Get Used to It: Ep. 177, "Voices of Our Lives: Patti Giggans"

(enchanted music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used to It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, and as usual, I will be your, I don't know what shall I say gracious host is through the next hour, because we have a great show for you for this month and hopefully beyond. Every so often, as you might know, we do a one-on-one interview with a person who has made an enormous difference in the world and a member of our community. We call it voices of our lives. And today we are very fortunate to have as our guest, Patricia Giggans. She's the executive director of Peace Over Violence, which for many years was known as the LA Commission on Assaults Against Women. But her story is very agated and interesting and wonderful and I'm so glad you're here. Hi, Patti. - Hi, Sheila. - [Sheila] Welcome. - Thanks, it's great to be here. - So I know, I think having been your friend for such a long time, a lot about your life, sort of since I met you. But it's always a curiosity to me how people make the decisions they do and end up being leaders in our community, being leaders in society, and really working to make a difference instead of working to make a million bucks, which I wish you were making, but you know, will give it to the organization instead. So if you don't mind, let's go way back to the beginning. Where did you grow up? - I grew up in New York, on Long Island. - Long Island. - On Long Island. - [Sheila] What was that like? - Kind of version of little Italy on Long Island. - [Sheila] Uh-huh. - Yeah, this was growing up in the fifties and in the sixties an amazing time in my history. I feel like I'm such a child of those times. - [Sheila] But the fifties were very different from the sixties though. So what was-- - Complete. - What was childhood like for you, your folks, et cetera, your family? - Yes, I grew up in a family. We had an Italian family, Italian American family. My grandparents had come over from Italy. So my parents were born in America and we had an Italian restaurant. - [Sheila] Oh, yeah? - Which my dad to this day still has. - Really? - And I grew up in the restaurant business in a way. In fact my whole family did, we all kind of worked different jobs there, and in high school, my dad was always so kind to my friends, he'd give them all jobs working in the restaurant. - [Sheila] It was probably good for him too, right? - Yeah, right, right. - So what was your childhood like? You have siblings or? - I have a brother and two sisters. - Uh-huh. - And so it was interesting because the community that I grew up in was divided into several communities. It was somewhat segregated actually back then. And so like the Italians were in one neighborhood, and African Americans in another, and Jews in another, and Protestants in another, but then everybody went to the same high school. So there was this crossing over at the same time that there was these different neighborhoods. So early on I had a kind of consciousness of that, you know, what is that about. - That's separation, you mean. - Yeah, that separation and you-- - Well, you actually had an experience in your preschool, right, or when your mother was, as I recall, something. - My mother, she had her own ideas. She said, "I'm the black sheep of the family," 'cause she always had a lot of her own original ideas and she was not able to go to college. In fact, she had to quit high school, was forced to quit high school to take care of her younger siblings. So when my brother and I came along, she just programmed us that we were gonna go to college. She set it out that her kids were gonna have a college education and chap. So she whispered into our ears since we were babies, "You're going to college." And so I'm in elementary school getting ready to graduate, going to high school, and you're kind of picked to go into, whether it's the college course or the more technical or business. And because of my last name, an Italian last name, - [Sheila] What was your last-- - Occhiuzzo. - Occhiuzzo. - This counselor that had come to the school that didn't even know me just kind of randomly marks down to put me in this technical. - Trade school kind of stuff. - Trade school, trade school. - Right, right. - Exactly. - Yeah. - So I go home with this piece of paper and I was confused. My mom went through the roof, she goes marching down to the school and said, "Why did you do this? Aren't you looking at my child's grades and what we say we want for her? Are you going by this last name?" And that was a lesson for me, of course. And my mom periodically would storm the barricades about something to do particularly with her kids or with the family. So I kind of saw that she was an advocate that way. - So you had a lesson in advocacy early? - [Patti] Early on. - But wasn't there an issue where you were supposed to go to one school and your mom wanted you to go to another school? - Well, not really. There was an issue of moving out of a neighborhood and wanting to finish school. So I wound up living my last two years of high school, I lived at a friend's house during the week to go to school so I could finish my high school. - And did you make your mother happy and go to college? - I did. - Where'd you go? - I did. I went to the University of Buffalo, SUNY at Buffalo. - So what years are we talking about now? Things are heating up activism wise. - Yes, in fact, UB was known as the Berkeley of the east. - [Sheila] The Berkeley of the east, why was that? - Well, there was a lot of social activism. SDS was big on campus. I remember marching against HUAC. - The House Un-American Activities Committee. - Yeah, exactly. And then I had this experience, another little illuminating thing that I'd never forgotten. At that time, all of us were impacted by the Civil Rights Movement early on and watching on television and people being cattle-proded and dogs, and all that, trying to have integration happen and all that consciousness coming up. And so here I'm at the University of Buffalo and there's this activism and the Vietnam war is starting to really build up. And so girlfriend and I went into a meeting of SDS. We thought, okay, let's go find out what that's about. So we listened and there were just very few women in this meeting, there were mostly men. So at the end of the meeting, everybody was getting their marching orders of you go do this, you go make signs, and you go write a petition, and you go write a resume, and you go do