INCITE! 3rd Color of Violence Conference

Off Our Backs, May/Jun 2005 by Mantilla, Karla, Mann, Edith, Roberson, Amaya N

The 3rd Color of Violence Conference (COV) was held by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence organization on March 11-13 in New Orleans. [See the May! June 2002 issue of off our backs for detailed coverage of the second COV conference.] The theme of the conference was "Stopping the War on Women of Color."

Over a thousand women from across the country and around the world attended. The conference took place in spite of the fact that a large mainstream foundation withdrew a grant in the amount of $100,000 because of INCITE!'s support for the Palestinian cause.

In a move to both save money for the organization and make the conference financially accessible for a large number of low-income conference goers, the conference stood out from most other conferences because it was not held in an expensive hotel in the middle of an upscale downtown urban area. Instead, it was held in a community center in a historic African American neighborhood in New Orleans, with workshops held in an elementary school across the street.

At the start of the opening plenary, there was an awesome performance by Faith Nolan, a musician who plays guitar, harmonica and tambourine at the same time. She has a wonderful voice, brilliant political lyrics and a bluesy style that is compelling and mesmerizing. (Don't ever miss an opportunity to hear a performance by her!)

Beth Richie, author of Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women, was the facilitator of the plenary. She began by saying that the goal of the conference was to "talk about violence but also resistance." She said the "real war is war on the streets, institutions, military bases and for women, in their homes."

Amara Ferez, executive director of Sisters in Action (SIA), based in Portland, Oregon, reported that 80% of SIA membership is girls ages 11-17. In 1999, SIA was shut down but was subsequently reopened independently. The shutdown was demoralizing and unexpected since it happened when SIA was only three years old. The staff had little experience with fundraising, administration or infrastructure. In regard to fundraising, the first thing they did was to write grants, but that meant they took on more work. There was a conflict between doing what "we wanted to do internally and what to do to fulfill grants." The administrative part of the organization became immense-establishing and managing such things as insurance, payroll, 501(c)(3) requirements, personnel policies, legal matters, by-laws, articles of incorporation, job descriptions, letterhead, computers, various accounts, etc. It became a "struggle to do social justice work in the nonprofit structure, a struggle to articulate political analysis, a struggle so the culture of the organization was not mimicking the practices we were fighting against."

Perez explained the context behind their work: the pillars of colonialism are 1) taking land and resources; 2) force and technology; and 3) killing people. Those in power employ the pillars of colonialism to keep control, but analyze and explain local issues and policies in language that masks their real agenda-inequality. In Portland, schools with the highest number of students of color and poor students were the first casualties of this process. Authorities told the schools they were not functioning, but the reality was that the schools were actually discredited, which promoted flight from those areas. The next step is that the curriculum is altered and replaced with test preparation to pave the way for charter and private schools. This leads to the depletion of public schools. Ferez pointed out that "they use our concerns-education and equity-with the real intent of undermining the institutions they have fought for decades to establish." She concluded that it is important to unmask these issue campaigns that reshape the dominant culture and popular politics and to expose the truth behind the lies. The projects SIA has worked on include helping youth leaders create T-shirts for their schools to foster school pride in those schools labeled "non-performing" through the "No Child Left Behind" act. SIA also created a "critical cemetery" with a large "death row" mural to highlight the various programs that have died or are being eliminated. In another political awareness project, SIA created a haunted house complete with dazed children, their thinking caps on the floor, to dramatize how the schools are becoming places devoid of critical thinking.

But SIA has found that administrative and fundraising work has been more taxing than all the activist work. Perez emphasized that people must stop thinking that work needs to be done somewhere "out there." The grassroots activist community should not be led by the nonprofit model, so that the community abandons critical analysis in favor of what a foundation determines to be relevant or important. We must not forget that strategic radical movement building is not on the foundations' agenda. Ten years ago, Perez thought that the management skills needed to manage a nonprofit were more important than organizing skills. Ferez explained, "but that leaves activist organizations dependent on the 'foundation dance,' which exhausts us. The foundations persuade us that we can't do the organizing work without their money." She concluded that we "must prepare for a radical movement that is not funded" by foundations.