On March 23, 2012 in collaboration with the Barnard Center for Research on Women, we brought together New York City based anti-violence organizations to discuss local policy goals and develop a shared vision for an inclusive domestic violence movement.

The October 2011 PVPJ Summit brought together anti-violence advocates and leaders to address racial justice, body integrity, economic justice, immigration issues and learning from and using the international human rights framework to inform our work and more.  Our goals for the summit were to:

(1) Create spaces for conversation to occur across communities, movements, where we can share our struggles and successes, learn from each other, and bridge isolation to strengthen networks of support, creativity, and innovation.

(2) Capture as much community narrative that can help inform our vision for strengthening the anti-violence movement for social change.

(3) Begin to identify strategies on working together as we build momentum towards shaping an anti-violence movement that is inclusive, intersectional, and holistic.

By continuing to foster spaces for conversations across communities, we work to bridge isolation, strengthen networks of support and build an inclusive, intersectional and holistic anti-violence movement.  Take a look at some photos from the October Summit.

For more information, get in touch with Sakhi at contactus@sakhi.org.

Continuing on our commitment to movement building, Sakhi’s Executive Director Tiloma Jayasinghe will speak at Civil Liberties and Public Policy’s (CLPP) 26th annual conference,“From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom.” 

Tiloma’s talk titled“Fighting Violence, Empowering Our Communities: Community-Based Approaches to Preventing Violence and Achieving Justice” will take place on April 14th from 1:15-2:45.  This weekend long conference will take place at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA from April 13 – April 15.  CLPP is a national reproductive rights and justice organization dedicated to educating, mentoring, and inspiring new generations of advocates, leaders, and supporters.

Get more information on the program.

(excerpt) “I have always felt passionately about women’s rights and women’s issues,” says Maheen Nusrat who was born in Pakistan and now lives in Jersey City. “Domestic violence is such a personal and taboo subject in the Pakistani community. We have to get the community to talk about the issue.” As a volunteer with Project Speak Out, Nusrat has approached local business owners within the New York City Pakistani community about putting up flyers informing customers about the domestic violence issue and programs women can access if they need help.

Similarly, Darrel Sukhdeo has been approaching local businesses within the Indo-Caribbean community based in Richmond Hill. “There is a real need for this information to get out,” says Sukhdeo, who describes himself as a community activist who has volunteered with many local organizations in recent years. In addition to posting flyers, Project Speak Out asks businesses to declare themselves as “safe havens” for women seeking help.

Read full article here.

It’s that time again, VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) reauthorization is up for vote.

The Violence Against Women Act (commonly known as “VAWA”) is  now in Congress for a full Senate vote which will  determine whether to reauthorize federal  funds that supports local domestic violence shelters and programs nationwide.  VAWA is a landmark US federal legislation that was passed in 1994.  Developed and passed with the concerted effort by domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy organizations to address and prevent domestic and sexual violence in the United States, VAWA has allocated over $9 billion to federal, state, and local-level work to address and prevent domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and stalking.

Due to expire at the end of 2012, the legislation is up for reauthorization and is soon to be marked up in the Senate committee this week.  Although, these funds are necessary for many national and local service providers, domestic violence advocates and organizations have all too often focused their legislative efforts on VAWA reauthorization without offering a critique of a continued and growing dependency on federal funds for necessary services and resources to survivors of domestic violence.

Take a look at what three advocates have to say about VAWA; what works, what doesn’t and what should be done.

Donna Coker: The VAWA reauthorization bill provides critical funding for services, expands protections for immigrant and Native American victims, and expands non-discrimination protections.   For these reasons, we should urge Congress to pass the bill.  But the bill, like its predecessors, continues to focus disproportionate funds on criminal justice responses rather than on the economic and racial justice initiatives that are desperately needed in our struggle to end gendered violence.

VAWA funding is inadequate to offset federal policies that render women more vulnerable to private violence.   TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) policies that place women in low-wage dead-end jobs instead of providing a bridge out of poverty, federal restrictions on funding for abortion for low-income women, and criminal law enforcement policies that results in mass incarceration are just a few of the federal policies that render women, but particularly poor women of color, immigrant women, and Native women more vulnerable to private violence.

We should urge Congress to address these structural inequalities that increase domestic violence.  We should further urge Congress to fund demonstration projects for Restorative Justice and other alternatives to punitive criminal law responses that allow women more choice.

Alisa Del Tufo: The passage of VAWA in 1994 has transformed the landscape of awareness, interventions and services for victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.   However those of us who work in communities know that the success attributed to VAWA may be more complex than some would like us to believe. We are compelled to ask questions about the effectiveness of a system that relies so heavily on individual services and criminal justice interventions.  Especially as the number of people, in particular men of color are put behind bars.  With re-authorization pending it is a good time to ask, “what do we want VAWA to do?”  As our awareness about and efforts to end intimate and family violence evolve so must the ideas, strategies and messages we use to do this vital work.  To move forward with a focus on promoting prevention, building movements, collaboration and engagement with our communities we must draw attention to new directions.

