INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
Encyclopedia
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a United States
-based national activist organization of radical feminists of color
advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities. INCITE! is organized by a national collective
of women of color and has active chapters and affiliates in San Francisco, Washington, D.C.
, Denver, Albuquerque, Austin
, New Orleans, Boston
, Philadelphia, New York City
, Ann Arbor, Binghamton, Chicago
, and a chapter in Toronto
, Ontario
, Canada
. INCITE! was founded in 2000.
, attacks on the reproductive rights
of women of color, medical experimentation on communities of color, homophobia
and heterosexism, economic neo-colonialism, and the politicization of the movement against domestic and sexual violence. Conference organizers initially anticipated a small gathering of one to two hundred people, but over one thousand people attended and over two thousand people had to be turned away because of space limitations." Andrea Smith
, an INCITE! co-founder, wrote that "the overwhelming response to this initial effort suggests that women of color and their allies are hungry for a new approach toward ending violence." As a result of this enthusiastic response, conference organizers and others founded INCITE! to continue to implement the ideas of the conference.
, and colonialism
, and "violence within communities," such as rape
and domestic violence
. INCITE! critiques the battered women's movement and anti-rape movement as becoming increasingly professionalized, keeping it from taking more political stances on institutional oppression and violence, and increasingly collaborative with the criminal justice system, which they identify as being "brutally oppressive towards communities of color." INCITE! also critiques racial justice organizing that focuses on racism only as it affects men of color. As an alternative strategy, INCITE! develops strategies to address both personal and state violence, acknowledging the ways that oppressions intersect in the lives of women of color. At INCITE!'s first conference, "The Color of Violence," in 2000, speaker Angela Davis
described this intersectional approach to violence against women of color in the following way:
INCITE!'s grassroots chapters also organize projects to address multiple kinds of violence against women of color. After Hurricane Katrina
, INCITE!'s New Orleans chapter began a women's health clinic to support low-income and uninsured women of color to meet their healthcare needs and to organize for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice
. INCITE!'s Philadelphia chapter has worked on issues of housing and gentrification
. INCITE!'s affiliate, Sista II Sista, organized campaigns against sexual harassment
of young women of color by police officers in Brooklyn, NY. INCITE!'s Denver chapter spotlighted an intersectional analysis of racism and violence against women as a critique to other anti-violence organizations' responses to the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case
. INCITE!'s chapter in Washington, D.C. organized direct actions against street harassment.
INCITE! also organized two other national Color of Violence conferences: "The Color of Violence II: Building A Movement" in Chicago, IL in March 2002, and "The Color of Violence III: Stopping The War On Women of Color" in New Orleans, LA in March 2005. INCITE! also helped to organize a national conference in April 2004 entitled, "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex" at the University of California-Santa Barbara. This latter conference brought together activists to investigate the impact of the non-profit system on grassroots movement building.
In 2006, INCITE! published an anthology of writings that reflect their politics entitled, Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, published by South End Press
. In 2007, they also published an anthology entitled, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex, published by South End Press
. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded was awarded the Gustavus Myers 2007 Outstanding Book Award.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-based national activist organization of radical feminists of color
Person of color
Person of color is a term used, primarily in the United States, to describe all people who are not white. The term is meant to be inclusive among non-white groups, emphasizing common experiences of racism...
advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities. INCITE! is organized by a national collective
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
of women of color and has active chapters and affiliates in San Francisco, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Denver, Albuquerque, Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, New Orleans, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Philadelphia, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Ann Arbor, Binghamton, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and a chapter in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. INCITE! was founded in 2000.
History
INCITE! began in 2000 after organizing the conference, "The Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color," held at University of California-Santa Cruz on April 28–29, 2000. Issues addressed at this conference included immigrant rights and Indian treaty rights, the proliferation of prisons, militarismMilitarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, attacks on the reproductive rights
Reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...
of women of color, medical experimentation on communities of color, homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
and heterosexism, economic neo-colonialism, and the politicization of the movement against domestic and sexual violence. Conference organizers initially anticipated a small gathering of one to two hundred people, but over one thousand people attended and over two thousand people had to be turned away because of space limitations." Andrea Smith
Andrea Smith (academic)
Andrea Lee Smith is a intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist. Smith's work focuses on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women...
, an INCITE! co-founder, wrote that "the overwhelming response to this initial effort suggests that women of color and their allies are hungry for a new approach toward ending violence." As a result of this enthusiastic response, conference organizers and others founded INCITE! to continue to implement the ideas of the conference.
