Path: mit!news
Newsgroups: mit.apsintl
Subject: ECN/UK: THE WOMEN ARE MARCHING
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Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 20:41:45 +0100
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from: ECN London
15 December 1992
THE WOMEN ARE MARCHING
November 25th is the International Day to End Violence Against
Women. In Britain, on Saturday 28th, women marched
to Trafalgar Square in London to protest against the global
attacks on women's rights and bodies. The numbers started at
around 2000 but swelled to 4000 as women joined the march.
In the square, speakers were hampered by the fact that the
Department of the Environment (the government department
responsible for Trafalgar Square) would not allow the
electricity to be switched on. Thus the speakers, from a diverse
number of groups, organisations and campaigns, were forced to
shout into a megaphone. A woman speaker from Yugoslavia
was visibly distressed s she was forced to shout atrocities
inflicted on women in the war, into a crowd that still could not
hear her.
Violence against women is global. It ranges from domestic
violence to the international sex trade, to imperialism such as
the British occupation of Northern Ireland, to pornography, to
the new colonialism, to the physical and political violation
that is the 'disabled health service', to female genital
mutilation.
As all these women, from all these internationally focused
campaigns, spoke of struggle and resistance to a cheering
audience, it was impossible not to realise that women must
stand up and link across the world. Isolated, we fight alone,
together we are an unstoppable force.
There followed a minute's silence, to remember the women who
have had their lives taken from them. Last year the song
"I will survive" was then played and women danced in Trafalgar
Square. There being no electricity, this year we sang it.
We finished by making a minute's noise- because women have
always been silenced.
It was an incredibly moving and uplifting experience. I
personally felt profoundly exhilarated and re-energized. Across
the
world: Women's Tradition; Struggle not Submission.
for information contact: November 25th Women's Action, 52 -54
Featherstone Street, London EC1Y 8DB.
(written by Sam Murdoch, from: 'Bad Attitude'- radical women's
newspaper, 121 Railton Road, London SE24 OLR)
