WomenSafe’s Racial Equity Values Statement

February 2022

This document is a current representation of WomenSafe’s core values, our goals in embodying these values, and our process for meeting these goals. This is a living document that is ever-changing as we learn and grow as an organization. We welcome feedback regarding these values. If you’d like to provide feedback, please email us at info@womensafe.net.

Important Terms & Definitions

Ableism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or group of people who possess a disability.
Ageism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or group of people because of their age.
Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

Classism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or group of people due to their economic status.
Colonialism: the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
Criminal legal system: a series of government agencies and institutions that seek to rehabilitate and punish offenders, prevent other crimes, and provide moral support for victims. The primary institutions of the criminal legal system are the police, prosecution and defense lawyers, the courts, and prisons. Some people may also refer to this as the criminal justice system.
Dating violence: violence that occurs in a relationship where two or more people are dating. This term is often used when talking about violence in relationships involving teens.
Domestic violence: a pattern of coercive control involving emotional, verbal, physical, and/or sexual violence that occurs in a relationship where people are married and/or living together.

Family violence: Emotional, verbal, physical, and/or sexual violence that occurs within a family.
Gender-based violence (GBV): violence that is directed at an individual based on their gender identity. GBV typically looks like sexual violence, dating violence, domestic violence, and/or stalking. For brevity, we use the term gender-based violence to talk about the kinds of violence we primarily support people with at WomenSafe.
Intersectionality: the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
Intimate partner violence (IPV): a pattern of coercive control involving emotional, verbal, physical, and/or sexual violence that occurs in a romantic and/or sexual relationship.
LGBTQIA+: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, plus other marginalized identities related to human sexuality. We also use the term queer when referring to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Non-profit industrial complex: The non-profit industrial complex (or the NPIC) is a system of relationships between the State (or local and federal governments), the owning classes, foundations, and non-profit/NGO social service & social justice organizations that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements.

Oppression-based violence: violence that is directed at an individual based on the oppressions they experience in society like racism, transphobia, sexism, homophobia, ableism, classism, ageism, etc.
Prison-industrial complex: the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems.
Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or group of people based on their race or ethnicity, specifically races and ethnicities that are marginalized in our society.
Sexism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against women and femmes due to their gender identity.
Sexual violence: violence that includes a range of actions such as sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, etc.

Stalking: a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for the person’s safety or the safety of others; or suffer substantial emotional distress.
Survivor: someone who has experienced gender-based violence. We know that not all people who experience gender-based violence use this term to talk about their experiences.
Transphobia: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed at a person or group of people based on their gender identity not aligning with their sex assigned at birth.

Our mission: WomenSafe works toward the elimination of physical, sexual, and emotional violence through direct service, education, and social change.

Our core values are collective liberation, transformation, safety, justice, and joy.

Collective Liberation

We firmly believe that, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “No one is free until we are all free.” The liberation of people experiencing gender-based violence is directly tied with the liberation of those who experience racism, transphobia, ableism, classism, and all other forms of oppression. We cannot end dating violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking without coming together with our community to care for one another, uplift each other’s strengths, and protect each other. Our movement is strongest when we work together.

In holding collective liberation as one of our core values, we recognize that we must also integrate intersectionality as a dominant part of our work. We cannot ignore the intersections between identity-based oppressions and increased rates of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and stalking. Black, Indigenous, and people of color experience some of the highest rates of gender-based violence, both locally and nationally. We cannot adequately support survivors in our community without working to eradicate racism.

We also acknowledge that survivors who experience identity-based oppressions have experienced greater disparities and discrimination by systems in the process of seeking support and justice. Black, Indigenous, and survivors of color face additional, unique barriers because of racism. Black, Indigenous, and survivors of color are more likely to experience violence, ranging from overt racism to victim blaming when seeking help from the police, healthcare providers, social workers, and advocates.