Analysis
INCITE! identifies "violence against women of color" as a combination of "violence directed at communities," such as police violence, warWar
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
, and colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, and "violence within communities," such as rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
. INCITE! critiques the battered women's movement and anti-rape movement as becoming increasingly professionalized, keeping it from taking more political stances on institutional oppression and violence, and increasingly collaborative with the criminal justice system, which they identify as being "brutally oppressive towards communities of color." INCITE! also critiques racial justice organizing that focuses on racism only as it affects men of color. As an alternative strategy, INCITE! develops strategies to address both personal and state violence, acknowledging the ways that oppressions intersect in the lives of women of color. At INCITE!'s first conference, "The Color of Violence," in 2000, speaker Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
described this intersectional approach to violence against women of color in the following way:
"We need an analysis that furthers neither the conservative project of sequestering millions of men of color in accordance with the contemporary dictates of globalized capital and its prison industrial complex, nor the equally conservative project of abandoning poor women of color to a continuum of violence that extends from the sweatshops through the prisons, to shelters, and into bedrooms at home. How do we develop analyses and organizing strategies against violence against women that acknowledge the race of gender and the gender of race?"
Projects
INCITE! works on several local and national campaigns including organizing against police violence against women and trans people of color, for community-based strategies to hold people engaged in abusive behavior such as domestic and sexual violence accountable, against sterilization abuse and the Hyde Amendment, and against the War on Iraq and U.S. militarism. INCITE! helped to establish the Boarding School Healing Project, a project that organizes Native Americans to hold the U.S. government accountable for forcing over 100,000 Native children to go to Christian boarding schools where they were often raped and abused. In 2004, INCITE! launched SisterFire, a national tour of women of color artists using creative cultural methods to engage other women of color on a number of issues, including war, reproductive violence, and immigrant rights.INCITE!'s grassroots chapters also organize projects to address multiple kinds of violence against women of color. After Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
, INCITE!'s New Orleans chapter began a women's health clinic to support low-income and uninsured women of color to meet their healthcare needs and to organize for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice
Environmental justice
Environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...
. INCITE!'s Philadelphia chapter has worked on issues of housing and gentrification
Gentrification
Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
. INCITE!'s affiliate, Sista II Sista, organized campaigns against sexual harassment
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
of young women of color by police officers in Brooklyn, NY. INCITE!'s Denver chapter spotlighted an intersectional analysis of racism and violence against women as a critique to other anti-violence organizations' responses to the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case
Kobe Bryant sexual assault case
The Kobe Bryant sexual assault case began in the summer of 2003 when the news media reported that the sheriff's office in Eagle, Colorado had arrested NBA superstar Kobe Bryant in connection with an investigation of a sexual assault complaint filed by a 19-year-old hotel employee...
. INCITE!'s chapter in Washington, D.C. organized direct actions against street harassment.
INCITE! also organized two other national Color of Violence conferences: "The Color of Violence II: Building A Movement" in Chicago, IL in March 2002, and "The Color of Violence III: Stopping The War On Women of Color" in New Orleans, LA in March 2005. INCITE! also helped to organize a national conference in April 2004 entitled, "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex" at the University of California-Santa Barbara. This latter conference brought together activists to investigate the impact of the non-profit system on grassroots movement building.
In 2006, INCITE! published an anthology of writings that reflect their politics entitled, Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, published by South End Press
South End Press
South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
. In 2007, they also published an anthology entitled, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex, published by South End Press
South End Press
South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded was awarded the Gustavus Myers 2007 Outstanding Book Award.
Further reading
- INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2007). The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge, MA: South End PressSouth End PressSouth End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
. - Bierria, Alisa; Liebenthal, Mayaba; and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2007). "To Render Ourselves Visible: Women of Color Organizing and Hurricane Katrina," What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and The State of The Nation, edited by the South End PressSouth End PressSouth End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
Collective. Cambridge, MA: South End PressSouth End PressSouth End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
. - Flaherty, Jordan (January 23, 2007). "The Second Looting of New Orleans," ZNet.
- del Moral, Andrea (April 4, 2005). "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded," LiP Magazine.
- Ritchie, Andrea and Ko Robinson, Tammy (2005). "Organizing To Stop The War Against Women Of Color," Left TurnLeft TurnLeft Turn is a bimonthly activist news magazine that focuses on international social justice movements. Based in New York and produced by an all volunteer editorial collective, the magazine promotes anti-imperialism and anti-authoritarianism....
. - Smith, Andrea. (2005). Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End PressSouth End PressSouth End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
.