A little TBTN history to get you excited!

The first Take Back the Night march was actually called "Reclaim the Night" and was held in Belgium in March of 1976. Groups of men and women marched together holding candles in order to protest the ways that violence is involved in the lives of women all around the world.
The first Take Back the Night march in the United States was only two years later, on November 4, 1978, in San Francisco, California. The march was organized by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media, who believed that rape and pornography are involved in the sexual subordination of women.
Take Back the Night began, and remains, as a form of protest against the violence that women experience while walking in public at night. Most women, especially female students here at UW-Madison, often hear that she should be careful, or refrain from, walking alone at night. Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist and author, writes in The Night and Danger:
"Women are often told to be extra careful and take precautions when going out at night. In some parts of the world, even today, women are not allowed out at night. So when women struggle for freedom, we must start at the beginning by fighting for freedom of movement, which we have not had and do not now have. We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for anything else. It comes before freedom of speech in importance because without it freedom of speech cannot in fact exist."
The purpose of TBTN is also to raise community awareness of this violence in order to prevent it from happening. TBTN has grown to not only include violence that women face at night, but rather the fear of violence in general. TBTN advocates for the right of everyone to feel safe from violence. We agree with this right and hope to spread the word!