FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Elinor Warkentin 778-389-4847
Angela Marie MacDougall, BWSS 604-808-0507
Ellen Woodsworth, MC 604-328-8230
Christine McDowell rememberoursisterseverywhere@gmail.com
ONE BILLION RISING: Marker of Change
Thornton Park, Vancouver
VANCOUVER’S WOMEN’S MONUMENT COMMITTEE
JOINS GLOBAL CAMPAIGN – ONE BILLION RISING –
TO STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS
February 14, 2013 to be V-Day’s Largest Day of Action Ever
On February 14, 2013 at 10:30am, Vancouver’s Women’s Monument Committee will join with activists around the world for ONE BILLION RISING, the largest day of action in the history of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls.
ONE BILLION RISING began as a call to action based on the staggering 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, 2013, V-Day’s 15th anniversary, the Women’s Monument Committee and MC Ellen Woodsworth will join activists, writers, artists, and ordinary women and men across the world express outrage, demand change, strike, dance, and RISE in defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to violence against women.
“When we started V-Day 14 years ago, we had the outrageous idea that we could end violence against women,” said Ensler. “Now, we are both stunned and thrilled to see that this global action is truly escalating and gaining force, with union workers, parliament members, celebrities, and women of all backgrounds coming forward to join the campaign. When we come together on February 14, 2013 to demand an end to violence against women and girls it will be a truly global voice that will rise up.”
Locally, Angela Marie MacDougall, of Battered Women’s Support Services says “With six to ten women a day seeking crisis support for their first time at Battered Women’s Support Services, increases of women arrests for allegedly perpetrating domestic violence, deportations of women who are in Canada fleeing gender persecution, the denial of Indigenous women’s voices at the BC Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry, the, seemingly, stalled BC Highway of Tears investigation, the ONE BILLION RISING campaign in tandem with 22nd Annual Feb 14th Women’s Memorial March DTES Vancouver galvanizes us to keep going.”
Women have been and continue to stand together around the world. “Victims of Japan’s military sexual slavery system, euphemistically called as ‘comfort women’ have been staging the longest demonstration in human history on every Wednesday (over 1000 times) in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Korea since January 1992. They demand the Japanese government for acknowledgement of historical truth and justice. We must stand in solidarity with them in combating violence against women,” says Thekla Lit, President of BC Association for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (BC ALPHA).
As the Women’s Monument Committee’s contribution to the ONE BILLION RISING global event, we are organizing the following action at Marker of Change, Thornton Park (Main and Terminal): At 10:30am we will gather to SAY NO to violence against women with speakers, poets, and dancing. At 11:30am we will walk in solidarity to Main and Hastings, to join the February 14th Women’s Memorial March that starts from the Carnegie Centre at noon.