INCITE! Color Of Violence 4 Conference
BEYOND THE STATE:
INCITING TRANSFORMATIVE POSSIBILITIES
March 26 – 29, 2015
Chicago, IL
Conference Call for Proposals
Deadline: September 1, 2014
Conference website: colorofviolence.org
INCITE! is excited to announce the Color of Violence 4 (COV4)—Beyond the State: Inciting Transformative Possibilities. This gathering will mark INCITE!’s fifteen years of engaging in grassroots organizing projects, critical conversations, national actions, transnational campaigns, and community building strategies to end colonial, racial, and gender-based violence against women of color, trans and queer people of color and our communities.
Although on-going systems of criminalization and punishment are occupying and devastating our communities, those systems are still often considered the frontline response to violence within and against our communities. Challenging multiple interlocking forms of violence requires new conversations and transformative approaches. Since 2000, INCITE! chapters, affiliates, and partners have developed and learned from non-state based responses to violence rooted in global grassroots liberation movements, local feminist of color practices, communities and organizations. COV4 will highlight emerging strategies, multiple approaches, and new frameworks that re-engage community agency and focus on ending violence without relying on policing, mass incarceration, restrictive legislation, and other systems of violence and control. Non-state based responses to violence are happening in our neighborhoods, families, classrooms, places of worship, friendships, online social networks, political actions, and around our kitchen tables. These efforts have been called “community accountability,” “transformative justice,” “restorative justice,” or simply taking care of our communities and our lives. Examples of these responses in action include: organizing workshops, community-based resources, and art & media projects; convening gatherings, interventions, and brainstorm sessions; and creating grassroots toolkits, participatory research projects, resource lists, and other practical tools to help us figure out what we do next. We believe that these practices are key components of radical movement building.
As we imagine, create, and build on practices that radically value the lives of women of color, trans & queer people of color, and our communities, this conference asks:
- What anti-violence organizing strategies are activists, artists, scholars, workers, and community members imagining or implementing “beyond the state?”
- What kind of new spaces and models have been invented locally, nationally, and globally?
- What core questions still need exploration?
We invite survivors of violence, artists, media makers, health practitioners, advocates, young people, people in the sex trade, students, activists & community organizers, scholars & teachers, and anyone else interested in submitting workshops and presentations that examine these questions and break new ground. Women of color, girls of color, trans & gender non-conforming people of color, Indigenous women and two-spirit people, immigrants of color, currently or formerly incarcerated people of color, and disabled people of color are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. Proposals might also consider the following tensions and challenges:
- How do we address violence beyond the state in cases of police violence or hate violence? Is incarceration all we can ask for or are there other possibilities?
- How do we scale up community accountability models so that their impact poses a real challenge to the prison industrial complex?
- How do we navigate the ways in which non-profit systems and foundation & government grant funding can bind our work to violent institutions?
- How do we address the ways in which community accountability or transformative justice strategies have not been responsive for all survivors and scenarios?
- How has community accountability been practiced in classrooms and on campuses as a way to address interpersonal harm as well as a way to challenge the violence of the academic industry?
- How do we imagine community accountability not only as responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, and other interpersonal harms, but also in the context of reproductive, economic, immigration, colonial, environmental, labor, and medical violence, as well as the violence of prisons, policing, surveillance, genocide, disaster, and war?
- How has media been a promising, yet complex strategy for community accountability? How do we address the racial/gendered threats faced by women of color and trans/queer people of color on social media?
- How can we challenge the ways in which state violence against people in the sex industry is strengthened and justified by many anti-trafficking initiatives?
- How have community-based responses to violence been used within recent insurgencies, such as Idle No More, Not1More anti-deportation actions, anti-capitalist actions, direct actions against prisons and policing, the movement for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions against Israel occupation, and revolutionary and anti-imperial movements abroad?
This gathering will provide an opportunity for individuals and groups to problem-solve ongoing challenges and share promising strategies. We are open to workshops on any theme that is in keeping with INCITE!’s mission to address the intersections of interpersonal, state, and institutional violence, and welcome a variety of formats: performances, participatory workshops, learning labs, story circles, open discussions, strategy sessions, activist studios, network gatherings, etc.
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: September 1, 2014
Proposals can be submitted online HERE!
Please send inquiries to: cov4incite@gmail.com
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