In response to the past year, Eve has updated her essay “Over It”, which was originally published in The Huffington Post as a call to action in 2012, in the lead up to the first One Billion Rising. Now entitled “Over It Redux”, it is a powerful response to the current climate of impunity and a loud call for an end to rape culture.
“I am over rape.
I’m over women (cisgender, transgender and gender non-conforming) having to tell our stories over and over, traumatizing and re-traumatizing ourselves over and over when the stories and names and identities of perpetrators remain protected and anonymous.
I am over rape culture, where privileged men with political and physical and economic power take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.
This would include the super Predator in Chief, Donald Trump, who was elected after bragging about grabbing women’s pussies without their consent and who has more than 15 charges of abuse against him. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly… the list is endless. It’s not enough to fire them and have them walk away with millions. Sexual abuse is already illegal.
I am over how long it takes for anyone to ever respond to rape, and how long corporations and partners protect abusers through payouts and backroom deals. If that same president or CEO stole money from you or killed someone, you can bet they’d be fired on the spot and he would be charged in court…”
Join us! Activists around the world are already busy planning their V-Day and ONE BILLION RISING events for the 2018 season. To date, there are hundreds of events and risings scheduled all over the globe from Tehran to Nanjing to Oklahoma City. Activists are collaborating with a range of local groups and producing their V-Day events as Acts of Resistance, highlighting the issues that their communities face.
This year is our 20th anniversary and we invite you to be bolder than ever before in your performances, actions and Risings. Whether it is performing The Vagina Monologues in a radical space or hosting an Artistic UpRising taking activism out of the theaters and into the streets. The energy is rising up and we are already feeling it.
Andrés Naime, OBR Mexico Coordinator, just translated the 2018 One Billion Rising and V20 logos in Spanish. Download them below!
We also encourage you to create your own logos in your own language! Share them with us at info(a)vday.org, and we can share them with other organizers around the world.
The ascent of a known sexual predator to the US Presidency alongside the emergence of other anti-women, anti-people leaders and governments around the world not only crystallized everything our movement has been working towards since 1998, but galvanized our activists in an unprecedented way as they took to the stage and the streets in the face of policies and actions that sought to strip their basic rights and call into question their experiences. This past year, with sharper focus on the rising and resistance against the systems that cause other forms of violence – imperialism, neo-facism, racism, capitalism and neo-liberalism activists in One Billion Rising took up their struggle against sexual and physical violence, expanding their frame to focus on interconnected issues facing the most vulnerable: workers rights, immigration, poverty, racial violence, corruption, environmental plunder, state sponsored wars, militarization, displacement, and violence created by greed and lack of access to healthcare and education. It was a breathtaking year!
RISE 2018: ONE BILLION RISING SOLIDARITY
Through One Billion Rising, activists worldwide have mobilized, engaged, awakened and joined people across the planet to end violence against women and girls. We have made violence against women a global issue, not relegated to country or tribe or class or religion.
ONE BILLION RISING will expand with its theme of REVOLUTION and SOLIDARITY this year. OBR has become a movement unto itself, taking activism out of the theater and into the streets, front and center. As neo-liberal policies and rapacious capitalism have become the engine of most governments, bringing profound consequences for the long suffering working class and marginalized sectors, it is more important than ever to be in solidarity with women on the frontlines. Suffering has reached new heights and this year OBR is seeing a new, dynamic and radical militancy and vibrancy that is opposing and rising against such repression and oppression. Activists across sectors are invited to stage Artistic Uprisings in their communities, create and learn new music and choreography from around the world.
Also, stay tuned as new voices and new music are coming to infuse the movement with renewed energy and voice!
PLAN YOUR ARTISTIC UPRISINGS
Beginning on 14 February through 8 March 2018, we are calling on activists around the world to hold Artistic UpRisings to escalate political consciousness and urge radical calls to action. We invite you to tell the stories of local women by:
– Holding and staging an event that brings together women from different marginalized and most oppressed sectors from each community. Have them tell their own stories through monologues/ spoken word/ song/ film/ dance.
