S.H.O.P: Stop the Violence, Heal the Person, Open the Mind, Promote Peace – Sept 15

Please join the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women (and our members, Global Girls, Illinois Caucus on Adolescent Health (Sisters Empowering Sisters), A Long Walk Home, and Young Women's Empowerment Project) for a YOUTH-ORGANIZED & YOUTH-LED Conference about Violence in the Lives of Chicago Girls.

When: September 15, 2012
Where: Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave, Room 300
Time: 10:30 to 5 p.m.
Info: At no cost to participants but PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. You can register HERE.

This conference is targeted to those who identify as young women between the ages of 13 to 22.

Description of the Day:
10:30 am — Registration

11:00 am – Opening Performance by Global Girls

11:30 -1:15 pm- Individual Youth-Led Workshops by Global Girls, A Long Walk Home, Sisters Empowering Sisters, and Young Women’s Empowerment Project — workshops will focus on developing media literacy, sexual violence, verbal and emotional abuse, and institutional violence against girls.

1:15-2pm- Lunch

2-3pm- Self-defense and Writing Workshop — There will be two workshops available. One is a creative writing workshop led by the young women of Sisters Empowering Sisters (ICAH) and the other is a self-defense workshop led by IMPACT CHICAGO.

3-3:15pm- Break

3:15- Youth Poetry Slam

4-5pm- Self Care and Q&A/Closing
Conference participants will be invited to visit various “self-care” stations at the end of the day.

For more information about the conference, contact the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls & Young Women at chitaskforce@gmail.com.

 

Violence in the Lives of Girls – A Conference for Adult Allies – September 14

Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls and Young Women
Conference on Violence in the Lives of Girls

The Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women is hosting a conference about Violence in the Lives of Girls on September 14 and 15, 2012.

The purpose of the conference is to re-inject the voices of girls and young women into the conversations about violence in Chicago. Discussions about violence in the lives of Chicago youth are mostly focused on boys and largely address lethal and public violence. Within this context, girls and young women are generally silenced, and their experiences of violence are minimized and overlooked.

This gathering is divided into two days. On September 14th, adult allies who work with and support young women will share innovative intervention ideas and re-frame the discussion about violence in girls’ lives. On September 15th, several groups of young women representing Global Girls, the Illinois Caucus on Adolescent Health, and A Long Walk Home are planning and organizing their own conference.

Agenda for Friday September 14

9-9:30 a.m. Registration

9:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Workshops: 1) Reconceptualizing Relationship Violence by Centering Young Women of Color
2) Healing Justice

12-1 p.m. Lunch (on your own)

1:15-3:45 p.m. Workshops: 1) Baby College for All
2) Strategy Session for Collective Responses to Teen Dating Violence

Conference Location: Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave, Room 300

Information: Space is very limited and Pre-Registration is REQUIRED. You can register HERE – Registration will close once we reach our capacity.

Note:
The conference is being offered at no cost to participants but it doesn’t mean that there are no costs associated with organizing it. We are grateful to the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation for providing the space for the conference, special thanks to all of the facilitators who are donating their time, and finally a huge amount of appreciation to all of the conference planners.

Please also keep in mind that we anticipate that many people will want to attend this gathering. Space is however limited so that we can have engaged conversation and discussion. With this in mind, we ask that you DO NOT register if you are not certain that you will attend. We want to insure that those who are able to attend are not turned away. So we ask that you not register unless you are certain that you will attend the event. We really mean this. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

9:30 to 12:00 p.m.

Title: Healing Justice
Facilitators: Stacy Erenberg (Young Women’s Empowerment Project), Tanuja Jagernauth (YWEP, Sage), Sangeetha Ravichandran (A Long Walk Home)

Wondering how you can incorporate Self Care and Healing Justice into your work with youth? Then look no further! Join Sangeetha Ravichandran (A Long Walk Home), Stacy Erenberg (Young Women’s Empowerment Project, Sage Community Health Collective), and Tanuja Jagernauth (YWEP, Sage) for an interactive and popular education-style Arts-and-Body-Based Exploration of Self Care and Healing Justice. Participants will collectively define Self Care and Healing Justice and adapt an example curriculum to weave in Self Care and Healing Justice activities. Expect to have fun and walk away with tools you can use to create your own Self Care and Healing Justice curriculum for young people.

