October 26, 2023 • 36 mins
In this two-part podcast series, Mo talks with DeAnn Alcantara Thompson and Sid Jordan about Mapping Prevention, a community participatory action research project. that helped shape the direction of prevention funding in King County, WA.
For more information and transcripts visit www.nsvrc.org/podcasts
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(00:00):
Well, coming to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual
Violence Resource Center on understanding responding to and preventing sexual
abuse and assault. I'm Moe. And in this two part series,
I'll be talking with Sid and Dian about the mapping prevention project,
what we did and what we learned. I'm here with Sid and Diane from
(00:40):
the Mapping Prevention Project, and we're gonna start this podcast episode
the way we would start all of our mapping prevention meetings,
which is with a moment of grounding. The chant that we were just
(06:57):
listening to is a chant from a group that I'm a part of
with my brother, who was also a part of the Mapping Prevention group,
and it's really like an invitation to the ancestors to be a part
of... To be a part of what we're doing and to welcome them
and also to be remembering our ancestors from where we're from,
(07:19):
and also the ancestors like a welcoming to all ancestors everywhere,
and we try to always start our meetings with something like that.
I like that we're starting off the podcast the same way,
it feels really nice. I'm wondering if we can start with what is
Mapping Prevention? How did this whole project even get started?
(07:42):
So mapping prevention is a project that started in late 2019
in King County, Washington. It was rooted in the coalition ending gender
based violence, which is a membership organization of domestic and sexual
violence service provider organizations in King County. But it was really
(08:05):
drawing on the work of a number of advocates, organizers and activists in
King County who are interested in thinking about violence prevention, domestic
and sexual violence prevention in new and different ways, and exploring
what we know from doing the work, and also we were in the
(08:28):
position to apply for some funding that the County had available,
which was set aside for a planning process, a community planning process
to set the structure for a pilot project that the County was going
to find on those pilot... And the pilot project was
(08:49):
new work in gender based violence prevention, and that was sort of how
it was set up from the beginning. So
we were able to use those funds to start a participatory action research
project that would explore gender based violence work in our area.
And I think I'll pass to Dee to let Dee talk about how
that sort of built on the longer term work, both of the coalition
(09:13):
and in or out. We were excited about getting a chance to have
some funding to lift up a lot of the BIPOC and queer and
trans programming that had been existing and around for a long time,
and not just programming within mainstream, non profits and domestic and
(09:35):
sexual violence organizations, but also just some of the really amazing
cultural work that was being done by BIPOC communities for a long,
long time in Seattle and King County, and
I think I was interested in both highlighting and
all of the programs that weren't necessarily doing an explicitly prevention
(09:56):
work, but we're doing cultural work, and then ended up kind of engaged
in anti violence work, there were just a lot of experiences around racism
and also homophobia in the mainstream movement. And so I ended up spending
just so much of my time at the coalition as the prevention
(10:18):
and transformative justice coordinator, talking with people about those
experiences and wanting to talk about just a really strong work people were
producing even in light of the oppression they were experiencing.
And I love that you were able to
bring this into this project, like this project became something,
(10:40):
I think, different than what was originally intended. Yeah, I don't think
we could have imagined what we were doing before we were doing it,
sometimes people say about transformative justice. It's like, you're building
the plane while you're flying it, and I 1000% feel like that about this
project just because it was the beginning of the pandemic, and now it's
(11:04):
hard to imagine our lives without Zoom, but at the time it was
hard to imagine our lives indefinitely this project inside of Zoom,
we imagine that people were gonna be like people that have been doing
long standing cultural work, getting together, people that have been advocates
for 20 years, and getting to talk to each other in person and
share a meal and become friends and you know that ended up being
(11:28):
different than what we did, exactly. Yeah, that's a good point.
I think it would be interesting to talk about how
you all came together and who was involved, and I feel like I
should also say that I was part of this project, so not only
Mo from NSVRC but Moe who lives in
(11:50):
Tacoma and has worked with you both for many years in different capacities.
I knew Sid from working on a project
many, many years ago at the Northwest Network of Bisexual Trans Lesbians
and Gays survivors of abuse and I just really saw... You said to
bring together mostly BIPOC queer trans people to talk about resources for
(12:16):
trans people in King County. And it felt really scary. So was like
there weren't a lot of resources. And it was sad,
and I think that you actually did it, you brought us together was
really hopeful and exciting and also just nice to be together with people.
