by Memorie Knox

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com)�Hundreds of women of all ages and ethnicities recently convened here to determine how to stop the global cycle of violence against the female gender, a problem that impacts the living condition of women, children and men.

Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Indian, Palestinian, Muslim, Christian and Jewish women shared their personal stories of bouts with violence to participants at the March 15-17 "Women of Color Against Violence" conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The conference was spearheaded by INCITE!, an international organization of women activists and community leaders.

One of those survivors was Kemba Smith, who, as a Black middle class college student in the 1990s, received a 24-1/2 year sentence without the possibility of parole due to association with her physically and emotionally abusive boyfriend. Ms. Smith, who was sentenced under the mandatory minimum sentencing law, was incarcerated for more than six years and was released by executive clemency from former President Bill Clinton in December 2000. Her case drew international attention.

She is now completing her Bachelor�s degree in Social Work at Virginia University, and travels across the country to tell how she landed in federal prison, the place where she also gave birth to her son while handcuffed to a bed.

"I feel very grateful to have the opportunity to come home, but I consider my victory an individual victory. I left a lot of women behind who also deserve to be at home with their children. God is preparing me to be a voice for those women I left behind because the laws that put me in prison are still intact, and a young woman could get life in prison on a first offense because of her association with a drug dealer," Ms. Smith said.

She urged women to stay involved in the political effort to change the laws. More than 80 percent of incarcerated women were in abusive relationships and are involved in illegal activities because of associations with their boyfriends, she said.

"When I look into this audience, I see so many diverse women. The last time I was in this type of setting was when I was in prison and we were still united in a struggle, even from behind the walls, to make a change. I ask that once you leave this conference to be committed and continue to do what you�re doing because we have to move forward," she said.

Women of color are the fastest growing number of incarcerated individuals in the United States, said Akua Njeri, mother of former political prisoner Fred Hampton Jr. "People do not realize the impact this has on families and children. Kemba is just a representative of many women that are unjustly imprisoned, separated from their families, brutalized and attacked by this American system of injustice."

These injustices, and others, were analyzed during a workshop titled "State Violence Against Women of Color: Police Brutality, Economic Violence and Policy Intervention."

Andria Riche, a women�s labor researcher, activist and Howard University Law Student, said that while racial profiling, police brutality and genocide implications of prison have almost been exclusively centered around young Black men, Black women�s voices have been strangely silenced.

"Police violence is, and always has been, directed at women of African descent in America. Black women are subjected to daily harassment, profiling, strip searches, body cavity searches, rapes, beatings and murders by officers of the state. Our experiences have been suppressed or erased by both the anti-police brutality and the domestic violence movements," Ms. Riche said.

She said society must acknowledge the many lives lost of Black women in the civil rights movement, Black liberation movement and now, more than ever, in incidents of police brutality.

Andrea Smith, a Native American and co-founder of the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, said Native American women are fighting the eroding and usurping of their traditions and legacies.

The issue of "appropriation," she said, where others claim the practices and traditions of another people as their own, is another form of genocide.

"It�s a way of trying to seize Native cultural identity in a way that allows White people to claim that they are the inheritors of all that is Indian, " Ms. Smith said. "And because our culture and spiritual practices are land based, you can�t just do them everywhere. But this new age movement where everybody can say they�re Indian allows them to not need to protect these specific land bases for these specific spiritual practices because they (Whites) can say �everybody can do this everywhere,� " she said.

Appropriation can even become a point of contention among Native Americans. Ms. Smith said that although she is Cherokee, she should not assume she could adopt the sun dance ceremony, which is a tradition of plains Indians.

The issue also arises when Chicanas, who have been separated from northern tribes by the U.S. imposed Mexican border, come to the United States and want to become involved in North American traditions.

"Appropriations issues is often of Whites verses other peoples of color, but a dialogue people of color need to have is, are we appropriating each other�s cultures? Sometimes we assume it�s okay to borrow someone else�s traditions because we�re not White," she said.

She suggested that all oppressed groups determine where they fit in the society so that strategic alliances can be formed to combat oppression.

"For instance, the African American has been used as an exploitable labor force, so that is a point of vulnerability. There should be an alliance on how to further that struggle. Conversely, Native people don�t have a large population, but we have the land base on which are the energy resources this country wants. It�s important for other groups to be in solidarity with us in land struggles because it doesn�t just involve us, but the entire global economies."

The workshop on "Globalization of Economic Violence Against Women" brought attention to treatment of women in the Caribbean. Elisa Facio, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the Department of Ethnic Studies of the University Colorado at Boulder, said that incidents of violence against women in Cuba are due to the discourse of globalization and "left wing rhetoric" about the socialist country.

Ms. Facio, who lived in Cuba during the 1970s, says she was arrested, shackled, raped and beaten for six hours in her quest for social, political and economic change.

"Cuba is being saved by entering the global economy, and that has happened on the backs women, especially women of color. The only way to build alliances through the world is to tell the truth about our oppression," Ms. Facio said.

Telling the truth about "Women of Color in the Mental Health System" was a focus of a power-packed workshop with Vanessa Jackson, president of Healing Circles, Inc., an Atlanta-based holistic clinical consulting group.

Ms. Jackson said current applications of mental health are forms of psychiatric oppression for Black people. Black girls, in particular, are being subjected to psychiatric abuse while raging inside against sexual, physical and emotional violence.

"We�re not talking about this and White folks aren�t talking about it, so we must begin to talk about what healing looks like for us and begin to struggle with those issues. This is a civil rights and human rights issue and not just a medical one. All of this money is being poured into systems that are abusing us, and we are nowhere at the table to make decisions about that," Ms. Jackson said.

The conference also focused on issues of battered immigrant women.

K. Sujata, executive director of Apna Ghar (Our Home), a Chicago-based group that provides services for Asian survivors of domestic violence, told The Final Call that her group is approaching the problems by forming coalitions and getting the community directly involved.

"Our motto is �peaceful communities begin with peaceful homes,�" she said, explaining that getting community members involved can have an impact in the home where people can see that what they are doing is abusive.

She also said immigrant women face additional barriers of isolation because some do not speak English well, they weren�t born in the country and don�t know the laws and don�t know the agencies to which they can look for help.

"Violence is about power and control," she said, "and many immigrant women are very vulnerable." She said husbands who are in India or Pakistan can have the children sent back to their home country without the mother�s knowledge. "I hate to call it kidnapping, but it�s a way of controlling the mother emotionally," she said.

Sonali Kolhatkar, a native of India, advocate for women in Afghanistan and vice president of the Afghan Women�s Mission, said now is the time for women around the world to focus on revitalizing Afghan women�s rights. "Afghan women are on the forefront of women�s rights. They have solutions to change the health, education and politics of the people. We must unite emotionally and financially with them to make it happen," Ms. Kolhatkar said.

Elham Bayour, a Palestinian student researcher at the University of Long Beach at California, said the occupation by Israel, policies in place and western non-governmental organizations are designed to depopulate and de-politicize Palestinian women.

"This has created a huge gap between refugee women, who want change and to bring an end to the violence, and middle upper-class Palestinian women leaders, who are only required to talk about social issues, not politics," Ms. Bayour said.

Photo: Participants at the March 15-17 "Women of Color Against Violence" conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago.