Women Plan Night March For Tomorrow

Women from around Cambridge will gather tomorrow night in Central Square for a three-hour march and rally to protest violence against women.

The Cambridge women will walk to Boston's Fenway area, where they will join women from five other sites around the area, in an effort to show that "together we can take back the night," Angel Ryan, a local coordinator of the march, said yesterday.

Fear

Boston officials, fearing racial violence in the wake of several killings in the last few weeks, almost refused to grant permits to the women, Stoller said.

"The march is interracial, though--it will defuse violence, not create it," she added.

Even so, Cambridge women who are wary of possible trouble along the route will meet tonight to discuss plans, Ryan said.

The high incidence of sexual assault and wife-beating are among the problems the march is intended to highlight, Andrea Rogers, a volunteer at the Cambridge Women's Center, said yesterday.

"The rallies have done a lot of consciousness-raising in the past," Rogers said. adding that women had also been able to meet other feminists.

"We have to become more aware of how to defend ourselves. You can't count on the police a lot of the time," Rogers said.

Men are "not encouraged" to join the march, although they can "stand on the sidelines," Stoller said. "This is a women's march," she said.

The Cambridge marchers will gather Mass Ave at 7 p.m., and march across the B.U. Bridge into Boston. A "collective of women will each deliver parts of a collectively written speech" at the rally, Stoller said