INCITE! Color of Violence 4

Engaging in organized resistance can be a profoundly healing experience for survivors. Organizing gives us survivors the opportunity to exert strength through social change after experiencing violence that took away our personal power and control. Organizing allows us to facilitate the release of personal guilt and shame, shifting this burden to the societal context that perpetuates violence against our bodies. Organizing also allows us to exist alongside other survivors, forming connections that can transform into bonds of kinship and community.

But what happens when our own experiences of violence lead to difficulties in forming the relationships necessary for meaningful organizing? What if surviving violence has brought with it anxiety, fear, mistrust, hypervigilance, panic, depression, or other characteristics, symptoms, and responses that are amplified in organizing spaces? What if we’re simply unable to belong to organizing spaces because of how we have responded to violence in our lives? In other words, what happens when organizing itself becomes triggering?

Resting on the assumption that organized resistance to violence against women of colour carries the potential to be healing for survivors, this knowledge generating workshop will explore how survivors who are triggered by common organizing tactics and/or cultures can participate in or develop our own strategies of resistance. Through group discussion drawing on the experiential wisdom of participants, the workshop will generate knowledge on: what makes it difficult for some survivors to engage in organized political resistance; strategies for managing these difficulties, or engaging in/initiating types of activism that are not as triggering; and ways of survivors supporting one another in this work, including the opportunity to stay in touch with one another after the workshop.

This workshop is for self-identified Indigenous, mixed, and/or women and/or genderqueer persons of colour who are also survivors of violence.