Declaration

We are Million Women Rise. 

We are a Black/Global Majority led, women’s grassroots movement which centres Black, Disabled Women. As Aurora Levins Morales says, “We are led by those who most know these systems.” 

We are dedicated to ending all forms of men's violence against women and girls.

Every year we come together from across these islands and beyond to take over these streets and say, “NO MORE!”. “No more violence against women and girls in all its forms”.

As violent men continue to wage wars, across man-made borders, girls and women are literally in the firing line. The Epstein files are exposing many of these men in power, and as the scale of their crimes is being uncovered, they have chosen to start yet another war in which girls and women have been treated like collateral damage. But we will not turn away. We will bear witness to all of the atrocities even as our hearts break. This is not easy, but we will not go quietly into the night. We will not forget. We are here to keep the attention and pressure on those men who need to have power-over in order to feel powerful! They must be held to account!

We come together to connect the dots. From Iran to Sudan, from Gaza to Goma, from Eritrea to the Gambia, from Washington to London…from White Hall to the White House…from Silicon Valley to the so-called “private islands"…to social media…there are men who believe that we are disposable. We know that their hatred of women and girls, and their sickening, violent hunger for power runs across the length and breadth of our societies. We know that violent men are not willing to relinquish their sense of entitlement to our bodies, our minds…our lives…and this is the case whether they are politicians, princes, billionaires, tech bosses, business men, religious leaders, prison officers, teachers, filmmakers, police officers, doctors, lawyers…or “ordinary blokes”.

We know, painfully, that there are women who are complicit in subjecting girls and women to harm and violence, and we recognise how hetero-ableist patriarchy and cross-cutting systems continue to replicate themselves, even within our movements. 

We also know that we can end this.

We are marching on Saturday March 7th to demand an end to ALL forms of men’s violence against us. This includes men who behave as if they have no power. This includes powerful men of all political persuasions….and let's be clear, the Left is not immune to this toxicity. We will not let our experiences become fodder for fascists. We will not allow ourselves to be divided. We know that our sisterhood is our strength. We will not join in the race to the bottom, or fight for the crumbs that are being scattered on the floor. We refuse to uphold systems of oppression that create hierarchies of life. We will not let ourselves be defined by laws that were not designed to free us.

We refuse to uphold systems that believe our bodies and our lives are disposable. 

We will not stop rising till we are free! 

We will not stop rising till the white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, ableist, capitalist, classist, colonial, necropolitical systems, that also brutalise our Mother Earth, are dismantled. 

We know that we can end this. I and I, We, Us, Together…because our liberation is only liberation if it is collective. As our Ancestor Audre Lorde said,

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own”

Our freedoms, therefore, cannot be at the expense of our sisters. We will not celebrate the slow or sudden death of any human-being who is at the coal face of patriarchy. 

Million Women Rise has been marching for 19 years, and warrior women, matriarchs, healers, dreamers, poets, freedom fighters have been rising for generations! We will continue to rise as long as men choose to perpetrate violence against us. 

We know that one of the ways that oppression works is by squeezing out our imagination and crushing our hope…forcing us into competition and doubt…but imagination and hope are a fundamental part of our radical work. Violence is NOT inevitable. Collective liberation is our birthright! When they tell us we aren’t being realistic…it’s okay. We are exactly the kinds of realists that we need to build a different world…because we are the ones that know that we can end this. As Ancestor June Jordan said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”.

Each one of us holds a fragment of the story, a piece of the puzzle…a part of the solution. This time in our collective journey does not ask us as individuals to do it all.  Some of us will need to literally fight, some of us will need to hold the line, some of us will need to chant, some of us will need to pray, some of us will need to write, some of us will need to make beautiful radical art, some of us will need to cast spells, some of us will need to go into the system, some of us will have to focus on dismantling the systems, some of us will need to build liberation schools, some of us will need to hold the container for our collective care, some of us will need to take the time to heal, some of us will need to rest and some of us will need to keep conspiring, organising, dreaming and world building for our collective freedoms. 

We come together in sisterhood and solidarity, at a time when our communities and our movements are being pushed into fragmentation and separation. 

We come together to build a practice where we are able to respectfully disagree and still stay in right relationship with each other.

We come together to raise our collective voices, at a time when individual men, governments, media bosses and their so-called “tech bros” are trying to distract us, intimidate us and silence us.

We come together, in shared grief, to mourn our sisters whose lives have been stolen. 

We come together to rise for girls and women whose voices are being silenced, who are surviving in the shadows, who feel alone, are isolated and afraid. YOU are not alone. We are here and we move with and for you. We say NO MORE and we want you to know that YOU are not ALONE. Million Women Rise rises for YOU, for US! As long as this violence persists, we will rise, we will resist! 

We come together, in rage and defiance, to resist all forms of violence against us. 

We come together, in revolutionary love, to remind ourselves that a different world is possible….and we are building that world, right now.

This is not just a march, this is a call to women everywhere. Wherever you are, whatever your piece of the puzzle is. Let’s come together. When we come together we are UNSTOPPABLE! 

Power!

Power!

Power to the Women!

Women got the Power!

Sisters, can you hear us?!

Growing stronger by the hour!

Power!

Power!

One Woman, One Body, One Song, One Love!