– Inviting radical artists who have curated creative work that fits the theme of OBR Revolution: Solidarity to join!
THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES
The Vagina Monologues birthed the V-Day movement in 1998. ONE BILLION RISING is the radical child of V-Day.
This year, we invite you to stage The Vagina Monologues as an additional Artistic Uprising event as part of the V TO THE 20th RISINGS, commemorating V-Day’s 20th Anniversary. Stage the play on a different date from the Artistic UpRising event – either as a lead up Rising event or your main OBR action! Instead of using mostly artists – stage the play with grassroots marginalized women.
Students of Fontys Academy for Dance Education in Tilburg, the Netherlands rocked One Billion Rising in 2014 with this astounding original dance and song that they created. Since then, the song and dance has gained great popularity among OBR global activists. Students from Fontys Academy have been dancing it for their OBR events ever since, bringing it outside of their school and into communities and town centers.
Last February 2017, domestic workers in Hong Kong learned and performed the dance at their annual OBR event, not only because they loved the lyrics and moves, but also because they said they wanted to be in solidarity with the young artists from across the world who created such an inspiring song that gives them joy and hope in the face of everything they struggle with as migrant domestic workers.
This year we are encouraging activists around the world to take inspiration from the radical connection of these young artists and domestic workers and learn this amazing new dance in the spirit of RISING SOLIDARITY.
Choreography by Nele Vandeneede
Music by students of the Fontys Rockacademy
Vocals by: Lisa Kraak & Marleen Langevoort
Composed by: Sasha Rangas, Fleur Van Gorp, Arthur Wils
Produced by: Jonathan Pitch
RISINGS PLANNED AROUND THE WORLD FOR 2018 SEASON
Already, activists across the planet are gearing up to demand justice on some of the most pressing issues of our time under the call of SOLIDARITY:RISE! RESIST! UNITE! In Bangladesh, activists are planning a huge hearing and action around justice for domestic workers, and in Taiwan activists will be staging an original Taiwanese play about women (the third part of a series) inspired by The Vagina Monologues called “Shidi”. In Croatia, a production of The Vagina Monologues featuring disabled performers will take place, as well as one featuring Roma performers, a minority that has faced discrimination in Europe. An evening of poetry by refugee women from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan will also take place. Across Africa, activists are planning a series of community risings. In Zambia and Malawi, for example, Risings will demand an end to child marriages and gender-based violence.
Youth, men, workers and activists fighting for climate justice will also be rising around the world to bring attention to issues impacting them and their communities. From calling for an end to sexual assault in schools to exploring hyper masculinity to demanding a livable wage and environmental regulations that protect the most marginalized, our activists will be taking to the streets and to the stage to demand justice and proclaim their solidarity with other groups working for a more just world.
This year we have created a series of downloadable posters for you to use for your Risings, productions, Artistic UpRisings and protests. The posters call on the world to rise for everything from women’s safety to climate justice to a free press, and to rise against forces like worker exploitation, racism, violence and misogyny.
We are thrilled to share our updated SOLIDARITY TO END THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN video, featuring our Global One Billion Rising Coordinators. The video explores the ways in which exploitation in all its forms impacts women and the global economy and calls for solidarity in its wake.
It’s been almost 20 years since V-Day was founded, since Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues shattered taboos, sharing the stories of women as they had never been told before. 2018 will be our 20th year.
