“Reclaim the Night” -Women March Against Violence in Adelaide
A World’s Greatest Blog Exclusive
On Friday 26th October 2007, Around six hundred women walked up King William Street in Adelaide, Australia, to campaign for safety. “Reclaim the Night” is the slogan for a movement aiming to bring about a world in which women can move about freely during the night-time without fear of violence.
Banging drums and blowing whistles, the group moved along Adelaide’s main arterial street about 7:30pm on Friday night. They carried banners calling for “Strength, power and respect, “Women’s Studies at Tafe” amongst other organisational banners for the National Council of Women, YWCA and SA Trade Union Choir.
Faced with such a noisy party, I decided to ask the marchers what all the fuss was about.
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[...] 28th, 2007 · No Comments Linda at the World’s Greatest Blog has posted a video of Friday’s Reclaim the Night march in Adelaide. Fantastic to see so many people [...]
Well done, women of Adelaide. Perhaps other places should copy – Newcastle, London, Liverpool etc spring to mind.
Interesting information, thankyou.
I am doing a project on RTN for a group project through Newcastle TAFE. Our project is on how to generate a better response to the Newcastle RTN event. I attended our march, which was about 100 people strong.
I would greatly appreciate any feedback from you re how to promote a better response and encourage participation in this important event.
What would your views be on making the event more open to every person and more about the promotion of safety at night for everyone? As apposed to only for women?
I would really appreciate your thoughts and hope you have the time to respond.
Thanking you in anticipation.
Lindsay Margaret Towell
As far as I know, the only thing you would need to do in order to get more people there is to publicise the event. Obviously, if the event isn’t just for women, you should be able to increase turnout by 50%.
The main thing you need to make sure of is that people know about the march, where and when it takes place.
Students generally will be more likely to turn up for this sort of stuff too – so get onto the student groups at the two universities who are aligned with your views (e.g. the Christian Union etc) as well as putting some more general publicity around the Universities.
I went to Newcastle Uni, and I’d recommend getting groups like the Eldon Society (the Law School society) to give you a hand – there’s a few hundred of them, and they are likely to agree with the philosophies of reclaim the night.
If you can get the event publicised on Look North and the other TV local news and radio, that would get a lot more people there, also if there are going to be cameras at the event people will come just for that.
Essentially, just let people know about the evnt in as many ways as possible!
If you have it somewhere busy that people will be able to find easily like the Quayside, that would be good too.
The banner on this video is a little out of date – The World’s Greatest Blog has now grown into its own domain and away from 24 Hour Trading – but the video nevertheless shows you how much noise can be generated by a few sticks, whistles and drums!