Op-ed: Survivors can't wait; Montana's delegation must act
This guest column by Haven Executive Director Erica Aytes Coyle appeared in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on Feb. 12 and the Billings Gazette and the Missoulian on Feb. 13.
“It threatened my life. It almost ended with me being murdered, and my children being murdered.”
“The work you guys do, it’s not just life-changing, it’s life-saving.”
“This place has saved me.”
These are the voices of survivors — our neighbors — who’ve turned to Haven in their darkest moments of abuse and violence. Haven has served thousands of abuse survivors over the years, and in the past 15 months, we’ve shattered our own records, serving more survivors than ever before — breaking quarterly records three times.
We can all agree — and Congress has agreed since 1994 — that domestic violence shelters like Haven offer life-changing, life-saving services in Montana and around the country.
But as of Feb. 6, these services are in jeopardy. Haven, like most domestic-violence shelters in the country, gets part of our budget from federal grants — part of the 30-year pact with the American people called the Violence Against Women Act, passed by Congress and reauthorized regularly since 1994.
As of Friday, the web portal for these grants is advising us that they’ve “withdrawn notices of funding opportunities,” or shut down the grants station during the middle of the fiscal year.
This is bad for two main reasons.
First, it’s dangerous and risks people’s lives. By our estimates, axing this bipartisan funding means Haven would have to turn away more than 400 mothers (and their children) just when they’ve gathered the courage to leave their abusive homes.
And that’s just Haven operating in Gallatin County. We and our sister shelters across Montana rely on the investments that Congress already agreed to make to support women in danger.
Second, abruptly cutting these investments isn’t what we all agreed on with Congress, and it isn’t efficient. We’ve held up our end of the bargain with the American people, acting as good stewards of donations and public money to directly support survivors.
Now we’re having to spend valuable time responding to the chaos of the funding freeze and other executive orders, when we and other groups would rather be building on the already-allocated federal investments in our work this year.
This can’t be what Congress had in mind when they reauthorized all of these investments just two years ago.
We call on Montana’s senators and representatives — the entire delegation in Congress — to assert themselves and stop this funding halt that they didn’t vote on and that neuters their power.
If Sens. Daines and Sheehy, and Reps. Zinke and Downing want to defend women, or protect women, as some recent executive orders claim to be doing, then stand with the Montana organizations doing the work to support women every day. Stop these funding freezes and let us get back to our work supporting survivors of abuse, violence, and trafficking.
We also call on all Montanans who care about defending women (and all survivors of domestic violence; they’re not only women) to pick up the phone today and ask our Montana representatives for the same thing: Stop the funding freezes that are hobbling the work of Montana domestic violence shelters.
And we call on all Montanans who care about defending, protecting, and supporting people in their communities to stand with your local domestic violence shelter right now.
Make an automatic monthly donation of any amount. Drop off some grocery and gas gift cards for survivors to use as they rebuild their lives. Attend our volunteer training to answer our support line.
This is how we take care of each other. This is how you can show up, and fill the gap until our representatives end this damaging funding game, and uphold the American people’s investments in the life-changing, life-saving work of domestic violence shelters in Montana.
Phone numbers for contacting Montana’s senators and representatives:
Sen. Steve Daines: (202) 224-2651
Sen. Tim Sheehy: (202) 224-2644
Rep. Ryan Zinke: (202) 225-5628
Rep. Troy Downing: (202) 225-3211