V-Day Blog Archive

NYC Save The Date: One Billion Rising Finale Event At Hammerstein Ballroom!

On February 14, 1998, Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues started a global movement, and it all began at the Hammerstein Ballroom! 15 years later we are celebrating a revolution!

Join V-Day & ONE BILLION RISING back at the Hammerstein Ballroom on February 14, 2013 to STRIKE, DANCE, and RISE to show our commitment to ending violence against women.

WHEN: Thursday, February 14, 2013, 8pm-Midnight
WHERE: Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenue) NYC
WHO: Special guests and DJ’s to be announced!

And DON’T FORGET! There are many amazing NYC One Billion Rising events happening all day on February 14 throughout all five boroughs! Check out our event map for more info! >

In Less Than Five Weeks the World will RISE!

We are less than five weeks away from ONE BILLION RISING on 14 February 2013!

As we dance upon the path to ONE BILLION RISING, our email boxes are full of amazing stories, beautiful photos and messages of solidarity to RISE. Facebook is on fire with reasons to rise, and twitter is abuzz with thousands of tweets from South Africa to India.

If you have not signed up to start a RISING in your community, or have not joined an existing RISING, then please do so today!

Start/Join >

At 182, we are just 14 countries away from having One Billion Rising events in every country on the planet on 14 February 2013. SEE our event map >

Here’s a sampling of ONE BILLION RISING activities happening around the world now and on 14 February:

• Activist Janelle Chung is currently cycling around Taiwan to get people dancing for One Billion Rising and to raise money for Garden of Hope women’s shelters, call centers, counseling programs & advocacy campaigns in Taiwan, the U.S., Cambodia, and South Africa!
• ONE BILLION RISING Amsterdam activists
  tailored the One Billion Rising short film to make a Netherlands TV spot!
  Check it out here >
• Singer Maya Azucena released a “behind the scenes” video for her new ONE BILLION RISING song and music video set to be released next week! Take a sneak peak here >
• On 14 February, Australian Aboriginal Women in Urban Society will be hosting an event titled “Rites of Passage to a Violent Free Life.” The Event will be held at National Centre for Indigenous Excellence, Redfern Sydney.
• The European Women’s Lobby is rising on 14 February with its European and Belgian members and will be holding a Flashmob in the heart of the City center of Bruxelles!
• 20,000 women in Norwich, UK (roughly 1 in 3 of the female population) will be conducting a mass dance to BREAK THE CHAIN in the city center. Check out their site!

So now that you are inspired, how will you be rising? We want to hear from you!

SHARE your plans >

TELL us why YOU are rising! >

Submit an ‘I Am Rising…” Video or a photo documenting your campaign activities! >

New Eve Commentary – “The Delhi Rape, Savile, Ohio – This Violence Will No Longer Be Tolerated” (The Guardian)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/11/delhi-rape-savile-oh…

by Eve Ensler

There seems to be two types of risings on the planet right now. One is a sexual violence typhoon that is impacting most countries in the world. It’s been happening forever but, like climate change, it’s suddenly impossible to ignore. I first noticed more ominous waves during the US elections, the extreme and ignorant anti-women policies perpetrated by the Republicans. Then, like climate storms, floods and fires, specific extreme manifestations began to gain attention. A group of boys allegedly raping a girl in Steubenville, Ohio; a 14-year-old girl shot in the head for insisting girls have the right to learn in Pakistan; the gang rape and murder of a girl on a bus in Delhi; and in Britain the revelations that Jimmy Savile was able to abuse hundreds of girls over six decades, while British institutions from the BBC to Broadmoor turned a blind eye.

And, like the response to climate change, first there was an attempt at denial, then there is the blaming of the victim: a woman raped in Dubai fined after telling police she had been drinking; a priest in Italy telling women they are beaten because they don’t clean the house well and wear tight clothes; women in the US military raped by their comrades who then use that as proof that they never belonged there in the first place; raped girls in Rochdale being ignored by police and social workers because they were seen as damaged goods who were “making their own choices”. It goes on and on.

Like climate change, only the patriarchs with power seem to be blind to the magnitude of the horrors. As a matter of fact they are engineering it. There is a rape culture – a mindset that seems to have infected every aspect of our lives: the raping of the Earth through ecological destruction by the corporate powerful, pillaging resources for their own coffers with no concern for the Earth, or the indigenous peoples, or the notion of reciprocity; the rape of the poor through exploitation, land grabs, neglect; the rape of women’s bodies through physical violence and commodification, where a girl can be purchased for less than the cost of a mobile phone. The modelling and licensing of this rape culture is done by those protected by power and privilege – presidents, celebrities, sports stars, police officers, television executives, priests – with impunity.

