February 25, 2013

National Alliance to End Homelessness speech

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The following is from a speech given by our Executive Director, Nan Stoops, at last week’s National Alliance To End Homelessness Conference.

My organization has 23 employees working in two locations. Every day, in both offices, we gather at almost exactly noon to eat lunch together. Regardless of how busy and chaotic the day is, we stop, get food, and sit down for an hour of book reviews, parenting follies, fashion advice, recipe sharing, baseball statistics, celebrity gossip, and so on. What started as a simple mealtime ritual has evolved into the centerpiece of our organizational culture and the values we hold for our work.

We all need sustenance and community. They give us life.

In 1977, I began volunteering at King County Rape Relief. In 1982, I was hired for the graveyard shift at New Beginnings Shelter for Battered Women. Those years were a time when I believed that my anger and energy and passion would help bring an end to violence against women.

I did not imagine that I would do this work for 35 years (and counting), nor that it would become as complicated as it has, nor that I would settle for a longer view and for the fact that violence probably will not end in my lifetime. I did not imagine the stories I would hear, the resistance I would encounter, and the fear, degradation, and cruelty I would witness.

I also did not imagine coming face to face with courage, resilience, and the will to live and love against all odds. I did not imagine working with people who personify what had been, for me, an academic understanding of how race, class, and gender intersect in this country. And I never imagined the vision, grace, dignity, and friendships that accompany this work.

My early failures of imagination have been replaced by a continuous cycle of curiosity, learning, and change. Right now, I am extremely curious, because I think change is in the wind. This is a very interesting time in the domestic violence “field.” The economy is bad. The political landscape isn’t much better. The demographics of our service population are fluctuating. And we are challenged by generational realities that include leadership and staff turnover in programs and, more important, the long-term impact of abuse that devastates entire families and communities.

I want to share my thoughts about a question that many of us are pondering. Because I’m not an expert on homelessness, I will stay mostly in the familiar territory of domestic violence. But I believe we have a lot in common, and I hope my thinking will resonate with you.

The question is this:  Do the services we constructed 35 years ago respond to the needs that survivors have today?

35 years ago, domestic violence was a private family matter. Victims were mostly silent and, when they dared to speak, they experienced both blame and shame. There were no laws with which to hold abusers accountable, and hastily organized crisis lines and safe homes were ill-equipped to handle the growing demand.

The original purpose of domestic violence emergency shelter was to provide safety and break isolation. Communal living made sense: women could share meals, take care of each other’s children, and participate in support groups where they could begin to rebuild their lives. They could get on AFDC within two weeks, and many left shelters with welfare checks, food stamps, and medical coupons in hand.

If I sound nostalgic, I don’t mean to. Most shelters were run-down and minimally furnished. Staff were compassionate, but overworked, underpaid, and consumed by the combination of the scope of the problem and continued public apathy. A social worker once said that shelter workers during that time exhibited the same symptoms that Amnesty International attributes to prisoners of war.

Today, in this country, there are more than 3,000 domestic violence shelter and advocacy organizations. When I look at the service models we have now, I am astonished by their complexity. And this is where I think the paths of domestic violence and homelessness really begin to merge or, at the very least, intersect in a big way.

Most domestic violence agencies have multiple funding contracts, each with its own programmatic and administrative obligations. In the name of compliance and efficiency, these obligations often get passed on to survivors in the form of shelter rules and mandatory participation. In the extreme, we hear about survivors returning home because it’s easier to be with an abuser than it is to live in shelter.

The domestic violence shelter population is changing. It’s more diverse in all ways, and it reflects the increasing hardships that people are struggling with; poverty and homelessness, substance abuse and addiction, trauma and PTSD, and entanglements with the child welfare, immigration, and criminal justice systems. This is a challenging, and sometimes volatile mix to house under one roof, and, again, we hear about survivors returning home, or never coming to shelter in the first place.

It may seem like I’m airing our dirty shelter laundry. But the truth is this: it’s time to think critically about the services we offer, and who better to do this thinking than us?

