Action Alert: Don't Let Guns into the Hands of Abusers

From NOW-NYC:

Don't Let Guns into the Hands of Abusers  
Anti-Violence Bill A.698B/S.4244A

Guns are the #1 weapon used in DV murders. It's already federal law that domestic abusers cannot buy guns, but some abusers in NYS are falling through the cracks. We need to fix our state's reporting requirements to the FBI to make sure guns are kept out of the hands ofall convicted batterers. Your Assemblymember needs to hear from you!

This act will align our state's reporting with the FBI, so that the federal law keeping guns out of the hands of abusers can be enforced. Convicted domestic violence abusers attempting to buy a gun will be flagged in the required background check and their application will be denied. Read more. 

Call Today!  

This bill's fate will be decided within the next few days.
Call: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (518) 455-3791

Codes Committee Chair/Assemblyman Joseph Lentol (518) 455-4477
Do you have 5 extra minutes? Then also call your Assemblymemberand push for him/her to pass this critical bill.

What you can say:   Hi, I'm [name] from [neighborhood & borough]. I'd like to urge you to support the passage of Assembly bill 698, which will prevent convicted batterers from buying guns. Please pass this bill - which could literally save lives.

If you have more time to devote to this issue and want to get involved with our phone lobbying, please call (212) 627-9895. 

FREE training on how to reduce & prevent domestic violence

Two different opportunities: Saturday 5/21 & Tuesday 5/31.  We will provide lunch.

In less than 2 months, there were 12 domestic-violence-related murders in NYC.  Help bring the number down to zero.

Project Speak Out is a new initiative in which four Asian-American domestic-violence agencies in NYC (New York Asian Women’s Center, Sakhi for South Asian Women, Korean American Family Service Center, and Garden of Hope) are working on a unique project to reduce and PREVENT domestic violence in NY’s Asian-American communities.  http://nynp.biz/breaking-news/5707-project-speak-out-creates-pan-asian-voice-against-domestic-violence-

Instead of organizations going into communities to talk about domestic violence, volunteers themselves will interact with their fellow neighbors, friends, and families to change individual & community attitudes & behaviors toward domestic violence.  As Project Speak Out volunteers, these community members, who might speak the language or share the culture of their audience, will make sure that three core messages are passed on:
1.    Domestic violence DOES EXIST in our communities
2.    Women are not to be blamed for the violence perpetrated against them
3.    YOU as an individual/group CAN TAKE ACTION! (and suggest ways to take that action)

We will train you on what domestic violence is and how to engage and mobilize individuals and groups in communities to take action!

We will go over the following topics during the training:
•    Bringing in the Bystander: A Prevention Workshop for Establishing a Community of Responsibility
•    Domestic violence
•    Asian-Americans and domestic violence
•    Project Speak Out
•    Outreach and Activities: Role of Volunteer, Resources

You do NOT need to speak an Asian language to volunteer

**Please note: quite a few of the New York Asian Women’s Center employees started as volunteers.

Contact: Project Speak Out Manager, Tel: (212) 732-0054 ext 163, Email: projectspeakout@nyawc.org

Facebook Page: ProjectSpeakOut        
Twitter: @ProjectSpeakOut  
Blog: projectspeakout.blogspot.com

New York’s largest group of neighborhood newspapers covers our event

Yournabe.com, part of New York’s largest group of neighborhood newspapers, covered our community forum to end domestic violence, where we introduced Project Speak Out.  



Asian-American panel views domestic violence
By Connor Adams Sheets
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 1:54 PM EDT


The seemingly intractable scourge of domestic violence among Asian Americans was front and center at a panel discussion last week in Flushing.

The April 14 conference, called “Out of the Darkness: Confronting Domestic Violence in Our Community,” brought together representatives of academia, community organizing groups, the corporate world and law enforcement in an engaging conversation about ending abuse in the Asian-American Diaspora.

As panelist Jerin Arifa, the manager of the New York Asian Women's Center's Project Speak Out program who is also active in the National Organization for Women, said, Asian communities are sometime especially vulnerable to the ravages of domestic violence and the silence that all too often accompanies it.

Whether they avoid confrontation as a result of fatalism, immigration concerns, the belief in karma or other cultural issues, many Asian domestic violence victims never leave their abusers or seek help, Arifa said.

And with that reluctance comes a toll. Last year the NYPD took 247,000 calls about domestic violence incidents, and 75 people — 24 of them children — were killed as a result of domestic violence, according to NYPD Sgt. Stephen Kurz.

“The pan-Asian community must get out the message that violence will not be tolerated against our mothers, our sisters and our daughters,” Arifa said, echoing the statements of other panelists.

The panel members and attendees are working hard at their varied organizations to bring domestic violence out of the shadows, get the word out about ways to get help and educate the Asian population about its dangers.

“One way that all of us can get involved, can get engaged, is by educating ourselves and knowing what resources are available in the community for domestic violence victims and survivors,” said CUNY School of Law Professor Donna Lee, the discussion’s moderator.

Larry Lee, executive director of the New York Asian Women’s Center, which hosted the event at the YWCA, at 42-07 Parsons Blvd., put it simply. He said there are a couple of things he wishes everyone knew about domestic violence to begin the process of stopping it from continuing in the future.

“There’s domestic violence in the Asian-American community. The victim is not to be blamed. And there are places where you can get help,” he said.

Four separate Chinese Newspapers spotlight our work

Four separate Chinese Newspapers: Ming Pao Daily NY, Sinovision, Singtao Daily East USA and World Journal, covered our community forum to end domestic violence, where we introduced Project Speak Out.  Please find below the titles translated.

Ming Pao Daily NY:

Agency held a community forum to discuss Asian domestic violence issue. Traditional attitude would reinforce violence; women should be bold to seek help.
Friday, 15 April 2011

Sinovision:

http://174.120.145.163:82/gate/big5/epaper.sinovision.net/?pid=14643
http://gate.sinovision.net:82/gate/big5/video.sinovision.net/?id=1798

Community forum to understand Domestic Violence in Asian American community. City Councilman Peter Koo encouraged victims to have courage to stand out and fight for their right.
Friday, 15 April 2011

Singtao Daily East USA:

“New York Asian Women Center Forum” to talk about Domestic Violence in Asian Community
Friday, 15 April 2011

World Journal:

“New York Asian Women Center Forum”. Facing a domestic violence situation, stand out and speak out!
Friday, 15 April 2011

Two separate Korean Newspapers spotlight our work

Two separate Korean Newspapers, The Korea Times and The Korea Daily, covered our community forum to end domestic violence, where we introduced Project Speak Out.

For those of you who do not understand Korean, here is a short summary of the articles below.

The Korea Daily
http://www.koreadaily.com/news/read.asp?art_id=1181637 

 "Please ask for help, regardless of immigration status" NYAWC 'domestic violence' Forum
April 14, 2011
 

The Korea Times
http://ny.koreatimes.com/article/655910

“Don’t Ignore the Harm of Domestic Violence.”
Friday, 4/15/11, edition on the home page!
 
Steven Kurz, a Sargeant in the Office of the Chief of Dept. for Domestic Violence, is quoted as saying, there are 270,000 DV reports in New York every year, and 677 calls a day. The numbers coming from the Asian community are very low.  However, he is aware that undocumented Asians fear that their status would be revealed, preventing them from calling NYPD.  He confirmed that the NYPD does NOT care about someone’s immigration status, and police officers are not allowed to inquire about someone’s status.  The article mentions project partners NYAWC and KAFSC, and describes Project Speak Out as a campaign to bring about more Domestic Violence awareness. KAFSC’s Executive Director Grace Yoon is quoted.

$200,000 matching grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch Project Speak Out

The following is an excerpt from the latest New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC) newsletter, describing the grants that make Project Speak Out possible.

NYAWC Receives $200,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
 
NYAWC recently received a $200,000 matching grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch Project Speak Out, a grassroots initiative to address domestic violence in New York City’s Asian-American community. Local funding partners including the Asian American Federation, The Grace and Mercy Foundation, Korean American Community Foundation, Ong Family Foundation and Tiger Baron Foundation have contributed matching grants totaling $150,000 so far. Distributed over two years, the grants will enable NYAWC and its project partners—Garden of Hope, Korean American Family Service Center and Sakhi for South Asian Women—to recruit volunteers from the community to foster attitudinal change about domestic violence and engage in a community-wide movement to stop abusive behavior. Project Speak Out will also help survivors become informed of their rights and available assistance and encourage them to seek help.
 
“We’re not just raising awareness; we are creating momentum for long-term community change,” says Alyssa Elser, Director of Shelters and Operations. “We will work with everyone—women, youth, elders, religious leaders, shopkeepers, students, housewives and men—to embrace traditional ideas about non-violence and harmonious homes that should make DV unacceptable. Our volunteers will craft and execute a plan of action that encourages people not just to be aware, but to take small but significant steps to send a clear message that violence against their mothers, sisters and daughters will not be tolerated.”
 
NYAWC thanks the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and our local funding partners for their support of Project Speak Out.
 
To volunteer for Project Speak Out, please contact NYAWC’s Project Speak Out Manager, Ms. Jerin Arifa, at jarifa@nyawc.org or 212-732-0054 ext. 163.

Men Speak Out Against Sexist Coverage of Rape: A Call to Action

Project partner Ted Kang and I just completed a thoughtful training against Domestic Violence at CONNECT.  They continue their good work with the call to action below.  As part of Project Speak Out, all four project partners will engage men to end violence against men, and Ted will focus on an action group of men.

Sincerely,
N. Jerin Arifa
Project Speak Out Team
New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC)

Over 40 activists, professors, authors, artists, therapists, advocates, providers and other leaders from the nation's anti-violence movement have signed this call to action. Please download post and distribute widely! For more information and feedback please contact Quentin Walcott qwalcott@connectnyc.org

Men Speak Out About Sexist Coverage of Rape: A Call to Action
April 2011

In the struggle to stop rape and all forms of men's violence against women, it is time for men to leave the sidelines and get in the game. One important step we can take is to raise our voices and insist that the spotlight in media coverage of rape turns away from a fixation on victims and their behavior and instead focuses on abusive men and boys - and the culture that produces and makes excuses for them. We make this demand not only as concerned citizens and responsible members of our communities - but as men from virtually every cultural/racial/ethnic/religious background.

There is some progress to report, albeit progress in response to yet another depressing reminder of how far we still have to come. Consider this: reaction to the victim-blaming in a recent New York Times story about a brutal gang rape in East Texas has been fast and furious. Over the past several weeks, columnists, bloggers, victim advocates and anti-rape activists - women and men - have criticized the March 8 Times story for the way its use of selective quotes suggested that an 11-year-old girl in effect contributed to the assault against her by "wearing make-up and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her twenties;" In addition, critics have responded to the perception conveyed in the article that among the residents of Cleveland, Texas there is greater concern for the nineteen men and boys facing allegations of rape than for the young girl.

The Times Public Editor !rthur Brisbane agreed with much of the criticism of the piece: "My assessment," he wrote just a few days later, "is that the outrage is understandable; The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim;" (The Times front page follow-up story on March 28 did a lot better, offering an extended portrait of the girl, whom they described as having been "an honor roll student, brimming with enthusiasm;")

This tragic case will provide lessons for future news writing classes and journalistic ethics seminars. Clearly, news operations need guidance about how to cover sex crimes without perpetuating misogynous cultural attitudes.

But for those of us who work to end men's violence against women, this incident is less about the specific details of one horrific act of rape in a distressed community in Texas, and more about the broader themes of power, privilege, misogyny, class and race that the act itself-and the coverage it generated - so poignantly exemplify.

We have to ask some difficult questions: why would a group of men and boys sexually violate a vulnerable 11-year-old girl? What does this say not only about them or the small community where they live, but about the society - our society - that raised them? "What are we teaching men and boys about their attitudes and behavior towards girls?" and even further..."What are we teaching men and boys about themselves?"

Because of the class, ethnicity, and race of those involved, some people will predictably attribute this atrocity to the effects of poverty and fatherlessness, which is a coded reference to family dysfunction in communities of color. But gang rapes and the attitudes behind them are perpetrated by wealthy and middle-class white men and boys, too, including boys from "intact" families with present fathers. Just last October at Yale University, DKE pledges marched on Old Campus--home to the majority of Yale's first-year female students--chanting "No means yes" along with graphic sexual slurs that both demeaned women and glorified sexual violence. White men with privilege routinely perpetrate unspeakable sexual crimes against women in their own families, as well as other women and girls; What's the explanation for their sexist violence?

It seems to us that while questions of class and race are germane in this and many other cases, they are far less relevant than questions of gender. In particular, unless we believe that males across the board are born genetically deficient, we need to ask some fundamental questions, i.e.: How do we socialize our boys? How do we assign certain attitudes and behaviors as "normal?" And, ultimately: What does it mean to be a man in 21st century America?

For too many young men, communal rituals of sexism perpetuate negative notions of manhood. Most of us are rightly horrified when we read about gang rape. But group sexual assault is best understood as being at the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors that normalize men's sexist treatment of women. What about college guys hiring strippers for private parties and openly calling those women "bitches and hoes"? !nd let's not forget - an entire genre in pornography is devoted to simulated scenes of gang rape which in many quarters is considered socially acceptable entertainment for men, who sometimes watch it in groups.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this gang rape (as in others) is how often the alleged perpetrators videotape the event. In the Cleveland, Texas assault, the police investigation was prompted, according to the Times, when an elementary school student alerted a teacher to a cell phone video that included one of her classmates. Why would men videotape an incident that literally documents their commission of a first-degree felony unless they thought 1) there was absolutely no chance of them being caught or 2) they weren't doing anything wrong?

It is this last possibility that is most disturbing, because it implicates not just the men and boys who have been charged with the crime, but all of us. What role does each of us play in defining and perpetuating social norms? Moreover, what is the responsibility of adult men not only to girls, but to boys? What is the responsibility that each of us has to teach, mentor and model for younger men and boys non-sexist attitudes and behaviors toward women?

It is important to emphasize that we can primarily be concerned about the actual victim in this case and be empathetic with the boys and young men who are charged with this awful crime. How many of them were coerced to participate by older adolescents and young adults? How many of the younger boys acquiesced because they wanted to fit in and be respected as "one of the guys?"

Like other gang rapes, the East Texas case furnishes a powerful metaphor about silence and complicity, because gang rapes can often be prevented if just one guy takes a stand. Can it really be true that there wasn't one guy - or more --in the group who knew this was terribly wrong? If so, then what were the internal dynamics of the group that prevented anyone from interrupting or stopping the process? Are men (and boys) so scared of each other that no one will speak out for fear that other men will think less of them, or worse, turn the violence on them?

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. But while awareness about sexual assault is a crucial first step, it is not enough. For men in particular, we need more of a willingness to act - both locally and globally. When men speak out about rape and other forms of violence against women, we make it clear to other men that we do not tolerate or condone the mistreatment of women. We also send the message that men who mistreat women will face seriously negative social consequences for doing so - not just legal consequences. Join us and the women who have been doing this work for years. Stand up and speak out for an end to sexual violence!

In Peace and Gender Justice,
Bernardo Villafane, New Start Services
Byron Hurt
Charles Knight, Other & Beyond Real Men
Craig Norberg-Bohm, Jane Doe Inc.
Dasan Harrington
David S. Lee, PreventConnect / California Coalition Against Sexual Assault
David J. Pate, Jr. PhD., Center on Family Policy and Practice/University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Dick Bathrick, Bathrick Consulting
Don McPherson
Ed Gondolf, Ph.D.
Emiliano Diaz de Leon, Texas Association Against Sexual Assault
Etiony Aldarondo, Ph.D
Gary Barker, PhD, Promundo and MenEngage Alliance
Greg Jacob, Service Women's Action Network
Horace Campbell
Ivan Juzang, Mee Productions
Jackson Katz, Ph.D.
Jeff O'Brien & Daryl Fort, Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)
Jeffrey L. Edleson, Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Joe Ehrmann, Coach for America
Joseph Maldonado, CONNECT Men's Roundtable
Joshua Bee Alafia, Filmmaker
Juan Carlos Arean & Feroz Moideen, Family Violence Prevention Fund
Juan Ramos, North Brooklyn Coalition Against Family Violence
Kevin Powell
Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele
Michael Kimmel, Ph.D.
Michael A. Messner, University of Southern California
Michael Shaw, Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Services, Waypoint
Neil Irvin & Pat McGann, Ph.D., Men Can Stop Rape
Paul Kivel
Quentin Walcott & Marlon Walker, CONNECT NYC
Rob Okun, VOICE MALE Magazine
Rus Funk, MensWork
Dr. Stephen Jefferson, UMass, Amherst
Steven Botkin, Ed.D., Men's Resources International
Sut Jhally, Media Education Foundation
Ted Bunch & Tony Porter, A CALL TO MEN
Ulester Douglas & Sulaiman Nuriddin, Men Stopping Violence 
Victor Rivas Rivers, Actor, Author, Spokesperson/National Network to End Domestic Violence & Verizon Community Champion