But there is another rising. In the last year I have travelled the world for One Billion Rising, the global campaign that is a call for the one billion women who have been beaten or raped and the men who love them to strike, rise and dance on 14 February to end violence against women and girls. This movement is moving through the planet with a force and urgency unlike anything we have experienced – it is what the Indian activist Kamla Bhasin calls a “feminist tsunami”. Across 182 countries entire communities are planning to rise and voice their outrage and dreams. Nurses, teachers, domestic workers, indigenous leaders, fisherwomen, peasants, scholars, union organisers, all have come together.

Coalitions are being forged, with a new openness between issues, classes, tribes, races, artists, activists young and old. From Anna Cruz prosecuting 700 murders of women a year in Guatemala to Fartun, who opened the first shelter for women in Somalia, bravely organising for women to take to the streets of Mogadishu. From farmworker women – calling themselves Vaginas Campesinas – who will be dancing in their fields for less violent conditions, to the brave and outspoken nuns Sister Mary John from Philippines, Joan Chittester from the US, and Tenzin Palmo from Tibet. Entire networks are being activated – Gabriela in the Philippines, Unite in Britain, the AFL-CIO union in the US, and more than 14,000 other groups around the world.

Feminists and activists across the world have been tirelessly working for this moment for decades. If you don’t believe the door is opening look to India, where sexual violence has now become the central issue. Look to the winning of the US elections by women who said no to the anti-women extremists. Look to the UK, where a real debate is beginning about institutional violence against women – Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, spoke for many when he said the Savile report “must be seen as a watershed moment”. Look to loving men such as Kaizaad Katwal, Jason Day, Robert Redford, the Dalai Lama and millions of others who are rising with us. Look to City of Joy in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, where women who, in spite of the violent escalations of the M23 militias and the daily threat of annihilation, continue to heal and study and become powerful in order to save their sisters.

So I am opting for Rising #2. We don’t have any idea what’s going to happen when one billion women and men protest on the same day. We do know that the preparation for it over these last months has already announced, united and catalysed a movement that, like the violence, can and will no longer be denied.

Now is the time. One month. 14 February. Rise in the streets, in the schools, on the buses, in your homes, in the dark alleyways, in the offices and factories and fishing boats and fields. Let our rising reveal our understanding that, until women are equal, safe and free, no society can prosper and life is diminished. Let our rising announce our commitment to make ending violence against women and girls the central concern of our times.

Learn the Steps to BREAK THE CHAIN: “How To” Video NOW Available!

We are pleased to share with you a “how to” video of Debbie Allen’s choreography to the ONE BILLION RISING dance anthem BREAK THE CHAIN!

Activists in 182 countries are staging One Billion Rising events, many are using “Break The Chain” for flash mobs in high profile locations. Watch this video and dance the day away! And be sure to let us know what you are doing sign up your events on onebillionrising.org.

Special shout out to the incredible Senior dance class at Brooklyn High School of the Arts for teaching Debbie’s moves!

LEARN the dance! >

Once you learn the moves, plan a flash mob! >

Watch BREAK THE CHAIN Music Video >

DOWNLOAD BREAK THE CHAIN >

LAST CHANCE to see “Emotional Creature” Off Broadway!

This Sunday, January 13th, Eve’s play Emotional Creature will end its limited engagement Off-Broadway.

Tickets are still available for the remaining performances, so if you have not seen it yet, get your tickets now before it’s too late!

PURCHASE tickets >

Produced Off Broadway by V-Day Board members Carole Black and Pat Mitchell, and directed by Obie Award-winner Jo Bonney with original music and musical direction by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder, Emotional Creature began previews at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street) on Friday, October 26, 2012, and officially opened on Monday, November 12, 2012. The cast includes Ashley Bryant, Molly Carden; Emily S. Grosland, Sade Namei, Olivia Oguma, and Courtney Thomas.

DON’T MISS Emotional Creature! PURCHASE tickets today >

Bollywood Supports US Playwright Eve Ensler’s Gender Justice Fight (Zee News)

http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/art-and-theatre/bollywood-support…

New Delhi: American playwright and activist Eve Ensler, currently in India to gather support for her global movement to uproot violence against women, is also celebrating 10 years of her award-winning play `The Vagina Monologues` in the country.

Bollywood actors Chitrangada Singh, Manasi Scott and Suchitra Pillai will star in the hindi adaptation of the play, scheduled to be staged in Mumbai on January 6.

