In 2011. During my first year at the Market theatre laboratory (school for performance). I auditioned to be in the South African production of a play called “Emotional Creature” by Eve Ensler. I was an angry, bitter child. I was nineteen years old, had no language to describe what had happened to me to make me so angry, so shut down, so broken. My audition was the beginning of a journey that has changed my life. It has led me to discover a way to heal, a way to forgive and a way to dedicate my life to helping other people find healing and Closure. Telling my story was really painful. But I hope by telling it to you, it might help you too.
Every day we are receiving news of new risings, with new calls for REVOLUTION!
Activists have already started to share photos, video and audio updates, statements from their RISING events. You can follow the action on our homepage, which has been taken over by the global activists.
Share your events for the world to see using the official hashtags for this year’s rising: #rise4revolution & #1billionrising. The first two years we trended on 14 Feb so remember to tag all your photos, videos and updates so we can share them across social media platforms.
ARTISTIC UPRISING, Hammerstein Ballroom, NYC – Saturday, 7 February at 7:00PM ET
DANCE! DRUM! Usher in the Revolution!
Artistic Uprising is a one-night-only event at the Hammerstein Ballroom that will bring together revolutionary slam poets, singers, dancers and activists!
THE STATE OF FEMALE REVOLUTION – Sunday, 8 February at 1:00-2:00PM ET
One Billion Rising REVOLUTION presents: The State of Female Revolution, with Agnes Pareyio, Monique Wilson, Zoya, Christine Schuler Deschryver, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Eve Ensler. Moderated by GRITtv’s Laura Flanders. A conversation about what it takes to build revolution, be in solidarity and affect change.
JOIN US in person: Attend this once-in-a-lifetime conversation with activists from around the world discussing what Revolution means in their work. Seats are FREE. Please RSVP to events@vday.org with a list of names for those who will be attending. Be sure to put “Sunday RSVP” in the subject line of your email. Doors open at 12:30PM. We’ll see you there.
One Billion Rising REVOLUTION presents: The State of Female Revolution, with Agnes Pareyio, Monique Wilson, Zoya, Christine Schuler Deschryver, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Eve Ensler. Moderated by GRITtv’s Laura Flanders. A conversation about what it takes to build revolution, be in solidarity and affect change.
JOIN US in person: Attend this once-in-a-lifetime conversation with activists from around the world discussing what Revolution means in their work. Seats are FREE. Please RSVP to events@vday.org with a list of names for those who will be attending. Be sure to put “Sunday RSVP” in the subject line of your email. Doors open at 12:30PM. We’ll see you there.
The Greene Space New York Public Radio 160 Varick Street, New York NY 10013
1-2PM ET, DOORS: 12:30PM
Not able to be there in person? WATCH the whole event LIVE on our Blog or YouTube!
About our panelists:
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW teaches Civil Rights and other courses in critical race studies and constitutional law. She now splits her time each year between UCLA and the Columbia School of Law. At the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she received her LL.M., Professor Crenshaw was a William H. Hastie Fellow. She then clerked for Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Professor Crenshaw’s publications include Critical Race Theory (edited by Crenshaw, et al., 1995) and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment (with Matsuda, et al., 1993). In 2007, Professor Crenshaw was awarded the Fulbright Chair for Latin America in Brazil. In 2008, she was nominated an Alphonse Fletcher Fellow. In the same year she joined the selective group of scholars awarded with an in-residence fellowship at the Center of Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford. She is a member of the V-Board.
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER has called Bukavu her home all her life. She oversees all aspects of V-Day’s work on the ground in the DRC, including the City of Joy and coordinating campaign activities on the local, provincial, and national levels. She is an internationally renowned human rights activist who has worked as a teacher, an administrator for CARE CANADA, and, for 13 years, as an administrator for the German Technical Cooperation, where she oversaw a staff of over 100. She travels widely advocating for Congolese women’s rights.
EVE ENSLER, Tony Award winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries. Her books include Insecure At Last: A Political Memoir; the New York Times bestseller I Am An Emotional Creature, and her latest critically acclaimed memoir In the Body of the World. She is founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls which has raised over 120 million dollars to end violence and One Billion Rising, a global mass action campaign in over 200 countries. She was named one of Newsweek‘s “150 Women Who Changed the World” andThe Guardian‘s “100 Most Influential Women.” Her newest play O.P.C. recently had it’s world premiere at A.R.T. at Harvard in November.
LAURA FLANDERS, best-selling author and broadcaster hosts The Laura Flanders Show on GRITtv, an online channel for in-depth interviews with forward-thinking people which she founded in 2008. The Laura Flanders Show is syndicated globally by TeleSUR English TV. Flanders is also the Strong Local Economies Fellow at Yes! magazine (“Commonomics“) and a contributing writer to The Nation. She is the author of several books including The New York Times best-seller, BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004) and Blue GRIT: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians(Penguin Press, 2007) as well as the editor of At the Tea Party…(O/R Books, 2010) and The W. Effect (The Feminist Press, 2004). Flanders’ nationally-syndicated Laura Flanders Show aired on Air America Radio from 2004-2008. Before joining Air America when it launched in March 2004, Laura was the founding host of the award-winning “Your Call,” on public radio, KALW, 91.7 fm in San Francisco. She also directed the Women’s Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR’s nationally-syndicated radio program.
