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Education Empowers, Not Rules and Restrictions by Kristin Schlotterbeck I grew up in a conservative environment that held girls to a lot of restrictions about how to act and behave. The same restrictions did not apply to boys in my community, which struck me as fundamentally unfair.   Since many of these rules focused on what women wore, I got the message that it was girls’ and women’s responsibility to not attract men’s attention and that, if anything were to happen, the woman was partly, if not mostly, to blame. The details of what could happen were never spoken of outright. Today, my work focuses on violence prevention that does not restrict the behavior of people targeted for violence, but rather…

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…

This week, Prepare virtually huddled with a large group of Empowerment Self-Defense instructors to share and synthesize practical – and critical – applications of our work during the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe: Safer physical boundaries might be the highest expression of love as we heed the call to implement social distancing measures; Verbal and physical boundary-setting is a life skill for a variety of challenging situations; Flattening the curve to slow the spread, protect the most vulnerable, and to ensure that our healthcare workers and institutions can respond at capacity, requires each of us to enact and sustain a new set of boundaries in the interest of public health. In short, protecting public health is a form of defense because…

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. … Depending on your primary goal for becoming educated and skilled, you’d make the choice that works for you.

Human values lie at the center of each and every conversation. We are responsible to ourselves and others to honor, respect, and protect each other in friendships and romantic relationships.

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.

We know that small nuggets of information can sometimes help people stay safer or help their kids stay safer. But short cuts and tidbits don’t solve deeply entrenched social problems. Violence prevention is complex and deep. There are no easy answers or quick fixes.

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…

However, each “feel good” moment comes at a cost. For every story that raises our spirits and ends with someone who stops an assault, the story begins with someone experiencing violence. And it’s really hard to cheer for that.

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.