Collective liberation also means advocating for safety, joy, and justice for our queer community members. WomenSafe believes that it is imperative to not only work towards queer inclusion, but towards queer liberation. We work to make space for queer people to have a voice amongst traditionally heteronormative and cis-normative narratives behind gender-based violence as well as sex education. We recognize that these narratives have not only excluded queer people but have also created unique barriers towards accessing services and resources. To combat this, we strive to provide services and options that are not only safe but also affirming to queer identities and experiences. We cannot achieve the ultimate goal of ending domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking until we create a world in which queer people can live freely, openly, and without fear of homophobic and transphobic violence and discrimination.

We strive to approach our work from an anti-racist and anti-oppressive stance and to recognize and honor the uniqueness and wholeness of each person’s individual experience. When considering how to provide our services, our agency strives to incorporate this framework. Our staff is dedicated to listening to marginalized members of our community and doing our part to end all forms of oppression-based violence. We hold ourselves accountable to meeting the needs of Black, Indigenous, and community members of color. We will not wait to be told how we can support but will actively seek out those in our community who are experiencing oppression-based violence and ask what we can do to support them in eradicating the violence they are experiencing.

How we’re meeting these goals:

Exploring alternative paths to justice.

Providing gender-inclusive services.
Holding weekly racial equity meetings, with the goal of making our organization as just, equitable, and inclusive as possible.
Conducting a Puget Sound Survey (racial equity toolkit) for our staff and using this toolkit to drive our racial equity work forward. You can learn more about the Puget Sound Toolkit here.
Ensuring that our office and services are accessible for people with disabilities, Deaf & hard of hearing people, and people who have limited English proficiency.

The first floor of our office, including the main bathroom, is wheelchair accessible.
Our first floor transitional housing unit is wheelchair accessible.

Our website includes how to access WomenSafe services through a telecommunications relay service (TRS).
We utilize interpretation and translation services for our direct service work, provide outreach materials in Spanish, and our website is available in Spanish.

Reviewing policies and protocols to make sure they are racially equitable.
Arranging racial equity and accessibility audits of our organization.
Ensuring that our trainings for staff, interns, board members, and volunteers is not only intersectional throughout, but includes specific training pieces on the various barriers and unique risks of violence that Black, Indigenous, and survivors of color & LGBTQIA+ survivors face.

Using scenarios, images, and other media that is diverse and inclusive in our education in schools, as well as teaching students about intersectionality and oppression-based violence.
Ensuring that images throughout our office are representative of the communities we serve.
Changing our name to be more gender inclusive.
Teaching queer inclusive sex education.

Partnering with organizations such as the Pride Center of Vermont, Outright VT, and Migrant Justice.
Outreach at the annual Mexican Consulate visit in Addison County, VT.

Transformation

We value our ability to transform harm, as individuals and as a collective. In order to end the cycle of violence, we must believe that everyone, including people who cause harm, are able to learn and grow. We have all both experienced harm and caused harm. Through direct service, education, and social change, we can transform our community into a safe place to live for everyone.

One of our primary goals in ensuring that the value of transformation is reflected throughout our organization is the shifting and sharing of power. We know that hierarchical power dynamics are pervasive in every part of our society, including the workplace. We aim to shift typical power dynamics that occur in anti-violence work like advocate-survivor, executive director-employee, teacher-student to an environment where everyone involved shares power. Our staff and board do not hold any more value than our service-users, community members, and volunteers. Every staff member is just as integral to the existence of WomenSafe as the executive director.

We also strive to dismantle systems that cause harm to survivors. We cannot serve survivors within our community without working to dismantle the systems that perpetuate the existence of gender-based violence. These systems include but are not limited to capitalism, the criminal legal system, prison-industrial complex, and colonialism.

We acknowledge the structural oppression and exploitative means by which our economic systems impact all of us, especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color. We commit to actively work towards an equitable system where resources are shared so all people can thrive.

