To ask women and girls to walk with candles tonight at 6pm - in your local park or wherever you choose

[loveyouradvice]

The vigil for Sarah at 6pm tonight in Clapham Common has been cancelled. All the planned vigils have been cancelled. By the police.

But we are all allowed to walk - in our households or with one friend socially distanced.

Would you tonight consider walking with a candle?

Perhaps encourage others to walk too?

Even tell them where you might be going?

And courage calls to courage everywhere... Janice Turner's tweet summed it up perfectly - pasted below

Things change.... People change them.... Raising awareness is part of this.... just one small part of a huge step forward we need to take which is our society taking responsibility for male violence and the need to change its acceptability and prevalence

As a previous post highlights, no one gathers to protest the death of all the young kids stabbed on the streets. This murder is horrific but I don't see what's to be gained by gathering in groups and risking further spread of a virus that's killed significantly more, remember we are still in lockdown.

Please also remember Bennylyn and Jellica Burke. Their horrendous deaths have gone largely ignored over media and social media. My opinion on the matter was removed last night: but I feel the press have ignored them as they were disadvantaged and Asian

There are lots of good suggestions for highlighting and demanding change here and elsewhere. It’s totally right that society has to stop excusing misogyny and violence against women to effect change.

It’s sad the vigil has been cancelled but the way the government have thrown the police under the bus for this is also very poor. It is Boris’s government that have passed these regulations and they can amend them. The police can’t win in the position they are in at the moment and I am sure they don’t want to stop something so sensitive. A very big rock and a hard place to be for them right now.

As posters have said you aren’t breaking the law if you are taking exercise with one other however.

@loveyouradvice

Things change.... People change them.... Raising awareness is part of this.... just one small part of a huge step forward we need to take which is our society taking responsibility for male violence and the need to change its acceptability and prevalence

Raise awareness of what?? Men pose a danger to women, please tell me who isn't aware of this? What do you honestly see this achieving? I hate it, and it's upsetting but it won't make a difference.

So no one should ever try to bring a serious issue to the forefront?

Women are sick of being told to sit down, stay quiet, stay at home where it's safe and even then if something happens in your house you won't be believed, you were probably doing something wrong or as we've seen a few times recently consented to risky sexual practices resulting in injury/death.

But nevermind. We shouldn't take about those things because it probably won't change anything.

*talk about

This exactly.

Sorry my above post was meant to quote fluffyhippo. I don't belueve awareness needs raising, we all know how vulnerable women are, it's education that is key.

I'm not in London and my local area radio station is saying to leave a candle on your windowsill and pay respect on your doorstep for Sarah and al female victims.

It would be good if every politician and every police officer who goes out for a run, on patrol or anything else this evening, sees a lantern or candle in every driveway.

It needs to be crystal clear - they are not doing enough to change attitudes, protect women and stop the violence.

I will be taking 8 week old dd in a baby carrier and walking with a torch tonight.

Thank you op as I wasn't aware before

I suggest you check out Jackson Katz's TEDTalk. He speaks eloquently about ways to challenge GBV

I'm going out with my placard and I hope that it will encourage conversation between this generation and the next to educate boys and men in how they can help promote safety for women and not perpetrate violence or abuse.

I will be putting lanterns with tealights in on my window ledge.

I posted this on the other thread but THIS is what you can practically do, for reference (shouldn’t be posting in this UN but what the hell), I was brutally raped and a victim of the system, these people are the ones fighting the cause against the broken justice system, including the police in my case trying to shut me down:

Instead of breaking the law (not that I agree with it) and making misogynistic men feel even more entitled to think we are all a bunch of shouty feminists (we are quite bloody rightly), I’d put my cold hard cash into people who are actually fighting for change in meaningful ways. Like the CWJ -

www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/

Then plaster your anger and their link to every woman you know.

@loveyouradvice

Things change.... People change them.... Raising awareness is part of this.... just one small part of a huge step forward we need to take which is our society taking responsibility for male violence and the need to change its acceptability and prevalence

I agree. There were protests and vigils to raise awareness of Black Lives Matter after George Floyd died. If nothing else, they show people who agree but don't like to rock the boat that there is a groundswell of people who feel the same. Which may, in time, make people more confident at calling out misogyny in all its forms.

@FluffyHippo I am not doing this to feel virtuous. I am doing this to remember those lives who have been stolen and to show my daughters that yes they should be safe to walk the streets and no they shouldn’t need to change their behaviour.

This is not a competition to who is most at risk or to wether more men than woman are at risk it’s about everyone having freedom without fear.

Did you do this for the Rochdale girls?
Did you do this for the Rotherham girls?
The Oxford girls?
The Blackpool girls?
The Bradford girls
Govanhill girls
Bolton girls

And if not why not?

@HijabiVenus i agree, but we should have. I think the clapping for the nhs has shown how as a country we can come together, but yes we should have been out in the streets campaigning for every innocent person who has lost their life, especially those lives stolen. But we cant go back in time and its about remembering, its about change and its about saving lives through awareness.

Protests and vigils are for the participants. I will likely participate in something because this week has made me v emotional, but I very much doubt it will change anything at all sadly

Why? What difference would it make? If I walk through my local park like numpty, is she going to get any less dead? Are women going to be any safer? No. Of course not. It’s virtue signalling and nothing more.

The vigil for Sarah at 6pm tonight in Clapham Common has been cancelled. All the planned vigils have been cancelled. By the police

The police have not cancelled planned vigils. They are obliged to enforce pandemic rules put in place by the government, and as we saw in the High Court, these vigils are not exempt from current lockdown rules.

By all means carry on with your vigil if you want. But you may receive a fine or warning if you break lockdown rules. The organisers of the vigils are therefore advising other ways, rather than mass gatherings.

People are making it sound like the police are stopping these vigils because they don’t agree with them.

Check out your local council websites.

Some are encouraging people to socially distance and leave candles/whatever on the town hall steps.

Sussex police have warned women not to attend a vigil planned at a city centre park in Brighton.