(12:37):
Yeah, and I was excited about a project about prevention and
resistance to the criminal legal system, and as a response to domestic and
sexual violence being a project that could have research and could have
things that we could share afterwards with people beyond our
geographical area. Yeah. We were colleagues there until we came together
(13:01):
to work on this project, but I think one of the things that
sort of brought us together in a way is that we both were
recognizing the work that we were involved with outside of the traditional
domestic and sexual violence advocacy groups we were trying to
work with. When we were working on that trans guide, I remember us
(13:23):
saying, "Okay, well, we've been working so hard to try to make these
existing organizations safe places for trans people to go." And
we couldn't, as a group, even agreed to put most of those organizations
and to this guide, because we did not feel confident enough that we
could direct people there, but what we did see is all these arts
(13:47):
and cultural spaces and groups people were building and ways of connecting
that we're really led by trans and queer people and BIPOC, trans and queer
people, and so the resource guide, sort of was full of actual resources,
but they weren't the kinds of resources that I think in our field,
people think of as resources or think of as violence prevention,
(14:09):
and I think in many ways, the project we were doing is trying
to make transparent and filled and direct funds to these kinds of resources
that are... People have always been building outside of sort of those that
are typically sponsored by the state or county
or a local funder even, so. I love hearing the story of how
(14:33):
people know each other and how groups come together,
'cause we have such a shared history. So I know the project started
with a think tank. Can you say more about what that think tank
was and why you did it that way? We were
directing King County what kind of program should they be funding with new
prevention dollars, and we knew that people couldn't really be a part of
(14:58):
our group that was gonna be conducting the research if or their group
was gonna be applying for the money. So
we were thoughtful about that and we were able to have some of
those people be a part of our think tank, and it was really
just an opportunity to ask some questions, kind of like
get people talking to each other and sort of share some of our
(15:20):
ideas for what we thought we might... What we might do,
and some of the things that came out of that were just
how tired people were sort of like telling the county, telling the government
what is it that they want, and then definitely not seeing those things
happen, but also just not seeing a lot of change
happen in what the government always wanting to do,
(15:44):
but just like to have a checked a box, an opportunity to have
heard from community and then not really active move on that.
So that was something really over sounding. I think the other thing that
felt really clear to me was just how in April of 2020
already people were exhausted and overwhelmed by the grief and loss that
(16:08):
we had already experienced from COVID at that point, and then
simultaneously real mass uprising and resistance to the carceral system
to the criminal legal system. And I think this really big piece around...
We had always said, "We can never re imagine courts, we can never
(16:29):
re imagine schools." And there was a literal active building schools while
we were in Zoom. Everything online, all of a sudden. So
I think that that it was just a very particular moment,
a lot of those pieces, I mean, not that we weren't thinking about
those things, but I think just trying to develop that and we were
(16:52):
wanting to create a group for mapping prevention that was
majority BIPOC, majority queer trans. Good representation from people in
their twenties and under. And why did you want to use a participatory
action research approach? There's a long term pattern in King County,
(17:13):
and I imagine this in many other places, the
different state agencies or approaching community groups and saying, "Let's
just ask you what you need?" And taking the information that people give
and then saying, "Okay, we're gonna use that for our planning purposes."
And sort of never the community seeing back sort of the results of
(17:34):
that or feeling sort of dissatisfied with what was done and feeling like
they maybe were exploited for their time, taking advantage of, but also
just not heard. Essentially, I think that that is the pattern
of relations that we heard about when we first thought even actually before
we applied, I think Dee and I were starting to ask people,
(17:57):
"What would be a good version of this project?" Because in a way,
what's happening there is the county is trying to get an outside group
to go do that work for them, all the outreach, and that is...
It was kind of an amazing thing that happened that there was funding
available for that process. Before, there was just decisions made about
(18:17):
where the program money should go. So in many ways, it was extremely
exciting and new to have dedicated funding set aside for a group,
an outside group to go and do this work. And at the same
time there was a lot of skepticism about what was being asked then
and whether what people said would be listened to. So I think what
(18:39):
participatory action research and why I sort of pitched it to Dee and
was like maybe we can do it in this other way where I
came to it by setting it up in a way that we are
actually creating a team to say, "We wanna go ask questions."
And sure, county will give you some feedback from what we learned.
But the center of the project is not about you and what you
(18:59):
want. The center of the project is about questions that this group wants
to answer ourselves and we have a lot of learning to do ourselves.
We want to grow as people who care about prevention
and this is an opportunity for us to go out and build relationships
and networks and learn together. So as a person who does research sort of
as a job I think about participatory action research as like an attitude
(19:22):
towards research. So I'm thinking you know not about how I can become
the expert of the thing but how can we set up a process
that makes more and more people have knowledge about a thing.
So I think it's also like about more and more expertise like who
can be in charge or who can know things. So we knew coming
(19:45):
in that a lot of people had a lot of knowledge in our
community about prevention and that a lot of the knowledge that was being
produced by Black and Indigenous people and people of color and queer and
trans people was being sort of erased or not seen
as violence prevention about... And nor funded, which was essential to our
project which was like moving resources. We knew that coming in,
(20:07):
we knew there was so much knowledge and we were balancing that I
think at the same time as being people in those organizations who knew
that we were also knowledgeable but also learners and continuing to be learners.
And being humble and being confident. Blending those things as we go forward
(20:27):
to learn. And so I think at its best participatory action research is
about getting people involved. We're all a part of it. We are doing
sort of a systematic look at something, we're like inquisitive and trying
to learn something new and then of course action in the middle that
we aren't going to just take that information and move it away from
(20:51):
those people who participated but we're going to try to give it back
and we're going to try to actually make some social change based on
what we learn and do together. So we're responsible and accountable to those
people who we asked to help us build our knowledge together.
I'm really glad that you shared about participatory action research. It
was really a great thing to be involved in.
