As an intern at Third Wave, I have been working on a project that involves reading through all the end of year reports from our 2010 grant partners (reporting on their work throughout 2011). I am taking this opportunity to reflect on some of the innovative approaches of Third Wave grant partners, some of the challenges grant partners face head-on, and what makes Third Wave’s relationship to grant partners so unique and especially catalyzing.

First, let me give you snapshots of four groups that really jumped out at me (not because they are any more special than the other groups, but because their work resonated with me, personally):

St. James Infirmary is an organization providing services to sex workers in the San Francisco area. I was impressed with their commitment to providing high quality primary care, reproductive healthcare, gender transitioning, HIV/STI/TB/Hepatitis testing, STI treatments and vaccines, counseling, syringe access & disposal services, support groups & trainings, and especially with their effort to attack the stigma surrounding sex work. They launched a bold media campaign, “Someone You Know is a Sex Worker,” which ran on the sides of public buses. It showed San Francisco that sex workers are everyday people whose rights are human rights, and that sex workers do real work and deserve labor rights.

Brown Boi Project’s approach toward Gender Justice from a “masculine-of-center” position seems, to me, truly revolutionary: “We work for Gender Justice by re-envisioning the power imbalance between traditional notions of masculinity and femininity. We hold institutional systems, other masculine people, and ourselves accountable for its accompanying privileges. We draw on a gender inclusive framework that shapes non-oppressive masculinity rooted in honor, community, and empowerment of feminine identified people, especially women and girls.”(2010 report) In addition to shifting the conversation, they created a health guide, “Freeing Ourselves,” which has been presented in numerous venues and distributed across the country, as well as in Israel, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Canada, and the Ivory Coast. In an effort to cultivate this movement and draw upon the experiences of masculine-of-center young people, BBP provided leadership training to 46 young Brown Bois from all across the country in 2011.

Justice Now is a human rights organization striving for a world without prisons, and working to end gendered violence within the prison system. In particular, they are doing amazing work in collecting stories and testimonies to bring to light forced sterilization within prisons, and are linking this to historical patterns of eugenics in this country. I found the two interviews and other short pieces produced by Justice Now and uploaded to Vimeo to be very powerful.  But I am equally impressed with the radically grassroots nature of their organization: their volunteers are all people in prison documenting abuse and organizing from within, and the majority of their board of directors is currently imprisoned or recently released.

Young Women’s Empowerment Project is run by and for girls (including trans girls!) who are involved in the street economy. They recently carried out a participatory action research project called “Girls Do What We Have to Do to Survive,” which found that girls and queer youth involved in the sex trade are systematically denied help from those institutions meant to serve and protect them (police, health services, social services, etc.). The research also found that this institutional violence towards street youth compounds their experiences of individual violence, wounding them even more. One of the outcomes of this research was the creation of a “Street Youth Bill of Rights,” which YWEP is pushing to have adopted by as many service providers as possible. Since, as YWEP also discovered, “resilience is the stepping stone to resistance”(2010 report), they are doing their best to take care of themselves. YWEP declares: “For young people in the sex trade in Chicago, this campaign is not solely about access to services but is about gaining the power and skills to be able to name and change the circumstances that define our lives. Social justice for girls and young women in the sex trade means having the power to make all of the decisions about our own bodies and lives all the time.”(2010 report)

These four groups, as well as the rest of Third Wave’s grant partners, are at the front lines of gender justice work.  They are attacking structures of oppression and violence at their very base, fighting to bring about a systematic change.  Next week I will explore some of the challenges Third Wave’s grant partners face in the course of this fight.

DHS’ DECISION TO UNILATERALLY MOVE FORWARD WITH SECURE COMMUNITIES PUTS WOMEN IN DANGER

Immigrant Rights and Women’s Rights Groups Denounce the Decision Nationwide

On August 5th, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would unilaterally terminate all contracts with states and localities in an attempt to further implement the “Secure Communities” program nationwide, despite calls for the agency to suspend the program. Immigrant rights and women’s rights organizations strongly oppose this unilateral decision by DHS, before the local hearings on Secure Communities’ effects have even taken place. DHS’ announcement demonstrates that the hearings are a farce, and that DHS is determined to implement Secure Communities, regardless of public opposition or its demonstrated impact on survivors of crime. We continue to oppose Secure Communities and any law that encourages ICE to transfer its responsibility to local law enforcement. Secure Communities undermines local law enforcement’s commitment to community policing, which puts immigrant women, their families, and their communities in danger.

Since its introduction, the “Secure Communities” (abbreviated “S-Comm”) program has been opposed by local and state civic leaders, elected officials, law enforcement agents, religious leaders, and human rights advocates. S-Comm forces local law enforcement agents to act as an arm of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by detaining persons who are arrested, but not charged with a crime, so that they can be processed for deportation. Since implementation began, more than one million people have been deported under S-Comm, the vast majority of whom have no criminal history, despite DHS’ claims that the program targets individuals who are dangers to society. Instead, the program promotes racial profiling, destroys families, and undermines community relations with police that are essential to public safety. Continued ambiguity on the part of DHS regarding S-Comm has led to the Office of the Inspector General to initiate an audit into this controversial program.

S-Comm puts survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault at increased risk. It is threatening the progress our country has made in the last three decades to bring violence against women out from behind closed doors by making women afraid to call the police for help, for fear of arrest and deportation if they are undocumented. The program encourages violence against women and destroys the community trust in law enforcement that is necessary for safe neighborhoods for all members of a community, regardless of immigration status.

Immigrant women are increasingly breadwinners and often provide more stability for their family. Yet they are criminalized, and sometimes brutalized, for trying to keep families safe and healthy. Immigrant mothers, who are simply working to make ends meet, are bearing the brunt of these anti-immigrant policies. They risk being arrested for walking their kids to school, they must worry about who will provide care for their children if they are suddenly detained or deported, and when families are indeed separated by deportation, the well-documented psychological effects on both parents and children continue to devastate families for years.

Immigrant communities and women’s rights advocates are coming together to oppose the deeply problematic “Secure Communities” program. We pledge to speak out during DHS community hearings on S-Comm, and at other local, state and national public events. We urge local and state leaders to join us in declaring S-Comms unsafe for women and children.

ASISTA Immigration Assistance
Break the Chain Campaign
Casa de Esperanza
National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
National Day Laborers Organizing Network
National Domestic Workers Alliance
National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
Opportunity Agenda
Rights Working Group
STITCH
Third Wave Foundation

Earlier this May in New York, activists working to end mass incarceration in the United States organized “The New Jim Crow,” a conference inspired by the work of legal scholar Michelle Alexander.

In this clip from the conference, Alexander argues that racism has been given cover to operate within the supposedly colorblind criminal legal system. Through the disproportionate enforcement of loitering and drug laws in communities of color, the prison population has exploded. As a result, mass incarceration has systematically established a disenfranchised caste of young and low-income people of color, dividing families, entrenching stigma against formerly incarcerated people, and moving resources to the prison system and out of communities already experiencing profound divestment.

…women, men and transgender people who are targeted in anti-prostitution street sweeps and internet stings may be charged with breaking laws against solicitation, but not all sex workers face the consequences of the law equally. Those who can afford to find clients away from the street, who have a mobile phone or computer access, are less likely to interact with the police. For those who are arrested, if they are in possession of condoms, these may be confiscated and used to build a case for prostitution against them. False arrest – sometimes, simply for walking in an area known for prostitution – is not uncommon, particularly for young people, people of colour, LGBTQ people and people perceived as gender nonconforming. In this fashion, discrimination and economics regulate the sex trade in tandem with the legal system.

We know that each of our experiences of the sex trades are unique, and there are no one-size fits all solutions. We are members of families and communities struggling to survive and make the best possible choices given the options available to us. For many of us, the truth about the sex trade is somewhere between a completely empowered experience of the sex trade, which requires only decriminalization to eliminate harms, and a completely harmful experience of the sex trade which negatively presumes all of us to be victims in need of “rescue.”

In response to increased media and philanthropic attention on young people in the sex trade, a collective of radical women of color, queer people of color, and Indigenous people who identify as people in the sex trades, affiliated with INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, are working to center the voices of young people in the sex trades in conversations about policy reform that directly impacts their lives. You can read their statement (excerpted above) in full on the INCITE! blog.

Over at Feministing, Jos Truit has a powerful post giving some context and background to how social justice movements can meaningfully include young people in the sex trade.

Third Wave has also released a statement (in September 2010) on why we prioritize the expertise of young people in the sex trade.

Khmer Girls in Action (KGA) empowers young women of Cambodian and Southeast Asian descent in Long Beach, California to be leaders within the reproductive justice movement. KGA’s members learn the necessary educational tools and organizing skills to create positive change in their communities, including participatory research as a tool for organizing and action.

This Spring, KGA is kicking off a listening campaign to share the results of their first Participatory Action Research project on immigrant and refugee rights, reproductive justice, health, and safety. The youth members of KGA designed the study and carried out the research, collecting findings related to how young people in the Khmer community in Long Beach face harassment and discrimination, and how they are taking leadership to change it.

Check out their survey and share their video PSA.

Louisiana’s SCAN statute increases existing penalties on soliciting oral or anal sex in exchange for money, and classifies them as a serious sex crime. As a result, a SCAN conviction forces women to register as sex offenders, putting those women at risk for the loss of their jobs, children, and homes, as well as other forms of harassment and violence. Additionally, the people most likely to be charged under the SCAN statute are women engaged in survival sex and street economies — low income women, women of color, and transgender women.

