- [Voiceover] This is David
Lee from PreventConnect.
Welcome to today's
PreventConnect web conference,
Shared Roots: Sexual and Domestic Violence
prevention strategies in
support of social justice.
PreventConnect is a national project
of the California Coalition
Against Sexual Assault,
sponsored by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
The views and information
provided in this web conference
do not necessarily
represent the official views
of the United States
government, CDC, or CALCASA.
I'm really glad to have you joining us.
This is such an important topic for me.
It is very timely.
Today's learning objectives
are, we want to be able to
engage in a candid
conversation about factors
that sexual and domestic
violence prevention
and social justice movements
are trying to change
and real world opportunities and barriers
to working across sectors and
movements to address them.
Are also plans to show you
examples of work that align
sexual and domestic violence prevention
with today's social justice movements,
and work that can include
sexual and domestic violence prevention
in those movements,
and finally, we need to
be able to identify
some tools and resources
to support better linkages between
sexual and domestic violence prevention
and social justice movements.
As I said, this is very timely.
I'd love to see a hand
raise of how many people
were attending the Black
Women's Truth and Reconciliation
Commission on Sexual Assault
just last weekend in New York.
My colleagues, many of my
colleagues were there, and
from CALCASA PreventConnect, and we also,
many of our people were involved in the
Move To End Violence world,
and many other people,
and not many people, I have a handful
of you raising your hand.
This was a great
opportunity to look at the,
it was at the United
Nations in Riverside Church,
and beginning the convert,
and having a conversation
understanding historical
experiences of African-American
women and sexual assault,
and really imagining
where our future can be
by acknowledging our
history, drawing together
our civil rights movements,
our workers' movements,
and our women's movements,
in order to be able to do work
to prevent sexual violence.
Just today, Kelly and I are in a meeting
we had to step out of,
which we are actually
wanting to get back to, that's
work that's being done with
over 30 organizations, state
and national organizations,
part of the Move to End Violence work
that's looking at state violence
and alternatives to criminalization.
And this is some of the work
that it's been moving on
and it's been a real
exciting conversation,
and I just came back from two days of
the California Partnership
to End Domestic Violence's
conference on transforming our approach
to domestic violence, shifting the lens,
where we looked at trying to,
alternatives to criminalization
of domestic violence
and looking at community
solutions to this,
really pushing forward.
I've seen other events
that you are going through,
in Washington state, I've seen the
Washington State Coalition
Against Sexual Assault,
sexual assault programs, big step,
at a conference talking about links to
reproductive health and anti-racism work,
and so it's important, just on Denim Day
we had an alliance with janitors,
we'll talk about that later.
Being able to look at the work of
workers who are organizing women workers
to be able to make a difference,
we'll hear much more about that today.
To me, it's timely, and
people want to talk about it.
We have so many people, you can see,
this is one of the largest PreventConnect
web conferences we have ever had,
we've got over 284 people already on.
So today we're gonna just
want to acknowledge some
of the pronouns that
pronouns replace a person's name
when talking in the third person.
It's not really preferred to use pronouns,
but we often use them as shortcuts.
And while pronouns imply
something about gender,
they don't declare
somebody's gender identity,
and so we just want to be able,
there's many examples of
different pronouns people have.
We'd just love to have people put in
their text chat what pronouns.
I use he, him, and his.
And as we have each of our
speakers introduce themselves,
they will acknowledge their
own pronouns that they use.
But we do want to hear from you.
What pronouns do you go by?
And just, we want to honor
the differences, and this is
some of the work that we've been doing
with LGBTQ communities that we have seen,
this is an important piece,
and as we have done web
conferences in a way that
we're trying to model being able to
be attentive to and thoughtful
about the work we're doing
and honoring how people
represent themselves,
and that's part of the work
that we, in social justice,
to be able to work to support that work.
Then with that, wonderful!
It's great to see so
many people giving their,
I see there's, from University
of Wisconsin-Madison,
we've got over 20 students,
staff and students together,
so you can't put it all in one chat,
so we're well over 300 people then,
that makes it with them.
So I'd like to introduce my
very good friend and colleague,
Lisa Fujie Parks from the
Program Manager Prevention Institute.
Hi, Lisa!
We have worked together
for many, many years.
Lisa was from the beginning
of PreventConnect,
and so I'm really
gonna pass the podium over to you.
And thank you, Lisa, for
leading this important conversation.
- [Voiceover] Oh, it's such a pleasure!
Good morning, everyone, good afternoon.
I am so thrilled to be a part
of this web conference today.
Thank you to everyone for joining
for this really important conversation.
So basically, the trajectory
of the conversation is
first, we're gonna really explore,
what do sexual and domestic
violence prevention,
particularly that work when it is
approached from a public
health perspective,
what does that have in common with
today's key social justice movements?
Where is the common ground?
And then we'll also
talk a little bit about
important distinctions between
that work and those approaches.
And once we've laid that groundwork,
we are going to then explore
well then, what can it
look like in practice?
And we have some amazing guests
that will share about the
work that they've been doing,
and we do hope that you will also share
examples from your own work
or work that you admire.
And along the way, we'll, you know,
share resources with each other
that we can all carry forward so that
we can continue the conversation
and continue this important
work moving forward.
So, I'm just really thrilled
to introduce today's guests, and
I'm also trying to figure out
how to advance the slides.
Oh, I want to give a shout-out to
Casey Castaldi, who is our web tech today.
You see her face, she's behind the scenes,
she's working frantically,
actually very calmly (laughs)
to address all the challenges,
and I do recognize there
have been challenges
that have come up in the last 15 minutes,
so we appreciate your patience,
and Casey, we appreciate
all your hard work,
and Ashley's as well.
So, I am thrilled to
introduce two wonderful guests
that we have for today's conversation,
Kelly Miller and Saru Jayaraman.
Kelly is the Executive Director.
Many of you probably know Kelly.
She is the director of the Idaho Coalition
Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
She's an alumni cohort member
of Move To End Violence,
a tenure initiative of the Nova Foundation
that's designed to strengthen
collective capacity
to end violence against women and girls.
And over the last two years,
with Kelly's leadership
and, you know, all the wonderful staff and
partners there at the Idaho Coalition,
they've transformed their work
to center solutions on
marginalized communities,
and they've embraced a
liberation framework.
Thank you so much for
joining us today, Kelly.
- [Voiceover] Thank you, Lisa.
So happy to be here with you,
David, and Casey, and Saru.
- [Voiceover] Great.
And Saru Jayaraman is the
co-founder and co-director
of the Restaurant
Opportunities Center United,
ROC United, and she's the director of the
Food Labor Research Center
at the University of California-Berkeley.
So after 9/11, together with
displaced World Trade Center workers,
Saru co-founded ROC United which now has
more than 18,000 worker
members, 200 employee partners,
and several thousand consumer members
in 15 states nationwide.
And Saru is the author of
Behind the Kitchen Door,
which is a national
best-seller, and a new book,
Forked: A New Standard
for American Dining,
which was released earlier this year.
Thank you so much for joining us, Saru.
- [Voiceover] Thanks, great to be here.
- [Voiceover] So let's dive in.
This first part of the
conversation, like I said,
is really an opportunity for us
to kind of get a lay of the land
and really say, what are the factors that,
where is there common ground
and also, where are there links
between sexual and domestic
violence prevention work
and social justice movements' work.
So we have this Venn diagram here,
and I would like to start by just saying
a little bit about our understanding
of what sexual and domestic
violence prevention work,
particularly from a
public health approach,
is trying to change.