Domestic violence emergency shelter does save lives. It’s a refuge, a resource, and a respite for many. It’s also costly, sometimes chaotic, and almost always, limited in the time, space, and material assistance it can provide. And so, we need to preserve the best of what shelter has to offer and, at the same time, explore and test new strategies.

Here in Washington, we are re-considering shelter in three ways. And three and a half years ago, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we began a Domestic Violence Housing First project, in which 13 community and tribal based agencies are providing housing support services as an integral part of their domestic violence programming.

When we first started this work, one skeptical director said to me, “since when are we in the business of housing?” I was so surprised by the question that I didn’t know what to say, but in the three years since, we have studied the research, gathered our own data, formed new partnerships, and heard from survivors—all pointing to an answer of “how could we not be?”

I asked our Domestic Violence Housing First staff to help me prepare for today, and they gave me pages and pages of statistics, citations, analysis, and survivors’ stories and quotes, most of it in eight point font. I can’t possibly summarize it all, but let me call out the items that I find most striking and that I believe illustrate how short and straight the line is between domestic violence and homelessness.

Our people are the same:

  • The 2010 Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness cites “among mothers with children experiencing homelessness, more than 80% had previously experienced domestic violence.”
  • In the HUD 2012 Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Program Point in Time count, victims of domestic violence were the largest subpopulation of homeless persons here in Washington State.

The choices are untenable:

  • Domestic violence victims who are mothers will often choose stable housing with violence over unstable housing without violence. Violence directed at children is usually what precipitates leaving the home.
  • Efforts to escape domestic violence can result in loss of job, housing, healthcare, childcare, and access to a partner’s income. In fact, many survivors become homeless either during or after a domestic violence crisis.

Housing stability is essential:

  • Domestic violence coupled with housing instability results in high rates of depression and PTSD. In the SHARE study, the mean PTSD score for the domestic violence survivor population interviewed was equal to or higher than scores of returning combat veterans.
  • Conversely, the SHARE study reported that 18 months of stable housing resulted in dramatic decreases in danger levels for women and children, reduced depression and PTSD, and improved health and quality of life. As one survivor said, “It’s not just housing; it’s a sense of identity.”

These factoids are only a sample of what we have in common. There is so much to learn about the overlapping worlds of homelessness and domestic violence, and the ways that the same people navigate our respective services. We must partner well with each other. As HEARTH Act implementation continues, we need to work together on coordinated entry, resource distribution, and policy advocacy. We can do cross-training and talk about emerging trends, such as the increasing numbers of youth and veterans that need assistance. We can help each other understand how homelessness intensifies danger, and how safety intensifies stability. We can acknowledge how rapid re-housing with individualized support and advocacy is aligned with our fundamental value of self-determination. And we should agree that the whole of our work is greater than the sum of our individual parts.

I want to close by telling you a little bit about my 16 year old son Hanson. Hanson is a creature of habit. He loves routine. During the school year, Hanson’s days go like this. His i-phone alarm goes off at 6:15, he showers and gets dressed, eats the same breakfast of eggs, grits, fruit, and a power muffin, grabs his backpack, and runs to school to practice with the jazz band. He goes to all of his classes—at least I think he does—he runs track and works out, and gets home at 5:00. He does homework, eats dinner, loads the dishwasher, watches a little TV, brushes his teeth, jams his retainer into his mouth, and goes to bed at 9:00 in the same clothes he’s been wearing all day.

That’s what he does. Every day. It’s predictable and mostly unremarkable. Except for this. To him, I’m sure it’s also inevitable. Even though I frequently lecture him about his good fortune, and not taking it for granted, and being responsible, having compassion, and paying forward—to which he replies “yup, yup, yup, yup and yup”—I think he still experiences his day, and everything in it, as inevitable.

You and I know far too many people for whom violence, homelessness, hunger, and loneliness are inevitable. Our work together is about changing that inevitability. It is about making Hanson’s day possible for everyone. It is our challenge and our promise. It is lunch. It is community. It is the boldness to imagine.

