Friday, March 28, 2008

A Seat at the Table

     Yesterday’s interviews brought forth some interesting questions and highlighted some contradictions about the anti-violence against women movement. I prepared all evening for a meeting with Geledes, a twenty-year old Black women’s organization that fights racism and gender discrimination in Brazil. During this research I learned about their provocative approach to addressing violence against women of color; it was very similar to the radical feminist of color strategies in the US. Geledes organizers suggest that anti violence strategies must address the specific way in which Afro-Brazilian women experience violence. They suggest that efforts to remedy interpersonal violence must coincide with strategies that address the institutionalized violence that Black women face (including lack of education, violence associated with the drug trade, poverty, and the violence that Black women face in the domestic labor employment sector). Serendipitously and after learning about their efforts to address violence, one of the self-identified feminists invited us to an event that discussed the barriers to implementing the Maria de Pena law, a new anti-violence against women law. I was so excited to attend an event that was co-sponsored by Geledes, a radical women of color feminist organization because I assumed it would directly discuss the issues that I study. I thought I had found an allied network of movement organizers.

     In Geledes I did. However, the event as a whole reminded me of the white liberal feminist approach rather than that put forth by Geledes. I was disappointed, yet, unsurprised by what I saw. For example, while the event was cosponsored by many women of color organizations, a white feminist politic dominated the scene. Perhaps most obvious was that the six women chosen to speak at the event were all white women, yet most glaring was that at the last minute – indeed, at the event itself – one women of color was asked to join. The scene was eerily reminiscent of Audre Lorde’s famous feminist narrative in “The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” where women of color were asked last minute to speak at a conference in order to provide a façade of multiculturalism but not to truly address issues pertaining specifically to women of color. (The idea is that using the master’s tools, tools of oppression, will not bring down the master’s house, dominant power structures). Furthermore the sole women of color represented the state-owned oil company that sponsors many organizations in the name of “social responsibility.”  This lone Black woman literally did not have a “seat at the table.” The metaphor is glaring; she sat in a folding chair off the end of the table. At the event, violence against women of color was never mentioned, nor were the terms race or poverty uttered. While I am not surprised by this organizational methodology, it brings forth questions regarding the pivotal crossroads at which the Brazilian anti- violence movement stands.

     This movement has a lot of resources and they are at a moment in which the their work could be co-opted by state interests and lose its social justice grassroots footing.  Rather than propose strategies that address the way in which institutionalized and interpersonal violence compound on the lives of women of color, as I hypothesized, a professionalized state-sponsored movement in Brazil assuages violence against women in band-aid type reforms that neither address root causes of violence nor heal the community wounds caused by violence – in all of its forms.  During my visit to the all women police station, for example, I was both excited by how the movement was using a law and simultaneously providing social services that holistically addresses violence. Most importantly, the Sao Paulo station, unlike others, combines social services like health care, child care, psychological services, and mediation type reforms, yet women do not have to use the police stations to utilize these services. However, the anti-violence movement in the US also started this way.  It was at this pivotal stage that the US anti-violence against women movement turned to strategies that prevented the type of organized, funded, and sustainable movement that could end violence against women of color – as well as white women. How might Brazilian feminists learn from the mistakes of the US feminist movement?  How can we start this radical movement with these hopeful foundations? 

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