WomenSafe is a non-profit organization, and as a result inherently complicit in the non-profit industrial complex. We recognize that anti-violence non-profits can often replicate capitalist systems by being co-opted by those whose interests align with capitalist and white-supremacist systems. As a non-profit, we are limited by the fact that we receive state and federal funding which sets certain parameters regarding what kind of work we can and cannot do, and for what we can use our funds. Many non-profits have undermined collective anti-violence grassroots movements that work outside of the criminal legal system.

We are working to ensure that our future funding choices are made based on alignment with our principles. WomenSafe seeks funding that aligns with our values of racial, economic, gender, and social justice. We strive to move away from sources that are volatile and drain our staffing resources, and towards more inclusive, local, and regional community supports, because when we build each other up, our communities are stronger.

We acknowledge that we are living and working on the stolen sovereign land of the Abenaki Nation. We recognize that the colonization and oppression of the Abenaki People and all Indigenous Peoples is ongoing, and that domestic and sexual violence have been and continue to be tools of colonization and white supremacist violence. Domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and stalking all disproportionately impact Indigenous people. Our organization is committed to decolonization and the realization of Indigenous sovereignty in striving towards a future that is free from domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and stalking.

We are always open to learning. We are critical thinkers with empathy, and we always have more to learn. We strive to be open-minded and receptive when approached with feedback. We seek feedback from our community to see how we can continue to be a more racially just organization.

How we’re meeting these goals:

We strive to be open-minded and intentional in our work.
We hold that our community, like survivors, are their own experts.

We utilize audits to learn from our community partners using self-reflection.
We strive to write grants that include more options for transformative and restorative justice to meet what we are hearing from Black, Indigenous, and survivors of color.

We strive for collective decision making as much as possible and are working towards having a flat power structure at WomenSafe.
Our employees are paid a livable and competitive wage.
We are working towards reducing pay disparities across our organization and ensure that our employees' pay is on par with what folks are being paid across the state in similar positions.
WomenSafe releases an Annual Report that provides transparency about our funding sources and the services we provide.

Safety

Initiatives, protocols, and policies centralize physical, psychological, and emotional safety of service users, staff, and volunteers, and are co-designed with all who they impact. The process of defining safety honors racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic considerations and is both unique to the individual who seeks it and the dynamics within their internal landscape and external environment. The belief that survivors are the experts of their own experiences is central to the services that we provide, and thus are the experts on what options will be safest for them.

We strive to be culturally agile in our approach to the provision of trauma-informed care, and incorporate our understanding of the impact of cultural, ethnic, racial and intergenerational trauma in how we operate and interface with service users.

We are listening to survivors of color nationally and locally that the criminal legal system and prison industrial complex are usually not safe, equitable, or just. WomenSafe currently receives VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) funding through the US Department of Justice. The original VAWA was, at its core, a criminal justice bill focused largely on improving how law enforcement and the court system respond to domestic violence.  Women of color in the anti-violence movement have argued against what has come to be called “carceral feminism,” noting that feminists who see police and prisons as their natural allies are entrenched in the sexism and racism they claim to oppose.  Twenty-five years after the implementation of VAWA, the anti-violence movement is reckoning with its role in the mass incarceration of people of color and the harm many survivors experience from the legal system. We are working to find creative interventions to ending violence and alternative paths to justice for survivors that do not rely on this deeply harmful and problematic system.

To ensure we are creating a safer community, WomenSafe commits to providing prevention services at the same rate that it provides direct service advocacy. Prevention education is essential to centering safety in our work. We strive to provide this education to every K-12 student in Addison County and the town of Rochester every single year, so that the future members of our community are entering the world as safe, healthy people for their partners, friends, family, peers, and neighbors. Our prevention education prioritizes how to be a safe person, rather than how to stay safe in a violent world. Our communities will not be safer if we are not teaching skills including but not limited to empathy, support, consent, and healthy coping mechanisms. We want to end cycles of violence and prevent violence from happening in the first place. This can only happen through consistent, trauma-informed, and developmentally appropriate education around healthy relationships and healthy sexuality.

