Trigger warning: This article involves discussion of DSK protest, including stories of rape survivors and references to police violence

We fight for a small space – though it is also a big space, to hold all that it must – where our experiences are ours and are real.

As a rich and powerful man – flanked by eight bodyguards, protected by a steel fence and dozens of cops – is given an exalted platform to rehabilitate his image as an ‘economic expert’, whitewashing his abuse of women’s bodies, we create a makeshift platform from a megaphone and a wall. As students queue up to hear DSK speak, with their tickets, their two forms of ID, the body search, the surrendering of phones – looking smug because they are upholding the principle of free speech – we hear survivors of sexual assault speak out and break the silence that was imposed upon them. We create a space, there on the road, where women can speak and we will listen – they shake as they speak, and so do we. Continue reading