In 2024, Collective Action for Safe Spaces began developing and fundraising for a new multi-year project built on the legacy of the organization itself. The Safety in the Subversive Project was gearing up to be a cultural organizing effort to tap into indigenous methods of abolitionist community safety by way of healing salons, intergenerational storytelling, interactive multimedia projects, art & mutual aid pop-ups, and a community action framework that included both local and federal policy demands. 

The Safety in the Subversive Project aimed to usher in a cultural shift towards more communities taking collective action to keep each other safe without replicating the state. The program was designed to interrogate the current era of individualism, late stage capitalism, and widespread fascism that has produced widespread anti-Blackness, transphobia, interpersonal harm, and patriarchal violence towards marginalized people of color. The project wanted to revive unique models of care, communalism, and safety; in an effort to provide a more visible answer to the “how” of community-driven alternatives to the carceral state.

In the wake of Nona Connor’s death in 2021 and a sounding alarm from Tamika Spellman, individuals from our organization and the larger DC movement community embarked on a cross-collective community accountability process. This was on behalf of seven Black trans women (including Nona) who were impacted by violence, exploitation, and abuse from a local sex worker collective.

For more than two years, this dedicated group of supporters rallied behind survivors to support their material needs through curating fundraising groups & community events, supporting in paying bills, managing housing needs, organizing ride shares, demonstrating emotional support, sharing mutual aid individual grant opportunities, and setting up social supports for survivors.

The Survivor Support Fund raised almost $400,000,000. The funds went directly to 6 Black trans survivors over a two year period through monthly cash distributions, rent payments, car payments, legal support, and a fellowship program.

The majority of funds raiders was from peer-to-peer fundraising, including:

• social media days of action
• text & email campaigns
• art action fundraiser
• potluck/picnic fundraisers
• pie fundraisers
• targeted fundraising for specific needs (i.e., transportation, housing)

Beginning in 2017, more than 16 organizations collaborated to form the Sex Worker Advocacy Coalition (SWAC) and to write and organize around a historic bill that would decriminalize sex work in DC.

Through organizing led by queer and trans sex workers and people of color, SWAC and CASS organized our community over three years through sex worker speak-outs, arts and education events, canvassing across the city, and testimony writing workshops.

In June 2019, SWAC reintroduced the “Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019”, the bill to decriminalize the survival of people in the sex trade by removing criminal penalties that would decrease police harassment and abuse towards sex workers.

In October 2019, the DecrimNOW team provided 172 testimonies, thousands of resident signatures in support, and over 15 hours of labor advocating for the safety of people in the sex trade during a historic city council hearing to decriminalize sex work in D.C. This hearing made international waves, where opposition invited people from all over the world to attend and challenge the bill, and many other sex work decriminalization initiatives across the world cited SWAC strategies as effective modeling for sex worker-led coalition building.

ReThinking Masculinity was a partnership of organizations (ReThink, DC Rape Crisis Center, and Collective Action for Safe Spaces) who sought to address gendered violence by engaging masculine-identifying people in work to promote healthy masculinities. It aimed to build nurturance and accountability culture, make connections between gender norms and gender-based violence, and create an environment where everyone feels responsible for making our communities safe. The program operated under both names ReThinking and ReThink Masculinity

The cohort was a nine-week program for masculine- identifying people that held weekly meetings one a week covering topics including emotional labor, consent, structural violence and relationships.

The central aims of a ReThink course were typically to:

• Introduce shared, simple language to define and discuss masculinities
• Identify harmful behaviors and offer alternative behaviors
• Build ongoing relationships with peer accountability
• Provide a supportive place to reflect upon, process, and express emotion
• Develop respect for multiple identities and experiences of masculinity
• Improve men’s understanding and practices of consent, emotional labor, workplace discrimination, and intervention against gender-based violence

The program trained dozens of men and masc of center folks, and held four cohorts over the course of three years; 2017-2019.

The passage of the Street Harassment Prevention Act (SHPA) was an historic moment for the District of Columbia and the U.S. SHPA created the first legal definition of street harassment in the United States. Alone that would be unique, but SHPA was designed to move the focus to prevention through education in opposition to relying on criminalization. 