How we’re meeting these goals:

Our direct service staff is in the process of reading and analyzing the Creative Interventions Toolkit, a toolkit for finding community-based solutions to interpersonal violence made by survivors of color. We hope to use this toolkit to inform the direct service that we provide to be as safe and just as possible. You can learn more about the toolkit here.

We are always transparent with service users about community resources and options, and possible safety concerns regarding those options.
WomenSafe educators provide violence prevention education to almost every school in Addison county as well as businesses and organizations in our county.
Individual safety planning with survivors in person, over the phone or over Zoom.
Supervised visitation services.

Biannual Volunteer Training for WomenSafe staff, interns, and volunteers to ensure we are providing trauma-informed, inclusive, and up to date best practices for our service users.
Education about domestic and sexual violence (including child sexual abuse) to individual survivors and groups, with community members, educators, and grant partners.
Financial resources for survivors to increase safety such as phones and minutes, gas and food vouchers, lock changes and security cameras, emergency housing, transportation, etc.
Transitional Housing Program.
Monthly legal clinic.

Weekly advocacy at RFA Hearings.
Helping survivors connect with attorneys.
Support groups.
Supporting survivors to access Vermont Address Confidentiality Program, Victim Notification Systems, and other programs to increase safety.

Justice

At WomenSafe, we view justice as being survivor-defined. Paths and possibilities for justice are ubiquitous and vary from survivor to survivor, much like safety. Allowing survivors to decide what justice looks like to them helps to regain a sense of control over their lives. We are frequently having conversations about what justice looks like for survivors of gender-based violence with the people who use our services as well as our community. The voices of the survivors tell us justice can look like consequences, freedom, accountability, healing, responsibility, being heard, safety, dignity, acknowledgement, and prevention, to name a few. Some survivors just want the violence to stop and to feel safe, others want their perpetrators to acknowledge the harm they caused and work to repair the harm, and others just want to be able to tell their story. As we have repeated throughout this document, survivors are the experts of their own experiences, and they get to decide what justice will look like for them.

Currently, in the U.S., the primary way to obtain “justice” for survivors is by accessing the criminal legal system. The state offers incarceration as the solution to violence, which often fails to meet survivors’ calls for justice in several ways. First, many survivors do not report the violence they experience because of their valid distrust in the criminal legal system. Few perpetrators will be charged with a crime, even fewer convicted, and even fewer will serve prison time. For those who chose to report and go through the criminal legal system, the process is incredibly retraumatizing. Survivors are asked to retell some of the most traumatic experiences of their life while their experience is put under a microscope. Survivors tell us that they often experience victim blaming, minimization, gaslighting, and dismissiveness from people like attorneys, doctors, judges, advocates, officers, etc.

Then, there is the issue of prison time itself. Punishment does not prevent people from continuing to perpetrate violence. We know that incarceration harms all people, including survivors, and especially LGBTQIA+ Black, Indigenous, and survivors of color. Black, Indigenous, and people of color, queer people, and people living in poverty are also incarcerated at significantly higher rates and for longer time periods than white, cis-gendered, straight, middle- and upper-class people. This means that people who cause harm who hold more privilege will likely be able to dodge the criminal legal system altogether. Additionally, those who are incarcerated experience high rates of violence while in prison, especially from prison staff, thus further perpetuating the cycle of abuse. Incarceration fails survivors as a means towards justice as it often creates more harm, and in many ways is antithetical to justice.

Further, survivor justice is racial justice. We cannot have one without the other. When we create a world where Black, Indigenous, and people of color have access to safety, justice, freedom, and power, we help liberate survivors, too.

We firmly believe that we can respond to violence without causing more violence. Paths to justice should be community led whenever possible. Seeking justice should not be retraumatizing; seeking justice should be safe for all involved. WomenSafe supports survivors in identifying alternative paths to justice that suit their individual needs. We aim to support survivors in having their voices heard and in navigating their options. We do not see the criminal legal system as the sole way to obtain justice, and we are honest with survivors about the realities of this system. As an organization, we are constantly seeking how to prioritize safer options for justice for survivors.

