LGBTQQ Safety Is a Community Endeavor
safetyfest
“Our work comes out of the belief in our community’s capacity to heal, survive and transform,” Morgan says. To see that in action, CUAV created safetyfest, a festival showcasing cultural performances, self-defense workshops, skill sharing and healing opportunities like acupuncture. Safteyfest also highlights the power of grassroots fundraising, since CUAV combines donations of all sizes in advance so that the festival can be completely free to the community. Last year, more than 250 people celebrated survival and resilience. Morgan explains, “Safetyfest reminds us that creating queer and trans safety can be fun. The violence and trauma our communities experience is really heavy. Safetyfest allows us to hold the heaviness along with the celebration.”
CUAV is hosting its second annual safetyfest, April 14 – 17, in Oakland and San Francisco. For more information, or to support the festival, visit: http://www.indiegogo.com/safetyfest-2011
Growing isolation and eroding self-worth are everyday realities for someone experiencing domestic violence. Turning to the authorities might lead to even more violence if you are undocumented, involved in sex work, a person of color, queer or transgender. Astraea grantee partner Community United Against Violence (CUAV), based in San Francisco, is deeply familiar with those realities and exists to undo isolation and empower individuals and communities to create true safety.
Founded in 1979 in response to hate violence, often at the hands of police during raids of gay bars, CUAV emerged as a vehicle for LGBTQQ people to keep each other safe, whether from hate, state or intimate partner violence. Today, CUAV is “blending the organization’s legacy of providing lifesaving services for survivors with LGBTQQ community organizing to end all forms of violence,” said CUAV Organizing Director Morgan Bassichis. “We are reclaiming the ideas of safety and security to align them with social justice values.”
CUAV’s philosophy is that safety is not a destination; it’s a process. That process is transformative. It might begin with a survivor, seeking support as a participant.
(CUAV has dispensed with the term “client” to make sure that every aspect of the experience is about empowerment.) The participant can then access bilingual emotional support, advocacy and safety planning for free, and CUAV helps to identify life-options available to them. “The goal is for services to be the start, not the end, of our relationship with people,” said Morgan. “Participants are invited to come to our Safety Labs, which build skills of de-escalation, direct communication and peer support. Sometimes for the first time, they meet others that have dealt with similar issues and are committed to ending violence in their lives and communities. Participants say, ‘I didn’t realize that my survival is a source of power. I didn’t realize I could set boundaries and have options.’” From there, many become involved as members, helping to organize events and training to provide the same services that changed their own lives.
CUAV’s participants and members are largely LGBTQQ people of color and immigrants, and its work reflects its big-picture view of change. In moving away from a crisis-response model toward a transformative justice model that addresses root causes of injustice and violence, CUAV aims to fundamentally change relationships, communities and societies. Morgan said, “There is a growing consensus within LGBTQQ communities that as part of the larger movement for racial and economic justice, we must challenge solutions of policing, criminalization and imprisonment. We must work to transform cultural norms from punishment and shame to support and love.”