(21:13):
What else can you tell me about the Mapping Prevention group and what
actions the group did together? I don't know that I can talk about
what Mapping Prevention is without talking about this really amazing like
fierce phenomenal, super unique group that we came together where we had
you know reproductive justice activists, we had youth worker like artists,
(21:35):
and a lot of folks that have been in the anti violence movement for
a long time. So the art that we produced together, conversations that we
had really led us to getting to come up with like what the
action items were going to be for the project. And so
we did 46 long in depth interviews with cultural workers and anti violence
(21:59):
activists advocates. We really wanted the interviews to be meaningful and
connecting and to make sure that what the things that people were asking
us about we got back to them with. So I would end an
interview and have just like a page of notes and then I would
like come back to the interviewee with, what are all the resources around
these things. But everybody on the team conducted at least one interview.
(22:23):
Out of those interviews came, yeah, a lot of podcasts and other projects
which is pretty exciting. And then we also conducted a survey
of over 600 people. And we we'd really tried to have a focus
of people under the age of 25. I know we had a lot
(22:43):
of people in the field that filled out the survey and a lot
of those half about half of those people I think were BIPOC folks.
So those were some of the action items and then I mean also
we did a really fun event at the kind of the end of
that a block party and where we had like prizes and music and
(23:05):
just like getting to share a couple of breakout rooms on participatory action
research and people getting to hear more in depthly from some of the
programs that got funding. And then we wrote a really beautiful paper that
also looks really beautiful which to me felt special.
But process was just as important as like what the outcome was and
(23:29):
that was intentional. We would even say like we want these meetings we
want these events to be something that you come to and you feel
better for having come as opposed to like drained and
sad that you wasted your time. Yeah, as you're providing all those examples,
Dee, and I was just sort of remembering. I feel like part of
(23:51):
the action was having a community conversation and really promoting a community
conversation about what violence prevention looks like outside of
criminal justice solutions. And one of the reasons... I mean, that's obviously
something that all of us cared about and were deeply in conversation about
already but we started this project at the beginning of 2020 and it
(24:13):
was that spring when George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed and in
Seattle there was a huge conversation about divesting from police and at
the same time the very familiar sort of go tos for people in
opposition to those ideas, "What about domestic and sexual violence?" So
we really had an opportunity to be, as people who've been wronged, interested
(24:36):
in preventing domestic and sexual violence and knowing that policing and
prisons are not the way to do that. To really use a survey,
for example, as a way to get people sort of engaged with the
ideas of transformative justice, the preventative side of that. What would
it take for us to have the kind of world in which
(24:57):
we were free of violence? What do people need to be able to
feel safe? Those were the kinds of questions on there. So even the
survey was about collecting the data but it was actually much more I
think about sort of raising the questions and engaging people in those questions
and then we were able to use what people
provided back that in the interviews to drive the next level of conversation,
(25:20):
get the block party. So I think a big action was that social
media as Dee was saying but I think also I don't want to lose
that one of the pieces, we had the opportunity to shape where the
county funds were gonna go for these violence prevention pilot projects
as they were calling them and we could have done a lot of
(25:41):
things in terms of taking what we learned and advising the county and
one of the things we decided as a group which I think was
really useful and it wound up being successful though I think we didn't
know if it would be was instead of writing a report to them
we literally wrote a request for proposals. We wrote it in the way
that they typically write requests for proposals. We told them this is what
(26:04):
we think for RFP should look like when it goes out to communities,
these are the kinds of projects these are the kinds of things that
we heard people say should be funded and they wound up essentially using
our exact language when it went out and I... We had great partners
at the county. But if we had just given a report it would
(26:25):
have been up to them to interpret how that should go into that
request and so that was I think an action piece that our group
decided was really important. And then our report
that that we wrote was also sort of geared towards other kinds of
funders in order to elevate sort of the work that we did,
this is not just about this one source of funds that's going to
potentially come and go but that we wrote something that other other funders
(26:49):
could use to think about where they put resources for
gender based violence prevention and we already know it's been taken up
by some other funders which is great. Just hearing you both share these
examples brings back so many memories. I feel like we're all saying that
like, "Oh, this is... " I remember being at these meetings and
(27:10):
being able to hear the story back about kind of how everything was
shaped and how this project and this group was able to be
impacted by everything else that was going on around us in the world
is really... I think it's just a really great example of
(27:31):
how a group can come together and be really flexible and and still
have this goal but kind of build as we are meeting and as
we are doing things, yeah. One of the other things that I really
loved about this project and being able to be a part of it
(27:51):
and being a part of these conversations is that
the idea of prevention, like we were talking about before,
was filled with nuance. We weren't having just that limited
definition of prevention as this idea of stopping violence before it ever
has a chance to happen. And so I'm wondering if you could say
(28:11):
more about how you're thinking about prevention like both shaped the project
and maybe changed throughout the project? I mean,
I think this is an opportunity to talk about something that I kind
of been thinking about of just like I'm a survivor of multiple forms
of violence. I grew up and... I grew up and experienced sexual violence,
(28:32):
domestic violence, and I think that I never really saw this field.
