ENDING INTRA-FAMILIAL VIOLENCE:
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

The Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence is committed to community organizing with the goal of ending domestic violence and ensuring community accountability.  We view it both as a philosophy and a strategy, embedded in a social justice framework that emphasizes gender equity.  Organizing in our immigrant communities involves an intuitive and complex bi-cultural understanding and sensitivity to intra-ethnic, generational, class and regional differences. 

GOALS

• Raising awareness about the corrosive effects of domestic violence on individual, familial, and community strength.
• Empowering communities to frame the issues and decide on strategies.
• Placing the leadership of women, girls, youth, and other disenfranchised voices- disabled, queer, rural, monolingual women - at the center.
• Addressing the root causes of violence, the sustained devaluation of women, the impunity of abusers, and community complicity.
• Organizing cultural transformation by emphasizing individual and community accountability, and by establishing new social norms.

HOW CAN I START ORGANIZING IN MY COMMUNITY?

We offer some general guidelines and resources for mobilizing; knowing of course that strategies will vary depending on the issues, recent events and communities involved. 

Planning your outreach

• Who is at the table? Make this as inclusive a process as possible: consider the different constituencies that need to be represented and their level of awareness about the issues.  If there has been an incident, identify family/friends, meet with them and listen to their needs. Decide if you want to start with a small group and then expand it or start with a large group that can later form into sub-committees.
• Networks Identify existing support networks; allies; who else needs to be there, e.g., members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community, rural women, other ethnic groups, etc.  Network with individuals who are already working on the issue.
• Knowing the players Identify members of the community that might be difficult to work with; existing and potential leaders; and what community alliances or divisions they represent.
• Empowerment philosophies and strategies are critical, cultivate them in explicit and implicit way.  Work with existing leaders, facilitate new ones.

Researching and defining issues

• Starting where the people are It is crucial to engage community members in conversations about how they feel regarding the issue or event at hand; listening to different voices; ensuring that people feel respected.
• Framing issues, identifying goals How can we as organizers and members of the community frame the issue so that we get the optimum level of involvement e.g., making the shift from victim blaming to perpetrator accountability.  Establish a process for identifying goals collectively.
• Learning from others Find out what approaches and organizing strategies other ethnic communities have used; borrow from their successes and learn from their challenges.
• Assessing impactIf the organizing is around a recent incident, assess the impact on people close to the victim; if it is around an issue, assess its effects on community institutions and members. 
• Be prepared for difficult discussions or conflicts.  Attitudes like victim-blaming and opinions like defending a high-profile abuser can surface (after a domestic violence related homicide for example); anticipate and plan how to address conflicts - perhaps even using them to increase awareness.

Organizing

• Selecting strategies What are the possible strategies and which ones will work?  What are the positives and negatives of selecting a certain strategy?
• Conduct trainings designed for the entire community, or because of the sensitive nature of a topic, start with smaller groups.
• Optimize community involvement by including a broad group of people in your campaign e.g., hairdressers or beauty salon staff, religious institutions, ESL classes, health clinics, etc.
• Sharing responsibilities and dividing tasks between members of the planning group creates solidarity and efficiency, and facilitates learning as members commit to an action, whether it to organize a vigil or send e-mail messages.

Examples

• Conduct a series of educational workshops where members of the community come together e.g., neighbor hood center, mosque, health clinic
• Make a point to talk about issues at gatherings with family and friends.
• Bring up the issue with organizations that do not typically get involved with domestic violence, e.g., the consulate general's office, or the ethnic press
• Conduct a demonstration or a vigil: this is effective after a well-publicized incident in building a community awareness campaign and at the same time getting the media involved.
• Hold showings of documentary videos or films that raise issues - directly or indirectly - about domestic violence at your local community center followed by a debriefing.

