Disrupting the Cycle: ?No más silencio!

Pictured above: 7 year old me a week before moving from the Stateway Gardens Projects

SDG #16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions targets covered:

Target 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.

Target 16.4: By 2030, reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery of stolen assets, and combat organized crime.

Target 16.7:?Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels

This article is a brief summary and reflection of my activities during the month of November. It is written through my lens as a Sociologist and United Nations Association-USA Global Goals Ambassador for Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Within this article I will share heavy content speaking to the violence against women and girls, trigger warning for readers who may find these stories too graphic. There are links to safe resources below if you or someone you love are being impacted by violence. I was born in Bronzeville and have generational ties to the land directly receiving my academic training from the educational institutions within this space. Thus I speak from the ground level perspective. In the closing section of this article there is a strong call to action focusing on two points:

• Honoring the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence: The 16 Days of Activism is an opportunity to revitalize commitments, call for accountability and action from decision-makers, as the world approaches the?30th?anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2025?– a visionary blueprint for achieving gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights everywhere.
• BACP Entrepreneur Certificate Program in Chicago: Centering on women of color to pursue the role of entrepreneur in order to build up their Chicago communities which was highlighted during City Civics Day held at Malcolm X College on November 9, 2024.

Nearly??one in three women experience violence in their lifetime. Girls are at particular risk of violence—1 in 4 adolescent girls is abused by their partners.?

For thousands of women, the cycle of gender-based violence ended with one final and brutal act—their murder by partners and family members.?

I am also included in this number of women experiencing violence, first by the hands of my father and second by the hands of 3 partners. In my twenties, my grandmother shared with me that her husband was also extremely violent and physically abused her. They never divorced. As a widow, grandma kept her secret until she found me in a similar violent relationship. Perhaps, her story would have provided the signs of abuse that I normalized?

In abusive relationships silent and shame is our ultimate killer. We tuck away these experiences, neatly storing them in the dark corners of our mind. We mask the fear and pain behind over-achievement, depression, numbness, and false happiness. We mend our wounds only for our abusers to "pop up" to intimidate us into keeping silent. In order to maintain their false image and inflated egos. It is the power and control wheel to exert control over us, the entitlement of remaining in the driver seat of our lives. We must disrupt the cycle.

Even at this time I am being stalked and harassed by my abusive father Raynal Arness Monden, who ignores my boundaries of no contact. As a child I had an order protection placed on him several times by the court for my safety. I am in the process of obtaining another one, after he is still seeking to communicate with me via Facebook message from various counts he created. No more silence, my voice will be fearlessly activated again today.

The picture of me smiling above was a year after my father was removed from our apartment at gun point by my uncle Dwight and other male family members. For years my father could not figure out how my uncle Dwight discovered that we needed help. My mum at the time was not able to communicate the level of violence and abuse we were suffering. Each day was a nightmare. I still suffer from the mental and emotional scars. I am in therapy twice a week to unpack my childhood trauma and complex-PTSD. Yet, I remember my uncle Dwight, a military man with a fierce big brother instinct to cover his niece (me) and little sister (mum) noticing the signs. I never spoke a word to my uncle Dwight but my unnatural flinch when he reached to hug me moved him to pull up my long sleeves. The deep scars and red lashes from an iron extension cord revealed my father had been tying me up to beat me. I was tied up and beaten daily for rejecting my father's sexual advances from age 3 to 6 years old. I was tied down because I would fight back. For hours I would bite, kick, scratch, and wildly punch my father uncontrollably, a few times drawing blood. So my father would tie me up and beat me with his closed fist or knotted iron extension cord out of frustration. One weekend I fought back with such intensity he locked me in our bathroom for 10 hours. I was difficult to dominate and domesticate which was our silent secret too.

