Vancouver
Rape Relief and Women's Shelter Annual Walkathon
Held every year at Stanley Park, Vancouver
Walk, Wheel, Cycle around the Stanley Park seawall to raise money
for
Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter.
Winning
Choice on Abortion: How British Columbia and Canadian Feminists
Won the Battles of the 1970s and 1980s.
Tuesday June 7, 2005 7:30 pm
Alice MacKay Room Lower Level Central Library
350 West Georgia Street
Admission is free.
All are welcome for more information: 604-331-3602 Author: Ann
Thomson speaksa bout what it took to win women's "right to
choose" in British Columbia. Ann Thomson interviewed nearly
50 women and other participants to presnt the story from both
a personal and a political perspective. Trained as a historian
and archivist, she exlpores the complex intertwining of feminist,
government and social forces at play. Click on poster to enlarge.
International Women's
Day Rally and March
March 8, 2005
March 4, 5 (Friday and Saturday) are Vancouver events
View poster
View
IWD webpage
View IWD workshop schedule
March 4, 2005 (Friday)
Evening Gathering at Downtown Eastside Women's
Centre
302 Columbia Street Doors open at 6:30 pm for networking and refreshments.
7:30 - 9:00 p.m. Speakers and entertainment.
March 5, 2005 (Saturday)
Pancake Breakfast at Downtown Eastside Women's
Centrefrom 9 - 10:30 a.m.
March leaves Downtown Eastside Women's Centre at 11 a.m.
Rally at the Vancouver Public Library South
Plaza (Robson & Homer) at noon
Women's Forum at the Vancouver Public Library
Come and celebrate with local activists in an
interactive format
1:00 - 4:00 pm in the lower level of the Vancouver Public Library
All events are FREE, wheelchair accessible,
sign language interpretation on Friday night and at the Rally
on Saturday, email us at iwd2005@shaw.ca
To register for childcare, call 604 - 323 - 5662
For general information, call 604 - 708 - 0447
Visit Herstory to see more
about International Women's Day
Take Back
The Night
Stanley Park - Lost Lagoon
Women - what would you do your local city park at nighttime if
there were no male violence?
Would you:
- Run, Walk, Star gaze, Work out, Yoga, Breast-feed, Tango,
Read poetry, Create music
- Imagine
Over the past few years there have been several acts of sexualized
violence on women in Stanley Park. See some examples below.
- Women are repeatedly told to restrict how and when we use
the park particularly at night - we are tired of it and are
taking action.
- On Friday September 16th women from all over the city will
meet at Stanley Park, Lost Lagoon (Chilco and Alberni) at 7.30pm
to create some freedom for us to use our park whichever which
way we want. Women will work together allow us to enjoy our
community park at nighttime.
Imagine how you would use the park at night if there were no
male violence and then organize that activity ask your girlfriends
and other women in your community to join you eg. If you run and
you are a member of a running group ask them to come run in the
park with you. If you are a mom with a stroller ask other moms
with strollers to come walk with you that night.
- Join the postering and flyering team to promote the night.
Join the lantern making workshops to illuminate pockets of the
park. Assist with the stage set up and take down. Join the first
aid team Volunteer to push a wheel chair for another women participant.
- Or simply come on the night with your women friends and join
in one of the many acts of joyful resistance already organized
Call Vancouver Rape Relief and Womens Shelter at 604.872.8212
to sign up for any of the above or to find out more information.
Free Childcare available phone to register 604.872.8212
Sign Language Interpretation for some of the night and most of
the park is wheel chair accessible.
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter is a member of the Canadian
Association of Sexual Assault Centres.
Police fear sex attacker on the loose
Stanley Park: Women's group upset about police delay in releasing
info about new attack
A two-day police delay in revealing the Stanley Park sex attacker
may have struck again came under fire last night. "I think
it is utterly appalling, " said Louisa Russell, spokeswoman
for Vancouver Rape Relief.
Read more: Vancouver
Province May 27, 2005 page A4
Vancouver Rape Relief and Support, Education and Action Group
take to the streets in response to attacks on women in the WestEnd
Read more: Media
Advisory - Action Alert
Take Back the Night: No Woman is Free Until All Women
are Free
by Terry Picard, Kahtou Newspaper, November 2004
Over one thousand defiant women took to the streets on Saturday
evening Septmber 25. Chanting and singing they blocked traffic
at the intersection of Kinsway and Main street. Bouncers at the
strip club on the corner looked on nervously, expecting perhaps
that the women would storm the club.
Read the article.
View the webcast of Vancouver's 2004 Take Back the Night
Webcast on Working
TV San Francisco, USA, 1978. The slogan "Take Back the
Night" is first used as a theme for a national protest march
down San Francisco's pornography strip. The march took place at
night. Take Back the Night was a profound symbolic statement of
our commitment to stopping the tide of violence against women
in all arenas...
