Activism

Don’t Criminalize Domestic Violence Survivors, Advocates Say

Advocates say, domestic violence must be approached holistically. Every aspect of the issue must be considered. That not only helps to end the criminalization of people who survive it, they explain. It is also a better path to ending the cycle of trauma and dysfunction that triggers and sustains it.

Published

4 years ago

March 15, 2022

Oakland Post

The Anti Police-Terror Project is a Black-led, multi-racial, intergenerational coalition that seeks to build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color.

Charlene Muhammad | The Oakland Post

Problems plaguing people affected by domestic violence are often compartmentalized when law enforcement officers – as well as criminal justice and social welfare authorities — try to solve them. That is a fragmented approach, advocates argue, that helps neither victims nor perpetrators, and it does not lead to lasting solutions to the problem.

Instead, those advocates say, domestic violence must be approached holistically. Every aspect of the issue must be considered. That not only helps to end the criminalization of people who survive it, they explain. It is also a better path to ending the cycle of trauma and dysfunction that triggers and sustains it.

Democratic state Sen. Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles) is one of those advocates.

Kamlager, a former Assemblymember who was elected a state Senator earlier this year, introduced AB 118, or the “CRISES ACT,” in December 2020 when she was still serving in the Assembly. The acronym CRISES stands for “Community Response Initiative to Strengthen Emergency Systems.”

AB 118 seeks to implement a pilot program that would prepare and empower community-based organizations to serve as first responders instead of the police. That would place domestic violence advocates, mental and public health professionals on the frontlines, responding to calls when there are incidents of intimate partner abuse or other acts of violence in people’s homes.

Kamlager initially introduced the CRISES Act as AB 2054 in February 2020.

AB 2054 passed in the Legislature unanimously, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it, saying the Office of Emergency Services was not the appropriate location for the pilot program as proposed in legislation.

However, its legislative successor AB 118 also passed unanimously in the Assembly and is currently being considered in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti-Police Terror Project in Oakland thinks the bill will pass into law this time around. She owes her optimism to pressure elected officials may be feeling due to a growing movement in the streets of cities, and states across the country, that is pushing for alternatives to badges and guns responding to community crisis.

The Anti Police-Terror Project is a Black-led, multi-racial, intergenerational coalition that seeks to build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color.

“This current political moment sort of creates the perfect storm for bills like the CRISES Act to make it through, so I’m hopeful,” said Brooks.

The organization created the Mental Health First Oakland program, a non-911 mobile crisis response to domestic violence, interpersonal violence, substance abuse, mental health and other community crisis, according to Brooks.

“I’m a survivor of domestic violence, and the police came. And following my husband having beat-the-you-know-what out of me, I’m the one who ended up going to jail,” she recalled.

She was 19, Black, and a woman in Las Vegas, she says. Under the city’s Primary Aggressor Law, police can decide who is responsible for the domestic violence.

“That’s how they took me to jail, even though my husband had not a scratch on him, and I was covered in scratches and bruises and bleeding,” said Brooks. “I was targeted as a Black woman by White law enforcement, and I was sent to jail, and that happens to women over and over and over again.”

Unfortunately, her story is not an exception to the rule, she said. She believes race had less to do with her arrest than gender. “We have to remember that we live in a patriarchy, and we also have to remember that the least believed human being walking America’s streets is the Black woman. The most stereotyped is the Black woman. The image that is portrayed of us is loud-mouthed, crazy, out-of-control, angry, violent,” said Brooks.

How those stereotypes factor into how law enforcement officers treat Black women is not discussed enough in public discourse. But far too often those interactions are deadly or violent, she argued.

Brooks’ personal ordeal, she says, led her to start disbelieving that police officers are her friends, and they would help her. In fact, quite the opposite, they could end up making things much worse, she said.

For the duration of that relationship, she had no one to call, so she said she just took the abuse, which, she says, is true for so many Black, Brown and Indigenous women.

“They don’t call anyone because they don’t want the police to kill them. They don’t want the police to kill their partners. They don’t want to go to jail,” said Brooks.

The tragedy helped propel her into activism and advocacy. Now, the Anti Police-Terror Project is on the verge of releasing its model for responding to interpersonal violence without police, she told California Black Media.

Members have worked closely with many organizations on the frontlines doing domestic violence work, because it must be a local solution, said Brooks.

