Friend,

Even before COVID lockdowns, 1 in 4 women—and 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women—experienced intimate partner violence. [1]

But incidents of domestic violence have risen during the past year, with people spending more time at home. Many emergency shelters have been unable to meet the increased demand, and some shelters have also reported an increase in the severity of cases.

That’s why it’s so urgent that the U.S. Senate passes the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2021, now that we’ve passed it in the U.S. House. The bill provides funding for life-saving programs and survivor services like emergency shelters, safety planning, legal support, and mental health counseling for the devastating impacts of abuse.

Sign the petition to the U.S. Senate: Pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) immediately.

Since 1994, VAWA has been regularly reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support. However, it lapsed in the Trump era, expiring in October 2018. Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even bring it to the Senate floor for a vote in 2019 or 2020, after it passed both years in the House.

But now we have a new President and a new Senate.

We now have a chance to pass and sign into law the latest bill, which expands current protections and invests in more services, including improving survivors’ access to housing and economic independence. It also expands protections for transgender women to access women's shelters.

Crucially, the latest bill also ends the longstanding, unjust impunity for non-Native perpetrators of sexual assault, stalking, sex trafficking, and child abuse co-occurring with domestic violence.

Juana Majel Dixon, Co-Chair of the National Congress of American Indians’ Task Force on Violence Against Women, said after we passed the latest bill in the U.S. House:

“The House has recognized that Native victims of sexual violence, child abuse, stalking, and trafficking deserve the same protections that Congress afforded to domestic violence victims in VAWA 2013. This is about our right, as governments, to protect our citizens from violence. It is about the countless victims who have experienced life-changing trauma simply because federal law has tied our hands from protecting them. We cannot allow this to continue.” [2]

Please sign the petition now to support survivors as they rebuild their lives and seek justice and safety. Demand that the Senate reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act immediately!

This is one way to honor last week's National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, as well as Indigenous two-spirit and gender-nonconforming people. Let's keep showing up for our Indigenous family and neighbors.

In solidarity,

Rashida

[1] https://ncadv.org/STATISTICS and https://www.ncai.org/policy-research-center/research-data/prc-publications/VAWA_Data_Brief__FINAL_2_1_2018.pdf

[2] https://www.theonefeather.com/2021/03/house-passes-vawa-reauthorization-bill/