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![Claudia Plesa, right, dances with Emily Wolf during the 'One Billion Rising' event at the State Office Building on Thursday. With the stated purposed to "Strike, Dance, Rise!", the international rally is a world movement to encourage one billion harassed and exploited women to stop suffering in silence. Michael Penn / Juneau Empire](http://jun-cdn.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/superphoto/11986121.jpg "Claudia Plesa, right, dances with Emily Wolf during the 'One Billion Rising' event at the State Office Building on Thursday. With the stated purposed to "Strike, Dance, Rise!", the international rally is a world movement to encourage one billion harassed and exploited women to stop suffering in silence. Michael Penn / Juneau Empire")
People dancing in the eighth floor atrium of the State Office Building caught the eye of state workers during their lunch hour Tuesday afternoon, as they looked through their windows and lined up by the railings to see what was going on.
The dancing was part of the One Billion Rising campaign, which aims to “express outrage, to strike, dance and rise” to support an end to violence against women and girls, according to the organization’s website. Similar events were held in three other Alaskan communities: Ketchikan, Fairbanks and Ester, according to the website.
In Juneau, about 50 people danced to Destiny’s Child and Pat Benatar in between speeches from local figures calling for an end to violence against women.
“I’m here for all the people I’ve worked with and all the people that called me,” said Heidi Clements, 24, who previously worked as an advocate for women in crisis situations.
For small business owner Donavan Jackson, 28, one of the few men in the crowd, he said he was dancing for a family member who was a victim when they were younger.
“I hope next year to see a lot more people,” he said about the event. “This affects everybody in this city, not just the victims.”
This was the first year Juneau participated in the campaign. It was organized by the statewide Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault and locally by the AWARE (Aiding Women in Abuse and Rape Emergencies) shelter.
Two-hundred-thirty countries participated in this year’s dance, according to the One Billion Rising website. The “one billion” reference alludes to the United Nations statistic that at least one out of every three women on the planet has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
Annie Whittey, the program coordinator for the Council on Domestic Violence, reiterated for the crowd the statistics in Juneau. According to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, of every 100 women in Juneau, 47 have experienced intimate partner violence, which is defined as hitting, kicking, shoving, burning or other violence. And of every 100 women in Juneau, 35 have experienced sexual violence. Taken together, the two categories indicated that 55 percent of women in Juneau have experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence or both in their lifetimes.
With such depressing statistics, it’s that much more important to speak out against violence, said AWARE prevention manager Ati Nasiah.
“We will not silent, we will not be indifferent,” Nasiah told the crowd.
Caren Robinson, one of the founding organizers of AWARE in the 1970s, lauded the One Billion Rising dance event for giving the issue of domestic violence attention in a unique way.
“It is unique and I love it,” Robinson said. “It gives it a really uplifting aspect to it instead of always kind of down.”
The presidents of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood addressed the crowd, as did City and Borough of Juneau Assemblyman Jesse Kiehl and AWARE Executive Director Saralyn Tabachnick.
Alaska Native dancing group Yees Ku Oo and Eagle Ravens performed a traditional dance.
“We can’t just let women and children be beaten and raped and die without standing up to say we know about you, we care about you, we want it to end, the violence,” Pattie Adkisson, a dance group member and one of the organizers of the event, said. “So dancing was such a creative idea, (and it) gives us a chance to speak out locally and be part of a world wide movement.”
• Contact reporter Emily Russo Miller at 523-2263 or at emily.miller@juneauempire.com.
Comments (16)
Add commentI know a better person
I know a better person wouldn't tarnish the report by replying to you...but the bait is too good. Actually, just talked myself out of it, have a good day rough cut.
just put him on "ignore"
It'll save time and eventually your curiosity will wear off
This is part of bottom-up government
Which is really how it should be. Women are getting fed up with murder, rape, being used as objects, getting paid less, and being used as baby machines---It will encourage more women to be engaged, more politically active, and more assertive.
We've seen this movement on the left and on the right, and it's all the same thing, and brings it's typical hodge-podge of human issues to the fore, like the very relevant debates on abortion, peace, conservation, to mention a few.
We as men can only encourage this, if we want to call ourselves men, because it may well be a current that leaves us behind---If we think of women as the weaker sex, we may well have to wonder at the extraordinary lengths we've gone as a society to keep them enchained for so long.
Holy cow, jamison, that was
Holy cow, jamison, that was quite the post!
Why do you think so little of women?
Or are you scared of them?
Hey Jamison, unchain your
Hey Jamison, unchain your women !
Just what is "dancing" suppose to accomplish?
Simpletons.
just making an observation, Calypso
and acknowledging my bias. What would give you the impression I thought so little of women? I came out of one, was raised by one, had children with one. I think women are stronger than men in many ways, but we're all human, and share strengths and weaknesses in our portion, depending on the way we've lived.
