The marchers walked silently for a mile through the blocks of downtown Milwaukee.
They held flags, each one carrying the story of someone whose life ended because of domestic violence.
They passed out cards to onlookers, explaining their mission of memorializing victims and their commitment to ending domestic abuse.
The Zonta Club of Milwaukee’s sixth annual walk, “Zonta Says NO to Violence Against Women,” came at the start of Domestic Violence Awareness Month and less than two weeks after a report found Wisconsin experienced a record number of domestic violence-related homicides in 2020.
Fifty-eight people were killed in acts of domestic violence last year, according to the annual report from End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin.
In addition, eight perpetrators died by suicide and two others were killed by responding law enforcement, for a total of 68 people dying in domestic violence incidents, the report found.
That’s about one death every five days.
Behind every number are a host of loved ones left to grieve — people like Carrie Scott-Haney. Her daughter, Audrey “TuTu” Scott, went missing in 2017 from a downtown bar and was murdered by her ex-boyfriend.
Scott-Haney came to Monday’s walk to push for change. She has started a petition to create a “Purple Alert” system for adult women who go missing and have previously been victims of domestic violence.
“There’s so many people that go missing and when their remains are found it’s never determined if it’s domestic abuse, but their families know” that it was, she said.
Scott-Haney was among the speakers at City Hall, where the nearly 50 marchers gathered after the walk sponsored by Zonta, a women’s service organization seeking to end gender-based violence and empower women.
Karin Tyler with the city’s Office of Violence Prevention shared some of her personal experiences with domestic abuse.
“I am a survivor,” she said, her voice echoing in the City Hall rotunda.
She had been strangled and threatened with a gun, and she focused on keeping her children safe, she said.
“It infuriates me when I hear people say ‘Why did she stay?'” she said, describing how abusers can return again and again, and how women run into barriers when trying to leave.
And men have to be part of the effort to end domestic abuse, said Shawn Muhammad, director of The Asha Project, which serves African American women in Milwaukee.
“In order for us to eradicate intimate partner violence it will take all of us, and if the sisters could do it on their own, it would be eradicated already,” he said.
Deaths from domestic violence are the tip of the iceberg, said Carmen Pitre, executive director of Sojourner Family Peace Center.
“What it sits on is thousands of other situations right here in Milwaukee, where people are living in terror, who are suffering and who are living in isolation,” she said.
She called on those gathered to reflect on the stories they had carried. She shared how, at one point in the walk, a gust of wind tore her flag from her hands and sent it tumbling down the block.
She chased after it, thinking of the 60-year-old woman honored on it, a woman only a year older than her.
“She was lost once, she doesn’t need to be lost again,” Pitre said.
awareness advocacy storytelling
Zonta Club of Schaffhausen spreads awareness of child marriage with ‘Welcome at Home’ exhibit
Exhibition element informing about forced marriage: “It should have been the most beautiful day of my life.”
From 25 November to 11 December, “Welcome at Home” was shown in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. This project was initiated and led by the Zonta Club of Schaffhausen and actively supported by the local police and more than 15 local agencies dealing with domestic violence.
The exhibit and the symposium got a lot of media presence and thus helped to create the public pressure necessary to get politicians moving. In the meantime, the regional parliament has approved to create a body to take charge of implementing the Istanbul Convention in the region.
The target group of the exhibit itself was young adults. Approximately 800 vocational school students were led through the exhibition by a team consisting of a teacher, a policeman and a social worker. The goal was to inform them about the causes, backgrounds and toxic consequences of domestic violence and also about the support services for victims in the region.
Zonta club members unite during the 16 Days of Activism
From 25 November to 10 December, during the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, Zonta club members embraced the Zonta Says NO to Violence Against Women campaign and advocated to end violence against women and child marriage in their communities.
Watch the video below to see a few examples of how club members said NO during the campaign.
2017 Zonta Says NO recap
Zonta clubs across the world participated in advocacy and awareness efforts from 25 November to 10 December as part of the Zonta Says NO to Violence Against Women and 16 Days of Activism Against Gendered-Violence campaigns.
Watch select highlights here and read stories from other clubs at www.zontasaysno.com/zontiansinaction/
Read a recap of the 16 Days of Activism campaign from the President’s Corner Blog: http://ow.ly/kfL930hcMRe
Zonta Club of Hamilton 1 recognizes community newspaper project dedicated to ending violence against women
On the fourth day of the 16 Days of Activism, the clubs of District 4, Area 2 in Canada presented two local advocates with the 2017 Zonta Says No Award for their efforts to raise awareness for the issue of gender-based violence.
At the meeting of the Zonta Club of Hamilton 1 on 28 November, the award was presented to Doreen Nicoll and Brandon Braithwaite. The two led the way for a local newspaper in the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada area to focus specifically on violence against women.
The November 2016 issue of The Anvil, a Hamilton-based newspaper, was devoted to the topic of gendered violence. The special edition was titled “This Is Not a Woman’s Issue.”
In 2016, Nicoll, who was a volunteer for the Anvil, approached her managing editor, Braithwaite, with an idea to create an entire issue dedicated to Women’s Abuse Prevention Month. Her passion for the topic came from her own experience in an abusive relationship. The issue included articles from experts, doctors, and different area services, as well as hard-hitting stories about survivors. The goal was to provide as much information as possible in one accessible place.
After it was published, over 8,000 copies were distributed to apartments and homes across downtown Hamilton, Ontario, as well as at coffee shops, universities and colleges all over Hamilton and Burlington.
Nicoll was also recognized for her efforts in creating an online platform to provide additional information. Along with a team of friends, she developed the online resource 1infour.ca. The website was developed to help women identify important services in the area. It was born out of a frustration at the complexity of knowing and taking advantage of programs that exist in Hamilton.
Braithwaite, the second award recipient, was raised by a single mother and says it is the strength of his mother that shaped him to be the person he is today. Now, he says, it is his wife Rachel, and two daughters, Abigail and Emily, that drive him to make the world a better place.
When taking on the Anvil publication project, it was his passion to reach as many of his neighbors as possible with information pertaining to the challenges of violence against women. Braithwaite and his team hoped that by providing the information to people, they could help equip them with the tools they need to combat, confront and support themselves and others facing gender-based violence.
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