“Eve Ensler, has been in India for some time now to launch her One Billion Rising movement to end violence against women. She will be performing a piece in Mumbai along with the three guest actors from Bollywood,” Kaizaad Kotwal, co- director of the play, informed us.

Eve is also scheduled to visit Delhi on January 8 and perform with the cast, which includes Varshaa Agnihotri, Rasika Duggal, Dilnaz Irani, Dolly Thakore and Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal, who along with her son Kaizaad Kotwal has been directing the play in the country for the last 10 years.

The play, explores violence and other experiences of women all over the world through a series of monologues premiered in New York on October 3, 1996.

“With this new movement and with our efforts and Eve`s visit we intend to put India on the global map as a country that is going to take its role seriously when it comes to once and for all ending violence against women and girls,” says Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal.

In the backdrop of the brutal gangrape and death of a 23 -year-old Delhi medical student, the timing of the play is appropriate, says Kaizaad.

“I personally believe that the play has saved lives. Many women who have been victims of genital mutilation have come up and talked about their experiences and wanted to make sure their daughters did not have to go through what they did.

“And these are upper middle class women and not those in slum bastis. I believe the play has a transformational power. Very few plays last for 10 years. The audience has been growing over the years. This a reflection that the society is growing up,” says the co-director.

Eve had earlier in Thiruvanthapuram, met women rights groups, activists and artists to drum up support for her One Billion Rising (OBR) global movement. The activist will be launching the new movement on February 14, this year.

“The anti-rape protest movement will serve as a catalyst for the movement not only for India but for an entire world where sexual violence is rampant,” Eve had said in Thiruvanthapuram.

She said she eschewed capital punishment for rapists and advocated for education and “transformation”.

“I have never believed in capital punishment. I don`t think that kind of punishment serves a longer term I think it is about transformation and it is about accountability. I think men need to be held accountable for their actions,” she said.

Eve, who had reportedly been physically and sexually abused by her father when she was a child said, “I also think education and transformation is the key to the future, how do we help man who have raped who have incested and, how to stop doing that and how to teach their sons to do the same.”

The 59-year-old playwright and activist had earlier tweeted “Sexual violence not a cultural phenomenon in India – one billion women on the planet have been violated around the world.”

The OBR campaign, launched early in the year 2012 began as a call to action based on the UN statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than one billion women and girls.

On February 14, activists, writers, thinkers, celebrities across the world will plan to get together to express their outrage, “strike, dance, and rise” in defiance of injustices women suffer and demand an end to violence against women.

“The launch of the OBR is important. OBR is focusiing on the use of art to create activism,” says Kaizaad.

Meanwhile, Eve`s play `The Vagina Monologues`, translated into hindi by Ritu Bhatia and Jaydeep Sarkar is also set to travel to Lucknow.

“We did not get permission from authorities in Thiruvananthapuram to stage the play but we will be showing in Lucknow on January 14 and towards the end of January will stage the English version in Kochi. Eve will not be present for both of them because she would be going to Bangladesh and other countries,” said Kaizaad Kotwal, the play`s co-director.

The original stories of the play have been adapted to an Indian context.

“The original script we are not allowed to change, but we have done contextual changes to adapt to the Indian situation. For example the Jewish woman in the original script has been made into a Parsi,” says Kotwal.

PTI / Annie Samson

The Vagina Monologues Eve-Teases the Dormant Mind (Daily News and Analysis)

By Sanaya Chavda

http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/report_the-vagina-monologues-eve-t…

For Eve Ensler, the last 15 years have been all about spreading awareness on violence against women, breaking taboos and changing mindsets across the globe through her play The Vagina Monologues.

However, the violence hasn’t come to an end, says Eve. So the playwright escalated the awareness drive through her global project — One Billion Rising. “Violence against women is prevalent everywhere, and it’s getting out of control. The idea is to to take global action — to strike, to rise and dance against violence,” says Eve, who so far has received support from local communities in 179 countries for her project that will be held on February 14.

The concept is based on the statistics that one out of three women — a total of one billion women — will experience violence in her lifetime. So next month, one billion people around the world will walk out, rise and demand an end to violence.

“This couldn’t be more relevant in India given the horrific Delhi gang-rape. However, the outrage and discourse is what we hoped for; it’s amazing how people from all walks of life are demanding stricter laws and an end to the commodification of women,” she says adding, “It’s important to have a discourse on women’s rights, their sexuality and what it means to hold a woman against her will. In every country, women are degraded, sold, beaten and marginalised. People need to understand that by destroying women, you’re destroying life!”

