I first read the “Letter to the Anti-Rape Movement” from Santa Cruz Women Against Rape in the mid-1990s. It was a balm. I was already becoming disenchanted with the funded anti gender-based violence field. The survivors I was working with consistently rejected what we were offering, which were mainly legal solutions. That open letter sent me down a rabbit hole to learn more about the actual history of anti-rape and anti-domestic violence organizing. I learned that at every point in history ideas were contested. One side won and others lost. History did not play out as a series of waves but rather as contests and fights.
Currently in this #MeToo moment, there is a renewed interest in sexual violence by some members of the public. I welcome the interest. It’s important however to learn from the past and to avoid past mistakes. We will not end rape through criminalization. The women of Santa Cruz Women Against Rape warned us of this in 1977. I wanted to make this zine to introduce the open letter to a new generation of activists, organizers, and workers who may not yet have encountered it. I invite everyone who encounters this publication to read the letter and discuss it with your communities. What resonates with you about the letter? What is surprising to you? What is still relevant today? What feels dated to you? If you were to write an open letter to the anti-rape movement today, what would you say?
I’m so grateful to my friend & collaborator Hope Dector (who is the Creative Director at the Barnard Center for Research on Women) for designing this zine. It’s so beautiful. Thanks to my friend Jes Skolnik for offering a few words in closing. It’s gorgeous. Thanks also to Aim Ren Beland for some of the illustrations in the zine. Finally, thanks to my friends Rachel Caidor and Vikki Law for their helpful edits.
View the zine online at Issuu and download a print version of the zine here. You can also listen to remarks I delivered in March at UCLA focusing in part on the Letter to the Anti-Rape Movement below.
“To The Prisoner” is encouragement for the incarcerated and an exhortation to those of us on the outside to pay attention and to fight alongside those who are inside for their freedom.
Here’s the action I am asking you to take: 1. Read “To Prisoners”. 2. Film yourself reading the poem. 3. Post your reading on social media using the hashtag #FreeThemAll4PublicHealth this week. 4. Tag the Governor in your state with your reading. We want them to release incarcerated people for their safety and for our community’s safety. 5. Invite others in your networks to do the same.
If you are interested in listening to people including those who are formerly incarcerated discuss the poem, you can do that here.
by Bianca Diaz
TO PRISONERS
I call for you cultivation of strength in the dark. Dark gardening in the vertigo cold. In the hot paralysis. Under the wolves and coyotes of particular silences. Where it is dry. Where it is dry. I call for you cultivation of victory Over long blows that you want to give and blows you are going to get.
Over what wants to crumble you down, to sicken you. I call for you cultivation of strength to heal and enhance in the non-cheering dark, in the many many mornings-after; in the chalk and choke.
“Mutual aid is a term to describe people giving each other needed material support, trying to resist the control dynamics, hierarchies and system-affirming, oppressive arrangements of charity and social services. Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.” – http://bigdoorbrigade.com
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