Title: Reconceptualizing Relationship Violence by Centering Young Women of Color
Facilitator: Mariame Kaba (Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Project NIA)

Over the past 20 years, several teen dating violence and date rape curricula have been developed to educate youth about the warning signs and dynamics of abuse. This seems to be a good time for adult allies, youth workers, and educators to assess whether these curricula are relevant to the current lived realities particularly of young women of color. How should relationship violence prevention programs and curricula be re-conceptualized to meet the specific needs of young women of color in Chicago? Participants in this workshop will discuss the strengths and limitations of current teen dating violence and date rape curricula and programs. They will leave with specific ideas for how to more effectively intervene particularly with young women of color who are experiencing violence in their lives and relationships. Note: This is NOT an introductory workshop. Participants should have previous knowledge and/or experience addressing teen dating violence.

1:15 to 3:45 p.m.

Title: Baby College for All
Facilitators: Katy Groves (Youth Service Project) and Chez Rumpf (Center for Urban Research and Learning, Loyola University and Project NIA)

This workshop seeks to shift the framework around teen pregnancy and parenting. Pregnant and parenting teen girls often are pathologized as deviant young people who have become pregnant as a result of their personal deficiencies and problems. As such, services targeting these young women often attempt to “fix” or “reform” them through individual-level interventions. This workshop will engage participants in imagining ways to de-stigmatize teen pregnancy and parenting. Rather than frame teen pregnancy as a life-ending event that shoulders young women with insurmountable barriers, we will consider how to create structural supports for young mothers and how to cultivate a culture that places a high value on children.

Using a popular education approach, facilitators will lead participants through an activity to identify the current stigma and pathologizing discourse about teen pregnancy and to investigate the causes and consequences of this stigma. Through another activity, facilitators and participants will explore the historical evolution of this stigma. The workshop will close with a visioning exercise to develop concrete strategies to foster a sense of communal responsibility for children.

At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with:
• an understanding of the historical development of current discourses about teen pregnancy
• a critical assessment of these discourses
• ideas about how to create supportive environments for teen parents and their children

Title: Strategy Session for Collective Responses to Teen Dating Violence — Healing, Intervention, Accountability and Prevention/Transformation
Facilitator: Ann Russo, Building Communities, Ending Violence.
This workshop will offer the experience of a collective strategy session to show how community members might work together to effectively respond to teen relationship. The workshop will provide a structure for people to imagine collective responses that do not rely on the police or external authorities, and, if time, a chance to practice some of the skills it might take to implement them.

Stay tuned for information about the Youth-Led Girls’ and Young Women’s Conference that will take place on September 15th! We will be sharing information here on the blog about how young women can register to attend.

 

What do YOU think about media coverage of gender-based violence?

Have you been frustrated with media coverage of the issue of violence against girls & young women?

Are there facts you think the press should know? Ways you think the issue should be framed?

Or are there journalists and news outlets that you think have done a great job, and should be considered a model for reporting?

This is your chance to share your input as we create a Media Toolkit to suggest ways that news outlets can better cover the issue of violence against girls & young women.  Please fill out this survey by November 30!

 

New Occasional Paper from YWAT on engaging young men as allies

On November 2-3, 2007, fifteen young men gathered to participate in the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team’s (YWAT’s) Male Ally Training.  The training was created by Ed Mills and members of the YWAT.  Lillian Matanmi, a leadership team member of the YWAT, was the primary coordinator of this project.

Now Ed Mills and members of YWAT have prepared a report on the event.  The report summarizes what took place and indicates some of the training’s strengths and weaknesses.  It also discusses the participants’ – both trainees and facilitators – written and oral feedback, and contains a brief appendix with some of the activities, evaluations and facilitators’ afterthoughts.  The YWAT hopes that this report will be of assistance to other individuals and organizations seeking to create similar trainings.

The report — along with workshop activities and evaluations — is available on the Taskforce website.

The Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team has also developed a toolkit titled “Where Our Boys At? Involving Young Men as Allies to End Violence against Girls.”  In the toolkit, YWAT shares some of the resources (including curricula) that it has developed and perhaps even more importantly  discusses the challenges and accomplishments of its three-year campaign.  The toolkit can be found here!

Thanks to Ed and the members of YWAT for sharing their learnings!  If your group has similar evaluations to share, and would like to submit a proposal for an Occasional Paper, please email us at chitaskforce@gmail.com.

 

Tiawanda Moore is BRAVE…

Cross-posted at Prison Culture

I described my initial sighting of Tiawanda Moore back in June this way:

The first thing that strikes me when I see Tiawanda Moore is that she looks so very young. The second thing is that she reminds me of my cousin Fatime. She has the same fine features and beautiful dark skin. She is slight in build and is wearing glasses. Every black person in the U.S. has a sister, friend, cousin who looks just like Tiawanda Moore.

