V-Day Blog Archive

Essential Service Workers Take Action Launching Series of Strikes Beginning Monday; 15 Years Since Hurricane Katrina, A Look Back at Swimming Upstream

Essential Service Workers Take Action Launching Series of Strikes Beginning Monday; Join Elena the Essential Worker

These are challenging times for essential service workers, workers of color, and womxn-identifying workers and mothers especially. We write today to ask for your support for these frontline workers. Tipped service workers, including servers, bartenders, delivery workers, and more, are starting a series of monthly strikes this coming Monday, August 31, demanding a full minimum wage with tips on top, at a time when tips are down 50-75%. These workers’ subminimum wages have caused a horrific experience for them during this pandemic, as has also been the case for so many other essential workers in other sectors.

At Monday’s rally, we will be introducing Elena the Essential Worker, whom we hope can stand on the shoulders of Rosie the Riveter to serve as a new face in the fight for economic, racial, and gender justice!

Read Elena’s biography to learn more about this powerful piece of artwork by Paul Leibow. Elena will measure 24 ft high and be dressed as service in a visual representation of the fight for One Fair Wage. She will make her world debut at worker strike locations this coming Monday in New York and Chicago. From there, Elena the Essential will hit the road and make appearances in Boston, Philadelphia, D.C. and Orlando (5-6 different art pieces).

We share Elena’s ‘Coming Out’ on the heels of a historic strike vote by tipped service workers on August 24, 2020. With a unanimous vote, service workers who have been organizing and mobilizing for change all over the country will take to the streets on Monday, August 31st for a one-day strike in New York and Chicago in solidarity with tipped service workers in their cities and all over the country who have to rely on tips to make ends meet. The strikes will be growing to more cities — at least to Boston, Philadelphia, D.C. and Orlando — at the end of September, and then again at the end of each month until we win One Fair Wage — a full minimum wage with tips on top.

Can you come see Elena IRL and join striking service workers in a socially-distant action & picket line in solidarity? If so, please register here!

If you can’t be with us, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could use this Social Media Tool to share this timely solidarity alert on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also make your voice heard by signing the petition at FightDontStarve.com and share it with your friends!

Thank you for supporting this important movement for social, racial and economic justice for all! #1FairWage #NoWorkerLeftBehind #1BillionRising #FightDontStarve

In Solidarity,
Saru Jayaraman, One Fair Wage President & Co-Founder
& V (formerly Eve Ensler), One Billion Rising Founder

15 Years Since Hurricane Katrina,
A Look Back at Swimming Upstream

Photos: Paula Allen for V-Day

This week is the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. As the anniversary approaches – and a new storm is approaching the coast of Louisiana and Texas – we remember those we lost and those whose lives were changed fifteen years ago and we celebrate the activists in New Orleans and the Gulf South whose work to rebuild is ongoing, whose work to address the devastating impact of climate change continues.

We remember the 30,000 activists, survivors and artists who converged in New Orleans in 2008 for V-Day’s 10th anniversary celebration V TO THE TENTH including the premiere performance of SWIMMING UPSTREAM in the Superdome.

16 New Orleans women crafted Swimming Upstream – a powerful theatrical production that tells the raw and soulful stories of women who lived through Hurricanes Rita and Katrina with grace, rage and great resiliency, punctuated by a flair for storytelling, humor and music that comes from being New Orleanian.

The performance featured Troi Bechet, Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Anne-Liese Juge Fox, Briceshanay Gresham, Karen-kaia Livers, and guest performers Shirley Knight, Anna Deavere Smith, and Kerry Washington. We honor Shirley Knight, who passed away this Spring. Shirley, a dear friend of the V-Day movement, lent her talents to many V-Day artistic productions over the years, in support of our work to end violence against all women and girls.

Written by Carol Bebelle, Troi Bechet, Reverend Lois Dejean, Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Anne-Liese Juge Fox, Adella Gautier, Briceshanay Gresham, Herreast Harrison, Karen-kaia Livers, Tommye Myrick, Cherice Harrison-Nelson, Kathy Randels, Dollie Rivas, Dina Roudeze, Karel Sloane-Boekbinder, Carol Sutton. Created in a process facilitated by V-Day Founder/playwright/activist V (formerly Eve Ensler) and Carol Bebelle, (then) Executive Director and Co-founder of Ashé Cultural Arts Center, the play was produced by V-Day and Ashé Cultural Arts Center with Support from Open Society Foundation.

• “If art is therapeutic, Swimming Upstream is a breakthrough.” – Times Picayune
• “In many ways the work resembles an engaging church event – complete with gospel songs, testimonies and hand-clapping redemption.” – Variety
• “Swimming UpStream …. is the poetic equivalent of a breached levee. What begins as a flood of raw human emotion becomes a source of healing, transcendence and new beginnings.” – The Atlanta Journal Constitution

JOY! 18th Class Begins at City of Joy in Congo

Welcome to City of Joy! The new class of young women is now arriving in Bukavu at the City of Joy.

The City of Joy is a revolutionary leadership center for women survivors of gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a place where women turn their pain into power, a place that restores women’s sense of agency over their lives as they learn real, practical life skills to feed their futures, and connects them to the global V-Day movement, one billion strong. From the return of warmth and joy into women’s lives, to a reconnection to their bodies, to the feeling of empowerment each woman feels when she masters a new skill or acquires life-changing knowledge, the City of Joy gives women a platform to transform their pasts into fuel for a revolution of the mind, body, and community.

Over 1472 women have graduated to date. A woman who comes through the City of Joy is forever changed by it. She laughs more, she leads more, she gives more.

Join us in welcoming the 18th Class!

LEARN more about City of Joy: cityofjoycongo.org
GIVE Joy, DONATE today: cityofjoycongo.org/donate

The team at City of Joy are using every tool to ensure safety. They are skilled in public health measures including Ebola and now Covid. Everyone has been tested prior to entry and they will also quarantine for two weeks at City of Joy with essential staff.

Ready to Netflix and Joy?
WATCH the feature length documentary CITY OF JOY

The story of City of Joy is the story of love and community. It is the story of what happens when women who are sexual survivors live together in community, heal themselves and each other, and create their destiny on their own terms. The transformation that is seen at City of Joy is profound – the most abused become the most powerful who turn poison into medicine, isolation into community, shame into self-love, silence into story. This is the story of what happens when women have time to heal and truly release and transform trauma, when women are loved and held and nurtured and treated with deepest kindness, dignity and intention.

CITY OF JOY follows the first class of women at revolutionary leadership center City of Joy, from which the film derives its title, and weaves their journey as burgeoning leaders with that of the center’s founders (Dr. Denis Mukwege, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, women’s rights activist Christine Schuler-Deschryver and V (formerly Eve Ensler), founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising) – three individuals who imagined a place where women who have suffered horrific rape and abuse can heal and become powerful voices of change for their country.

“How does one find joy amid unspeakable tragedy? Madeleine Gavin’s documentary City of Joy, about a community built around women who have survived horrific violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), gives us a glimpse at both an incredible injustice still occurring today, and how Congolese women are combating it with their own grassroots movement.” – Clara Mae in The Guardian

During this Covid-19 pandemic, gather friends and community virtually and safely, watch CITY OF JOY and make use of the screening guide for small discussion groups via Zoom, Whatsapp, or Facetime.

Trigger Warning: Prepare to Support Survivors and Audience Members
Be sure to make your audience aware of the content of the film prior to screening. Stories about sexual assault, rape and sexual and physical torture are relayed in the film.

LEARN more about City of Joy

WATCH the Documentary Film on Netflix

HOST a watch party