Name: Wyeth Zeff
Social Justice Group: 2020-2021, Violence Against Women
Date of Fieldwork: February 3, 2021
Name of Organization:
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Sarah Wen
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
What I learned:
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
From interviewing Sarah Wen, Margot and I learned many things about domestic violence’s economic standing against women. Sarah is a well-versed economic justice specialist for the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Sarah explains that “One of the most common denominators amongst survivors is economic abuse.” Within the issue of economic abuse, we learned the obstacles survivors have faced with the credit score system, the importance of local cultural shelters and coalitions, the impact of domestic abuser dominance, and the significance of letting domestic abuse victims make their own decisions. Sarah talked about how domestic violence survivors’ needs are different and may vary based on ethnicity, which she states, “Is more than okay.” These programs, known as cultural programs, require even more support and funding from not only the government but from regular volunteers as well. We learned that volenteers and supporters can help by reaching out to Free From, a program that helps stabilize survivors finacially, especially black, native, biracial, and latinx survivors. As well as learning how we can support domestic abuse services during the pandemic, we learned about Strong Hearts, a cultural coalition for domestic violence suriviors who don’t identify as caucasion. From meeting with Sarah Wen, a women who discovered her passion of fighting for justice, has inspired us to do more work on ways we can help ourselves, even if it’s small.