AGNES PAREYIO, Kenya Director for V-Day, was named the United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year in 2005, and has worked with V-Day since 2000. She is the founder and director of the first V-Day Safe House for the Girls, which was established for young women and girls fleeing FGM in Narok, Kenya. The Safe House provides a safe haven for girls escaping from FGM and early marriage – a place where young women can safely celebrate an alternative “rite of passage,” enabling Maasai women to follow their tradition without undergoing the cut. In 2009, Ms. Paryeio and V-Day opened the second V-Day Safe House in Kenya, the Sakutiek Rescue Center. Agnes has been a candidate for Kenyan Parliament. She was elected as a councillor for Upper Melili Ward and Vice-Chairperson to the Narok council in 2002, where she still serves.
MONIQUE WILSON is one of the Philippine’s veteran theatre and film actresses – having acted professionally since the age of nine. At 18 she starred as the lead role in the original London West End production of Miss Saigon. In 1994, at 24 years old, she went back to the Philippines and founded the New Voice Company (NVC) theatre group, with a vision to awaken, inspire and transform Philippine audiences with socially provocative and innovative political theatre work. Her theatre group has produced The Vagina Monologues in the Philippines since 2000 and V-Day events since 2001, and helped change the laws on sex trafficking and domestic violence with performances in the Philippine Senate and Congress. Monique recently left a five year post as head of the MA/MFA Acting International course, which she spearheaded, at the East 15 Acting School in London – where she trained postgraduate international actors from over 45 countries, and where she organized V-Day events and directed political plays, to become Director of the One Billion Rising campaign.
ZOYA is a women’s rights activist who has worked extensively in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2014, together with V-Day, she founded a leadership center in Kabul. The center is providing free, non-formal education in literacy, science, computers, family planning and English for Afghan women and girls, as well as legal, psychosocial and counseling support.
One Billion Rising REVOLUTION presents: The State of Female Revolution, with Agnes Pareyio, Monique Wilson, Zoya, Christine Schuler Deschryver, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Eve Ensler. Moderated by GRITtv’s Laura Flanders. A conversation about what it takes to build revolution, be in solidarity and affect change.
JOIN US in person: Attend this once-in-a-lifetime conversation with activists from around the world discussing what Revolution means in their work. Seats are FREE. Please RSVP to events@vday.org with a list of names for those who will be attending. Be sure to put “Sunday RSVP” in the subject line of your email. Doors open at 12:30PM. We’ll see you there.
The Greene Space New York Public Radio 160 Varick Street, New York NY 10013
1-2PM ET, DOORS: 12:30PM
Not able to be there in person? WATCH the whole event LIVE on our Blog or YouTube!
About our panelists:
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW teaches Civil Rights and other courses in critical race studies and constitutional law. She now splits her time each year between UCLA and the Columbia School of Law. At the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she received her LL.M., Professor Crenshaw was a William H. Hastie Fellow. She then clerked for Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Professor Crenshaw’s publications include Critical Race Theory (edited by Crenshaw, et al., 1995) and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment (with Matsuda, et al., 1993). In 2007, Professor Crenshaw was awarded the Fulbright Chair for Latin America in Brazil. In 2008, she was nominated an Alphonse Fletcher Fellow. In the same year she joined the selective group of scholars awarded with an in-residence fellowship at the Center of Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford. She is a member of the V-Board.
CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER has called Bukavu her home all her life. She oversees all aspects of V-Day’s work on the ground in the DRC, including the City of Joy and coordinating campaign activities on the local, provincial, and national levels. She is an internationally renowned human rights activist who has worked as a teacher, an administrator for CARE CANADA, and, for 13 years, as an administrator for the German Technical Cooperation, where she oversaw a staff of over 100. She travels widely advocating for Congolese women’s rights.
EVE ENSLER, Tony Award winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries. Her books include Insecure At Last: A Political Memoir; the New York Times bestseller I Am An Emotional Creature, and her latest critically acclaimed memoir In the Body of the World. She is founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls which has raised over 120 million dollars to end violence and One Billion Rising, a global mass action campaign in over 200 countries. She was named one of Newsweek‘s “150 Women Who Changed the World” andThe Guardian‘s “100 Most Influential Women.” Her newest play O.P.C. recently had it’s world premiere at A.R.T. at Harvard in November.