 

November 27, 2012

High school football highlight

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Did you happen to see that Ike Ditzenberger was hospitalized with severe pneumonia? For those of you who don’t know Ike, he is a local teenager here in Washington State who attends high school in Snohomish. The video of his touchdown during a high school football game a couple of years ago went viral, and he won the Seattle Children’s Inspirational Youth Award. Check out his acceptance speech—it’s well worth the 5 minutes of your time.

What caught my attention with his recent near-fatal health scare, was how his teammates have been with him every step of the way. Ike experiences the beloved community—with his team and their opponents, in his school, and with family and neighbors. Imagine if every teenager had this. Imagine.

 

October 26, 2012

Lunch at Nordstrom

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Our executive director’s  first job at a domestic violence agency was at New Beginnings in Seattle. On Wednesday, she was invited to speak at their benefit lunch at Nordstrom. Here is the speech she gave at this event.  

New Beginnings is my alma mater, and I mean that in all seriousness. While I could say, simply, that my first domestic violence “job” was at New Beginnings, what is more important to say is that my education about domestic violence, my learning about the impact of violence in the lives of women and girls, my commitment to ending violence—perhaps not in my lifetime, but most definitely in my son’s lifetime—my trust that our collective humanity will prevail, and my gratitude for those moments when survivors experience justice and freedom and hope . . . all of that is rooted for me at New Beginnings, when I was hired 30 years ago for the graveyard shift (which I believe is now called the “sunrise” shift).

To say that the times have changed, and that New Beginnings is a different organization now, would be a tremendous understatement. The stories about our early days of working 35-hour shifts in a dilapidated house are best told over cocktails, but that formative time is the backdrop of my remarks today.

I have the privilege now of the long view. In 1982, we did not imagine that domestic violence would be everyone’s business. I had no idea that, one day, I would be in the flagship Nordstrom and, I should say, wearing an outfit purchased at Nordstrom, talking with hundreds of concerned and supportive people about what WE can do to stop domestic violence. In 1982, there were no events. There was no money. There was nothing like this.

For me, the past 30 years have been both challenging and deeply rewarding.  I have witnessed the worst and best of human behavior. I carry with me the names and faces and stories of brutality, the lists of the dead, the courtroom proceedings, the fear and grief and rage. But I also carry the courage of women, the pride and love of mothers, the resilient laughter of children, and the voices of men who call for a better manhood.

I try to hold all of it. Not one and then the other. All of it. All of the time. I don’t think of it as a burden. No. I think of it as a privilege and a promise.

In this country, we now have over 3,000 organizations that provide support for domestic violence survivors. We have state and federal laws that make domestic violence a crime and that authorize important funding for shelters and other community programs. We have innovative school curricula that teach young people about healthy relationships. We have thousands of advocates and tens of thousands of allies who work hard to save lives and change communities. There is a great deal to be proud of, and yet . . .

And yet. On February 5th of this year, Josh Powell killed his 2 sons, 7-year- old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden, and then killed himself. Josh Powell’s estranged wife, Susan Cox Powell, is still missing and presumed dead.

There are certain events that stop time. When we are left with the questions of: Where did we go wrong? And how on earth could this have happened?  That was my experience on February 5th.

Josh Powell and his father, Steven Powell, had been in the news for quite some time. Josh was considered a person of interest in the disappearance of his wife, and Steven had been arrested on charges of voyeurism related to his sexual abuse of young girls and consumption of child pornography.  Charlie and Braden were in protective custody and CPS was involved.

The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) has conducted a child fatality review of the case, and recently issued its findings and recommendations. After a review of the available facts, DSHS concluded that the deaths of Charlie and Braden Powell could not have been anticipated.

I and many of my colleagues have a different conclusion. Early on, we whispered that Josh Powell had killed his wife. With his father in jail and his world falling apart, we whispered that he might kill himself and take his children with him. We whispered because we had no proof. We whispered because we don’t want to be too cynical or negative. We whispered because we understood that Josh Powell was innocent until proven guilty, and we worried that Charlie and Braden would be innocent until dead. We whispered because we might be wrong or, worse, we might be right.

