INVEST in ending violence!
What does that look like? What does it mean? How do we do it? Let’s break it down!
We are back with another season of #16DaysOfActivism against Gender-Based Violence (GBV)!
The 2022 season spotlighted strategies that counter the violence of extractivism. Our 2023 season builds on this year’s UNiTE theme: ‘Invest to Prevent Violence against Women & Girls’. Through six episodes, JASS will unpack what it means to invest in preventing and ending all forms of violence against womxn.
GBV is often associated with the physical and sexual forms of violence against womxn. However, these forms of violence are one indicator of the sexism and misogyny womxn face in their daily lives. What happens to womxn in private is linked to the discrimination, exclusion, and inequity in other aspects of their lives.
Understanding violence against womxn in its various manifestations requires a structural lens that considers factors such as gender, sexuality, race, class, and ethnicity, among many others. This examination inevitably calls for the implementation of multifaceted movement strategies and approaches that delve deep into the root causes of this violence.
During this #16DaysOfActivism, join us as we spotlight the tried and tested strategies we use to address structural violence from a movement building perspective. We invite you to engage by sharing what resonates with you, as well as other strategies you use in your work.
Episode 1: Investment Goes Beyond Money
Resourcing is not only about money. As JASS, a movement support organization we like to think that we come with a basket of resources to meet movements where they are at – these include feminist popular education, physical security, leveraging alliances critical to movement agendas, and access to global advocacy spaces – which movements can draw on. —Shereen Essof, JASS Executive Director
Episode 2: Invest in Building and Strengthening Feminist Leadership
After attending these trainings, I feel that JASS is a fashion designer. By this I don’t mean that you come to design and measure us, but instead you let us measure ourselves and choose a design based on what is suitable for us and in our communities. From trainings with other organizations, we learn concepts, but they are very heavy and hard to follow. Here we draw learning from our experiences and determine what suitable things we can do in our community. It is very effective. We want to join JASS’ movement and partner with JASS in our movement. —woman activist, Myanmar
Episode 3: Invest in Collective Protection and Care
We experience many forms of violence, violence that comes from machismo in the intimate, institutional and public spheres. and we face racism for being indigenous women.. The defense of territory cannot be separated from the defense of body-territory, and the strength of resistance resides in both territories. —Lolita Chávez Ixcaquic, land defender from Guatemala
Episode 4: Invest in Building Collective Power + Solidarity Across Borders
Now I recognize that I am a woman with a lot of power, a lot of capacity. It’s a beautiful thing, because we’re sowing seed beds for more women to grow… —Ana Clementina Mejia, activist from Honduras
Episode 5: Invest in Racial and Gender Justice
It’s important to recognize this House [of Multiple Oppressions) and fight against anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity. Latinos have a hard time recognizing where we come from, our roots. We have to go from discourse to action and try to shake this House. —participant at the Feminist Movement Builders School for Racial and Gender Justice, organized by JASS and Feminist Centre for Racial Justice
Episode 6: Invest in Radical Imagination
We believe we normalize oppressions in the everyday as a way of surviving. To make new worlds, we need to get ourselves into a state of radical imagination, and play is indispensable to that.
