VIGIL AND MARCH TO HONOUR WOMEN

National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

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WED DEC 5th
Starts at 6 pm
DTES Women's Centre
(302 Columbia Street, near Main and Cordova)
Proceed to Thornton Park (Main Skytrain)
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* Led by Elders and drummers. Speakers include: members of the Power of Women Group and DTES Women's Centre, Carnegie Community Action Project, Kamilla Singh of Women Against Violence Against Women, Grassroots Women, Phillipine Women's Centre, Poet Ameena Mayer and others.

STOP ALL FORMS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN!
END PATRIARCHY!

Violence against women and girls includes domestic violence and sexual assault; psychological and spiritual violence; the economic violence of poverty and homelessness; dangerous working conditions that many women are forced to endure; violence committed by the government including by the
police and prisons; legislated violence that harms women through policies such as cuts to legal aid, lack of universal childcare, lack of pay equity, and child apprehension policies; and across the globe, the violence of racism and colonization that uses and commodifies women as a weapon of warfare.

Please join us! Trans inclusive, men welcome to march with us. For more information, contact us at DEWC at 604-681-8480 x 234 or email us at project@dewc.ca

DID YOU KNOW THAT:

* At least 50% of women in Canada have been a victim of either a sexual or physical assault.
* Approximately 100 women in Canada are killed annually by current or former boyfriends and husbands.
* Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women to die as the result of violence. Over the past twenty years, more than five hundred Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing.
* In a 2001 PACE report, one-third of women said they had survived an attack on their life while working on the street.
* One in five Canadian women lives in poverty, totalling 2.8 million women, particularly single mothers, women with disabilities, recent immigrant women, indigenous women, and elderly women.
* There has been an increase of 60% in the number of homeless women in the past year in Vancouver.
* Many women are forced to stay in abusive relationships for fear of homelessness or lack of adequate shelter, poverty, child apprehension, or deportation.

Organized by the DTES Women Centre Power of Women Group. The Power of Women Group is a group at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre dedicated to educating and raising awareness on social issues. We are a group of women from all walks of life who are either on social assistance, working poor, or homeless; but we are all living in extreme poverty below the poverty line. Many us of are single mothers or have had our children apprehended due to poverty; most of us have chronic physical or mental health issues; many have drug or alcohol addictions; and a majority have experienced and survived sexual violence and abuse. For indigenous women, women of colour, and immigrant women, we are affected by a history of colonization and racism.