So many of you probably know
this resource, Connecting the Dots,
it's co-published by CDC
and Prevention Institute,
and in this document, we identify
according to research,
what are the factors
that multiple forms of
violence are associated with.
And we've highlighted
teen dating violence,
intimate partner violence,
and sexual violence,
societal, and neighborhood
risk factors there.
And as you can see, norms
that support aggression,
harmful gender norms, lack
of economic opportunities,
and low neighborhood support
or low neighborhood cohesion
are some of the factors that those
forms of violence have in common.
And on the flip side,
on the protective side,
promoting social cohesion and
promoting community
support and connectedness
is associated with protectives
from those forms of violence.
So there are lots of different ways that
the connections between
sexual and domestic violence
has been described in
this resource by CALCASA.
The linkages between sexual
and domestic violences
are described, and I really
like this way of putting it,
that these are linked, but distinct.
Many of you may have also seen the
Stop Sexual Violence technical package
that CDC recently
released, and we wanted to
point out that according to that resource,
providing opportunities to
empower and support girls and women,
including strengthening economic supports
for women and families,
is an effective sexual
violence prevention strategy,
according to the best available research.
So harmful gender norms,
low social cohesion,
economic insecurity
are some of the factors
and the conditions that
we're trying to change
from a public health,
sexual and domestic violence
prevention approach.
A really quick overview, I'm sure there's
a lot more to say about that.
But now I wanna flip to this
other part of this Venn diagram
and ask Saru to talk a little bit about
from a social justice movement perspective
and just, you know, I do
want to point out here,
visually what we tried to do is,
and this is thanks to Kelly's insight
that, you know, social justice movements,
I mean, it's a huge circle, you know,
this really, in fact,
should be much bigger,
you know, can't even fit on
a slide kind of situation,
because we're talking about many movements
over many decades and centuries, right?
But here we have it
represented as this circle
and we are thinking about kind of
today's key social justice movements
that are really alive
and influential in 2016.
So from your perspective, Saru, what,
how would you describe some of the
issues and conditions that today's
social justice movements
are trying to change?
- [Voiceover] Yeah, and I,
if you can hear me, I feel like it's
maybe also helpful, a little bit,
to first frame what do we mean by
social justice movements.
You know, I teach social
justice movement theory
at UC Berkeley, so it's
hard for me not to say
that really what we mean by
social justice movement is
collective action by people
who are directly affected
to confront power, to
confront those who have power
and try to change power imbalances.
So, it is something very specific,
I think people use the word
movement quite broadly,
but if you really think of
it from that perspective,
then I think some of the key issues
that this moment calls for addressing,
and that social justice
movements are addressing,
really, is the fact that
we are in the moment of
the greatest economic inequality
in this nation's history,
surpassing even the Gilded Age,
in terms of the inequality that exists
between the 1% or 2% and
the 98% of this country
and frankly the world, it's
a global situation as well,
and that inequality is both in terms of
class and income and wealth.
It's also in terms of deep,
deep racial inequality
that intersects with and
obviously perpetuates
the income inequality, and
of course, gender inequality.
We have an image here of
the Fight for $15, which
really, if you see some of the
most vibrant movements of the moment
that fit the definition
that I just described,
certainly the Fight for $15 and
all of the work around wage inequality,
all of the movements to
raise the minimum wage,
as well as Black Lives Matter,
really working on racial injustice,
both in terms of criminal justice issues
and in terms of economic
inequality in this country.
Both of those involve collective action
by those directly affected, who are
confronting people in power to try to
change the situation of deep inequality.
So they're looking at the
root causes of the problem,
which they see to be deep inequality,
and they're engaging in collective action
to confront power to change it.
- [Voiceover] That's incredibly powerful.
The folks on the text
chat are agreeing as well.
Great definition, Saru.
Would you mind just
saying it one more time?
- [Voiceover] Sure.
I mean, I could go into it further,
but the basic pieces are
collective actions, by those
led by those who are directly impacted.
That piece is important, because you know,
I think that is what distinguishes
social justice movements from
what we might call activism.
Activism is, for example,
college students,
you know, boycotting something
on behalf of farm workers,
or on behalf of people in another country.
Social justice movements are when
people who are directly
affected themselves
are leading their own struggle for change,
even if activists and other supporters
are acting in solidarity with them.
Collective action by people who are,
led by people who are directly affected
confronting power, typically
through direct action,
to change systems of imbalance of power.
- [Voiceover] Great, thank you.
So,
power imbalance is
really a big factor that
movements are trying to change,
and economic inequality,
you really point out,
is one of the biggest sources
of power imbalance today.
So that's really helpful.
- [Voiceover] Yes.
Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Um, so...
Really, really helpful.
So then, let's talk a little bit about
where there is overlap
in what we just laid out.
So Kelly, what,
where do you see, I mean, you really,
you know, do work that's really
rooted in public health approach
to sexual and domestic
violence prevention.
You also have really been,
as we described in your intro,
have been centering solutions on marginal,
with marginalized communities,
and having this liberation framework, so,
from your perspective,
where do you see overlap
with what sexual and
domestic violence prevention
is trying to change, and what
social justice movements
are trying to change?
- [Voiceover] Thank you, Lisa.
Let's go ahead and go to the next slide,
and I can kind of give some examples
of where we see this
really significant overlap
and how we're trying to really
situate our organization
right in that section of the overlap.
So if you can shift to the next
slide, that would be great.
Right.
So here's where I see some really exciting
common ground and overlap between
a social justice framework
and a public health framework
that much of the sexual and
domestic violence prevention,
the primary prevention work comes through.
And I think it first comes
from that parable of the river,
that both of these lenses
recognize human need,
that we see that people are actually
in the river and need help.
And so when we think about that parable,
both in the primary prevention
work and social justice work,
we're going upstream
and I see the overlap,
you know, in that very conversation
about why is it that people are
in the river in the first place.
I see the social justice framework
that Saru has so eloquently talked about
is really examining the power.
Who has the power that's making
people in the river in the first place?
And that public health
is really looking at
the conditions of why people are coming
into the river that we need to help.
I also think of the parable of the river
of the people that are in
the middle of the river,
where the current is the strongest,
and they're experiencing
multiple oppressions.
Gender violence, racism,
sexism, poverty, homophobia,
and those are the individuals that,
you know, from a mainstream
anti-violence organization,
that we have to reconcile
that we haven't done
our work in really creating solutions
to reach those people in the river.
And so when I think about the overlap,
it gets exciting because there's
so many other places that
there's overlap, as well as
possibilities, where there's a
disconnect, to come together.
I mean, just from a baseline,
if you think about public health.
I mean, we're talking about public health,
not individual health, and
we're talking about
justice and social justice.
We're talking about societal
justice and community justice,
and not individual justice.
And so from that, the
overlap for me is that
we have this deep understanding
that health inequities, and that violence,
gender violence, domestic
and sexual violence,
are not anomalies, but they
come from social patterns
that are long-standing and they're
generated by inequalities,
both social inequalities,
economic inequalities.
And so there's a lot of
common ground, I think,
for us to begin to really see
and learn from one another
and a lot of exciting
work that can happen.
So I think if you go to the next slide...
What you can see, at the Idaho Coalition,
and this is something we've
been playing around with.
I mean, we have been using
the gender violence framework.
We're a dual coalition and we see that
violence and all its manifestations
are very inextricably interconnected.