The organization provides principles and structures, but ultimately, the community must come together, identify where the safe house is, who the trauma responders are going to be, who are going to deal with the perpetrator in a way that’s not violent, and force accountability, without involving law enforcement, she explained.

According to Brooks, the Anti Police-Terror Project does a lot of propaganda and talking to the community, and they have found it interesting that mainstream media’s portrayal of abusers is like the 1984 movie “The Burning Bed” starring Farrah Fawcett. In the movie, after nearly a decade of abuse, Fawcett’s character Francine Hughes douses gasoline over her sleeping husband and lights their bed on fire.

“They don’t think about that some families actually want to stay together, that some families actually want help for everybody. And for us, whether the family decides to stay together or not, we know that services and support and trauma work needs to be done with both the perpetrator and the survivors so those are the kinds of things that we’re advocating for,” said Brooks.

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Oakland Post: Week of November 5 – 11, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of November 5 – 11, 2025

Published

13 hours ago

November 7, 2025

Oakland Post

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Oakland Post: Week of October 29 – November 4, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 29 – November 4, 2025

Published

4 days ago

November 3, 2025

Oakland Post

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Past, Present, Possible! Oakland Residents Invited to Reimagine the 980 Freeway

Organizers ask attendees coming to 1233 Preservation Park Way to think of the event as a “time portal”—a walkable journey through the Past (harm and flourishing), Present (community conditions and resilience), and Future (collective visioning).

Published

2 weeks ago

October 27, 2025

Oakland Post

Hundreds of residents in West Oakland were forced out by eminent domain before construction began on the 980 freeway in 1968. Courtesy photo.

By Randolph Belle
Special to The Post

Join EVOAK!, a nonprofit addressing the historical harm to West Oakland since construction of the 980 freeway began in 1968, will hold a block party on Oct. 25 at Preservation Park for a day of imagination and community-building from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Organizers ask attendees coming to 1233 Preservation Park Way to think of the event as a “time portal”—a walkable journey through the Past (harm and flourishing), Present (community conditions and resilience), and Future (collective visioning).

Activities include:

Interactive Visioning: Site mapping, 3-D/digital modeling, and design activities to reimagine housing, parks, culture, enterprise, and mobility.
Story & Memory: Oral history circles capturing life before the freeway, the rupture it caused, and visions for repair.
Data & Policy: Exhibits on health, environment, wealth impacts, and policy discussions.
Culture & Reflection: Films, installations, and performances honoring Oakland’s creativity and civic power.

The site of the party – Preservation Park – itself tells part of the story of the impact on the community. Its stately Victorians were uprooted and relocated to the site decades ago to make way for the I-980 freeway, which displaced hundreds of Black families and severed the heart of West Oakland. Now, in that same space, attendees will gather to reckon with past harms, honor the resilience that carried the community forward, and co-create an equitable and inclusive future.

A Legacy of Resistance

In 1979, Paul Cobb, publisher of the Post News Group and then a 36-year-old civil-rights organizer, defiantly planted himself in front of a bulldozer on Brush Street to prevent another historic Victorian home from being flattened for the long-delayed I-980 Freeway. Refusing to move, Cobb was arrested and hauled off in handcuffs—a moment that landed him on the front page of the Oakland Tribune.

Cobb and his family had a long history of fighting for their community, particularly around infrastructure projects in West Oakland. In 1954, his family was part of an NAACP lawsuit challenging the U.S. Post Office’s decision to place its main facility in the neighborhood, which wiped out an entire community of Black residents.

In 1964, they opposed the BART line down Seventh Street—the “Harlem of the West.” Later, Cobb was deeply involved in successfully rerouting the Cypress Freeway out of the neighborhood after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

The 980 Freeway, a 1.6-mile stretch, created an ominous barrier severing West Oakland from Downtown. Opposition stemmed from its very existence and the national practice of plowing freeways through Black communities with little input from residents and no regard for health, economic, or social impacts. By the time Cobb stood before the bulldozer, construction was inevitable, and his fight shifted toward jobs and economic opportunity.

Fast-forward 45 years: Cobb recalled the story at a convening of “Super OGs” organized to gather input from legacy residents on reimagining the corridor. He quickly retrieved his framed Tribune front page, adding a new dimension to the conversation about the dedication required to make change. Themes of harm repair and restoration surfaced again and again, grounded in memories of a thriving, cohesive Black neighborhood before the freeway.

