A-Infos (en) Australia, Sydney, anarchist collective and zine Mutiny #32 - Reclaim the Night? A report from T with alice

(Reclaim the Night (RTN) is a "women's annual global march to protest men's 
sexual violence." It is held in a number of cities in Australia on the last 
Friady of October. This report comes from Sydney) I have to admit to being 
disappointed by last Friday's Reclaim the Night rally (31st October). The 
combination of heavy traffic holding up the truck and sound system for the 
speeches at Town Hall, and the threat of rain keeping people away got the 
evening off to a shaky start, and it was all down hill from there.
Reclaim is not an autonomous march, which surprised me, but I think I could have 
dealt with that were it not for the fact that it ended up being completely 
deferential to men.

Far from women surging onto the streets at night to reclaim them (even though 
arguably it's not the streets we need to Reclaim, it's women's houses and 
workplaces, where most violence against women occurs), we waited politely for 
the police to close George St and cordon the march. This wish for police to 
`protect' women in both the public and private domain is a strong sentiment, or 
at least it seems to be what people call for, rather than calling on communities 
to respond to sexual and physical violence against women.

The rally ended up at Hyde Park and we settled down on the grass to listen to 
the speeches. There were two that really stood out for me. The first was a 
fantastic talk by Barbara Shaw who came down to Sydney to talk about the 
Intervention/ Invasion in the NT. As one of the demands for this year's RTN was 
to end the Intervention, and to implement the `Little Children are Sacred' 
report, her talk was about those demands.

Just to counter that powerful and appropriate speech however, the speaker from
the NSW Rape Crises Centre, who one would have expected to talk about the first
demand of the rally, which was to support women's solutions to violence against
women, instead quoted a speech by Kevin Rudd!!!! So now we're expected to rely
on police and politicians for paternalistic protection? I would have thought 
someone from a women's service provider would be fully aware of the dangers of 
relying on politicians for funding said services.

The little singing group chosen to perform after the speeches seemed to be an
argument against autonomous organising ­ just because they're women
doesn't mean they have feminist politics. Their number about the girl
not being good enough for the boy really said it all.

That said however, I still believe that it's important for rallies like
RTN to continue to be organised, and it was great to know that
this year's rally was the 30th anniversary in Australia. It was
also fantastic to see the women from organisations like the
Penrith Women's Refuge out and marching with their banner.
Perhaps next year we can stack the organising committee and
re-radicalise Reclaim the Night?
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