CSB hosts annual international march

CSB hosted this year’s Central MN Take Back the Night march and rally on Thursday, Oct. 13, marking 40 years of the Central MN community coming together to take a stand against interpersonal, domestic and sexual violence.

CSB+SJU students gathered on the CSB Mall alongside other local and Central MN community members from the St. Cloud area to engage in the yearly event organized by the Central MN Sexual Assault Center. Take Back the Night, an international rally and march brought to local communities, began in the U.S. in the 1970s with the first Central MN Take Back the Night taking place in 1982. However, these rallies and marches date back to as early as the late 1800s in London where women took to the streets to protest the fear they encountered while walking alone at night.

Cassie Bauman, Central MN Sexual Assault Center safe harbor services coordinator, explained why the effort of these women in history continues to live on.

“It’s important to hold events like these so survivors have a chance to be heard, especially when they might otherwise not have the option,” Bauman said. “People need to hear from survivors and to see that this is still happening, that sexual and domestic violence isn’t something we’ve progressed our way out of and that it is deeply embedded within our culture.”

Bauman says that by holding events like Take Back the Night, people are spreading the word that violence is still ongoing and that it must stop. Bringing such an event to CSB has also allowed for more opportunity for other groups of students to participate, both in the event and in the planning of the event. Among the speakers at the rally to show support for the community was Carol Bruess, accompanied by her husband, President Brian Bruess.

“We know that you know that it’s up to each of us, especially those of us in positions of power and with access to the tables and the loudest voices to create the new conditions where no one ever again is afraid,” Carol Bruess said.

For the Bruess’s, one of the greatest commitments that they can make to their community is to keep working to change every environment where people work and live, not only now but into the future. Peggy LaDue, executive director of the Central MN Sexual Assault Center, was present and urged participants to have the courage to take action, speak up and stand with survivors.

“We should have the right to walk the streets, we should have the right to dress how we feel comfortable, we should have the right to practice our cultural customs, we should have the right to have the freedom to enjoy the nighttime, to be out in the darkness and not constantly feel afraid,” LaDue said.

LaDue also emphasized the dangers of victim blaming and the importance of diverging from harmful language rooted in stereotypes and systems of oppression. By doing so, she explained the ways in which others can actively become an ally in a crowd of survivors of violence and those who know survivors of violence that they love and care for.

“You are courageous survivors,” LaDue said. “Your authentic voices deserve to be heard. Your story is your story.”

Departing from the CSB Mall, the marchers walked and chanted along College Avenue to Minnesota Street, circling the CSB campus. Several CSB+SJU students attended the event with the Bonner Leader Program, a service-learning organization on campus devoted to community engagement. Among them was CSB senior Anna Watt.

“Peggy LaDue’s passion, her voice and even just hearing her out there as a Bennie, as a woman, as just as a person, it was really exciting to hear someone get angry about something that is so detrimental to so many people’s lives,” Watt said. “It was really cool to see all of us in one space for one reason, screaming our hearts out in 35-degree weather.”

SJU junior Zachary Staver had one key takeaway from his participation in the night.

“There’s a lot of people that care,” Staver said. “And based on the number of people that would pop their heads out of their windows and come out of their door, there’s people that weren’t here that also care. You just need to be that force to have other people feel confident to step up and come out for these things.”

LaDue left CSB+SJU students with words of encouragement in the ongoing battle against interpersonal, domestic and sexual violence and cultivated a sense of allyship among community members.

“Stand up to systems of oppression and speak out,” LaDue said. “Do not tolerate inappropriate jokes, inappropriate comments, inappropriate gestures. Call it out. Be the person that takes action and has the courage to say, ‘no more.’”