Always promising to protect us, my uncle Dwight stared into my eyes and the tears rolling down my dimpled cheeks told it all. He nodded slowly and whispered to me that he would come back for me. By dinner my uncle Dwight escorted my father out with his weapon given to him as a Correction Officer. My uncle Dwight served in the army and retired to Florida after his 20 years as a Cook County Jail Corrections Officer. He passed away in 2015 and my uncle Dwight kept his promise that I was never physically touched by my father again. Currently, I am in a weekly national therapy group which centers on healing from violence, rape, and incest by intimate partners or family members. We heal as we share our stories in efforts to bring awareness and eliminate the shame and stigma that comes from experiencing violence.

I share my story in solidarity with women across the globe who have suffered at the hands of family members and partners. I share my story for the women who are not yet able to speak their truth. I share my story for my step-sister who shared that my father used violence and rape to control her. Violence against women and girls can and must be prevented.

Take action with the UNiTE campaign

• End impunity?by holding perpetrators accountable and establishing zero tolerance of violence against women and girls.? ?
• Adopt, implement and fund National Action Plans to end violence against women and girls.?? ?
• Invest in prevention and women’s rights organizations to ensure rights and access to essential services for survivors.

In November, City Civics Day supported my efforts to push targets 16.2, 16.4, and 16.7 at the community level. Our Disrupting the Cycle: Building Safer Neighborhoods through Violence Interruption conversation featured a panel of community violence interrupters outlining strategies for improving safety across Chicago. Each panel member, although now advocates for peace; previously aligned with street organizations, engaged in gun violence, and criminal activity. Now their work focuses on bringing restitution to their communities. They also mentor youth by being a positive example of transformation. These ground-level violence prevention workers (interrupters) equate to UN Peacekeepers. Their roles are essential in stabilizing hemorrhaging neighborhoods just as UN Peacekeepers maintain order abroad. Fear among Chicago residents heightens after dark and the death toll often strikes even with international wars. Chicago has been eerily compared to Iraq, the death toll in the city once surpassed war casualties during the Operation Enduring Freedom War (2001-2014). Directly, as a black man, it was safer to be stationed in Iraq than reside in high crime areas of Chicago. As a former military wife whose husband was in Iraq during this time, this statement brought solace to me. Unfortunately, unlike my spouse, many of our young men fall into the ranks of organized gangs or imprisonment rather than becoming G.I.

So the role of violence prevention worker is crucial, not only to formerly incarcerated individuals in sustaining their livelihoods but to their communities survival. As the heart is to the body, neither can exist without the other. It is the ultimate “cycle of restitution” which recovers maimed communities through the theory of restitution. Collectively, violence prevention workers relentlessly seek ways to restore safety to harmed spaces. They craft the tools to build up what they once destroyed. Now their hands-on block by block approach is essential peacekeeping ground work to disrupt the cycle of violence. Statistics show that their mission to empower youth through this work is integral to increasing emotional intelligence and overall community well-being. However, program funding and hazard pay for violence prevention workers are two main areas I wish to expand on in future engagement with these organizations that are vital to our city.

Upon the end of my time at City Civics Day, during the Creating Vibrant Communities Through Entrepreneurship panel we heard first-hand testimonies from local entrepreneurs about city resources to support small businesses. These resources narrowed down to economically fragile communities that desperately need a boost of economic growth. Centering the focus on growing minority and women led businesses in low income and deprived areas. Women have often been shut out of the dialog on how to stop crime in their communities. This leads towards only building up men in efforts to establish safer community spaces. Yet, in the midst of working with young men, limited time is spent empowering young women to establish local businesses which also combats crime. For example, black women are currently the highest college educated of all minority women in the USA. In drawing them into spaces of entrepreneurship as a collective, they can increase job creation and bring profitable traffic to forgotten spaces. This action not only enhances the ability for residents to foster community, it builds up black women to take power back in their communities as well. Ending in a win-win results for residents and newly-minted women of color entrepreneurs.?

