[V-Day, New York, 8 July 2013]
Today, V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, and the One Billion Rising campaign announced the launch of ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE. The campaign will build upon the energy and momentum that was created in 2013 when one billion activists in 207 countries came together to strike, dance, and rise in order to end violence against women and girls.
This year, the focus will be on the issue of justice for all survivors of gender violence, and on ending the rampant impunity that prevails globally.
ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a call to women, men, and youth around the world to gather safely on 14 February 2014 outside places where they are entitled to justice – court houses, police stations, government offices, school administration buildings, work places, sites of environmental injustice, military courts, embassies, places of worship, homes, or simply public gathering places where women deserve to feel safe but too often do not.
The campaign is a recognition that we cannot end violence against women without looking at the intersection of poverty, racism, war, the plunder of the environment, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Impunity lives at the heart of these interlocking forces.
“Many of our supporters wrote to tell us that this year they wanted to go further, to go deeper, to address impunity and the lack of accountability as significant factors in the perpetuation of violence against women. ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a call to survivors and their allies to break the silence – politically, outrageously, artistically – through art, dance, marches, ritual, song, spoken word, testimonies, and other ways that best express their outrage, their need, their desire, and their joy,”
stated Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising.
”With this launch, I am thrilled to announce that Monique Wilson – an extraordinary V-Day activist for 15 years who literally inspired all 7,000 islands in the Philippines to rise and dance – is joining us as Director of the One Billion Rising campaign.”
For more than 15 years, V-Day activists have mobilized in more than 200 countries and worked tirelessly on a grassroots level to demand an end to all forms of violence against women and girls. In the face of resistance, V-Day activists have raised consciousness, changed laws, funded rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters (often keeping the doors open), educated their communities, and raised more than $100 million for groups doing the essential work of ending violence and serving survivors.
ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE will continue to leverage the strength of V-Day’s activist network to escalate efforts and create change, calling on women and men everywhere to rise in defiance and in celebration, showing the world the strength of global solidarity and the power of art to educate, transform, and inspire.
To get involved with V-Day and ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE:
- SIGN UP
- LIKE US on Facebook
- FOLLOW on Twitter @VDay; #rise4justice
- RECEIVE text message updates, text BILLION to 50555 (US only)
- READ about the campaign, including a letter from Eve and Monique
- WATCH “Rising”
To learn more about One Billion Rising and the V-Day, visit the website