We see that it's also important to
use that social-ecological model
working at the individual, the relational,
the community, and the societal level.
And so we see overlap in that regard,
that we can begin to really understand
some of the deeper-root
causes Saru had mentioned,
and how we can really
create solutions that work
and reach actually
marginalized communities
that are in the middle of the river,
experiencing the most
systemic oppressions,
the most vulnerable, the most challenging
in terms of, you know, the state violence
and other aspects of oppression
that are working against
us in communities.
And so when I think about
the work that we're doing,
the other place that I
see the most possibility,
if you want to go to the next
slide, Lisa or Casey, great.
Is the all-purpose horizon
that both the social justice and the
sexual and domestic violence,
anti-violence prevention work,
is looking at.
I mean, when you start thinking about
what is it that we're working towards,
what are the solutions that we're
trying to create in the
world that we envision?
That's when I see some of the
most exciting possibilities
in terms of what we both want,
and I don't even think it's
a both, I think it's an and.
It's what both social justice, you know,
advocates and organizers,
community organizers,
primary preventionists,
that we want worlds
where there's social equity, both around
race and gender, and
economic, and, you know,
all the different socially constructed
identities that we've
created in our culture,
you know, to really foster this
culture of domination and violence.
So we want that, we want social equity,
we want liberation, we want freedom
from all the different oppressions
that exist in our society.
And when we think about
this, what we really want is,
we just want a world where people
can thrive and reach their full potential.
And so I see significant overlap,
both in understanding some
of the conditions at play,
the power that Saru talked about,
the social and the health inequities,
and so when we think about that
and how we look at solutions,
about how we envision the world we want,
that's where I see some of the
most exciting possibilities where I work,
as we begin to integrate those
two circles in the Venn diagram and
really bring the sexual
and domestic violence work
much more solidly into the
social justice framework.
- [Voiceover] Hmm.
So, should we go to the
next slide, Stephanie?
All right.
So,
thank you for speaking to that overlap
and where you see the
common ground, Kelly.
And I want to actually go ahead and
do another text chat.
Let's hear from everyone on text chat.
Participants, where do you see overlap
with the factors that
social justice movements
and sexual and domestic
violence prevention
are trying to change?
So, please go ahead and share
your thoughts about that.
And, while we're doing
that, I'm gonna turn to you,
back to you, Saru, and
ask you to talk about both
you know, we have this Venn diagram
with the overlap arrow in the overlap, and
you know, perhaps you could speak to,
from your perspective,
where there's overlap and
also, you know, where
maybe there isn't overlap,
where there's some important
distinctions that you see.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, um...
So I think...
I would just give an
example from our own work
of how we've managed to work closely with
people in the Move To
End Violence community
and with that work and with the framing.
So, with ROC, with my organization,
we organize the 11
million restaurant workers
in the United States, who
are the largest workforce
and the absolute lowest
paid, and you know,
one issue we've been working a lot on
over the past many years is the fact that
restaurant workers in the
United States who earn tips
can still be paid as low as $2.13 an hour,
that is actually the
legal federal minimum wage
for workers who earn tips
in the United States,
is between $2.13 and $7 in 43
states in the United States,
and 70% of tipped workers in
the United States are women,
who work in very low-tipping restaurants
like IHOP and Applebee's and
Chili's and Olive Garden.
And so we have been working
on this issue for many years
of, you know, organizing
workers, and again,
as I described social justice movements,
that's what we do, we
engage in collective action.
That means organizing restaurant workers
to actually take action themselves,
to lead rallies and protests,
to go to take over capitol buildings
and engage in what we call direct action,
confronting those in power,
confronting the National
Restaurant Association,
these kinds of direct actions.
We've been doing this for many years
and lifting up these
issues that, you know,
this is an incredibly low
wage, it's incredible poverty,
but over the last couple
of years in particular,
I've worked with several organizations
in the Move To End Violence world,
Forward Together in particular,
and did a study where
we actually looked at
how this very low minimum wage
for tipped restaurant workers
results in the highest rates of
sexual harassment and even sexual assault
of any workplace or industry
in the United States
because it's largely low-income women
having to tolerate any kind
of treatment from customers,
any kind of, you know,
they have to basically put up with
whatever a customer might do them,
however they may touch them
or treat them or talk to them,
because the customer is always right,
because the customer pays their
bills, not their employer.
And so understanding that, uncovering it,
doing research on it,
we were able to reframe
the entire issue as a
sexual harassment, sexual violence issue,
as an issue of gender inequality,
and it actually changed our
ability to move the issue,
even legislatively through our organizing,
because so many legislators
either had experienced this,
if they were women themselves,
when they were restaurant
workers in their youth,
or they had daughters who
were restaurant workers
who had come home and shared
stories of sexual harassment,
having worked in restaurants,
so we actually then
gained a lot of momentum in moving both
legislators and restaurant owners
to change this issue altogether,
and Congress introduced legislation,
it had a lot of success.
But it's just an example of how,
when we work together with,
in our case, an organization
that cared a lot about
sexual harassment and gender inequality,
we were able to reframe the
issue and move it forward,
but it was always, it was always from the,
we moved the work in the same way
that we always move
our work, which is that
we organized them, lots and lots and lots,
there's hundreds of thousands
of tipped worker women,
who were able to share
these stories themselves,
who were able to go to Congress and say,
"I work for $2.13 an hour."
You know, we had a woman speak at
a Senate press conference and say,
"Senators, what would it be like for you
if your income depended on the happiness
of the people you served?"
She said, "because my income depends on
the happiness of the people I serve.
I have to put up with a guy
groping my butt every day
to be able to feed my
four-year-old son at night."
And that's the kind of testimony
coming from workers themselves,
workers needing that movement, that,
we were able to reframe it, working with,
you know, working with the
sexual and domestic violence community,
we reframed the issue but we certainly
kept the methodology in line with
the way we do social justice organizing.
I hope that made sense.
- [Voiceover] That's great.
So, linking the issues and the framing,
you know, drawing on different approaches.
So that's pretty sophisticated work,
and I'm really glad to hear that
your work was able to evolve in that way,
and I'm also glad that we're gonna hear
a little bit more about
it in a little bit.
So I just want to take
a few more moments to...
tease out some of this notion
of overlap versus no overlap,
and really hearing some interesting
things on the text chat.
People are calling out inequity
and oppression, privilege,
structural issues, capitalism,
as some of the overlap
in terms of what we're trying to change
and the agendas that we have in common,
and, you know, I think
that's really interesting.
Kelly, can you, you know, do you,
do you agree with that?
Do you feel like that's what
the work does have in common?
And I know we're making really
big generalizations here
because you really can't characterize
all the work as being one
way or the other, but,
you know, can you speak to some,
broadly-speaking, where you see,
do you agree with what's
happening in the text chat?
And then also, where do you see
some important distinctions?
Maybe there are places where
the work really doesn't come together,
or there are distinctions
in the approaches.
- [Voiceover] That's a
great question, Lisa.
I mean, I think we're really
at a point of evolution in
sexual and domestic
violence prevention work,
and I think it's because we're having
a deepening understanding about
the importance of a social justice framing
in the way that Saru talked about power.
I mean, I would say that
the Idaho Coalition,
over the past several
years, we've gone through
both a personal transformation
and organizational transformation,
and it comes from that
just that really clear understanding
that the ways that we dominate
one another as human beings
based on socially constructed,
for the most part,
identities of race and gender, really
using other identities
like sexual orientation,
and ability to really value
one human being over another,
and that there's this web of systems
of racism and capitalism,
and we have to understand
how these are all very much interwoven
and are working together.
