Over the weekend, people from all over the country came to the National Mall in Washington D.C. to see the Monument Quilt, a collection of 3,000 stories from survivors of rape and abuse. “By stitching our stories together, we are creating and demanding public space to heal,” reads the text on the Monument Quilt’s website. “The Monument Quilt is a platform to not only tell our stories, but work together to forever change how Americans respond to rape.”
The full display is the culmination of years of work by Baltimore-based activist organization FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, co-founded by 2015 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Hannah Brancato. As part of her Fellowship, Brancato founded Gather Together: a Survivor Support Network, which works to better support survivors and transform cultural attitudes to prevent rape and abuse.
Open Society Foundations was the premiere sponsor of the Monument Quilt and OSF Program Officer Gretchen Rohr participated in the Survivors’ Policy Convening on Saturday, introducing keynote speaker Marissa Alexander.
Read coverage of Monument Quilt in the Washington Post, ABC News, the Huffington Post, and Teen Vogue.