What is Denim Day in USA?
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. In an effort to help eliminate persistent harmful attitudes regarding why, where and how women are raped, Peace Over Violence initiated Denim Day in L.A. ten years ago. This year’s event will be held on Wednesday, April 23rd.
The event was initially triggered by an Italian Supreme Court decision that overturned a rape conviction because the victim wore jeans. The justices stated that the victim must have helped her attacker remove her jeans, from which they inferred consent. Enraged by the verdict, the women in the Italian Parliament launched into action and protested by wearing jeans on the steps of the Supreme Court. This call to action motivated the female members of the California Senate and Assembly to do the same, and since then Peace Over Violence has organized Denim Day in L.A. Wearing jeans on this day has become an international symbol of protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault.
Last year, over 300,000 individuals and 400 organizations/corporations/schools in L.A. County signed up to support Denim Day in L.A. And this year we are expanding our focus nation-wide.
We invite you to join us by participating in four ways:
1. Wear denim on April 23 as a symbol of your commitment in making a social statement with your fashion statement.
2. Register at www.denimdayinla.org.
3. Contribute to our DOLLARS FOR DENIM fundraising campaign. Your dollars will help to underwrite our costs in producing the event, especially for the educational material we distribute to the schools, community organizations and corporations that participate. Any net proceeds will go toward supporting the ongoing social services we provide 24/7 such as crisis intervention, a 24-hour hotline, SART (Sexual Abuse Response Team), free legal services to victims, case management, etc.
4. Organize your friends, family and workplace to do the same.
Visit www.denimdayinla.org to donate online and for further information.