On Friday I blogged about the Take Back The Night march. This poster made its way onto my desk this morning and it's the perfect illustration for the point I was trying to make!
The White Ribbon campaign is the premier place to educate and get educated about violence against women. In some countries, White Ribbon is run exclusively by men, in others it is a joint collaboration of men and women. This is MEN taking a stand, teaching their younger generation of men and pledging to never condone or remain silent when it comes to violence against women.
I've been warned since my Take Back The Night blog post to never use the phrase "REAL MEN" but frankly...
THIS IS WHAT REAL MEN DO, TEACH AND PLEDGE.
Join the fight, take the pledge and raise your voice in the fight against violence.
**The definition of MEN by me is as such: if you were born a man, if you were born a woman who feels like she should be a man, if you are not sure what gender you identify with or feel people are genderless.... BASICALLY, if you want to be a man, be a man. Regardless of where you started from.**
On Saturday September 29, about 250 women, children and trans* folks (along with a handful of men, allowed to walk only along the sidelines) gathered to Take Back The Night and march down King St to call attention to and call for action against violence aimed at these groups.
There's something about being part of a group of empowered women. We yell louder than we would if we were alone, we feel stronger just by being part of the sisterhood. Although I have very few female friends, it's something that I really enjoy and it makes me wonder each and every time why I don't try to curate more female friendships.
Something sat oddly with me this year, however. Me, being a straight female with children, felt left out. Remember this song?
I felt like the boot. Part of the reason was because the crowd was strongly LGTBQ-identifying, which, as much as I support them, I don't identify with; the other part because I was missing something... my partner.
I don't believe that public awareness or political events should be exclusive of any group. A men's bible study, sure. A women's book club, sure. But if there's a group marching to raise awareness of aboriginal rights, I feel I should be allowed to join to support my fellow citizens, even though I'm not aboriginal. Same here, if my husband wants to join me in a march that's protesting violence against women as a man who would never do such a thing, he should have the right.
Sadly, we as women, cannot change the way we are treated by men or even by other women. What we can do is educate ourselves and other women and provide a resting place, a shoulder and love to those who are fleeing abuse or have been abused.
We cannot change their behaviour. We can only change our own.
So why not let men, smart, respectable, loving men, join us in our march? Or even better, let our men march in protest of violence, showing the world that they would never hurt a woman, while WE march beside them showing our support?
There were a number of women marching with their children, both male and female. As a mother to 2 young boys, I could not, in good conscience, have them march with me knowing that eventually they'll have to stop marching because they've become too old and are therefore, now the men who we are excluding from our demonstration.
I did pass off some of the questions I had to Ethan Jackson, one of the planning committee members of Take Back The Night Waterloo Region but did not receive a response.
Exclusion aside, the march was a great success, with people joining in along the march route and more joining at the rally at Kitchener City Hall. We were treated to some kick-ass vegan chili (never thought I'd say that but seriously, if anyone wants to share the recipe I'd be grateful), information from community groups and poetry by KW's first slam poetry team, The Flying V's. I met some great women and had sighting of both Catherine Fife, newly elected MPP for Kitchener-Waterloo and Sara Casselman, the Operations Director of SASC.
A great event and truly, a cause worth fighting for. Let's all work toward a world where no one has to be scared, whether they are man, woman, child or trans*.
Sara Casselman was noted this year by The Record as being one of Waterloo Region's Top 40 Under 40. She was also awarded a Leading Women, Building Communities award in 2011 and is setting examples across our fair city by educating and supporting women and helping men stand up in protest of violence against women.
She's the Public Relations & Operations Manager of the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region (SASCWR) and she has a message that while direct service is an essential service in our area, becoming more and more important in the fight against ANY issue if we hope to eradicate it rather than clean up the aftermath, is social justice and advocacy.
Direct service provision is a simple concept. Direct service helps women after a sexual or physical assault. Direct service feeds the homeless on the streets. Direct service helps a person get back up after a mental breakdown.
The disconnect is often that these services offer no other support or strategic planning to go to the source of the problem. Eradicating homelessness isn't possible until we've built out all the possible ways that would lead a person to homelessness in the first place. While direct services are needed in our community, we always need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture...
Why is this _____________ (insert social epidemic here) happening in the first place?
She demonstrated with an illustrated story.
A townsperson saw a child drowning in the water. She ran in to save her. Then another child floated down the river, then another and another. Soon, the river was full of townspeople pulling their drowning children out of the water.
This is direct service. These townspeople are cleaning up the aftermath of whatever horrible thing is causing their children to fall into the river and drown.
Eventually, someone realized that perhaps they should wade upriver and find out what was causing the children to drown and stop THAT.
And this, my friends, is social justice. This is the people like Sara who are helping with the aftermath but are also forging ahead to find the root cause of the problem.
Sara is a true leader in our community, showing us how to think forward and find true SOLUTIONS to social issues. In this way, she is not only a hero of the Not For Profit world, she's also a business leader and teacher, and we should be thankful that we have community heroes like her, teaching us how to become better global citizens and neighbours.
You can connect with Sara on twitter @SASCWR or find more information on Women's Issues on the SASCWR website.
*This is part 5 in a series of 15 blogs detailing the amazing projects presented in the world's first ever Ignite Charity: Waterloo. For more info on Ignite Charity visit www.ignitecharity.ca and follow the conversation on twitter @IgniteCharity.