Yesterday when I saw and spoke with Tiawanda, I observed something more – her courage and dignity. For nearly two years, this young woman has endured so much. First she was sexually molested by a police officer and then when she sought out justice for this offense, she found herself in the clutches of the State’s Attorney charged with two class 1 felonies for eavesdropping facing up to 15 years in prison. Tiawanda Moore is brave.

Yet every single media story that I have read since she was acquitted of all charges yesterday either opens with the words “former stripper” or mentions this somewhere in the article. Radley Balko picks up on this in a blog post published yesterday. He writes:

One other thing. It’s a little odd that most media accounts of this case describe Moore as a “former stripper.” It’s actually the first three words in the Sun Times story. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s hard to envision the article starting that way if Moore were a former nanny. Or school teacher. Or bus driver. So what’s the point? Even if Moore’s sexual assault allegation was the only newsworthy part of this story, the implication is that her former job is relevant to her allegation. Is the implication that strippers probably act provocatively even when they aren’t working—-indeed, even when they aren’t strippers anymore—and thus should expect unwanted sexual advances from cops? Is it that strippers are inherently untrustworthy? That they’re more likely to make false allegations of sexual assault? (If anything, I would suspect that strippers have built up a fair amount of tolerance for unwanted advances.)

But that of course isn’t why this story is in the news. It’s in the news because Moore became frustrated in her attempt to file a complaint, and so recorded what she thought were Chicago police officers’ attempts to rebuff her, and was consequently facing a felony charge and up to 15 years in prison. The validity of the allegation that set all of that into motion isn’t really at issue. (Indeed, the resolution of Moore’s complaint is apparently “sealed.” Which is a problem in and of itself.) So even if you buy into the fairly offensive notion that Moore’s former occupation calls her harassment allegation into doubt, the “former stripper” label is completely irrelevant to whether or not she should have been arrested and charged for recording the cops.

I would submit that it is not “odd” that Ms. Moore’s employment as a stripper is always foregrounded in the media coverage. Young black women are often portrayed as sexually promiscuous. This has a longstanding history. If you recall the Duke Lacrosse case, the alleged victim was also frequently described in media accounts as a “stripper.” In the Dominique Strauss-Khan case, Nafissatou Diallo was alleged to have been a prostitute. There is an inglorious history in the press of women who bring charges of sexual assault often being painted as sexually “loose” in some way. So Mr. Balko is not wrong to assume that if Ms. Moore had been a former teacher or nanny that this would not have been the opening statement in an article covering this trial.

There is something more to the press’s fixation on the fact that Ms. Moore worked as a stripper. This description of her is offered as a kind of shorthand. As though it suggests something about her character and perhaps should lead us to question her credibility. It’s as if this is the main thing that we ought to know about who Tiawanda Moore is.

Chris Drew, who himself is facing eavesdropping charges, has been a supporter of Ms. Moore. He attended both days of the trial and was present when the jury read its verdict yesterday. He wrote the following about Tiawanda in an e-mail blast that he sent out to his supporters:

Ms. Moore is twenty years old and very much still trying to discover herself in this world. The Tribune calls her a former stripper but she is first a young woman struggling to survive in a depressed economy. She is too young to have established a career out of anything yet. She has every right to expect justice from our system and she is a brave fighter for women’s rights. She stood up to the intimidation of Chicago police to lodge her complaint of sexual abuse. Anyone who listened to the testimony Tuesday and Wednesday at her trial knows that took a very brave spirit. We should expect more from the newspaper of record in reporting behind the scenes. They should examine in depth the way Cook County State’s Attorneys Office shields police misconduct.

She fought against a culture of intimidation other women of any background might face when they try to lodge a complaint against the Chicago Police for sexual misconduct. She won putting the Cook County State’s Attorney on notice that they should not be shielding police who violate citizen’s rights with malicious prosecutions of this type. Her win is a win for all women and all citizens who expect justice from Cook County. Her attorney argued that she was being intimidated out of her right to file a complaint by police who were breaking their own rules in doing so.

