CAPPA Statement: Black Lives Matter

Access PDF VERSION Here

June 22, 2020

As an LC, we are grieving and outraged over the murders of innocent Black people by police, most recently George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade. This violence is neither new nor shocking; as part of an anti-violence profession we are all much too aware that such institutionalized violence is suppressed and minimized. The anti-violence field, our field, would not exist without Black people and in particular the work of Black women who created some of the very foundational systems and knowledge on which our daily work relies. Black Lives Matter. We cannot end interpersonal and gender-based violence without ending racism. These are facts, not opinions.

We are in solidarity with calls for accountability, not only for these violent and deliberate acts of murder, but also the acts of brutality deployed specifically against protestors to scare, deter, and further oppress. We wholly reject these and all acts of white supremacist violence and anti-Black racism. We recognize that these events especially impact Black CAPPA members. Your grief, rage, fear, exhaustion, and frustration are real, and the LC email account and CAPPA Listserv are here to help, to listen, to share - whatever we can do.

For members who are not Black, if you are looking for some self-education materials, Wanda Swan and LB Klein put together this great list of Resources on Dismantling White Supremacy. We use several pieces from this list in our own LC onboarding discussions.

We are working on a longer position statement on the intersections of institutionalized racism (within the police and, ahem, other institutions, like in higher education…) and in our own field of campus gender-based violence prevention. If you are interested in helping with this work, or have expertise or resources to recommend or share, please get in touch with us at cappaleaders@gmail.com.

In Accompliceship,

CAPPA 2020 Leadership Council

Wanda Swan, Drew Rizzo, Michelle Bangen, Rowan Frost, Sabrina Griffith, Kate Hildebrandt, La Wanza Lett-Brewington, Robyn Manning, Melanie O. Matson, Jessica Muniz, Elliot Ruggles, Megan Selheim, Tayler Simon, Rachel Stewart, Taylan Stulting, Shana Ware, Elizabeth Wilmerding