WEBVTT 00:00:00.467 --> 00:00:02.402 As far back as, you know, 17th century England, 00:00:02.402 --> 00:00:03.770 there was a law that said that 00:00:03.770 --> 00:00:05.875 a man could beat his wife with a stick 00:00:05.875 --> 00:00:08.609 so long as it wasn't thicker than his thumb (i.e. "rule of thumb") 00:00:08.609 --> 00:00:10.811 you know, and we still have that idea today. 00:00:10.811 --> 00:00:13.080 So when we talk about things like Cell 16 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_16] 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:14.581 Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts, 00:00:14.581 --> 00:00:17.276 and other forms of feminist self defense, 00:00:17.276 --> 00:00:19.620 we shouldn't look at it as just a physical self defense, 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:22.291 but also this growing recognition that 00:00:22.291 --> 00:00:24.664 that there are all sorts of ways that violence impacts women's lives. 00:00:26.935 --> 00:00:29.230 We need to make sure that people who might be abusive and violent 00:00:29.230 --> 00:00:31.506 know that every eye in the community is on them. 00:00:33.198 --> 00:00:35.736 Prisons and policing often protect those in power 00:00:35.736 --> 00:00:40.641 and do very little to nothing to those who, for those who don't have any power. 00:00:40.641 --> 00:00:45.364 So, they might decide that they don't necessarily need to act or intervene in some cases. 00:00:46.410 --> 00:00:48.916 Andrea Smith, one of the co-founders of Incite, 00:00:48.916 --> 00:00:52.119 actually talked about one very public incident in which 00:00:52.119 --> 00:00:55.774 a woman who was in a housing project in a city 00:00:55.774 --> 00:00:59.093 called the police because of a domestic violence incident with her partner. 00:00:59.093 --> 00:01:02.095 And when the police arrived, they decided, they looked around the projects 00:01:02.095 --> 00:01:03.564 and decided that, 00:01:03.564 --> 00:01:06.688 no, this woman actually didn't qualify for their protection, 00:01:06.688 --> 00:01:08.635 they didn't want to enter the public housing area 00:01:08.635 --> 00:01:11.138 to try to ascertain what was going on 00:01:11.138 --> 00:01:13.941 and possibly arrest the person who had abused her. 00:01:13.941 --> 00:01:17.978 And she got incensed, and asked for their badge number, 00:01:17.978 --> 00:01:20.581 and they decided that they were going to further brutalize her 00:01:20.581 --> 00:01:22.850 by beating her and arresting her and taking her in 00:01:22.850 --> 00:01:24.753 on some bogus charge 00:01:24.753 --> 00:01:26.854 because she had demanded that they offer her 00:01:26.854 --> 00:01:28.689 the same protection that they would 00:01:28.689 --> 00:01:31.305 a white middle class woman living in an affluent suburban neighbourhood. 00:01:33.293 --> 00:01:37.931 We've also seen that, um, especially in communities where the police 00:01:37.931 --> 00:01:40.167 are not seen as protectors, 00:01:40.167 --> 00:01:42.169 like low income communities of colour, 00:01:42.169 --> 00:01:43.804 or poor neighbourhoods, 00:01:43.804 --> 00:01:45.639 that for a woman to call the police 00:01:45.639 --> 00:01:47.207 and invite them into the neighbourhood 00:01:47.207 --> 00:01:50.077 often ostracizes her from the rest of the community. 00:01:50.077 --> 00:01:51.278 So the community will see her as 00:01:51.278 --> 00:01:55.082 calling the police in to further terrorize the community. 00:01:55.082 --> 00:01:58.519 And so whatever support she might have gotten from her friends and her neighbours 00:01:58.519 --> 00:02:01.589 and her co-workers and everybody else in the neighbourhood disappears 00:02:01.589 --> 00:02:03.224 when she calls the police in. 00:02:03.224 --> 00:02:05.058 So all these factors put women more at risk 00:02:05.058 --> 00:02:07.728 when they call in the police. 