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Dozens march to “Take Back the Night” from violence
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Armed with drums made of overturned buckets and a megaphone, a group of about 80 University of Wisconsin students dressed in pink marched and danced through Madison Saturday evening to reclaim the night from violence and crime.
Causing curious heads to turn, the “Take Back the Night” parade chanted “Two, four, six, eight — No more violence! No more hate!” as it marched down the middle of the street on its way to Library Mall.
Traffic came to a complete standstill at the corner of Langdon and Henry streets as the procession stopped in the intersection to dance for a few minutes, chanting, singing and beating their bucket drums the whole time.
Many of the participants had covered themselves with pink in every way possible, using shirts as headscarves and covering their faces with pink bandannas.
UW freshman Mara Lazer, a pink-clad drummer, said she thought the group achieved its goal based on the reaction from the people they passed.
“I thought the drums were a nice addition,” Lazer said. “They added a lot of energy for sure. A lot of people seemed confused so they were turning around asking people, ‘What’s going on?’”
The procession ended in a candlelight vigil on Library Mall where the march had first begun about two hours earlier.
“Take Back the Night” coordinator Chynna Haas said the goal of the procession was to raise awareness about all forms of violence and to allow people to feel safe in their community.
She added though street safety is currently a big concern in the community following the homicide of UW junior Brittany Zimmermann, there are a lot of cases that do not receive media attention.
“Every minute there is a sexual assault taking place (nationwide),” Haas said. “We want to raise awareness, again not just about the high-profile situations, but for the things that happen and people don’t come forward.”
The rally started with about 30 students and community members gathering at Library Mall. It made its way up State Street to Capitol Square where it paused to hear keynote speaker DJ Doxtater, the aging and disability specialist for the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
The group then met up with the large, rowdy mob of pink on Carroll Street and made its way back to campus via Langdon behind a sign that read “Refuse 2B Abused!”
As the group crossed Library Mall to the fountain where the candlelight vigil would begin, they shouted their purpose, chanting “Whose night? Our night!”
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and the night has been taken back?
““I thought the drums were a nice addition,” Lazer said. “They added a lot of energy for sure…”
Or so you’d like to think. Did you marchers notice all the folks yelling at you to go home? Didn’t? Everyone else did.
Yeah, it’s pretty safe when you can get a whole bunch of people together and have a march on a busy street where rapists don’t dare tread. But when you walk alone at night, it’s a different story. A powerful statement you made Saturday!
“A lot of people seemed confused so they were turning around asking people, ‘What’s going on?’”
They knew what was going on. They just thought they’d seen the last of the man-hating feminists a long time ago when the 90’s ended. So now, not only do we have predators breaking into people’s homes a killing them, we have a bunch of wacko male-bashers scapegoating half the human race. And what about all the women sexual predators preying on our kids? Are we gonna hear any feminists say anything about them?
Wow. The comments posted here demonstrate why such an event is necessary. Apparently the loony bin conservatives on campus think it’s more important to degrade women and make points about feminism than to acknowledge domestic violence (both against men and women) and violence against women and the LGBTQ community.
For many of us, walking in a large group, like the pink bloc and the TBTN march, is the only way we feel safe on the streets at night, or even in society. Without the pink masks and the safety in numbers, we really lack a safe physical and virtual space to be ourselves. The march was not just to “sell” our problem to the community (although that’s part of it) but to empower ourselves. And even as we took up traffic lanes from Willy St to the Union, I never heard a negative comment, and heard a lot of supportive honking the entire way, even from people who were inconvenienced by our presence. And that’s part of the problem with some of these comments: our fight for equal rights and safety, even our very existence, are seen as an inconvenience by much of society. After Saturday, I felt like we had come a long way. But after reading these comments, it’s painfully obvious that we have a long way to go still.
9:22—
It’s not about scapegoating males, or feminism. It’s about recognizing that sexual violence is a problem in our society. Your comments do nothing but attempt to marginalize that it is such a problem. Surely you wouldn’t call a rape victim a “wacko male-basher,” or would you?
Surely you wouldn’t call a rape victim a “wacko male-basher,” or would you?
actually I’m sure a lot of people would…or at least think it. It’s become such a problem in society now…with “grey area” rape and all the blame-the-victim that goes on especially in campus areas, there need to be more of these events/marches.
You want to “take back the night?” Then pass a concealed-carry law.
take back the night is an outdated medium for activism