Community Accountability Project

Paving New Roads: Communities Engaged in Resisting Violence

This event was held on Saturday, December 1, 2007.

What is PAVING NEW ROADS?

PAVING NEW ROADS: Communities Engaged in Resisting Violence — An opportunity to hear about new initiatives to resist violence and to gain new hands-on skills
and tools to bring back to your community to work to end violence against women and girls.

PAVING NEW ROADS seeks to:

• spur new local initiatives aimed at ending violence against women, girls, and youth
• provide new ideas and energy to groups that are engaging in this work
• share hands-on skills and tools for community-based initiatives
• provide opportunities for collaboration and networking

What are people saying?

The Workshops: Group 1

Media Justice & How to Deconstruct the Media – Females United for Action

This workshop will introduce you to media consolidation and corporate control or “Big Media” and how that contributes to the epidemic of violence against women. You will learn how to separate explicit and implicit meaning in advertising as well as how to analyze the social messages used in ads in an objective way. Finally you will get to explore examples of how you can change the negative impacts media has on your community on a national, state and local level. [Youth-led]

Using Platica & Storytelling Around Issues of Violence & Reproductive Justice
- Latinas Organizing for Reproductive Equality

The focus of the workshop will be using the platica & storytelling format in order to raise consciousness around reproductive justice & violence against women issues. This will be an interactive workshop where all the senses will be engaged in order to create a comfortable space for individuals to share their stories while learning about the evolution & approach of l.o.r.e.

Creating Alternative Responses to Violence against Girls & Women of Color
in the Sex Trade & Street Economics – Young Women’s Empowerment Project

This workshop will explore, and discuss community based alternative responses to state and social systems violence against girls and young women in the sex trade and street economies, developed by YWEP. This session will present YWEP’s community responses and practices that reduce violence and increase our collective capacity to organize for greater justice and health for all women and girls impacted by the sex trade and street economy. [Youth-led]

Disabled Women and Girls: How to Include Them in Your Work – Access Living

This workshop will give participants a chance to learn and discuss the nature of disability oppression, and how it plays out in the domestic and caregiver violence experiences of people with disabilities. You’ll also get practical tips on how better to include this underserved population in current programming, and where to turn for ongoing support and resources. Presenters: Susan Nussbaum and Janice Harris of Access Living of Metro Chicago.

Incorporating the Prison Industrial Complex and the Experiences of Queer
Youth of Color into our Anti-Violence Work –
Broadway Youth Center

This workshop will briefly explore the history and roots of the prison industrial complex (PIC) through a lens that places the increasing criminalization and displacement of queer youth of color at its center. We will position our discussion within a framework that places the PIC, state violence, militarism, institutional violence, and intimate partner violence along a continuum of violence. And, through these connections, we will explore the ways in which youth workers, adult allies, and domestic violence service providers can incorporate this framework into their individual and group work with survivors of oppression and trauma.

The Workshops: Group 2

Educación Popular : Una Herramienta Contra la Violencia de Género –
Casa Segura

Este taller es una breve introducción a la metodología educativa de Paulo Freire y al Teatro del Oprimido de Augusto Boal. Ambas corrientes, basadas en una concepción marxistahumanista tienen como objetivo el liberar al individuo de las limitaciones y clichés impuestas por la sociedad. Mediante el uso de ejemplos los participantes a esta sesión aprenderán algunas técnicas educativas utilizadas en grupos para sobrevivientes de violencia doméstica, así como en educación comunitaria, elevando la consciencia social de la comunidad y organizando su resistencia activa.

Where Our Brothers At? YWAT’s Approach to Engaging Young Men in Addressing
Sexism and Violence – Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team

This workshop will highlight the multiple methods that the YWAT is using to engage young men in our work. We will also discuss what we are learning through our men as allies campaign. Workshop participants will leave with concrete resources to use to involve young men in your gender violence prevention efforts. [Youth-led]

Performance as a Means of Activism & Resistance – AquaMoon

Through an interactive performance and discussion, this session will demonstrate how creative expression (poetry, prose, art, dance, song, and music) can be an effective form of activism and resistance for girls and womyn. In addition, attendees will be provided with writing and performance tools to use with girls and womyn to promote healthy self-esteem as a prevention mechanism for resisting violence.

Dating & Sexual Violence – Take Back the Halls

The discussion will be lead by Nicholas Senn young women who have been in the Take Back the Halls program for at least a year and will consist of a power point presentation that will address issues concerning sexual violence and teen dating violence. The powerpoint will provide audience members with statistics, definitions, and provide understanding of the topics. The presenters will also explore current media that depict sexual violence and teen dating violence. [Youth-led]

Safe Space, Harm Reduction, and Trauma-Informed Principles: Opportunities
for Innovative Anti-Violence Work in Youth Spaces – Broadway Youth Center

This workshop will highlight and envision models of anti-violence work that center the experiences of youth of color, LGBTQ individuals, PIC-impacted folks, and poor people. Using the Broadway Youth Center’s drop-in program for LGBTQ and/or homeless youth to frame our conversation, we will share our guiding values, frameworks, and approaches to anti-violence work within our space – as well as explore the ongoing struggles and complexities that challenge our program, youth workers, and youth participants.