As a young person as a field that was
a place that I could work or like experience healing. I think I
just really thought that that was for like other people that hadn't had
those experiences. And when I started working at a shelter I was like,
"Oh, actually my experiences are really helpful," right, for doing this
(28:56):
work. And I think at every level as an advocate doing more prevention
outreach and education work I sort of... I was trying to figure out
how to make a path for myself and my people and my community
and the people that I grew up with.
"How do we make this movement?" If a third to a fourth of women
(29:18):
and... I mean, just the category there's... It's so massive. There's no
way that like the current responses we have could really respond.
And so I think that I have really been interested in like figuring
out how everybody has to be a part of this movement to end
violence and to end oppression and we can't actually
parse out just ending domestic and sexual violence without ending racism
(29:41):
and classism and homophobia and all other forms of oppression.
I did not believe that we could use the master's tools to solve
this problem. I did not think that we could use really structured like mainstream
approaches to to fix these issues or to like address them.
And, I think, even when I hear a word like outcomes I get
(30:05):
very nervous that we're trying to put really amazing responsive and like
fluid responses, I guess, into like a box, right? And so I similarly
like having heard PAR or like research was like very nervous about what
that could mean? And then, for me, like the transformation was really around
(30:28):
like just seeing how this really was a way to
validate and prop up the programs that I saw doing like the most
amazing work, right, and the people and the groups that...
People really need advocates to to try to write a mock RFP,
right? To tell the government, to tell funders this is how you could
(30:50):
write a proposal for funds in a way that speaks to
the most people, right? And I think that that was something I got
really interested in. And I'm starting to understand slowly it could happen,
right? But I do think that it really was a process.
And for me it was a process that happened while I was doing
(31:10):
it that I was like interviewing people and realizing
"Oh, we're gonna be able to frame what people are actually saying they
need to funders before the funding applications even go out," right?
And that was a really just different process than I had been a
part of before having been more on the like program side for most
(31:34):
of my now 20 years in the field. I think in many ways
this is a non profit wide problem but in domestic and sexual violence
advocacy we and in King County at least which I'm most familiar with
there. We've been in a trap, like an inclusion trap,
right? The idea being that we know a lot of the organizations are
(31:57):
sort of founded on principles that are reflective of white supremacy and
the gender binary and these are sort of underneath our organizations and
we're trying to sort of fix them or repair them or make them
better, put more people of color and put more diversity into them,
(32:18):
right, as a way to sort of change them and transform them and
of course organizations have also tried to learn from mistakes and adapt
and that's sort of been like the hamster wheel a little bit.
And I just saw Dee doing like so much care work for people
who are in these organizations and I know Moe you've also done that
work just people kind of in sort of the consequences on people who
(32:41):
are working in the organization when that's the wheel you're in and so
I think your question about like how are we trying to think of
prevention differently was how do we move from the this other center not
try to make the organizations that are haven't been sort of meeting the
needs of more marginalized people especially multiply marginalized people
(33:04):
like how do we actually go to them models and ideas
that are really born out of the communities that are left out of
these systems. So I think that was sort of the move we made.
And one of the things, I think... One of the first things that
happened when we came together as a team is sort of we need
to sit and acknowledge that because we're working, we're doing this based
(33:28):
on this coalition we need to acknowledge the history of racism within the
organizations we're sort of centered in and that that had to be
done at the outset to build trust as a group to know where
we were moving from as a group. One of our members offered a
tool that she had used with a lot of other groups and brought
that to one of our first meetings and that tool was sort of
(33:49):
like, "What are anti racist commitments as a group?" "What is our understanding
as a group of how we're going to move and think about our
own commitments?" And I think that really set us up so well to
then ask at every step is what we're doing now reflective of that that
I think we had already been doing some of the bringing in some
(34:11):
of the cultural work and our ancestors like Dee spoke about.
We had already done that a few times, but that moment helped us
be like, "Oh we're doing this thing, let's actually continue to do that,
let's have a framework for why we're doing that, let's talk about that
as part of an anti racist commitment to our meeting, culture,
and how we're moving." I think that was like real shift and also
(34:32):
an example of how this wasn't about me as somebody as a trained
researcher bringing in research tools and saying these are the tools we're
going to use it was about saying... All of us have tools we've
been using that are useful for research, unless when somebody sees something,
"Oh this tool would be useful, let's use that. Let's actually
kind of merge our tools as a group." Let's talk about what our
(34:55):
next podcast together will cover. I know that our second podcast is going
to focus more on what we found when we had all this amazing
data like the interviews that... 46 interviews with people talking about
their work in depth and we wanted to
try to think about what we were learning when we put those interviews
(35:16):
together. We saw sort of trends or core ideas that were
falling kind of into these four areas. So the four areas that we
in talking with people decided kind of worked as categories although there
was lots of overlap. We drew it in the report as concentric circles
(35:38):
so community and belonging, abolition and transformation, healing and accountability,
liberation and agency, but it was really helpful for us and especially thinking
through the interviews. So those were developed after we... After we did
all the interviews and we're going through them.
(35:59):
I'm really looking forward to our next conversation about this. It's
been really fun to talk through this process with you
and I just know that people are going to be really excited to
hear about all of the knowledge and wisdom that came from
the action items in the project and it'll be fun to talk with
(36:20):
you about it again. So thanks both of you for being here.
