1 Billion Rising For Justice

People from Donegal joined one billion women and men in 207 countries and shock the earth through dance and song on Valentines Day. The event One Billion Rising for Justice whose aims to highlight the violence globally against women and girls. Despite the falling snow the Regional Cultural Center provide a light warm space for those gathered to add their voices to the global campaign.

The event was opened by Kathleen Mc Creery

The lilting melodies from artist and musician Danielle Roelofsen warmed the spirits, followed by the collected voices of Kathleen, Sinead Gallagher and Valarie Bryce in a powerful poem.

Music and dance began as all ages came together with the hope of a better future for the younger generations in the room. some looked like swirling dervishes.

To bring balance the day a poem was recited by Maximum Homosapien.

ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE was a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice – courthouses, police stations, government offices, school administration buildings, work places, sites of environmental injustice, military courts, embassies, places of worship, homes, or simply public gathering places where women deserve to feel safe but too often do not. 

Writer, activist and performer Eve Ensler  best-known for her play, The Vagina Monologues Eve said “Violence against women is an epidemic. It may manifest itself differently from culture to culture: female genital mutilation in one place, internet bullying in another, gang rape here, acid burning there, but I believe it is the mother issue of our times. If anything else in the world caused the suffering of over a billion people the world's energies, resources and attention would be focused on it.

But because it is violence against women and girls, a huge part of our fight is overcoming what has become entrenched, expected and normalised.”

 Women in India had tribunals outside courthouses, breaking the silence, demanding accountability. In the UK there was a rising planned outside Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre, where women are held for months instead of receiving asylum and care after fleeing countries where they were raped, tortured, and threatened. Syrian women were rising from the front lines of war. Many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women are rising because the majority of women in prison are there with histories of being victimised by violence that directly or indirectly led to their incarceration. Indigenous and Aboriginal women are rising throughout the world to reverse laws that allow corporations to steal, develop and pollute their land, and because the rate of violence against them is often three to 10 times higher than the non indigenous population.

This was not a woman only event as there are thousands of men rising to change preconceive notions of masculinity and manhood.