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Review of The Revolution Starts at Home
THE REVOLUTION STARTS AT HOME: CONFRONTING INTIMATE VIOLENCE WITHIN ACTIVist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, began as a zine. It met with such enthusiasm and high demand mat it was eventually transformed into a full-fledged anthology. A collection of testimonies, essays, and interviews, The Revolution offers groundbreaking insights into how various activists have identified the problem of interpersonal violence in their communities and the strategies they used to confront it.
The core idea in Revolution is that "the movement" to end violence against women "became a network of social service providers and legal system advocates ," a collection of services and responses that came to rely on the nation/state, itself a perpetrator and benefactor of gendered violence (p. xiii). This movement model failed to address all the forms of violence encountered by women and sometimes exposed survivors to more violence by the nation/state. Revolution documents the efforts of groups whose focus has been on developing community accountability models mat empower communities to develop strategies to heal and transform violence. This unique collection also recognizes that interpersonal violence can emerge in activist groups that are attempting to resist violence . The editors highlight responses to violence within activist groups, reminding us that the "revolution begins at...