Community Based Support/Accountability: A small percentage of assaults are reported to the police.  Accountability, justice and reparation are not the sole purview of the criminal justice system. We must build community based efforts to prevent intimate violence, support survivors and intervene with perpetrators.   Grow Prevention Efforts With Community: Prevention must be community based, community owned and focus on reframing norms.Impact on Health: Abuse impacts the long-term health of victims, perpetrators and the entire community. Finding ways to prevent and heal are essential.  Increase Immigrant Assistance: Assistance should be expanded to abused immigrant women and prevention efforts should target immigrant families with culturally focused and sensitive messages and assistance.  Lesbian/Gay/Trans Assistance: Assistance to this community should not be an “add on” but core to the new VAWA legislation.  Community Well-Being: In addition to the impact on mental and physical health these forms of violence degrade community well-being, safety and engagement. We can tap and support ways to build community strength and interrupt this epidemic. We hope that the conversations occurring as part of re-authorization will help us to invigorate our efforts to address these issues in ways that are more comprehensive, focus and prevention and build community partnerships.

Soniya Munshi: The current dialogues about the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act offer us an opportunity to step back and take a look at the impacts of VAWA, over the past 17 years, on our work to address various forms of intimate violence. One of the most significant effects of VAWA has been the recognition of certain forms of intimate violence (e.g. domestic violence, sexual assault) as a crime. For example, the monies that are made available for policing and prosecution activities has grown, in actual amounts but also in the percentages of the overall VAWA budgets, with each re-authorization.

While some segments of the anti-violence movement see this recognition from the state, through the casting of intimate violence as a crime, as a success, many of us who are invested and working in communities of color in the U.S. are concerned about the complicated consequences of criminalization on our everyday lives. Groups such as INCITE! Women of Color against Violence have shown that strategies to address violence that rely on a sexist, homophobia, racist, xenophobia and classist criminal legal system do not increase conditions of safety and well-being for survivors of color.

As VAWA has become indicative of widespread recognition of and concern about intimate violence, for me, some of the critical questions that emerge include: Is it necessary to think of something as a crime to recognize it as wrong or harmful? What happens if we think about violence and harm in our communities outside of a framework of crime and illegality? What community-based responses are we growing that are accessible to survivors who, for their own sense of holistic safety, are reluctant to engage with the state? How do we create responses to violence that center individual and collective responsibility and accountability for violence that is enacted upon survivors, but that also transcend solutions based in incarceration or other techniques of structural violence?

About the advocates

Donna Coker is the Professor of Law at the University of Miami. Professor Coker’s scholarship focuses on criminal law, gender and inequality.  She is a nationally recognized expert in domestic violence law and policy.  Her research concerns three major areas: the connection between economic vulnerability and domestic violence; restorative justice and other alternative criminal justice interventions; and gender and criminal law doctrine. Before attending law school, Professor Coker worked in the domestic violence field for 10 years.

Alisa Del Tufo is the Founder and Director of Threshold Collaborative- an organization that uses narrative, community opinion gathering to develop place based solutions that privilege the voice of marginalized people. Having worked to end violence in the family for almost 30 years, Ms. Del Tufo has been the Founder and Director of CONNECT as well as one of the nation’s leading domestic violence agency; Sanctuary for Families. Through transformative education, Alisa has pioneered programs that help batterers, victims, children, community members, service providers, clergy, and social workers examine and change the assumptions that perpetuate family violence.

Soniya Munshi is a doctoral student in Sociology and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Soniya’s dissertation research looks at state, medical institutional, and community-based responses to domestic violence in South Asian immigrant communities in New York City. Her work centralizes possibilities for transformational justice that transcend state-driven responses to community violence. Soniya’s academic work is informed by over 15 years of experience with anti-domestic violence efforts as well as her participation in immigrant rights and queer/trans justice organizing work in people of color communities.

Resources for further reading 

National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey  |  INCITE! Women of Color |   Women’s Law.org  |  Wikipedia: VAWA

In her new book Outdated, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Sakhi Board member and Editor of Feministing.com, offers a personal account of what she calls a ‘feminist critique’ of dating and love in our world today.
“I felt a tremendous frustration with what I felt were the dominant narratives about romance in the mainstream media.  I really saw the book as an intervention.  Not really rewriting the fairytale, or this is how you live happily ever after, not necessarily a follow these guides into the relationship of your dreams, but to really critically analyze the dominant mess that we have internalized about romance and to really serve as an intervention into what I felt was making young people unhappy.”

Outdated gives voice to the daily pressures and fears media, society and family instills in young women, such as the pressure to have a successful long-term, heterosexual relationships that will lead to marriage, the ways consumerism and media shape our ideas of romance and sex.  Samhita responds insightfully to the myth “feminism hurts your love life” and addresses the need to collectively redifine feminity, masculinity and romantic relationships.  Get a copy of Outdated.

