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Not only was the election of President Barack Obama a historic event by electing our first black president. This election also marked a momentous turning point for the battered women and sexual assault movements in this country. For the first time in history, advocates and survivors watched Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates and heard the words "VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN." For the millions of women and children affected by violence and the advocates who work tirelessly everyday to make change, we heard the resounding call to America-that ending violence against women is a national priority.
In early 1990, a small working group of state domestic violence coalitions and advocates, known as the Domestic Violence Coalition on Public Policy (DVCOPP), came together to fill the gap in information and expertise in the early discussion of federal public policy related to domestic violence. And they met with Senator Biden.
In June of that year, Senator Biden introduced the landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and heard the first hearing on his bill (S. 2754) in his Senate Judiciary Committee, "Women and Violence."
Senator Joe Biden was the chair of the Judiciary committee and had been a senator for sixteen years by the time he introduced the bill in 1990. He held many hearings, talked to survivors, and understood that in order to remedy violence against women the federal government had to take a stand.
And it was Senator Biden who stood.
Senator Joe Biden stood with the missing and murdered women, young women who had been sexually assaulted, stood with Native women, immigrant and refugee women and children who had witnessed their mother beaten or worse-murdered. Senator Biden stood with Sheila Wellstone.
Senator Paul Wellstone was a co-sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act that was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994 and its reauthorization in 2000. Sheila Wellstone was key in drafting and working across the aisle to bring the issue of ending violence against women to the forefront. In 1995, Sheila was appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Social Services to the Women Advisory Council for VAWA.
Sheila played a key role writing policies by telling the stories of battered women across Minnesota and the nation. Sheila traveled with Marcia Avner and Connie Lewis to shelters across Minnesota to understand the complexity of violence against women. What Sheila understood from battered women and their children was that her safety was dependent upon her ability to achieve not just criminal justice but-economic justice.
When I watched the debates this year and heard our national candidates speaking with knowledge and experience about federal policies that address violence against women, I was moved. As an advocate who has worked on the frontlines, in the halls of tribal, federal, and state governments, I cried.
I cried because for the first time we had a platform to tell the millions of stories of struggle, courage, love, voting, and custody. I thought of the battered mothers who lost custody to their batterers, the young women who had been raped, the Native women who had been brutally murdered and their young motherless children, the domestic violence survivors who are in the midst of the foreclosure crisis, the prostituted women and girls, the mothers without healthcare or a living wage job. I want everyone to know their stories, and I want them to have a place to share with the world their struggles, their beliefs, their faith and their triumphs.
For the first time in history we have a tireless advocate that for almost twenty years told the stories of the powerful women I know-Senator Joe Biden. Now vice-president elect Joe Biden.
We know that we have a long road ahead for the economy, the looming deficits, the war - but what I know is that Vice President-elect Joe Biden understands what's at stake for battered women and their children and safety.
I don't expect the grassroots advocacy and lobbying and national organizing that the Sheila Wellstone Institute or NNEDV or NCADV is gearing up in 2009 to fully fund the VAWA reauthorization, or the Family Violence Prevention Fund Services Act, or the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) to automatically be funded.
What I do know is that the Obama-Biden administration understands safety. And that they understand the implications of what is difficult in this economic crisis for millions of Americans-is that it's much more difficult for survivors if your very life depends on it.
I thought of Sheila Wellstone on election-day, I knew that somewhere she was smiling.
___
Senator Chris Dodd in remembering Paul said this of Sheila, "If there are women today who are suffering less because of domestic violence-and they are many who are not, but many who are-you can thank some colleagues here. But I suspect one of the reasons they became so motivated about the issue was because there was a person by the name of Sheila Wellstone who arrived here over a decade ago and wanted to make this a matter of the business of the U.S. Senate."
Photo by stephen_bolen on flickr.com
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