Take Back the Night

This year marked the 30th anniversary of Take Back the Night in Burlington. To mark this historic occasion, Sarah Kenney of the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault addressed a crowd of survivors, supporters and allies. Sarah’s inspirational and informative speech touched upon the importance of linking the past to the present: “In a way, the metamorphosis of the WRCC mirrors what has happened in the movement statewide and nationwide. Moving from kitchen tables to tiny, donated spaces, to bigger office spaces, to purchasing buildings! This is pretty enormous progress, but it can come at a cost. The more we succeed at being “reputable”, respectable and collaborative, the more we risk losing touch with our roots. That’s why I’m so excited about the wonderful significance of the new building that the WRCC just purchased … The historical and political significance of the WRCC’s new home presents a great way to link our past to the future – to move forward in making progress for the rights and dignity of survivors, and offender accountability, while reconnecting with our radical roots”. (To read full speech click here).

To view inspirational Keynote address given by Sarah Kenney at our 30th annual Take Back the Night, click here

If you would like to be involved in this year's Take Back the Night, or have any questions, please email our Director of Education and Outreach at jeanne@stoprapevermont.org

Sarah Kenney, April 30, 2008

I’m so excited to be here, so honored to be a part of this important event, so happy to be in a forum where I can say what I’m really thinking, where I don’t have to be nice and political and strategic (as I have to be as a lobbyist at the statehouse every day). I’m really excited to be able to talk about what’s really happening in women’s lives and in our movement to end violence against women, in a forum where I can be sad and angry and yell about it.

I’ve been reflecting recently on my personal herstory in this movement: ten years ago this past fall I went through my first volunteer training at the WRCC in Burlington. It was an incredible introduction to a movement that has become an integral part of who I am and that now defines how I spend my days. It was wonderful – a bunch of radical, compassionate, thinking women (and a handful of men). In volunteer training I learned about our founding mothers in the movement and was completely inspired. These were women in Burlington in the 1970s who went to porn shops and sloshed buckets of paint around… who, when the mayor suggested that women might be safer if they didn’t go out alone at night, instead declared a curfew for all men in the city and posted the Mayor’s home phone number on the flyers around town in case women had any questions or needed an escort after dark. These were examples of fabulous, gutsy activism! And these are the women who began the TBTN tradition, here and across the country. We follow in really amazing footsteps.

Not long after that first volunteer training, I went to work at the WRCC. When I went to interview for the job, I was seated on a broken futon in a tiny little office and quizzed by a panel of staff and board members. One of the first questions they asked me was: “why are people poor?” I immediately knew that these were my people, and that I would love it there. When I started we were in a dingy little two-room office upstairs on College Street, with hand-me-down, broken down furniture. Then we moved into what felt like palatial new office space on Kilburn Street. We soon discovered that the walls were crumbling and moldy, and the one dirt-level window didn’t really provide any light, but it was still a huge improvement. Now, ten years later, there are major, exciting changes in the works for WRCC and for the movement. The WRCC is buying a beautiful new building and has a level of community support that we could only dream of back then.

In a way, the metamorphosis of the WRCC mirrors what has happened in the movement statewide and nationwide. Moving from kitchen tables to tiny, donated spaces, to bigger office spaces, to purchasing buildings! This is pretty enormous progress, but it can come at a cost. The more we succeed at being “reputable”, respectable and collaborative, the more we risk losing touch with our roots. That’s why I’m so excited about the wonderful significance of the new building that the WRCC just purchased. The building on North Avenue was the first women’s health clinic in the state to provide abortions – many of them to women who had been raped, who hadn’t had a choice in conception and were finally being offered safe choices about what to do when they became pregnant. It also has a special personal significance for me, since it’s the building where I had the bulk of my lifetime pap smears before the VT Women’s Health Center moved out of that building and merged with Planned Parenthood. The historical and political significance of the WRCC’s new home presents a great way to link our past to the future – to move forward in making progress for the rights and dignity of survivors, and offender accountability, while reconnecting with our radical roots.

As we reflect back over the past thirty years, there is much to celebrate. Our movement has indeed made incredible strides. We have new laws, new services, 24-hour hotlines, a shelter in central Vermont for sexual violence victims, legal resources – so many exciting innovations. We have survivors getting elected to office, publishing books about their experiences, speaking openly in the media about their experiences. We have a strengthening men’s movement to end violence against women. We’ve accomplished so much, and we should celebrate that fact. Yet so much remains to be done.

There are indigenous women experiencing rape and battery at alarmingly high rates across this country – mostly at the hands of white men. Women are being raped as an act of genocide in Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Iraq, and all across the world. Women in the military, serving in war, are more likely to be raped by their fellow soldiers than to be killed by enemy fire. Women are being raped by their husbands; children are being sexually assaulted by trusted adults. And there have been recent drastic, horrifying incidents here in our hometown. My world has been rocked – shattered – three times in the last three years as women were murdered in our community. Laura Winterbottom, Linda Lambesis, Alicia Shanks, Michelle Gardner-Quinn. These names are seared into our collective memory, into our hearts. The murders of these women were so close. And there were many others before them and sadly, there will be more.

As I was doing a little research into the herstory of Take Back The Night, I learned that at the first U.S. march in 1978, in San Francisco, the rally speaker was Andrea Dworkin who delivered what’s now referred to as an “exhortation to march”. Andrea Dworkin died three years ago this month, and the movement against violence against women lost a dynamic, militant, controversial and inspirational voice. I firmly believe in keeping alive the words and sentiments of my predecessors, so I’d like to share some of Dworkin’s remarks with you all – she’s much more articulate than I am. This is an excerpt from a speech she gave in 1983, to a roomful of 500 men at the Midwest Regional Conference of the National Organization for Changing Men in St. Paul. Only Andrea Dworkin could stand up in front of 500 antisexist men and inspire and berate them at the same time. Her words reflect my sentiments amazingly well, and mirror a conversation I frequently have with other women and activists. The speech was titled “I Want a 24-hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape”. When she gave this speech in 1983 she had been listening to the gut-wrenching stories of sexual violence survivors for ten years, and she was tired. I can relate on a number of levels, especially as I mark ten years of working in the movement and likewise often find myself feeling tired, saddened and overwhelmed. Here’s what Andrea Dworkin said:

“As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.

"I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on this day, here in this place. And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

"I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

"And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives--both men and women--begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.”

When I lived briefly in Aotearoa/New Zealand I learned a remarkable word – auwe. It’s a single word that expresses anguish, frustration, sadness, and sheer overwhelmingness. I often wish we had such a word in English, but we don’t. So for now I’ll settle for another kind of cry – no more!

For Laura, Linda, Alicia, Michelle – their memories move us to action. They are the reason that we cannot rest, cannot be complacent. They are the reason we march and yell. They are the reason we cannot be silent. For these women and for the countless others we say “no more!” (say it with me!)

As we head out onto the streets of Burlington – for the thirtieth time – to reclaim the night and to name our collective power, I would encourage us to follow the wisdom of another incredible foremother in our movement, the amazing Audre Lorde, who said, “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” Let’s raise our collective voice, to speak to what is most important to us, even if we must take a risk in doing so. Let’s demand a world free of violence – a truce from oppression in its many insidious forms. Let’s say it loudly and clearly: “NO MORE!”