whatever. And then they told us, would you please go do the xeroxing. - The girls. - The girls. Well, we left the meeting and they never got their xeroxing done by us. That was like we said, "No, no, no, no, we're not doing the xeroxing," 'cause at that point, feminism was starting to the idea of-- - Right, there was something sort of trickling into our consciousness, right. - Yeah, it was like the little stuff was kind of seeping, seeping into the community. And so that was again, very interesting experience. - But there was very little gay consciousness at the time, even when the women's movement was starting. I remember actually many of them were very worried that there would be lesbians in it because that would give the movement a bad name or you could, you could minimize it or something. So in terms of your own sexuality, did you have any inklings? - You know, I didn't and I didn't even know any lesbians. And if they were lesbians that I knew, I didn't know they were lesbians. - [Sheila] Right, right. - And that's all through college actually. - I kept kind of at a distance. But I remember when I was married and I was living in Greenwich village, a kind of another awakening in terms of politics. I lived in the west village and Stonewall was down the street. - [Sheila] Oh sure. - I was there. I watched that happen in the streets of Greenwich village. - Wow. - So there was all this politics and movement, beginnings of movements. And I was paying attention to a lot of it. - And so did the activism appeal to you? I mean, I'm always interested in sort of what it is that pushes people along the way, because 99% of people are not activists. They don't necessarily feel like, oh, I've just gotta spend my life working to make things better for other people or civil rights or whatever. There's just something that guides us along. - I really think I am such a child of those times. I did go along and I was doing a lot of thinking and I was educating myself, and I was moved to act, to get involved, to protest. And so I do feel like I am a child of the Civil Rights Movement, the Ant-Vietnam War Movement and the feminist movement. And then later on, the Gay Liberation Movement. - Right. So here you are in college in Buffalo. And what did you go straight through, or how did that unfold for you? - I took time, I took some time. I had it in my head that I wanted to go to Europe and I wanted to give a break from, there was some things going on in my family, divorce in the family. And I just wanted to get away and I thought I'm gonna go to Europe. Of course my family looks at me. When they think back at some of the things I thought about, they think, where did she come from? (laughing) But so I did. I kind of made my own junior year abroad. So I left school and had the money in my pocket, and when my money was gonna run out, I was gonna have to come home. So I got on the SS France and left from New York and went to La Java in Paris and decided to stay and have Paris be my home base and I traveled. Went to museums and started to take French classes at the Sorbonne. And that was another life-changing experience. I met students from all over the world. This was an amazing experience, Sheila. You would've loved this. You would've said this actually had you been there. You'd been the professor. We're in this big amphitheater at the University of Paris, one of the oldest in the world and all of us foreign students, 'cause it's a course for foreigners from all over the world. And this man comes walking in with these black robes and this hat and he says (speaking French), welcome, citizen of the world. - Citizens of the world. - And it was like all the light bulbs in my head when off. I said, "Yeah, that's what I wanna be. That's what I wanna be." And I traveled and I'm very grateful for the travel that I have done in my life, and I've had a chance to live abroad, live in France, I've lived in Asia, I got to live in Vietnam and visited many countries. And that's really important to me. - Well, something else happened on the boat on the way over, I think, right? - Yes, I met my future husband. - You did. Tell us about him. - Yeah, I met the man that I was eventually to marry and it was like, again, one of these meant-to-be's and it was great because we had some similar values around the kind of family that we wanted to have. We both love to travel, we were interested in languages and he was already speaking French and I was still struggling to learn French. And then eventually he became a journalist, a broadcast journalist. - [Sheila] Uh-huh. - And we got to go live in Vietnam. - So you guys, you were living in Paris. - Well, there we're just students. - Oh, right, as students in Paris students. - And later on after that, we came back to the states and got married. - Uh-huh, 'cause you said you were married and living in Greenwich village. Was that before you went to Vietnam? - Yes. - Uh-huh. So talk about that for a minute because well, you mentioned Stonewall and it sounds like a very interesting time in Greenwich village. - It was very, very interesting. And at the same time, like there was what they called WLM, Women's Liberation at the time. - [Sheila] Right. - The movement was starting and I remember having a consciousness-raising group in my living room. - Of women who were-- - Of women who friends and colleagues from work. I was working at the Department of Social Services for New York City as a case worker then. And yeah, so we had consciousness-raising groups there. And that was an important thing to do. - What do you think developed in you because of that? - Well, it was really interesting for women talking together. I think that was the big thing. And really talking about our lives and seeing the commonalities among the differences, different backgrounds. - Was there any mention at that time about abuse or-- - A little bit, yes, exactly. People begun had begun to talk about that in my groups. And then of course we're reading and looking at the feminist literature and finding out that all over the country, women are meeting together and talking about the sexual violence, the domestic violence, things they witnessed in their families. Little by little, those secrets were coming out. And that was like, I think for me became an important part of my feminism. I became more like an anti-violence feminist in a way, because there were equality feminists or feminists who were gonna work on this, you were gonna work on that. So for me, that's what compelled me. And then of course I stuck with that over the years. - Yes, of course you did. And we're gonna talk a lot about that, but tell me a little bit more about Stonewall, 'cause you said you were in the village. - Yeah, it was kind of happening. All of a sudden it was happening and I was fairly ignorant of anything preceding, maybe I just knew a little bit. And so it was a very dramatic thing. The riots were happening right down the block from where I lived, and a lot of people were waking up to what is this grievance about, who are these people who are protesting and are complaining about police brutality, and how they're being treated and rights that they don't have? And so of course here I was beginning to really think about that in terms of women. And so then of course, like other people, I'm making the connection. - Oppression of one group - Exactly. - And the relationship to oppression of the other groups. - Exactly. - Right. - And civil rights and human rights. - Yeah, it was kind of an interesting continuum. I mean, it wasn't perfectly sort of chronological, but my awareness of the civil rights work kind of from outside as you seeing it on TV, although I went to Birmingham accidentally for a television show and we were in the middle of a bunch of stuff in 63. And then the women's movement and then hearing about Stonewall, not quite getting what was going on, but thinking about it kind of takes you along kind of a path. But then Jim, now Jim African American, right, and he was in public relations, I think you said. And then you said broadcast journalism. - [Patti] Yes, yes. - So was he recruited to-- - Well, it was right during 1968 with all the assassinations, assassination of Martin Luther King. And at that time there were really no African American broadcasters or news people, you know, very little on television at all, and in the field, in the industry at all. And Jim he's always been interested in writing and film and documentary. And so he actually got in touch and said, "You know, maybe I could be useful here." And he got offered a job with the ABC News and started a new career for him. - You know, I had never really thought about it. It's funny how you're not conscious until you are, watching all the broadcasts about the assassination of Dr. King. And of course my conscious is not high enough really yet, but white face after white face after white face, where was the comment? Oh, there might be a community person they'd ask, what do you think happened, et cetera, but you're right, it would make it very different. - Right, and it changed after that. I mean, it was struggles all along the way to make that change to have more people of color on television in general and specifically also obviously with broadcast. - So was that how you guys ended up in Vietnam? - Exactly, 'cause Jim then got an assignment to go to Vietnam and was war correspondent. - And United States was already in Vietnam? - Right, we're talking 1970 at this point. - So he was a war correspondent. - Yes. - And you went with him? - And I went with him and the news company didn't really want me to go, they wanted me to stay back in the States or hide out in Hong Kong or Singapore. And I thought, you know, we hadn't been married that long. I said, "No way, if you're going, I'm going." And we went. And again in an amazing, extraordinary. - Say more about that time. - Yeah, we lived in Vietnam in Saigon for about two, two and a half years. And Jim was riding in those helicopters and following the infantry and doing all kinds of stories and little by little at that point, the troops were starting to come home. And what I was doing was volunteering at a couple of orphanages, and you're gonna laugh when I say this, but kind of organized a consciousness raising group and my apartment in downtown Saigon with this crazy crew of us women from different walks of life, different countries. And we would sit around talking and then of some of them were wives of journalists. Some of them were related to the military, working for the military. There was a stewardess, there were journalists, actual stringer journalist who were part of it. And again, it was fascinating, and it was a kind of expatriate group and it helped ground us actually that group. I remember fondly all of those women and we were talking about some of the things you live in a foreign country and how do you fit in, what do you do, how do you manage? And it was a war. - It's hard to be grounded in a war. - Exactly. - It's the craziest time. - Exactly. - I was there only for four weeks in 69 with the USO. And it seemed to me to be like being Allison Wonderland, not where it wasn't Wonderland, it was more like war land. Very different, very ungrounded. So I can see where you'd need to have a kind of an anchor. - Yeah. And Jim was doing a lot of stories on the orphans, the collateral damage of war. - Right, the sort of biracial children from the soldiers. - Exactly, exactly. And so I was volunteering doing some work in some of the orphanages. And so we decided that maybe we would start our family and we would adopt a child and we adopted our first child there. And-- - So how old was she when you adopted her? - She was about three and a half months old. - Wow. - Three and half months old. And she's Vietnamese and African American, mixture. - It's quite a commitment in the middle of a war to adopt a child. You were staying in Saigon, you weren't just taking Allie and leaving, right? - No, and we couldn't leave or well, we couldn't leave - Because of her? - But she couldn't leave. - [Sheila] Uh-huh. - And we didn't know how long how that would work out and how long the papers would take for us to have permission to have the adoption in hand so that we could leave. And that's part of the reason we stayed as long as we did so that we could leave with Allie. And we were fortunate that Jim's posting after Saigon was Paris, which was a dream to go back since that's where we met to go back and live in Paris. - So you went back with Allie. - Went back with Allie and lived in Paris for about seven years. - Wow, and what did you do while you were there? - There, I started training in the martial arts. - Why was that? - Well, I always had another thing was a crazy idea I had in the back of my head that I wanted to learn some self defense. And I was often interested when I was a kid and reading about Buddhism and Zen and that kind of a little bit of martial arts. I kind of had this interest at an early age. - So is this a sort of an integration thing? I mean, I'm talking about self kind of, 'cause I think of it when you talk about Buddhism and Zen, and then you talk about martial arts, I'm not obviously sure-- - Yeah. - What's the connection? - Well, there is a kind of meditative and also a philosophical basis, particularly the Japanese martial arts and also the Chinese martial arts. There's a spiritual component to the practice, absolutely. And it was also because at that point too, women, we were thinking more about trying to pay more attention to our bodies and who we were. And certainly it's a body art. - [Sheila] Right. - It's a movement art, it's a martial art. And there were very few women who were doing it. I was one of the first women in the States to get a black belt as a matter of fact. - Really? - Well, I got my black belt in Paris. And so I started training a little bit while I was living in Saigon. I was studying some TaeKwonDo. And then when I moved to Paris, I switched over to Japanese style, martial arts and that's where I got my black belt. And then I started teaching a class for women because my own instructor, my sensei asked me one day, he said, "How come you're the always the only woman in the class?" And I said, "Because I have a hard head." He said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, the other one's come and go because it's not easy to be here, it's not welcoming. This is not a welcoming environment for women to train." And he had the idea, he gave me this idea, which changed my life. He says, "Why don't you teach women and then maybe they'll hang out and they'll stay and they can benefit." So under his auspices, I opened a class for women. and I started to in a way, him as my mentor, learned how to teach martial arts to others. And so when I came back to the States a few years after that, I started karate women's school here in Los Angeles, karate women school for women and karate kids. - But how did you end up in California? - Well, after Paris, - [Sheila] Yeah. - We returned to the United States and Jim began to work here in Los Angeles. - Uh-huh. So you opened a whole school, not just a class, your own school to train women in the martial arts and young people. - Yes, we had karate kids before the movie. (Sheila laughing) We were the first karate kids. They stole it from you, but they never should. - Part of the reason I did that is I wanted my own kids to be able to learn. - [Sheila] Sure. - Some of what the martial arts has to offer. And it was a fantastic experience. And so I had a teacher here in Los Angeles, karate teacher, James Field, and he was another mentor. I had some wonderful male mentors because yeah, I wouldn't have been able to have done it because there were no women, I didn't have a women teacher. There are women now who have only had women teachers. But when I was coming up through the ranks, I only had male teachers. Right, that was the case in a lot of professions actually. - Exactly, and in a lot of professions, you have to come and steal the knowledge and kind snoop around to get the skills. I'm really grateful to my martial arts teachers, because for some reason they wanted to teach me, maybe they knew that I really wanted to learn. And so it was a real gift. I'll always be grateful for that. - But they must have also gained some business skills. I mean, you're essentially running your own business, right? - Yes. - Which has probably stood you in good stead in the 501c3. - Right, right. Right, because we weren't in nonprofit, but we didn't make a very much profit like karate women's school. (group chattering) - I know, I have a law practice like that. - It was through that, 'cause then I was teaching self defense at West LA College at Santa Monica College and I was teaching karate, taught the karate class at Santa Monica College. - [Sheila] Oh yeah. - And I was running my school. And the LA Commission on Assaults Against Women heard about through my self defense-- - Which was not an LA city thing. It was a private 1c3, right? - LACAAW, yeah. - The Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women. - [Patti] Exactly. - So they asked you to teach. - They asked me to come and help retrain some of their self defense instructors. And that's how I got involved with LACAAW in the eighties. - So you went to teach a class and then what? - And then I became a volunteer on the hotline and became part of the advisory board, and then I got hired on as a staff person. And after that I became the executive director. And as I started to move into more and more work with the commission, eventually I gave up my karate school and it was taken over by some senior students. - And were you divorced by now? - At that point, yeah, separated and then divorced. - So-- - Change is in the air. - Change is in the air and a lot of making tracks, absolutely. But your sexuality must have been something that you discovered was either different than what you thought or the same along a spectrum or what happened there? - Well, it's so interesting. Of course it's kind of like a really surprised myself, - [Sheila] Uh-huh. - Big surprise. But it's like the way I look at it is value added. It's the way I look at it. - Say more. - Say more. I think the idea of, well, for me, it's like, I don't like to get stuck too much in categories, that you have to be this way and then you're not that way anymore, then you're this way. I think there is a kind of continuum and ebbs and flows and kind of a natural. And when you fall in love, you fall in love. - Right. - You can't discount that. - Well, it is sort of strange in a way, because for instance, you married an African American man that didn't make you an African American. - No. - I mean, it's not required - [Patti] Yeah. - If you cross a line of somebody who's not you and vice versa when you cross a line and somebody is like you. So in a way, if you were a Martian anthropologist like I am, you would say, "Well, no, this is not either this or that. It's simply me and who I fall in love with," which I think is what you just said. But how long have you been with Ellen? - 28 Years. (Sheila laughing) - That's great, that's very good. So how did the two of you meet? - We met through the martial arts actually, that's how we met. - She was a student. - Student. She's a student in my classes. - Now had you already adopted your second child with Jim or? - [Patti] Yes, yes. - Tell us about Chris. - Yes, my son Chris was born in Brazil and so we went down, we decided we wanted to expand our family. - And why Brazil. - My brother lives