The Lasting Scar

The 980 Freeway was touted as a road to prosperity—funneling economic opportunity into the City Center, igniting downtown commerce, and creating jobs. Instead, it cut a gash through the city, erasing 503 homes, four churches, 22 businesses, and hundreds of dreams. A promised second approach to the Bay Bridge never materialized.

Planning began in the late 1940s, bulldozers arrived in 1968, and after years of delays and opposition, the freeway opened in 1985. By then, Oakland’s economic engines had shifted, leaving behind a 600-foot-wide wound that resulted in fewer jobs, poorer health outcomes, and a divided neighborhood. The harm of displacement and loss of generational wealth was compounded through redlining, disinvestment, drugs, and the police state. Many residents fled to outlying cities, while those who stayed carried forward the spirit of perseverance.

The Big Picture

At stake now is up to 67 acres of new, buildable land in Downtown West Oakland. This time, we must not repeat the institutional wrongs of the past. Instead, we must be as deliberate in building a collective, equitable vision as planners once were in destroying communities.

EVOAK!’s strategy is rooted in four pillars: health, housing, economic development, and cultural preservation. These were the very foundations stripped away, and they are what they aim to reclaim. West Oakland continues to suffer among the worst social determinants of health in the region, much of it linked to the three freeways cutting through the neighborhood.

The harms of urban planning also decimated cultural life, reinforced oppressive public safety policies, underfunded education, and fueled poverty and blight.

Healing the Wound

West Oakland was once the center of Black culture during the Great Migration—the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and home to the “School of Champions,” the mighty Warriors of McClymonds High. Drawing on that legacy, we must channel the community’s proud past into a bold, community-led future that restores connection, sparks innovation, and uplifts every resident.

Two years ago, Caltrans won a federal Reconnecting Communities grant to fund Vision 980, a community-driven study co-led by local partners. Phase 1 launched in Spring 2024 with surveys and outreach; Phase 2, a feasibility study, begins in 2026. Over 4,000 surveys have already been completed. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity could transform the corridor into a blank slate—making way for accessible housing, open space, cultural facilities, and economic opportunity for West Oakland and the entire region.

Leading with Community

In parallel, EVOAK! is advancing a community-led process to complement Caltrans’ work. EVOAK! is developing a framework for community power-building, quantifying harm, exploring policy and legislative repair strategies, structuring community governance, and hosting arts activations to spark collective imagination. The goal: a spirit of co-creation and true collaboration.

What EVOAK! Learned So Far

Through surveys, interviews, and gatherings, residents have voiced their priorities: a healthy environment, stable housing, and opportunities to thrive. Elders with decades in the neighborhood shared stories of resilience, community bonds, and visions of what repair should look like.

They heard from folks like Ezra Payton, whose family home was destroyed at Eighth and Brush streets; Ernestine Nettles, still a pillar of civic life and activism; Tom Bowden, a blues man who performed on Seventh Street as a child 70 years ago; Queen Thurston, whose family moved to West Oakland in 1942; Leo Bazille who served on the Oakland City Council from 1983 to 1993; Herman Brown, still organizing in the community today; Greg Bridges, whose family’s home was picked up and moved in the construction process; Martha Carpenter Peterson, who has a vivid memory of better times in West Oakland; Sharon Graves, who experienced both the challenges and the triumphs of the neighborhood; Lionel Wilson, Jr., whose family were anchors of pre-freeway North Oakland; Dorothy Lazard, a resident of 13th Street in the ’60s and font of historical knowledge; Bishop Henry Williams, whose simple request is to “tell the truth,” James Moree, affectionately known as “Jimmy”; the Flippin twins, still anchored in the community; and Maxine Ussery, whose father was a business and land owner before redlining.

EVOAK! will continue to capture these stories and invites the public to share theirs as well.

Beyond the Block Party

The 980 Block Party is just the beginning. Beyond this one-day event, EVOAK! Is building a long-term process to ensure West Oakland’s future is shaped by those who lived its past. To succeed, EVOAK! Is seeking partners across the community—residents, neighborhood associations, faith groups, and organizations—to help connect with legacy residents and host conversations.

980 Block Party Event Details
Saturday, Oct. 25
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Preservation Park, 1233 Preservation Park Way, Oakland, CA 94612
980BlockParty.org
info@evoak.org