Welcome to V-Season 2018. It’s hard to believe we are here at this moment in our movement’s history. While the stakes could not be higher, we feel the energy of rising up, of resistance, of bold artistic energy and creativity coming forward from V-Day and One Billion Rising activists across the globe. We witness it in your performances and your risings. At the City of Joy in Congo, over one thousand women survivors will have graduated by the end of 2017, and the documentary film also entitled CITY OF JOY is enjoying a successful run at film festivals across the world, exposing audiences to the message of Turning Pain to Power. We could not feel more committed to the work at hand and the movement with V-Day and OBR activists worldwide at its core – is more active than ever, producing art for social change, activating communities and colleges, raising crucial funds for rape crisis shelters, domestic violence shelters, local programs for transgender youth at risk of sexual violence, for immigrant women and girls, and many more groups reflecting the needs of their communities.
Together we have witnessed the power of art and activism to catalyze change on a scale never seen before.
In 2018, staging a production of The Vagina Monologues or A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer is more than just a theatrical experience; it is an ARTISTIC UPRISING, a RADICAL act, an ACT OF RESISTANCE.
2018 Spotlight: The Resistance: Infuse key aspects of your production with the spirit of V20: Rise, Resist & Unite. Consider producing the play in radical spaces. Explore where that might be in your community – ideas include fracking sites, Legislatures, Governor’s offices & City Halls, historical bookstores, museums that typically background women artists, churches, mosques, Planned Parenthood Clinics (work with the clinic on how this can uplift the work they do), refugee and immigration offices, prisons (opportunity to highlight the experience of women in prison/make a statement against the prison industrial complex, and for a restorative justice frame), places that typically exclude women, Trump Tower, etc… (Note: always reach out to discuss the idea of the play as a tool for resistance with the frontline groups working on the issues and how it might work or not within their current actions/campaigns/priorities).
Platform Resistance within your production: Collaborate with a range of local anti-violence groups from groups working to end campus sexual assault (in the US many groups are working to counter the upcoming policy changes expected under Betsy DeVos); Say Her Name and Black Lives Matter; groups working to support refugees and immigrant rights, end mass incarceration, promote fair pay and economic justice issues for women workers and more.
Amplify and lift up the most marginalized groups and activists in your communities with your productions: Center the voices of the most marginalized women on your stage, harnessing the power of The Vagina Monologues to create a space for critical conversations and voices. For example, this might include cast members who are undocumented women (who have made the decision to be public about their status), formerly incarcerated women, women workers, Indigenous women, immigrant women, transgender women and gender non-conforming folks.
Testimonies of Resistance, Amplifying New Voices: When women take the stage, incredible things happen, as their issues are voiced and confronted for all to see and hear. In place of a traditional Spotlight monologue, we invite you to select up to three local leaders or activists to showcase after the play, inviting them to speak to the audience about “What and Why my Vagina is Resisting”. Create a platform for those who are doing the crucial, daily work of resistance. Invite them to share with the audience what they are working to change and how the local community can support them. We suggest each speaker is given 2 minutes each to speak and that you work out staging and lighting for this aspect, so that it is an integrated part of the experience for the audience.
DONATION: Donate 90% of your proceeds to a group or groups in your community who are doing anti-violence work. For example, a local rape crisis center or domestic violence shelter.
SPOTLIGHT DONATION: Send 10% of your proceeds to our newly created Spotlight Fund: Frontline Resistors Fund.
The two artistic works will be available free of charge to registered activists hosting benefit productions solely during the month of February. By focusing the benefit performances during one month – February – we maximize the impact.*
In the face of resistance and at the intersection of art and activism, local volunteer activists and college students produce annual V-Day benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues, and A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups in their communities – as well as Risings, documentary film screenings and teach-ins. Through ten of thousands of communities and on college campuses, performances in over 140 countries, V-Day organizers have raised consciousness, changed laws to protect women and girls, funded rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters (often times these much needed funds kept them from closing), educated their communities, and raised over $100 million in urgently needed funds for groups doing the essential work of ending violence and serving survivors and their families.
RISE 2018, One Billion Rising SOLIDARITY
Through One Billion Rising, activists worldwide have mobilized, engaged, awakened and joined people across the planet to end violence against women and girls. We have made violence against women a global issue, not relegated to country or tribe or class or religion.
