V-Day Annual Report 2016 - ONE BILLION RISING: RISE FOR REVOLUTION 1 | Page 26

RISING
2016 TOUR
WITH EVE ENSLER

and

MONIQUE WILSON

ATLANTA; DHAKA, BANGLADESH; CEBU, TACLOBAN, DAVAO, AND MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES;
HONG KONG; PLAYA DEL CARMEN AND MEXICO CITY, MEXICO, AND LONDON.

One Billion Rising Founder, Eve Ensler, and Global Director, Monique Wilson, completed
a multiple country RISING tour where local organizers and activists for local events
joined them. Each rising, city and country is applying the 2016 call to action in their local
context, focusing on marginalized communities and calling for justice and systems
change to end all forms violence against women in girls. In Dhaka, organizers hosted a
revolutionary panel discussion followed by an evening of feminist themed performances
and artistic pieces, including performances by Monique Wilson and Eve Ensler.
The pair spent a week in the Philippines, in multiple cities, rising for and with a cross section of Filipina
communities including Gabriela Women’s Party, comfort women, youth activists, labor activists, indigenous
groups, and more. In Tondo, one of Manila’s biggest slum areas situated by the bay where water floods its
residents on a daily basis, and where makeshift settlements are surrounded by slaughter houses and now a
coal factory, the pair joined with residents in demanding and end to violence and poverty. In Tacloban, they
joined Typhoon Haiyan storm survivors Rising for climate justice and Mother Earth, and rising for justice from
government neglect. In Davao City, joined with activists from many grassroots communities including workers,
urban poor, peasants, teachers, students, women’s groups, community groups, families of migrants, LGBT
groups, groups for the rights of sex workers, Lumad communities who are currently displaced because of
militarization and living in evacuation camps in the city as they rise for Lumad rights, against militarization,
against mining and environmental plunder, and against political oppression and killings. And in Pampanga,
Angeles City (known as a brothel city where US troops come to purchase and use Filipina women and girls for
“Rest & Recreation”, OBR Pampanga they joined a Rising against foreign intervention and militarization and
the sexual and economic exploitation of women and children.
In Hong Kong, rose alongside domestic workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh rising for the rights of domestic and migrant workers. In March, they traveled to Mexico the One
Billion Rising Revolution focus is the issue of the national and international sex trafficking of Mexican girls and
women.
The tour finished in London with the London Premier of Ensler’s newest theatrical work the “Fruit Trilogy” at
the Southbank Center, part of the WOW (Women of the World) International Festival and co-produced with
the West Yorkshire Playhouse and a “Bodies of Revolution” panel at WOW with Eve Ensler, Monique Wilson,
Christine Schuler Deschryver from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rada Boric from Croatia.
In November, Executive Director Susan Celia Swan joined OBR Director Monique Wilson in Manila for the
global gathering of the International League of Peoples Struggles World Conference as well as meetings with
the Lumads and One Billion Rising activists from around the region and world. Susan joined Risings across
the breadth of the campaign including stops in London, New York and the Mission Girls led Rising in San
Francisco and Bay Area Rising in Oakland.