Thanks for listening to this episode of resource on the go
for more resources and information about preventing sexual assault visit
our website at nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by
emailing resources at nsvrc.org.
Well, coming to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual
Violence Resource Center on understanding responding to and preventing sexual
abuse and assault. I'm Moe. And in this two part series,
I'll be talking with Sid and Dian about the mapping prevention project,
what we did and what we learned. I'm here with Sid and Diane from
(00:40):
the Mapping Prevention Project, and we're gonna start this podcast episode
the way we would start all of our mapping prevention meetings,
which is with a moment of grounding. The chant that we were just
(06:57):
listening to is a chant from a group that I'm a part of
with my brother, who was also a part of the Mapping Prevention group,
and it's really like an invitation to the ancestors to be a part
of... To be a part of what we're doing and to welcome them
and also to be remembering our ancestors from where we're from,
(07:19):
and also the ancestors like a welcoming to all ancestors everywhere,
and we try to always start our meetings with something like that.
I like that we're starting off the podcast the same way,
it feels really nice. I'm wondering if we can start with what is
Mapping Prevention? How did this whole project even get started?
(07:42):
So mapping prevention is a project that started in late 2019
in King County, Washington. It was rooted in the coalition ending gender
based violence, which is a membership organization of domestic and sexual
violence service provider organizations in King County. But it was really
(08:05):
drawing on the work of a number of advocates, organizers and activists in
King County who are interested in thinking about violence prevention, domestic
and sexual violence prevention in new and different ways, and exploring
what we know from doing the work, and also we were in the
(08:28):
position to apply for some funding that the County had available,
which was set aside for a planning process, a community planning process
to set the structure for a pilot project that the County was going
to find on those pilot... And the pilot project was
(08:49):
new work in gender based violence prevention, and that was sort of how
it was set up from the beginning. So
we were able to use those funds to start a participatory action research
project that would explore gender based violence work in our area.
And I think I'll pass to Dee to let Dee talk about how
that sort of built on the longer term work, both of the coalition
(09:13):
and in or out. We were excited about getting a chance to have
some funding to lift up a lot of the BIPOC and queer and
trans programming that had been existing and around for a long time,
and not just programming within mainstream, non profits and domestic and
(09:35):
sexual violence organizations, but also just some of the really amazing
cultural work that was being done by BIPOC communities for a long,
long time in Seattle and King County, and
I think I was interested in both highlighting and
all of the programs that weren't necessarily doing an explicitly prevention
(09:56):
work, but we're doing cultural work, and then ended up kind of engaged
in anti violence work, there were just a lot of experiences around racism
and also homophobia in the mainstream movement. And so I ended up spending
just so much of my time at the coalition as the prevention
(10:18):
and transformative justice coordinator, talking with people about those
experiences and wanting to talk about just a really strong work people were
producing even in light of the oppression they were experiencing.
And I love that you were able to
bring this into this project, like this project became something,
(10:40):
I think, different than what was originally intended. Yeah, I don't think
we could have imagined what we were doing before we were doing it,
sometimes people say about transformative justice. It's like, you're building
the plane while you're flying it, and I 1000% feel like that about this
project just because it was the beginning of the pandemic, and now it's
(11:04):
hard to imagine our lives without Zoom, but at the time it was
hard to imagine our lives indefinitely this project inside of Zoom,
we imagine that people were gonna be like people that have been doing
long standing cultural work, getting together, people that have been advocates
for 20 years, and getting to talk to each other in person and
share a meal and become friends and you know that ended up being
(11:28):
different than what we did, exactly. Yeah, that's a good point.
I think it would be interesting to talk about how
you all came together and who was involved, and I feel like I
should also say that I was part of this project, so not only
Mo from NSVRC but Moe who lives in
(11:50):
Tacoma and has worked with you both for many years in different capacities.
I knew Sid from working on a project
many, many years ago at the Northwest Network of Bisexual Trans Lesbians
and Gays survivors of abuse and I just really saw... You said to
bring together mostly BIPOC queer trans people to talk about resources for
(12:16):
trans people in King County. And it felt really scary. So was like
there weren't a lot of resources. And it was sad,
and I think that you actually did it, you brought us together was
really hopeful and exciting and also just nice to be together with people.