Whispering is only slightly louder than the silence that we at New Beginnings 30 years ago vowed to end. Charlie and Braden Powell have reminded me of my obligation not only to pay New Beginnings back, but also to pay it forward. Charlie and Braden demand that I use my voice. And so I want to ask you for 3 things.

First, when you are asked for your contribution to New Beginnings, please dig deeper than you think you can. And after you have made your gift, tell someone about it. You don’t have to say how much. Just say that you did it and why. Not in a whisper, but with all the clarity and purpose you can muster.

Second, vote with all of your conscience. Use a Sharpie. March your ballot to the mailbox and pray for a good outcome.

And third, join me in going to the theme of this luncheon and beyond. “It’s Everyone’s Business to Stop Domestic Violence.” Make it your professional business by having good policies and practices that support and help those who experience abuse and harassment. Think about what you can do in your job, both formally and informally, to make a difference. As I was coming up the escalators, I was thinking about how much access Nordstrom has to people. And how much influence. My own experiences here of marketing, customer service, fitting, alterations, and dare I say returns, as well as the friends I have who work here, mean there are so many opportunities for what we know about domestic violence and what we know about Nordstrom to intersect. And this is true in every business and workplace.

Make it your personal business by going further. Take a chance. Take a chance with your family and with your friends. Take a chance in your neighborhood and at your school. Take a chance with your team, in your congregation, at the grocery store.

Take a chance on compassion. Take a chance on hope. Take a chance on who we really are and the power we have when we call and work and live for an end to the violence.

Don’t whisper it. Say it. Shout it. Sing it. Bring it.

A change is gonna come, yes it will.

 

March 20, 2012

I have been to India

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WSCADV executive director Nan Stoops with Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi

As you might know, I have the privilege of participating in the first cohort of the Move to End Violence, a 10-year initiative that seeks to strengthen our (U.S.) collective work to end violence against women and girls. Recently, the cohort spent 11 days in India meeting with survivors, activists, scholars, and government officials to learn about Indian social justice efforts in Delhi, Jaipur, and Kolkata. Over the next few months, I will post some of my reflections from this inspiring, unforgettable experience.

We began our journey in Delhi with a visit to Gandhi Smriti, the place where Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhiji) spent his last 144 days and the site of his assassination in 1948. We immersed ourselves in Gandhian philosophy and walked his last footprints. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim.” Witnessing the legacy of Gandhiji―his influence on everything from governmental policy to social justice organizing to informal conversation to daily prayer―adds relevance to Dr. King’s statement. The memory and will of Gandhiji are pervasive.

I was particularly struck by one of Gandhiji’s last notes: “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.”

We conceptualized the “poorest and the weakest” as “the last man, last woman, last girl.” We met some last girls. They are not so different from the last girls that live in our communities here at home. HERE.

Sitting with a last girl, the only thought I had was: there but for the grace of God. . . How can I not work for her freedom? As it will be mine too.

 

December 27, 2011

What next? Part 6

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , |
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Earlier this year, our executive director, Nan Stoops, was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Hawai’i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her assignment: outline a five-point plan for ending violence against women and girls.

Here is the final installment of her speech. (Or jump to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Point #5: Recognize the beloved community

I want to close by talking about the beloved community. I was recently re-introduced to the concept of beloved community, and I had two instant realizations: one was that beloved community describes what I have always hoped we can achieve, and the second was that the beloved community is something I have already experienced.

For me, the beloved community is characterized by integrity, respect, openness, kindness, honesty, curiosity, authenticity, compassion, patience, forgiveness, hard work, fair play, good humor, and a belief in the abundant possibilities of our humanity.

I experience the beloved community in different ways with my co-workers back home, with friends, family, my softball team, and neighbors. Almost always, food is involved. Laughter too, and, sometimes, tears. We acknowledge that we are in community with one another, we work together to sustain it, we appreciate the privileges it represents, and do not take it for granted.