00:02:07.728 --> 00:02:11.031 And, again, it doesn't necessarily mean that the abuse is going to stop, 00:02:11.031 --> 00:02:15.168 because either the police showing up and arresting the person 00:02:15.168 --> 00:02:16.203 right then and there, 00:02:16.203 --> 00:02:18.605 and taking him out of commission for 24 hours, 00:02:18.605 --> 00:02:24.612 or, the police arresting the person and then pressuring the woman to file charges 00:02:24.612 --> 00:02:28.782 and often holding threats of perhaps removing her children, 00:02:28.782 --> 00:02:30.985 or doing something else over her head, 00:02:30.985 --> 00:02:33.254 communities haven't been able to develop, 00:02:33.254 --> 00:02:35.322 or haven't developed other means to solve, 00:02:35.322 --> 00:02:37.758 you know, interpersonal violence or abuse, 00:02:37.758 --> 00:02:43.096 so therefore, if the only solution seems to be to call in this, to call in the police, 00:02:43.096 --> 00:02:45.632 and the police can use this then as a way to say well 00:02:45.632 --> 00:02:50.871 we have to be in these "higher crime, higher violence communities" to prevent violence, 00:02:50.871 --> 00:02:54.675 without actually addressing all the other ways that violence can take place, 00:02:54.675 --> 00:02:58.684 without it necessarily being like one person physically hurting another person. 00:03:01.719 --> 00:03:03.217 I don't want to pinpoint one as THE root cause, 00:03:03.217 --> 00:03:05.052 but some of the root causes are 00:03:05.052 --> 00:03:07.199 this idea that women are the property of men, 00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:11.091 So as far back as 17th century England, there was a law that said 00:03:11.091 --> 00:03:13.460 that a man could beat his wife with a stick, 00:03:13.460 --> 00:03:16.029 so long as it wasn't thicker that his thumb (i.e. "rule of thumb") 00:03:16.029 --> 00:03:17.998 You know, and we still have that idea today, 00:03:17.998 --> 00:03:23.170 that women are somehow the property of the men that they are in relationships with, 00:03:23.170 --> 00:03:27.308 whether it be their fathers, or their husbands, or their boyfriends, or sons. 00:03:27.308 --> 00:03:30.778 There's this idea that it is OK to 00:03:30.778 --> 00:03:34.315 to exert power by any means necesary, 00:03:34.315 --> 00:03:37.751 whether it be like physical abuse, or emotional abuse, or mental abuse, 00:03:37.751 --> 00:03:39.448 or controlling someone economically. 00:03:42.789 --> 00:03:44.324 In East Harlem, In New York, 00:03:44.324 --> 00:03:46.660 which is a primarily black and brown, poor community, 00:03:46.660 --> 00:03:48.415 in New York City, 00:03:48.415 --> 00:03:50.764 um, residents formed what they called, um, 00:03:50.764 --> 00:03:51.865 what do they call them... 00:03:51.865 --> 00:03:53.100 Neighbourhood Watches, 00:03:53.100 --> 00:03:55.169 where they would actually go to the apartment 00:03:55.169 --> 00:03:59.039 of somebody who was involved in a domestically violent situation, 00:03:59.039 --> 00:04:01.000 either because the woman asked them to, 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:02.876 or because a neighbour called in a complaint, 00:04:02.876 --> 00:04:05.913 and they actually went to the apartment, 00:04:05.913 --> 00:04:09.616 and they physically moved themselves in to the apartment for a while. 00:04:09.616 --> 00:04:11.918 And obviously they couldn't live in this apartment forever, 00:04:11.918 --> 00:04:14.020 but they would be there for a few days, 00:04:14.020 --> 00:04:16.156 and the abusive partner would know 00:04:16.156 --> 00:04:19.559 that he couldn't do anything while they were there, 00:04:19.559 --> 00:04:21.495 and even after they moved out, 00:04:21.495 --> 00:04:23.296 he knew that they could come back 00:04:23.296 --> 00:04:26.728 and that basically the community had taken it upon itself 00:04:26.728 --> 00:04:29.466 to say that we won't stand for this kind of violence, 00:04:29.466 --> 00:04:31.204 and this kind of abuse any more. 00:04:31.972 --> 00:04:34.642 In the mid- 1990's there was a group called 00:04:34.642 --> 00:04:36.434 Sista to Sista, 00:04:36.434 --> 00:04:39.479 s-i-s-t-a, not s-i-s-t-e-r 00:04:39.479 --> 00:04:42.716 which is a group of predominantly black and brown women, 00:04:42.716 --> 00:04:44.484 in the Bushwick area (north Brooklyn), 00:04:44.484 --> 00:04:47.254 and they recognized that they had to address 00:04:47.254 --> 00:04:49.790 interpersonal violence and state violence, 00:04:49.790 --> 00:04:51.158 so one of the things that they did was 00:04:51.158 --> 00:04:53.560 they started the sister circles, 00:04:53.560 --> 00:04:56.630 understanding that they couldn't necessarily rely on 00:04:56.630 --> 00:04:58.999 the police to help them, 00:04:58.999 --> 00:05:02.403 especially when police were coming into this community, their communities, 00:05:02.403 --> 00:05:04.019 and murdering people. 00:05:04.019 --> 00:05:05.406 So, two young women of colour 00:05:05.406 --> 00:05:08.342 were murdered around 2000 by the police, 00:05:08.342 --> 00:05:13.713 and there was like no, you know, like huge state outcry, there was no big shake-up 00:05:13.713 --> 00:05:15.982 about the fact that the police had murdered two young women. 00:05:15.982 --> 00:05:20.320 But they also recognized that there was a lot of interpersonal violence that was going on 00:05:20.320 --> 00:05:22.355 that needed to be addressed as well. 00:05:22.355 --> 00:05:24.591 So they started forming what they called the sister circles, 00:05:24.591 --> 00:05:26.360 in which they actually talked to each other, 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:29.163 and they devised ways in which they could address abuse 00:05:29.163 --> 00:05:31.598 without relying on policing and prisons. 00:05:31.598 --> 00:05:33.033 And one example that was given was 00:05:33.033 --> 00:05:35.235 one of the women came to the sister circles and said 00:05:35.235 --> 00:05:39.106 my ex boyfriend has been stalking me, you know, 00:05:39.106 --> 00:05:41.208 he's been psychologically intimidating me, 00:05:41.208 --> 00:05:46.279 and I'm getting worried that this is going to keep escalating until he becomes 00:05:46.279 --> 00:05:48.183 physically violent with me. 00:05:48.183 --> 00:05:50.951 And they talked with her, and they devised a plan, 00:05:50.951 --> 00:05:55.021 and, I'm going to like shorten the version, because I'm sure a lot of planning went on, 00:05:55.021 --> 00:05:58.192 it wasn't like they just like automatically had this instinct. 00:05:58.192 --> 00:06:00.060 And what they did was, 00:06:00.060 --> 00:06:03.163 they went and confronted him at the barber shop where he worked, 00:06:03.163 --> 00:06:04.665 in front of all his co-workers, 00:06:04.665 --> 00:06:06.734 and said look, this is what you're doing to this woman, 00:06:06.734 --> 00:06:08.402 you need to stop. 00:06:08.402 --> 00:06:09.269 And what happened was, 00:06:09.269 --> 00:06:11.772 that the men in the barber shop that worked with him said 00:06:11.772 --> 00:06:14.808 hey, that's really messed up, you need to stop, 00:06:14.808 --> 00:06:17.244 and his boss even said if I hear about this again, 00:06:17.244 --> 00:06:19.179 you're fired. 