BroRice+-+VAWA

__**Contention 1: Inherency**__

//**The Violence Against Women Act contains provisions to secure public and low income housing for survivors of domestic violence – unfortunately these provisions are not enforced**//

Cecelia Friedman Levin and Kathy Zeisel, Domestic Violence Staff Attorney. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “Insult to Injury: Violations of the Violence Against Women Act”, April 2009, http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/Insult_To_Injury_VAWA_Apr_%2020094.pdf

__//Ensuring safe and affordable housing is essential ... serious problems and failures in the implementation of VAWA’s housing protections.//__

__**Contention 2: Abuse:**__

//**First – The fear of eviction creates a cycle of violence – Battered persons refuse to report abuse in the face of homelessness**//

Wendy R. Weiser and Geoff Boehm, staff attorneys, “Housing Discrimination Against Victims of Domestic Violence”, National Organization for Women, Clearing House Review, April 2002, http://www.legalmomentum.org/assets/pdfs/housingdiscrimagainstdvvictims-clearinghouse.pdf

__//Ms. Alvera’s story is not an aberration. ... independence from their abusers//__

//**Second – This makes public housing a magnet for abusers – they use the threat of eviction to silence their victims**//

Jody Raphael, executive director of the Center for Impact Research, “Public Housing and Domestic Violence”, Violence Against Women, Vol. 7, June 2001,

__//As I have discussed extensively ... attract abusive partners to women in public housing.//__

//**Third – Public housing employs a “zero-tolerance policy” for violent crimes which punishes both the abuser and survivor for domestic violence – this creates a deterrent to report abuse**//

Vrettos JD from Cardozo Law School 2002 Tara Cardozo Women's Law Journal lexis

__//The goal of 1437d(l)(6) and "the one strike and you're out" ...efforts to address domestic violence//__

//**Fourth- Everyday 3 people are murdered as a result of domestic violence – And this number doesn't take into account deaths from poverty, HIV, or suicide, which are in the 10s of thousands**//

National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative 2000 Organization funded by the Office on Violence Against Women and the US Department of Justice, conducted by Baylor University latest statistics published in 2000

__//Intimate partner homicide usually involves a man killing his female partner, ... "fleeing abuse" as the reason for their homelessness.//__

//**Fifth- Violence against women is the root cause of war**//

Hudson & Caprioli 08 (Valerie M. Hudson is Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. Mary Caprioli is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota–Duluth. Published in MIT journal of International Security http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2009.33.3.7?cookieSet=1)

__//Just as a proclivity toward international peace ... providing a natural wellspring for social diffusion.//__

//**Sixth- Discriminatory evictions from public housing blame women for the abuse they recieve- this supports gender norms which give men the right of control over their partners and limit female behavior.**//

Baker 01 Associate Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law. BOOK REVIEW: Dialectics and Domestic Abuse: Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. By elizabeth M. Schneider lexis

__//Where, then, does gender fit into the analysis? ... limit the range of permissible female behavior.//__

//**Seventh– Blaming the victim prevents individuals from recognizing both the systematic oppression of patriarchy and their own role in this system.**//

Ehrenreich 02 UMKC Law review, SUBORDINATION AND SYMBIOSIS: MECHANISMS OF MUTUAL SUPPORT BETWEEN SUBORDINATING SYSTEMS, Winter 2002, Professor of Law, University of Denver College of Law lexis

__//Singly burdened individuals are disabled from recognizing their own oppression ... the subgroup members actually do behave in deviant ways.//__

//**Finally – Patriarchy is the root cause of all impacts – it makes extinction inevitable**//

Warren and Cady, Professors of Philosophy at Macalester College & Hamline University, 1994 (Karen and Duane, Hypatia, Spring, Proquest)

__//The notion of patriarchy as a socially ... the dysfunctionality of patriarchy guarantees continued violence, war, and environmental destruction.//__