ONE BILLION RISING will expand with its theme of REVOLUTION and SOLIDARITY this year. OBR has become a movement unto itself, taking activism out of the theater and into the streets, front and center. As neo-liberal policies and rapacious capitalism have become the engine of most governments, bringing profound consequences for the long suffering working class and marginalized sectors, it is more important than ever to be in solidarity with women on the frontlines. Suffering has reached new heights and this year OBR is seeing a new, dynamic and radical militancy and vibrancy that is opposing and rising against such repression and oppression. Activists across sectors are invited to stage Artistic Uprisings in their communities, create and learn new music and choreography from around the world. Also, stay tuned as new voices and new music are coming to infuse the movement with renewed energy and voice.
Ready to go? Head to vspot.vday.org, and register for an account or sign in to your existing account. Afterwards, click on the event or events you want to apply for and follow the instructions.
*If you wish to perform The Vagina Monologues in other months, you may purchase the rights from Dramatists Play Service. Performance rights information can be found at www.eveensler.org/plays.
Breaking: Jeff Sessions officially announced today that the Trump administration has rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Unless Congress takes action, in just six short months, DACA recipients will be at risk for deportation.
The Dream Act is legislation that creates a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth raised in the U.S. Pass the Dream Act of 2017.
US Activists, RISE! RISE UP and #DefendDACA! Here are links to actions you can take:
From MoveOn: 800k youth at risk of deportation. Tell your representative: Congress must pass a strong, stand-alone DREAM Act now.
Sign the Daily Kos petition to join the fight to protected undocumented youth and tell Congress they must pass the Dream Act of 2017 here.
Follow UndocuMedia for updates, events and further actions you can take.
In conjunction with her upcoming appearance at the Antidote Festival, Eve penned a new piece for The Guardian Australia, to “share the stories of 20 years of the Vagina Revolution and all the glorious activists who grew the movement theatre to theatre, college to college, town to town”. She writes, “Now more than ever, we have to break the silence and call out the sexual predators, racists, earth murderers, war makers, corporate plunderers and explode the power of the V.”
On Saturday, 3 September, join Eve in conversation at the Antidote Festival at the Sydney Opera House, where she will reflect on two decades of work with V-Day in her talk 20 Years of The Vagina Monologues.
CITY OF JOY is continuing its film festival tour across the US and the world, and recently picked up The Jury Award for Best Documentary at the Woods Hole Film Festival. Next stop for the film will be London.
On 2 September, Eve Ensler, founder of One Billion Rising (OBR) and Monique Wilson, Global OBR Director will meet, converse, share stories and celebrate with One Billion Rising Australia organisers, migrant women workers, local women’s groups, and OBR activists.
The OBR gathering in Sydney will be an opportunity to hear about the deeper issues of violence against women in Australia in the context of interconnected issues such as poverty, migration, labour, climate, war, globalization.
As the global One Billion Rising theme around the word this year continues to be SOLIDARITY AGAINST THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN – the gathering will be an opportunity to also deepen the conversation about building, strengthening and escalating local and global solidarity.
Eve and Monique will also share new, creative and political initiatives, ideas and strategies for the OBR 2018 campaign which is formally being launched globally in September – and will also include celebrating the efforts of local women’s movements and OBR Australia organizers.
The OBR Sydney gathering is taking place on Saturday, 2 September 2017, from 2 to 5 pm. Venue will be at the Trades Hall (UnionsNSW), 377 Sussex Street, Sydney (near Chinatown). Refreshments and Light Meal will be served. Please RSVP by Thursday, 31 August at women(a)speakout.org.au. For details contact Jane Corpuz-Brock (0410 453 459), (Immigrant Women’s Speakout Association Inc), and Lina Cabaero (0407 841 010), (Asian Women at Work Inc).