At certain times, I expect to be in the presence of beloved community. But it is the unexpected moments that take my breath away. Like when the driver of elementary school bus #4 told her riders that she would drive her route for as long as she could while undergoing chemotherapy treatments for her cancer, and that night the children shaved their heads in solidarity.

Or when 16-year-old Isaiah T. read his poem entitled “It was taken some time ago” about the many losses in his life, and about staying with his homeless mother, and staying in school, and staying with the memories of all that was taken some time ago. The standing ovation Isaiah received was our wish for a beloved community for him.

Or when a 62-year-old woman marched in Seattle’s “Slutwalk” to protest against the Toronto police officer who said “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” This particular woman marched in grey pants, a red sweater, a scarf, and brown loafers. She had bought them 40 years ago to replace the same outfit that the police had bagged as evidence after she was raped. She had never planned to wear the clothes, but she just wanted to have them. As she marched, she carried a sign that read “this is what I was wearing.” Beloved community.

Each of us might think of beloved community differently. What’s important is that we know it when we see it. And that we work today as if we plan to live in it tomorrow. Beloved community. Freedom, now and always.

 

December 20, 2011

What next? Part 5

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Earlier this year, our executive director, Nan Stoops, was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Hawai’i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her assignment: outline a five-point plan for ending violence against women and girls.

Here is the next installment of her speech. (Or jump to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Point #4: Love those teenagers 

We often talk about the need to shift popular culture and change social norms. This is the language of primary prevention, and it is gaining momentum throughout the mainstream domestic violence and sexual assault field. For the past 8 years, I have watched the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and many of our colleagues on the mainland strategize about how to integrate prevention activities into our work, and we are now beginning to see these efforts take root in some of the target communities.  Almost all of it involves teen and youth engagement.

While I’ve been largely uninvolved in the CDC initiative, I have been hard at work closer to home. Unfortunately for my 15-year-old son, Hanson, and some of his friends, they too are participating. My frequent announcements of “I feel a lecture coming on” are met by loud groans and an occasional “oh god.” Video games, music, TV, certain levels of Angry Birds―nothing is held harmless. I’ve played “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto,” watched “Jersey Shore” and two of the “Jackass” movies, and danced to “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” and “Teach Me How to Dougie.” I am offended by almost all of it, but Hanson is at an age where he is regurgitating the advice he has received his whole life. Don’t reject something without trying it first. And you can’t change what you don’t know. So I study what I can, and go about my parenting in fits and starts.

There is very little polish on most of what I do as a parent. Some day in the future, Hanson and I will thoroughly evaluate my briefings on pornography, condoms, sexting, and what girls like.  Someday, I hope he will understand that my social norms work with him really boils down to a mother’s love for her son.

 

December 13, 2011

What next? Part 4

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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Earlier this year, our executive director, Nan Stoops, was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Hawai’i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her assignment: outline a five-point plan for ending violence against women and girls.

Here is the next installment of her speech. (Or jump to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Point #3: Be a good partner

We know that violence against women is everywhere. It’s in every section of the newspaper, in every profession, in every community. So, whether we pick a group, topic, or activity, there is collaborative work to be done. Until we say that we are a single issue movement, we aren’t. And just as survivors bring us the complexity of their lives, so too must we be living the complexity of ours.

I have found wonderful collaborations and opportunities in the two things I love the most: sports and money. There isn’t time for me to rattle on about this, but I work with various sports organizations on coaching and mentoring leadership, respect, strength, and community-building, and I’m hoping to begin a philanthropy project at a girls’ school in Seattle. Some of my best work happens without ever mentioning domestic violence or sexual assault.

And so I encourage you to collaborate toward your passion. Sing, dance, pray, march, read, write, and play. Work hard, find joy, and be a good partner.

 

December 6, 2011

What next? Part 3

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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Earlier this year, our executive director, Nan Stoops, was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Hawai’i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her assignment: outline a five-point plan for ending violence against women and girls.

