Florida Uterati

bellemaddox:

computerblu:

This year, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been struggling for re-authorization because Republicans have been blocking sections that create policy specific to supporting Native, immigrant, and LGBT survivors of domestic and sexual violence.  Specifically, these sections help make non-Native men who assault Native women on tribal lands subject to prosecution by tribal courts; provide U-visas to undocumented survivors who cooperate with prosecuting their abusers; and support access to legal and victim services to LGBT survivors, including training police and other law enforcement personnel.

I have no doubt that these Senators are blocking these provisions ultimately because of their contempt for these populations.  Importantly, their contempt is institutionally sanctioned by colonial, genocidal, xenophobic, and homo/transphobic projects that have helped license who can and can’t be considered legitimate victims of violence. 

That said, I’m frustrated by uncritical pro-VAWA advocacy by progressive and feminist voices.  The argument is that all survivors deserve “equal access” to the “protection” that VAWA offers.  The anti-racist position seems to begin and end with the idea that we should urge Senators to pass the “good” version of VAWA that includes these provisions.  However, this argument fails to ask if state-based “protection” is helpful for those people who cannot access racist notions of legitimate survivorhood.  This “good” VAWA vs racist/homophobic VAWA framing obscures the fact that VAWA itself is tied to devastating legacies of racial violence.

VAWA directs federal funding to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those deemed guilty of domestic violence and sexual assault, as well as provides federal funds to services. It was initiated in 1994 as part of the behemoth Crime Bill Act which, as Angela Davis put it, facilitated the incarceration of more women.  This was especially true for black and Latina women, who, by 2005, were 200% and 69% (respectively) more likely than white women to be incarcerated.  In short, the ‘94 Crime Bill and anti-violence feminists’ advocacy for criminalization-based strategies in general, was a catastrophe for many survivors of color.   This has been discussed at length here, here, here, and here, as a few examples.

Black feminist anti-violence veteran and scholar Beth Richie also discusses this legacy in her recent book, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation.  She writes:

Paradoxically, the social commitment to incapacitation, surveillance, and criminal justice sanctions, which were not originally key elements of the anti-violence movements’ radical agenda, were accepted as necessary strategies in order to benefit some women at the expense of others who are less advantaged.  Once divestment has begun and movements are being co-opted, isolation and criminalization constitute the final and most significant aspect of the buildup of a prison nation and its impact on Black women who experience male violence.

…instead of benefiting from advances in state protection when they are in danger, Black women from low-income communities become isolated from mainstream services, blamed for the abuse they experience, and then sanctioned by state agencies for the harm they endured.  (pp 111-112)

State-driven, pro-criminalization strategies to address domestic and sexual violence doesn’t just limit black women’s “access” to anti-violence services or justice, it reinforces and legitimizes state violence against black survivors.  In an earlier book, Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women, Richie outlines how the survival tactics of black women domestic violence survivors are systematically criminalized, ultimately landing them in prison.  As I’ve argued elsewhere, when black women are victims of violence, they are constantly dis-positioned as the perpetrator of the crime of violence.  Ask Marissa Alexander, who is serving 20 years for shooting at a wall as a self-defense warning to her abusive husband.  Or CeCe McDonald who is in jail for defending herself from racist and transphobic white people who slashed her in the face.  Or the New Jersey 7, black lesbians who were prosecuted and convicted for defending themselves from a street attack.  Or Janice Wells who, after being profiled as a domestic violence victim by police, was pepper-sprayed and tasered by those officers.

So I ask those who are advocating for VAWA in order for survivors to gain “equal access”: equal to whom and access to what?  

Further, Richie’s assertion that anti-violence feminist activists pursued criminalization at the expense of those survivors who are routinely targeted for police/prison violence highlights a racial politics of survivor currency. Namely, if the state is fundamentally organized around anti-black racism and settler colonialism which systematically brutalizes some survivors in order to secure the provisional “safety” for others, what kind of trade agreement are anti-violence advocates co-signing and helping to authorize?

Instead of uncritical support of law-and-order legislation like VAWA, I wish that feminist advocates would promote a politics grounded in racial justice that address the profound structural conditions that help drive domestic and sexual violence for so many of us.  A politics that says yes to making sure that non-Native men cannot abuse Native women and others with impunity through the restoration of sovereignty that ultimately creates space to develop community-based responses to violence and doesn’t further empower the colonial state (as advocated by Andrea Smith and Sarah Deer).  And yes to amnesty for undocumented immigrants who are survivors of violence (among others), but not dependent on their coerced participation with police and prosecutors, as would be required from the “good” version of VAWA.  And yes to the public recognition of the existence of queer relationships and access to services for queer survivors of domestic and sexual violence, but why hinge that recognition to a state that regularly and intentionally wields violence against queer people of color who are poor, incarcerated, immigrants, indigenous, disabled, and/or black?  (More on that visionary politics here.)  And critically, yes to pushing back against the state’s invitation to be complicit in “crime control” policies that we know — and have known — terrorize black survivors and others whose bodies are routinely targeted by the state. 