How we’re meeting these goals:

By acknowledging the systemic racism that has resulted in major disparities for Black, Indigenous, and people of color and LGBTQIA+ people in our criminal justice system. .
By acknowledging that the criminal legal system has been retraumatizing or inaccessible to many survivors.
By acknowledging that the criminal legal system is only one limited form of justice and working with survivors and communities to find alternative forms of justice that meet their needs.
Participating in organizational, local, and statewide conversations about racial equity, justice and alternatives to the criminal justice system.
Advocacy within existing criminal justice and civil court systems for survivors that choose to work with these systems. This includes legal advocacy with criminal and civil court processes including Relief From Abuse order hearings, assistance securing legal representation and monthly legal clinics, assisting survivors to access crime compensation and restitution programs.
Providing opportunities for survivors to participate in legislative advocacy and community activism.

Providing opportunities for survivors/community to engage in awareness building and/or collective healing (community vigils, speak out events, awareness campaigns, documentary screenings, support groups).
Acknowledging that financial/economic justice is a part of justice for survivors and supporting survivors to seek financial relief through various means- spousal support, child support, civil damages, public benefits like Reach UP, WIC, 3 Squares, Social Security Disability, etc. and education and advocacy supports for seeking employment, securing transportation, and access to safe housing, food, and other basic needs.

Joy

At WomenSafe, we believe in working in positives, not just negatives. We believe in not only working to end violence in our community, but in creating spaces where all people can experience joy. This is part of a holistic approach to addressing gender-based violence. The presence of emotional and physical safety in relationships precedes that people can whole-heartedly experience joyful connection. We value creating a workplace and a community where joy, laughter, connection, and love are prioritized and ubiquitous. We will fight to make space for joy in the face of violence as an act of resistance. We are working to embody pleasure activism as broached by Adrienne Maree Brown, who argues that social change work is most effective when grounded in a politic of joy and pleasure.

We seek to channel joy and pleasure in our prevention education. In addition to what unhealthy and abusive relationships look like, we also teach about what healthy relationships look like. We ask students to explore what makes them feel good in their relationships. When young people know what they want and need from each other, we create more room for joy in our interpersonal relationships. We emphasize that exploring sexuality and relationships should be a safe, joyful, and pleasurable experience for all involved. In elementary school, we talk with kids about self-esteem and provide them with tools to raise their own self-esteem as well as others. It’s easier to help others feel good when we feel good too.

How we’re meeting these goals:

WomenSafe has two wellness days a year, where our staff gathers to be in community with one another as a means of self-preservation. Sometimes we go to the beach, bowling, to the spa, create art, whatever our souls call for.
WomenSafe provides new staff with three weeks of paid vacation, eleven paid holidays, and two and a half weeks of paid sick time. Employees receive more time off as they work at the organization.
WomenSafe provides staff with a $100 wellness reimbursement per year to use towards wellness activities such as yoga classes, gym memberships, acquiring good running shoes, etc.
Employees have the ability to open a flex account which allows them to put a certain amount of their paycheck into a non-taxable account that can be used for medical and dependent care expenses.

WomenSafe offers a variety of health insurance plans and covers the majority of the premium for the employee. We are working towards increasing the premium coverage for dependents at a similar percentage rate.
To encourage longevity, for every five years of work, staff earn a one-month paid sabbatical in addition to other paid time off.
Staff have one hour of paid lunch time every day.
We practicice flexibility in working with people’s schedules so that they can take care of themselves and their loved ones.
We have a library for survivors.

Working to provide opportunities for engagement and community building for survivors and community members that bring joy and support self-care, pleasure, healing, and empowerment such as school-based groups, support groups, connecting with community members, access to self-care and healing, etc.

Created by the WomenSafe Team