in Brazil. He's lived there then and still lives there now. And he told us, there's some possibilities if you're really seriously interested in expanding your family and you owe me a visit. So why don't you come down. - [Sheila] And pick up a kid. - Right, exactly. And that's what we did. So he knew how to go through that process. He helped us through that process. - And Chris was actually just a newborn, right, when you got him? - Yes. - So there you are, you and Jim have two kids, both adopted. Doesn't work out for you. You separate, you meet Ellen, and now you're a family. All the kids- - And now we have Ruby. - And now we have Ruby. - So we have three kids. - But that was a little later, right? I mean, you have two kids. You and Ellen get together, and then Ellen decides she wants to be the adoptive mother for somebody. So we get Ruby into the picture, who's now how old? - 17. - 17. - Right. - Wow. Well, it's a wonderful thing to build a family. And it strikes me that you've really kind of done the same thing at work in a very serve different context. So let me follow that thread for a minute about LACAAW. What was it about the LA Commission on Assaults Against Women that drew you in, because you said volunteer and then staff, and then they wanted you to be the executive director, which I know you've been for 30 years. So what was it about the mission or whatever, because you weren't running it when you first got involved. What was it about? - It's this question of violence? I mean, as I said, I was and still am an anti-violence feminist and kind of been studying violence in terms of the way people treat each other and mistreat each other for my whole life. And I think part of what I discovered when I got to the commission was that I actually had been a witness to domestic violence, but I kind of put it way in the back of my head, because my mother in her second marriage was a victim of abuse. And even though when I started to get involved with the commission, that wasn't primary for me, it was more of this fascination that I've had about if we really want equality, how can women and girls have equality when there is the threat of violence, the reality of violence all the time? So that's always been a fascinating thing for me. And so I've kind of stayed mostly I kind of, I love connecting the dots and I'm very interested in how the dots need to be connected about all different kinds of violences and issues of oppression and inequality and equality. But I've kind of stayed on that as a focus. And I don't know if it was by accident, by design, by some other karma, but that has been my path. When you start to ask me questions about this and I realize, wow, I've been on that path for a while. - Well, my experience of you is that injustice makes you angry, not always just in the giant sense of the word, but there's just, and you also are more, it seems to me like a doer, not that you're not a thinker and a planner and an analyzer, but you it's like, I experience you as there's something wrong, I wanna do something about it. - I wanna take action, I wanna do something. - Yeah, and this just, you cannot abide this injustice of people having to suffer, children, women, it was the entry point for you it seemed to me. So what was LACAAW like in those days? What did they do, and what did you do when you first started as executive director? - Right, it was the rape in the LA Rape and Battery hotline, one of the first in the country and they had a self-defense program, which to me that's also very active. So they had the intervention. People could call up, people would come in for counseling. If they had been assaulted, raped, or battered or suffered from child abuse. And on the other hand, they were asking me to come in to be in the community and teach self defense, self protection. And to me that translates out as taking care of yourself, becoming empowered, and then in my warrior mind, then you're taking care of other people also. And you are gonna stand up against the bullies and you're gonna stand up against the bullies as an advocate for those who cannot stand up for themselves. So that self-defense piece really attracted me with LACAAW, and that's how they snagged me in, doing that. - It was somewhat controversial, wasn't it? Maybe not. I think there was a discussion that I remember from the old days about whether you should fight back or not. Remember that about rape, whether you should just like go with it because you might get killed or fight back. And I think if I recall you were on the fight back side, or at least be prepared. - [Patti] Yes. - Because that's what self-defense really was about really. - Right, do your best to fight back in all the ways that one can fight back, not necessarily making a fist, but know how to make a fist. But if you chose not to do that for whatever reason, know in your mind that you don't deserve this, you didn't ask for this, and you're gonna remember what this person looks like after they're gone, and that you're going to recover from this. So it's really participating in your own self protection, taking action about your own safety. And it is a way of standing up for yourself, whether you ever make a fist or make contact and hit somebody. It's much deeper than that. And that's what we teach in self defense to this day in women's self defense and in our empowerment classes. And a lot of people are trained and they never physically have to use it, but they're walking around the world as if they belong in the world. They're not shrinking, they're not hiding, they're not receding. They know they have a right to their presence in life. And that's really important, and it is really life changing for a lot of people to begin to be asked to consider this for themselves. - Right. It's empowering. I mean, it's interesting the more you learn about power, the more you learn how you don't have to use it, necessarily. - People ask all the time, "Oh, you had a black belt. Do you still practice," or, "did you ever use it?" And I say, "I use it every day." And they look at me and they think, oh. (group chattering) Who did I beat up? No, it's not about that at all, it is really about kind of embodying it and hopefully it doesn't mean that somebody's not gonna have to you, there's no guarantee, absolutely, no guarantee. - [Sheila] Right. - I don't believe there is any real safety in life. Something's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. But we have to be awake, we have to be alert, we have to participate. - Well, actually