(12:37):
Yeah, and I was excited about a project about prevention and
resistance to the criminal legal system, and as a response to domestic and
sexual violence being a project that could have research and could have
things that we could share afterwards with people beyond our
geographical area. Yeah. We were colleagues there until we came together
(13:01):
to work on this project, but I think one of the things that
sort of brought us together in a way is that we both were
recognizing the work that we were involved with outside of the traditional
domestic and sexual violence advocacy groups we were trying to
work with. When we were working on that trans guide, I remember us
(13:23):
saying, "Okay, well, we've been working so hard to try to make these
existing organizations safe places for trans people to go." And
we couldn't, as a group, even agreed to put most of those organizations
and to this guide, because we did not feel confident enough that we
could direct people there, but what we did see is all these arts
(13:47):
and cultural spaces and groups people were building and ways of connecting
that we're really led by trans and queer people and BIPOC, trans and queer
people, and so the resource guide, sort of was full of actual resources,
but they weren't the kinds of resources that I think in our field,
people think of as resources or think of as violence prevention,
(14:09):
and I think in many ways, the project we were doing is trying
to make transparent and filled and direct funds to these kinds of resources
that are... People have always been building outside of sort of those that
are typically sponsored by the state or county
or a local funder even, so. I love hearing the story of how
(14:33):
people know each other and how groups come together,
'cause we have such a shared history. So I know the project started
with a think tank. Can you say more about what that think tank
was and why you did it that way? We were
directing King County what kind of program should they be funding with new
prevention dollars, and we knew that people couldn't really be a part of
(14:58):
our group that was gonna be conducting the research if or their group
was gonna be applying for the money. So
we were thoughtful about that and we were able to have some of
those people be a part of our think tank, and it was really
just an opportunity to ask some questions, kind of like
get people talking to each other and sort of share some of our
(15:20):
ideas for what we thought we might... What we might do,
and some of the things that came out of that were just
how tired people were sort of like telling the county, telling the government
what is it that they want, and then definitely not seeing those things
happen, but also just not seeing a lot of change
happen in what the government always wanting to do,
(15:44):
but just like to have a checked a box, an opportunity to have
heard from community and then not really active move on that.
So that was something really over sounding. I think the other thing that
felt really clear to me was just how in April of 2020
already people were exhausted and overwhelmed by the grief and loss that
(16:08):
we had already experienced from COVID at that point, and then
simultaneously real mass uprising and resistance to the carceral system
to the criminal legal system. And I think this really big piece around...
We had always said, "We can never re imagine courts, we can never
(16:29):
re imagine schools." And there was a literal active building schools while
we were in Zoom. Everything online, all of a sudden. So
I think that that it was just a very particular moment,
a lot of those pieces, I mean, not that we weren't thinking about
those things, but I think just trying to develop that and we were
(16:52):
wanting to create a group for mapping prevention that was
majority BIPOC, majority queer trans. Good representation from people in
their twenties and under. And why did you want to use a participatory
action research approach? There's a long term pattern in King County,
(17:13):
and I imagine this in many other places, the
different state agencies or approaching community groups and saying, "Let's
just ask you what you need?" And taking the information that people give
and then saying, "Okay, we're gonna use that for our planning purposes."
And sort of never the community seeing back sort of the results of
(17:34):
that or feeling sort of dissatisfied with what was done and feeling like
they maybe were exploited for their time, taking advantage of, but also
just not heard. Essentially, I think that that is the pattern
of relations that we heard about when we first thought even actually before
we applied, I think Dee and I were starting to ask people,
(17:57):
"What would be a good version of this project?" Because in a way,
what's happening there is the county is trying to get an outside group
to go do that work for them, all the outreach, and that is...
It was kind of an amazing thing that happened that there was funding
available for that process. Before, there was just decisions made about
(18:17):
where the program money should go. So in many ways, it was extremely
exciting and new to have dedicated funding set aside for a group,
an outside group to go and do this work. And at the same
time there was a lot of skepticism about what was being asked then
and whether what people said would be listened to. So I think what
(18:39):
participatory action research and why I sort of pitched it to Dee and
was like maybe we can do it in this other way where I
came to it by setting it up in a way that we are
actually creating a team to say, "We wanna go ask questions."
And sure, county will give you some feedback from what we learned.
But the center of the project is not about you and what you
(18:59):
want. The center of the project is about questions that this group wants
to answer ourselves and we have a lot of learning to do ourselves.
We want to grow as people who care about prevention
and this is an opportunity for us to go out and build relationships
and networks and learn together. So as a person who does research sort of
as a job I think about participatory action research as like an attitude
(19:22):
towards research. So I'm thinking you know not about how I can become
the expert of the thing but how can we set up a process
that makes more and more people have knowledge about a thing.
So I think it's also like about more and more expertise like who
can be in charge or who can know things. So we knew coming
(19:45):
in that a lot of people had a lot of knowledge in our
community about prevention and that a lot of the knowledge that was being
produced by Black and Indigenous people and people of color and queer and
trans people was being sort of erased or not seen
as violence prevention about... And nor funded, which was essential to our
project which was like moving resources. We knew that coming in,
(20:07):
we knew there was so much knowledge and we were balancing that I
think at the same time as being people in those organizations who knew
that we were also knowledgeable but also learners and continuing to be learners.
And being humble and being confident. Blending those things as we go forward
(20:27):
to learn. And so I think at its best participatory action research is
about getting people involved. We're all a part of it. We are doing
sort of a systematic look at something, we're like inquisitive and trying
to learn something new and then of course action in the middle that
we aren't going to just take that information and move it away from
(20:51):
those people who participated but we're going to try to give it back
and we're going to try to actually make some social change based on
what we learn and do together. So we're responsible and accountable to those
people who we asked to help us build our knowledge together.
I'm really glad that you shared about participatory action research. It
was really a great thing to be involved in.
