The first time I was sexually assaulted, I was eight.

The first time a man I didn’t know commented on my body in a sexualized way, I was nine.

I didn’t know that what I was experiencing had a name, or that other people experienced it too. Like many other experiences of trauma, I believed it was my personal responsibility to stop it from happening and shame made me believe that I was the only one experiencing it. After years of hiding, changing clothes, taking alternative routes home, and always watching my back, I was still harassed regularly. The trauma of harassment disconnected me from my neighbors and community, and I often missed out on the beautiful things happening in our public spaces because I was too busy just trying to stay safe.

And then I found Collective Action for Safe Spaces. I learned that I wasn’t alone, and that there are tools, tactics, and interventions I could use to help keep myself and others safe and hold harassers accountable outside of the systems that criminalize us and our loved ones. The most important of those tactics was building community and a culture that says public space is for all of us, especially those of us who are people of color, LGBTQIAGNC, living on the streets, being displaced through gentrification, sex workers, immigrants, or any intersection of all of these identities.

The work of making our communities safer is not theoretical to me. I came to CASS because I wanted a place that could hold the intersections. My gendered harassment has always lived in the context of my race, class or perceived class, body type and size, the person I am holding hands with, and more.

CASS’s work is proof that we don’t have to leave anyone behind. We are helping to build safer communities for all of us.

I am alicia, and I am thrilled to step into the role of interim executive director for CASS. I’m a queer, afrolatinx survivor, and I have called DC home for almost twenty years. I joined CASS as a board member in early 2017 and was excited to join at a time when CASS was deepening our attention to the way that gendered harassment intersects with police harassment and state violence — and as CASS began work to improve and measure program impact. As a board member, I helped CASS fundraise, conduct community workshops, and create internal policies and procedures that reflect our values of intersectionality, shared leadership, and creating survivor-centered responses to harassment and violence.

Previously, I managed sexual assault crisis services at the DC Rape Crisis Center, I conducted bilingual case management with survivors of domestic violence at The District Alliance for Safe Housing (DASH), and supported women who were living with HIV/AIDS and also survivors of gendered violence at The Women’s Collective. I spent time doing mental health first response with folks living on the streets at DC’s Department of Behavioral Health and worked with HUD’s Office on HIV Housing to create guidance on intersections of HIV/Domestic Violence and LGBTQIAGNC housing needs.

With my free time, I’ve written grants for Casa Ruby, I volunteered for three years on the outreach van at HIPS, conducted grassroots fundraising and grantmaking with the Diverse City Fund, and I was a long-time member of INCITE! DC. Most recently, I managed YWCA USA’s gender based violence work and conducted federal legislative advocacy. My work weaves together racial justice, reproductive justice, ending the carceral state, economic justice, immigrant rights work, LGBTQIAGNC rights and ending gender-based violence in what I hope is an interconnected thread. I also have a masters of social work, but life and other survivors have been my best teachers. I want my work to be a love letter to those of us at the margins.

In addition to work, I love talking about astrology, binge-watching the Celia Cruz Telenovela (for the third time), creating beautiful spaces and food to support my introversion, reading books by Black women and femmes, and singing musical theater at karaoke. The revolution needs joy and healing too.

I believe another world is possible — and it can start right here in DC. At a time when so many of our communities continue to bear the disproportionate burden of harmful state policies and violence, and #MeToo sheds light on sexual harassment and assault, I know that CASS’s work training and supporting communities to work together to end violence is crucial. We use intersectional, community-based solutions to end gender-based harassment and assault in the DC metropolitan area with a deep understanding of that way gendered violence intersects with our other identities, like race and class.

I am honored to steward and build on to work that Jessica Raven so lovingly and boldly led with many of you. And I am excited to bring my own experiences to this work of liberation. During my interim tenure, I hope to:

• Deepen our practice of solidarity with our partners and soon-to-be partners, ensuring that our work is intersectional, survivor-centered, coalition led, and people-powered;
• Expand our training to new partners; taking our bystander intervention training, Safe Bars Collective work and our ReThink Masculinity programs to more people across DC;
• Continue to organize and conduct advocacy around work that centers queer and trans folks of color, including our DecrimNow campaign, which aims to decriminalize sex work in DC and provide resources and support to folks in the sex trade;
• Shore up internal policies, procedures, data and evaluation and infrastructure, so that CASS can continue to meet the high demands of our work, and sustain our work and our people for the long haul;
• And help establish a collaborative process for choosing the next permanent Executive Director.

We have a strong foundation, incredible supporters, amazing volunteers, a highly engaged board, and we have you. I can’t wait to see what’s next for us.