The title of this article on the Daily Hampshire Gazette is a little misleading, I think— “Changing times: Pioneering women’s center at UMass struggles to stay vital,” implies that the center is having difficulty connecting to the student body because they are out of touch, or that the need for their services has dramatically decreased; that they have become irrelevant. On the contrary though, the article is actually a really sad tale about the lack of funding for women’s centers and how the Everywoman Center at UMass has been forced to cut back on their programming and has to rely on incredibly competitive grants to stay afloat. It’s a story that hits very close to home for SAFER, and I’m sure tons of other anti-VAW organizations and agencies across the country.

The Everywoman Center currently provides sexual assault crisis counselling and a rape crisis hotline to students and “the Hampshire County community at-large.” The sponsor special events like Take Back The Night and organize a Women of Color Network. They have a staff of five, but seem to be largely supported by a broad network of volunteers and interns. There hasn’t been a director for two years. They run on $600,000 a year.

This pales in comparison to the 1990s, when the center had 12 paid staff members and ran a comprehensive slate of programming, including a radio show, a newsletter, professional development programs, topic-based working groups, and a Poor Women’s Task Force. But over the last decade, their budget has been cut by 40%. Not that they’re alone—I doubt that Massachusetts is unique among other states in their funding predicaments:

The Everywoman’s Center operates on the margins at a time when about 2,500 sexual assaults are being reported annually to Massachusetts’ 17 rape crisis centers, according to Jane Doe Inc., a nonprofit fighting sexual and domestic violence. Meanwhile, financial support for rape crisis centers is shrinking. The state used $1.48 million in stimulus funding to offset a 24.6 percent, or $909,000, cut to public sexual assault and domestic violence services.

The number of sexual assaults alone proves how vital the services of the Everywoman Center, and it’s sister centers across the country, actually are, despite their limited funding. And while the article doesn’t give detail about the popularity of the center’s former robust programming, there is no evidence to suggest that programming fell off for any reason other than lack of funding. We work with campus women all the time—I can tell you that if you give them compelling programs, they will attend.

I think the initial reaction of many to an article like this would be something like “who needs women’s centers at universities when women are already exceeding men in admission and graduation rates? Clearly women are succeeding on their own just fine.” And I think there are two flaws with that argument. (Well actually there are a number of flaws that hinge on the assumption that college graduation is the grand indicator of “gender parity” and feminists should shut the hell up, but I’m not going to address this one here for lack of time, space, and energy.) The first is that no matter how well women are performing in higher education, sexual violence on college campuses—of which women are most often the victims—is by no means less of a problem and women’s centers have been integral to providing necessary related support and resources.

But for me that’s a given problem—when you cut funding from crisis support, people suffer. What’s a little less obvious perhaps is the issue of what the Gazette refers to as the loss of “programs that pushed for political change.” I’m not a historian of women’s centers so I can’t speak to the role they have played in campus activism or supporting minority groups, but the Everywoman Center certainly sounds like it had a pretty badass roster of programming in its day. I think the loss of this feminist-inspired activism is really notable and disheartening. It’s likely that some of what the women’s center used to sponsor has been taken up by student-run activist/identity organizations and that’s fine. But it means that the women’s center is left to be associated only with sexual violence and loses its connections to fighting other kinds of oppression/approaching other kinds of structural inequities. And I think that’s hurts women’s centers and campus-based feminism in general. Where once there was the possibility of forming really powerful alliances and tackling a number of social justice issues, the women’s center becomes “that place for rape survivors.” And while it’s beyond really important that “that place” exist, I think that mindset allows the concerns of women’s centers and feminism to be framed as very exclusive and defensive, as opposed to the really proactive, inclusive, social-justice oriented model of feminism that the women I know aspire to/buy into/want to be a part of. And I feel like that alienates a lot of progressive folks from each other, from feminism, and from caring about something like the existence and funding of women’s centers.

I suppose this is also sort of a long-winded way of reflecting on how difficult it is to get funding for activist-oriented projects or social justice work in general. It’s a constant struggle for SAFER (er, is it in poor taste to let you know you can donate?), and I know for all of our organizational peers as well. It’s funny—on a personal note, I’m about to start a degree this fall in public administration, basically marrying myself to the nonprofit world for the indefinite future. And no matter how committed to that and excited about it I am, I can’t help but think of how much of my life I am going to have to dedicate to fundraising and grantwriting and already feel really tired. And I don’t really have the knowledge yet to espouse some grand theory of an alternate funding system for social services and nonprofits—I’m still trying to figure out how the one we’re working in functions. But I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on part of what’s lost for “our movement” when places like the Everywoman Center have to drastically cut back, or an organization like the Pro-Choice Public Education Project has to shut down.

But now back to strategizing about positive change. See ya.

It’s National Crime Victims’ Rights Week and there are two amazing events tonight for any NYC locals out there. I will be at both and plan to give you all a full report-back of what work is being done to end violence and support survivors in my fair city of Brooklyn.

The first is a collaborations of the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, in partnership with the Brooklyn Community Pride Center and the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office.  The info fair starts at 5pm, and the event starts at 7pm at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon St.

The second is the first annual Brooklyn SAY SO (Sexual Assault Annual Speak Out) – just a few blocks away at the Callahan Center at St. Francis College (180 Remsen St.)  The event runs from 5-9pm and is co-sponsored by the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault and Safe Horizon.

Hope to see some of you there!

