Taking Back the Night

Tonight the National Organization of Women (NOW), organized a "Take Back the Night" march at the University of Central Florida. They worked with the Student Government Association, the Multicultural Student Center, and other campus organizations and were successful in bringing out a couple hundred students to the event.

Marches to "Take Back the Night" have been held for many years in many cities throughout the world to call attention to the high rates of violence against women. Feminists in the 1960s began to hold these marches composed entirely of women at night to protest the fact that women could not feel safe walking the streets at night. By coming together, shouting, and chanting without men to protect them, these women were able to symbolically  reclaim space. The Take Back the Night events provided platforms for women to denounce  the high incidence of rape in our country while also empowering themselves through testimony and the dissemination of information.

I attended my first "Take Back the Night" march when I was a college student. I am fortunate that because I am now a professor I have students who continue to organize such events and who invite me to participate.

I read a few of my poems at the event. Here is the poem, "Rape: A State of Emergency"

The Demands of Existence

Demands of Existence

If I told you to do the impossible

To fight the impossible fight

To pursue the impossible dream

If I told you it was the only thing that would

Make you possible

Would you do it?

If I told you your life was absurd

And unfair and that the cards would be stacked

Ridiculously against you

But that you should live nonetheless

That you must live nonetheless

Would you do it?

If I set wolves at your door and

Snakes in your bed

If I made your neighbors vultures

And your enemies your only friends

If I gave you but a stone for a pillow

And a shack for a home

And told you to awaken each morning

With a plan

To wake each morning

Determined to live

Would you do it?

If I gave you but one hawks feather to pray with

And 7 rocks set in a circle for a temple

If your flock was a ragged and desperate band of thieves

Your children thugs and your own mother addicted to drugs

Would you have the strength to lead them?

Would you have the heart to love them?

Would you have the humility to call yourself one of them?

To claim their faults as your own?

If I colored you black or red and set you down in this white world

If I shaped you woman and set you down in this man’s world

If I fashioned you queer and set you down in this straight world

If I told you to do the impossible

To fight the impossible fight

To pursue the impossible dream

If I told you it was the only thing that would

Make you possible

Would you do it?