Reclaim these streets

Mar 18, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – There is a new movement taking shape in furious form in Britain. It is called “Reclaim These Streets” and came about on the heels of the disappearance and later discovered death of Sarah Everard, a “33-year-old marketing executive, who disappeared as she walked home in London on March 3” (New York Times, “In rage over Sarah Everard’s killing, ‘Women’s Bargain’ is put on notice” March 14). Women in Britain are blazing mad, and with justification. We think that it is with much basis and say this to our officials and fellow citizens: Listen up Guyana. And especially: listen up all men out there, who harbour ill-will against our daughters, sisters, mothers, and female relatives and friends.
We say cut the nonsense and ugliness out. Let it stop now. Come to your senses and be a man, a real man – real men don’t hit women. Real men do not cowardly brutalise helpless women. And real men do not take advantage of those females in our society who depend on them, once looked up to them, but who are now forced to hide from them, recoil from them, and flee in mortal terror from them.
This was what ended up being the final fate of this, most likely, still largely unknown woman and name from Britain to most Guyanese. According to The New York Times article referenced, the late Ms. Everard did everything right. In her fateful March 3 walk home in London, “she took a longer route that was well-lit and populated. She wore bright clothes and shoes she could run in.” And she communicated with her boyfriend to keep him informed of her movements. But then, she disappeared for a week, and then she turned up dead.
There can be no doubt that Ms. Everard took every possible precaution yet she is now dead. But it was what the London Metropolitan Police did in the wake of her death that unleashed the rage of women, who feel increasingly besieged. The British “police were going from door to door telling women in the South London neighbourhood where she disappeared to stay inside for their own safety.” That did not go down well at all, and things quickly came to a head, through what has now blown up into the wrathful presence of the “Reclaim These Streets” movement, which has its own powerful messages for the police and society.
Among those messages are: “Hey mister, get your hands off my sister.” That should be the loud call of men in neighbourhoods and everywhere in Guyana, too, at those males who man-handle and maim the women in this country. To the police seeking to arrest some of those at the vigil, there was this message: “arrest your own” which was a reference to the police officer charged with Ms. Everard’s killing. The women in Britain are frustrated and they are making no bones about where they stand, and how they see themselves more and more marooned in the face of always encroaching violence at the hands of violent men.
The women are outraged because they cannot understand “why the police demand sacrifices of women rather than forcing men to change to end violence” particularly against women. We agree that the tendency of aggressive males to resort to the violence that is a culture against women in this society, and that more must be done to curb it quickly and harshly. Our women here must not live in fear of physical harm here, there, and everywhere. That would be in their homes, in their places of work, or on the streets. It does not matter whether the perpetrator is a domestic partner or total stranger. The emphasis from officials must be directed at men and backing them against a wall, jamming some sense into their heads, and letting them know that this almost ready-made violence against women must stop.

If there is serious interest (and we believe that it is so) in Guyana at bringing about sweeping change in male mindsets, then our women have to take a page out of the book of their sisters in Britain. It was where “women from all walks of life” took to the streets to raise their voices in “demanding safety from male violence – and demanding that the police, the government and men collectively be the ones to bear the burden to ensure it.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves and this is what we at this paper lend our own voices in calling upon our males, officials and regular citizens, to find ways to deliver on what enraged and alarmed women demand. It is long overdue.

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