Despite an eleventh-hour effort by Vice President Joe Biden, House Republican leaders failed to advance the Senate's 2012 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that would have extended domestic violence protections to 30 million LGBT individuals, undocumented immigrants and Native American women. As Erika Eichelberger writes in The Nation this week, by refusing to reauthorize VAWA, Congressional Republicans are leaving rape victims with few options.

The National Task Force to End Domestic and Sexual Violence Against Women is imploring the 113th Congress to restore VAWA immediately. Join the call and mobilize support yourself with the VAWA Tool Kit.

Through the telling of one woman's story, Alisa Bohling shows what the end of VAWA could mean for women everywhere in a recent article on TruthOut..

This past December, US Senator Maria Cantwell joined six of her female Democratic Senate colleagues to make clear why the VAWA Act is so important to so many women.

A weekly guide to meaningful action, this blog connects readers with resources to channel the outrage so many feel after reading about abuses of power and privilege. Far from a comprehensive digest of all worthy groups working on behalf of the social good, Take Action seeks to shine a bright light on one concrete step that Nation readers can take each week. To broaden the conversation, we’ll publish a weekly follow-up post detailing the response and featuring additional campaigns and initiatives that we hope readers will check out. Toward that end, please use the comments field to give us ideas. With your help, we can make real change.