Angelina Jolie made an impassioned speech to the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, getting choked up as she urged Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.
The Hollywood superstar was one of the women to raise their voice during the event, urging Congress to pass the act and naming it “one of the most important votes US senators will cast this year.”
“Standing here at the center of our nation’s power, I can think only of everyone who’s been made to feel powerless by their abusers, by a system that failed to protect them,” the mother-of-six began her speech. “Parents whose children have been murdered by an abusive partner, women who suffer domestic violence yet are not believed, children who have suffered life-altering trauma and post-traumatic stress at the hands of people closest to them.”
She continued by explaining that many people choose not to leave “abusive situations” because they’ve been “made to feel worthless” without a government to count on for aid.
“When there is silence from a Congress too busy to renew the Violence Against Women Act for a decade, it reinforces that sense of worthlessness,” she continued. “You think, ‘I guess my abuser’s right, I guess I’m not worth very much.’”
“As survivors of abuse know all too well, victims of our failed systems are not allowed to be angry. You’re supposed to be calm, patient and ask nicely. But you try staying calm when it’s as if someone is holding your head under water,” she added.
“Try to stay calm when you’re witnessing someone you love being harmed. Try to stay calm if after you were strangled and you find the courage to come forward, you discover that your chances of proving the abuse are now gone, because no one took into account the different ways bruising presents in Black or brown skin and they failed to check properly for signs of injury.”