ACCESS PDF HERE

September 18, 2020

The Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association (CAPPA) is a collective of campus-based professionals who work to educate their campuses and colleagues about interpersonal/gender-based violence in all its forms, and those who advocate for and support people who have been affected by dating and domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, and stalking. Our organization envisions campuses free from all forms of interpersonal and gender-based violence. We maintain in our vision that “our work is rooted in social justice, supporting survivors, and fostering communities that value evidence-based practice, practice-based research, and self-care.” 

Many of us are all too familiar with the complex, and often harmful, experiences that advocates and survivors have had with the criminal system at individual and institutional levels.

As an anti-violence organization, we stand in solidarity with all people whose pleas for accountability for these racist and violent acts have not been heard. We also recognize that these recent events may have especially impacted our Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) CAPPA members in a number of ways. We honor your grief, rage, fear, exhaustion, and frustration. 

In light of the recent and continued violence against Black people in our country at the hands of law enforcement, we write to: 

1. Call attention to the ways in which structural inequities, including racism, directly contribute to the increased rates of interpersonal violence committed against BIPOC people, who are also disproportionately made vulnerable to interpersonal violence by these structures and systems. Please see this very short list of the following organizations and coalitions who have been doing this work:

   1. Black Lives Matter

   2. INCITE!

   3. Combahee River Collective

   4. Black Women’s Blueprint

   5. Equal Justice Initiative

   6. Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective
      

2. Reiterate that we as advocacy and prevention professionals are not exempt from critique within these structures, and highlight the areas in which CAPPA members should strive to improve.
   

3. Stress to our membership the importance of amplifying the voices and perspectives of those who are most marginalized-- both within the populations we serve, and those of our professional colleagues. 
   

4. Resist the shift of our national narrative that silences conversations about antiracism and to call for programs to critically examine our country’s history of systemic racism and state-sponsored anti-Black violence, and the intersecting harms experienced by BIPOC survivors. Given President Trump’s recent call to ban anti-racism trainings labelling them as “divisive, un-American propaganda”, working to center the impacts of white terrorism against Black lives and the intersections with interpersonal violence work is urgent. We recognize the work of violence prevention and response as historically dominated by white ciswomen who have made alliances with the criminal justice system in the pursuit of accountability for gender-based and interpersonal violence. 

5. Share resources and opportunities for forward movement-- see below. 

Resources and Ways Forward

What follows are a few questions that some LC members have been asking ourselves and one another. We invite you to join us in thinking and talking about them yourself, with the LC, and with your colleagues.

1. What does implicit (or explicit) bias look like in advocacy and prevention work?

2. Does your sex positive consent programming take into consideration the complex history of Black women's (and other BIPOC) sexuality?

3. Is your victim advocacy office encouraged to offer resources other than the police?

4. Have you examined your work’s relationships to carceral systems or how you might incorporate abolition frameworks into advocacy and prevention?

5. Does your bystander intervention training provide alternatives to calling the police or other authorities?

6. Does your prevention and advocacy center anti-oppression work when examining anti-violence work?

7. If you are a white person in a position of leadership, how are you creating space to decenter your voice, and acknowledge the history of how whiteness has co-opted the interpersonal violence prevention movement? See this article on avoiding taking colonizer positions in therapy as a starting point.

8. Does your program offer Black (and other BIPOC) clients the opportunity to create a space for healing and addressing their mental health concerns in a context free from colonial and oppressive systematic assumptions? See this toolkit of journal prompts as a starting point.

Again, for some more self-education materials directly curated from several CAPPA members, here is a great list of Resources on Dismantling White Supremacy.  

There is no ending interpersonal violence without ending white supremacy. We hope that you will use this time of reflection to engage with the roots of racism and white supremacy in the anti-sexual violence and feminist movements, and take tangible steps within your personal and professional life to engage in dismantling racism. As professionals and as a field, may we continue to work to center the most marginalized voices and to uplift the Black, Indigenous, and POC experts in our field who are so often silenced, exploited, or tokenized. We can and should strive to do better. 

This statement was written by the Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association Leadership Council.

ABOUT CAPPA

The Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association (CAPPA) is the professional association representing over 600 professionals in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and 3 countries working as campus-based advocates and prevention specialists. CAPPA envisions campuses free from all forms of interpersonal and gender-based violence, including dating and domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, and stalking. For more information visit: http://www.nationalcappa.org/