Keynote by Loretta Ross

(1 hour 59 minutes) This keynote address given by Loretta Ross, Founder and National Coordinator for SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. It was recorded on October 15, 2008, at the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance‘s “Building Healthy Futures II: Strategies for Effective Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence & Intimate Partner Violence” conference in Richmond, Virginia. She is introduced by Brad Perry, Sexual Violence Prevention Coordinator for the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance. In this keynote, Ms. Ross talks about the history and development of the movement to end violence against women in the United States, the perspective of women of color in the movement, and how a human rights framework can be applied to the prevention of violence against women.

Loretta Ross is the founder of SisterSong, a collective composed of 70 women of color organizations across the country. She was also the founder and former Executive Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education, a training and resource center for grassroots activists on using human rights education to address social injustices, and in the 1970s was one of the first African American women to direct one of the first rape crisis centers in the United States.

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