Melissa Spatz

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By Melissa Spatz • 12 years ago

New youth-written paper by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project!

The Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women is thrilled to share the latest Occasional Paper, by C. Angel Torres and Naima Paz of the Young Women’s Empowerment Project! The paper looks at the organization’s Bad Encounter Line, which they describe like this:

The Bad Encounter Line (BEL) is a way to report bad experiences you have had with institutions such as police, the health care system, public aid, DCFS, CPS, etc. In our research we noticed so many girls and transgender girls reporting bad encounters from systems that are set in place to help them. So we wondered is the same happening to boys as well; so we expanded the BEL to reach them as well, and as we have been receiving data we have learned that these systems are affecting all genders. Based off the BEL, we started a task force for street based youth and wrote a Bill of Rights that we want non-profits to sign so they have to be accountable to us and can’t get away with denying us help.

The paper is available for downloading – along with the Bill of Rights that YWEP members developed – on the Taskforce website.

By Melissa Spatz • 13 years ago

Take action… because reporting police sexual misconduct shouldn’t land you in jail

The Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women is taking action to support Tiawanda Moore, a young woman here in Chicago who alleged that a police officer sexually harassed her, and then filmed the police at the station when she felt she was getting the runaround. Ms. Moore has now been charged with eavesdropping on the police, and faces up to 15 years in jail.

Please take a moment to read & sign our petition on change.org – the petition includes info from the New York Times, which reported on the case back in January. The Taskforce is collecting signatures and will be attending the trial, which has been rescheduled to May 3.

By Melissa Spatz • 13 years ago

New resource on ending violence against girls

I wanted to share a new online resource from the Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women. You can find our new online report, a roadmap to ending violence agains girls & young women, at www.chitaskforce.org.

The website looks at 5 forms of violence against girls and young women. We believe these issues are complex, interrelated, and inherently tied to multiple forms of oppression that girls experience:

Teen dating violence Sexual violence Violence & education Reproductive Justice & Violence Violence & criminalization

For each of these, the website offers concrete data about violence against girls in Chicago and nationally, and identified issues & needs in the field. For each section you ...