Women's Health & Justice Initiative (WHJI)
New Orleans, LA
Phone: 504-524-8255
E-mail:
The New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative (WHJI, the Initiative) was formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina through the organizing efforts of INCITE! New Orleans1 and local health care practitioners and activists challenging the social invisibility of women color and poor women experiences, vulnerabilities, and health care needs.
The New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative is a multi-dimensional community-based organizing project centered on:
- improving low income and uninsured women of color access to quality, affordable, and safe health care services; and
- organizing women for sexual health and reproductive justice through community-based strategies to equip those most disenfranchised by the medical industry with the means to control and care for their own bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.
In order to address the needs and experiences of low-income and uninsured women of color, WHJI has established a women’s health clinic (the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic) and has launched a sexual health literacy & reproductive justice project (SHLRJ) and a gender-based violence prevention program – all incorporating grassroots organizing, advocacy, and multimedia strategies, and community-based participatory action research.
MISSION:
The mission of the New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative is to develop community-based strategies to improve the social and economic health and well-being of women of color by 1) centering the experiences of low-income and uninsured women of color living in the intersections of oppression based on race, gender identity and express, sexuality, immigration status, ability and class; and (2) addressing the social, economic, culture, and political conditions that impact women’s health.
WHO IS WHJI?
WHJI is a organized by a community-based collective of radical women of color feminists, organizers, health educators, researchers, human rights activists, and students. Our collective is inclusive of mothers, young women, lesbian/queer/questioning women, immigrant women, and low-income and uninsured women.
WHJI’s COMMITMENT TO GENDER JUSTICE:
In using the term "woman", we recognize that this term does not signal a particular type of body or fixed gender identity. Collectively and organizationally, we are committed to creating institutions and environments that challenge gender-policing and trans and homophobia by dismantling racist, heterosexist, patriarchal, classist, and xenophobic ideologies of exclusion, discrimination, hatred, and violence, which creates barriers for many members of our community, particularly those persons who are women of color, poor, LGBTQ, immigrant, differently-abled, homeless, heads of households, disabled, sex workers, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, young, and living in racially and economically segregated communities.
OPPORTUNITIES TO AFFECT CHANGE:
The programs and projects of the Initiative are fertile ground for organizing and educating women of color who are vulnerable to violence, exploitation and discrimination, particularly those women who are poor, immigrant, LGBTQ, homeless, heads of households, differently abled, sex workers, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, young, and living in public housing. WHJI integrates a consciousness of the impact that violence, poverty, gender inequalities, trauma, coercive sterilization policies, and toxic environments have on women’s health and well-being. Providing services and education about these topics is not enough to ensure women and girls of color have adequate information and resources to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction. We therefore prioritize strategies that incorporate both health services to meet women’s immediate needs and community organizing for gender, racial, reproductive, economic, and environmental justice. Our organizational goals are to:
- Make visible the experiences, needs, and voices of women of color and other marginalize members of our community in the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region
- Foster the leadership of women of color most vulnerable to gender-based violence, sexual coercion, and poverty
- Organize a grassroots base to demand and make sexual health and reproductive justice a reality
- Improve low income and uninsured women of color’s access to safe, affordable, and adequate health care services
- Examine and challenge gender and sexuality-based violence and its impact on health and well-being
- Facilitate community wellness projects and workshops that increase women’s self-determination to address their health needs, and
- Promote collaborations and coalition building with other social justice organizations for racial, gender, environmental, and economic justice.
(Coming Summer 2008)
The New Orleans Women of Color Resource & Organizing Center, a project of WHJI and the New Orleans Chapter of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, will serve as a resource and organizing hub to nurture grassroots organizing and activism to end violence against women of color, linking struggles against the violence of poverty, incarceration, environmental racism, housing discrimination, economic exploitation, population control policies, medical experimentation, and forced sterilization.
The Center will house a radical women of color lending library, a cluster of computers for community access, meeting space, and a comfortable environment for women and girls to hangout. The Center will provide a host of movement building and leadership development programs, activities, and resources to end violence against women of color.
[1] INCITE! New Orleans is a community based collective of women of color feminists, survivors, mothers, organizers, workers, and activists organizing to end violence in the lives and on the bodies of women of color in the New Orleans area. INCITE! New Orleans is a member chapter of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a national grassroots organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities.