“Take Back the Night” is an international rally and march that brings college campuses and communities together. This event unites women, men and children in realization of violence against women and raises awareness on how pervasive and common violence is against women and girls. “Take Back the Night” allows people of various backgrounds to congregate together and make a connection. Students will march through campus and into town and then end with a candlelight vigil and “speak out” that will allow people to speak and break their silence.Participants in “Take Back the Night” will provide an environment of support and healing wherein survivors are empowered to express their experiences. Awareness will be raised about the ways sexualized violence is a force of oppression used to perpetuate racism and sexism, among others. Those at “Take Back the Night” will build a network of individuals committed to creating a community free of sexualized violence.
Participants say the act of marching and demanding safe streets is a very powerful experience. One of the participants in an early New York “Take Back the Night” march stated, “The March was a way of demonstrating our commitment to stopping the tide of violence against women, whether by rapists or batterers or image makers in the mass media…Chanting slogans such as “No More Profit Off Women’s Bodies, we filled the street entirely, blocking off traffic and completely occupying the Broadway strip for three blocks. For an hour, and for the first time ever, Broadway belonged not to the barkers, pimps, or pornographers, but instead to the songs, voices, rage and vision of thousands of women.”
In accordance with the “Take Back the Night” campaign, the Women’s Center has created a program called the Clothesline Project which many students will recognize as T-shirts that have been in Sykes and in the Academic Quad. Each T-shirt represents a different violent crime committed against a woman.
“Take Back the Night” will take place on Tuesday, April 20 at 7 p.m. outside of the Lawrence Center. For more information about “Take Back the Night” and Project Clothesline, visit the Women’s Center Web site at http://www.wcupa.edu/_SERVICES/Stu.wce/Default.htm or call the Women’s Center at 610-436-2122.