The day after the OBR gathering, on 3 September, Eve will be speaking at the Antidote Festival in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House at 3pm, to “share the stories of 20 years of the Vagina Revolution and all the glorious activists who grew the movement theatre to theatre, college to college, town to town. Now more than ever, we have to break the silence and call out the sexual predators, racists, earth murderers, war makers, corporate plunderers and explode the power of the V.”
The violence in Charlottesville last weekend that resulted in three dead and dozens injured has left the US reeling. For many of us in the V-Day and One Billion Rising movements, it has been a time of action, speaking out against hate and also of mourning, re-traumatization, fear and anger. Many activists have reached out asking what they can do to fight back against the white supremacist ideology that is spewing out of the White House and those who US President Trump has emboldened by his vitriolic words, weak acknowledgements, and incendiary tweets.
With a racist sexual predator in the US Presidency, now is the time for all of us to take action and deeply understand the systemic racism and violent misogyny that are behind this historical moment.
Below you will find some suggestions from Color of Change and the Movement for Black Lives. We encourage you to take up their calls, and engage with your local V-Day and OBR networks to come together and plan local community responses. At times like this, showing up for each other is the best first step. We will continue to share calls to actions over the coming weeks over e-blast and our social media (Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter).
Words from our Founder, Eve Ensler
In June, the African American Policy Forum – co-founded by V-Day board member Kimberlé Crenshaw – celebrated its 20th anniversary, at which Eve spoke. As the violence in Charlottesville unfolded – for those of us who were in the room that night – her words rang out. What follows is an excerpt:
“Every white person in this country is born in a racist world. The work is to unmake yourself, decolonize yourself, to engage in the project, to give yourself fully to this project. It’s a life project and it requires every bit of your being and devotion. Which is why I don’t believe in allies. Ally implies I am helping you with your problem. The struggle to end racism is actually the problem of white people in the same way that ending violence against women is the problem of men. Turns out we don’t rape ourselves. But another added injustice to the many injustices is that not only does racism undermine, devastate, destroy black folks then they are the ones who spend their days fixing it.
Solidarity implies it is all of our problem. That we are in this equally together. Allyship suggests distance and comfort. Solidarity implies something more daring, more direct, more radical, more consuming, more committed, crossing lines, taking the struggle upon ourselves. Making it our own, doing the hard painful work of excavating the history embedded in our DNA. To know black people, to be in relationship with black people, to be in solidarity. Solidarity means I am in this struggle as deeply as I can be. Something easy about being an ally. When the going gets tough you can step away. Something patronizing about being an ally. It reminds me of tolerance. I despise the word tolerance.
It implies that I am tolerating you. Giving me the position of authority to be the one who tolerates. Tolerates is not the same as accept. Or love or become. Ally implies an inside and an outside. Solidarity, a bond of unity between individuals, united around a common goal or against a common enemy racism. It’s time now to put our white asses on the line for the freedom of our black sisters and brothers time to be willing to forfeit our privilege and status. Time to admit the devastation of a racist ideology and framework. Time to stop criticizing the tactics or methods or emotions of revolutionary movements like Black Lives Matter or Say Her Name that rise with bravery, heart, vision, passion, patience and heroic kindness in response to the most grotesque atrocities, murders, degradations, terror, isolation and exclusion. Because nothing will change until we are willing to shut up and listen and serve, willing to stop making it about us: our feelings, our hurts, our guilt.
Can we own our selfishness and fear and need for comfort and our desperation for power? Can we give ourselves in service without directing or determining? Can we walk behind black folks or beside them? Can we allow ourselves to get close, real close, and rub up against the burning pain of those we have abused and enslaved, raped, incarcerated, shot, lynched, ignored, diminished and degraded?
From my favorite writer James Baldwin: “The white man’s unadmitted–and apparently, to him, unspeakable–private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro. The only way he can be released from the Negro’s tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself, to become a part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the heights of his lonely tower and, armed with spiritual traveller’s checks, visits surreptitiously after dark.”
