So this is not a normal humor post. On Valentines Day (V-Day) my
It. Was. Amazing.
To start off this post, I need a couple facts.
- One in three women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
- Every 12 seconds, a woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend.
- Between 3.3 and 10 million children witness domestic violence annually.
Aren't those facts horrible? They were when I first saw them- I couldn't believe it. I haven't personally experienced anything like that and I wanted to try and change it. When my teacher announced that we would be learning a dance for women's rights, I was ecstatic. The whole thing worked like this: at exactly12 pm our time, 1 billion people across the world would dance the exact same choreography to the exact same song. It's called "Break the Chain" by Eve Ensler. Here's the link (the song and the choreography). It was supposed to be a protest to end domestic violence, and it was a pretty big thing. We practiced..a bunch. In class, for homework, waiting in line for the water fountain- everywhere! I didn't really get how big of a deal it was until I was there- we went to a rally first. It was in front of the Capitol, which is where all the government is in my city. We had signs, we had voices, and we were excited. Martin Luther King Jr's daughter spoke (among other important speakers) and we were all so pumped. Women came up and talked about living in a house with violence, and talked about a world without violence against women. There were chants like "When do we want violence against women to end? NOW!" We sang a beautiful song-here's a bit of it(rise up, we gotta rise up. stand up, for those who gave up) and then we walked to the dance space/protest in a park a couple blocks down. By that time, I'd realized that this was something I'd be telling my kids and grandkids about- it felt like the "I have a dream" protest. They played "Girl on Fire" (it's mah jam) and my friends and I hopped and skipped and danced all the way to the protest. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there. Maybe a thousand. We were all wearing pink and red and we were all pumped. I saw a bunch of people I knew- my neighbor, my old friend, my temple leader- it was so sweet to see all the people I knew! At noon...we danced. The music came through the entire crowd and every time you stepped you could feel the ground shake from everyone stepping with you. It was a truly beautiful thing. The crowd reminded me of the old tapes showing segregation protests, and the energy in the crowd could have made it to Africa, where the women really needed us. Years from now, I will be telling future generations that I was there- just like the generations before me tell me about the protests they went to. Anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment