Anti-Racism as Violence Prevention

These videos and discussion guides are intended to be used by domestic and sexual violence advocates and activists to spark conversations on the ways that racism and oppression have shaped our anti-violence movements and how we can dismantle racism in our organizations and communities. In these videos, you will hear from advocates and organizers who discuss their own experiences, perceptions, and journeys of practicing anti-racism as a means of ending gender-based and intimate violence. We invite you to view these videos with an open heart, on your own or with others.

For White people watching these videos, it is beneficial and important to sit with any feelings of discomfort, listen to feelings, stories, and perspectives of people of color, and move towards repair, action, and accountability.

Voices from Our Movement: a 3-part video series on ending racism and oppression as the heart of our anti-violence movement

Video 1: Connecting the Dots: Racism, Oppression, and Work to End Domestic, Sexual, and Intimate Violence Spanish language version coming soon!

Video 2: Racism in the Anti-Violence Movement: Impacts on Survivors, Advocates, and Communities Spanish language version coming soon!

Video 3: Transformation is Now: Toward an Integrated, Intersectional Movement Spanish language version coming soon!

If you have feedback about your experience using this set of resources or suggestions on how they can be improved, please share your thoughts with us! For questions about these videos and accompanying materials please contact Kate Vander Tuig at kvandertuig@futureswithoutviolence.org.

Resources

The following list is a limited collection of resources to support your anti-racism/oppression work and goals for liberation suggested by the developers and participants of these videos that closely match the themes discussed. For an expansive list of tools and resources visit racialequitytools.org.

Understanding racism, White supremacy, and oppression

RaceWorks video series is a educational video series about race as a doing, doing race and undoing racism through specific topic areas (e.g., immigration), and the role racial perception plays in doing race from Stanford.
MTV Decoded “A weekly series on MTV News tackling race, pop culture, and other uncomfortable things, in funny and thought-provoking ways. Half sketch comedy, half vlog.”
The Urgency of Intersectionality TED Talk from Kimberlé Crenshaw Civil rights advocate
Cracking the Codes: The system of racial inequity film series from World Trust “This film asks America to talk about the causes and consequences of systemic inequity. Designed for dialogue, the film works to disentangle internal beliefs, attitudes, and pre-judgments within, and it builds skills to address the structural drivers of social and economic inequities.”
Information about White supremacy, privilege, and White feminism from Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
Race: The Power of an Illusion “The three-part documentary series asks a question so basic it’s rarely raised: What is this thing called ‘race’? What we discovered was that many of our conventional assumptions about race—for instance, that the world’s peoples can be divided biologically along racial lines—are wrong.”

Intimate violence, racism, and oppression in the context of the United States

Black Women’s Blueprint Training on Intergenerational Trauma and Colonization on Communities of Color: A Context for Understanding Sexual Assault and Other Violence in Communities of Color
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea J. Ritchie “A timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement…in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, it documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of policing and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.”
Sasha Center’s Black Women’s Triangulation of Rape graphic
Criminalizing Survival Toolkit and Curricula from Survived and Punished focused on the intersections between racialized gender-based violence and criminalization.
How can we prevent child sexual abuse without incorporating systemic violence as a causal factor? “Irene Strong Oak Lefebvre from Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle Intertribal Coalition explains how historical trauma is the root cause of childhood sexual abuse, resulted by structural racism and oppression. The workshop also addresses the role and significance of community organizing as a prevention strategy by collaborating with anti-racist and environmental community groups.” At the 2016 National Sexual Assault Conference.
Dear Sister: Letters from survivors of sexual violence, edited by Lisa Factora-Borchers, shares the lessons, memories, and vision of over fifty artists, activists, mothers, writers, and students who share their stories of survival or what it means to be an advocate and ally to survivors.

Individual anti-racism/oppression work and White allyship

What is allyship? Why can’t I be an ally? Blog post from PeerNetBC
Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy Workbook for people who have White privilege
CPR The Racial Microaggressions Reparative Response Model
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. This book “offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the “N” word.”
Move To End Violence Six-week Racial Equity and Liberation Virtual Learning Series and all of Move To End Violence’s resources for liberation and equity.
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.

Working against racism in our organizations and anti-violence movement

Toolkit for Interrupting Oppression from the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence OCADSV
Centering Survivor Leadership at the Intersections of Oppression: A Comprehensive Approach to Ending Intimate Violence This webinar, featuring Amita Swadhin, explores intersectional and anti-oppression approaches to ending intimate violence and emphasizes the importance of including children and young people in this work.
Race to Lead: Women of Color in the Nonprofit Sector Report This report reveals that women of color encounter systemic obstacles to their advancement over and above the barriers faced by white women and men of color.
Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s guidance on a voluntary services shelter model and reducing rules that reduce survivor self-determination.
Racial Equity Readiness Assessment for Workforce Development from Race Forward “Designed as a guide for workforce development organizations and practitioners to evaluate their programs, operations, and culture in order to identify strength areas and growth opportunities. Practitioners can use this toolkit to familiarize themselves with various practices and policies that support institutional racial equity, evaluate their current efforts, and plan action steps.”
Information on operationalizing race equity, which includes training on how to “normalize conversations about race and race equity” from the Racial Equity Alliance.
Crossroads Ministry’s Continuum on Becoming an Anti Racist Multicultural Organization
Center for Social Inclusion’s Talking About Race Toolkit
CityMatCH’s Conversations that Matter: Guide for Hosting Discussions about Race, Racism and Public Health

Working against racism in our communities and systems

Women of Color Network publications “provide background, a scope of the problem, and offer targeted recommendations for advocates, agencies, and policymakers to resolve common challenges facing Women of Color.”
Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence Webinar Series: Prevention Through Liberation and Prevention Through Liberation projects
PreventConnect webinars from the Just Beginnings Collaborative on survivor lead prevention efforts of child sexual abuse and sexual violence more broadly.
Community United Against Violence blog for stories and perspectives on organizing around the issues that affect survivors of color.
A Health Equity and Multisector Approach to Preventing Domestic Violence The Prevention Institute offers research, analysis, and frameworks to understand the factors in the community environment that support safe relationships and a reduction in domestic violence (DV).
Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation: An implementation guidebook “The TRHT approach examines how the belief system became embedded in our society, both its culture and structures, and then works with communities to design and implement effective actions that will permanently uproot it. The TRHT will marshal individual, local, public and private resources to dismantle systemic, structurally-based patterns of discrimination at the municipal, county, state and federal levels.”
Health Equity: Why lead with race from HealthEquityGuide.org of Human Impact Partners

Exploring solutions to violence outside of the criminal legal system

National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women End Mass Incarceration Webinar Series
Information about transformative justice from the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
Expanding our Frame: Deepening our Demands for Safety and Healing for Black Survivors of Sexual Violence A policy brief by Andrea J. Ritchie for the National Black Women’s Justice Institute
Building Accountable Communities Video Series “Accountability is a familiar buzz-word in contemporary social movements, but what does it mean? How do we work toward it? In this series of four short videos, anti-violence activists Kiyomi Fujikawa and Shannon Perez-Darby ask and explore: What does it look like to be accountable to survivors without exiling or disposing of those who do harm?”
What is Accountability? Panel discussion featuring Shannon Perez-Darby, Esteban Kelly, RJ Maccani, Mia Mingus, Sonya Shah, and Leah Todd. Moderated by Piper Anderson at Barnard College.
Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators is a workbook by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan that includes reflection questions, skill assessments, facilitation tips, helpful definitions, activities, and hard-learned lessons intended to support people who have taken on the coordination and facilitation of formal community accountability processes to address interpersonal harm & violence.
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (January 2020, AK Press) edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha “focuses on concrete alternatives to policing and prisons. From practical tool-kits and personal essays, to supporting people in mental health crises, to community-based murder investigations, this text delves deeply into the “how to” of transformative justice.”
TransformHarm.org is a resource hub about ending violence. It offers an introduction to transformative justice. Created by Mariame Kaba and designed by Joseph Lublink, the site includes selected articles, audio-visual resources, curricula, and more.
Queering Sexual Violence “Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender and gender non-conforming survivors have been organizing in anti-violence work since the birth of the movement…Moving beyond dominant narratives and the traditional “violence against women” framework, the book is multi-gendered, multi-racial and multi-layered.”
Organizing Resources from INCITE! on community accountability, violence from law enforcement, and more.
Decriminalizing Domestic Violence by Leigh Goodmark “asks the crucial, yet often overlooked, question of why and how the criminal legal system became the primary response to intimate partner violence in the United States…It examines how social, legal, and financial resources are diverted into a criminal legal apparatus that is often unable to deliver justice or safety to victims or to prevent intimate partner violence in the first place.”
Love WITH Accountability: Digging up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (October 2019, AK Press) edited by Aishah Shahidah Simmons “features compelling writings by child sexual abuse survivors, advocates, and Simmons’s mother, who underscores the detrimental impact of parents/caregivers not believing their children when they disclose their sexual abuse. This collection explores disrupting the inhumane epidemic of child sexual abuse, humanely.”

Moving towards liberation

Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence Webinar Series: Prevention Through Liberation and Prevention Through Liberation projects
Move To End Violence Six-week Racial Equity and Liberation Virtual Learning Series and all of Move To End Violence’s resources for liberation and equity.
Healing Justice Podcast “An audio project to democratize access to inspiring stories, leaders, and practices to support our liberation.”
Movement Strategy Center‘s tools, webinars and resources on transformative movement building.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown “radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book teaches us to map, assess, and learn from the swirling structures around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen”
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown “How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work.”