Here’s a film you’re going to want to watch: Knots: A Forced Marriage Story, a feature-length documentary film that follows three forced marriage survivors from the U.S., including our founder/executive director Fraidy Reiss. Knots, from filmmaker Kate Ryan Brewer, “examines the truth about forced marriage in the U.S. through the complicated experiences of those who have survived it.
Forced marriage is a human rights abuse that happens right here in the U.S., and it impacts people from all backgrounds. In a forced marriage, one or both parties enters without full, free, informed consent. Further, even if both parties enter a marriage with full, free, informed consent, the union can later become a forced marriage if one or both parties is forced to stay in it. Women and girls, including children at least as young as 12, are being forced into marriage here in the U.S.
Read more about forced marriage in the U.S. and our work to end it.
Knots is being screened at film festivals around the world. You can watch it here:
TBD
Knots made its global premiere in March and has been seen at international film festivals:
March 4, 2020 | Omaha Film Festival | Omaha, NE (Global premiere)
March 14, 2020 | Manchester Film Festival | Manchester, England
Any chance you’re in Omaha today? Or will be in Manchester, England, on March 14?
If so, join us to watch Knots: A Forced Marriage Story, a feature-length documentary film that follows three forced marriage survivors from the U.S. — including our founder/executive director, Fraidy Reiss.
We’ll celebrate the film’s global premiere tonight at the Omaha Film Festival, then head next week to the UK to celebrate the film’s inclusion in the Manchester Film Festival. At both festivals, Fraidy and filmmaker Kate Ryan Brewer — and, in Manchester, costars Nina and Sara — will engage the audience in a Q&A session about forced marriage in the U.S.
Remember how we Chained-In in Minnesota last month to urge legislators to end child marriage? Looks like they got the message.
The senate judiciary committee just released SF1393/HF475, sponsored by Sen. Sandy Pappas and Rep. Kaohly Her, to end all marriage before 18. The bill now heads to the full senate. And since it already passed unanimously out of the house, if the senate votes yes, it heads to the governor’s desk.
Click here to track our progress as we push to end child marriage in every U.S. state and territory.
Dressed in bridal gowns and chains, we descended on the Minnesota state capitol building on Thursday, chanting, singing and marching through the building to protest forced and child marriage and tell legislators this Valentine’s Day that there is nothing romantic about child marriage.
As usual, our Chain-In drew the attention of passersby and the news media, including ABC, CBS, TwinCities.com, DL-Online, WCCO Radio and The Bemidji Pioneer.
Speakers included:
Our message to legislators was clear: It’s time to pass SF1393 and make Minnesota the third U.S. state – after Delaware and New Jersey – to end child marriage.
We at Unchained At Last lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in the United States by eliminating the legal loopholes in all 50 states and at the federal level that allow, and even encourage, child marriage. Seventeen states, including Massachusetts, do not specify any minimum age for marriage.
Read more here about Chain-Ins, the powerful form of peaceful protest that we invented to raise awareness of forced and child marriage in the United States.
Did you know one of the gutsy women featured in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s recently published The Book of Gutsy Women is from Westfield, NJ? We’re talking about our founder/ executive director, Fraidy Reiss.
Join us and Fraidy at Westfield’s James Ward Mansion for a lively discussion of why the world needs gutsy women. Light refreshments will be served. Reserve your tickets now.
This is not a book club! You don’t have to read the book first; just come have a good time.
Gutsy Women Discussion
February 27, 2020
7:30-9:00 p.m.
James Ward Mansion, 169 East Broad St., Westfield, NJ
NOTE: Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the 64th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women has been postponed until a yet-to-be-determined date in July. All side and parallel events, including our Woman @ CSW parallel event scheduled for March 12, have been canceled for now.
We will keep you updated as we get more information. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
As the United Nations launches the 64th session of the Commission on the Status of Women — the world’s largest annual gathering on women’s rights — we are launching a parallel event.
Join us for an exclusive screening of Woman, a gorgeous documentary film that examines the lives of hundreds of women around the world (including, briefly, our founder/executive director Fraidy Reiss). We’ll discuss the central question the film raises: How far have women come, and how far do they still have to go?
A parallel event to the 64th Session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women
LOCATION: Lycée Français de New York, 505 E 75th St., NYC
DATE: TBD
TIME: 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
ADMISSION: Free
Light refreshments will be served. REGISTER NOW.
Woman, from filmmakers Anastasia Mikova and Yann Arthus-Bertrand, is based on interviews with some 2,000 women around the globe. In a world where women are forced to marry, deprived of an education, forbidden from going outside on their own and subjected to myriad other abuses, the film is a message of love and hope.
Hosted by Unchained At Last. Made possible by generous support from the international law firm White & Case. Co-sponsored by NGO CSW/NY.
WE DID IT! We just helped to end child marriage in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Gov. Albert Bryan just signed Sen. Javan James’ bill that we at Unchained had relentlessly promoted to end all marriage before 18 in the U.S. Virgin Islands. You will recall we even took one for the team last October and traveled to St. Thomas (someone’s gotta do it!) to meet one-on-one with legislators and testify in support of Bill #33-0109.
Now two U.S. states (Delaware and New Jersey) and two territories (Virgin Islands and American Samoa) have eliminated this human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives. Just 48 states and three territories to go …
We couldn’t lead the national movement to end child marriage without your support. Thank you for following/liking/sharing us on social media, heeding our calls to action and supporting us financially.
Once again, we at Unchained At Last are going to Chain-In to protest child marriage in the United States. This time we’re headed to St. Paul, MN
We’ll gather in the Minnesota state capitol Capitol Press Room (B971) wearing bridal gowns and veils, with our arms chained and mouths taped, to protest child marriage. Then we’ll march to the rotunda to urge legislators to pass HF745/SF1393, the simple, commonsense bill that would end child marriage in Minnesota. Will you join us?
February 13 | 2:30 p.m.
Minnesota State Capitol Room B971
75 Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, St. Paul
We provide the bridal gowns, veils and chains, all at no cost. All you need to do is register via the link below – and join us to make some noise!
Speakers include:
We lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in the United States by eliminating the legal loopholes in all 50 states and at the federal level that allow, and even encourage, child marriage.
Child marriage is often forced marriage, because children face overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to leave home, enter a domestic violence shelter, retain an attorney or bring a legal action such as a divorce before they turn 18. Further, child marriage destroys girls’ health, education and economic opportunities and significantly increases their risk of being beaten by their spouse.
The U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse.” Let’s Chain-In to demand an end to this human-rights abuse in Minnesota.
Read more here about Chain-Ins, the powerful form of peaceful protest that we invented to raise awareness of forced and child marriage in the United States.
Learn more here about other ways you can help to end child marriage in the United States.
Our Executive Director Fraidy wrote an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News this week asking one thing: For Maine Governor Janet Mills to veto LD545, the well-meaning bill ambitiously titled ‘An Act to Ban Child Marriage.’ As she says in her article:
“In fact, the bill would ban child marriage only for those 15 and younger. Children aged 16 and 17 would still be allowed to marry with parental ‘consent,’ even though national marriage license data we’ve compiled…shows some 96 percent of the children who married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010 were age 16 or 17.”
You can read the full op-ed here, then email and/or tweet at Governor Mills (@GovJanetMills) to ask her to please veto LD545, which fails to protect Maine’s most vulnerable children from a human rights abuse.
