I left New York City’s Washington Square Park yesterday
after a One Billion Rising flash mob event with the
oddest sense of female empowerment. Why odd?
Well, mostly because I’m a man. Nonetheless, I
found the spectacle and high-energy performance
of nearly 300 women dancing to the strains of Tena
Clark’s Break the Chain tremendously inspiring.
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The day of foot- stomping, flash-mobbing and
booty- shaking all across the world?will not, in fact,
end violence against women. It won’t stop men?of
the cloth from molesting children, the Taliban from
shooting?little girls who want an education, or
boyfriends from raping their girlfriends. But what it
does is help all of us tell a new story about what’s
possible. It creates connections across demographic
and organisational difference, a shared experience
and set of memories, an undeniable visual and
visceral demonstration of our collective outrage. It
gives us somewhere to place our intolerance for what
happened in New Delhi and Steubenville and so many
places just like it that never made the headlines.
Above all else, it awakens our own dormant audacity.
If Eve Ensler and V-Day can get one billion people
to dance together, what else might be possible?
In nearly 200 countries around the world, people
took to the?streets Thursday with a carnival spirit as
part of One Billion Rising,?a campaign initiated by
Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues,
to highlight violence against women. In India, the
message mirrored widespread public sentiment that
has swelled after the gang rape and death of a
23-year-old physiotherapy student in Delhi in
December, bringing women’s rights and safety to
the center stage of civic and political discourse.
...Thursday’s event, which?was attended by dozens
of young people from Delhi University and student
organizations, seemed to herald a broader movement,
one focused on changing societal mindsets and
individual attitudes rather than railing against the
government.
International Herald Tribune/NYT India
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Al Jazeera, Courtney Martin
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