Can we become part of that dancing and suffering country and not make black people responsible for our guilt and neglect? Can we stop punishing people we have harmed for reminding us we have harmed them? Can we be that honest, that generous, that vulnerable, that humble that we are able to provide support and kinship without being thanked or getting credit?
Can we serve without expecting to be worshipped? Can we stop issuing instructions and offer our bodies for action instead? Can we make this terrible wrong of racism the center of our thought and moral occupation?
The truth is we are as much sinew as we are symbol. Our whiteness is our skin color, but it’s also a torn sheet draping the dead, a flag of privilege that will not surrender, a town called separateness and power. Our whiteness is that poisonous sky right before it rains, the color of shame.
So can we sit and be still for a minute and let the onerous truth and sorrow and history wash over us? Then, in that cataclysmic silence, when we have touched into the tidal wave of our responsibility, we will know what lengths we have to go, what risks we will have to take to dismantle this mad hatred. And how fiercely we will have to love to right this wrong.”
– Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising, in a speech given on 11 June 2017 at the 20th anniversary event for the African American Policy Forum, NYC.
TAKE ACTION –
The Movement for Black Lives: To mark the one week anniversary of Charlottesville, Movement for Black Lives is calling on people to take action on 19 August, this coming Saturday, at local institutions of white supremacy. They are also calling on people to pressure local Charlottesville officials to respond to the racist white supremacist ideology and the events of last weekend.
Color of Change: Color of Change has issued this series of strategic actions responding to the tragedy in Charlottesville. We urge you to share them in your communities and get deeply involved in the fight for racial justice and against hate in your communities.
1.) End corporate funding of hate groups: calling on credit card companies to stop processing fees for white nationalist/supremacist sites, cutting off their funding and hobbling their ability to do their work. http://bit.ly/dontfundhate
2.) Remove Confederate Symbols & Effigies: organizing communities to pull down confederate monuments. http://bit.ly/2vUvWhq
3.) Media Accountability: Holding media responsible for language and representation, targeting a set of hosts and influencers and eventually going after funding.
In response to the past year, Eve has updated her essay “Over It”, which was originally published in The Huffington Post as a call to action in 2012, in the lead up to the first One Billion Rising. Now entitled “Over It Redux”, it is a powerful response to the current climate of impunity and a loud call for an end to rape culture.
Join us! Activists around the world are already busy planning their V-Day and ONE BILLION RISING events for the 2018 season. To date, there are hundreds of events and risings scheduled all over the globe from Tehran to Nanjing to Oklahoma City. Activists are collaborating with a range of local groups and producing their V-Day events as Acts of Resistance, highlighting the issues that their communities face.
2018 Spotlight: The Resistance: Infuse key aspects of your production with the spirit of V20: Rise, Resist & Unite. Consider producing the play in radical spaces. Explore where that might be in your community – ideas include fracking sites, Legislatures, Governor’s offices & City Halls, historical bookstores, museums that typically background women artists, churches, mosques, Planned Parenthood Clinics (work with the clinic on how this can uplift the work they do), refugee and immigration offices, prisons (opportunity to highlight the experience of women in prison/make a statement against the prison industrial complex, and for a restorative justice frame), places that typically exclude women, Trump Tower, etc… (Note: always reach out to discuss the idea of the play as a tool for resistance with the frontline groups working on the issues and how it might work or not within their current actions/campaigns/priorities).
Testimonies of Resistance, Amplifying New Voices: When women take the stage, incredible things happen, as their issues are voiced and confronted for all to see and hear. In place of a traditional Spotlight monologue, we invite you to select up to three local leaders or activists to showcase after the play, inviting them to speak to the audience about “What and Why my Vagina is Resisting”. Create a platform for those who are doing the crucial, daily work of resistance. Invite them to share with the audience what they are working to change and how the local community can support them. We suggest each speaker is given 2 minutes each to speak and that you work out staging and lighting for this aspect, so that it is an integrated part of the experience for the audience.