I teared up when I read this mainly because it is so TRUE. But also because I felt a sense of hope to read these words coming from a man who is so very different from Tiawanda Moore. Chris Drew is an older white man, an artist. He is someone who has already lived many years and it seems that in this case it has brought him wisdom. Tiawanda Moore is young, black, and very different in many other ways from Chris. Yet he can see through those differences to simply embrace Tiawanda’s humanity. It means that we have hope for transformation. While the media continues its relentless assault on the images of young black women in the U.S., on an individual level many (including Chris Drew) resist these portrayals.

Chris offers something else in his words about Tiawanda Moore. He provides a context within which a young black woman with limited opportunities finds a way to survive. Young women do what they have to do to survive. Chris forces his reader to consider stripping as a rational form of employment and dares us to judge Ms. Moore without having lived in her shoes. He is basically saying to us: she was a stripper, so what? He also frames her as a “fighter for women’s rights.” To me, that is the proper context within which to view Tiawanda Moore. What she did in standing up to the police and the state tells us more about her resilience and character than does her employment. Most of us are not primarily defined by where we work. We define ourselves mostly in relation to who we love. Perhaps we see ourselves first as mothers, sisters, spouses or friends. We define ourselves by the struggles that we join as organizers, citizens, activists. We define ourselves differently depending on the day or the context. These things are complicated rather than being straightforward. The media shies away from the complicated preferring black and white descriptions. So I offer them an easy description of Tiawanda Moore: Ms. Moore is BRAVE. Thanks Chris for giving voice to this!

 

Now that Tiawanda Moore is free, what lessons can we learn?

On August 18, 2010, Tiawanda Moore went to the Office of Internal Affairs to file a complaint, alleging that a police officer had sexually assaulted her.  Getting the runaround from the officers at Internal Affairs, and feeling threatened and intimidated, she pulled out her Blackberry to get proof that they were refusing to help her file her claim.  As many of you know by now, Ms. Moore was charged with “eavesdropping” on the police, a charge that can bring up to 15 years in jail.

Today, I’m so happy to announce, she was acquitted, and her nightmare is over.

But there are lessons to be learned from this, and changes that are needed, and I think it’s important that we take the time to think about what happened here, and what it says about the need for systemic reform.

I was in court today, along with my good friend and colleague Mariame Kaba and a small group of supporters.  The closing arguments we heard spoke volumes about the injustice that this young woman – and I fear, young women in general – experience at the hands of the police and the states’ attorney.

“THEY WERE STALLING, INTIMIDATING HER, BULLYING HER NOT TO MAKE A COMPLAINT.”

Ms. Moore’s attorney, Robert Johnson, spoke eloquently about her experiences of injustice.  His description of what had happened to Ms. Moore, based on the testimony and the tape itself, which had been played for the jury, filled in some of the details on her harrowing experience at Internal Affairs that you may not have heard.

First, he said, when she made the appointment, she was told to bring any witnesses who could support her allegations.  She brought her boyfriend, but he was immediately told to go home or go to McDonald’s to wait for her; no interview was held.  The police urged her not to file a complaint, insisting that the assaulting officer was “a good guy.”  On the tape, there’s a promise that what happened to her will never happen again (proving, as Robert Johnson pointed out, that they believed that she had been assaulted).  There’s the insistence that instead of filing a complaint, she should “go a different route.”  (On cross examination, the officer admitted, correctly, that there is no other route for victims of police sexual harassment in the system.)  And there’s the fact that when she became concerned and wanted to speak with another officer, the police locked the door and told her she could not leave.

Imagine how scary this experience must have been.  Imagine the power dynamics in the room, of this 19-year old young woman trying to plead her case to two police officers, and getting this kind of response.

The only conclusion you can reach is the one Robert Johnson reached:

“The plan was to kill this complaint from the very beginning….  They were stalling, intimidating her, bullying her not to make a complaint.”

HERE WE GO AGAIN, FRAMING THE VICTIM AS THE PERPETRATOR

And what did the State have to say about what happened?  Brace yourself, because here’s their theory.

Tiawanda Moore, they said, was on a “fishing expedition.”  They alleged that this young woman came in all the way from Indiana, not because she had been assaulted by a police officer and wanted to make a complaint.  No, the real reason according to the State was that she “wanted them to say the case was going nowhere.  That’s what she wanted them to say.”

What?  Didn’t she say on the tape itself that she’s concerned about how many other young women have been sexually assaulted by this officer?  Absolutely, said the State, and that is just proof that she was “editorializing,” by which I suppose they meant she was trying to make her case for public consumption.

If this sounds crazy to you, like the world’s gone mad, consider the State’s conclusion as to the power dynamics at play when she went to file her claim.  Is it the police that are in a position of power?  No.