This Sunday will be a special performance of Eve’s Vagina Monologues in Hindi – Kissa Yoni Ka – to mark its 10th year running, with guest appearances by Chitrangda Singh, Suchitra Pillai and Manasi Scott. The proceeds will go to Sneha shelter in Dharavi, which deals with abuse of women and children.

“Staging the play in a local language is always more powerful. I’m very proud of the production in India and feel director and producer Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal and Kaizaad Kotwal have nurtured the play well and continue to showcase it in the face of resistance. I’m also looking forward to interacting with college students in Mumbai. I love the energy and inspiration that comes from being around youngsters,” says Eve, who will also be holding a press conference and meeting NGOs to spread her message.

“It’s an amazing time to be in India, when men and women are coming together to protest against rape and take the issue forward,” she adds.

Capital Punishment for Rapists Not the Right Solution: Eve Ensler (The New Indian Express)

http://newindianexpress.com/cities/thiruvananthapuram/article1405730.ece

By Express News Service – THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

As a debate rages across the country on whether capital punishment should be awarded to rapists, noted playwright and women’s rights activist Eve Ensler said that such a move would not help solve the problem.

“Around one-third of the women in the world have been subjected to rape. So how many men will have to be killed? They are our fathers, brothers and sons. I don’t believe in capital punishment. The aim should be to fix accountability among men. Education and creating awareness is the key,” Ensler, who is in the city to create awareness about the campaign ‘One Billion Rising’, to be held across the world on February 14, told a press conference here on Wednesday.

“Widespread sexual education is the need of the hour. Along with this, the objectification of women should be resisted,” Ensler said, when asked about the rising cases of incest rapes in the state. Ensler said that the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign, which will also be held in India, should be an occasion for women subjected to violence to express themselves in joy, proud of their bodies and their freedom.

The campaign is being held in the state in association with various cultural and women’s organisations.

National Mahila Federation president Annie Raja, who attended the news conference, said that the time was ripe to take concrete steps to end the violence against women, as the whole country was seriously debating the issue.

All-India Democratic Women’s Association state secretary K K Shailaja said that ‘consumerist culture and feudal anti-women rituals that existed in the country were responsible for the plight of women’.

Eve Ensler in India: ‘After This Gang Rape, India Must Take the Lead’ (Kashmir Times)

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=10420

By Pamela Philipose

The horrific gang rape of December 16 on a bus in Delhi has led to a lot of asking. What is it about Indian society that has allowed such crimes to flourish? How are women’s lives to be secured against sexual predators? How are survivors to recover their sanity and spirit after the grievous assaults on them? The questions never end really.

Playwright and international women’s activist Eve Ensler doesn’t claim to know all the answers, but she has been grappling with such questions for years. Her play, ‘The Vagina Monologues’, which debuted on Broadway in 1996 and has since been enacted in over 140 countries, reflects this eloquently.

In one of those curious juxtapositions life throws up, Ensler’s tour of India to raise awareness over her One Billion Rising campaign – calling for an end to violence against women globally – coincided with hundreds of thousands of Indians literally rising in protest against the gang rape of the Delhi student and the exponential increase in crimes against women in India. “One Billion Rising is happening right here!” she exclaimed, calling the new activism on India’s streets “motivating”. As she put it to the media in Kerala, it’s very important that India, especially its youth, take the lead in this moment of distress.

For Ensler, the act of breaking silences and asserting the unexpressed is the beginning of change. ‘The Vagina Monologues’, which has been performed by iconic actresses like Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon as indeed by hundreds of ordinary women around the world, brought to the public stage hitherto unarticulated aspects of women’s bodies and lives. In a more recent work, ‘I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around The World’ (2010), it was the girls who got to monologue on their hidden fears, desires and experiences – an expression of ‘girl energy’ in Ensler-speak.

Mumbai, one of Ensler’s stops during her India tour, is familiar with her work, with ‘The Vagina Monologues’, having been translated into Marathi. According to Nandita Shah, co-director of Akshara, a Mumbai-based organisation working on gender justice concerns, Ensler’s greatest strength has been her ability to reach out to people, especially the youth. Says Shah, “Ensler is an unusual activist. She uses theatre and popular culture to connect with young people. Just consider her slogan, One Billion Rising. It is so simple, anybody can understand it. At this juncture, after the horrific Delhi gang rape, people from all streams of life – not just feminists – are suddenly very conscious of women and violence issues and they want to do something about them. So there is a double connect that Eve has been able to achieve this time.”

