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Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, announced today he will donate all the proceeds from his forthcoming book, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” to support the American Jewish World Service in its international efforts to fight for women’s rights.
In an essay on his blog, Horowitz writes about how as a kid he watched the miniseries “Roots,” and learned about the brutality, scale and scope of slavery and how it could be ended. He compares an English poem defending slavery in 1789 to modern-day statements deployed in resistance to women’s rights:
“Sadly, something like slavery is happening in my time. It’s not happening in the United States, but it is happening and the victims are women. In many parts of the world, women are literally owned by men. Women do not enjoy basic rights, are denied access to education, can be arbitrarily raped, robbed, and killed, and live in fear with no chance for self-determination.
“After understanding how slavery ended, I promised myself that if something like that ever happened in my time, I would be part of the group who tried to stop it.”
Published by HarperBusiness, the book will be available on March 4. Horowitz will be interviewed onstage by rapper Nas at SXSW on March 9.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
