Feminist Action Support Network

HEY FRIENDS!

After doing with with FASN, members of the network are regrouping and doing work under the banner of the F12 COLLECTIVE.

They're still doing work to address gendered and sexual violence in Chicago's DIY music and art scenes, but shifting how they do that work. They're hosting workshops, doing art, collaborating with venues, and talking to folks in the community. Check out what they're doing, spread the love, and stay tuned for more rad events in the same vein as the Feminist Action Support Network.

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F12Network.com F12 provides educational resources & workshops to the Chicago music/arts scene to prevent sexual violence

"Festival attendees themselves can help prevent sexual violence by stepping in if they see someone who looks uncomfortable, or if they see someone being harassed. Being an active bystander can include telling the harasser that their behavior isn’t acceptable, checking in with the person being harassed if they are okay or asking for security."
also known as "community accountability"

Music for All: It's time to get serious about ending sexual violence at festivals The looming threat of sexual violence has turned festivals into unsafe places for many music fans, particularly women.

Since its inception a year and a half ago, the Feminist Action Support Network has changed dramatically. Our fundamental mission has remained the same: to address sexual and gendered violence in Chicago’s DIY, punk, art, and lit scene(s). FASN’s methods have become more developed and nuanced; new people became involved, we responded to community feedback, and we recentered our praxis around Transformative Justice principles. Because of this, we have decided to formally change how we interact with venues, and therefore are recalling our Peach, Olive, and Pistachio Space posters currently in circulation. We will be replacing them with a new poster and single classification: “Plum Space.” The new text on this poster is as follows:

This is a Feminist Action Support Network Plum Space. We work with FASN to have Support Liaisons at our events. FASN is a Transformative Justice Project that strives to: value community-wide healing, survivors, and accountability; address society’s conditions that encourage and perpetuate violence; develop response strategies that don’t involve the State.

There are several reasons for this change:
--We wanted to remove the hierarchy of involvement implicit in the old posters.
--We didn’t want to write an accountability statement for venues; venues are autonomous spaces and should be responsible for deciding what their own values are. A lot of venues already have their own statements and we don’t want to delegitimize them. We also want to encourage the people who run these spaces to think about their role in Chicago’s arts communities and write their own statements instead of putting up something that FASN wrote on their behalf.
--In practice, spaces that have the Peach, Olive, and Pistachio Space posters up don’t live up to the claims that the posters have. Not everyone who has a poster, regardless of the level, is capable of enforcing the claims, which undermines their purpose and makes everyone look bad. FASN doesn’t want to pretend that our involvement automatically means that the venue is a “safe(r) space,” either. We’re all doing this work together, but we need to recognize our own capacity as well as where we’re at individually in this journey.
--We don’t agree politically with everything written on every poster, specifically the statement that those who have been offered an accountability process by FASN are not welcome in the space until it is completed. Enforcing this is unrealistic and unethical; it takes away agency from the survivor, is not always relevant because of the social circles we inhabit, and would require a literal list of abusers that would have to be circulated to everyone living or working at Olive and Pistachio Spaces and would automatically remove any hypothetically wanted privacy from all parties involved. In the future, individual Plum Spaces will be made aware of relevant accountability process details and stipulations in accordance with a survivor’s needs and demands.

The new poster and subsequent classification recognizes these issues but capitalizes on what the old posters did well. They raised awareness for FASN as an entity, informed those in attendance the space had Support Liaisons at their events and that they were committed to (or at least interested in) Transformative Justice, and provided a continuity from one space to the next. We want to be honest with ourselves and each other, recognize our capability as individuals and as FASN to live up to our commitments, and allow for more autonomy. We also made a conscious decision to keep the original metaphor (things with pits) intact, and choosing a plum gives us a color to work with for our merch and publications in the future.

Please bear with us as we, as an entire community, make this transition. We’re all learning and working to hold ourselves and each other accountable.

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns by messaging us on facebook or emailing [email protected]

Thank you.
-Arielle

Modern Baseball Set Up Help Hotline for Concert Goers “You can text our tour manager if you see someone acting inappropriately or feel unsafe.”

Find out more at http://feministactionsupportnetwork.tumblr.com/

New Plum Space posters soon! No more Peach/Pistacho/Olive, spread the word. Share this document! We love you

There has been serious discussion about a recent post concerning an abuser in the community. We prioritize survivor empowerment, I am unsure if our valuing of "community-wide healing" means that we should or should not also post this person's name and face to our page.

I believe that the post has achieved its desired effect of alerting the immediate community to a situation. We may choose to become involved as FASN depending on how things progress from here, but our Tumblr page features resources that should be able to assist in creation of an appropriate process/response - if you want to move forward in a transformative way.

I want to say with the utmost care and respect that the Feminist Action Support Network command center is not facilitating individual Accountability Processes at this time. After lots of learning and struggle, we have found that we are unable to be as responsive and responsible as needed in AP work.

We have been training communities, though interconnected, to become self-reliant as it relates to sexual violence. Our job as the FASN command center is to facilitate education and broader organization, not directly respond to violence. We do not have the personnel or infrastructure to serve otherwise. We are working on a registry for FASN spaces to be able to share information on ongoing Accountability Processes and as always are trying to communicate as openly as possible.

best,

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Two very lovely people from the Feminist Action Support Network

Email [email protected] to get added to our Transformative Justice Group contact list!

What ideas for posters do y'all have? "How to be an ally"? How to dismantle transmisogyny? Good consent practices?

How can we ask FASN be more transparent and accountable?

How do we hold spaces accountable to their community? How do we make sure that venues that are trying to be "safer" are actually following through on it? How do folks who run venues or book shows deal with making events more empowering and positive for everyone to be at?