Dear Risers,

We are two weeks away. Many of us have worked for months to prepare for our risings for justice. Some have just found out and signed up and some have created a rising in their school, center, place of worship, their block, in their office, factory, home or bedroom. Some are planning with coalitions, others with local groups, some with their best friends. Some are organizing to rise in squares, courthouses, mines, military bases, college campuses, fields. Some in their bodies, hearts and minds. Some are dancing on stages, others in parks, in squares, in prisons, in auditoriums. Some are working to bring out thousands, others just their close circle. Some are engaging men and new activists. Some are gathering the courage to join any group at all, or release their story, or dance in public or in the streets which would, could mean risking their lives. Some are rising to release their wounds, others are rising to articulate them.

Every rising is part of a collective energetic decision to end the violence on this planet that has traumatized women and girls’ bodies and robbed us of the full capacity of our life force and value. Every rising is a dance of connection to end racial, environmental, economic, and gender injustice.

There is no way to fail.

What matters is that we rise, that we name the injustice, that we commit with our bodies and our communities that this rising on the 14th, like all the days that lead up to it and all the days that follow it, is our life.

Each rising for justice is part of the river of justice, the current of a new paradigm, an unstoppable wave, joining us through the strength and encouragement of our global solidarity.

May this wave lift us and unite us. May it take us and surprise us. 

May it move us into love.

Eve