00:06:19.179 --> 00:06:21.414 You know, like you are not going to be harassing this woman any more. 00:06:21.414 --> 00:06:24.517 And this is the kind of thing that they were doing, 00:06:24.517 --> 00:06:26.227 because they couldn't rely on the police 00:06:26.227 --> 00:06:27.465 to keep them safe. 00:06:29.490 --> 00:06:31.279 Cell 16 was a women's liberation group, 00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:33.460 it actually, it was formed in the late 1960's, 00:06:33.460 --> 00:06:36.163 and I think maybe by the early 1970's had disbanded. 00:06:36.163 --> 00:06:41.301 But during their time they were based in the Boston area of Massachusetts. 00:06:41.301 --> 00:06:42.369 They did several things. 00:06:42.369 --> 00:06:45.605 They did patrols of areas in which working class women were 00:06:45.605 --> 00:06:48.642 getting out of factory shifts late at night. 00:06:48.642 --> 00:06:53.199 So they understood that women who didn't have resources to say, like, 00:06:53.199 --> 00:06:55.715 have someone come pick them up, or didn't have their own cars, 00:06:55.715 --> 00:06:59.586 were vulnerable to violence when they were getting off their factory shifts late at night, 00:06:59.586 --> 00:07:01.789 and walking to the public transportation. 00:07:01.789 --> 00:07:04.324 So what they would do, is they would patrol 00:07:04.324 --> 00:07:06.794 in pairs, or you know, in groups, 00:07:06.794 --> 00:07:09.863 and they would offer to walk women to where they were going. 00:07:09.863 --> 00:07:11.899 So whether it be walking them to the train station 00:07:11.899 --> 00:07:13.767 and making sure they safely got into the train station, 00:07:13.767 --> 00:07:15.502 or walking them to their houses, 00:07:15.502 --> 00:07:19.406 to make sure, again, like the sisterhood societies, that they were safe 00:07:19.406 --> 00:07:22.475 from external threats, relying on this idea that there's safety in numbers. 00:07:22.475 --> 00:07:25.946 And they would watch out for suspicious behaviour, 00:07:25.946 --> 00:07:26.680 you know, 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:28.281 and it's not the same "suspicious behaviour" 00:07:28.281 --> 00:07:30.818 that the government tells you to, like, look for today. 00:07:30.818 --> 00:07:33.687 But you know, like, hey, there's this man that seems to be standing there, 00:07:33.687 --> 00:07:37.057 you know, for absolutely no, you know, no purpose, like, 00:07:37.057 --> 00:07:38.725 what are his intentions? 00:07:38.725 --> 00:07:40.227 Is he going to assault somebody? 00:07:40.227 --> 00:07:42.963 Or is he waiting for his girlfriend or his wife to get off of work? 00:07:42.963 --> 00:07:46.164 You know, but actually putting 00:07:46.164 --> 00:07:48.034 potential assailants on notice too, 00:07:48.034 --> 00:07:53.340 that there were people involved in, you know, like watching out for everyone's safety. 00:07:53.340 --> 00:08:00.013 They also were one of the first women's groups to offer self defense classes for women 00:08:00.013 --> 00:08:01.181 with a feminist slant. 00:08:01.181 --> 00:08:02.483 Sot they actually said, you know, 00:08:02.483 --> 00:08:05.085 women have the right to be safe and secure in their own bodies, 00:08:05.085 --> 00:08:07.254 and they need to have the skill set and the tools 00:08:07.254 --> 00:08:10.266 to be able to defend themselves physically, 00:08:10.266 --> 00:08:12.059 if they are attacked, 00:08:12.059 --> 00:08:15.262 and so they offered free Taekwondo classes to women 00:08:15.262 --> 00:08:17.263 so that women could learn to defend themselves, 00:08:17.263 --> 00:08:19.292 and they weren't always needing to rely on somebody else to do so. 00:08:21.714 --> 00:08:26.172 In 1974, 1975, going on this same premise that women have the right to be safe 00:08:26.172 --> 00:08:28.308 and secure in their own bodies, 00:08:28.308 --> 00:08:31.778 two feminist martial arts activists 00:08:31.778 --> 00:08:36.149 Nadia Telsey and Annie Ellman started Battered Women's, oh, sorry, 00:08:36.149 --> 00:08:39.855 Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts, um, in Brooklyn New York, 00:08:39.855 --> 00:08:44.424 and they basically started the first dojo specifically for women, 00:08:44.424 --> 00:08:48.194 in which they wanted women to be able to train and learn how to defend themselves. 