lives—women’s lives—are worth the strenuous effort it takes to choose the route of diplomacy and compromise. AND:
 DOWER AT THE END OF HER THRU-HIKE (VIA INSTAGRAM)
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