The Rape Relief Files: Take
Back The Night - Vancouver Herstory 1985
"I never dared go out alone after dark. when I saw the
leaflet about the night demo I knew I had to go but I was so scared.
I was even sick before going out but I did and it really changed
how I felt. I'm not alone. I know that now. It's wonderful."
The Rape Relief Files: Marching Against
Rape 1979
Why Take Back the Night is Women-Only
Women want a women-only event. Men are excluded from the rally
and march because women want to know what it is like to do what
men take for granted -- take a safe walk on a public street at
night without a male protector. Instead, women make each other
safe by getting together, refusing to be isolated, refusing to
give up the right to travel our streets in safety and committing
to helping each other in times of danger.
Read more: Why
Take Back the Night is Women-Only
DEAD WOMEN - murdered by their husbands or boyfriends
- make front page headlines.
Burned, shot or dismembered, they're news. In recent months, a
horrifying number of Ontario women were accorded this grim measure
of posthumous fame. Women working to stop the violence, on the
other hand, couldn't get into the headlines even if they put on
a rubber suit like Stockwell Day and zoomed around on a jerkmobile
watercraft.
Read more: Women's activism thrives amid
silence, neglect
The women of Vancouver Rape Relief
& Women's Shelter celebrate the latest achievement of
collective member Lee Lakeman
"Obsession, With Intent - Violence Against Women"
a book written by Lee Lakeman is now released in North America.
Published by Black
Rose Books, "Obsession" is currently the publisher's
book
of the month. The book provides a critically important
examination of the national and international mechanisms that
conspire to keep women subjugated to sexist violence from the
perspective of a Canadian front-line anti-violence activist.
Canadian National
Day of Rememberance and Action
Saturday, December 1st, 2007
Central Branch of Vancouver Public Library
350 West Georgia Street
Read these articles for further analysis on the Montreal Massacre
Women
in a Man's World: Striving for Equality and Beyond in the Male
Dominated Workplace
Ten years after the Massacre, watching the film "After the Montreal
Massacre" for the first time, the shock and horror really hit
me, not only of the lives lost, but of the screaming message
it sent to feminists and women everywhere: push the boundaries
if you dare, but you'll pay the price. Newly identified as a
feminist myself, and as an engineer before that, ten years later
I finally took it personally and I cried.
The Legacy of the Montreal
Massacre
speech delivered by Samantha on December 6, 2003
National
Film Board material about the Montreal Massacre
Uneasy questions about the
White Ribbon Campaign
by Martin Dufresne of Montreal Men Against Sexism
To get back to the local level, I - like others, mostly women
- have approached men asking them to commit to wearing a white
ribbon. I have mostly been snubbed. I have also seen the ribbon
eagerly taken up by the worst kind of guys. Batterers have worn
white ribbons to court, or used white ribbons to try and blend
in truly progressive events such as the Men's Walk Against Male
Violence. I have heard WRC leaders make excuses for such abusers,
rehashing discredited theories about what "makes them" do it,
decrying the "male condition".
Maclean's Magazine Article
December 18, 1989
He entered the classroom slowly a few minutes past 5 on a bitterly
cold afternoon. There was a shy smile on his face as he interrupted
a dissertation on the mechanics of heat transfer. In clear,
unaccented French, he asked the women to move to one side of
the room and ordered the men to leave. The request was greeted
with titters of laughter. "Nobody moved," recalled Prof. Yvan
Bouchard. "We thought it was a joke." An instant later, Bouchard
and his students discovered that what they were confronting
was no joke.
A Time for Grief and Pain
by Diana Bronson, The Globe and Mail
Excerpt: Fourteen Women are dead for one reason: they are women,
Their male classmates are still alive for one reason: they are
men. While gender divides us in thousands of ways every day,
rarely are the consequences of misogyny so tragic
The Massacre in Montreal: Speaking
about the Unspeakable
by Emil Sher, The Globe and Mail
Excerpt: The wanton slaugher of 14 women at the University of
Montreal has taken male violence against women to unimaginable
lengths. Our minds spin trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
We are left speechless. Words fail us - at the very time when
men must begin to speak about the unspeakable.
Women, Violence and the Montreal
Massacre
by Lee Lakeman, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter
Excerpt: A volunteer who left the office earlier this afternoon
calls from home, interrupting a meeting she knows is in session,
with information she doesn't think can wait. "I've been
listening to the news for a couple of hours now; I thought
you might not have heard yet," she says. "Some guy has just
shot fourteen women at the University of Montreal. He
said he was killing them because they were feminists."
Other phone calls follow.