Coming from a long line of women entrepreneurs dating back to my great-grandmother, it is imperative that we educate young women to prioritize social responsibility and job creation. City Civics Day was a call to action by the people for the people to discover avenues to build a stronger and safer Chicago. This month I gained a deeper understanding that volunteerism is a great foundation to assess the needs and serve the community. Then entrepreneurship is the next step forward to ensure citizens served in these areas are able to achieve true sovereignty.

Our Global Goals inspire us to use innovative ways to reach each target in efforts to eradicate harm by 2030. Violence is a crippling disease in Chicago and we must continue to equip our violence prevention workers in debulking it at the root. Lack of employment is also a contributing factor to violence. The void of active and functioning businesses in deserted areas shatters residents who are left behind to pick up the pieces. So entrepreneurship is one of the highest paths to recovery. It ensures fragile communities and the broken institutions within them are repaired which is the crux of the problem addressed in SDG #16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.?

In efforts to continue moving forward and empower myself to stand as an example, I enrolled in the BACP Entrepreneur Certificate Program. I am centering on selecting my birth neighborhood of Bronzeville in Chicago as a prime location. Former and current residents of Bronzeville have committed to the restoration of our neighborhood which was the founding area of The Great Migration. This was the historical mass migration of African Americans moving to the north from plantations in the south. Aforementioned, my grandmother was one of those migrants from Missouri to Chicago. As her proud descendant, I want to ensure we continue to build a safer and economically stable Bronzeville in order to decrease violence by disrupting the cycle. I complete my last webinar on December 4, 2024 and will graduate from the BACP Program. I owe the motivation of these actions from being in my role as the Global Goals Ambassador of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. This role shifted my perspective on additional ways to meet the needs of my community. All the information on the BACP Program is found below, I urge you to share it with others just as passionate in creating a safer Chicago for generations to come.

Summary of the BACP Program: The Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) Entrepreneur Certificate Program is a free program for anyone interested in starting or growing a business in Chicago to gain knowledge across various essential business topics.

Since the program launched, more than 1,000 Chicago entrepreneurs and business owners have successfully completed the program. All Program graduates, based in Chicagoland, are eligible to apply for the Entrepreneur Loan Program with BACP’s partner, CIBC Bank USA .

STEP 1: Enroll in the program by signing up at the BACP Entrepreneur Certificate Program Portal. The portal makes it convenient to track your progress by automatically crediting you within 24 hours of attending webinars.

STEP 2:? View and register for upcoming webinars at Chicago.gov/BACPWebinars (categories are always listed here). Attend 6 webinars from below categories within 6 months:

• City Inspections (monthly)
• Business Operations & Licensing
• Finance
• Legal
• Marketing
• Technology

STEP 3: Graduate from the program after attending 6 webinars. Within a week of attending the final webinar, your certificate will be made available on the Portal.

References:

• The BACP Entrepreneur Program: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/bacp/supp_info/bacpentrepreneurcertificateprogram0.html
• 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence: https://www.unwomen.org/en/get-involved/16-days-of-activism
• United Nations Secretary-General Campaign UNiTE to End Violence Against Women: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/unite_16_days_2024_concept_note_final_oct4.pdf
• Signs of Abuse: https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/faqs/faqs-the-signs-of-relationship-abuse-and-how-to-help
• Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/peace-justice/
• Local Abuse Helpline: https://lila.help/
• No More Global Directory: https://nomoredirectory.org/
• National Organization for Men Against Sexism: https://nomas.org/model/overview/
• Abuse Power & Control Wheel: https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/

Author: La Trese Annette Monden, M.A. is a proud Baddie millennial mommy, Chicago native, and Cultural Sociologist moonlighting as a coffee fueled techie. As the 2024-2025 UNA-USA Global Goals Ambassador for Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, she turned her time as an empty-nester into ambition for making an impact on the world. In her spare time, she loves cooking from scratch on the weekends and holding space for her brilliant Gen-Z daughter Anastasia Marie who embodies rizz.

12.01.24