The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (Paperback)
Description
"Was/is your abusive partner a high-profile activist? Does your abusive girlfriend’s best friend staff the domestic violence hotline? Have you successfully kicked an abuser out of your group? Did your anti-police brutality group fear retaliation if you went to the cops about another organizer’s assault? Have you found solutions where accountability didn’t mean isolation for either of you? Was the 'healing circle' a bunch of bullshit? Is the local trans community so small that you don’t want you or your partner to lose it?
"We wanted to hear about what worked and what didn’t, what survivors and their supporters learned, what they wish folks had done, what they never want to have happen again. We wanted to hear about folks’ experiences confronting abusers, both with cops and courts and with methods outside the criminal justice system."
—The Revolution Starts at Home collective
Long demanded and urgently needed, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “secret” of intimate violence within social justice circles. This watershed collection of stories and strategies tackles the multiple forms of violence encountered right where we live, love, and work for social change—and delves into the nitty-gritty on how we might create safety from abuse without relying on the state. Drawing on over a decade of community accountability work, along with its many hard lessons and unanswered questions, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic.
Kundiman Fellow Jai Dulani is an interdisciplinary storyteller and activist/educator.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is the author of Consensual Genocide.
Andrea Smith is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide.
Praise for The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities…
“It’s about goddamn time a book like this was published.”—Make/shift
"Like [This Bridge Called My Back], the editors of The Revolution Starts at Home have provided a landmark resource....For anyone who believes that the personal is deeply political in social justice circles, The Revolution Starts at Home is a must-read."—Ms Magazine Blog
"If this book had been published ten years ago, I would have perhaps not felt so isolated, or have felt that just because someone could dedicate themselves to the bettering of society, that they were not capable of turning their internalized anger onto me. I would have not felt so alone."—Persephone Magazine
“A document of more than 10 years of community accountability work, this anthology is bursting with transformative poems and stories, well-developed models, vital guidelines and new questions. By providing resources and excellently written pieces about experiences and strategies, The Revolution Starts at Home offers appealing alternatives for ensuring survivor safety — and hope that more activist communities will name and break patterns of violence.”—Xtra! Toronto
