In an Irish Home

I know today is Valentine’s Day and everyone wants to think about Champagne and chocolates and fat little cupids hurling arrows of love across the sky. But today, behind the red hearts and the roses, there is an even greater opportunity to send your love across the world. Dance.

Yes, Dance.

Today, 14th February, women and men, girls and boys will come together in Ireland and around the world to dance for a cause.  It’s a campaign of LOVE and it’s called ONE BILLION RISING. If you are a woman, know a woman, are raising a woman, love a woman…you should know about it.

Have you heard of it?

The ONE BILLION RISING global day of action is a campaign created by award-winning American playwright and gender activist Eve Ensler and V-Day, the international movement she founded to stop violence against women and girls.

Today, it is hoped that as many as one billion people will ‘rise’. That they will walk out of their homes, their work places and their schools in an act of protest against the fact that one in three women – a total of one billion women – will be beaten or raped over the course of her life.

Eve is calling on people everywhere, on this day of love, to express their outrage, demand change, strike, dance, and rise in defiance of the injustices women suffer.

Ireland is answering the call.

The following are known Risings across Ireland:

• Dublin: The Living Room, Clarendon Street, 1.00pm
• Dublin: The Spire, O’Connell Street, 1.30pm
• Dublin: Dáil Éireann, 2.15pm
• Dublin: Trinity College Front Square, 3pm
• Dublin:Connolly Station, 4pm
• Dublin: Top of Grafton Street, 6pm
• Donegal: In front of An Grianan Theatre 1.30pm, Main Street, Letterkenny
• Mayo: Mayo Rising, 10.30pm, Lannagh Road, Castlebar
• Sligo: Sligo: Sligo Rising, 6pm, Forthill, Sligo
• Donegal: Get Donegal Dancing, 1.30pm, Main Street, Letterkenny
• Sligo, Belta Country Market, lunchtime
• Tipperary: Cloughjordan Rising, 8pm, Parochial Hall, Step Road, Cloughjordan
• Galway: Galway is Rising, 1pm, Eyre Square
• West Cork: West Cork Strike, Dance, Rise, 1.30pm, Wolfe Tone Square, Bantry
• Maynooth: Start a Rising, 2pm, NUI Maynooth
• Ennis: 5pm, Ennis Courthouse, Zumba parade down to the Queens
• Kerry: Into the Light, 8pm, the Square, Listowel, Co Kerry
• Tralee: 7 – 8pm, contact details of organisers here
• Cork: 6.30pm, St Aloysius, Sharman Crawford St, Cork
• Cork: 5pm, Ballydehob social club, Co Cork

Go out today and show your LOVE by DANCING! For a full list of events in Ireland, visit: http://www.onebillionrising.org/page/event/search_results?orderby=day&state&country=IE&limit=100&radius_unit=mi

And, for more Irish details, visit: http://www.facebook.com/VDayOneBillionRisingIreland and

http://www.thejournal.ie/one-billion-rising-ireland-dance-792602-Feb2013/