A group of women from Lambeth have organised a march to honour victims of violence against women and girls a year on from the murder of Sarah Everard.
The Walk Her Home march will meet at Clapham Common bandstand at 7pm on Friday, March 4, where Leader of the Women’s Equality Party Mandu Reid and Helen Hayes MP will give speeches.
Poet and activist Monika Radojevic will also read a poem.
The group will then walk from Clapham to Brixton with the march ending in Windrush Square.
As well as mourning the women who have been killed, the event is calling for the right for women to live in safety, free from the constant threat of physical and sexual violence.
Organiser Freya Papworth said: “Last year so many of us felt the need to come together to mourn Sarah, and add our voices to the growing conversation about male violence against women that the pandemic had brought to the headlines.
“Our organisers had spent the previous year campaigning for protections for women against the rising tide of domestic violence that was sweeping the globe, and Sarah’s murder caused a ripple that was impossible to ignore.
“We want to create a space where women can come together to mourn, to heal, to share our stories, and to show those watching that we will not be going away.
“We need a dramatic societal change in how we talk about male violence and to stop dismissing it as a women’s issue.”
On March 3, 2021, Ms Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by serving Met police officer Wayne Couzens.
In 2021, at least 141 women in the UK were killed by men, or in cases where a man was the principal suspect.
Georgia Yale, who is also organising the event said: “We are brought up on the belief that men who kill and abuse women are bad eggs and if we avoid them and stay vigilant we will be safe.
“But men are killing and abusing women every single day regardless of where women are or what they are doing.
“We are fed up with accepting this as a part of life as a woman.
“This is not our issue. This is a man’s issue and men need to wake up and do something about it.”