And I think the more we
come to that understanding,
we see how that, all of this is our work.
All of it's our work.
And the way that we have
to really undo this culture
and move to something that's more about
mutuality and interconnectedness
and interdependence.
And so for that aspect, I think
the conversations in the chat about
lifting up, especially capitalism,
I think is something that's really
within the prevention work,
we're really starting
to look at more deeply.
But that is something that we can
also lose sight of, I think.
I think much in the same way,
racism is something that's becoming,
that is a significant conversation
within the anti-violence work,
both in prevention and response.
And so, again, I think that
there's a significant overlap.
I think it's also important to be
thinking about this from
the broader framework.
If you think about public health overall,
it is very much rooted
in the working conditions
of people from the Industrial Revolution,
and what happened within, you know,
the labor market and the
long hours and child labor,
that's how public health
really got its start.
And so when we're thinking about
sexual and domestic violence, I mean,
I think we're newer to this.
I mean, I think we're, you know,
within the public health realm,
not so much in the social justice realm,
but within the public health framework.
But there's lessons that we can learn
from both ways of viewing
these deep societal problems
that can really, really lift up, you know,
some real solutions that could maybe
possibly start to shift the
culture that we live in.
- [Voiceover] So...
That's such a good point.
I mean, I love you envoking the kind of
radical roots of public health,
but newer attention, you know,
within the public health infrastructure
to issues of sexual and domestic violence.
You know, in the slides that
I shared in the beginning
with the risk and protective factors,
you know, oppression was not listed.
Inequality was not listed.
I mean, economic insecurity
was, but not the inequality.
You know, what are some of
your thoughts about that?
I mean, even the notion that public health
focuses on factors, as opposed to
the relationship between groups of people
and the power between them.
- [Voiceover] Lisa, if you
want to go to the next slide,
I could just talk a little bit about
the gaps that we're seeing.
I think the thing that,
from the public health framework,
we have to be honest about,
there's less exploration about
power, that power analysis,
about societal and economic
power and how that's held,
and how that needs to be challenged.
I think social justice has always had
a much deeper analysis of the
root causes of inequities,
and as Saru talked about, you know,
it really goes down to political power,
and really understanding who has that
privilege in our communities,
and on the flip side of that,
who is experiencing the oppression.
So I think that's where that overlap,
but I see it, I mean,
this is why I get excited.
I see that changing.
I mean, you think about
the public health framing
of sexual and domestic
violence work and prevention,
and just the naming of gender norms.
I mean, for a long time, public health
and this anti-violence work didn't really
speak about a gender analysis.
And now we see that coming
through gender norms.
I think race is another analysis
that's really lacking within
the public health framework.
It is there, it just
needs to be lifted up.
And it has been there in the past.
That's the thing that I
think we have to also honor.
Yeah, that other overlaps, that
there's areas we can learn.
Public health really has a really robust
academic research and evaluation
model that goes with it,
and if you look at social justice
and the participatory action research
that really values the voices who are
experiencing oppression,
domination, and violence,
and if we can begin to merge those
in ways that are, I think,
could create new possibilities,
but really understanding the value of that
participatory action research
that's a less academic model,
but it's so rooted in community,
and it's just essential,
and it's really honoring and centering
the work that we do
around those individuals
which, in our country, tend to be
marginalized communities,
you know, based on
race and ethnicity, national origin,
gender identity, and more,
that we need to really begin to honor that
and center that in our work.
And that has been a
significant shift for us.
I think the other area
in the prevention work
that comes predominantly from
a public health framework
and sexual violence and
domestic violence, you know,
are those conversations around privilege.
We just really need to be more upfront
and have those deeper conversations
about what does that mean for our work.
So I see the connect-the-dots
that came out of the CDC really hopeful,
when that came out I
think two years ago or so,
because it was starting
to make the connections,
where I think social justice...
has had that stronger connections.
Because I think they
frankly have gone deeper
on the analysis of the root causes.
And I mean, it's challenging
'cause we're talking
most of public health,
primary prevention work is
funded through the government,
and there's that discomfort when
you start thinking
about who has the power.
Who has the power?
Particularly within governmental systems.
And having conversations around
things like state violence.
So I think there's, I mean, there's gaps,
but the thing I see is also evolution.
I think the other place where I,
particularly where I work
at the Idaho Coalition,
I'll talk more about this in a little bit,
but so much of our work
in primary prevention
in the earlier years was
really on the individual level.
And I've seen a huge shift within the CDC
and within, I think,
PreventConnect has been
a leader on that, and really
moving to the outer layers
within the social-ecological model.
And so when you think about the
outer layer work and prevention,
that very much is social justice work,
because that is about
community organizing,
it's about collective advocacy,
moving towards social cohesion
and some of the public health language,
and so that's where I
see all the opportunities
that this overlap, I don't
think is gonna be there
at the same level it is, where the gap is.
I see that continuing to grow.
That gap is gonna be less and less.
- [Voiceover] That's great.
So you know, it does feel
important to acknowledge
these are not the same things, you know,
that there are important distinctions
and history and approach and analysis, but
I love how you are really pointing to
where there, you know, even
within the distinctions,
for example, in focus
on, you know, research,
that there are ways of incorporating
more social justice principles
and how that research takes place
and offering participatory action research
as an example of that, and
just your hopefulness around,
you know, public health
can change (laughs)
and we are important voices in
helping that evolution to happen, so
thanks Kelly.
I want to put out to the text chat
and see what other folks have to say about
some of the important distinctions between
sexual and domestic
violence prevention work
particularly from a
public health perspective
and social justice movement work.
So please go ahead and share
your thoughts about that.
Where are the places
where there isn't overlap
between sexual and domestic violence
prevention work and
social justice movements?
And Ashley, I know you're multitasking,
but you know, I have seen
some really good stuff,
Oops, I don't want to be doing that!
(laughs)
I have seen some really good
comments in the text chat,
can you read some of what is
coming out of the text chat?
- [Voiceover] Let me just
start 96 up, really quick,
and I'm gonna need our speakers to
press star 6 to unmute your lines.
- [Voiceover] All guests have been muted.
You can unmute your line
by pressing star six.
- [Voiceover] Okay, so if our guests
would press star six,
to unmute your lines,
it looks like we're hearing
something in the background.
Lisa, are you there?
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Okay.
So, let's go to the text chat.
So we're looking at where the places
where there isn't overlap between
sexual and domestic violence prevention
and social justice movements.
And we want to hear from you, audience.
And it looks like folks haven't
had a chance to type in yet,
but I was really hoping you might be able
to scroll back and highlight some of
the discussion that's already taken place,
in terms of where there is overlap.
- [Voiceover] Sure.
So there was a lot of great
discussion and some of those,
let me go back and tell
you where they were.
We saw that, you know,
looking again at those
community solutions,
communities recognizing that oppression
and looking for their own solutions,
I think that Rachel Porter
was talking about that
so thank you, Rachel.
Again, Michelle said
community-based interventions
that address community violence.
There was some discussion with Deborah
where Deborah said resources
pay equality, access to
healthcare, race equality,
patriarchal led society, gender equality
and sexual equality were all
places where there was overlap.
There's a lot of devaluing
and dehumanizing bodies,
Jenny mentioned.
And then other folks were talking about
just general privilege and oppression
and how they relate to
access to resources,
what that means about power and control
and who we hold accountable.
