"We wanted to take back a space off limits to women...instead of telling women they should stay away in order to be safe, we wanted women to be here and be safe.”
The women were conducting Take Back the Night, a direct action to take over city streets calling for freedom from rape, freedom from prostitution and livable welfare on demand.
We must join forces as peoples of conscience to demand change. Governments at the provincial and federal level must invest in equality-seeking women's groups. They must investigate arrest and prosecute to conviction those men who use sexist violence against women. They must do so in such numbers that a critical mass of men interested in change forms.
The conference was unique. It brought together grassroots activists who run rape crisis centres, women who had used rape crisis centres, anti-poverty workers, prisoner advocates and women who had done time in prison, supreme court judges, and some of the most brilliant feminist legal minds in the country. We found that we agreed with each other far more than we disagreed.
We require the police and crown councils to do their jobs. When we come to you, do not treat us like inconveniences. Treat us with respect and investigate our cases. Charge him appropriately. Do not treat our advocates and support system with suspicion. Understand that we require each other’s presence until we can be 100% sure of your good will and action on our behalf.
The feminist is the woman who is there not because she is his woman, but because she is the sister of the woman he is being a weapon against. Feminism exists so that no woman ever has to face her oppressor in a vacuum, alone. It exists to break down the privacy in which men rape, beat, and kill women. What I am saying is that every one of us has the responsibility to be the woman [that prick] wanted to murder. We need to live with that honor, that courage. We need to put fear aside. We need to endure. We need to create. We need to resist, and we need to stop dedicating the other 364 days of the year to forgetting everything we know. We need to remember every day, not only on December 6. We need to consecrate our lives to what we know and to our resistance to the male power used against us.