It would be powerful if anti-violence feminists would develop a politics that seamlessly integrated our work into social movements that support Native sovereignty, (im)migrant justice, and queer liberation.  It would also be transformative (not to mention a great spiritual relief to me personally) if anti-violence feminists would concurrently nurture a deep and genuine commitment to black freedom.  While this (still) requires fundamental shifts in the politics and praxis of much of the network of anti-violence programs, I think practical strategies are available to policy advocates who are serious about working towards these goals.  For example, what would happen if advocates demand that federal funding for services come with no strings attached to state-based crime control policies?  Receiving funding from the state has its own serious problems, so this move should be considered an intermediate step towards a more liberatory and liberated anti-violence social movement that isn’t beholden to the state at all.  But a partial divestment designed to intentionally reject what Richie calls the “prison nation” might create a strategic fissure between anti-violence efforts and a state apparatus that is unbearably hostile towards so many survivors of domestic/sexual violence. 

Finally, I feel like I should note that the concerns that I’m raising here are not new and reflect decades of critiques offered by black feminists, indigenous feminists, other radical feminists of color, and many other critical voices.  And yet, here’s everyone demanding that we all get our VAWA on.  That these critiques continue to go unheeded or are tacitly dismissed leads me to believe that black women are near-incapable of being seen and valued by the broader community of people working to address domestic and sexual violence.  Not only have the consequences of criminalization and other collaborations with the state remained largely unaddressed, they are barely recognized at all these twenty years post-VAWA, and all these books, studies, conferences, forums, media, and organizing labor later.  I mean, for the love of Joan Little, people.  What exactly does it take for us to get there? 

Bolded for emphasis.

riotgrrrljacksonville:

emphysemainacan:

31-year-old Marissa Alexander was cornered by her abusive husband when she fired a warning shot into the ceiling of their home, using a gun she was licensed to carry. The August, 2010 incident led to the Jacksonville, Florida resident’s conviction of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to newspaper The Florida Times-Union.

Her defense attorney, Kevin Cobbin has filed numerous motions for a retrial on grounds that her case is within the bounds of instances covered under the controversial “Stand Your Ground” law, but Florida Circuit Court Judge James Daniel on Thursday denied them all. Critics of the judge’s ruling, including the local NAACP, charge that Alexander’s race has been a factor in her sentencing and denial of a retrial.

Alexander claims she was acting in self-defense, that her husband, Rico Gray, attacked her when he found messages to her ex-husband on her cell phone. Gray has said in testimony that he had previously warned Alexander that he would kill her if he ever found out that she had been unfaithful. In her panic, she ran to the garage, hoping to escape. Once there, she found that she did not have her keys and that the garage door was broken.

“I knew I had to protect myself,” she told CNN in an interview from behind bars, “I believe when he threatened to kill me, that’s what he was absolutely going to do.”

Feeling that there was no other route of escape, Alexander armed herself and re-entered the house. Gray confronted her, threatening to kill her once again. The mother of three turned her face away and fired a warning shot into the ceiling in hopes that Gray would back down, which he did, taking his children from a previous relationship and fleeing the house.

No one was hurt, but now Alexander is facing a mandatory 20-year sentence with no chance of parole. She turned down earlier plea deals that would have offered her three years in jail, maintaining that she only fired the gun in self-defense.

Defense attorney Cobbin has cited Gray’s previous arrests for domestic violence and insists that his client’s actions were legal under “Stand Your Ground.”  Both Circuit Court Judge Daniel and Circuit Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt, however, have ruled against Alexander.

Jacksonville NAACP head Isaiah Rumlin told the Times-Union that the evidence speaks to a miscarriage of justice, “After looking into it and studying the case, this is a clear case of Stand Your Ground as it relates to what she had to do on the date that she did it.”

The group sent a letter to Judge Daniel asking him to postpone his ruling and suggesting that Alexander’s race, gender and economic status were factors in the court’s handling of the case.

Daniel was unmoved. “Maybe I would be agreeing to a new Stand Your Ground motion, which highlights some of the difficulties we are struggling with procedurally implementing this new law,”he wrote, “but ultimately the motion is denied.” In his opinion, Alexander’s decision to re-enter the house was “inconsistent with a person in genuine fear of his or her life.”

“Stand Your Ground” was invoked by one of the defense teams that have represented George Zimmerman, Jr., the volunteer neighborhood watch captain who shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in the chest, killing him, earlier this year.

The blog Wonkette reacted to Judge Daniel’s ruling by saying, “In Florida, as it turns out, being in ‘genuine fear of your life’ means that you’re white and your attacker is black, so clearly that was her first mistake.  Also, if you really want to Stand Your Ground you have to call the police only to ignore their instructions anyway, so there’s that. And crucially, it doesn’t say anywhere if her husband was wearing a hoodie when he was threatening to beat her up, which we hear is a relevant aspect of whether or not black men are actually scary.”

Marissa Alexander’s sentencing is scheduled for May 11.

 

(via riotgrrrljacksonville-deactivat)

feminishblog:

This a fantastic resource that really breaks things down for you. Educate yourself. Know the signs. And remember: abuse knows no sex or gender - abuse is abuse.

(via thesexuneducated)

A Senate panel approved LGBT-inclusive legislation on Thursday that would extend and strengthen programs working to combat and prevent domestic violence…