Linda said capitalism and
patriarchy hurt women's
economic independence.
So, yeah, there is some
really great discussion
in there, Lisa.
- [Voiceover] Thank you, and I'm checking
the discussion on where
there isn't overlap
and some really interesting
themes have come up
around differences in language.
Differences that are really
rooted in restrictions
by funders or what
funders are interested in
supporting or not
interested in supporting.
And then an important
comment that sexual and
domestic violence work is not,
or is frequently not led by
survivors or those who
are most impacted directly
by the issues, so,
you know, I think it is
important to keep in mind
that there are a lot of common ground,
a lot of overlap in analysis and approach
and a lot of important distinctions to be
aware of and to navigate as well.
I hope that was helpful.
- [Voiceover] Lisa?
- [Voiceover] Yes.
- [Voiceover] This is Saru,
can I speak to the questions?
- [Voiceover] Oh, yes, sure.
Oh yes, absolutely.
- [Voiceover] Where I see there
are some real distinctions
between our work, again
to me goes back to some
of the definition that
I put forward before.
I will say I'm not as familiar with
the world of sexual violence
and domestic violence
as I am with the broader
social justice world, but,
it's very encouraging,
certainly, to see intersectional
analysis which is what we would call it.
People really, seeing
the connections between
capitalism and patriarchy
and colonialism and slavery
and domestic violence and sexual violence
and everything that's been talked about.
From our perspective, that
is useful only insofar as
we then act on it.
It's only useful insofar
as we then come together
as disparate communities
working on different issues
and engage in collective
action that confronts
our common power, our
common targets of power.
So, if we all agree that there
is an intersectional problem
of patriarchy and capitalism
that, from our perspective
of a social justice
organizer then the solution
must be organizing.
It must be coming together
across different movements
to engage in collective action
to actually change that.
So, I would just switch
to say that analysis
is not enough from our perspective and
that might be an area of
lack of overlap at the moment, but perhaps
there is potential to
change that for the future.
The other thing I would say is that
in some of the chat I noticed
that there was talk
about a tension between,
hello?
- [Voiceover] If someone is
unmuted and has background noise, please
go ahead and mute yourself.
But please go ahead Saru.
- [Voiceover] So, I saw
some of the chat was about
the tension between being
explicit about racism
and sexism and patriarchy
and all of those things,
and then the need to
neutralize that language
and serve multiple populations.
In our world, there's
a framework that's used
particularly in the
racial justice community.
Explicit but not exclusive,
which is that it is essential if you have
an analysis that looks at
the root causes of power
and the root causes of inequality
as being power, right?
Then, you have to be explicit about
leading with a racial justice
and a gender justice frame.
You have to be explicit about the people
most affected leading.
You can't be exclusive because
otherwise you won't win
because organizing is all
about putting together
the widest swath of the
public to fight to change
an issue, to target power
and change an issue.
So, you have to be explicit
and lead with race and gender.
But you can't be exclusive.
That idea of explicit but
not exclusive is exactly
how we do our work and
the way that we navigate
the tension between being
very focused on the roots
of the issue, the sources of the issue,
and being universal in our inclusivity
around everybody ultimately is affected by
these issues.
I hope that makes sense.
But, as I said, even that
analysis is useless in our opinion
unless then using it to
move people toward change.
- [Voiceover] Great.
Well that's really powerful.
I really like that.
Explicit but not exclusive.
And I think your point about
needing to be explicit about
the power and what we're trying to change
is really useful and then
moving that into action
in an inclusive way,
which is a perfect segue
to our next segment of the web conference
which is really about what can this work
look like in action?
So, thank you Saru.
I'm gonna turn it back to Kelly
and ask Kelly to talk about what,
what are some examples
of how you've approached
aligning your sexual and
domestic violence prevention
work with today's social
justice movements,
moving from that analysis into action,
as Saru described.
So, you know, please talk about
the great work that you're doing and
turn it over to you Kelly.
- [Voiceover] Thank you, Lisa.
And thank you, Saru.
That was a really super great analysis
of moving beyond theory into action.
So, the first slide here.
I have to say, a couple years ago,
and it's probably been almost four years
that we've been on this journey now,
that it became really clear to me
as someone who would identify
as white, heterosexual,
middle class, in an organization that was
embedded in mainstream,
really connected to the
criminal justice system
as a solution, that we
had a lot of internal work
to do first.
And it was about the internal
work that needed to be done,
not just to talk about it in theory
but really to go through personal
transformations ourselves
and a deep understanding of
the harm that we have caused
as a anti-violence movement.
So, I would say we had to
do this work internally
because we needed to be able to show up
in spaces where individuals
and organizations
that are living in and rooted
in marginalized communities
were doing this work a
long, long time before
we ever started thinking about it
and it was about being
able to show up responsibly
and to take leadership from others.
And so to that end, what we chose to do
over the last couple
years and there has been
at least two years in the making now
and I'm just so excited to say
that our board of directors
passed our theory of change on Monday.
This is after we had been
field testing it internally
now for well over a year.
And I put this up here,
and it's a really kind
of cumbersome document
but I want to kind of
take you through some
pieces and so don't get overwhelmed by it
but this is something that
is very much integrated
now into the Idaho Coalition's work and
so we live and breathe this and so
any decision we make about funding,
about choices of work,
about grants we write,
that we are running
this continually through
our theory of change.
If you go to the next slide, Lisa,
in a theory of change,
this is very much a living document.
We worked with a consultant for six months
with a group of five members
from the board, five staff,
and two external folks
as well as with the
consultant Geraldine Coffey
out of Oakland.
It really helped us really gain clarity
about what kind of
organization do we want to be,
how we move from the social services
to a social justice or
a social change model.
I saw one of the comments
about how we have so
professionalized and that's exactly who
the Idaho Coalition was five years ago.
And we are moving
significantly away from that.
So, if you look at the
red area, red arrow,
it kind of talks about our values.
The ones I'm gonna lift
up is we had to decide
what are the values that we want to bring
to everything that we do
and I think some of the most
significant ones are Leading Boldly,
and that's about risk
taking, because we had to
understand that we needed
to step out ways and
show up at places that we never had before
including, as I'll talk about later,
like Black Lives Matter rallies
and Pro-Choice rallies
and Anti-Gun rallies
and a minimum wage support.
So, another one that
becomes very important
is about social equity.
That's something we ended
as more than equality
and giving everybody the
same and this really takes
a deeper analysis of
understanding colonialism
and genocide, particular
of Native Americans
and those that live in Idaho
and really understanding
that equity is about
recognizing historical
oppression, historical trauma,
historical health inequities,
and coming up with
solutions that address that.
Then the last value I'd
point to would be around
collective liberation and that's
(inaudible due to coughing)
all as human beings tied
up in the liberation
of one another and until
everyone is liberated,
no one is liberated.
If you look at the purple arrow,
that's our issue.
And that's when we had to say what is it
that we even exist to
address in this world.
What we identified is gender violence
that's fueled by multiple
systemic oppression.
And we wanted to name
it there so everything
is interconnected in our work.
If you go up to the orange arrow
about who are we ultimately accountable to
and because we feel like we have
such a strong gender
focus, it's girls and women
and people who are gender oppressed
as well as we see our prevention work
across the gender spectrum
for all use in young adults.
When we start looking
at the entirety of this
particular document,
and Lisa, if you want to
go to the next one.
The orange kind of arch is
like what are the approaches
that are across our work.