there was a lot of scattered work going on in those days that seemed to me about sexual assault, about domestic violence. We had sort of coined the phrase and nobody wanted to call it woman beating, which is I think what many of us kind of wanted like let's call it what it is, but we got the nicer frame, domestic violence, but at least the word violence. But there were a lot of scattered work going on, and I think you began to participate in kind of pulling that together because I think there was organization. Say something about-- - The different coalitions? - Yeah. - Like the Southern California Coalition for Battered Women and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. A lot of the groups started to come together in their fields of service and fields of interest. And the movement really started to make a difference once the organizations really started to work together. - Well, I remember we had to work together to find the real language we wanted to put in the law. I mean, there was only gonna be one bill about making this a crime. We all had to agree on kind of what it would be, but sexual assault and domestic violence still were pretty separate, and in many cases still really are. - Right, and you were involved all those years and you did such important work, Sheila. But I always still join it, in my mind it's violence against women and girls, and this isn't to leave out the violence that happens to men and to boys at all. But there is that focus because of the historical context, gender-based violence. Gender-based violence doesn't answer every question about how humans harm each other or why. But it's a big piece, it's a big piece of the violence and those are the hidden violences. So I still think about it as violence against women, as an issue together, there's sexual violence, there's domestic violences, stalking. It's like you can deconstruct it, but I think it's important to think about it as a movement that what we're trying to do is have women have less violence happen to them, have children have less violence happen to them, have men and boys have less violence happened to them. - Well, that was an interesting development. I mean, there have been many at LACAAW, and we'll talk about the name change in just a minute, but it seemed to me every time I talked to you, you would be having an idea about a connection with something else in society that could be brought into this concept. I mean, I've seen the through line of violence against women as you say. It's a core issue even today, but you began to see that there was kind of more that could be brought in. And I think even before you guys changed your name to Peace Over Violence, that you were talking about men and boys and even gangs, if I recall. - [Patti] Yes, exactly. - Tell me about how you're thinking connected these things? - Right, I do call it connecting the dots and how all these violence is for us to really challenge the amount of violence, I wanna change the culture of violence, the institutions where violence is inhabited is to not have gang violence being a silo over here and state violence, like in prisons, or what the government might do, or racism and homophobia, and economics. We all can't work on all of those things at the same time, I totally get that, and I know I can't, but I think it's important that we connect with each other and we try to make those alliances and coalitions and show up for each other, those of us who are activists tried to show up for each other on these issues, and try to find the connecting points and what are the commonalities. - Well, the LGBT community, I think struggled with what to do about this violence issue for a while, because it was hard for people to say, "Well, it's gender-based violence," because it would be men beating up men or women beating up women. Although there was some role issues, I think that would enter into it, but not always. And there have been some complaints that the violence against women movement didn't sort of embrace the issues of violence in our community. Was that an issue for LACAAW one way or another or? - I mean, I'm aware of some of the philosophical bumps and the ideological bumps that have come out of this. And as I said, the gender-based approach or perspective does not answer all the questions. - Right. - But I don't think it answers it for all of them because I feel like we have to evolve. I use the term value added, this is where I've gotten in my life. It's like I add on. I don't subtract that much, but I make room to add on. And so I think what I've been able to do is help our organization have a broader view, have a bigger view. And so, yes, we believe that there're gender-based violence and the feminist perspective is still very valuable, and does answer and helps do some of the work that we need to do. At the same time, the public health model is also very valuable. The fact is we do participate in the criminal justice model, holding abusers accountable, 'cause that's kind of a runaway model that we have to be careful with, and the law, and that's an important piece of it. And I don't think we're done. And then the oppression, and power and privilege. I don't think we're done thinking about this and figuring out, 'cause it doesn't come in this little box you could tie it up with a bow. Humans don't function that way in our interactions. - Well, is that why you wanted to change the name because LA Commission on Assaults Against Women, people thought of course, expansive feminist, whatever, always thought it included children because where you have women - [Patti] Right. - We have taken care of children, blah, blah. But you had a larger vision for the group. Talk about that. - Right, yeah. I think what happened is that, first of all, we were growing over years, 30, 35 years where we changed our name. We just celebrated our 40th anniversary Peace Over Violence, formerly LACAAW, and it's the 40th anniversary of the Violence Against Women's Movement this iteration in the United States, right? So when we changed our name five years ago, it was because we had outgrown this idea of that's all we were about. We wanted to be able to open it up to make more connections, and we wanted to have a name that was for something. We're always so against things, and I think this is part of the evolving, if we're gonna be an evolving movement, if we're gonna be an evolving civilization as a human beings, as humanity, we wanted to have a name that was what we were aspiring to. And so we came up with