Have any of you ever thought what it would take to completely end sexual violence? If someone asked you what it would take or what the world would look like after, how would you respond? Asking these questions and working towards the answers is exactly the work of the three neighborhood based coalitions that comprise Project Envision. Each coalition works in concert with the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, local rape crisis programs and community activists passionate about ending sexual violence.

Of course the need for crisis and counseling services for survivors of sexual violence and intimate partner violence still exists. Project Envision’s work comes out of a lack of work towards primary prevention, that is a change is the social conditions that permit and promote sexual violence. To this end each coalition, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and the South Bronx, conducted a participatory action research study to determine what folks in their neighborhood thought would be the most effective route to prevention. For their results please click here.

Despite the need for prevention, as is made especially clear by recent findings that the New York City police department regularly downgrading charges of sexual violence, the New York City Council elected to cut prevention services in their budget for fiscal year 2010 -11. Although I agree that the burden for supporting such programming should not fall solely on a city council, this does send the message that programming aimed at larger social change is not as important as programs for those who have already experienced violence. Should we not all be invested in working towards a world in which violence is not as accepted in the first place.

If you would like to find out more about Project Envision, their history as well as present and future work please attend the Lower East Side coalition’s open house this Thursday from 5:30 – 7:30 at the 6th Street Community Center. Further, to support the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault in the wake of City Council budget cuts please go here.

Rally in Union Square, starts at Noon, sponsored by the May 1 coalition

Rally and March in Foley Square (near City Hall), starts at 11 am, sponsored by the New York Immigration Coalition, The Alliance for Labor & Immigrant Rights & Jobs for All

And for those of you who can’t make it to these rallies or aren’t in NYC, please write to Gov. Jan Brewer here to express your opposition to SB 1070.

Since this law was passed I have read a number of moving blog posts, but one I would most highly recommend is over at the INCITE!blog, entitled “Confonting Citizenship in Sexual Assault.” (They have posted a trigger warning,  so keep that in mind before clicking the link.) As someone whose professional work focuses on sexual violence and intimate partner violence, my mind immediately went to the detrimental effect this policy will have upon immigrant people who are harmed by intimate partner violence and/or sexual violence. This post really highlights for me one of the numerous ways that immigration issues and feminism are linked.

The auction helps provide much needed scholarships for young rock stars to attend camp. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $75 for a VIP Ticket that includes pre auction reception with Kathleen Hanna and Kaki King, plus complimentary hors d’oevres & cocktails from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, gift bags, & mini drum lessons! The event will be hosted by Mr. Murray Hill with performances by Kaki King, Saffire and Erin McKeown. Come support!

Disturbing (yet not entirely surprising) information about juvenile detention in NYS started coming to my attention in my professional life. By chance I’ve also been reading Victoria Law’s Resistance Behind Bars which turned out to be key in keeping a radical feminist perspective while researching juvenile justice in the context of a liberal work setting. Law reminds the reader at the beginning of Resistance that she is not advocating for a more humane prison system, but rather to “strive for a better world – one in which prison’s are obsolete.” I would tend to agree that the prison system for adults and juveniles cannot simply be reformed into a slightly better place. I also believe that the struggle for some changes which can prevent the most egregious violations of human rights, such as the shackling of birthing women’s legs and the level of physical restraint which lead to the death of 15 year old Darryl Thompson at Tryon Boys Residential Center in November 2006, are crucial to advocate for.

The merger of the DJJ into ACS, which is the most recent reform to the juvenile justice system and possibly the first of many to come in the near future, is aimed at adding a therapeutic focus for juvenile detainees rather than having a city agency whose central aim is to manage detention. This merger does have some degree of logic considering a disproportionate number of young detainees have had contact with children’s services prior to detention. Thus the merger will streamline agencies and institutions that young people and their families must navigate Further, ACS will be recommending community based alternative programs to judges in an effort to reduce the population of young people in detention. However this merger seems to lack an explicit plan for prevention of conditions that lead young people to court involvement. Thus the question remains, “how can we rehabilitate individual youth?”, rather than “how can we create social change that will support positive youth development while deconstructing the stereotype of young people of color as delinquent?” And back to Law’s question, how can we make prisons obsolete?

The focus of discussions about juvenile justice often focus on the experiences of young men. Although young women represent a smaller amount of the population in juvenile detention centers – in 2008 there were 243 young women admitted to placement out of a population of 1,632 (Citizen’s Committee for Children report, December 2009) – their experiences cannot be assumed to be represented by stories of what their male counterparts are experiencing. Because the stereotype of juvenile delinquents is so centered around young men, visibility of young women in detention is reduced. This is easily seen in coverage of abuses of young people in the media. Despite the nearly equal amount of examples in the DOJ report of abuses that young men and women experience in detention, news articles focus on young men. For instance a recent article in New York magazine was entitled “The Lost Boys of Tryon.” The article does include one example of a young female detainee being sexually abused and becoming pregnant as a result. Yet a story of one young woman experiencing sexual abuse in detention does little to speak to the systemic problem of sexual abuse within prisons. Nor is there representation of the results that imprisonment can have to exacerbate trauma experienced before incarceration. This is of particular importance when considering that young women experience abuse at higher rates than young men. Because sexual abuse takes power away from the victim/survivor, the experience of imprisonment, in which autonomy is taken so completely, may be triggering in ways that have not been widely acknowledged.