ONE BILLION RISING REVOLUTION 2018: SOLIDARITY RISE! RESIST! UNITE!

The 2018 Campaign

ONE BILLION RISING REVOLUTION 2018: “SOLIDARITY”

RISE! RESIST! UNITE!

Once again, the theme of SOLIDARITY remains the focus of One Billion Rising 2018.

We are coming into a time defined by a fierce escalation of fascist, imperialist, neo-liberal attacks on the lives of people around the world. And the most marginalized – working class, minority and women on the margins in every part of the globe – experience the impact and are forced to confront these attacks on their welfare and rights and homes. In response to Trump’s election in the US, joining the emergence of other anti-women, anti-people leaders and governments around the world, we are seeing mass global rising of movements and deep and ongoing engagement creating a vigorous solidarity and dynamic energy to a rising resistance everywhere – for women’s rights and gender rights, the protection and defense of indigenous lands and the rights of indigenous peoples, against fascism and tyranny, discrimination and racism, environmental plunder and destruction, corporate greed, economic violence, poverty, state brutality and repression, war and militarism. This year, OBR is set to escalate RISINGS against all forms of violence against women – including a rising resistance against the systems that cause other forms of violence: imperialism, fascism, racism, capitalism and neo-liberalism – and will continue to highlight where all these issues interconnect.




RISE

OBR 2018 continues to sustain the theme of “Solidarity Against the Exploitation of Women” as neo-liberal policies and rapacious capitalism have become the engine of most governments, bringing profound consequences for the long suffering working class and marginalized sectors. The unprecedented exploitation and poverty ravaging most of the world is becoming harder and impossible to ignore. Suffering has reached new heights and this year OBR is seeing a new, dynamic and radical militancy and vibrancy that is opposing and rising against such repression and oppression. A focus continues to remain on “Exploitation” – because women across the globe are suffering from the reign of neo-liberalism that has worsened social and economic conditions for women. Hunger has reached new levels and poverty can no longer be excluded as a distinct form of violence. Joblessness, homelessness, labor exploitation, forced labor, government cutbacks to social services, landlessness, contractualization, lowering of minimum wage, privatization, displacement from wars, militarization and climate, environmental disasters cause by corporate greed, human and sex trafficking and more – all outcomes of a global system that is plunging the world into economic crisis – lend to other forms of violence that come hand in hand with excruciating poverty, hunger and deprivation.

The theme of exploitation highlights, in particular, workers rising everywhere. From women peasants and indigenous communities rising against extractive industries like mining, oil drilling, fracking, and against the plunder of the environment and natural resources, to factory workers rising against abuse from multi-national companies inside export processing zones, to nurses rising for better pay and dignity of labor, to government workers rising against their own employers, to restaurant workers rising for minimum wage, to migrant and domestic workers rising against abusive labor practices, to garment workers rising for safety in the workplace, to workers everywhere rising for live-able wage, safety , dignity, equal pay and more. Women workers everywhere are rising against the neo-liberal attacks on wages and against the degradation of workers, reducing them to no more than cogs, part of a global capitalist wheel that keeps churning for profit which do not serve or go back to workers. States, nations, international instruments and institutions who so often pretend to safeguard the welfare of the people sanction this economic exploitation – but they exist only to stand as imperialist purveyors of capital – and therefore, vanguards of exploitation.

In 2017 – major risings saw workers, minority groups and the most marginalized communities rising even in the face of suppression, deception, manipulation and violence. But because of the strength of solidarity the Risings also saw a collective energy and political resistance that could not be crushed.

Our call of SOLIDARITY is local and global and includes (but is not limited to)

Rising Against…
War
Tyranny
Racism
Fascism
Violence Against Women
Worker Exploitation
Imperialism
Resource and land exploitation
Climate destruction
Poverty
Misogyny
Patriarchy
Sexism
Gender Discrimination
Transphobia

And Rising For:
Women’s equality and safety and freedom
Refugee rights
Migrants rights
Climate justice
Reproductive rights
Education
Free press
Safety of women’s rights defenders
Constitutional rights
Civic and sex education
LGBTQI Rights

Like in years before, the working class, grassroots, minority and marginalized women will continue to fiercely and dynamically lead the way – women who have been most affected by anti-women, anti-democratic and anti-people policies.

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