So if you’re tuned into internet feminism, you’ve likely heard a lot this week about the Newsweek piece on the lack of youth activism in the reproductive rights movement. And you’ve also noticed the anger coming from a lot of awesome young women who are actually quite active on the issue. (Check out Shelby Knox’s twitter list of young feminists for more.)

Working for an organization that supports youth activism, I feel compelled to add some words to this debate, even if other folks have already said them and probably said them better. Although SAFER doesn’t work on the issue of abortion rights, we do position ourselves as part of a larger reproductive justice movement, and the students we work with are more often than not campus feminists who are also interested in repro rights issues. Also, I turn 25 next month, which I think probably puts me in the “young person” bracket still. So that said, here’s my very jumbled two cents (not necessarily the SAFER two cents):

The Newsweek piece and the comments from NARAL staff focus on the assumption that they are losing youth support because they have been unwilling to have an “open discussion about the moral, ethical, and emotional complexity of abortion that would be more likely to resonate with young Americans.” And there may be something to that—outside of the super-left feminist circles that I seem to run in, anyway. But while the piece talks about the struggle to mobilize young people who grew up in a post-Roe world, it ignores the issue of HOW to mobilize young people, period. And while changing the language around “complexity” might be part of that, I feel like it’s a really small part of the equation.

I think that what these larger, older organizations are really struggling with is not a lack of interest in the issue; it’s a lack of interest in them, both because they represent a certain type of feminism (the kind that chastises people for not supporting a female candidate just because she’s female, and the kind that have not been successful at incorporating the voices of women of color, queer and trans women, and low-income women) and because their activist strategies are simply no longer relevant to a lot of young folks.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a lot of value in these big mother organizations. They have and produce amazing resources, and have done an amazing job of accruing lobbying power and making important inroads for women’s rights at the institutional level. But I think you can’t underestimate how much power young women have on their own these days, without paying their dues (literally and figuratively) to a NARAL or a NOW. You have a blog, you get connected to other women on the internet, you feel like you have a voice, are part of the conversation, all without leaving your computer. A lot of people might call this kind of individualized activism lazy and useless (or not activism at all). But I would encourage those people to think of it not as individual but as local—this kind of internet activism is important because it shows that feminist issues DO hit really close to home for a lot of young women. They are looking at their immediate worlds and speaking up when they don’t like what they see. And there is something powerful about that: I have (gasp!) never gone to a protest, but I have had countless conversations with friends and family members about why I care about the issues I’m passionate about and (however implicitly) why they should too. And isn’t that how we change the world at large? By starting at home?

I get a lot of emails from a lot of organizations asking for my money and telling me about federal legislation that I need to write letters about immediately. And, as someone who works in the nonprofit field, I get why that’s the way it needs to be. But I am so much more likely to go to the benefit for the repro justice organizations working hard, without much funding, in my own backyard. I am more likely to be concerned about how the women I know or see on the street everyday are or aren’t being supported. And yes, obviously whether or not Roe v. Wade gets overturned has a huge impact on them too, but that’s just not all I’m thinking about because it doesn’t reflect the realities of what I see around me all the time.

Not every organization can be everything to all people. I mean, SAFER couldn’t be any more niche, so I get that. But if you want to be a national organization that gets youth support, besides actually “sharing power” and actually talking to young women about how they would like to be more involved (as the bloggers I linked to above have covered) I think you also need figure out how to make yourself relevant at the local level. What can your potential supporters do besides writing a letter to their congressperson or sending you a check? What’s going on around them that you should care about too? How do you frame the conversation about repro rights so that it’s more inclusive of issues besides abortion access for women who can already afford health care? How do you leverage the huge internet presence your issue has that simply isn’t affiliated with your own organization? Easier said than done with limited resources and huge staffs that need to get paid, I know….but. If you want nuance, move in this direction, not about the complexities of abortion. I think that’s what will feel more relevant.

If I can use SAFER as an example, not because I think we’re the best model (we’re not, we’re a volunteer collective, and generally just completely different animal here), but because it illustrates my point: SAFER’s founders were very clear about the role that the organization would play in campus organizing: a very small one. The goal was to support activism that arose organically on a campus, to arm students with strategies that would help them achieve success on their own terms, the idea being that every campus is different, and a sexual assault policy should be written to reflect the culture/needs/demographics of that specific campus. Although SAFER has guidelines for what makes a good policy, and requires that the activists we work with spend some time reflecting on issues of intersectionality and how sexual assault interacts with other oppressions on their campus, we NEVER write the policy for them, or tell students explicitly how they need to run their campaign. I really appreciate this approach. I think it helps turn young folks into the kind of leaders they want to be.

So you know that young people are interested in the issue because that’s what the polls tell you. But they’re not active in the ways you would like to see them be? Seems like it’s time to find out what they are doing, and what kinds of support they could use in doing it, or how they could take it to the next level. Different “generations” of women are clearly going to have different tools, strategies, priorities. The Newsweek piece seems to make it clear that the job here for older feminists is actually figuring out what those are for young women who care about repro rights. It shouldn’t have to be the young womens’  responsibility to come to you, especially if it hasn’t been made effectively clear to them why they need you in the first place. This doesn’t mean sending frantic emails about legislation changes. It means talking for real about how a movement works, how to be diverse without being divided, and how to meet each other in the middle.

[p.s. This isn't to say that youth activism is all online, or that all young folks do is sit around talk. That's far from true, as all of the students we know who are trying to change campus policy as we speak can prove. I just think it's hard to deny how the internet has changed feminist activism...]