V25 is here: V-Day Activists Gathered in NYC for An Evening of Reckoning and Rising

2023 marks 25 years of our global activist movement to end violence against women (cisgender and transgender), gender expansive people, girls and the planet.

For 25 years, V-Day has worked at the intersection of arts and activism to shatter taboos, create space for women and the most marginalized, and initiate community-led culture change.

On 1 February, V (formerly Eve Ensler) and V-Day activists, artists, friends, supporters and alumna gathered for An Evening of Reckoning and Rising at 92NY featuring V, Paula Allen, Rosario Dawson (V-Day Board Member), Noma Dumezweni, Dylan McDermott, and Marisa Tomei reading from V’s new memoir Reckoning. Together with V-Day Board Members V, Carole Black, Rosario Dawson, Pat Mitchell, and V-Day Executive Director Susan Celia Swan they marked V25.

Reckoning, the newest book from V, Tony Award-winning, bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues, takes us through a lifetime of writing, poetry, and activism, representing the methods through which she survived her own abuse and self-hatred, challenging the myths and narratives that have guided her life and the core of ideas that have become the global V-Day/One Billion Rising movements.

V25 kicked off in Accra with the launch of VOICES, an audioplay and campaign grounded in Black women’s stories of the African continent and diaspora in honor of V-Day’s 25th anniversary and Ghana’s Month of Return.

On 14 February, the date of the very first V-Day benefit of The Vagina Monologues in 1998, One Billion Rising activists around the world will stage One Billion Rising dance-filled, creative resistance events marking the 25th anniversary of V-Day and 10 years of One Billion Rising.