READ OUR MANIFESTO

A STATEMENT OF INTENTION FOR
THE VOICES GHANA LAUNCH & BEYOND
On behalf of Voices & Partner Organizations

(December 2022)

VOICES is a new interdisciplinary performance arts project and campaign grounded in Black women’s stories by V-Day to unify the vision of ending violence against women. Our goal is to use art to embody and inspire solidarity-making in our collective imagination.

We are excited to launch our audio play created in collaboration with Black women artists across the diaspora and continent in Accra, Ghana on December 18th, 2022.

We have no romantic illusions about the socio-economic and political conditions in Ghana and the continent at large. We understand that colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy know no borders and in order to facilitate deep, meaningful, and transformative relationships as African people across the globe, we must move with intention, critical consideration, and active listening. We honor the deep emotional and spiritual wisdom within each one of us, learning from and alongside one another. As we return to the African continent, we know that a diaspora return rooted in feminist principles and values is integral and instrumental in the Pan-African struggle for freedom and liberation.

It serves none of us to continue to move in the world and replicate old, antiquated models of leadership and economic systems. Insecure, dominant, and ego-driven examples of masculinity are costing people everywhere their lives, hurting communities, and ruining the environment. It is clear that the ways of patriarchy are failing women, non-binary peoples, and it continues to fail men. If we are to shift the conditions of the poorest and most vulnerable of our communities, it must be guided by and grounded in the experiences, perspectives, and lessons from women, non-binary people, and children.

We welcome another process, inviting us to re-vision and reimagine ourselves in relationship with one another. We call on solidarity instead – firmly standing alongside our sisters in Iran, Palestine, the Congo and the world at large. We center Black women’s voices, not just because we are Black or women, but because we are the poetic philosophers of an unseen world, the very language of difference and magic, solidarity in the flesh.

We want all those who claim to love us to listen, to collaborate, to imagine and create with us. This is an opportunity for women of all orientations, nationalities, and identities to come together to cherish, to support, and to transform the conditions that silence and disappear us. We call on our brothers and men everywhere to stand with us, listen deeply and to be committed to the necessary work of dismantling patriarchy in their lives and the lives of those they love. We unite and connect through our differences. We celebrate the possibilities born of our creative coalitions as our collective survival depends on our coming together. We cannot be free until women everywhere are free. “What shall we build on the ashes of a nightmare?”