Ten days out from my travel to the Democratic Republic of
the Congo and a return visit to the City of Joy. Two weeks and a couple
days until One Billion Rising.
I don’t normally send my first post out this early, but
lately I find myself talking more and more about One Billion Rising, and since
I will be in Bukavu, DRC on the 14th of February, the day that One
Billion people around the planet will Rise, I want to make sure you all can
take part in the Risings where you are.
So what is One Billion Rising (OBR)? It’s how Eve
Ensler does things. It’s how we change the world. It’s never been
needed more than at this very moment. It’s about standing up with
everyone you love and care about, especially the women, the sisters, the
mothers, the aunts, the grandmothers, the daughters, the friends and every man,
brother, son, father, nephew, friend that loves us, and saying that we are OVER
the violence against women. We are DONE with it. We have had
ENOUGH. It has to STOP. One Billion Rising on February 14, 2013 is
a TRUE MOMENT on this planet and we cannot miss it. The chance
to connect and mobilize a billion women and girls, men and boys towards
creating a very different kind of world at a time when this one teeters in many
ways - socially and environmentally.
Last night, someone sent me the trailer for the
documentary The Invisible War,
a film about rape in the military. The screen flashed
with the statistic that over 500,000 women in the US military have been
sexually assaulted.
In Steubenville, Ohio a 14 year girl is raped by members of
the high school football team. Students
stand aside, take photos, and post them on Facebook and Twitter, and no one
steps in to stop it.
In New Delhi, India a female college student and her
boyfriend board a bus home. She is so
violently gang raped and beaten with a metal pipe that it destroys all of her
organs. Then she and her boyfriend are
thrown from the bus and lie naked and bleeding on the road while people pass by
and do nothing. And India rises like never before and the mothers begin
to say “That could have been my daughter.” And then someone says that we
also need to step forward and say, “That could have been my son.”
Today, on the planet, a
billion women – one of every three women on the planet – will be raped or
beaten in her lifetime. That’s ONE BILLION mothers, daughters, sisters,
partners, and friends violated. V-Day REFUSES to stand by as more than a
billion women experience violence.
On February 14th, 2013,
V-Day's 15th Anniversary, we are inviting one billion women and those who love
them to walk out, DANCE, RISE UP, AND DEMAND an end to this violence. One
Billion Rising is a promise that we will rise up with women and men worldwide
to say, "Enough! The violence ends now."
As crazy as I thought Eve was when she kicked off One
Billion Rising - because let’s face it, that’s a lot of people - I know every
morning when I look in my inbox and see the countries, cities, mayors,
congressional leaders, parliamentarians, TV networks, religious leaders that
have signed on to Rise - the list goes on, today Risings are planned in over
186 countries - that she will get there. I encourage you to go to www.vday.org and find a
Rising near you. And if you are so
inclined, start a Rising at your school, your church, your neighborhood, your
company, your gym, your city center. Here in the Bay Area nearly every
college and university, most high schools, many churches, and city centers are
all hosting Rising events. And if you like to DANCE well then click on
the link to Break the Chains (http://onebillionrising.org/blog/we-have-an-anthem) and learn
the dance that is choreographed by Debbie Allen.
Read the blogs of why people are
Rising. Check out the tumbler https://www.rebelmouse.com/VDay/ and share it with your friends and family. I encourage you to RISE.
I will be with Eve in the Congo on the 14th at
the City of Joy. The City of Joy is a
center that was built to help women that have been among the most brutalized on
the planet. A center built in the poorest section of Bukavu on a plot of
mud that no one wanted. A place that we now say is the BEST place in the
world to be a woman in a country that has been labeled the worst place in the
world to be a woman. The City of Joy is the lotus that rises out
of the mud. A place that signifies love
and transformation and all that is good about humanity.
I have two things to share with you in this first
posting. One is a poem that Eve wrote
this past fall, Over It, about demanding an end to the violence against
women. The second is a video called The Man Prayer (http://www.vday.org/node/3036). I
think it’s the most beautiful Valentine I have ever sent. The video fills
my eyes with tears from the start to the finish because it’s a video of men,
all speaking in their native tongues from all over the world, reading the
verses of a prayer Eve wrote last year after meeting His Holiness Gyalwang
Karmapa at TED India and being inspired by his commitment to this movement to
end the violence. When I read the words it is what I want for every man
on the earth and if we could get there I know the violence against women and
girls would stop.... And then I think of the teenagers in Steubenville
and the students in India, and the girls at the City of Joy, and I know I have
to share this message with everyone I know and hope it will ripple out like a
pebble tossed into the pond because that could have been my daughter and it
could have been my son.
Over It
by Eve Ensler
I am over rape.
I am over rape culture,
rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook.
I am over the thousands
of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame.
I am over people
demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it freedom of speech or
justifying it as a joke.
I am over people not
understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don't have a
sense of humor, and women don't have a sense of humor, when most women I know
(and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don't think that uninvited
penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.
I am over how long it
seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape.
I am over Facebook
taking weeks to take down rape pages.
I am over the hundreds
of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the
rapists to be held accountable.
I am over the thousands
of women in Bosnia, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone,
Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice.
I am over rape
happening in broad daylight.
I am over the 207
clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that are capturing, raping, and
torturing lesbians to make them straight.
I am over one in three
women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their
so-called "comrades."
I am over the forces
that deny women who have been raped the right to have an abortion.
I am over rape victims
becoming re-raped when they go public.
I am over starving
Somali women being raped at the Dadaab in Kenya, and I am over women getting
raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were
protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the
economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.
I am over women still
being silent about rape, because they are made to believe it's their fault or
they did something to make it happen.
I am over violence
against women not being a #1 international priority when one out of three women
will be raped or beaten in her lifetime - the destruction and muting and
undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.
No women, no future,
duh.
I am over this rape
culture where the privileged with political and physical and economic might,
take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time
they want it.
I am over the endless
resurrection of the careers of rapists and sexual exploiters - film directors,
world leaders, corporate executives, movie stars, athletes - while the lives of
the women they violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live
in social and emotional exile.
I am over the passivity
of good men. Where the hell are you?
You live with us, make love
with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and
eternally supported by us, so why aren't you standing with us? Why aren't you
driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?
I am over years and years
of being over rape.
And thinking about rape
every day of my life since I was 5 years old.
And getting sick from
rape, and depressed from rape, and enraged by rape.
And reading my insanely
crowded inbox of rape horror stories every hour of every single day.
I am over being polite
about rape. It's been too long now, we have been too understanding.
We need to OCCUPYRAPE
in every school, park, radio, TV station, household, office, factory, refugee
camp, military base, back room, night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We
need people to truly try and imagine - once and for all - what it feels like to
have your body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need you
to let our rage and our compassion connect us together so we can change the paradigm
of global rape.
There are approximately
one billion women on the planet who have been violated.
ONE BILLION WOMEN.
The time is now.
Prepare for the escalation.
Today it begins, moving
toward 14 February 2013, when one billion women will rise to end rape.
Because we are over it.
I hope you will join a RISING on February 14. It’s
time.
Amy
No comments:
Post a Comment