Believing is the Baseline

On the day that I biked to the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence (MCEDSV) office in Lansing, a haze of wildfire smoke filled the air. I wrapped a shirt around my face and kept pedaling. Fire carries urgency, and the smoke felt like a metaphor. In the weeks that I’d spent interviewing frontline workers, I’d seen urgency in their eyes. Every day, they faced new fires.

I turned off a city street into an office plaza. When I neared the MCEDSV building, the team was waiting for me by the door. They ran into the street and cheered as I pedaled to a stop. I untied the shirt from around my face, and we all laughed. I felt delighted but also somewhat guilty. Biking across Michigan is a lot easier than working in the domestic violence sector. I felt like I should be cheering for them instead!

After this warm welcome, we all went inside the building. It was a bright space full of colorful art and pictures with motivational messages. MCEDSV is a membership-based organization that represents more than 75 agencies across the state. Its mission is “to develop and promote comprehensive efforts aimed at eliminating all forms of domestic and sexual violence, including human trafficking.” The organization offers training, advocacy and legal support, as well as a 24/7 hotline that connects callers to resources across Michigan. This building was the place where all that work came together.

The hotline workers and administrative staff dispersed to their respective offices and roles, and I sat down at a long table with Co-Executive Directors Chéree Thomas and Merkeb Yohannes, hotline Co-Program Director Peter Namukowa, and hotline Program Manager Bailey Harrington.

I had lots of questions prepared, but I quickly realized that I didn’t need them. Once the team started talking, they didn’t need any kind of direction. They were a bottomless well of insight. I sat back and listened, trying to soak up their knowledge as deeply as I could.

For the next hour and a half, the team took me on a journey through the landscape of domestic violence on a personal, social and institutional level. Chéree started by saying how honored she was to hold space for survivors, and Merkeb added that many folks in the domestic violence sector are survivors themselves.

“This field is really being driven by survivors,” she said.

It made sense, and it also put things in sharp perspective: not only do survivors escape and heal, but often, they also go back to heal their communities.

The conversation shifted toward the misconceptions that surround domestic violence and how the media often elevate big, flashy stories over the gritty day-to-day reality of relational control.

Chéree described how domestic violence often escalates slowly over time.

“I've never, ever, in all the years I've been doing this work, met a single perpetrator who told their person, ‘You know what? I got you. Six months later, I'm gonna be whooping on you. Five months, I'm gonna ruin your credit. In three months, you're not gonna have any friends other than me,’” she said. “They are whittling away all of your support systems and access to be able to have that freedom to just walk away along the way.”

She emphasized that this slow slide into control and abuse is the result of the perpetrator’s choices.

“One of the things that people like to say is, ‘Hurt people hurt people,’” she said. “Sometimes. But I know many people who've experienced lots of harm and have never harmed another person. Ever. It's a choice. It's a whole choice.”

The conversation flowed from the nuances of individual relationships to systemic abuse, intersectionality and racism. The team emphasized that although abuse is a choice, it’s a choice that’s made possible by cultural norms and institutionalized hierarchies.

“Individually going to one person and educating one person alone, it's not as impactful as changing these norms and beliefs that we have as societies or as communities,” explained Merkeb.

Over time, the team kept coming back to one specific point: advocacy means believing survivors.

“The baseline is believing,” said Merkeb. “For us, to be an advocate, there's no question,” she continued. “We believe, period.”

Her energy seemed to change when she said those words, gathering itself in some central, powerful place. It struck me.

Chéree clarified that belief is what distinguishes advocacy from other roles in the justice system.

“It’s somebody else's job to investigate,” she explained. “That's what I would say is the beauty of our job. We don't have to investigate. We're not investigators. We get to really just hold the truth and that's it.”

Something clicked inside me. In a society that often does not believe survivors, the role of believing becomes essential. Advocates believe survivors when no one else does.

After we finished talking, the team gave me a tour of the facility, including the offices where folks take calls for the 24-hour hotline. Staff members smiled and waved hello as we walked through. Everything was clean, bright and designed for comfort and emotional well-being. We ate lunch, and then it was time for me to get back on my bike and say goodbye.

As I pedaled through Lansing’s smoky streets, I kept thinking about what it means to believe survivors. Chéree, Merkeb, Peter and Bailey had decades of cumulative work and perspective, and this is what they emphasized: believing is the baseline.

It wasn’t necessarily what I had expected. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If communities believed survivors, we would empathize with people whose power had been taken from them. We would work to restore balance and equilibrium. We would build businesses, governments and institutions that served that purpose. If we believed survivors, the whole world would look different.

I zigzagged across the city, thinking about something Merkeb had said: “We would love to work ourselves out of a job. We would love to work ourselves out of a coalition, or focus on a coalition that strengthens communities so that we can maintain communities that are violence free.”

When we believe survivors, that’s exactly what will happen.