I'll tell you, the one that
has made the most significant
change in the entirety
of our organization is
that we center solutions on the last girl.
And the last girl we came
to understand through
our move to end violence work
and that is very much
a conceptual language
that there's not a literal last girl,
but who was it in our communities that
has the least opportunities,
that they're valued the least,
that they have the least resources.
Marginalized communities are different in
different sections of Idaho,
but if we center our solutions
keeping in mind and having
the voices and experiences
of marginalized communities in our work,
it has begun to change everything
including who our partners are.
So, our membership is expanded to include
the Women of Color
Network, Mujeres Unides,
the ASLCIO that we worked
with really closely
on minimum wage, United Vision of Idaho.
It's bringing us into the
network of the progressive
community in Idaho, which there is one.
That's exciting work for us.
We do a lot of work with
the LGBTQ communities,
the Disability Advocacy,
and so it's really,
it has literally shifted the
way that we view the world
and as we have done that
shift, it has also begun
to shift our work.
One example would be, Lisa,
if you want to go to the
next slide.
- [Voiceover] Sure, and Kelly,
I know you have examples of
some of your youth work here
and then we want to turn it back to Saru
to talk about her work and then we also
really wanted to take that dive into
looking at criminal justice reform work,
so, if you could just
spend maybe about a minute
really highlighting what these posters are
and where people can
find out more information
about what that work looks
like, that would be great.
- [Voiceover] Excellent.
So, I think one way you
can see that this shift
has been demonstrated,
I would say four or five years ago,
we were relatively
known across the country
for our healthy relationship work
and we came to understand
that that both looked at
violence on an individual
level, not a societal level.
It didn't bring in an intersectional lens
in any way, shape or form to that work.
It didn't even really have a
strong gender lens frankly.
So we really have shifted towards
a youth organizing model.
That's something pretty much
all of our work is in that
direction now and when
you take the public health
framework, that is the
mechanism or the tool
that is a strategy to
build social cohesion,
which is just a different
way of saying community
and community connectedness.
But if you look at the next slide, Lisa,
this'll kind of give you an idea
and keep in mind we're in Idaho.
That is not known as a
very progressive place.
This is a campaign that
goes to all of Idaho
middle schools and high schools
as we've gotten bolder with a
clearer intersectional lens.
This is 100% youth and adult
developed with youth voices,
identifying the messaging.
The five before were our
youth activists and our
youth organizers that we employ
that have been part of
the Idaho Coalition team.
We generally have about eight paid youths
throughout the year and so in this year,
two, three years ago
they switched from our
healthy relationship kind of framework
to our revolution, the last two years
was our gender revolution and the cultures
kind of give you a sampling.
What I will tell you
is that the youth said,
"We need to be connected to
our social justice roots."
So, on each of these posters,
they feature folks like
Grace Lee Boggs, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde,
and as that reading.
That's part of our internal work is having
gone through and get reconnected to the
voices of women of color in particular
that had been saying much
of what we're learning
for many, many decades.
Well, I'll tell you that
it's been super successful,
these posters are available
for free on our website.
We've had orders now from
over 40 states in the country.
As they're resonating with youth,
we've had a lot of adult concern,
but that's part of change.
Lisa, if you want to go to the next slide.
The last thing I would just
mention on the power of words
to kinda give an example
of how this is different.
We have always had a writing
challenge, our prompt.
We have over 3,000 submissions
and the prompts have really
significantly brought
intersectional analysis.
The youth were writing
about their experiences
as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans youth,
about use of color and
experiencing both racism
and sexism and so this
event brought in 400 folks
together, predominantly youth.
The thing I will tell you that
shifted how we do this work,
some of it's small and
some of it's very big
and it all makes a difference.
Not only were the poems
intersectional that the youth read,
and the audience was from
many different communities
in our state.
At the end of the event,
because our staff had insisted
in the venue that we had
gender neutral bathrooms,
as well as being physically
accessible for individuals
with disabilities,
that we had diversity and
ethnicity and national origin
and everything represented
in the entirety of the event,
that a young woman came
up to one of our staff
and she self identified
as a young trans woman
and she said for the first
time in the state of Idaho,
not only did she feel safe,
but she felt welcomed.
And so that's about taking these theories
and putting them into action.
That's what we're seeing
is making a significant
difference in our work.
- [Voiceover] Thank you so
much, Kelly, for sharing
those great examples and I
know there's so much more
that you can share and
please feel free to add
more to the text chat
and you have more resources
that we're sharing as well.
I want to ask the next text
chat question be put up
because we need to hear from
our participants as well.
They have great examples of how they are,
how are you aligning your
sexual and domestic violence
work with social justice movement work
and incorporating those
principals and approaches
into your work?
So, go ahead and text chat your examples.
We wanted to highlight one
example in San Francisco
where housing justice work is so critical
to so many people's lives.
San Francisco Women Against Race.
It's aligning with
housing justice folks and
working to address safe
and affordable housing.
Some of you may be familiar
with this public statement
recently that over 250
organizations working
to end sexual assault and
domestic violence were
active in opposing
anti-transgender laws that
have been popping up in different states.
So, hopefully, you will
share your examples
as well, because that
could be great examples
and resources for us all to learn from
and to build into our work.
I'm going to turn it
to Saru and ask you now
to talk about questions
from your perspective.
You spoke about this earlier
when you were talking about
the overlap and you've
mentioned how you have
integrated sexual and domestic violence
prevention into your
campaign work and other
organizational work.
If you could talk a little bit more about
examples and how you've
approached addressing
sexual and domestic violence
within your movement work,
that'd be fantastic.
Saru, are you there?
- [Voiceover] You might
need to press star six
to unmute your phone.
- [Voiceover] Sorry.
Can you hear me now?
- [Voiceover] Yeah, yeah.
- [Voiceover] Okay, sorry about that.
- [Voiceover] No worries.
- [Voiceover] I was just
saying, this is the report
that I was mentioning earlier
that we did work together,
where we reframed the issue
that we were organizing
workers around the country
on, which is the minimum wage
for tipped workers, we
reframed it as an issue
of sexual harassment and sexual violence.
So, we had for many years,
we had surveyed workers,
we'd surveyed actually
about 6 or 7,000 workers
around the country and
here's another example
of how maybe we do things
a little bit differently.
For us, when we do participatory research,
as I know a lot of you do as well,
when we do participatory
research, we actually use it
as a tool for organizing.
So, every 500 surveys result
in 2 or 300 new members
of the organization.
We do the surveys going
out and talking to workers
late at night after their
late night restaurant shifts
and we then recruit them
into the organization
at the end of the survey.
But anyway, we had done 6
or 7,000 of these surveys
around the country and asked people,
"Have you experienced sexual
harassment on the job?"
And only about 20% of workers said, "Yes."
One in five said, "Yes."
80% said, "No."
If you go to the next couple of slides,
but then, if you don't
mind moving one more.
Never mind.
So, only about 20% said
"Yes," and 80% said "No."
We then worked with (word
inaudible due to disruptive noise)
together and a bunch of
organizations with a lot of
experience in sexual
harassment, sexual violence
and changed the questions,
did a series of questions
leading up to this issue
of sexual harassment
and found that 90% of both men and women
said "Yes" they've experienced
sexual behaviors on the job.
That's the next slide.
That were scary or unwanted
from customers, management,
and from coworkers.
And so, part of it was
just a language change
because so much of our population,
remember this is 11 million workers,
one in 12 Americans works
in the U.S. restaurant
industry, one in two of us has worked
in the restaurant industry at
some point in our lifetime.
