On Friday 7th November 2014 over 500 people marched across Bristol city centre to reclaim the night. This was the culmination of a promise I made in my election manifesto when I ran to be Equality, Liberation and Access Officer. I pledged to organise a Reclaim the Night march, to protest against sexual violence and victim blaming attitudes that tell women to stay off the streets at night if they want to avoid harassment or attack. Bristol hadn’t had a Reclaim the Night march since 2011, and when it came to writing my manifesto I felt it was so important to bring the march back, particularly given the rapes and sexual assaults that had recently happened in Clifton and the city centre.
We started the march at Queen Square, where we lit candles and had a minutes silence to remember survivors of rape and sexual assault. This silence was incredibly powerful, much more so than I expected. The vigil had been something I had worried about as I organised the march – what would we do? Would we just stand there? I needn’t have worried. The depth of feeling as we stood in the dark candlelight was palpable. After several minutes a Bristol student, one of our stewards, began to read a poem she had written called ‘Woman That I Am Today’. It was perfect for the event, a message of rising up against anger and pain and embracing a new pride in being a woman. We then began our march, with a chant of ‘whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no!’
The march took us along Baldwin Street and round the big roundabout in the centre, where we waved our placards at passing buses and onlookers watched and took photos – some even joined us! Fantastically it was no trouble at all getting the marchers to chant and make lots of noise – unlike other demos I have attended in the past which have been near silence! We had a megaphone at the front and had given out printed chant sheets, it was great to hear different chants going on behind us when we stopped to take a breath. For me the level of noise illustrated the level of feeling, by joining the march we were saying enough is enough – women should be able to walk the streets at night without fear of violence and harassment. Furthermore no matter what a woman is wearing, where she is, whether she is drinking or taking drugs, it is never her fault if she is attacked and she is never ‘asking for it’.
We arrived at the Union at about 7pm, and myself and Megan Armstrong, our Women’s Officer gave a short speech welcoming everyone and giving some background to the march. We then introduced our speakers, Rowan Miller from SARSAS, Shabana Kauser from BAVA, Sarah Wilson from Kinergy and Susuana Antubam, our NUS Women’s Officer. All had powerful messages. We were shocked when Rowan told us that across Avon and Somerset over 60 women and more than 10 men are raped or seriously sexually assaulted a week. We were inspired when Shabana told us that she does not put up with the ‘bullshit’ anymore, and moved when Sarah read us messages from survivors of rape and sexual assault who have received counselling by Kinergy. The extent to which rape culture affects our everyday lives was illustrated when Susuana told us that when she was at university she never went out at night, she stayed in and watched Netflix so she would be safe.
Following the speeches we heard music from Suzy Condrad, a solo loop and beatbox artist, and Muff Said, a seven piece ska-reggae band. The dancing continued with the Lipstick on Your Collar DJs – who played everything from No Doubt to the Spice Girls!
And the next morning I woke to messages on twitter, women tweeting pictures of themselves with their banners, saying that the march had been ‘beautiful’, ‘incredible’, ‘empowering’, ‘uplifting’ and ‘cathartic’. And as one blogger wrote ‘I basked in the glow of sisterhood’.