After years of work, Senate negotiations on a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) ground to a halt. Despite having introduced competing bills, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) have announced their intention of returning to the table and working to find a bipartisan compromise. We appreciate their commitment to a bipartisan bill and look forward to continuing to work with both offices to introduce a bill that meets the needs of all survivors. This means:
A bill with absolutely NO rollbacks, including no exemptions to nondiscrimination provisions and no provisions undermining the integrity of tribal courts;
A bill that respects the authority of tribal courts and affirms tribes’ inherent right to hold non-Native people who go on tribal lands and prey on Native women and children criminally accountable;
A bill that addresses the needs of underserved communities;
A bill that keeps guns out of the hands of adjudicated domestic and dating abusers and stalkers;
A bill that increases survivors’ access to safe housing;
A bill that invests in prevention;
A bill that provides a mechanism to educate survivors about economic protections available to help them regain their financial autonomy and ensures that every state makes unemployment insurance available to qualifying survivors;
A bill that considers innovative means of responding to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and related crimes;
A bill that does not contain provisions extraneous to the scope of VAWA;
A bill that builds on the First Step Act by responding to the needs of incarcerated survivors rather than enhancing criminal penalties; and
A bill that the domestic and sexual violence fields support.
We must make sure that Senators Feinstein and Ernst introduce a bill that meets these criteria - and that other Senators pressure them to do so. Your Senators need to know their constituents care - and are watching!
We are asking you to post at least one tweet on Wednesday, December 11th at 2PM EST. Sample social media messages can be found here! The hashtag is #VAWA4ALL
You can find your Senators’ social media handles here.
Please also call or email your Senators and tell them:
VAWA has always been bipartisan, and you support continued negotiations between Senators Feinstein and Ernst;
Any bipartisan VAWA bill must protect all survivors, and must:
Include NO ROLLBACKS, including to nondiscrimination provisions;
Respect the authority of tribal courts and affirm their sovereign right to hold non-Native predators accountable for crimes on tribal land;
Disarm adjudicated domestic and dating abusers and stalkers;
Increase access to safe housing and economic stability;
Address the needs of underserved communities;
Continue the good work started by the First Step Act; and
Be acceptable to the domestic and sexual violence fields.
You can find your Senators and their contact information here.
If you have any questions or are interested in writing an op-ed for your local newspaper, please contact Rachel Graber (rgraber@ncadv.org), Dorian Karp (dkarp@jwi.org), and Emily Dahl (edahl@nnedv.org).