If you need assistance organizing in your community or would like to share strategies that have worked please email our Community Development Program Coordinator apidvinstitute@apiahf.org

RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Organizations, list-serves, printed materials

Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence

A national network of advocates, community members; professionals from health, mental health, law, education, and social services; scholars; researchers; and activists from public policy, community organizations, youth programs, immigrant's rights networks and other social justice organizations

• List-serve: to subscribe apidv-join@apiahfelist.org
  
• Technical Assistance: contact apidvinstitute@apiahf.org

Breakthrough
Breakthrough uses education and popular culture to promote public awareness and dialogue about human rights and social justice. The website hosts discussion groups, multimedia educational materials for schools, colleges, neighborhoods and uses mass media in partnership with the creative world to create art, radio, music, and television programming for social change.  www.breakthrough.tv

Community Builders
This site gives step-by-step instructions on community building; using and interpreting statistics; group work techniques; managing conflicts and partnerships with community and business. New South Wales, Australia. http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/building_stronger/ webkeeper@communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au

Family Violence Prevention Fund/ Battered Immigrant Women's Project
A web page devoted to issues affecting immigrant battered women in the United States, includes tips on advocacy, services and public policy.   Includes a link to the National Network to End Violence Against Immigrant Women.  www.endabuse.org/programs/immigrant/

FIVERS List
An email discussion list that focuses on all aspects of intimate abuse and examines them from a feminist perspective.  fivers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
A national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.  Organizing kit for activists available.  www.incite-national.org/involve/ready.html

Lotus Project: Domestic Violence Prevention in Asian American Communities
This manual presents strategies for building awareness and preventing violence against women in API communities.  It provides a community education curriculum packet in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and English; presentations on same sex domestic violence; youth domestic violence; and media advocacy.  Written and translated by Asian Women's Shelter, San Francisco, CA. Copies available from the Institute apidvinst@apaihf.org

Multilingual Access Model: A Model for Outreach and Services in Non-English Speaking Communities
This monograph documents the innovative efforts of Asian Women's Shelter, San Francisco, to integrate bilingual and multilingual volunteers in their work with battered women and their children from diverse Asian and Pacific Islander communities.  Copies available from National Resource Center (800) 537-2238 www.vawnet.org/NRCDVPublications/TAPE/Papers/NRC_MLAM-full.php

National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
Video listings for advocates and others working to end domestic violence, to be used in educational programming, training, and service provision. http://www.vawnet.org/NRCDVPublications/TAPE/OtherResources/NRC_Videolist.php

Net Action
Net Action promotes the use of the Internet to mobilize grassroots actions, and to educate the public and policy makers about technology policy.  To subscribe to their online newsletter, Net Action News, contact majordomo@netaction.org.  www.netaction.org 

Organizing a Community-Based Response to Domestic Violence: The Filipino Experience
Focusing on the Filipino community in the San Francisco Bay Area, this publication explores the process of organizing communities of color against domestic violence. Topics include key elements to effective community organizing, workshop facilitation conference planning and working with the media. Family Violence Prevention Fund, San Francisco, CA 415.252.8089 www.store.yahoo.com/fvpfstore/immigrantwomen.html

Organizing with Passion
Domestic Violence Organizing Strategies: Building Relationships of Trust with Compassion, Honesty and Creativity.   This manual describes community organizing, outreach, leadership development, community attitudes, organizer strategies.  It provides examples of organizing in Samoan, Cambodian, Latino, Cheyenne, Filipino, and rural communities.  By the Asian and Pacific Islander Women & Family Safety Center, Seattle, WA, 206-467-9976 apiwfsc@vista.com

Raising Our Voices: Queer Asian Women's Response to Relationship Violence
A booklet based on the results of focus groups with Queer Asian immigrant women of different backgrounds with the goal of integrating the communities' needs and the barriers to accessing services. A joint project of Queer Asian Women's Services (QAWS) of Asian Women's Shelter and Family Violence Prevention Fund 415.252.8089 www.store.yahoo.com/fvpfstore/immigrantwomen.html

Safe Network
Safe Network provides training and technical support to domestic violence agencies and advocates in California; and information that can be used for community organizing strategies.  To subscribe to their list-serve, SNTalk, go to http://www.safenetwork.net/sntalk.cfm; for information www.safenetwork.net

Silence Speaks
Silence Speaks integrates aspects of creative writing, oral history, art and narrative therapy, facilitative filmmaking, and digital media manipulation to assist people in telling stories as short digital videos. Also engages storytellers and grass root activists to conduct community screenings as a way of deepening public understanding of violence and its impact on communities. www.silencespeaks.org/resources.html

Sista II Sista
Created by a small group of working class women in their early 20's. Their goal is to promote holistic development of their constituents and inspire them to take strong leadership roles in their local communities to bring about concrete social and political change.  One of their core programs, the Freedom School for Young Women of Color, focuses on the intellectual, creative, and physical development of young (ages 13-19) women of color in Brooklyn.  (718) 366-2450 info@sistaiisista.org www.sistaiisista.org 

Transforming Communities
TC seeks to change the prevailing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that support violence against women as a social and individual norm.  It supports residents to take action on community issues such as media violence, public accountability for batterers, etc.  TC provides leadership, training, technical assistance and resource materials to support the expansion of domestic violence prevention efforts.  Disseminates best practices, development of innovative campaign materials, an evaluation handbook on domestic violence activism.  Marin Abused Women's Services, www.transformcommunities.org, admin@transfomcommunities.org

Third World Majority
A multimedia training and production resource center dedicated to the pursuit of social and economic justice by engaging grassroots activists and artists in digital storytelling workshops, TWM provides an important forum in which people struggling with personal and social issues are able to tell their truths in their own voices.  www.cultureisaweapon.org

(Un) heard Voices: Domestic Violence in the Asian American Community
This booklet examines common cultural attitudes and beliefs on domestic violence among the Asian immigrant community, developed from a series of focus groups. A joint project of Asian Women's Shelter, Manavi and Family Violence Prevention Fund 415.252.8089 www.store.yahoo.com/fvpfstore/immigrantwomen.html

Women of Color Resource Center
WCRC is an education, community action, and resource center working on social justice issues that affect women of color. It develops and distributes educational and resource information about women of color that support, sustain, and advance social justice movements.  info@coloredgirls.org, www.coloredgirls.org

Women Make Movies
A multi-cultural, multi-racial media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women.  info@wmm.com, www.wmm.com

Prints and Audio Visual Materials
Additional materials are listed under the section on Domestic Violence in Specific Ethnic Communities

A Life Without Fear
This docu-drama portrays the struggles facing a South Asian woman as she tries to overcome the violence in her life. It also examines the ways in which our families, our communities, and society's strict roles for women perpetuate abuse in women's lives.  By Sakhi for South Asian Women,
New York, sakhiny@aol.com

Children We Sacrifice, The
This film is a call to stop sacrificing South Asian girls to predators within families by keeping silent about incest. The video celebrates the resilience of women who defy social pressure to keep silent. It makes visible the ways in which families prioritize family harmony, honor and duty over accountability and pursuit of justice for victims.  By Grace Poore, Shakti Productions www.shaktiproductions.net/isa_wwis.html, shaktivideo@aol.com

City of Shelter: A Community Response to Domestic Violence
Designed to help viewers understand how the dynamics of domestic violence in the context of how the community as a whole responds to victims of abuse and batterers, and the steps it can take to end domestic violence.  Accompanied by a Facilitators Guide.  www.cityofshelter.org

Creating Community Change
Sakhi's newest video explores the legal and community barriers blocking survivors from pursuing lives free of violence. The film includes survivor stories, an in-depth examination of the importance of accurate court interpretation, and the role of the commuity in creating healthy families.
sakhiny@aol.com

Empowering South Asian Women
This mini-documentary on Sakhi's work describes our history, the core program areas, and the vision behind Sakhi's work. The video contains heart-rending stories from survivors about their journeys to safety. By Sakhi for South Asian Women, New York, sakhiny@aol.com

Enemy On The Inside: Who Holds You Accountable?
Presents cross-racial and cross-cultural perspectives on what influences people to sexually gratify themselves with children.  It explores if incestuous sexual abuse occurs because of socialization more so than psychopathology, making this abuse "more the norm" than an aberration, and more widespread than gets reported.  By Grace Poore, Shakti Productions,  www.shaktiproductions.net

For Straights Only
Told from the perspective of a straight sister about her gay brother, this film explores the social and familial prejudices faced by gay and lesbian South Asians. By Vismita Gupta-Smith Futprintz@aol.com

Mann Ke Manjeere (Rhythms of the Mind)
A music video depicting the exuberant journey of a South Asian woman who leaves an abusive marriage and becomes a truck driver.  By Breakthrough www.breakthrough.tv

New Americans, The
A miniseries that looks intimately at the American dream through the eyes of immigrants and refugees from Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, the West Bank, Mexico and Vietnam.  It captures the breadth and scope of immigrants' and refugees' everyday lives.  www.pbs.org/pov/tvraceinitiative.  For training and technical support to organize The New Americans Community Campaign contact Active Voice inquiries@activevoice.net 

Rewriting the Script: A love letter to our families
This documentary explores the loves, lives and sexualities of Queer South Asians and their families of origin.  Parents, siblings and family members talk about the struggle to re-write and redefine their relationship.  By South Asian Video Project Collective. For rentals: Vtape www.vtape.org.  Home Sales: Toronto Women's Bookstore www.womensbookstore.com. 

Runaway
A documentary about a group of young runaway girls who are taken to a women's shelter in Tehran, Iran. The film focuses on the sufferings of young girls who struggle to free themselves from the tyrannical and abusive power of their families, mainly their fathers, brothers, and stepfathers.  By Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini.  Distributor: Women Make Movies http://www.wmm.com/girlsproject/c550.htm, info@wmm.com

Voices Heard Sisters Unseen
By using performance art, poetry, and narrative montage this film serves as a political documentary with an art feel. It challenges attitudes in the South Asian community about what constitutes domestic violence and confronts the conventional understanding of who a battered woman "really" is.  It uses a feminist analysis on the mistreatment of battered women by the courts and social services, especially those that are disabled, lesbians, prostitutes, HIV-positive, or without official immigration status.  By Grace Poore, Shakti Productions, www.shaktiproductions.net/isa_wwis.html, shaktivideo@aol.com

Wave After Wave: Domestic Violence in the Korean American Community
This film interweaves the stories of three generations of Korean/Korean American women: one who still lives with her husband even after decades of verbal and physical abuse, one who is divorcing a husband who has beaten her children for years, and one who has begun a new life a few years after her marriage to a man who raped and abused her.  By Jisu Kim kimjisu02@yahoo.com

Well Founded Fear
The film is about political asylum in the United States - about who deserves it, and who decides.  It provides an intimate, close-up view of what goes on behind the electronic doors of the Asylum Office. By Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini.  www.wellfoundedfear.org

Where My Girls At
A film by Desi Girls on Da Rise, a young woman's leadership and organizing program at South Asian Youth Action, New York.  Contact: SAYA 718.651.3484 saya@saya.org, www.saya.org

Young Asianz Rising! Breaking Down Violence against Women
Nine youth come together to work in front of and behind the cameras to explore Asian/Pacific Islander perspectives on domestic violence, dating violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. By the Asian Domestic Violence Prevention Collaborative, a partnership between Nihonmachi Legal Outreach, San Francisco and Narika, Berkeley. Distributed by NAATA: National Asian American Telecommunications Association www.asianamericanmedia.org, distribution@asianamericanmedia.org

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