Launch of « Why Women? »

On the 28th of February, they were a small yet to-be-reckoned with group of youth at the Côte Vertu metro station, chanting slogans such as « Your mom is a woman! », and carrying placards which read « What would you do without women? ». Without a doubt, the confused STM staff won’t forget them anytime soon…

The young activists

The girls from Cardinal high-school came supported by a group of their friends to manifest peacefully around the metro station, to ask for respect for women and girls, the end of harassement and youth profiling in the neighbourhood, as well as freedom of speech.

Arriving at the metro

While there, the girls (and their very supportive guy friends 🙂 also distributed copies of « Why Women? » to passersby. Speaking of passersby, they were sometimes amused, sometimes curious, but also kind of … well .. not cool.

Hawa holds a placard, while Sabrina is holding the magazine

Some people thought we were part of those « irritating red squares », because of which a well intentioned STM employee kindly asked us to manifest calmly, « more like women » (« because that is your cause, right? ») to avoid any confusion with other student protests. To this we bit our tongues really hard to make sure the youth could continue their peaceful march, but oooohhhhh how we would have liked to underline we WERE a student group and that there is nothing wrong with that, red square or no red square. And don’t even get me started on that « manifesting like women » bit ! (end rant)

so proud 🙂 Berekhya, one of us animators, and Santa Félicia

On that note, this is the close of the « My City, My Safety! » Cardinal project chapter. It is a little bittersweet for us, to have supported the girls in producing something beautiful and profound, but also to always want to keep doing more things with them, for longer. We can only hope that these young women will continue being inspired and inspiring (scratch that, we know they are!!), in their lives, and for other young women and girls.

And this may be the end of the project, but hey, let’s keep touch, right ladies 😉

To be continued…