Here is the next installment of her speech. (Or jump to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Point #2: Evolve our shelters

Emergency shelter saves lives. It’s a refuge, a resource, and a respite. It’s also costly, sometimes chaotic, and almost always, limited in the time, space, and material assistance it can provide. I don’t know if and how you experience these challenges, but I think they are so prevalent now that we must face head-on this question about how to evolve shelter services. While it is essential to keep shelters going, we need to be honest about the fact that they serve only a small percentage of survivors, they make the community dependent on US to provide support and care, and, while they may stop violence against some women, they do not end violence against all women.

In Washington, we are examining shelter in three ways. First, we are re-evaluating shelter rules, so that families have more flexibility and self-determination while in residence. Second, we are designing shelters architecturally and programmatically to support moms with parenting, to respect religious and cultural practices, and to reduce how many people have to share communal spaces―like a kitchen and a bathroom―as a part of shelter life. And third, we are helping shelter programs focus on providing what women say they need in order to be financially self-sufficient: housing, job training, childcare, in one instance, a bicycle, and in another a spare tire.

This work is confirming the thinking that brought us to it. And that is―nobody really wants to live in a shelter. So let’s find a way to preserve what does work and incorporate some other things that might work even better.

 

November 29, 2011

What next? Part 2

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Earlier this year, our executive director, Nan Stoops, was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Hawai’i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her assignment: outline a five-point plan for ending violence against women and girls.

Here is the next installment of her speech. (Or jump to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Point #1: Bring the past forward

Our work to end violence against women is rooted in the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s, in particular the efforts to secure reproductive rights. Early organizing strategies were learned from the Civil Rights, Labor, and Anti-War movements, where work was launched by personal testimony about violence, oppression, and dehumanization. Many of us remember the 60’s and 70’s as an angry, energetic, and passionate time.

I think we are in another period of unrest. While the big issues have evolved into the 21st century, they appear to be very familiar. And we have a great opportunity to bring what we’ve learned into the present with a more nimble and visionary approach to our social justice work.

We must remain vigilant about reproductive rights. There are three times as many anti-choice bills in state legislation this year as there were in 2010. Anti-choice campaigns are controlling and hateful, and shameless in their strategic manipulation of race, class, and immigration.

The wars are taking a tremendous toll on our communities. Not only are we faced with the devastating effects of war on families, we are also suffering from the economic and political fallout caused by years of troop buildup and declining morale. Women around the world continue to be both the victims and tools of men’s war against each other. I hope we are working to support the families of returning troops, and I also hope we are joining in global organizing against militarization and U.S. domination.

Civil rights for immigrants are being dismantled. The war on poverty has been completely lost. And technology has added elements of speed, invisibility, and recklessness to the exploitation and abuse of women and children.

Over the past 30 years, we have developed an increasingly complicated rhetoric about our work to end violence against women. It’s so complicated that sometimes I’m not really sure what I’m talking about. So I want to suggest that we return to plain talk. Plain talk about what happens to women. Plain talk about what we are doing and what we want in our future. We need not care about being impressive. We need only care about being heard.

 

November 22, 2011

What next? Part 1

Posted by Nan Stoops under Domestic Violence Advocacy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Earlier this year, our executive director, Nan Stoops, was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Hawai’i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her assignment: outline a five-point plan for ending violence against women and girls.

Over the next six weeks, we will post installments of her speech. After all, if we can figure out how to end this kind of violence in five steps, shouldn’t we all have a look?

I honour your gods. I drink from your well. I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place.

These words from a Susan Wright prayer express how I feel about being with you here today. I am enormously humbled to be a part of your conference, and I thank the organizing committee for the gracious invitation.

Hawai’i is like a home away from home for me. I come here as often as I am able, which, of course, is not often enough. But always, the colors, the water, the people, the food, and the pace of life remind me why it is that I am forever contemplating a one-way ticket to this place. It is here that I encounter the timelessness of friendship, renewed passion for our collective work, and an understanding of the fundamental importance of connection.

