The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) - Mission Statement from the NCIDP

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP...

We live in a country where, by declared intent and design, "the fight for civil rights" should be an oxymoron. Yet millions upon millions of individuals in this nation can speak to the failures of this nation to live up to that promise. We are here to say that among them, survivors of violence are not the least of them. We are here to say that we survivors are not here to be beaten down another round and led to slaughter by those very ones whose professions and duties are to protect us, to help us, to serve us - we as members of society and community.

We cannot, we refuse, to forget that the issues we raise and confront ARE matters of life-or-death for the innumerable, the hidden, survivors of violence that cannot find safety without respect for, and honor of, their rights. We insist upon confronting those who would arrogate such important, life-or-death rights in the terms of the status they have chosen to adopt in so doing: as criminals.

With so much literature about privacy and identity now (finally) reaching the public consciousness, we would expect to see more actions against those who commit such crimes, or at least more explanations about existing protections for those rights. Yet, sadly, there appears to be woefully little beyond our own work of the past decade and more to inform individuals that the laws that protect them offer criminal prosecution against those who perpetrate upon them and their rights, their identities, their existence.

While we applaud, ideologically, notions of increasing the protections of individuals and their rights, we remain skeptical of the efficacy of such changes when existing and long-standing standards of law remain so callously and even blatantly unenforced and arrogated.

OUR MISSION is the exercise of control over personal identity information through the exercise of fundamental legal rights and protections guaranteed to people in this nation by the rule of law - to the end that such exercise is critical to survivors of violence escaping their perpetrators.

We are an organization of, about, by, and for survivors of violence. We intend to end reperpetrations upon such survivors by those to whom we are supposed to be able to turn safely for help. To that end, we educate, advocate and challenge those who choose to perpetrate.