The Art of Intimidation: Sexism
& Destiny at Queen's
This Magazine, March 1990
WHEN OUTBREAKS 0F flagrant sexism on Ontario campuses broke
into the news last fall, reports of panty raids at Wilfrid Laurier
and sexual harassment cases at the University of Toronto paled
beside the nasty reports in October from Queen's University
in Kingston. The sexism came as no surprise to anyone who knew
the university, but the courage shown by those women who staged
a Sit-in in the principal's office was as admirable as the venom
of the attacks on them was disturbing.
Top
Public Forum on Seeking
an End to Women's Poverty
Putting Violence Against Women on to the Social Agenda
Part 4 of a series presented by
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
WISE Hall, 1882 Adanac
Friday, January 16, 2004
7pm-10 pm
They are taking away our welfare
- What is our fair share? How will we get it?
- And how will we help each other survive until then?
Join us for:
Learning centres to discuss expectations we can all have of our
government. We will explore together what social changes we must
initiate to get a redistribution of wealth and what we must do
together to survive through the transition to our fair share.
A panel discussion will be part of the learning centres. Speakers
in the panel discussion include:
Sharon Yandle, Feminist Union Activist
Fay Blaney, Aboriginal Women's Action Network
Jackie Ackerly, Together Against Poverty
Lee Lakeman, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
Kim Pate, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
Dara Culhane, Moderator
This event is free and open to the public.
Space may be limited, please rsvp - 604-872-8212
Free childcare available, please rsvp
For more information about welfare &
welfare cuts please visit these articles and sites:
The World March of Women Against Poverty- for sharing
of wealth Against Violence Against Women - for the respect of
women's physical and mental integrity.
The persistence of inequality in a world of increasing wealth.
We live in a world where inequality reigns. As we near the year
2000, profound disparities still exist between women and men,
North and South, East and West, and within the population of a
given country, between rich and poor, the young and the elderly,
and the urban and rural landscape.
Top
Go
to the World March of Women Demands
B.C. Singled Out for Criticism by U.N. Committee
A coalition of 12 prominent B.C. women’s organizations are
calling on Victoria to reverse recent policy changes and cuts
to social programmes that specifically harm women and girls in
the wake of criticism from the United Nations Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Read
the BC CEDAW alternate report to the UN CEDAW Committee: British
Columbia Moves Backwards on Women's Equality
Read
the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA)
Alternate report to the UN CEDAW Committee
Read
the United Nations CEDAW Committee's criticism of Canada's
lack of progress on eliminating discrimination against women.
Why
Women Would Gain from a Guaranteed Livable Income
by Cindy L'Hirondelle, Status of Women Action Group
Article first published in Focus on Women, March 2003, Victoria,
BC
In response to welfare cuts Vancouver Rape Relief found it neccessary
to increase the amount of time that women could stay in the transition
house for battered women.
We issued an information release in order to get the word out
The Gosselin v. Québec case is about a Québec welfare
regulation that provided drastically reduced benefits (170$ a
month) for persons under thirty years of age who were considered
able to work. The case is now before the Supreme Court. The Court’s
decision could very well determine whether basic welfare benefits
are a right or a privilege in Canada and Québec.
More
about this case at the National Association of Women and the Law
website.
Kimberly Rogers died destitute, alone and eight months pregnant,
while under house arrest for welfare fraud. An Ontario coroner's
inquest into her death August 2001 revealed how welfare cuts were
a primary cause of Kimberly's death. Visit the Disabled
Women's Network of Ontario website for more information
On October 4, 2002, Women took to the streets to protest the
welfare cuts.
This is link to the information leaflet we created and handed
out to people in the downtown of Vancouver as we demonstrated:
"The results of the Harris government cuts to welfare, legal
aid and women's advocacy centres are in:
A dramatic increase in the number of wife murders in Ontario."
Leaflet
text only
Leaflet
pdf versionWarning
to Women of British Columbia - from feminist allies in Ontario
as BC women face the government cuts.
Other Anti-Poverty Websites and Resources:
Livable
Income For Everyone
(LIFE) is an organization started in 2003 to promote the implementation
of universal guaranteed livable income in every country in the
world.
Why? Because...
The
Vancouver Status of Women's Welfare Resource Guide for Women in
BC.
This guide provides general information to women about British
Columbia's welfare system or Employment and Assistance Regulations.
In your dealings with welfare you have a right to be treated with
respect, to be given clear information and to be told about decisions
that effect you. This Guide is meant to help you apply for the
welfare, disability, and child benefits you are entitled to, and
to offer guidance on any problems that you may run into in the
process
Women for Women
Needing Welfare
We encourage all supporters of women needing welfare to use this
service to tell each other about upcoming workshops, protests,
conferences, and other actions. WWW editors do post events from
time to time. But "what's up" is as full, as diverse,
as regionally-broad as you choose to make it.
Provincial government
"fact sheets" about welfare rates and cuts to other
social services:
- Welfare
and shelter rates
- Appeals
and reconsideration process
-
Time limits on receiving welfare |
