More death in the news.  We may not be responsible for creating the ideology of white supremacy, but we can be responsible for doing something about it as my teacher Loretta Ross says.  Our first impulse is to reach out to people we know who belong to the group that was most directly affected.  We express our horror and outrage and offer our love and support.  They are grieving but not surprised at the latest expression of white supremacy in the form of violence against their community.  The exchange is short, they thank us. We post on social media and maybe carry a sign at a march. 

But what if … our outreach during crisis isn’t what someone most wants from us?  Or isn’t the only thing they want from us?  What if the raw pain we notice is their disappointment that we never reach out until a community is in mourning and on the streets? 

I asked my friends what all-year-long efforts from friends and family mean the most to them. Linda Leu told me, “Don’t show up only because you care about me as an individual – bring a human right’s lens to the violence and care about all communities and all forms of oppression.”

Lia Nagase shared with me a number of ways to show her love by contributing the list below:

#1 Believe them.  Be willing to see the pattern, name the oppression, accept the reality of a person’s lived experience. Notice if you have a tendency to justify, or deny, or minimize, rationalize or make excuses for the injustices they have faced.  Instead, next time someone shares a story of mistreatment, expresses a fear of harm, shows you their hurt just from existing, show them love and solidarity by saying, “I believe you. That wasn’t ok. I am sorry you are going through that.  How can I support you?” Let folks know if they want to share, you are interested to learn what that was like for them.

#2 Do your own work. Read the books, take the classes, do the internal interrogation of your own beliefs, have the conversations that help you understand white supremacy. Commit to actions to upend white supremacy in your every day life.  For example, examine practices and policies at work, in your book club, where you volunteer, in friendship and family circles, at your child’s school, and make changes.  Ask permission to ask questions when you don’t understand feedback or why something is problematic – if you tried and can’t find the answer yourself online.

#3 Learn people’s stories.  Appreciate their unique experiences that differ from yours but are no less valid just because they don’t match your experiences. Ask permission to open conversations and hear from them, “What has your experience with oppression been like?  What is this bringing up for you?” Do some radical listening. 

All of this is great, says Tessa Smith, who invites us to know our own stories as well.  “Do your own work with accountability and awareness of your own experience of oppression and your own relationship to oppression. Sit with it in the context of your own experiences.“

#4. See people’s full identity!  When we say things like, “I forgot you were  ____!” or “I never even think of you as ____!” we communicate that some important part of who they are doesn’t register as important to us. 

#5. Be willing to be uncomfortable.  Mistakes will be made, despite best intentions.  Be open to feedback and new knowledge even when it’s a personal stretch to do so.  It’s ok to say, “I am not sure how to do this but I wanted to let you know I care.”  Apologize, but more importantly, learn and do better next time.

Lastly, Tessa encourages us to find out what communities want long term to address the issues they face.  “Walk with and not in front of the folks you are supporting.” 

It is a journey to move from empathy to action. Let’s show up by taking these steps to loving and supporting each other in between assassinations.

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We are often asked how our instructors can be pro-Prepare and also pro-martial arts. It’s not hard! There are a host of similarities between mixed martial arts sports fighting, traditional martial arts programs and self-defense/violence prevention workshops. There is overlap with content and they all can help people feel strong, confident, and empowered.

“The fundamental difference is in the main objective of each discipline.

• MMA is a full-contact combat sport. The main objective is to win.
• Self-defense focuses on dealing with aggression. The main objective is to survive.
• Martial arts are practiced for self-mastery. The main objective is to improve.

Notice that I said main objective. Because someone can train to win, to improve, and develop survival skills at the same time. The difference is in the focus, or the ultimate goal.” – P. Fulop

Depending on your primary goal for becoming educated and skilled, you’d make the choice that works for you. If you have more than one goal, you might do more than one type of program at the same time or in sequence. Many of our instructors and our students have done just that. Some begin with Prepare, and then enjoyed it so much they enrolled in an ongoing martial arts program. Some begin with martial arts and then joined us at Prepare and then returned to martial arts. People might want the more varied options of a martial arts program/martial arts self-defense course if they are committed to longer-term training, but also be enthused about teaching and/or taking a shorter program with a curated list of skills, so they do it all simultaneously!