SHPA came about after Collective Action for Safe Spaces published a policy paper on public sexual harassment and assault. After the paper, CASS began work with DC area community groups and individuals to organize what is believed to be the first roundtable on the topic of street harassment in DC. Dozens of people testified at the roundtable, which was convened by dual committees of the Council of the District of Columbia. The four hour hearing saw individuals testify about personal experiences with street harassment with backing by community based organizations such as CASS and partners, including Stop Street Harassment, the Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum, and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.

To that end, CASS participated in the End Street Harassment Coalition, a community-led process to draft legislation that became SHPA.

The Street Harassment Prevention Act created an advisory committee on street harassment that would propose policies and/or training materials to be implemented in District agencies; require the DC Office of Human Rights (OHR) to both conduct a citywide survey on street harassment and implement a public information campaign regarding street harassment.

Community-wide change required equipping groups and individuals with tangible skills to address harassment. In 2014, Collective Action for Safe Spaces launched a fee for service workshops program. Thousands of individuals were trained, including those from 150+ businesses, organizations, and collectives across the U.S. Workshops sought to empower people to take action in their own communities –be it at school settings, work settings, or just on the blocks where they lived– to shift the culture of harassment. 

Foundational CASS workshops sought to train participants on addressing anti-harassment in the workplace, within community groups, and in the nightlife industry. Later workshop offerings included technical assistance on transformative justice, anti-oppression, and anti-patriarchy topics. The underlying premise of the workshops was that creation and maintenance of safe spaces required a holistic, responsive, and anti-carceral approach that supported all marginalized people.

Safe Bar Collective was a full-fledged, stand-alone program beginning with a similarly named program, Safe Bars. This partnership program trained and empowered staff at alcohol-serving establishments to recognize and respond to incidents of sexual harassment and assault among patrons and staff. The Safe Bar Collective became a network of bars, restaurants, and community groups working to make nightlife safer from sexual violence and discrimination. Partner bars had staff trained to use proven strategies to safely intervene to keep staff and patrons safe from harassment and harm, including an expanded conversation on race influence harassment culture.

CASS partnered with ROC DC, a DC workers rights organization, to create job opportunities for trans people of color by training program participants with specific skills to work in bars. By building the capacity of bars and restaurants to support marginalized workers, and actively supporting trans people of color in accessing and maintaining supportive employment, the Safe Bar Collective trained dozens of SBC-certified bars in DC and in other cities over the years.

Beginning in 2012, CASS partnered with Stop Street Harassment and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), to launch multiple awareness campaigns to address sexual harassment and assault on DC’s public transit system.

In 2016, CASS and Stop Street Harassment expanded that work to curb harassment by WMATA employees and Metro Transit Police. The collaborative effort also produced one of the first-ever comprehensive transit safety surveys in the country to learn more about transit riders’ experiences.

In addition to providing consultation, we recommended and then helped implement an online sexual harassment reporting portal to help WMATA track data and monitor trends. We also successfully advocated for WMATA to train all 3,000 frontline WMATA employees and Transit Police to address sexual harassment and assault by being survivor-sensitive and responsive. This collected data was intended to aid in the development of more comprehensive solutions for the transit agency and its riders.

RightRides DC was a direct service program that offered free, safe, late-night rides home to women, gender non-conforming, and LGBTQ-identifying people. The program motto was  “Getting home safe shouldn’t be a luxury.” Launching in fall 2014 RightRides DC arrived just before the widespread adoption of services like Uber and Lyft. The program was supported by one part-time paid staff with volunteer drivers and operationally built on a partnership with the short term car rental company Zipcar. RightRides DC was modeled after a pre-existing program in New York, NY.

This program was initiated after a 2013 survey of nearly 300 potential RRDC users (women, LGBTQ, and GNC people living in DC). 84% of respondents had experienced harassment while walking, biking, taking public transit, or taxi cabs, ranging from threatening comments to sexual assault. 85% of respondents indicated they used public transportation because it was cheaper than taxis or car services; however, the majority of respondents didn’t feel safe while using DC public transit late at night by themselves. 

The program paired two RightRides volunteers in each car with the requesting rider. It typically ran until 3:30am on weekends and holidays including Halloween and New Year’s Eve.