Learn more about Samhita, the writer, the activist, the technologist and the Sakhi.

For survivors of domestic violence, financial barriers are another obstacle to overcome when dealing with abuse.  As the economy falters, it becomes clear how vital economic stability is to our future.

Survivors of domestic violence face numerous hurdles when confronting abuse. Women in physically and emotionally violent relationships often also face financial abuse by their spouse or partners which can take many different forms.

While the physical manifestation of domestic violence is often the most obvious one and there is widespread recognition of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as forms of domestic violence, there remains a lack of awareness around the dynamics of economic abuse and financial control tactics used by abusers. To make matters worse, while the impact of financial abuse can be devastating, it is often difficult to identify, document, and rectify.

Sakhi is committed to fighting for women to be free from economic violence and we are putting pressure on local law makers and decision makers to help alleviate and remedy this important issue that affects our community. If you wish to learn more or get involved in this campaign, please contact Suha Dabbouseh, Policy Advocate at suha.dabbouseh@sakhi.org.

Through a participatory process, Chhaya engaged with approximately 100 stakeholders in determining the greatest needs and desires for having this community center, as well as best location.  As a result of these focus groups, it was determined that the Northwest area of Queens was the most highly trafficked and densely populated South Asian area, and the best location for the center. It was noted that there is a sizable South Asian population in Richmond Hill and western Queens, but that the region was too inaccessible and isolated to locate the center there.  Several of the most requested needs for space and programming of the Center included recreation space, kitchen and eating area, performance space, child care and space for services to be brought to our population.

Sakhi participated in order to gather information as to whether this space could be used for any of our services, and to also pass on this information to the women we serve.  We asked that there be more emphasis on ensuring that child care would be made available, and whether any confidential space could be created.  It is unlikely that Sakhi will seek that any space be held aside for our direct service work, as confidentiality and safety is of prime importance.  However, this space would be an ideal location for our services to be advertised and for outreach and awareness raising.

This is an amazing endeavor undertaken by Chhaya CDC and its partners, and we look forward to supporting it in any way we can, so that the Community Center can be made a reality soon.

Learn more about Chhaya CDC.

In the last few months, Occupy Wall Street has shown us that Americans have tapped into the global movement against negligent economic policies. Americans are fed up with the aggressive capitalism that is hurting the middle class and resting on the backs of the poor.

Unjust economic policy is the cause of much of the violence and disruption seen in many of our communities and specifically poor, immigrant communities. As Mayor Bloomberg fights to clear out the occupiers- we must remember the real issue is not the encampments, but what they represent- which is the fight against regressive economic policies that are hurting our communities and stopping us from living sustainable, happy and healthy lives.

As members of the Sakhi community and committed to the eradication of violence against women, let us use this momentum to push for change in our communities that reflects the needs of our own 99%.

As with the Occupy movement, it is clear that the time has come for concrete actions to be taken.  We must push for the kind of change we want to see.  At Sakhi, we are using this momentum to continue our work, strengthen our partnerships, ramp up our prevention programs and enable and support our communities.

Over the past year at Sakhi, we:

* Formed partnerships with the Anti-Violence Project for our staff to be trained on working with the LGBTQ community

* Expanded our scope of services to permit safe friends and family of survivors to attend some of our economic empowerment workshops, recognizing their similar isolation and vulnerability to violence

* Launched a teen dating violence project, for the first time ever reaching our youth – working with both boys and girls so that we can address and prevent violence

* Continued to reach previously unreached South Asians in New York City through community outreach activities

* Held our first Summit,  ‘Preventing Violence, Promoting Justice’ and brought together social justice leaders across movements to figure out how we can bring our collective voices and strengths to end violence against women

As the year ends, we already have plans to build on the energy surrounding the Summit and will host the first in a series of follow up events in February 2012 at the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

To join us in this collective work, please reach out to us at contactus@sakhi.org.

Preventing Violence, Promoting Justice provided the opportunity to explore and mobilize around the intersections between domestic violence, immigration, economic justice, health and other related movements for social justice between current frameworks, and toward building a movement rooted in our community values.

Our goals for the summit were to:

(1) Create spaces for conversation to occur across communities, movements, where we can share our struggles and successes, learn from each other, and bridge isolation to strengthen networks of support, creativity, and innovation.

(2) Capture as much community narrative that can help inform our vision for strengthening the anti-violence movement for social change.

(3) Begin to identify strategies on working together as we build momentum towards shaping an anti-violence movement that is inclusive, intersectional, and holistic.

Stay tuned to this website as we will upload inspiring videos from the summit and summaries of the different panels!

For more information on the campaign, go to http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/.

In 2006 , as part of the global campaign, we asked members of the Sakhi community to share their thoughts about activism and violence against women. We sent selected responses for each day of the campaign by e-mail. Listed below are the questions which participants answered:

1. What does activism mean to you?

2. Why is activism for women’s rights important?

3. How is violence against women a human rights issue?

View the responses from the community.