Take Back The Night March and Clothesline Project at UMM

The 2017 Clothesline Project and Take Back the Night March will be held this year on Thursday, April 20.

The Take Back the Night March is an international event that was created in the 1970s to enable women and men to publicly express opposition to sexual violence. It is estimated that almost 500 people, almost all women, are raped or sexually assaulted each day in the U.S. The Machias event is a project of the University of Maine at Machias, Next Step Domestic Violence Project, AMHC’s Sexual Assault Services and UMM’s Mental Health Counselor Stacey Cherry.

The march will begin at the Machias Bay Chamber of Commerce train station (across from Helen’s Restaurant) at 4 p.m. The march will end at the Performing Arts Center on the UMM Campus. There will be an opening ceremony, guest speakers, a speak out event and a candlelight vigil. Shuttle vans will be available to take people back to their vehicles after the ceremony.

The Clothesline project will be on display at the March ceremony in the Performing Arts Center. It is a program started on Cape Cod in 1990 to address the issue of violence against women. It is a vehicle for women affected by violence to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. They then hang the shirt on a clothesline to be viewed by others as testimony.

For more information about this topic, contact Erica Batson, at 207-812-0314 or erica.mann@maine.edu.