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A yearlong statewide program has forged new
connections among organizations working on various aspects of violence
against women. “What Will It Take? Building the Safest State
for All Women and Girls,” headed by the Chicago Foundation for Women,
provided $1 million in grants to nonprofits. The Illinois state government
and the federal government each contributed $1 million to the anti-violence
campaign. The program has been collecting ideas for a report,
which was released Tuesday. The report, containing 100 action items,
highlights the need to take stalking more seriously as an indicator of
future violence, to get more men to see violence prevention as their issue,
and to treat violence as a national epidemic and a public-health crisis. “The whole process expanded people’s
context for what violence is,” says Rachel Durchslag. “People
will think of hitting or rape as violence against women, but they might not
think of someone in the sex trade [as] being a victim of violence or how
media images of thinness and quote-unquote ‘beauty’ influence
us to commit violence against ourselves. This process brought together
people who are trying to fight different kinds of violence.”
Durchslag should know. Last year she founded a
grassroots organization focused on eliminating the sex trade in Chicago
— but was soon struggling to locate data on the demand side of the
problem. She got a $30,000 research grant from the statewide
initiative that allowed her to join an international study about the demand
side of prostitution, and from there she put together an interview team
— including three survivors of prostitution — who questioned
more than 100 men in the Chicago area about their attitudes and practices
on the subject. While her organization, the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual
Exploitation, compiles its survey findings it is also teaming up with the
local Christian Community Health Fellowship’s Footprints program to
develop a series of “john schools” for men caught soliciting
prostitutes. Chicago judges refer the arrested men to the program, which is
held twice a month. “There’s historically been a lot of focus
on prevention but not much on demand elimination,” Durchslag says.
“We give women resources so they don’t end up in prostitution,
but we also want to educate men and get them involved.”
The initial goal of “What Will It
Take?” was to reach 4 million people in Illinois through a series of
events around the state. Susy Schultz, director of advocacy for the Chicago
Foundation for Women, says the campaign ultimately reached more than 10
times that number since its September 2006 kickoff.
From March to June there were eight “What Will
It Take?” town-hall-style forums, for which guest speakers were
brought to specific communities to talk about a range of issues. Another 40
community meetings were held around the state, grants were distributed
statewide, and an online forum for all participants was set up through the
foundation’s Web site.
As part of its yearlong effort, the Chicago
Foundation for Women also sponsored a men’s initiative, designed to
get men thinking about their role in stopping violence and enlisting them
as allies. The foundation held speaker training for men, who
then spoke to Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, and other community groups around
the state. Male speakers also went to high schools to talk with teens and
hosted events in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago, Springfield, and other areas. Feedback from these and other events are included in
the Sept. 11 report, which also looks at how the organizations brought
together under this initiative have cooperated and what they plan for the
future. “For me, this initiative was an opportunity to
work with some of the best people in the field and just not the usual
suspects,” Durchslag says. “I don’t know if I’d
ever have gotten to meet with some of these organizations if they
hadn’t been at the same table.”
For more information, go to www.whatwillittake.org.
Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based journalist who has
written for Mother Jones, The New Republic, and
Womensenews.com.
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2007.