00:08:48.194 --> 00:08:54.802 They made it sliding-scale, so that if a woman couldn't afford to pay for classes, 00:08:54.802 --> 00:08:58.004 she didn't have to, or if she could only afford to pay a little bit she could, 00:08:58.004 --> 00:09:00.143 and women who could afford to pay more, did. 00:09:00.143 --> 00:09:03.877 And they also offered childcare at all of their classes, 00:09:03.877 --> 00:09:06.914 understanding that they didn't want women with children to say 00:09:06.914 --> 00:09:11.056 well, I can't take these classes because I don't have a safe place to put my child 00:09:11.056 --> 00:09:12.719 or my children, 00:09:12.719 --> 00:09:16.223 you know, and also understanding that when women become mothers, 00:09:16.223 --> 00:09:18.904 they're just as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable to violence, 00:09:18.904 --> 00:09:20.693 because you know they don't necessarily have all the 00:09:20.693 --> 00:09:24.831 access and resources and mobility that, you know, single women might. 00:09:24.831 --> 00:09:27.734 So, and, this is, their dojos continued on to this day, 00:09:27.734 --> 00:09:32.651 in the 1980's they re-named themselves The Center for Anti-Violence Education, 00:09:32.651 --> 00:09:35.976 recognizing that it's not just women who face violence. 00:09:35.976 --> 00:09:41.214 Um, so they actually started doing trainings for, um, transgender people, 00:09:41.214 --> 00:09:45.252 they started doing trainings for, after 9/11, they started doing trainings for 00:09:45.252 --> 00:09:47.921 groups that were specifically working with South Asian populations 00:09:47.921 --> 00:09:51.658 that were more vulnerable to the racist backlash post 9/11, 00:09:51.658 --> 00:09:54.427 and like, how to like, deal with safety and security 00:09:54.427 --> 00:09:56.496 not just from the physical aspect, 00:09:56.496 --> 00:09:59.532 but also tactics like de-escalation, knowing what to look for, like 00:09:59.532 --> 00:10:04.270 trying to get a situation away from a dangerous place, 00:10:04.270 --> 00:10:07.007 without actually having to use your fists. 00:10:07.007 --> 00:10:09.109 They also recognized that 00:10:09.109 --> 00:10:12.846 violence is one of the things that held all these different types of oppression together, 00:10:12.846 --> 00:10:16.583 so they weren't just focussing on violence against women, 00:10:16.583 --> 00:10:18.318 and white-washing this idea of women, 00:10:18.318 --> 00:10:20.653 but they were understanding that 00:10:20.653 --> 00:10:24.290 women with the least amount of resources were the most vulnerable to violence. 00:10:24.290 --> 00:10:26.593 So, like, women of colour would be vulnerable 00:10:26.593 --> 00:10:28.228 not only to interpersonal violence, 00:10:28.228 --> 00:10:30.830 but were more vulnerable to state violence as well. 00:10:30.830 --> 00:10:32.165 You know, and violence from the police; 00:10:32.165 --> 00:10:35.702 and weren't necessarily in a position to be able to call the police. 00:10:35.702 --> 00:10:38.572 Poor women were less likely to be able to get away 00:10:38.572 --> 00:10:42.976 because they were poor and they didn't have the resources and opportunities to do so. 00:10:42.976 --> 00:10:47.547 And so they did a lot of work around also educating people around the fact that 00:10:47.547 --> 00:10:49.583 there are all these different oppressions that intersect, 00:10:49.583 --> 00:10:53.653 and you can see violence as one of the glues that holds together all these oppressions.