By Emily Davidson, Opinions Contributor
Each year on a fall evening in Halifax, a group of women protesters and their allies gather to march and rally as part of Take Back the Night. The aim of Take Back the Night is to provide a safe public space for women to demonstrate in the streets, speaking out against all forms of gender-based and sexual violence. Take Back the Night is about reclaiming the right for women to be out after dark without the fear of sexual assault or rape.
It’s about our right to safe communities. Over the past three years I’ve attended Take Back the Night here in Halifax, but for the first time I’ve joined Dalhousie Women’s Centre (DWC) volunteers and other community members to help organize it. Being part of the organizing of this event has brought into focus for me some of the roadblocks standing in the way of creating a safe public space for women to rise up against sexual violence.
Take Back the Night can dredge up some pretty contentious debates, but I’m particularly interested in discussing the presence of police. In Halifax, the police usually lead the Take Back the Night march with squad cars and mounted officers.
The police don’t have a very good track record when it comes to preventing sexual violence or helping survivors of sexual assault and rape. In fact, the entire criminal justice system seems to be biased toward blaming victims of sexual violence. Rape and sexual assault continue to be some of the most underreported crimes in Canada, with an estimated 88 per cent of incidents going unreported. Barriers preventing women from reporting incidents of sexual violence to the police include: fear of the dehumanizing process of the judicial system; fear of escalated violence from the perpetrator; fear of not being believed; and fear that the police will also perpetrate sexual violence. Women who are at high risk for sexual violence, such as sex workers, often can’t access the prevention and protection services that police are supposed to provide to everyone. The laws under the Canadian Criminal Code criminalize sex work which not only adds to stigmatization, but also forces sex workers into dangerous working conditions. Many sex workers can’t report sexual violence perpetrated against them for fear of arrest. The Halifax Regional Police continue to use rhetoric that place blame on women in cases of sexual violence, instead of blaming the perpetrators.
The police, along with other parts of society, tell women not to get raped, instead of telling perpetrators not to rape. Elise Graham, VP external at the NSCAD student union, witnessed first-hand what message the Halifax Regional Police are delivering to students during the NSCAD Orientation Week police presentation. The officer warned female students to cover their drinks, not to drink too much, not to wear revealing clothes, not to hang out in or around bars, and not to walk through the north end at night. He “created an overwhelming sense of fear among the new students,” says Graham. “It would have been refreshing to hear ‘rape is wrong’ instead of putting all the onus on what potential victims shouldn’t do.” According to the Global News article published on September 20, the Halifax Regional Police released another warning about the “sleep watcher” stating that the break and enter incidents had “escalated from previous cases, whereby the victim was touched for a sexual manner.”
Female students were warned to “take caution at night by locking their windows and doors, and walking in groups.” The police have been releasing similar fear-mongering statements about this case through mainstream media and Dalhousie University communications since 2008.
While these warnings are made in the name of ‘public safety’, they continue to place the blame on the women who didn’t lock their doors or who walked home after dark alone, instead of blaming the man who has been perpetrating the sexual violence. We still haven’t seen any constructive action from the police to better deal with the problem, or provide services to survivors or potential victims.
What makes Take Back the Night an important event is that it provides an opportunity for women to take collective action to reclaim the night. There needs to be an event that stands against the constant barrage of messages that it’s a women’s own fault if she get raped or abused. Part of what makes Take Back the Night an effective safe public space for women is that it is lead by women. Each year, the DWC does a great job training women volunteers to be marshals for the march.
The marshals act to ensure the collective safety of the group by helping to control traffic, explaining the protest to bystanders, and helping to maintain the women’s only space that leads the march. Seeing women in these leadership roles provides comfort and security for many protesters.
The inclusion of police at Take Back the Night marches is not unique to Halifax. The American-based Take Back the Night Foundation, which provides organizational resources to groups planning Take Back the Night events, recommends liaising with police forces as part of risk management procedures. The Newfoundland & Labrador Sexual Assault Crisis & Prevention Centre (NLSACPC) recommends that Take Back the Night organisers “put in a request to local RCMP detachment for a female officer to lead [the] march in a patrol car.”
According to the NLSACPC website the reason for police presence is to ensure safety and promote visibility of the participants.
Neither the Take Back the Night Foundation or the NLSACPC provide resources on how effective volunteer marshalling can promote safety at marches.
The problem remains that the police are perceived as being in a leadership role at Take Back the Night because they are the pervasive authority in our society. For many women including sex workers, women living without immigration status, domestic abuse survivors, formerly incarcerated women, queer women, women of colour, and Aboriginal women, police forces are the perpetrators of violence in their communities. In this light, the police presence in the march actually works against the march’s aim of creating safe spaces for women to speak out against sexual and gender-based violence in their communities.
At a demonstration aimed to reclaim public space as safe space for women and survivors of sexual violence, it is frustrating that we engage with a force as oppressive as the police. How can Take Back the Night fulfill the mandate to empower women if we continue to work with a system that blames women for sexual violence?
Emily Davidson is an activist who organizes with the Feminist League for Agitation Propaganda (FLAP) and theDalhousie Women’s Centre.
Take Back the Night will take place on Friday Oct. 1 at 7 p.m.. The march and rally start at Victoria Park, on the corner of Spring Garden Road and South Park Street. Allies are invited to march under the leadership of the women.
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