Haines residents prepare for the Choose Respect march

Haines and Klukwan residents will march in solidarity with other Alaska communities this Saturday in the Choose Respect march. The March 30th event will kick off Sexual Assault Awareness Month which is observed in April. 

Samantha Clay and her daughter painted signs at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall to prepare for the upcoming Choose Respect march. She held up a couple of complete signs.

“There’s a couple that say “Break the Silence,” and then “Love shouldn’t hurt,” which is one of the biggest taglines,” Clay explained. She is the Project Coordinator for the Domestic Violence Prevention Initiatives grant and is organizing the march in Haines.

“So I’m hoping this will be a good way to start the conversation up,” she said. “I’m trying to find ways that’ll promote community participation and discussion in a way that’s still respectful. Because violence is so prevalent you kinda have to go in with the assumption that you will have survivors at any event or any gathering that you have.”

Other communities throughout the state are marching as well. Governor Sean Parnell started the Choose Respect campaign in 2009 to combat what he called an epidemic of domestic violence in the state. Alaska had the highest rate of sexual assault in the nation at the time. Ten years later, that’s still true.

“It’s a really unfortunate thing,” said Clay. “Our rape rate is 2.5 the national average, our child sexual assault rate is six times the national average, and we have the highest rate of men murdering women in the nation per capita. We also have the lowest population density of any state so to have those numbers in and of itself is very staggering.”

Mayor Jan Hill has been involved with Choose Respect marches in Haines since the beginning. She will speak at Saturday’s march.

“This is a very difficult topic to talk about, and particularly in a small town where everybody knows everybody, which probably makes it even more important that we talk about it. We know it’s here. It’s like a lot of things: you know about it, but you turn and look the other way sometimes,” she said.

The march had humble beginnings: she says only ten people showed up for the first year. But she says every year more people participate; sometimes onlookers join the march from off the street. One year, she remembers two full classrooms marched with them.

There were a number of years where Haines did not have a march: the Walker administration moved the Choose Respect campaign out of the governor’s office after Parnell’s term. Now the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (CDVSA) runs the Choose Respect campaign.

Over 170 communities in Alaska marched at the same time on the same day at the height of the Choose Respect campaign. Now support is more diffuse; some communities marched earlier this week and others may march later.

But Mayor Hill says every step counts.

“My hope is that this march on Saturday will be the catalyst for future events like this and I think that if there are six people that turn up on Saturday we will be six powerful people. And we will make our point and we will make some noise on the street and we will start to make some plans for next year, so that this will grow like it did last time,” she said.

The march will begin at noon on Saturday in the Thor’s Fitness parking lot and finish at the Haines Borough Library with speakers and refreshments. Bicycles and dogs on leash are welcome.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, you can access help through Becky’s Place, a safe house in Haines. In an emergency, call 911 to be connected to the SEARHC crisis line.