Aracelia Aguilar, Empowerment Director, shares an update from DeafHope. She is a Deaf Latina wearing a black shirt, sitting on a chair against a white background. “There has been fraudulent activity using our board chair, Julie Rems-Smario’s name. She is not staff at DeafHope and isn’t looking for employees. If you come across anything suspicious using her or DeafHope’s names, please contact us at...
TRANSCRIPT Hello! My name is Ashley. What is the purpose of this vlog? I want to discuss about Domestic Violence (DV). The actual process of leaving a dv relationship and we need to understand that once the survivor leaves, there will be an amount of self-critical period, where the survivor will ask many questions that determines their worth (will people judge or look down at me, worry that I will be stalked, and all that) I will connect more to what I will discuss later on. What I want to talk about different messages (in this vlog) for two groups – those who are outsiders of the dv relationship and those who are currently in one or in the process of leaving/have left already. I will explain my experience briefly and the reason why I am doing this. So many people have asked me these questions, why are you involved, why are you an activist. Even this question, are you becoming one of those feminists? No! That is not the answer. The reason why I am doing this because I actually experienced being in a dv relationship myself. Again, everyone has different experiences, different background, and different journeys when it comes to comparing dv relationships. My experience in a dv relationship, that it was only under two years that I was with this person, had two children with but you know what I am thankful. Yes I did experience a lot of abuse, oppression, really a lot of things I had went through. Again, Trigger Warning (TW), I had experienced economic manipulation/control even in the following areas: sex, physical,...
There is a new movement on social media. Survivors are sharing their experiences and why they stayed in abusive relationships using this hashtag #WhyIStayed. If you need DeafHope’s support, you can e-mail us anytime at deafhope@deaf-hope.org and advocates will be there for you! De’Lasha Singleton from the social justice organization Take a Stand shared her experience and invites you to share yours too. “All deaf* survivors who feel comfort to share your reasons, it will share under Take A Stand organization along with the hashtag #WhyIStayed.Send me via DelashaTAS@gmail.com. I am expecting to spread the video by Monday, September 15th. Send my love vibes to all of you! This vlog is based on my real experience and an example of what you could do with your vlog. Please feel free to share the information to all survivors. I would love to see more people get involved in this important part of the life. Finding the heal, courage, and etc pieces that were STOLEN by all abusers. If you do not want to show your face, there are many other options such as display on the body with signing, screenshot, hands signing, writing on the paper, and etc.” De’Lasha’s video: transcript on youtube link...
At NAD 2014, there were two workshops on diversity, intersectionality, and social justice. DeafHope is committed to those values in our work with survivors and our communities. The first one was a panel with diverse NAD members – discussing their experiences with NAD. The main point was that to grow NAD and make it stronger, NAD cannot just invite diverse people to get involved and that’s it. To grow and move faster, NAD will need to go out to different communities and become involved with them. Mark Ramirez and Jonathan Kessel from DYUSA gave a workshop on social justice. They focused on many different types of oppression and privilege. They encouraged us to think about intersectionality, which means to recognize and embrace all types of identities in our community. We include those values of social justice in developing our shared leadership model with our Empowerment Directors. Many people were curious about how we run DeafHope using shared leadership and wanted to know more. We will share our progress as we grow as an organization. We invite you to share your ideas and thoughts with...
