05/26/2016
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
