DEAN SPADE: When the entire framework of how we're going to deal with violence against women or domestic
violence is about criminalizing people, folks
that are in communities that don't trust the
police, that are targeted for immigration
enforcement, that know that if they call the
police they are likely to be harmed themselves
or their family or community is likely to be harmed, all those
people, aren't going to feel connected to
those services - aren't going to be able to
avail themselves of them. 
SONIYA MUNSHI: Immigrant survivors
of violence - often new immigrants to the US -
who come to their organizations for services
don't want to have any interaction with the
criminal legal system. They don't want to
call the police. They don't want to go through
a criminal legal process to get any kind of
safety mechanism, like a criminal restraining
order. Because there are risks for them and
their communities in those interfaces. So,
especially because of the increased relationship
between the criminal legal system and immigration
enforcement, any contact with the criminal
legal system exposes them to whole new set
of risks. Dean Spade: There's been the creation
of these immigration relief programs that
require survivors to cooperate with prosecution
in order to get immigration relief, right?
In order to not be deported. So literally
you have to become explicitly engaged in a
prosecutarial effort in order to get this
type of relief. 
Shira Hassan: The impact of passing legislation to protect people 
actually just sets people up to experience further
harm from the police and prisons. So we can
see, the path was so direct from the Violence
Against Women movement to growing the prison
industrial complex. We can see this sort of
straight line. I think it just opened up this
possibility for re-evalutaion because it was
such a clear failure to so many of us who
were involved in the 80s and 90s trying to
make that change happen. We got this moment
of wake up around, "Wow, more laws actually
equals more violence in our lives." 
Andrea Ritchie: As the anti-violence movement professionalized
and began to invest in and receive government
funding, began to really see government and
the state and law enforcement specifically
based responses as appropriate responses to
violence, rather than looking to each other
in communities as both sources of immediate
safety, sources of prevention, and sources
of transformation. And so, the more people
became invested in the government as the solution
to violence, and law enforcement particularly,
the less they became willing to critique law
enforcement. Or even to see law enforcement
as a source of violence and the state as a
source of violence, both directly and in the
way that it responds to violence in the community.
Andrea Smith: When the Department of Justice
started to say yes, with the Violence Against
Women Act, etc. we're going to fund anti-violence
programs, I mean, now many programs are almost
entirely funded by the state. So you don't
just have the contradictions of you know,
funding, per se, but funding specifically
by the state. And so the result of that is
that many anti-violence programs are essentially
operating as arms of the state. The strategies
that they've come up with to end domestic
and sexual violence are all around longer
prison sentences, more police involvement,
working closely with the criminal justice
system, and hence not an ability to address
state violence at all. And so many of the
laws, then, that have been passed by the anti-violence
movement end up getting used against survivors
of violence. For instance the mandatory arrest
laws, where batterers now just call the police
first. So it's become kind of this big industry,
essentially. Shira Hassan: Instead of people
being separated and both parties going through
a healing process, and the family and community
both staying intact, instead what you have
is communities being literally taken apart
because one person is so heavily penalized
that they are incarcerated for years and years
and years. Sometimes the right person, sometimes
the wrong person, sometimes they're both wrong,
sometimes they're both right, it's just complex.
Dean Spade: These supposed solutions that
are heavily funded and supported by the government
and by a philanthropic community that feels
great about cops and prosecution - totally
alienated from the experiences of those facing
the worst forms of violence. Angelica Chazaro:
Looking at where the anti-violence movement
is now in terms of continuing to, you know,
partner with the state in expanding criminalization
- a lot of that I think is because of this
kind of departure from radical, really trying
to get to the roots of anti-violence to this
nonprofitization of anti-violence where the
state is both the partner in funding and a
partner in, you know, addressing domestic
violence and that's seen as a victory. So
I think the really interesting work is being
done by people who are pushing back against
that and saying, you know, we've succeeded
in having the cops take domestic violence
seriously, but how much of that was due to
the fact that criminalization was just expanding
everywhere, and how much was that really a
win for the movement, and how much of that
is actually keeping our community safe, and
how much of that is actually responding to
the fact that the cops are the ones targeting
queers of color, immigrants, etc? Shira Hassan:
There isn't always a clear batterer. There
isn't always someone who is solely responsible
for what's happened. And the law is just too
blunt an instrument for such a delicate and
intimate thing as interpersonal violence and
interrelationship violence.
