The annual Take Back the Night rally and march will take place this year on Thursday, September 25 at 7pm at Gazebo Park (8331 104 street). Take Back the Night is a long-running annual event which takes place across Canada and Quebec, typically held in September or October to raise awareness, honour victims and survivors, and demand that women can walk in safety, in the day or at night, wherever we go, in the streets and in our communities. Through the years, Take Back the Night has become a day to demand an end to all forms of violence against women. Everyone is welcome. Refreshments will be served after the march.
We will boldly march together on Whyte Avenue in the dark, holding our candles and our placards, chanting “Wherever we go, however we dress, NO means NO and YES means YES!” and “Who decides? We decide!” By walking together in the dark, we build our collective strength, and we affirm that our security lies in our fight for the rights of all.
Women are not only present, but in the forefront of all the fights to defend rights. We are fighting the systemic discrimination which targets us as “fair game” for attacks. Governments foster arrangements that permit atrocities against the female person including super exploitation, human trafficking, slave labour, abuse and violence against women and children and other vulnerable collectives of the people.
We will demand justice for the thousands of Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered, and call for an end to state-organized violence against the Indigenous peoples. Since our last TBTN march, the heroic fight of the families and their supporters that their loved ones are not disposable forced the government to search the landfill and bring home Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myran, and to identify Ashlee Shingoose, formerly known as Buffalo Woman. The search continues.
Women have a right to decide on all matters that affect them, from insisting on free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples regarding what takes place on their territories, to demanding justice for the missing and murdered, to insisting on funding social programs including emergency shelters, housing, childcare and everything necessary so that women and their children are not left to fend for themselves, to asserting the rights of workers to set working conditions and compensation acceptable to them, including Alberta teachers who are standing up for public education, to opposing Canada’s role in genocide and US-led war preparations.
When women say, “NO means NO!”, we are opposing all manifestations of violence against women and expressing our determination to defy political power which deprives us of the ability to control our lives and conditions of life. Women lead the way when we march on Take Back the Night, as well as on Red Dress Day, International Women’s Day, and as part of global movements for Palestine, for Mother Earth, and in all movements for our rights as women and as human beings.
W4RE has been organizing Take Back the Night events in Edmonton since 2016.
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