LAURA FLANDERS, best-selling author and broadcaster hosts The Laura Flanders Show on GRITtv, an online channel for in-depth interviews with forward-thinking people which she founded in 2008. The Laura Flanders Show is syndicated globally by TeleSUR English TV. Flanders is also the Strong Local Economies Fellow at Yes! magazine (“Commonomics“) and a contributing writer to The Nation. She is the author of several books including The New York Times best-seller, BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004) and Blue GRIT: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians(Penguin Press, 2007) as well as the editor of At the Tea Party…(O/R Books, 2010) and The W. Effect (The Feminist Press, 2004). Flanders’ nationally-syndicated Laura Flanders Show aired on Air America Radio from 2004-2008. Before joining Air America when it launched in March 2004, Laura was the founding host of the award-winning “Your Call,” on public radio, KALW, 91.7 fm in San Francisco. She also directed the Women’s Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR’s nationally-syndicated radio program.
AGNES PAREYIO, Kenya Director for V-Day, was named the United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year in 2005, and has worked with V-Day since 2000. She is the founder and director of the first V-Day Safe House for the Girls, which was established for young women and girls fleeing FGM in Narok, Kenya. The Safe House provides a safe haven for girls escaping from FGM and early marriage – a place where young women can safely celebrate an alternative “rite of passage,” enabling Maasai women to follow their tradition without undergoing the cut. In 2009, Ms. Paryeio and V-Day opened the second V-Day Safe House in Kenya, the Sakutiek Rescue Center. Agnes has been a candidate for Kenyan Parliament. She was elected as a councillor for Upper Melili Ward and Vice-Chairperson to the Narok council in 2002, where she still serves.
MONIQUE WILSON is one of the Philippine’s veteran theatre and film actresses – having acted professionally since the age of nine. At 18 she starred as the lead role in the original London West End production of Miss Saigon. In 1994, at 24 years old, she went back to the Philippines and founded the New Voice Company (NVC) theatre group, with a vision to awaken, inspire and transform Philippine audiences with socially provocative and innovative political theatre work. Her theatre group has produced The Vagina Monologues in the Philippines since 2000 and V-Day events since 2001, and helped change the laws on sex trafficking and domestic violence with performances in the Philippine Senate and Congress. Monique recently left a five year post as head of the MA/MFA Acting International course, which she spearheaded, at the East 15 Acting School in London – where she trained postgraduate international actors from over 45 countries, and where she organized V-Day events and directed political plays, to become Director of the One Billion Rising campaign.
ZOYA is a women’s rights activist who has worked extensively in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2014, together with V-Day, she founded a leadership center in Kabul. The center is providing free, non-formal education in literacy, science, computers, family planning and English for Afghan women and girls, as well as legal, psychosocial and counseling support.
JOIN US as we usher in this year’s RISING with global artists, activists and performers. DANCE! DRUM! RISE REVOLUTION!
Time is running out to get your tickets to the one-night-only ARTISTIC UPRISING, Saturday 7 Feb, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. A Revolutionary evening of Performance & Slam Poetry, DANCING, Music, & Activist Inspiration: Maya Azucena, Batala NYC, Betty, Ted Bunch, Climbing PoeTree, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Christine Schuler Deschryver, Asali Devan Ecclesiastes, Eve Ensler, Saru Jayaraman, Gina Loring, Morley, Emma Myles, Kathy Najimy, Thandie Newton, Agnes Pareyio, Sunni Patterson, Streb, Swoon, Saidah Baba Talibah, Karabo Tshikube, Monique Wilson, Y3K, Jaha Zainabu, Zoya and more to be announced.
Eve will be on The View this morning sharing the latest updates from the ONE BILLION RISING campaign including RISE FOR THE RAISE with a special appearance by ROC UNITED‘s Saru Jamayaran.
We are escalating our RISE FOR THE RAISE efforts! On Friday, 13 February, in partnership with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, we are showing our love in public for restaurant workers, and bringing attention to the poverty wages and lousy employment practices at the largest full-service restaurant corporation in the world Darden Restaurants.
Activists Fartuun Adan, Nakima Jones, Khushi Kabar and Rosi Orozco share their stories of Revolution. Keep up with the extraordinary activists who embody the creative radical shift in consciousness required to bring about CHANGE.
Proceeds will support our RISING work to end violence against women in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and the Philippines.
Thanks to the artists for sharing this amazing footage – Maya Azucena, Climbing Poetree, Streb, and to Maya and DJ Spinna for the song “Dance Revolution” (Watch the official video)
In 2011. During my first year at the Market theatre laboratory (school for performance). I auditioned to be in the South African production of a play called “Emotional Creature” by Eve Ensler. I was an angry, bitter child. I was nineteen years old, had no language to describe what had happened to me to make me so angry, so shut down, so broken. My audition was the beginning of a journey that has changed my life. It has led me to discover a way to heal, a way to forgive and a way to dedicate my life to helping other people find healing and Closure. Telling my story was really painful. But I hope by telling it to you, it might help you too.
