INCITE! Women, Gender Non-Conforming, and Trans people of Color Against Violence, formerly known as INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, is a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

-based national activist organization of radical

feminists Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are assoc ...

advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities. INCITE! is organized by a national collective of women of color and has active chapters and affiliates in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United ...

Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding i ...

, Austin,

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Ann Arbor Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie. Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...

Binghamton Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluenc ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, and a chapter in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. INCITE! was founded in 2000.

History

INCITE! began in 2000 after organizing the conference, "The Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color", held at

University of California-Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

on April 28–29, 2000. Prior to The Color of Violence, many women of color felt their needs had been ignored in the

violence against women Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), are violent acts primarily or exclusively committed against woman, women or Girl, girls, usually by Man, men or Boy, boys. Such ...

movement. Much of the leadership in the movement that was started by Black lesbians, at that time, was white women who typically excluded an

intersectional Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...

approach. Women of color had a more radical approach to the violence against women movement. That approach was often ignored. Many of the women of color grew frustrated and left the movement entirely. The Color of Violence Convention gave women of color a place where their more radical approach could be central. Issues addressed at this conference included immigrant rights and Indian treaty rights, the proliferation of prisons,

militarism Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...

, attacks on the

reproductive rights Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to human reproduction, reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows: Reproduct ...

of women of color, medical experimentation on communities of color,

homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy ...

and heterosexism, economic

neo-colonialism Neocolonialism is the continuation or reimposition of imperialist rule by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony). Neocolonialism takes the form of economic imperialism, gl ...

, and the politicization of the movement against domestic and sexual violence. Conference organizers initially anticipated a small gathering of one to two hundred people, but over one thousand people attended and over two thousand people had to be turned away because of space limitations.Smith, Andrea (2001). "The Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color," ''Meridians: Feminism, Race, & Transnationalism''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press." Andrea Smith, a white woman and INCITE! co-founder, wrote that "the overwhelming response to this initial effort suggests that women of color and their allies are hungry for a new approach toward ending violence." As a result of this enthusiastic response, conference organizers and others founded INCITE! to continue to implement the ideas of the conference.

Analysis

INCITE! identifies "violence against women of color" as a combination of "violence ''directed at'' communities", such as police violence,

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

, and

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their rel ...

, and "violence ''within'' communities", such as

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

and domestic violence.INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2006)
''Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology''.
Cambridge, Massachusetts:

South End Press South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political ac ...

. INCITE! critiques the battered women's movement and anti-rape movement as becoming increasingly professionalized, keeping it from taking more political stances on institutional oppression and violence, and increasingly collaborative with the criminal justice system, which they identify as being "brutally oppressive towards communities of color". INCITE! also critiques racial justice organizing that focuses on racism only as it affects men of color. As an alternative strategy, INCITE! develops strategies to address both personal and

state violence State violence is defined as "the use of legitimate governmental authority to cause unnecessary harm and suffering to groups, individuals, and states". It can be defined broadly or narrowly to refer to such events as genocide, state terrorism, drone ...

, acknowledging the ways that oppressions intersect in the lives of women of color. At INCITE!'s first conference, "The Color of Violence", in 2000, speaker

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member o ...

described this intersectional approach to violence against women of color in the following way:

We need an analysis that furthers neither the conservative project of sequestering millions of men of color in accordance with the contemporary dictates of globalized capital and its
prison industrial complex A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correct ...
, nor the equally conservative project of abandoning poor women of color to a continuum of violence that extends from the
sweatshops A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...
through the prisons, to shelters, and into bedrooms at home. How do we develop analyses and organizing strategies against violence against women that acknowledge the race of gender and the gender of race?

Projects

INCITE! works on several local and national campaigns including organizing against police violence against women and trans people of color, for community-based strategies to hold people engaged in abusive behavior such as domestic and sexual violence accountable, against sterilization abuse and the Hyde Amendment, and against the

War on Iraq {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...

and U.S. militarism. INCITE! helped to establish the Boarding School Healing Project, a project that organizes Native Americans to hold the U.S. government accountable for forcing over 100,000 Native children to go to Christian boarding schools where they were often raped and abused. In 2004, INCITE! launched SisterFire, a national tour of women of color artists using creative cultural methods to engage other women of color on a number of issues, including war, reproductive violence, and immigrant rights. INCITE!'s grassroots chapters also organize projects to address multiple kinds of violence against women of color. After Hurricane Katrina, INCITE!'s New Orleans chapter began a women's health clinic to support low-income and uninsured women of color to meet their healthcare needs and to organize for racial, gender, economic, and

environmental justice Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justice ...

. INCITE!'s Philadelphia chapter has worked on issues of housing and

gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the ...

. INCITE!'s affiliate, Sista II Sista, organized campaigns against sexual harassment of young women of color by police officers in Brooklyn, NY. INCITE!'s Denver chapter spotlighted an intersectional analysis of racism and violence against women as a critique to other anti-violence organizations' responses to the

Kobe Bryant sexual assault case The Kobe Bryant sexual assault case began on July 18, 2003, when the news media reported that the sheriff's office in Eagle, Colorado, had arrested professional basketball player Kobe Bryant in connection with an investigation of a sexual assau ...

. INCITE!'s chapter in Washington, D.C. organized direct actions against street harassment. INCITE! also organized two other national Color of Violence conferences: "The Color of Violence II: Building A Movement" in Chicago, Illinois, in March 2002, and "The Color of Violence III: Stopping The War On Women of Color" in New Orleans, Louisiana, in March 2005. INCITE! also helped to organize a national conference in April 2004 entitled, "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex" at the University of California-Santa Barbara. This latter conference brought together activists to investigate the impact of the non-profit system on grassroots movement building. In 2006, INCITE! published an anthology of writings that reflect their politics entitled, ''Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology'', published by

. In 2007, they also published an anthology entitled, ''The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex'', published by

. ''The Revolution Will Not Be Funded'' was awarded the Gustavus Myers 2007 Outstanding Book Award.

Notes

External links

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
{{DEFAULTSORT:Incite! Women Of Color Against Violence Anti-racist organizations in the United States Feminist organizations in the United States Multicultural feminism Native American feminism Organizations established in 2000 Radical feminist organizations Organizations for women of color

History

Analysis

Projects

Notes

Further reading

External links