Bay Area Rising is an all-volunteer team formed three years ago that is dedicated to the feminist principles of individual empowerment, collective action, and connecting the everyday to the sacred. By combining art, spirituality, and activism, we focus on a performance ritual dedicated to healing the violence against women and girls.
Our performances each year are purposefully sculpted to become a catalyst to increase awareness, raise money, and bring attention to educating and changing social attitudes, and ultimately be champions in the fight to stop violence against women and girls.
Our campaign, launched in a community park in Berkeley in June of 2012, began as a call to action, based on the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS!!!
Every year since 2012, when we held our first event in a community park in Berkeley, we come together to express outrage, strike, dance, and RISE in defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to violence against women.
In 2013 we held our first evening event at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland entitled ‘Night for the One Billion’. In 2014, we launched our efforts to ‘Stand for Real Love, One Billion Rising for Justice’ which focused on the issue of justice for all survivors of gender violence, and highlighted the impunity that lives at 
the intersection of poverty, racism, war, the plunder of the environment, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy.
And this year our mission is clear. This is the year for EVOLUTION! For all of us to evolve to a place of knowing that we will do whatever it takes to end the systemic and societal violence against women. It is time, as humans, that we evolve into our higher selves to end this now. We have entitled our event ‘Evolution: Drum! Dance! Rise!’
Peformers will include: GINA BREEDLOVE • DESTINY ARTS • STARHAWK • JEAN A. RHEA • LORRAIN TAYLOR • SARAH BUSH DANCE PROJECT • JULIE WOLF • KANYON SAYERS-ROODS • OJALA LUISAH TEISH • ARISIKA RAZAK HAND-2-HAND COMBAT • CHHOTI MAA • RICHELLE DONIGAN • AFIA WALKING TREE • FAT CHANCE BELLY DANCE • SRI DEVI • RAE ABILEAH
Join us, February 14th, 2015 at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland for this astounding performance ritual. An Oakland event. An Oakland Tradition. And an event that we must keep doing until all violence against women and girls is eradicated from our planet. Buy tickets HERE.
