Letter to Jane Doe
Dear Jane Doe, Dear sister.
As you chose to remain anonymous, we can’t help but identify with you. In the future record of this heinous crime you have survived, future generations will continue fighting for you. I know this to be true, because what you are representing is the ultimate symbol of survival of a self-destructive patriarchal society that is designed to rape bodies and Land, and get away with it.
Dear Jane Doe, Dear sister.
We will raise hell until the seven men who violated you –and the 50 other men who knew about the invitation and remained silent, are brought to justice. We will call, write op-eds, strategize, raise our voices, and demand justice. Because we cannot help but identify with you. We cannot ignore that what you have undergone is beyond violent and against any and all laws protecting students and protecting women. In a country that claims it is the land of the free, that claims it sits at the epitome of power and democracy, it will tremble when we raise our voices for you, Jane Doe, for us all, and for women’s rights to walk and exist safely.
Dear Jane Doe, Dear sister.
Even as you chose anonymity to protect yourself, we hold you in our prayers, we send blessings to your heart and your spirit, to your body and your family, to be held in times where White Supremacy’s psychotic machine will attempt to devour you and scare you into submission and silence. Even as you choose anonymity, you are ever present, and echo in an endless chorus of voices that are carrying you. There is no silence big enough to contain you. Justice is inevitable, we will not stop.
Dear Jane Doe, Dear sister.
What happened to you is happening to many women and men around the world, because raping is a colonial tool of submission and occupation and erasure and theft and utter humiliation. The refusal to allow it to reduce you, Jane Doe, or any of us, or our ancestors, and our families in occupied Lands, is to never normalize it, and not to allow it to go unpunished. In a time where pedophiles are the power of the world, where the Epstein files exist, yet not one person is taken to justice (except the woman who aided him), we will not allow this to go unpunished. And at a time when Cornell’s own graduate student assembly says the university suspended more than 30 students for protesting for freedom and justice for Palestine, we stand with you. We demand to know why Cornell appears to treat an alleged gang rape as less serious than a demand for liberation.
Dear Jane Doe, Dear sister.
We will claim justice in your name, in the name of women around the world. We will not stop. Call on us. We are with you.