We’re back!

If anyone still reads this blog, then I thought people would like to know that the planning process for a Reclaim the Night March in March 09 (hopefully on International Women’s day) has begun.  If you want to get involved then you can email us on edinburghrtn08-at-googlemail.com.  We’ll hopefully be updating this blog about what we’re doing, to start us off I’ve copied the minutes from our last meeting below so that anyone who has any thoughts or suggestions on what we’re thinking about and doing can add comments.  Please do add something, we really want our organising process to include as many people as possible, so even if you aren’t able to make it along to meetings (though we would love you to come!), you can still contribute.

Marylou, Rachel and Allyson were at the meeting.

Points of Discussion:

We discussed the importance of being transparent and open about what we are doing in order to gain input from interested people who don’t have time to be fully part of the organising group, for example, putting discussion points on facebook.

Marylou is trying to network with various groups in Leith, in particular trying to think of ways to engage with groups of women from different ethnic groups. Perhaps we could translate our promotion materials into other languages.

Given the march is on International Women’s Day, it might be good to get a speaker from Amnesty International at the march to give us an insite into global violence against women.

We also discussed engaging with young people and elderly people. In particular the idea of going into schools to do assemblies and discussion groups about violence against women and RTN, hopefully in conjunction with Zero Tolerance.

We discussed our ideas about projects to run alongside the march, Marylou wants to organise an art project (perhaps pre-making bannters) and Rachel would like to put together a zine of other stories of the women of Edinburgh.

The bulk of discussion was about an event to be arranged for the end of September to promote the march, network with other groups and try and get more women involved with organising. Hopefully also do some fundraising. We decided:
- would be good to have a social evening, hopefully in the Drill Hall in Leith
- include music, cake, perhaps comedy, recruiting for us and info on violence against women and lots of networking. Any other fun creative things we can think of.
- Creche should be included.
- Best time may be late september to conside with uni’s going back. 

Action Points:
- Everyone should continue trying to network as much as they can with contacts they have.

For event:
- Marylou is going to find out when the best time would be in terms of uni terms and school holidays and then get in touch with the drill hall about dates.
- Rachel is going to email round our old publicity material so we can hopefully use the same logos for our publicity
- Allyson is going to begin investigating the logistics of organising this event, e.g. how to get cake, what fire safety and child protection things we would need.
- everyone in the group should be brain storming about potential activities and people we can invite. 
- Rachel is going to try and restart blog (reclaimthenightedinburgh.wordpress.com) to raise awareness, and get in touch with F-word about publicity once we have a date and time

For next meeting:
- Rachel is going to arrange with YWCA to be a key holder.
- we need to set a regular day and time, starting from next week, what day is best. We need to make this decision fast!

Groups we can possibly network with that we thought of at the meeting:
- Damn rebel bitches (at Tollcross community centre)
- Alternatives to Violence Project (to get in with the quaker granny mafia )
- Deaf Action
- Sikh Sanjog
- knitting and craft circles

Article in the f-word!

‘The f-word’, an online magazine aimed specifically at young feminists in the UK, has published an article about Edinburgh’s Reclaim the Night march.

‘Edinburgh Gets Ready to Reclaim the Night’

We are famous!!

Incredibly excitingly, our planned march was mentioned in a recent Guardian article on up-and-coming young feminist activists.

For anyone that’s googled ‘Reclaim the Night Edinburgh’ after reading the article and wants to get involved, we would love to have you! Please add a comment, or email us at E_F_N@myway.com.

Calling all Scottish activists!

If you’re an individual, or part of a group, who is interested in feminism, women’s choices and gender based violence and how to stop it we would love to hear from you.

We feel that much discussion within the UK is London based, and it would be great to find out who else is in Scotland and how we can work together.

We would like to start mapping all the feminist activism that is going on here,beyond the organisations who have been pioneers in this field, and beyond the central belt! so get in touch, leave a comment and we can start to build on what we’re all doing separately!