__//**Thus we offer the following plan:

Through all necessary means The United States Federal Government, specifically the Department of Housing and Urban Development, should regulate and enforce the requirements for public housing proposed in Title VI of the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, including but not limited to, enforcing the amendment to the federal housing statute that clarifies a tenant's status as a survivor of domestic violence may not be the cause for eviction from or the denial of public housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development should make available Low Income Housing Assistance vouchers to all survivors of domestic violence who qualify and should coordinate and oversee all necessary cooperation between Public Housing Authorities and Social Service providers.**//__


 * Contention 3: The Ballot:**

//**First – The United States should enforce VAWA to promote political goals – ensuring safe and affordable housing breaks the cycle of violence**//

Cecelia Friedman Levin and Kathy Zeisel, Domestic Violence Staff Attorney. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “Insult to Injury: Violations of the Violence Against Women Act”, April 2009, http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/Insult_To_Injury_VAWA_Apr_%2020094.pdf

//__Violence against women is a leading cause of homelessness nationwide. ... the unique problems such victims confront.__//

//**Second – The ballot can recognize the failings of welfare policy and use the plan to develop sites of resistance to challenge patriarchy**//

Johnson et al, Professor of Political Science at Williams College, 2007 (Cathy Marie, also Georgia Duerst-Lahti, Professor of Political Science at Beloit College, and Noelle Horton, Professor of Political Science and IR at the University of San Diego, Creating Gender: The Sexual Politics of Welfare Policy, pp.19-20)

__//Government is central to creating gender ... gender constructs they create in the process//__

//**Third – Demanding HUD oversight and regulation is key to ensure Public Housing Authorities enforce VAWA**//

Cecelia Friedman Levin and Kathy Zeisel, Domestic Violence Staff Attorney. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “Insult to Injury: Violations of the Violence Against Women Act”, April 2009, http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/Insult_To_Injury_VAWA_Apr_%2020094.pdf

__//HUD must make substantial improvements in its oversight of VAWA implementation ... Section 8 owner or management agent.//__

//**Fourth – We must conceptualize housing discrimination as a broader pattern of Government discrimination against women – The plan can be used to empower feminist lawmaking.**//

Lapidus 03 Lenora, Director, Women's Rights Project ("WRP") of the ACLU. Published in the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law DOUBLY VICTIMIZED: HOUSING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE lexis

__//These responses to housing discrimination ... by thwarting the efforts of the most diligent women to report the abuse.//__


 * Contention 4: Ethics**

//**First– Ignorance of material suffering through cost-benefit analysis marginalizes our understanding of the harms women face and turns people into statistics– only with a focus on personal harm can we respond to systems of domination.**//

West 06 Law Prof Georgetown University Law Center, 2006 Robin, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender Winter ARTICLE: DESPERATELY SEEKING A MORALIST lexis

__//So what is the loss in all of this? ... trivializing or denying their seriousness.//__

//**Second- The threat of war creates a stop-gap in thought which prevents a response to patriarchy- only focusing on human well-being can produce sociopolitical change.**//

French, PhD from Harvard, 1992 (Marilyn, Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals, pp.494-5)

__//Just as our present morality offers us no imaginable alternative to the domination of power, ... of the macro- and microcosm—and in biology and ecology.//__

//**Third is our framework - Patriarchal actors enjoy near immunity while the others must constantly confront their vulnerability to the threat of violence. Collapsing this dichotomy forces those previously protected by patriarchy to recognize that they too are inevitably vulnerable. This recognition has the power to change the very structure of domination because it opens a space for an ethical relationship with the Other. This instigates a shift from violence and towards an ethic of collective responsibility.**//

Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at UC-Berkeley, 2004 (Judith, Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence,)

__//By insisting on a “common” corporeal vulnerability ... that I cannot fully predict or control.//__

//**Finally attempts to eradicate vulnerability fuel the instruments of war. Only recognizing our vulnerability can end violence.**//

Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at UC-Berkeley, 2004 (Judith, Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence, pg 28-9)

__//Mourning, fear, anxiety, rage. ... brief and devastating exposure to this condition?//__