Women With A Vision, the New Orleans based advocates for women’s reproductive and sexual health and justice and a recent Third Wave grant partner, have been working to educate the public about the effects of SCAN on their communities:

“Since our founding in 1991, Women With A Vision has been standing with the women of New Orleans no questions asked. We’ve been let into worlds that few others see, and trusted with stories that traditional public health workers rarely, if ever, hear. But little could have prepared us for that day when ‘J’ arrived at one of our Our Space events. Barely saying hello, she pulled out her photo I.D. card, which read ‘SEX OFFENDER’ in block red letters. She is only 23 years old, and one month clean from a heroin addiction; the ‘sex offender’ label will remain on her ID until she turns 48.” - Women With A Vision, “No Justice“

This week, supported by Women With A Vision and their “No Justice” campaign, the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a Federal civil rights suit challenging the constitutionality of the SCAN statute. Women With A Vision’s executive director, Deon Haywood, said in support of this suit:

“I work with the people directly affected by this statute every day: the toll it takes is devastating. Many of these women are survivors of rape and domestic violence themselves, many have struggled with addiction and poverty, yet they are being treated as predators.What this law does is completely disconnect them from our community and from what remains of a social safety net, making it impossible for them to recognize and develop their goals and dreams.”

We’ll be following the developments in this case closely and letting you know ways you can support Women With A Vision to protect the rights and freedom of low-income women, women of color, and transgender women. Their policy brief “Just A Talking Crime” was released this week.

At The Root La’Tasha Mayes, executive director of Third Wave grant partner New Voices Pittsburgh, breaks down the ways our beliefs around abortion go beyond the oppositional frame of “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice:

La’Tasha Mayes, executive director of the activist group New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice, says that frequent descriptions of African Americans as conservative and pro-life are an overgeneralization. She argues that it’s time the country moved beyond the pro-life versus pro-choice binary of the abortion debate.

“It’s a limiting concept that says the choices that black women make are black and white. It’s not that simple,” Mayes told The Root, adding that the broader reproductive-justice movement — for access to health insurance, family-planning services and abortion — includes women with nuanced positions who identify as both pro-life and pro-choice.

“I’ve learned that it’s about people’s individual experiences,” she says. “Regardless of her politics and religion, if a woman does not want to have a child, she will not have a child. But the message from opponents of abortion is that we can’t be trusted to make these decisions for ourselves and our families. They want to shame black women for the choices we have to make, mostly out of survival.”

Mayes rejects the idea that black women are being targeted for abortion, arguing that the conversation lacks a full sense of perspective. “The leap from abortion to black genocide is missing many steps in between,” she says. “We can’t look at abortion in isolation, as if it’s a choice made independently from the context in which black women live.

“After years of doing this work, I’ve realized that abortion becomes a choice for women when they have been socially, economically and politically marginalized in complex systems of oppression,” she continues. “If you’re not talking about race, class, sex and gender issues before you start talking about abortion, then you’re missing the larger context.”

If passed, HR3 would put the burden on survivors of sexual assault to prove their rape was “forcible” in order to qualify for any public assistance for abortion. As Mother Jones reported last week, this Republican plan to redefine rape isn’t just a hateful attack on survivors of violence. It marks a shift in anti-abortion tactics with devastating implications:

“Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used. The Smith bill represents a frontal attack on these long-standing exceptions.”

So in addition to rolling back almost all of the (very few) exceptions for Federal funding of abortion, House Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) are attempting to redefine rape in order to restrict abortion access.

Reproductive justice activists have long recognized that sexual violence and abortion access are deeply connected. As a matter of body autonomy, we all should have the power to decide when we want to have sex and when to have children.

These attempts to regulate reproductive and sexual health access out of existence aren’t just an attack on our rights. They are a form of institutional violence, and they disproportionately impact people of color, low income people, and young women, transgender and gender nonconforming youth.

HR3 has 173 co-sponsors. You can find out if your Congressional rep has backed HR3, and give them a call to let them know how HR3 will impact you and your community if it passes. Right now, HR3 is sitting in committee — there’s still time to have your voice heard. Once you’ve made your call, drop us a comment here, or chime in on #DearJohn on Twitter.

The most recent installment on this topic is an interview with Loretta Ross from SisterSong and Lynn Paltrow from National Advocates for Pregnant Women about the so-called “Freedom Rides” against abortion. Take a look:

More GRITtv

One of our amazing grant partners, SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW has been organizing in the face of these Freedom Rides which intentionally use the language of racism and  Civil Rights to increase the criminalization of black women. Read more about what SPARK’s been up to here!