(21:13):
What else can you tell me about the Mapping Prevention group and what
actions the group did together? I don't know that I can talk about
what Mapping Prevention is without talking about this really amazing like
fierce phenomenal, super unique group that we came together where we had
you know reproductive justice activists, we had youth worker like artists,
(21:35):
and a lot of folks that have been in the anti violence movement for
a long time. So the art that we produced together, conversations that we
had really led us to getting to come up with like what the
action items were going to be for the project. And so
we did 46 long in depth interviews with cultural workers and anti violence
(21:59):
activists advocates. We really wanted the interviews to be meaningful and
connecting and to make sure that what the things that people were asking
us about we got back to them with. So I would end an
interview and have just like a page of notes and then I would
like come back to the interviewee with, what are all the resources around
these things. But everybody on the team conducted at least one interview.
(22:23):
Out of those interviews came, yeah, a lot of podcasts and other projects
which is pretty exciting. And then we also conducted a survey
of over 600 people. And we we'd really tried to have a focus
of people under the age of 25. I know we had a lot
(22:43):
of people in the field that filled out the survey and a lot
of those half about half of those people I think were BIPOC folks.
So those were some of the action items and then I mean also
we did a really fun event at the kind of the end of
that a block party and where we had like prizes and music and
(23:05):
just like getting to share a couple of breakout rooms on participatory action
research and people getting to hear more in depthly from some of the
programs that got funding. And then we wrote a really beautiful paper that
also looks really beautiful which to me felt special.
But process was just as important as like what the outcome was and
(23:29):
that was intentional. We would even say like we want these meetings we
want these events to be something that you come to and you feel
better for having come as opposed to like drained and
sad that you wasted your time. Yeah, as you're providing all those examples,
Dee, and I was just sort of remembering. I feel like part of
(23:51):
the action was having a community conversation and really promoting a community
conversation about what violence prevention looks like outside of
criminal justice solutions. And one of the reasons... I mean, that's obviously
something that all of us cared about and were deeply in conversation about
already but we started this project at the beginning of 2020 and it
(24:13):
was that spring when George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed and in
Seattle there was a huge conversation about divesting from police and at
the same time the very familiar sort of go tos for people in
opposition to those ideas, "What about domestic and sexual violence?" So
we really had an opportunity to be, as people who've been wronged, interested
(24:36):
in preventing domestic and sexual violence and knowing that policing and
prisons are not the way to do that. To really use a survey,
for example, as a way to get people sort of engaged with the
ideas of transformative justice, the preventative side of that. What would
it take for us to have the kind of world in which
(24:57):
we were free of violence? What do people need to be able to
feel safe? Those were the kinds of questions on there. So even the
survey was about collecting the data but it was actually much more I
think about sort of raising the questions and engaging people in those questions
and then we were able to use what people
provided back that in the interviews to drive the next level of conversation,
(25:20):
get the block party. So I think a big action was that social
media as Dee was saying but I think also I don't want to lose
that one of the pieces, we had the opportunity to shape where the
county funds were gonna go for these violence prevention pilot projects
as they were calling them and we could have done a lot of
(25:41):
things in terms of taking what we learned and advising the county and
one of the things we decided as a group which I think was
really useful and it wound up being successful though I think we didn't
know if it would be was instead of writing a report to them
we literally wrote a request for proposals. We wrote it in the way
that they typically write requests for proposals. We told them this is what
(26:04):
we think for RFP should look like when it goes out to communities,
these are the kinds of projects these are the kinds of things that
we heard people say should be funded and they wound up essentially using
our exact language when it went out and I... We had great partners
at the county. But if we had just given a report it would
(26:25):
have been up to them to interpret how that should go into that
request and so that was I think an action piece that our group
decided was really important. And then our report
that that we wrote was also sort of geared towards other kinds of
funders in order to elevate sort of the work that we did,
this is not just about this one source of funds that's going to
potentially come and go but that we wrote something that other other funders
(26:49):
could use to think about where they put resources for
gender based violence prevention and we already know it's been taken up
by some other funders which is great. Just hearing you both share these
examples brings back so many memories. I feel like we're all saying that
like, "Oh, this is... " I remember being at these meetings and
(27:10):
being able to hear the story back about kind of how everything was
shaped and how this project and this group was able to be
impacted by everything else that was going on around us in the world
is really... I think it's just a really great example of
(27:31):
how a group can come together and be really flexible and and still
have this goal but kind of build as we are meeting and as
we are doing things, yeah. One of the other things that I really
loved about this project and being able to be a part of it
(27:51):
and being a part of these conversations is that
the idea of prevention, like we were talking about before,
was filled with nuance. We weren't having just that limited
definition of prevention as this idea of stopping violence before it ever
has a chance to happen. And so I'm wondering if you could say
(28:11):
more about how you're thinking about prevention like both shaped the project
and maybe changed throughout the project? I mean,
I think this is an opportunity to talk about something that I kind
of been thinking about of just like I'm a survivor of multiple forms
of violence. I grew up and... I grew up and experienced sexual violence,
(28:32):
domestic violence, and I think that I never really saw this field.
As a young person as a field that was
a place that I could work or like experience healing. I think I
just really thought that that was for like other people that hadn't had
those experiences. And when I started working at a shelter I was like,
"Oh, actually my experiences are really helpful," right, for doing this
(28:56):
work. And I think at every level as an advocate doing more prevention
outreach and education work I sort of... I was trying to figure out
how to make a path for myself and my people and my community
and the people that I grew up with.
