The directors of Women Against Registry and WAR-Family Foundation would like to wish each one of you the happiest of holidays. We are grateful for you and your continued support. 

This year we have been reaching out collaborating with other organizations and voicing the need for criminal justice reform and prison reform. We orchestrated the first ever live streaming of a peaceful demonstration at the federal courthouse in Denver Colorado after the reversal of the win. The Tenth Circuit reversed an unprecedented ruling in which the district court had held Colorado’s sex offender registration act to be unconstitutional on multiple grounds. Allegedly following both Supreme Court and Tenth Circuit precedent, the Tenth Circuit Court rejected plaintiffs’ as-applied constitutional challenges based on cruel and unusual punishment and substantive due process. The court also overturned the lower court’s ruling that one plaintiff had been deprived of procedural due process by state courts, because the federal district court allegedly lacked appellate jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to hear a challenge to those state-court decisions.

We have begun work on a huge push-back initiative. The leadership of Women Against Registry National, after years of scratching our heads, hearts breaking at the manner in which loved ones are referenced by labels, and the foundations of families destroyed, have decided it's time to confront the use of those degrading label words which some think are carved in stone. The labels that have been used to refer to people with a past conviction for violating any sex law and even violating some laws such as public-urination-laws that have nothing to do with sex.  We don’t buy into the SMART Office’s mantra of using labels, as evidenced in their tiering based on original offense.

We are keenly aware of the challenge and for those unaware we are the action-oriented group. We go where others dare not! But, when and where do we start?

This initiative with be a 12-month project beginning January 1, 2021 and ending December 31, 2021.

Where do we start? With the brain. We are not under the tutelage of Dr. Ben Carson but in simple terms the reference is such because the reptilian brain, our reptilian brain, includes the main structures found in a reptile's brain: the brainstem and the cerebellum. The actions and emotions that spring from the reptilian brain do so automatically, without us having to think about it. It’s in charge of our survival; for our flight, fight or freeze responses, anger in response to danger, and most of all – fear.  With that said we have to learn to reframe our message which involves reimagining the way a person/persons receive what we say instead of engaging that flashing danger - sign! Reframing involves modifying the person or group’s frame of reference before the content of a message is conveyed. By first reshaping the receiver's context so the receiver will understand the situation as seen by the sender, the sender's message will have a greater chance of being accepted. In other words, we have to change a person’s frame of reference that they use to make sense of situations. We will conduct a podcast in January to help everyone understand and be able to ask questions.

We have a list of newspaper, television, cable media, probation & parole, treatment therapists, private and public defenders, bar associations, law schools, defense and academics, etc. who will receive an announcement concerning the need for dialog centered on the acknowledgement of a need for people first language and phasing out all demeaning labels. 

We will need volunteers in each state to perform small tasks which should take a couple of hours a week. 

Notice- We will not be posting anything using the prohibited labels now banned on our site other than case law and court decisions. Nor will we approve any forum posts that include such demeaning labels.

WAR National Directors