piece of violence, which was a nice umbrella. And I remember Sheila, you said, "Oh, you're changing your name is because you don't want women in your name anymore?" I remember. (group chattering) - No, but people say it was legitimate. It took us a long time to change the name. We had a two-year process at the agency making sure that everybody sat with this idea. What is this new name gonna be, how is it gonna feel, what does it mean, is it really expressing who we are now? We really took it on to. That was not like, oh, let's just change the name, we really thought about it a lot with our volunteers and our staff, and our board, and the community. And we're very happy with it. And part of the, it was so interesting. At that point we are working a lot with youth. We were working with gangs, gang prevention. And we were part of the California Wellness Foundation's Twelve-year Violence Prevention Initiative, which was extraordinary in the State of California, really put violence prevention out there as an issue. And we were part of that. So we were changing. We had a lot of youth involved with us. And so when we started to talk about changing the name, a lot of our young men said, "What, you're gonna take LACAAW away from us?" They were kind of used to it. - Well, they were also modeling not being violent against girls. - Exactly. - And not being violent. That real manhood was a whole new idea, that real manhood involved not hitting people. And that was a real evolution for many of the young men in your program, I know. - Absolutely, and it's fantastic. 'cause these high school students, these adolescents, these young men are taking this on. They wanna figure it out. - [Sheila] Right. - And they don't see themselves so much as models, but they're starting to use the term leader. Yeah, I wanna be a leader at violence prevention, and we're helping them do that. - Right. Well, it's also a great branding opportunity. I mean, you have done blank over violence with everybody you can take pictures of. - But the only thing Peace Over Violence is an idea whose time has come. - It really is, it really is. Although an old idea too. - [Patti] Absolutely. - I mean, you can go, I'm sure farther back than Gandhi. - [Patti] Yeah. - But the notion that there's something and it's the same thing you're also talking about in self-defense where you never use it or you don't need to use it, that there is something inside. And I always thought of it as, T. S. Eliot called it the still point, kind of like when a wheel goes around, it looks like the axle's just staying still, which I think is what he was talking about in his poetry. But that same idea of quietude is equal to peace in a way like peace over the violence, in my own person, in my own life. I actually have come to think quite a bit of the name of your organization and think about it. Although I think the poster in your kitchen with your picture that says pasta over violence, this is perhaps going too far, but was pretty good. - Well, we have to nurture. - Yes, of course. - And we have to eat. - And food becoming from a restaurant family. - Absolutely. - Now you won a Peace prize, did you not? - I did, I got the Peace prize from the California Wellness Foundation. That was great, that was great. - What did they say it was for? - And this was one of those where you don't even know you're nominated. You get this call and they tell you, they call me and was shocked. You know what? And it was for my work with sexual and domestic violence and youth. - Right. - And the work of the agency, not just my work, it was really for all of us at the time LACAAW. - So what's the next growth spurt or expansion or whatever? - Well, when we changed our name to Peace Over Violence, little by little more men had been calling who abused his children, molested his children, sexually assaulted. And right now we're in this. - We're seeing a lot-- - Very big discovery. - [Sheila] Right. - Period with Penn State and Syracuse University. - [Sheila] And the Boy Scouts. - The Boy Scouts. This is big right now. This is going to be one of those silos that breaks apart. I believe that Penn State will be to male child, sexual abuse and child abuse in general, and particularly males, but both girls and boys to what OJ was to domestic violence. This teaching moment, this movement moment, and the secrets are going to come out. When I look back at my life and I know you can relate to this, Sheila, all those years of work that you've done in violence prevention and intervention is that it's like secrets have to come out. It's those closet doors have got to open, the windows have to open. And I think we've been on that path. This iteration of life where I've been on earth, it's like, I'm really grateful for it because we've been able to witness that, the breaking down of the barriers, the breaking of the secrets, the opening up and unfolding. It's a good time. - It is a good time, but I think your work has done so much to make it safe to tell those secrets. And it's the same thing really in the community. When Jean O'Leary and Rob Eichberg invented National Coming Out Day, it was a way of saying let's pick one day a year and come out to everybody you can think of. And it was stunning really what happened when people started coming out. It was a very, very difficult or individual decision to tell the secret. But one of the things I found, and I don't know if it's the same with you, Patti, is when I told my secret, somebody would then tell me back a secret. Now, it wasn't necessarily that they were gay too, but something-- - It's a lot of things had to happen. The violence, yeah, it's happened to me. - It could be about violence, could be about their mother, could be about alcoholism, could be about good things. But I mean, something they had just discovered or something they-- - [Patti] Realized. - Wanted to tell a story of their own, telling. So what's the next area for Peace Over Violence. So what we're doing now is we are a couple areas of growth. And I like to think of not just growth, but depth for us is we have a center downtown. And my dream was for us to have our name on the building. We don't own the building, we're renting, which is fine, but downtown LA, as you drive down Wilshire Boulevard, there's Peace Over Violence that lights up at night and behind it are the skyscrapers of our wonderful city. And so we're expanding into the sweet next door to create a children and youth center. - Huh. - And this is our newest big idea. - Wonderful. - And