In 2008, we stayed at a house near Haleiwa where we were in the company of some very social Honu. One in particular kept my attention. She was quite large; she had one flipper that, either by birth or by injury, was ½ the size of the other; and her shell was full of scratches and chips. Each day she would arrive in the cove and slowly make her way onto the beach where we would spend the morning basking in the sun as if we were friends.

I learned early on to keep a certain distance from the Honu, and I did. I would even move away, only to be followed. We never spoke, we never shared a meal, we did not friend each other on Facebook. I wondered about her journey and how she decided when to ride the current or swim against it. I wondered if she knew when she was being tossed against the rocks. I wondered if she had a plan when she left and didn’t return.

I have wondered the same things about so many women I’ve encountered. I can’t begin to count them, but I remember many of their names, their faces, their children, and the stories they told. Some are surely dead. And some are surely free.

I am here today, talking with you, because of them. Public speaking is not the comfort zone of introverts like me. But I am indebted to a long line of survivors who have filled my life with theirs. They are my past that informs my present and gives shape to my hope for the future. For me, they are the Mo’o.

I want you to know that I love being able to do the work I do. I see it as a blessing, a privilege, and a chance to participate in something really, really big. I have been fortunate to work with a Who’s Who of advocates and activists all around the country, and to witness the visionary organizing that is happening in other parts of the world.

I believe we are at a critical juncture in our anti-violence, social justice work. We now have state and federal laws that criminalize rape, domestic violence, incest, and trafficking, and that authorize funding for a vast network of shelter, treatment, and advocacy services.

We understand how domestic violence intersects with numerous social and community issues―homelessness, poverty, juvenile delinquency, chemical dependency and substance abuse, differential access to education, healthcare, and public benefits, immigration, sovereignty, global political unrest, and war.

We are paying more attention to what many of us call violence in the margins. We know that the experience of gender violence and the response to it is affected by a host of other factors, like race, ethnicity, class, status, age, sexual orientation, physical and cognitive ability, religion, culture, first language, and so on.

Our work to end violence against women is now quite complex. When I look back over my own 30 years of advocacy, I am both enormously proud of what we have accomplished, and somewhat concerned about where we are headed. In my home state ofWashington, I am referred to as a “movement historian,” and advocates often ask me if I get tired of doing the work. Now once I get over the shock of being considered old enough to be a historian, I always reply, and I mean this, “of course, I get worn out and worn down, but we are in a very challenging and exciting time right now, and I think a fresher and better version of ourselves is going to emerge. I want to see it and I want to be a part of it.”

Here’s the deal. We have been in the anti-violence business for more than 40 years. Many of us talk about being a full generation into the work and, in fact, we see every day what that means. We have women and men who, as children, lived with their mothers in shelter and now as adults, are again calling us for help. We have activists who were raised by activists, young people who now join or replace their parents in our workforce. Some of us work alongside four generations of people, which means that the workplace is equally complicated and dynamic. We welcome new, diverse, energetic voices and ideas at the same time that we mourn the growing loss of our earliest leaders, founders, mothers, and warriors.

When I think about all that we have learned over the decades, and all of the growth and progress and change, what I always come back to is that which has stayed the same. And perhaps the best way for me to describe it is to reflect on my own experience as a fledgling advocate in 1981. I remember being oddly passionate and irritable. I had the textbook answer to the question “Why does she stay?” But whenever I was asked that, I would say, “Because she can’t leave. And you should be asking me ‘Why does he batter?’ The answer to that is ‘Because it works and he can.’ ”

To this day, even though I am capable of articulating a more sophisticated and nuanced response, I still often rely on “she can’t/it works/he can.” My participation in a full generation of anti-violence work has landed me, in some ways, very close to where I began, and this simple fact is what guides my hope for our collective future.

I want to offer the Nan Stoops five-point plan for ending male violence against women. It isn’t written down anywhere, except here. And this is the first time I’ve said it out loud. It’s in no particular order, and it may not even make sense, depending on what you do, with whom, and to what end. However, what I hope comes through is the importance of thinking about the conditions that allow, encourage, and perpetuate violence and the opportunity and responsibility we have to do work that matters.

Jump to: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

 

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