Making the world safer for survivors
Introduction
On the one hand, the spring academic semester has been off to a great start, with innovative programming that soothes, affirms, and challenges us to grow, connect with and to see each other in new ways. Most recently, William Estrada of the Department of Art Education (CADA) has begun a collaboration with the Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change (CCUSC) that is taking the form of a campuswide art project that we call UIC Manifest! With the support of UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, members of the UIC community will be able to share their ideas about how we can create safe and loving communities at UIC, name the policies and practices that make that difficult to accomplish, and dream together about how we can build the communities that we need to thrive. Stay tuned for more about UIC Manifest!
On the other hand, we are being reminded of all the work that is still left to do. Just last week, the campus received a news alert that a young woman had been shot and killed in one of the parking structures on the UI Health campus. The bulletin also stated that the situation did not pose a threat to the campus community. That line gave me pause. Certainly, the person who took the life of Shawnquanice Kimbrough while her newborn child was in the car may have targeted her and her alone in that moment. But the threat of this violence happening to others has not disappeared, certainly not for survivors who are clinging to the hope offered by orders of protection issued by the courts. We know that, for Black women, gun violence and domestic violence are intimately linked. That is to say, Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to be killed with a gun in a domestic violence situation than any other group of women. We also know that Black women are quite vulnerable to intimate partner violence when they are pregnant and after they have children.
For the women who are dealing with domestic violence, and who work and attend classes at UI Health and UIC, this tragic incident may be particularly triggering because it exposes another way in which they are vulnerable to more violence. Driving to work and finding a convenient place to park is not a simple matter for survivors at all. Yes, parking structures perform a specific function and convenience, but they are also a site of vulnerability. If the perpetrators know this, then we should also take note. Many survivors have intimate knowledge of being followed to and accosted in parking lots; some have even been killed there. The murders of Tamara O’Neal in a parking lot at Mercy Hospital in 2018 and Ruth George in a UIC parking structure in 2019 are stark reminders of this reality. Survivors are already hyperaware of their surroundings. However, they don’t have much control over what will happen to them in those spaces once they have been targeted. And that’s the problem.
What is difficult to confront is that more police patrols, better lighting, more accessible security features, and parking lots located closer to buildings do not magically make survivors safer. These features are bandaids on a structural sore, one that normalizes violence, and then blames survivors for not being aware enough of their surroundings or taking sufficient action to prevent more harm. One where survivors are expected to contort their lives to fit into the increasingly small and confining spaces to which they have been relegated because so many of our communities, families, and institutions - churches, spaces of leisure, workplaces - do not take domestic violence seriously in the first place.
What more can UIC and UI Health do to protect and empower survivors who interact with these institutions for work, study and health reasons? There is plenty. At a most basic level - and I know I have said this before - we can recognize that survivors interact with the institution every day, at every level. I don’t think I have ever seen an official message that acknowledged that basic reality. Knowing and accepting that this is the case will make us see, talk and act very differently.
WINGS, the organization contracted to provide domestic violence services at UI Health, is ramping up the education of UI Health staff who can help to identify patients who are dealing with intimate partner violence and connect them with resources and support. I hope and imagine that there is similar effort by other entities in the hospital to offer support to staff at all levels, i.e. to help staff get connected to support services, and to recognize the very real threat that domestic violence poses in the lives of the nurses, doctors, faculty, administrative workers, facilities workers, and students who make up this institution. Too often, the responsibility for addressing domestic violence is treated as an individual concern and purely the purview of CAN, Employee Assistance Services and UIC Police. But it requires all of us to act in order to make the institution - and worlds we inhabit - safer for everyone.
We, as individuals and collectives, can do much more to support and participate in the many efforts to transform the society and make it safer. Create healing opportunities for survivors. Read the relevant research about how domestic violence matters in relation to your work and specialty. Listen to and follow the experts and expand your understanding and analysis. Uplift, support and participate in activist and transformational work that is intended to eradicate violence. Make space for the voices of survivors and listen to them.
There are opportunities to do some of this right here on campus this month. For example, you can attend the talk by Moya Bailey: Misogynoir in Medicine on Wednesday, February 11, 4:00-5:30 PM at the UIC Moss Auditorium, 909 S. Wolcott. You can also attend the film screening and discussion of Still Searching documentary with director Latoya Flowers, artist Damon Reed, Dr. Terrion Williamson, and Scheherazade Tillet on Wednesday, February 25, 6-8:30 PM, at the Chicago Justice Gallery, 1344 S. Halsted. You can watch a preview of the documentary in Latoya Flowers and Damon Lamar-Reed’s TED Talk, “Still Searching - Chicago’s Missing Black Women.”
Until survivors are no longer afraid to go to the health clinic, the supermarket, to work, or to class, we are being called to do much more, and to be much more for each other.
Take good care of yourselves and each other,
Natalie Bennett