we're gonna be able to have a lot of the kids, the students that come from the local high schools who come out and hang out at our office after school, they're gonna have a space right next door for them, kind of teen loungey area. And we're also gonna be dealing with children who are witnesses to domestic violence. We already deal with children who are sexually assaulted, but we're gonna have a much nicer welcoming space for that to go on. And it's gonna be expansion. Our goal is to be able to intervene and prevent violence across the lifespan. So we've been doing it with the teenagers and adults and elders, and now we are gonna be doing it with the under 11 years old. we are adding that component, and I'm really excited. I don't wanna retire until we get that done. - Retire, Patti Giggans, retire. I never heard those in the same sentence and I don't know whether I will. You deserve it, whatever you wanna do. - Well, I have no intention of retiring. My father is still working in his restaurant. He's 88 years old and he's running his restaurant. And I figure I have a long way to go. - Well, I feel the same way. And it's interesting what you said, it's a good time in life. And I don't know that you meant that everything is going fabulously because we look at the world and we look at our country, and we look at even our cities, our campuses, things are not going well, but people are finding their voice just like 30, 40 years ago, we were feeling like we were finding our voice, being able to articulate sort of what, that's another kind of secret whereas we all keep society secret, whether it's the top 1% or whether it's the incredible amount of violence that was going on when everyone said, "Oh, well, it's just a few women." And we had to break that open. So it is a very good time in life. - [Patti] It is. - Now you also have a new project that you personally get to embark on, I think. - Yes, well, I just wanna say the one other thing I wanna about talk that, but I just wanna say that we're also very excited. Peace Over Violence is part of the California Endowment's Building Healthy Communities. So we're working in south LA and in Boyle Heights, working with youth in particular in those areas. So my board would love to have like Peace Over Violence youth centers all over the place. And they'd be very happy if we could do that. But it is getting this idea of Peace Over Violence and joining with other organizations, and work on these issues and build this leadership. You wanna build the leadership where young people are empowered to use their voice. And the other thing I want, and I also have to check myself on this, we also have to listen. We can't just be telling our own secrets and becoming empowered and telling our stories, we have to be able to make sure that we're listening to each other and taking that, that there's a mutuality. Otherwise it's like there's this cacophony going on. We gotta doing something. - Well, and that's where the learning goes on. - We have to do something with these stories. - Well, that's where you learn too in listening to other people. Although sometimes I do find that when I articulate something, I'm learning from myself, because I didn't even know I thought that before. - [Patti] Right. - You put it into a sentence and you go, "Ah, that's it, now I've got it." I made it come out of my mouth. - I'm the same way. When I say it out loud, it's like, oh yeah, like the light bulb goes off. That's what I meant. - [Sheila] Right. - Now I know what I mean. - [Sheila] Right. - But I'm gonna work on this project. I've just been awarded a Stanton Fellowship from the Durfee Foundation. And what the goal of the Stanton Fellowship is to allow a leader to take a little time away from work, which they will support so that you can do some thinking and some research, and some work on an intractable problem. So of course, I've been working on this intractable problem of violence against women and children for my whole life. And so I presented them with this idea that I would like to have a little time away from work, because what intrigues me now after 40 years of the violence against women's movement is we haven't solved the problem. And there's a lot of violence. I mean, at our center, I just got a call from one of my staff said, "We need to hire another counselor." We need more help. So there was a tremendous amount of sexual and domestic violence and child abuse still. And so my question is, what do we do for the next 12 years, where do we go, what has to change? And I wanna ask questions that are really going to get people to think about have we, even as a movement, as activists, have we even created things that are now in our way? What have been the unintended consequences of some of the laws and public policy that we've created? So I'm want take some time away from work and talk to other people. I want to set up some mini think tanks, get some groups of people. I wanna get the usual advocates and activists and leaders, - The next generation of consciousness. - Right, but I wanna get not the usual suspects too. - [Sheila] Right, right. - To start talking and thinking about this with me. And so I'm wanna spend the next couple of years working on that and see if we can come up with blueprint for the next 40, what do we have to tackle? What do we have to change? What are the paradigm shifts that we need to either make happen or maybe already started that we have to get involved in? - Well, I can't tell you how much I admire the work you've done and just the person that you are. I mean, to say, this is a good time in life, I know exactly what you mean. It is fulfilling and yet new challenges all the time. I think people will have been wondering, supposing I need to contact somebody. So we're gonna probably put up maybe a website and some phone numbers at the end of this show certainly for Peace Over Violence and any other hotline or anything you think should go up. But Patti thank you so very much for doing this. First of all, it's a great oral history of a wonderful leader. And I see the show very much as doing that. Members of our community who have done amazing, amazing work, each one of them deserving to be spotlighted. And I'm so glad I finally got to do your story on the show. Really, really good work. And thank you for being with us as well. The story of Patti Giggans is not the story of just one person, but a person who decided they would take the next step and make a difference and you can do it too. Get used to it. (enchanted music)