So it's the second largest
and absolute fastest
growing sector of the economy.
The largest employer of
young people, largest
employer of women, of
immigrants, and the majority
of this workforce, when
you ask them straight up,
"Have you experienced sexual harassment?"
say, "No" even though the
EEOC reports that this
is the industry with the highest rates
of sexual harassment of any
industry in the United States.
So, when you change the
question and you ask people
about their experiences on the job,
it totally comes up and
what that said to us
was generally this concept,
the ideas of sexual
harassment and sexual violence
and often when we're working,
whether it's your community working on
the issue of sexual violence
and domestic violence
or us working on minimum wage,
whatever it is that we're
working on sometimes
we're in a bit of a silo.
We know our language, we know our issues,
but to really reach a much
wider population of people,
which is what is required
to actually build
a true movement that as I said
is explicit but not exclusive,
we have to find ways of helping people
relate their own experiences
to what we're talking about.
In this case, I know
in my case, every time
I've ever talked to a restaurant worker,
and asked them, "Have you ever
"experienced sexual harassment?"
they say, "No."
And then when I keep asking the question,
in different ways, they
share the most horrific
stories, even rape, even sexual assault
in the restaurant or in
a coworker's apartment
or a manager in the walk-in freezer.
I just can't tell you the number of people
who've said, "No, I've never experienced
"any kind of sexual
harassment at the restaurant,"
but then tell me after
many questions that they've
actually been raped in the restaurant.
It's just an example of
how to really reach a
much wider swath of
people, we have to reframe,
we have to sometimes reframe the issue and
so the slides that we skipped over was
after we put out this report it got
more media than anything we'd ever done.
It was on the cover of USA Today.
A waitress wrote in to the New York Times,
wrote an editorial in the New York Times
called "Can You Be a
Waitress and a Feminist?"
This is a feminist academic in Las Vegas
who she herself said, "I'd
never actually thought
"of these issues and when ROC's report
"came out, it made me
realize, here I am a feminist
"academic and I myself,
working in the industry
"at night to make extra
money didn't recognize
"the sexual harassment
that I was experiencing
"on the job."
So, it's just an example, I think, of how
when we each begin to
work together and view
the intersectionality,
we can begin to reframe
our issues in different ways.
We can make them more powerful.
We can reach wider audiences of people,
us reframing our issues
and thinking about how
sexual violence, sexual
harassment relates to issue
of wages and maybe from
your end thinking about
as Kelly was saying how the minimum wage
directly impacts all
the people you work with
and their experiences of violence,
both economic violence and
other forms of violence.
So, I think, it's first
understanding how these things
are connected in people's lives
and then mobilizing them to take action.
So, once they've realized
that the other images you saw
are actions where we had
women, that was women in front
of City Hall, women in State Legislatures,
women in Congress speaking up and saying,
"I'm a woman, I'm not on the menu."
And "We want fair wage, want to eliminate
"the lower wage for tipped workers."
And it's actually worked.
- [Voiceover] So, what is
the One Fair Wage campaign?
Is that something that
sexual and domestic violence
prevention advocates
can get engaged with?
- I'm so glad you asked that 'cause that's
the piece I forgot to mention
in terms of opportunities
and what can be done.
Through all of this,
what it's resulted in is
state coalitions in all of
the states where we're moving
the One Fair Wage campaign
which is a campaign
to eliminate the lower
wage for tipped workers,
which is, as I said $2.13
an hour and a direct
legacy of slavery because
the original tipped workers
were former slaves.
In every state we've
built these coalitions and
have invited women's
organizations, domestic violence
organizations, organizations
working on sexual assault
and sexual harassment
to join with us because
we see the tipped minimum wage as an issue
and again not just as economic violence,
but directly correlated to the industry
that has the highest
rates of sexual violence
and sexual assault of any industry
in the United States.
So, we want to work with you all
in every state that we're
moving this legislation
to change the law and to
have these workers paid
one fair minimum wage,
which we believe is $15.
Unfortunately, for
example, in New York state,
New York state just went
up to $15 but left out
300,000 tipped workers, mostly
women, mostly single moms
and that is an, and
mostly women experiencing
horrific sexual harassment
and that is an example
of where if we can bring
together a coalition
of women's organizations
and sexual violence
and domestic violence
organizations to say,
"How dare you leave these women out.
"We need to fix this so that
these women are included
"in $15," that that
will change in New York
and change in all the
other states that are
contemplating minimum wage increases
that leave out
leave tipped workers out.
- [Voiceover] Wow.
That's really,
I wanna let everybody
find out more information
about the campaign right away.
Just to reiterate, if I
understood this correctly.
So, you're saying, can
you just say one more time
how many thousands of
people 90% of them said
that they had
unwanted sexual behavior?
Or can you just restate?
- [Voiceover] Yeah, sure.
- [Voiceover] What we're talking about.
- [Voiceover] Sure, so we did,
we interviewed 6,000
workers across the country
and simply asked them,
"Have you experienced sexual
"harassment?" and 80% said,
"No," 20% said, "Yes."
Then we did a new survey with
about 800 workers together
found that 90% of both
men and women said, "Yes"
after being asked a series of questions
that got them to the
place of understanding,
"Yes, I experienced
sexual behavior that is
"scary or unwanted."
The words "sexual
harassment" I think really,
really in people's
minds signaled something
that they thought was illegal and thus not
what they were experiencing.
They thought what they're experiencing
was so normalized and
so a part of hospitality
thus the title, "Can You Be
a Waitress and a Feminist?"
So a part of the job of
hospitality that they didn't see
it as illegal and sexual
harassment is seen as illegal.
And so, so I think
helping people understand
that this is again very
much an interconnected
economic justice and sexual
violence issue at the same time
helps us and I think
helps you all reach a much
wider audience than maybe
you've reached previously.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, that's great.
So, Beth
says she's talking about some
efforts called See the Signs,
bystander training at bars
and Becca talks about
work that's happening
in bars in college town.
So, these are, I think, great examples of
ways that
sexual and domestic violence folks are
addressing kind of broader conditions
that are happening in these
kinds of establishments.
So, I want to throw out the next question
which really gets into how can sexual and
domestic violence prevention
take that kind of work
and really, no, I'm sorry,
how do we go about including
sexual and domestic violence
in today's social justice movements?
So, where do you see social
justice movement work
going on where there's really a sexual
and domestic violence prevention aspect
to it that you've noticed
or that you've inspired by or
where do you see where there
might be more opportunities
for this kind of work?
Let's hear from participants
and their experiences.
Saru you mentioned that
this language barrier
around defining something
as a criminal behavior
is a perfect segue into
this last piece that we want
to spend a few minutes
exploring, which is really how
people's experiences
are defined as illegal
and then we have
put into place strategies to address them
from a criminal justice or
from a legal perspective.
And yet there are social
justice movement work
that's really happening including
the kind of work that
David and Kelly mentioned
that they are engaged in
today here in Berkeley
that's really looking at
alternatives to criminal
justice responses, so I want
to take it back to Kelly
and ask you to talk a little bit about
this issue of how can
sexual and domestic violence
work align with today's key
social justice movement work
that's really looking at
ending mass incarceration,
addressing violence by law enforcement
and addressing other
aspects of criminal justice.
- [Voiceover] Thanks, Lisa.
I think this is a both and.
I think it's about having
honest conversations
about how our particular
movement has really been
so embedded in the criminal justice system
as a solution and the harm that's caused.
