One Billion Rising: Rosario Dawson on why she is joining Eve Ensler

One Billion Rising:

Rosario Dawson on why she is joining Eve Ensler’s campaign

 

Actor and activist Rosario Dawson explains why she’s joining Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising Campaign, which aims to encourage people around the world to Take Action to ‘end violence against women and girls‘.

Rosario Isabel Dawson (born May 9, 1979) is an American actress, singer, and writer. She has appeared in films such as Kids, Men in Black II, 25th Hour, Sin City, Clerks II, Rent, Death Proof, The Rundown, Eagle Eye, Alexander, Seven Pounds, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Unstoppable.

Dawson was born in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, is a writer and singer who is of Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent. Isabel was sixteen years old when Rosario was born; she never married Rosario’s biological father, Patrick C Harris, who is of Irish American and Native American descent. When Rosario was one year old, her mother married Greg Dawson, a construction worker, who “loved and raised Rosario as his own daughter” (Dawson has stated that “He’s always been my dad”).

Dawson has a brother, Clay, who is four years younger. Her parents divorced in 2006, Dawson and Clay both struggled with their family.

At the age of 21, Isabel moved the family into an abandoned building squat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she and her husband renovated an apartment and installed the plumbing and electrical wiring for the building, creating affordable housing where Rosario and Clay would grow up. Dawson has cited this part of her history when explaining how she learned that “If you wanted something better, you had to do it yourself.”

The campaign has named its ‘deadline for justice’ as ‘V Day’, 14 February 2013

ABOUT ONE BILLION RISING

ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION

On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 2.14.13, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

What does ONE BILLION look like? On February 14th, 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION.

ONE BILLION RISING IS:

• A global strike
• An invitation to dance
• A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
• An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
• A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
• A new time and a new way of being

 

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