TOWNSHEND — On Thursday, Feb. 14, at 12:40 p.m., members of the Leland & Gray Union Middle and High School community 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.
The word billion refers to the one billion women worldwide the group estimates are survivors of abuse.
On Feb. 14, V-Day's 15th anniversary, many from Leland & Gray are expected to join activists, writers, thinkers, celebrities, and women and men across the world to “express outrage, demand change, strike, dance, and rise in defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to violence against women,” according to a press statement.
CLEA (Civic Leadership Education and Action), a student activist group at Leland &Gray, has organized the school's participation in One Billion Rising in partnership with the Women's Freedom Center in Brattleboro, which presented this to the student body last week.
CLEA students invited their peers and teachers to join them Feb. 14 to express solidarity with One Billion Rising and highlight the importance of ending violence against women.
The event will take place in Leland & Gray's activity room during high school lunch. According to CLEA, many students and teachers plan to rise and dance to the campaign's theme song, “Break the Chain,” “constructively interrupt” the normal lunch-time routine, and demonstrate their commitment to ending violence against women and girls.
This CLEA action is part of a larger effort Leland & Gray has made in recent months to raise awareness around issues of social justice on both a local and a global scale.
CLEA also will organize a bake sale at Leland & Gray during February as an extension of the One Billion Rising effort. All proceeds from the sale will be matched by CLEA and donated to the Women's Freedom Center.
“When we started V-Day 14 years ago, we had the outrageous idea that we could end violence against women,” said playwright and activist Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues.
“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 Feb. 14 to demand an end to violence against women and girls it will be a truly global voice that will rise up.”