Last September, women in cities and towns across Canada responded to a call for feminist action to Take Back the Night. Women in some cities have been organizing Take Back the Night as a public protest against the continued danger we face from men, and as a way of experiencing for at least one night the freedom of women walking together free from male violence. In other centres, this was the first or second year women have marched together calling it Take Back the Night. These actions are organized by rape crisis centres, by transition houses, by women's centres, by women's groups and coalitions of women's groups representing women in all communities.

We are facing increasing pressure to abandon the strategy of mobilizing women as a way to affect social change. Police and city councils try to stop us from gathering to Take Back the Night. They tell us we can't march in large groups, or that we can't march on streets that have traffic, or that we can't march without a permit, or with a permit, or without including men, or without risking the licensing and funding of our women's shelters and centres. We are under pressure from the men in our lives to exempt them from responsibility for other men's violence: they want us to believe that men's violence against us is not about gender, power and inequality, and that it is not intended to prevent our freedom.

Despite all this, women Took Back the Night last year in Vancouver, Surrey, Maple Ridge, Kelowna, Kamloops, Chetwynd, Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell river, Calgary, Brandon, Timmins, Halton, Barrie, Toronto and Montreal!

There was a big Take Back the Night week of marches and rallies across Canada the last week in September, 1997.

Vancouver's March was Saturday, Sept. 27/97 at 7:30 p.m. beginning at the Vancouver Art Gallery sponsored by Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter.

Other Take Back the Night marches were as follows:

• Abbotsford B.C. Sept 27
• Maple Ridge, B.C. Sept. 27
• Prince George Sept. 19th
• Victoria Sept. 27
• Cranbrook Sept. 19
• Kelowna Sept 27
• Ft. Nelson Sept. 27
• Vernon Sept 27
• Chetwyn Sept 27
• Surrey Sept 26
• Campbell River Sept 27
• Calgary, Sept 20
• Edmonton Sept 27
• Regina Sept 27
• Saskatoon Sept 27
• Winnipeg, Sept 19
• Brandon Sept 19
• North Bay Sept 18
• Chatham Sept 27
• Toronto Sept 27
• Ottawa Sept. 19
• Timmins Sept 27
• Godridge Sept 18
• Kenora Sept 18
• Kitchner Sept 18
• St. Catharines Sept 18
• Oshawa Sept 18
• Brantford Sept 19
• Sudbury Sept 25
• Barrie & Huntsville Sept 27
• Guelph Sept 18
• Winchester Sept 25
• Hamilton Sept 18
• Oakville Sept 27
• Windsor Sept 27
• Newmarket Sept 25
• Fredricton Sept 26
• St. John's Nfld. Sept. 26