"How do we make this movement?" If a third to a fourth of women
(29:18):
and... I mean, just the category there's... It's so massive. There's no
way that like the current responses we have could really respond.
And so I think that I have really been interested in like figuring
out how everybody has to be a part of this movement to end
violence and to end oppression and we can't actually
parse out just ending domestic and sexual violence without ending racism
(29:41):
and classism and homophobia and all other forms of oppression.
I did not believe that we could use the master's tools to solve
this problem. I did not think that we could use really structured like mainstream
approaches to to fix these issues or to like address them.
And, I think, even when I hear a word like outcomes I get
(30:05):
very nervous that we're trying to put really amazing responsive and like
fluid responses, I guess, into like a box, right? And so I similarly
like having heard PAR or like research was like very nervous about what
that could mean? And then, for me, like the transformation was really around
(30:28):
like just seeing how this really was a way to
validate and prop up the programs that I saw doing like the most
amazing work, right, and the people and the groups that...
People really need advocates to to try to write a mock RFP,
right? To tell the government, to tell funders this is how you could
(30:50):
write a proposal for funds in a way that speaks to
the most people, right? And I think that that was something I got
really interested in. And I'm starting to understand slowly it could happen,
right? But I do think that it really was a process.
And for me it was a process that happened while I was doing
(31:10):
it that I was like interviewing people and realizing
"Oh, we're gonna be able to frame what people are actually saying they
need to funders before the funding applications even go out," right?
And that was a really just different process than I had been a
part of before having been more on the like program side for most
(31:34):
of my now 20 years in the field. I think in many ways
this is a non profit wide problem but in domestic and sexual violence
advocacy we and in King County at least which I'm most familiar with
there. We've been in a trap, like an inclusion trap,
right? The idea being that we know a lot of the organizations are
(31:57):
sort of founded on principles that are reflective of white supremacy and
the gender binary and these are sort of underneath our organizations and
we're trying to sort of fix them or repair them or make them
better, put more people of color and put more diversity into them,
(32:18):
right, as a way to sort of change them and transform them and
of course organizations have also tried to learn from mistakes and adapt
and that's sort of been like the hamster wheel a little bit.
And I just saw Dee doing like so much care work for people
who are in these organizations and I know Moe you've also done that
work just people kind of in sort of the consequences on people who
(32:41):
are working in the organization when that's the wheel you're in and so
I think your question about like how are we trying to think of
prevention differently was how do we move from the this other center not
try to make the organizations that are haven't been sort of meeting the
needs of more marginalized people especially multiply marginalized people
(33:04):
like how do we actually go to them models and ideas
that are really born out of the communities that are left out of
these systems. So I think that was sort of the move we made.
And one of the things, I think... One of the first things that
happened when we came together as a team is sort of we need
to sit and acknowledge that because we're working, we're doing this based
(33:28):
on this coalition we need to acknowledge the history of racism within the
organizations we're sort of centered in and that that had to be
done at the outset to build trust as a group to know where
we were moving from as a group. One of our members offered a
tool that she had used with a lot of other groups and brought
that to one of our first meetings and that tool was sort of
(33:49):
like, "What are anti racist commitments as a group?" "What is our understanding
as a group of how we're going to move and think about our
own commitments?" And I think that really set us up so well to
then ask at every step is what we're doing now reflective of that that
I think we had already been doing some of the bringing in some
(34:11):
of the cultural work and our ancestors like Dee spoke about.
We had already done that a few times, but that moment helped us
be like, "Oh we're doing this thing, let's actually continue to do that,
let's have a framework for why we're doing that, let's talk about that
as part of an anti racist commitment to our meeting, culture,
and how we're moving." I think that was like real shift and also
(34:32):
an example of how this wasn't about me as somebody as a trained
researcher bringing in research tools and saying these are the tools we're
going to use it was about saying... All of us have tools we've
been using that are useful for research, unless when somebody sees something,
"Oh this tool would be useful, let's use that. Let's actually
kind of merge our tools as a group." Let's talk about what our
(34:55):
next podcast together will cover. I know that our second podcast is going
to focus more on what we found when we had all this amazing
data like the interviews that... 46 interviews with people talking about
their work in depth and we wanted to
try to think about what we were learning when we put those interviews
(35:16):
together. We saw sort of trends or core ideas that were
falling kind of into these four areas. So the four areas that we
in talking with people decided kind of worked as categories although there
was lots of overlap. We drew it in the report as concentric circles
(35:38):
so community and belonging, abolition and transformation, healing and accountability,
liberation and agency, but it was really helpful for us and especially thinking
through the interviews. So those were developed after we... After we did
all the interviews and we're going through them.
(35:59):
I'm really looking forward to our next conversation about this. It's
been really fun to talk through this process with you
and I just know that people are going to be really excited to
hear about all of the knowledge and wisdom that came from
the action items in the project and it'll be fun to talk with
(36:20):
you about it again. So thanks both of you for being here.
Thanks for listening to this episode of resource on the go
for more resources and information about preventing sexual assault visit
our website at nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by
emailing resources at nsvrc.org.
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