“It is her that is in control…. You can’t push Tiawanda Moore around, she’s not going to let you.”

After all, the State’s Attorney added, “What motive do the police have to protect this officer?”

“JUST ANOTHER DAY IN INTERNAL AFFAIRS”

Now that we can breathe a huge sigh of relief that Tiawanda Moore won’t be facing jail time for this travesty, I am left with a deep fear that what she experienced may in fact be, to quote the State’s Attorney, “just another day in Internal Affairs.”

The concerns raised by groups like the ACLU, and activists like Chris Drew, over the Eavesdropping Law are important and valid.  Our avenue for defense against all types of abuse of power by law enforcement must be protected.  Citizens should be able to record police abuse, and to use recordings to hold the police accountable for such abuse in court.  Period.

Beyond that, though, let’s not lose focus on how the system failed this young woman at every level.  It is important that we remember that Tiawanda Moore’s terrible experience with the system as a young woman survivor of violence was most likely not a fluke.  Instead, her experience points to what young women are up against, and the need for systemic changes.

Young women in Chicago are at risk of sexual assault by the police.  Tiawanda Moore is certainly not the only young woman to allege that she has been sexually assaulted by a police officer.  In Chicago, and in other cities as well, young women have come forward to say that they have been assaulted by their local police officers.  Here in Chicago, there have been rallies in support of survivors of police violence, and groups such as Women’s All Points Bulletin – whose director, Crista Noel, was present in court as well to support Tiawanda Moore today – are working to draw attention to these cases, and to provide crucial support for women.

And can we really believe, as the state alleges, that Internal Affairs is deeply committed to supporting survivors of police violence?  Literature from Chicago Activists Against Police Sexual Assault, a new group that is holding rallies around the issue, quotes these statistics from a 2007 study by the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago.

• The odds that a Chicago police officer charged with abuse will receive any form of meaningful discipline are 2 out of 1,000. But as the U.S. Dept. of Justice has found, only 1 in 10 citizens ever even report police abuse for fear of reprisal, and distrust of the investigatory process.
• Between 2002 and 2004, 85% of abuse complaints were dismissed without ever interviewing the officer.
• 75% of Chicago police officers with multiple charges of abuse never receive any discipline whatsoever
• Brutality complaints are 94% less likely to be found as having sufficient evidence by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) than in the nation as a whole.

Yes, it does sound like what happened to Ms. Moore was what might be expected on any typical day.

And now we can add the State’s Attorney into the mix.  For months, the Taskforce has called for the State’s Attorney to drop these ridiculous charges against Tiawanda Moore.  They refused.  Today’s closing arguments made it clear that the State’s Attorney cannot be relied upon to protect young women from police violence.  The topsy turvy world view that was presented in court today – a world in which young women supposedly have power over the police – was startling and frankly, frightening.

We all have a lot of work to do if we are going to make Chicago safer for young women.  Systems change at every level is called for.  What are your thoughts about what needs to be done?

 

New Occasional Paper: C.R.I.M.E. Teens Project

The Taskforce is happy to announce the release of our latest Occasional Paper, by youth and adult allies at the C.R.I.M.E. Teens Project!

The C.R.I.M.E. Teens Project (Compassion, Respect, Inspiration, Motivation, Empathy) is a grassroots, youth led violence prevention program.  Since its inception in 2009, the C.R.I.M.E. Teens have worked toward multiple achievements, most notably presenting to hundreds of elementary, middle school, and professional populations through an adolescent-centric perspective of community, school, relational, and familial violence, and authoring and publishing a book targeted to educators and direct service professionals on how to better understand the youth experience of violence.

This paper is a written collaboration between the C.R.I.M.E. youth and the adult supporters to dive deeper into the critical issues of violence against young girls and women, particularly focusing on cyber bullying, relational violence, and teen dating relationships.  The young women of the C.R.I.M.E. Teens also provide personal narratives of their own experience with complex trauma and violence and their stories of resilience and advocacy to aid other young girls and women in their own recovery.

In the words of one of the program’s youth,

“The violence rate toward and between women is increasing in Chicago neighborhoods. We have all witnessed violence in our own ways. We want to talk about how we experienced violence and what we have learned from it.  We are a group of teens trying to stop violence and help communities come together as one. As youth, people think just because we are teens, we don’t really CARE, but we do; we want to use our voice to help make change.”

You can read the paper by C.R.I.M.E. Teens here.