By Alberto Suris
For eleven consecutive years on a given day, a group of women dressed in white wedding gowns accompanied by several men dressed in black, march thru several Lawrence streets. This year was no exception.
On September 26, 2013 a group, like the one described above, left the Senior Center located at 155 Haverhill Street to return about an hour later. They were carrying signs denouncing violence against women. At the center, in a very emotional ceremony, candles were lit in honor of eleven people-nine women and two menwho lost their lives to domestic violence since last October.
This annual event began in 2001 to remember Gladys Ricart, who on September 26, 1999 was murdered by her abusive former boyfriend on the day she was to marry her fiancé. The Gladys Ricart and Victims of Domestic Violence Memorial Walk also mourns, memorializes and honors the many other victims whose lives have been taken as a result of domestic violence related incidents.
The March also serves to raise awareness of the seriousness and horrors this antisocial behavior and it sends a boisterous message that we as a community will no longer condone this behavior. The March has also become the kickoff to October’s National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
In Lawrence, this year, the March was dedicated to Milka Rivera and her two children, Sachary and Ariel Max Montanez killed by Milka’s boy friend José Luis Tejeda on September 5th, 2011.
