Sakhi Holds March Against Domestic Violence in Jackson Heights (2 of 2)

The first round of the march was held in complete and deafening silence. Passersby stopped and stared at the shocking crowd, and as one community member put it, “Seeing so many people marching in silence gave me goose bumps.”

During the second round, the group chanted slogans in English, Hindi, Urdu, and Bangla. By the third round, onlookers joined the marchers in chanting as well as dancing to festive drumming.

Sakhi's march in search of a new kind of community renews the possibility for feminist direct action to impact public consciousness. At a time when the corporate media increasingly pumps our airspace with racist and sexist programming, when public spending cuts have eroded programs responding domestic and sexual violence in many cities, the job for activists to ensure lasting institutional change remains. The promise of earlier liberation and social justice movements has hardly been fulfilled, and is in fact backsliding. Activists must find ways to militantly apply direct action to press a progressive agenda.

Sakhi estimates that in the South Asian community, 1 in 4 families have experienced some kind of abuse. It handles approximately 30 new crisis calls per month, and over 500 calls or emails for help a year – but New York City's South Asian population numbers in the hundreds of thousands. To truly eliminate domestic violence, activists must do more than raise consciousness, they must mobilize the resources that can be used to educate and offer services to the next generation. Additionally, in crafting ways of intervening in situations of violence, activists will be faced with the question of how to address the brutality of the current criminal justice system. Feminist activists of color, such as the group INCITE!, have only begun the difficult work of trying to reconcile an anti-sexual/domestic violence and anti-prison agenda.

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