Martial arts systems had their genesis in a variety of contexts. Some were developed to foster national pride, some primarily for exercise and fitness, some are about culture and sport, some were about preparing for rebellion against oppressors. Self-defense as a movement for women in the U.S. arose as a complement to the backlash of acquiring the right to vote “to protect themselves physically but to empower themselves psychologically and politically for the battles they would face in both the public and private spheres.” (Rouse & Slutsky, 2014, p. 470).

For many women interested in training in decades past, there may not have been empowerment self-defense classes and/or women’s-only programs available in their community. There still may be few choices in some communities. For formal training programs, martial arts programs could be the only option. Additionally, martial arts schools often filled the gap by also offering self-defense programs or emphasizing self-defense applications of the skills they were already teaching, especially as students progressed to higher levels. The ever-present threat of sexual assault has always existed and surely there were many ways people learned to protect themselves outside of what we now think of as self-defense courses or more traditional martial arts programs.

Winning, surviving, and improving

Self-defense that ends an assault isn’t a win in the traditional sense of competition. In a competition or a sport, both participants have consented to a planned event and engage with an agreement about the contest’s rules; that is not the case in a situation where self-defense is deemed necessary to survive. In a self-defense encounter, one person didn’t consent and may even be surprised. To “win,” you have to be the target of violence first and that may not feel like much of a victory. Both aggressor and target might be injured and both parties might have to navigate the legal system when the assault is over.

Self-defense is about improving one’s odds of survival, but not about improving fitness, coordination, or moving through higher levels of tests and trials of progressively more challenging techniques to master. Rather it’s about techniques (verbal and physical) becoming easier to execute as you progress through a course, even when the scenarios presented become more challenging or the skills become more complex.

Survival can mean different things to different people, such as surviving attempted sexual assault, relationship abuse, or emotional boundary crossings. It might mean engaging in body-based healing for prior violence, and wanting general empowerment to manage the everyday experiences that wear people down.

For many, surviving means needing to have a variety of skills beyond physical strikes to avoid physical aggression. Not everyone has equal access to the legal right to self-defense, and engaging in self-defense may come with consequences. Not everyone is comfortable with or able to utilize physical self-defense. Improving threat assessment, increasing verbal response options, and emphasizing strategies for accessing help can be critical.

The idea of self-defense has long been coupled nearly exclusively with the idea of learning “fighting” skills to protect us from strangers. We address the larger likelihood of needing to manage violence and protect ourselves in the context of people we know – family, friends, and romantic or sexual partners.

Surviving can also mean building a sense of self and embodied power that allows people to live larger lives with more freedom and self-direction and joy.

Prepare helps people meet their goals of self-defense and survival.

Much can be said about martial arts and MMA training. Prepare’s expertise comes from the vantage point of self-defense and violence prevention. We focus on self-defense and survival by emphasizing the following:

1. Providing relatable scenarios – ones that match the lived experiences and most likely risks of those being taught. Scenarios change based on who is being taught since that connects to what one is likely to face.
2. Teaching accessible techniques – including accessibility for people with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities. When the desired time to invest in a program is short-term – for example a single day or multi-session program over a handful of days – then the list of techniques taught needs to match what one can integrate to a reasonable level of effectiveness in that time frame. Our goal from the start is to make the learning efficient and practical and to build confidence in one’s competence!
3. Setting as the goal to shut down aggressors’ intentions and or capacity to continue. It’s not a “win” per se, but the interruption of violence that has begun.

That can mean using physical skills, but it can also mean psychological strategy, verbal responses, evasion responses, accessing help from others, and even skills to be able to provide help to others. Most people we meet deeply care about the moral and legal ramifications of delivering full force strikes, even in the name of self-defense. Our class participants consistently cite using their intermediate level strategies after class, and they rarely face the feared physical confrontations that motivated them to enroll.

4. Trauma-informed training is a key component to making a space feel safer for survivors and others. For example, it’s very important to include acknowledgment that not resisting (by choice or because of physiological response) is also a valued or necessary option. If you are “in it to win it,” that wrongly implies failure when the choice not to respond is made. If you are geared to constant improvement that wrongly implies failure to improve since you didn’t best someone when given the chance. These perspectives are deeply hurtful to survivors who couldn’t resist, chose not to resist, or who resisted but were not able to deter their assailant.

Learning survival skills is a potentially emotionally laden experience, and we can create safer spaces by providing opportunities for peer support, acknowledging and sharing of emotions, and space to reflect on the connections people make with class experiences and their own lives. The class is explicitly not a hierarchy or a competition; there are no ranks – so each person can work on their own goals at their own pace.

We feel that everyone benefits from having varied options available. If pursuing more than one type of program helps people meet their goals, we are all for it!

 

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Having conversations with children about consent can and should incorporate larger protective factor concepts that reach beyond consent for touch. Reducing the subject of consent to sexualized or painful touch misplaces the emphasis and narrows the discussion, thereby limiting the life-long protective factors we hope to instill in young people. Educating young people to help them stay safer means placing consent conversations in the a broader context of having other people respect your personal boundaries – around touch certainly – but also in terms of how someone talks to you and/or treats you.

Understanding your own boundaries and the boundaries of others goes to the heart of self-worth and empathy. Children develop through learning their boundaries are worth respecting and learning how to listen to someone else’s emotional and physical boundaries, even when they are different than our own. By asking for and then waiting for an enthusiastic yes to any offered touch or behavior, children can learn that other people should listen to their boundaries too. If young people notice that their boundaries aren’t being respected, they can discuss the situation with trusted adults who can help them manage safety concerns.

Ultimately, it’s on us to make children safer and to more successfully promote consent as the standard. More people can be role models, asking for consent as an ongoing practice. More people can undertake the role of a trusted adult who young people can come to for help and protection from those who cross their boundaries.

These guidelines don’t mean you won’t be able to feed, clothe, or bathe your child. You and medical professionals may still tend to them when they are sick or hurt. There can and should be reasonable expectations about hygiene, medical emergencies, and the daily routines of life. Body autonomy can begin early – for example, have your child be in charge of feeding themselves and washing their own bodies as soon as they can do a reasonably good job of it. Let them know they don’t ever have to be alone with a medical person.

Provide body autonomy messages

• LOVE doesn’t equal permission or consent to touch.
• Like doesn’t equal permission or consent to touch.
• Power or authority over a young person doesn’t equal permission or consent to touch.
• Being older doesn’t equal permission or consent to touch.
• Power, age, size, or a loving relationship must never be used to coerce or force touch.
• Saying yes equals permission or consent to touch. The message to young people is: Your body, your choice.
• If someone offers your child affection or touch, ask your child for their answer instead of answering for them or insisting that the other person ask your child for permission. Sexual or sexualized touch is never appropriate between a child and an older teen or adult – even if the child has said yes, the child doesn’t have capacity to consent to this.
• Teach a child that their choice to say “No” means that the other person should stop. If a child wants to offer or receive permission to touch another person, they must ask first. Any answer that isn’t YES means no or not now.

Foster trust in your child’s feelings

• Let your child be the authority on how they are feeling. To regularly ignore, reframe, or contradict what your child says they are feeling with language such as, “you have nothing to be sad about,” “you aren’t really hungry,” “that doesn’t hurt – shake it off” undermines their agency. Instead, help them sort out disappointment from sadness, hunger from boredom, pain that needs medical attention from pain that needs TLC.
• Cultivate emotional resilience and emotional intelligence by teaching them to trust their own feelings and let them know you will trust them too. Help them develop a big emotional vocabulary to discuss how they feel.
• Our minds and bodies send us powerful signals about personal safety – teach young people to listen to and trust those instincts carefully. That means learning to pay attention to emotional and physical signs of intuition.

Promote the concept of affection at your own pace

• Ask the young people you know and care about before you touch them. Model a neutral reaction if they say no – “Ok, thanks for letting me know.” Lack of consent to touch should not be over-ridden, even when relatives and friends of the family want hugs and kisses.
• Politeness, warmth, respect, and hospitality can be demonstrated in many other ways besides nonconsensual touch, even if the intention is affection.
• If we teach our children and young people that someone who likes or loves them can expect touch, or that if you like or love someone you owe them touch — that message may carry forward into interactions later with adults, older teens, and the folks they date.

Positive socialization

• Notice and speak out against others using annoying or harassing touch. For example, saying “When they tussle your hair that means they like you” communicates that one should not make a big deal out of being touched without consent. Instead, reinforce that touch without consent isn’t a game. Break the pattern of normalizing, denying, minimizing, excusing, rationalizing, or justifying such behavior.
• Help young people of all genders understand that asking first isn’t weakness – it’s teaching respect and it’s an easy habit to learn.
• Support young people to develop their personalities, characteristics, interests, authentic voice, and individual strengths as ways to meet and attract friends and romantic relationships.

Be the “askable parent” with sources of knowledge about important topics.

