Survivor Safety at the Conference

All Nolose conference attendees are expected to read and abide by the Nolose Community Agreements at all times during the conference.

While personal safety is always first and foremost a personal responsibility, the Nolose community is committed to working to prioritize safety in Nolose conference spaces, particularly the safety of survivors attending the Nolose conference.

Please contact feedback@nolose.org before the conference to request confidential assistance with survivor safety related issues. During the conference, please contact the Nolose hotline (562) 354-FATS or board member Amithyst Fist (503) 270-6230 during the conference for confidential crisis intervention or immediate assistance with safety-related concerns.

There are a number of ways the Nolose community can confidentially work with survivors during the conference to help prioritize the safety of survivors, depending on the survivor’s needs, wishes and boundaries:

(1) If the survivor wishes to disclose the name of the abuser to the Nolose board on a confidential basis, we can block the perpetrator from registering, or we can refund them their ticket and tell them that they are not welcome at our conference and ask them not to attend. In accordance with the survivor’s wishes, we can deny the registration request with little or no explanation– something as specific as “a survivor of an assault that you perpetrated has asked us to prevent you from being in the same space with them and we believe and prioritize survivors,” or as vague as “we are concerned about the safety of our community if you were to attend.”

If the survivor consents, the Nolose board or community may communicate with the perpetrator in writing or verbally. In addition, we could have the perpetrator’s name and image at registration so people are on the lookout for them. If the perpetrator showed up anyway we have a board member and will work to have a few volunteers trained to de-escalate people and deal with crisis, including harassment and violating boundaries (i.e. by attending the conference or being in conference spaces)

(2) If the survivor does not want to block the perpetrator from the conference, we can do something as passive as warning the survivor when the perpetrator is in a Nolose conference space– the Nolose board will work with the survivor to train one or more confidential trusted volunteers to recognize and identify the perpetrator and survivor, in that case, so we would need the name and image of the perpetrator and the name and image of the survivor.