Words by Janhavi Gosavi (she/her) and Azaria Howell (she/her)
Last year, over 500 people took to the streets of Wellington to protest sexual violence amidst Wellington’s unsafe nightlife scene. Now, actions are being taken to address safety concerns throughout the city.
The rally was held in March 2021 and was hosted by the Wellington Alliance Against Sexual Violence (WAASV), calling on the Government, Wellington City Council, and Hospitality NZ to implement a strategy to prevent violence in the city.
Now, fourteen months after the rally, political action is being taken, says Wellington City Councillor Tamatha Paul. Paul spoke at the rally, supporting calls from the Wellington Alliance Against Sexual Violence to make the city safer. Paul brought the demands from the WAASV to the political table.
In an interview with Salient, Paul outlined her commitment to the cause, saying, “I brought my knowledge about what council levers were available to pull. I think that made a really big difference; we were putting it into achievable chunks for the City Council to commit to.”
Paul added that the rally demonstrated “how prevalent this issue is and just how many people feel unsafe in Wellington City.”
Jahla Tran-Lawrence, the lead coordinator of WAASV, said, “We've put in a lot of work since the rally to ensure that this momentum has turned into action.”
Tran-Lawrence said the rally called attention to the issue, saying, “we were responding to this huge amount of energy and emotion that was happening in the community at that time. We wanted to do a rally [...] to give people an outlet, a very loud, tangible visual outlet to express their emotions.”
The protest has led to increased support in Wellington, with government funding towards mitigating issues of family and sexual violence also increasing.
Both Tran-Lawrence and Councillor Paul agreed that a well-organised event is key to achieving justice. Tran-Lawrence said, “the key part is to do it as a community [...] to harness the knowledge and experience of the people around you [...] to build on what's already being done.” Paul’s advice to future community organisers was to “figure out what justice looks like to you”, whether that took the form of systemic change or social media awareness.
As a result of the rally, the City Council partnered with the police, government organisations and community outreach programmes in a project working towards making the city safer. The project, called the Pōneke Promise, has four main aims: improving public spaces, increasing community spaces, reducing harm and violence, and increasing business confidence. In a statement, the City Council said, “Our central city should be safe, dynamic and inviting. Unfortunately, we have recently seen a number of incidents that have created a sense and experience that our city isn’t safe for us to enjoy a night out or walking around our inner-city neighbourhood.”
The Pōneke Promise has received widespread support from students; In VUWSA’s 2022 Referendum, a majority of 87.93% of respondents said they supported the project.
In addition to supporting the implementation of the Pōneke Promise, the rally called on the government to increase support and funding towards sexual violence services. The 2022 Government Budget aims to deliver $114.5 million over four years “to prevent and respond to family violence and sexual violence across Aotearoa.”
In a statement, Marama Davidson, Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Sexual Violence said, “This investment of $114.5 million is a major milestone for the implementation of Te Aorerekura, New Zealand’s first ever strategy to end family violence and sexual violence.”