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About the Abolishing Patriarchal Violence Study

The APV Study is a national multi-method research project  of Black people’s experiences with both violence and safety in their homes, at work, and in their communities. This project began as a 100-year visioning exercise with the goal that in five generations from now, if you were to ask a Black child what sexual violence is, they wouldn’t understand the concept because it would have been eradicated. Led by a team of Black Feminist organizers at M4BL and researchers at GenForward, we are committed to understanding how Black people keep themselves and each other safe from patriarchal violence as a means to craft systemic solutions that are extrapolated from what we learn.

Questions Motivating the Work

1

SAFETY & VIOLENCE

What proportion of Black people have stayed in an abusive relationship for financial reasons? What proportion of Black people experience gendered harassment or bias at work? What proportion of Black people across genders feel safe in their homes? 

What proportion of Black young people feel safe from harassment and sexual assault at school?

2

RESOURCES & RESPONSES

Who do Black people trust to help them if they are experiencing harm? What resources do Black people need to keep themselves safe? How do Black people address gendered harm that happens in their communities? What alternatives to policing do Black people already engage?

Our study seeks to answer these questions by engaging directly with Black people who employ nuanced safety processes in their day-to-day lives.

3

GENDERED HARM

How are Black folks talking about gender? How do Black people define sexual assault? How do Black people define consent? Where are Black folks learning about patriarchal violence? How is social media shaping people’s understandings of patriarchal violence?

This work is about understanding the ways that patriarchal violence affects everyone but especially Black women, queer and trans people, and those who are most vulnerable to state violence and repression.

Background on Survey Design

National surveys are helpful for understanding people’s social and political lives, their experiences, and their attitudes. This survey was designed to focus on the experiences Black Americans whose experiences are frequently excluded from surveys and research that guides policy-making and institutional governance in the United States. By focusing on patriarchal violence, systemic and extra-systemic harm, and the ways that Black communities protect themselves, this study provides real-world, empirical data regarding the specific lived experiences of Black people.

The Abolishing Patriarchal Violence Table

Abolishing Patriarchal Violence (APV) is a multi-year effort to abolish patriarchal violence in Black U.S. communities, informed by community assessment and collective visioning; 15 organizations and one community-based artist engaged in the project. As an ethos of transformation, we twist together two strands of action: interruption and intervention. Interruptions aim to stop incidences of harm before they start with political education, narrative strategy, and community training. At the same time, interventions pursue reparations by supporting survivors and confronting harm-doers with transformative justice, accountability practices, and experiments around justice. 

The APV table’s mission is to end the epidemic and legacy of patriarchal violence within Black communities. Radical Black feminist politics and a commitment to abolitionist practices guide us. As a survivor-centered project focused on advancing interventions, education, leadership development, power-building, and shifting culture, we work to prevent, disrupt, interrupt, and interrogate the unchecked consequences of patriarchy and misogynoir in our families, relationships, communities, and movements.

About GenForward

The GenForward Survey grew from the Black Youth Project (BYP), housed at the University of Chicago. The GenForward Survey provides the most consistent and robust collection of public opinion data on young adults’ attitudes and perceptions in the country. GenForward regularly fields multiple surveys a year that sample 2,000 to 4,000 young adult respondents and includes over samples of Black, Latinx, and API young adults, ages 18-42.

For nearly 20 years, BYP has dedicated its work to understanding the challenges and opportunities faced by young people of color, especially young Black adults in the contemporary United States. Our work reflects the Black Youth Project’s sustained commitment to documenting and amplifying knowledge, voice, and action among young people, particularly young people of color through rigorous surveys and qualitative research.

Cathy J. Cohen

Principal Investigator
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Savannah Shange

Principal Investigator
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Jae Shepherd

 Abolishing Patriarchal Violence Table Lead Organizer, M4BL

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Jonathan Lykes

Director of Program & Partnerships, Black Youth Project/GenForward Survey

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Jenn M. Jackson

GenForward Researcher

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Cathy J. Cohen

Principal Investigator

Cathy J. Cohen is the D. Gale Johnson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and inaugural Chair of the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. She has served as the Deputy Provost for Graduate Education and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. Cohen is the author of two books: Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press 2010) and The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press 1999), and co-editor with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto of Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (New York University 1997). Cohen is also the author of the article “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” and her work has been published in numerous journals and edited volumes including the American Political Science Review, GLQ, NOMOS, and Social Text. Her general field of specialization is American politics, although her research interests include African-American politics, women and politics, lesbian and gay politics, and social movements. She is also the founder and Director of the Black Youth Project and the GenForward Survey.

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Savannah Shange

Principal Investigator
Savannah Shange is associate professor of Anthropology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She earned a PhD in Africana Studies and Education from the University of Pennsylvania, a MAT from Tufts University, and a BFA in Experimental Theater from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Her first book, Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness and Schooling in San Francisco (Duke 2019) is an ethnography of the afterlife of slavery as lived in the Bay Area. She is a proud alumni of BYP100 and is currently working in collaboration with organizers to document and amplify the practice of abolition in everyday life.
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Jae Shepherd

Abolishing Patriarchal Violence Table Lead Organizer, M4BL

Jae Shepherd (they/them) is a non-binary, Black queer feminist. They are a lover of being in deep relationships, creating systems of care, supporting survivors, and finding joy on the way to freedom. Jae is the Abolishing Patriarchal Violence Table Lead Organizer with Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). Abolishing Patriarchal Violence (APV) is a multi-year effort informed by community assessment and collective visioning made up of 13 organizations and community-based artists. We envision a world where the epidemic and legacy of patriarchal violence within Black communities is abolished so all Black people can thrive.  Previously, Jae was the Abolition Organizer with Action St. Louis where they led a campaign to close the Workhouse, a debtors’ prison, and led a campaign which diverted $4 million dollars from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and put funds into supporting our unhoused family.  You can find them watching new shows, staying hydrated, and twerking in the mirror. 

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Jonathan Lykes

Director of Program & Partnerships, Black Youth Project/GenForward Survey
Jonathan Lykes Director of Partnerships and Programs Jonathan Lykes is a Black queer artist, activist and academic. His interdisciplinary approach to art, activism and anti-oppression work, merges policy change, artistic expression and activism. Combining these forms of social transformation—and harnessing their synergy—Jonathan works to create awareness, promote personal healing, surmount institutional barriers and generate systemic change. Lykes is also a founding member of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), a movement of young adults using a Black Queer Feminist lens to advocate for community and institutional change. Jonathan is also the curator of BYP100’s freedom song and chant album, The Black Joy Experience, helping to teach holistic energy through the Black radical tradition. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago, where he also received his master’s degree from the School for Social Service Administration.
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Jenn M. Jackson

GenForward Researcher

Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a genderflux androgynous Black woman, a lesbian, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science. 

Through their research and teaching in the academy, their work as an organizer and political educator in Black-led movement spaces, and their journalistic and book-length work, Jackson seeks to disrupt the status quo which demands silence from those who are most marginalized in society. In the traditions of women like Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, and Angela Davis, Jackson is a firm believer that it is the job of Black queer/trans/women academics to make space and hold that space for the fullness of Black experiences especially in the Ivory Tower, social justice, and publishing realms.