The harm it's caused particularly
on marginalized communities,
the harm it's causing
that we see right now and
the lifting up of voices
and Black Lives Matter and state violence.
Because as we found in
Idaho, as we made the
shift and really taking it into action,
it looked like things like
after the massacre of
individuals in Charleston
at the church, we had a
call because we're working
with Surge which is the
how to be an aspiring ally
to the Black Lives Matter
for individuals who
identify as white,
but we were able to use our leveraging
and we called the U.S. Attorney for Idaho
and we said, "We need
to do a press conference
"this Sunday" and this
was on a Saturday, "and
"we need you to come in and
talk about white supremacy."
So it was about using the
leverage we had within
the criminal justice system
to begin to undo the harm.
So for us, David and I are in this
engaging conversation.
If people have not read Beth
Richie's book Arrested Justice,
and particularly the chapter
on how we won the mainstream
but lost the movement.
The New Jim Crow is another
book that I must read.
So it's about both,
both understanding and the
history of the anti-violence
movement and who we left
behind and how we need
to undo the harm
and it's about taking action
and beginning to show up
in the places that we
need to be showing up.
So, for us, in Idaho,
anti-immigration, anti-refugee,
the Black Lives Matter work,
you know, minimum wage work
and you know the complexities
are for some of our
local community domestic and
sexual violence programs,
this is
I'll say almost confusing
and uncomfortable
because we had, for such
a long time, really looked
to the criminal justice
system as the solution
to end violence and we
know now that not only
is that not working, but
it's really also caused harm.
- [Voiceover] And what is
this Compassionate Communities
image that we're seeing here?
Does this tie into this work?
- [Voiceover] Yeah, I
mean I think this is just
an example, much like the
California partnership
and CALCASA.
Many of us across the
country are really looking
to how can we begin to
shift the lens and change
the conversation, so this
was from our conference
last November and it was
all about intersexual analysis.
We had Monica Ramirez talking
about migrant farm workers
and sexual assault.
We had folks coming in
and talking about prison,
the pria with Lavista Stano
from Just Detention International.
We were understanding.
We had folks from the Northwest Network,
Connie Burke talking
about the intersection
of gender identity and sexual orientation
and how that intersects with violence.
We had folks coming in
and talking about how
we could get engaged in campaigns.
This was right after the
incident of the young
high school student that was brutalized by
a school resource officer,
so we all wore buttons at that conference,
Black Girls Matter,
and lifting up the individual lives of
black young girls and women of color.
And so it's about really integrating
this into action and
what does that look like.
And I will say at the same
time the positives are
we want to be a bigger "we".
We need to be a bigger "we".
At the same time, we have
many of our normal allies,
are experiencing some
discomfort and so we're having
deep conversations and
working through that
and trying to undo pretty
much what we've created
over the last several
decades in order to really
significantly end and really
make a change in our culture
of domination.
- [Voiceover] Thank you, Kelly.
I just really appreciate
that you've been creating
this basis to have this
kind of conversation
and what was one of your values?
Was it being bold or risk taking?
- [Voiceover] You know, I
think you have to do that.
You have to lead boldly on this.
And at the same time, you
know, you need to make sure
you have a staff and a
team that's willing to take
these risks.
Honestly, five, six, seven
years ago, we were hiring
for professional degrees.
We understand now that
actually community organizing
and being rooted in a
marginalized community
and having that voice is what
is essential in our work.
We have to have a board that
supports this directionality,
which is a lot of conversations
and the plus is, the bigger
we is growing, we have
partnerships and forming collaborations
from a deep place of understanding
the interconnectedness
with so many organizations
that we would've never
reached out to.
That's the excitement.
I think a bigger "we" is
going to be so much powerful
and moving towards what Saru talked about
in terms of collective action.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, thank you.
Saru, can you speak from
a social justice movement
perspective on this issue?
What are the ways that
you are seeing kind of
the linkages between the
movement work that you're doing
and sexual and domestic
violence prevention
and a shift away from
criminal justice approaches?
- [Vocieover] Yeah.
There was the movie that
you have on the screen
Rape on the Night Shift
I was on a panel with
the filmmaker who's great
and they showed a piece of the film where
it was clear that a lot of
the sort of point of the film
is that these supervisors
of these janitors
had not been screened by the company
based on their criminal backgrounds.
And I just had to say in that audience,
this may be totally unpopular
speaking to a community of,
I was speaking at a conference
that worked on violence against women,
sexual violence and
domestic violence conference
in New York.
I said, "This may be
unpopular in this room,
"but I don't see that as a solution.
"That's actually the
antithesis to what a lot of us
"have worked on.
"A lot of us have worked on,
from my side of the world,
"a lot of us have worked on what's called
"Ban the Box initiatives where we actually
"do not want to allow
employers to be screening
"for jobs based on criminal..."
(laughs) Thank you.
"criminal justice activity."
Pointing that out as a solution to
janitorial supervisors
raping female janitors
on the job does not seem aligned, to me,
with the broader movement
of folks that are trying
to end, to ban the box.
So, that was just an example of,
I think we need to talk to
each other a little bit better
and also I would say,
even in this exchange,
this chat, I really
appreciate people bringing up
the examples of other work in
the bars, that kind of thing,
but to me it also points to
kind of the ways we see things
a little bit differently
because for us, the solution
has to be getting rid
of the two tiered wage system.
What does that mean?
To us, the solution is not educating or
observing the sexual
violence and sexual assault.
It's not actually just
educating supervisors
and workers on the issue.
It's not monitoring it and calling it out.
The root cause, again, if
you go to the root cause
of why women are sexually
harassed, and men,
in the industry, but mostly women,
it's because they are relying on tips.
It is because they are forced to work
and tolerate all kinds
of inappropriate behavior
because they're relying on tips
and so getting rid of a
lower wage for tipped workers
in states like California
and Oregon and Washington.
There are seven states that
have gotten rid of the system,
has cut sexual harassment
and assaults in half
in our industry.
And so again the solution can't just be,
it can't be just teaching
people or talking about it.
I think, you know, we
have to learn from you all
on these issues, as I said,
how to reframe and rethink these issues.
It'd be great to work
with you then to also see
that the solution can't just
be the public health solution
of perhaps education
and addressing people's
individual needs.
It also has to be the, in our case,
the root cause solution
which is eliminating
the lower wage for tipped workers
or raising the minimum
wage or just providing
more economic opportunity
for people in the time
of incredible economic inequality.
- [Voiceover] Well, thank
you so much for highlighting
ways that we can work
together and inviting that
and this has been an
incredibly rich conversation
and thank you for your work
through and your leadership in
advancing that work in such powerful ways.
There are a number of tools and resources
that we've compiled from
our guests and from others
and we invite our
participants to look at that
and also, please feel free to share more
resources in the text chat.
We will compile the
text chat and send that
out to everyone and the Power Point
will be available as well.
Thank you so much to our
guests Kelly and Saru.
This has been a really dynamic
and inspiring conversation.
Thank you to our
participants who were active
in the text chat.
Thanks to David and to
Ashley and to Casey.
It's great to have the opportunity to have
these kinds of really
important conversations
and I look forward to more
conversations like this
on PreventConnect and in other spaces.
So, thank you so much everyone.
And with that, this concludes
this web conference.
Thank you all so much.
- [Voiceover] Thank you.
- [Voiceover] Thanks everyone.
- [Voiceover] Thank you all.
We'll leave the text chat
open for a few more minutes.
