Step It Up Ontario!

Better to be seen and heard! Public action is one of the most effective ways to get your message out. The "Step it Up!" campaign needs a public voice to succeed in creating change for women to end violence. Here are some ideas for raising public awareness.

Spread the Word

• Distribute "Step it Up!" posters, buttons and stickers. Order some "Step it Up!" stuff and make sure your community organizations and agencies, schools, businesses, faith groups, public spaces and anywhere else you can think of has the information your local community needs to get involved. Encourage individuals and groups to not only post the information or wear a button, but to put action behind it and to make sure the Ontario government knows about their support for 10 Steps.
• Write a letter to the Editor of your local paper about the 10 Steps and what government needs to do to make them happen in your community.
• Call your local media and tell them about the campaign and what you are doing to support it. Get local cable TV and radio talk shows to do a show on the campaign.
• Get local organizations and agencies, unions and businesses to support a billboard or lawn signs supporting the campaign.
• Talk about the campaign in your school class, service club, workplace union or association, club or team, faith group or circle of friends. Organize them to do something together to endorse and support an end to violence against women.
• For web the savvy: Set up a local website for "Step it Up!" Start a "Step it Up!" blog. Put a link to stepitupontario.ca on your website.

Public Actions

Hold a public meeting about "Step it Up!" in your community. Provide information about the campaign, about the things women need to end violence against women and about how anyone can get involved. Invite women there to keep meeting and planning action on the campaign over the next election year. Let us know what you plan to do. Take pictures and send them to us for the website!

Organize an information picket at the local office of your MPP on Fridays, constituency days for provincial MPPs. Send us your photos and tell us how your MPP responds.

Plan public events. There are many creative actions that you can take. Here are a few good examples:

• 'Clothesline' event: Gather women together to speak their minds and hearts on plain, cheap T-shirts, then have a public event where you hang the shirts on a 'clothesline' and provide information for the community on the campaign. Take pictures of the display and send them to the Premier of Ontario. Send them to us and we'll put some on the site.
  
  Even if you don't do it in public, you can have a T-shirt gathering in any group and create the messages you want to send. Take a picture of the group with the messages showing and send it with your thoughts and support for the campaign to your MPP and the Premier of Ontario. Tell them you are supporting the "Step it Up!" Campaign to end violence against women.
• 15 Minutes to End Violence Against Women: Organize your workplace, school class, community or faith group or a group you gather together to stop whatever they are doing for 15 to 20 minutes to fill out a card or write a note to Premier Dalton McGuinty asking him how he will put the 10 Steps into action. Don't forget to send us a note too about your 15 minute action so that we can highlight it on our site to inspire others.
• Public painting party: Invite some women to a public gathering to paint banners or signs with your messages about ending violence against women. 'Plant' your signs and hang your banners in your own space or in public places. Chalk a street with your messages or the names of women and children murdered in Ontario — they'll wash off when it rains.
• Car and bike 'rally': Gather supporters together in a local parking lot. Decorate cars, bikes, motorcycles and trucks and take a nice long ride together through your town and region. Your moving messages will cover a lot of ground and spark interest in local actions.
• March and street blockade: To demonstrate the barriers to women leaving violence: poverty, discrimination, lack of housing and child care, lack of safe shelter, etc. The blocking of a street doesn't have to be long and very disruptive to be effective, but it would be good to have media attention.
• Direct Action to create your own alternatives: Set up your own examples of what you want to see government doing. The Toronto Women's Coalition Against Poverty met on November 25th to bring women together to explore creating a women's 'squat' to create housing for women in Toronto. Take up some public space and do your own thing!
• Demonstrations: A time-honoured women's action that you and your friends or community group can work together to do. Example: Women 4 Social Justice in Sault Ste. Marie picketed the family court with signs each Wednesday during November Woman Abuse Prevention Month.