Two Project Hopes

I've been watching a lot of Law and Order: SVU lately. Its on netflix and there are nearly a dozen years worth. I used to watch it, back in the 90s, but I had to give it up for awhile because it hurt me to watch. My first job in college was at the Janet C. Anderson Gender Resource Center as the Project Hope Assistant. That Project Hope was sexual assault and domestic violence prevention program for campus. When I was working there, I also volunteered as a victim's advocate for Family Services Alliance. This job meant answering their crisis line (cell phone) mostly during the night, sometimes of suicidal individuals, but also it meant that I would go out with officers when they had a domestic violence call and do some on-site crisis intervention.


I was thinking about this Power and Control Wheel. This particular wheel isn't my favorite because it uses sexist language. It treats power and control as the male's fault. I think plenty of women use these tools on their partners in negative ways too. It is just that biologically women generally smaller than their partners. Their size makes them less likely to successfully use physical violence to terrorize their partners.

People in poverty also are stuck in an unequal and unhealthy relationship with society. But while my old Project Hope was about crisis intervention, my new Project HOPE is about transition out of the wheel.

I want to know which is more successful. Is crisis intervention or teaching transition more successful at ending oppression?

I heard this story at church on Sunday and think it relates. It was about how instead of doing things right, and having your fingers all alight like candles, be consumed by the flames and become completely transformed. I like the idea of being transformed. Being completely transformed is very different from transitioning to a new style,Transition is used in social services now.

I think that the Bridges Initiative program is the best I've seen yet at trying to do both intervention and what I see as batterer's treatment. Batterer's treatment is directed at those who are wielding the power. It is to teach them to communicate better and teaches collaboration between partners. The Bridges style is directed at "classes" rather than individuals.


I am trying to see how we can be successful using the same intervention techniques with poverty as we do with personal violence. I think if we see that people in the social services as victims we might do our jobs differently, and might be more successful. But it does take the primary aggressors to make the change work. That is the systems change we are looking for. Our systems must learn to not use power to continue to the cycle of power and control if we want people from poverty to heal from their abuse.

For examples, from the wheel, using privilege is a form of control. People in the middle class can treat the unemployed as servants. They are expected to take the entry level positions, clean their offices, cook their food, and are the ones who define the others roles. Some models, when trying to help others, also use the idea of threats (which are the converse of rewards [rewards are shown to be successful forms of behavior modification]). There is the threat of taking things away, like unemployment or food and housing assistance, if a person doesn't fit their role. Models of social services also can at times use intimidation, in the form of threats, or like having to make a person feel bad and scared if they don't do what the powerful (often governments) say is necessary to be successful. People in poverty often believe the emotionally abusive things that those in power have said about them, like that they are just lazy, crazy, or stupid. We treat them like that by demanding they take depression medication, or see a councilor. Isolation can be from things like access to transportation or health care or child care. It also comes from housing availability that keeps those in poverty separate in a concentrated area, or just limiting their options for location because of their budgets. We often blame the victims, especially in cases of situational poverty, for losing their job, not planning in advance for emergencies that lead to poverty, or we even blame people's families like in generational poverty. Children are often used as a form of power and control, and for parents to help their children, or not help their children, we use guilt or the threat of taking children away from their parents if they don't perform. We also do have real structural barriers to getting and keeping a job and having access to their own money.

Social services, while trying to help, often rely upon the same power and control ideas that we are trying to end in personal violence. This is what we call structural violence, and this is why we don't just need to do something better and to the letter of the laws, but rather be transformed in our systems. I hope I can remember what I learned from my first experience at Project Hope to help my second experience with Project HOPE to be more successful and transformative.