• Children should know they can bring any question to the adults in their lives and get thoughtful and accurate responses without any drama or shaming.
• Teach young folks anatomically correct body language for their genitals from birth and be open to take questions about sex and sexuality at any age.
• Ensure your child receives comprehensive sex education that covers: biology, hygiene, sexual and gender identity, intimacy, sensuality, and sexual violence. Accurate, age-appropriate, sex education is a protective factor against violation and abuse.

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Anastastia Higginbotham is a recognized feminist writer and was a Prepare instructor for many years. Her essay in the collection Yes Means Yes inspired many calls to Prepare.

Her children’s’ books are quite amazing. Death is Stupid, Divorce is the Worst, and now Tell Me About Sex, Grandma. They show young people working through ordinary and terrible life experiences such as divorce and death, without sugar coating or making their experiences any less powerful or real than they would be for adults.

In her latest book, Higginbotham explores how to talk about sex with a child. There are so many wonderful parts of this book — the illustrations, the intergenerational aspect of family life, her language.  And, from a violence prevention standpoint, Higginbotham keeps it right to the point. Sex is never with a child and always with consent. Simple. Honest. Concrete.

For a preview of her latest, see this NY Times Article: Well Illustrated: The First Sex Talk

 

 

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Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi created Black Lives Matter (#BlackLivesMatter) as a call to action for Black people after George Zimmerman was found not guilty for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (#TalkAboutTrayvon). Trayvon was 17 when George Zimmerman took his life February 26, 2012. Trayvon was an honors student in English and loved math. He hoped to be a pilot one day. Zimmerman targeted Trayvon because he thought it was suspicious for a young black man to be walking in his neighborhood. In “The Killing of Trayvon Martin,” Mike Armato and I discuss how a gendered and sexualized racism meant that Trayvon Martin’s existence as a young African-American man became the focus of Zimmerman’s trial, resulting in Trayvon’s death being labeled a killing rather than a murder because African-American boys and men were assumed to be inherently dangerous.

Although founded because of Trayvon Martin’s death, Black Lives Matter is not limited to addressing extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes but is focused on affirming the lives of all Black people, including queer, trans, disabled, undocumented, criminalized, women and across the gender spectrum.

There have been White people who have grumbled about and protested the idea of Black Lives Matter and have countered with All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. While of course all lives matter, these responses miss the point that Black people in the United States face a particular and unique set of conditions and that without attending to these conditions we cannot create a society free from oppression. A basic idea in Black Lives Matter is by centering the lives of Black people, we can create a better world for all or “When Black people get free, everybody gets free.”

One way in which Black Lives Matter has influenced IMPACT Chicago is in our examining and revising our approach to getting to safety after an attack. For many years, our getting to safety mantra ended with “911.” We have changed that mantra to end with “Get to safety” or “Walk to Safety.” * The original mantra was based on good intentions but didn’t reflect the realities of Black women who have defended themselves against violence. The guiding principles of Black Lives Matter and Mariame Kaba’s book No Selves to Defend helped us see the necessity of changing our safety mantra.

The change to “Get to Safety” is consistent with our commitment to expanding people’s choices and not offering a formulaic approach to self-defense. Everyone has benefited from this change because the emphasis is on people making choices based on their assessment of themselves, their relationship with the person(s) targeting them, and their knowledge of the situation they are in and no assumptions about what safety is for all. This is an example of how centering the lives of Black people benefits everyone.

Martha Thompson, IMPACT Chicago Lead Instructor Professor Emeritus Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies, Northeastern Illinois University

reposted with permission from IMPACT Chicago’s blog *

Prepare has also made the change from 9-1-1 to “Call for Help” or “Go Get Help” for all the reasons so beautifully articulated above. Our students really appreciate the acknowledgment that safety and help look different for each person and context matters. Even when someone chooses to call 911, it might not be in the immediate aftermath of an incident, but some time later, after consideration of all the factors that go into the decision to report a crime to law enforcement. Karen

#TalkAboutTrayvon toolkit Done in partnership of Black Lives Matter Global Movement & Showing Up for Racial Justice

#TalkAboutTrayvon Toolkit for white people http://rememberingtrayvon.com/talkabouttrayvon/

#TrayvonTaughtMe Toolkit, designed for people of color https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0pJEXffvS0uNHlsQzlqNjBZcVU/view

Link to #TrayvonTaughtMe Toolkit in Spanish: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0pJEXffvS0uUXF5R3prek5UeTg/view

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