The India tour took off from Kerala, a state which despite its progressive veneer has seen a recent spate of extremely ugly incidents of violence, including women being sexually assaulted by their fathers, brothers, grandfathers. For Eve, who is herself a survivor of paternal sexual abuse, all this is just a reminder of the work that still needs to be done.

Feminist and trade unionist Nalini Nayak, general secretary of the Self Employed Women’s Association, Kerala, believes that Ensler can actually provide Kerala’s women with a chance to speak out on issues that have not figured in public discourse, “The women of Kerala have their own inhibitions about speaking on issues of sexuality, and here is someone who is actually encouraging them to do just that in a state where patriarchy is a huge problem and one that is not easy to address. There are some glimmers of change – films like ’22 Female Kottayam’, for instance, seem to reflect new attitudes. Ensler’s visit should also hopefully encourage young people in Kerala to question patriarchy and take it on.”

Nayak, who has struggled for years to protect the rights of fish worker against the plunder of the seas by global interests, is also struck by the comparison Ensler draws between the violence on women’s bodies and the rape of the eco-system by free market forces. Comments Nayak, “There certainly is a close parallel. It causes one to look at the root of the problem. It provokes you to ask: ‘why are societies so oppressive of women?'”

An assiduous blogger, Ensler’s take on the world is worn on her sleeve – rather like the hennaed tattoos she recently sported in Kerala. A recent one went: “I write after days of reading devastating blogs, stories and emails arriving from women on the ground in Palestine and Israel and Syria. Women who have been fighting for peace and an end to occupation and violence. Women who report the terror of bombs landing around them and the tremors and explosions and loss of limbs and lives and hope. Women who are burying the small bodies of children and who report feeling manipulated and controlled by politicians who do not see them, who use them merely as pawns in their game of power and rage.

“I write after the storm Sandy flooded New York and New Jersey – 23 US states in total – and the Caribbean, from Haiti to Jamaica to Cuba. I write in its aftermath, leaving neighborhoods and houses and lives destroyed. I write as drought and fires and extreme and unusual temperatures rage across the planet. I write as fossil fuel companies continue their drilling and plundering knowing that if this excavating of oil does not stop, it will soon be too late.”

That is Eve Ensler in essence. As her friend and sister-in-arms, Delhi-based feminist Kamla Bhasin puts it, “she approaches the issue of violence against women in a political way by making deeper connections – against militarism, against economic paradigms, against social relations that strip people of their dignity.” Adds Bhasin, whose organisation, Sangat, is coordinating the One Billion Rising campaign in South Asia,

“I respect her because of this. That is why when she asked me to come on board this campaign I had no hesitation in doing so.”

Bhasin is particularly touched by the fact that Ensler, a cancer survivor, has undertaken this long and arduous tour – four locations in all, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Delhi and Dhaka – in her quest to get women in the region to break free. And not just women. Ensler is clear that if violence against women and girls has to end, men need to become ‘active allies’ in a movement she terms as ‘Woman Spring’.
—(Women’s Feature Service)

Playwright Eve Ensler to Arrive in Mumbai to Address Meetings on Women’s Rights Issue (The Times of India)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Playwright-eve-ensler-to-…

By Bella Jaisinghani, TNN

MUMBAI: Playwright Eve Ensler, who wrote the Vagina Monologues, will arrive in Mumbai on January 4 to address a series of meetings on the issue of women’s rights. She will launch the Mumbai edition of the One Billion Rising (OBR) campaign, a global movement aimed at ending violence against women. OBR was an event planned well in advance but stands to gain relevance owing to the fatal gangrape of a medical student in Delhi on December 16.

Ensler is being hosted by theatre director Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal who has been staging her play in Mumbai. Of course, Vagina Monologues is not without its critics either who question whether its blatant descriptions of the female anatomy are not intended to titillate after all. They accuse it of taking the women’s liberation movement back a few decades by playing into the hands of those who objectify the fair sex.

Those who will accompany Ensler and Kotwal during Thursday’s launch will focus their solidarity on the OBR campaign. Actors Sakshi Tanwar, Nandita Das, Dolly Thakore and Kotwal’s son Kaizaad will be present at Jaihind College Thursday to kickstart the movement.

OBR began as a call to action based on the UN’s mind-boggling claim that one in three women will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at seven billion, this adds up to more than one billion women hence the name One Billion Rising.

The playwright and her team will proceed to Churchgate railway station later in the afternoon in order to ”salute the spirit of women and flag off a unique walkathon.”