Women, Sleep In A Park This Saturday & Join A Global Movement

Gather your squad or go alone, and take a nap in a public park this weekend.

Called “Meet to Sleep”, it is part of a series of programmes aimed at reclaiming public spaces for women. It has been organised by the Blank Noise, a volunteer-led collective based out of Bangalore, committed to tackling attitudes on street harassment.

Why should women sleep in parks? Well, you know that men have no problems whatsoever in lying down on or sleeping in the Maidan or any public park, right? Is anyone going to bother them, lech or pass any lewd remarks? Nope. How many women would feel comfortable sleeping in a park, or just lying down, reading a book?

Meet To Sleep is trying to reclaim public spaces for women. It urges participants, collectively, to unlearn fear, occupy spaces and claim visibility. Rather than policing or censoring women’s mobility, Blank Noise says that cities should be made safe and inclusive.

Blank Noise has been organising such events around Indian cities where women meet in parks and simply sleep for a couple of hours on a bench or on the lawn.

This year’s event is going to be more special because 2017 is the when the #MeToo movement happened, this is teh year when TIME magazine put the Silence Breakers on the cover as its Person Of The Year, when Merriam-Webster dictionary chose “feminism” as the word of of the year.

Also, December 16th, 2017 also marks five years since the gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh.

So go ahead and take a nap in a public park.

Create a hashtag, #MeetToSleep, from where you are and post pics on Fb or Twitter and Insta.

You can build this action where you are, you can do this with a group or go solo. Build the action with your community – partner with us. Take it to your organisation, university campus, workplace, neighbourhood parks. As their Facebook page says: “Sleep. Alone. Together. We sleep to fight fear. We sleep to fight fear, through trust and belonging. In sleep we assert our right to be defenceless. In sleep we protest.” 

Those who want to participate can land at the venue with a mat, cushion, blanket, water and snacks. Women participants are called ‘Action Heroes’. You can register here.

Also check out their website — they do some pretty amazing stuff.