Shamara Kelly testifies on Black women survivors and restructuring
Sisters in Purple co-founder and Voices of Women organizer says Black women survivors fall through the cracks whether domestic violence is addressed through NGBV or OCS. She criticizes the lack of survivor inclusion in the restructuring and asks what OCS will do to protect Black women from violence.
Good afternoon.
My name is Shamara Kelly.
I am the co-founder of Sisters in Purple.
I am here today as a community organizer with Voices of Women organizing project.
The Voices of Women is a survivor-led organization that works on systemic change for survivors.
I want to speak to something that continues to be missing from the conversation about community safety, the lives of Black women survivors.
Whether domestic violence is addressed through NGBV, the Office of Community Safety, or both, Black women survivors tend to fall through the cracks.
With regard to the restructuring of NGBV, survivors and survivor-led organizations were not included in any conversation leading up to or during the act of restructuring of NGBV.
So we question what the difference is.
What active actions is the Office of Community Safety going to take to protect Black women from violence?
We are watching black women continue to lose their lives to violence and too often there is no public urgency, visibility, or collective response.
Office of Community Safety seems more focused on community violence.
We cannot build domestic violence systems and community safety strategies that respond to some form of violence while remaining silent when violence happens within our homes, families, and relationships and communities.
Part of my concern
is the lack of communication from the office
of community safety and NGBV.
We do not know what this restructuring means for survivors or how they are addressing longstanding issues with the city's response to domestic violence.
There just has not been enough communication about what this new structure actually means for domestic violence survivors.
We are organizing for full survivor involvement and implementing policies and procedures that impact survivors.
We should not have to organize for this.
It should be a given that this will happen.
Survivors come to the table with solutions.
We should be compensated for their time and certainly deserve more than a statement or condolences after a tragedy.
And our communities deserve leadership that is willing to speak even when speaking is uncomfortable.
And as someone who works directly with survivors and communities, I know that silence does not make us safer.
Survivors need to feel protected and heard.
Thank you.