Wednesday, November 18, 2015

I saw a church today

Today I walked from training to see a friend at her house in a different part of town. I passed this church, and it reminded me about an event me and a friend arranged 20 years ago. She introduced me to the riot girls movement, and we read zines that got from someone that got the from someone. We read about this event "We take the night back". And we decided to "take the night back", to have a rally against violence against women. I used the copy machine at my moms work and did the fliers. Me and my friend went around and placed those at cafes we knew had people with opinions like ours. People we knew existed, but didn't really know. We were sort of shy. We called ourselves the "Black widows"... well, at least that we signed our fliers with, I think we thought it sounded cool, the black widow eating the male after sex... I don't think either of us really thought that anyone would show up, of course we were hoping but we weren't really expecting it.
A week later, on the date we had decided on we are standing on an square in Old Town, and people are showing up. Not just four or five, no more like 40-50... And I look at my friend, and she looks at me... And people are starting to ask each other, who are the people behind this? I am 15 and shy. So my friend steps up on a bench, wearing black, black jeans, black hoodie and calls for action. We say things like "let's take the night back" "Women should not be afraid" "We are not scared" "Those are OUR streets". And we all start walking down the street, yelling and chanting. It's powerful, me and my friend are both glowing, because we feel the power of a cause, of daring to stand up for what we believe in and feeling that there are others that share what we feel, and we are with them. We made this happen! Why I thought about this when I saw this church? Because this is where we got rounded up by the police in the end. We didn't get arrested, I guess the police didn't think two teenage girls could have organized it... I do think that maybe the police took a few guys in for questioning. Next day there was a small text about it in the national newspaper... I saved it..

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