Women have lived subject to rules made by men, largely administered by men, and in many religious traditions utterly dominated by men and are by many considered the "weaker" sex: They are beaten, raped, murdered, and sold into slavery the world over on a daily basis, even right under our very noses---My wife just told me that 10,000 sex slaves congregate around the Super Bowl every year, for instance (but if they walk away with a bunch of money in their pockets afterwards, it's more than I've seen).
Our society, such as it is, can be fairly said to be male-dominated (though without women we wouldn't get very far at all), and though we try to view ourselves as supreme (the greatest country in the world, and all that), we have fairly high rates of violence and sexual abuse of women, especially here in Alaska. Yes, it happens to men too, but only a tiny fraction of the overall statistic.
We comfort ourselves that women have an increasing role in politics, business, society, and it's a very good sign of our overall growth as a civilization, but the abuse persists, and in certain parts of the world it's truly horrible.
Women put up with more: Life itself is making them stronger, even as our commercial society, which often treats women as commodities, is making men weak.
There, Calypso---
I've devoted more time to answering you than I ever thought I would, mostly because I think you might be a woman. You can blame the coffee...
Hi there 'franklin! I've noticed you're not as wise as your namesake (but then, neither am I)...Having a good morning, I trust?
Dancing is good for you---Very therapeutic, as these women seem to know. You should try it---Shake things up in there; it'll improve your thinking!
Dancing against violence?
I'm sorry to say but I think that's ridiculously silly. Now lynching against violence will work. Public lynchings.
Lynchings? nah... builds up a bow-wave of resistance too fast.
probably a better tactic for later...
Come to think of it,
I never did see many fights at the Great Alaska Bush Company.
Or at the Marine Bar,
But whenever the fighting the dancing stopped.
jamison - societies evolve or
jamison - societies evolve or de-volve, in some instances. Am I supposed to be held accountable for the treatment of women since the beginning of time?
The answer is no - we all should do the best we can, in the time we have, to make things better for all things Earth - people, animals, environment, etc. Throwing in a straw man to make a point and further an agenda isn't fair.
But then the progressives pop up with some agenda driven talking point that is supposed to make some of us feel guilty or something. Like the ridiculous "war on women" or "conservatives want you drinking dirty water and breathing dirty air" or "conservatives want grandma eating cat food" and you get the idea.
However, I'm not buying all your passion because the policies of the liberals don't pan out.
The left has destroyed the family over a generation or two under the guise that men weren't needed - government would take care of the women and children. Well, look where that social engineering game as gotten women - promiscuity is rampant, drug use is everywhere, kids are left alone because women have to work or else kids are deprived because the government can only give so many dollars to keep them 'just comfortable enough' and you get the point.
Then we see how the left gives the men a pass on their anti-social behavior towards women - 'it's not their fault, they didn't have a father growing up, their mother was doing drugs and had men in and out of their lives, prison will only make them more bittter' and you get the idea there too.
So, I guess we're left with a circular firing squad.
I have one question. Why do you feel the need to dismiss the person you're having a discussion with? Like this - "I've devoted more time to answering you than I ever thought I would"?
Well - it certainly got
Well - it certainly got everyone talking, now didn't it?
I clicked on the "here" to view your post, Calypso
and, sorry, I just can't wrap my head around your partisan mindset.
I once heard that there are two kinds of people---People that think there are two kinds of people and everyone else: You seem like the former to me---I try to think there's a little mixture in everyone: That there are religious conservative environmentalists out there, liberal anti-abortionists, fiscal conservative liberal academicians, homosexual evangelicals(God help them), and feminist Christians, to name only a few.
This emphasis on trying to isolate out the "liberal mindset", trying to pin every tail on the donkey from socialism, fascism (!?), communism, anarchy, and every bad thing under the sun seems just a little fanatical to me, especially considering that "liberals" wrote and ratified the Constitution, signed the Declaration of Independence, invented practically everything, and have risen up to challenge hidebound beliefs throughout our history.
The reality is that those you call "liberal" are really the worst kind of "conservatives"! They want to conserve the water, the air, the earth, to stop and think quite a while before introducing brave new innovations which stand to make certain people a hell of a lot of money; whereas those you call "conservatives" want to rush ahead, damn the torpedoes, and give anything a try if it will mean development of our limited resources.
But where it comes to women the titles hold true---Liberals just want to let women become, and conservatives, very many of them men, seem to want to clamp down on the choices women are able to make about their reproductive freedom----Don't you trust them?
Why did you bother, Jamison?
Were you expecting a different kind of post? After years of unenlightened, partisan Frenchie posts, what caused you to look again? Just curious...
it was my day to torture myself
so i thought, Why not?