Los Angeles Commission on Assault Against Women Collection
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BIOGRAPHY
The Los Angeles Commission on Assault Against Women (LACAAW), now Peace Over Violence, was a Los Angeles feminist community-based non-profit organization founded in 1971. LACAAW’s mission was the elimination of violence against women, youth, and children. LACAAW was founded by a group of six women, friends of a survivor, organizing grassroots anti-rape campaigns and staffing crisis phonelines at the Women’s Center in Los Angeles. In response to the large number of hotline callers, the crisis line evolved to include educational programs, self-defense classes, and policy advocacy, oriented towards the empowerment of survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
For 35 years, LACAAW worked with volunteers to provide education, prevention, and intervention services including peer counseling, a crisis hotline, self-defense trainings, and referral services for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse. In 2006 LACAAW was re-named “Peace Over Violence” positioning the agency as a leader in the field of family violence and representing an all-inclusive call to action to rally people behind a larger social movement. “Peace Over Violence” offers a constant reminder that building healthy relationships, families and communities free from sexual, domestic and interpersonal violence is achievable.