WUNRN
http://www.silentwitness.net/about-us.html
Silent Witness Exhibits & How to Create: http://www.silentwitness.net/exhibit.html
Can be adapted for any community, any country, and made
portable, changing the victims’ nameplate for other locations.
How The
Silent Witness Initiative Began
In 1990, an ad hoc group of women artists and writers, upset about the growing
number of women in the US State of Minnesota being murdered by their partners
or acquaintances, joined together with several other women's organizations to
form Arts Action Against Domestic Violence. These compassionate women felt an
urgency to do something that would speak out against the escalating domestic
violence in their state. They set out to create something that would
commemorate the lives of the 26 women whose lives had been lost in 1990 as a
result of domestic violence. After much brainstorming, the women began to
design 26 free-standing, life-sized red wooden figures, each one bearing the
name of a woman who once lived, worked, had neighbors, friends, family,
children--whose life ended violently at the hands of a husband, ex-husband,
partner, or acquaintance. A twenty-seventh figure was added to represent those
uncounted women whose murders went unsolved or were erroneously ruled
accidental. The organizers called the figures the Silent Witnesses (the original 27 witnesses).
The Debut
On February 18, 1991, more than 500 women met at a church across the street
from the Minnesota State Capitol to showcase with the newly-constructed
Witnesses lined up at the front of the sanctuary. The women formed a silent
procession escorting the figures in single file across the street, up the
steps, and into the State Capitol Rotunda for public viewing as statements
about the tragedy of how their lives ended. The sheer volume of space the
figures occupied spoke of their power... and the loss. The Silent Witness
Exhibit was officially launched. A press conference highlighted the
organizations purpose and goals for eliminating domestic violence murders.
The National Initiative
Inspired by the impact of the Exhibit on many lives, a few of the project supporters
came together with Janet Hagberg and Jane Zeller 1994 with the determination to
create a larger goal, namely the formation of a national initiative dedicated
to the elimination of domestic murders. It was then that a five part process
model evolved starting with the creation of Silent Witnesses Exhibits in
all 50 states. Within one year, as of September 1995, a total of 800 Silent
Witnesses had been created representing women who were killed as a result of
domestic violence in seventeen states. By February of 1996 twenty-four states
were involved. As of March of 1997 forty-six states had joined the initiative.
The Goal
The goal of the Silent Witness National Initiative has become 0 by 2020,
specifically zero domestic murders by the year 2020. As hope was born, the
healing began to happen while the organization took form. Today many
states and countries are involved. Since its inception, Silent
Witness has been instrumental in the discovery and promotion of successful
domestic violence reduction projects. The March and conference was
successfully accomplished in 1997 and in 2004 many of the witnesses gathered
for a march in Providence, R.I. The original twenty-seven women (witnesses)
whose murders prompted the passion to create the Silent Witness Initiative have
prevailed. Their stories have been heard across the country calling for the
healing to continue until there are no more domestic murders and domestic
violence is eliminated in our homes and communities world-wide.