By Lucy Rios

Tiphany Tallo, 17, should be getting ready to finish up her school semester so she can enjoy her summer.  Instead, she lies dead by a gunshot wound.  Ashley Tallo, 19, should be resting and preparing herself and her home for motherhood.  Instead, she lies in a hospital room with stab wounds.

The recent killing of Tiphany, and stabbing of pregnant Ashley, by Leron Porter aren’t domestic violence crimes, but they should send the community a strong message.  It’s a wakeup call.  Things must change if want our children to grow up in healthy and peaceful communities, or better yet, if we want them to grow up and grow old at all.  Tiphany didn’t get that chance.  At 17, her life was taken from her by violence.  We can and we must help create a different outcome for other young people in our communities.

Read more: Can Youth Violence Be Stopped?

By Sara Molinaro

I’m not the kind of person who’s usually annoyed by commercials – I mean, I like TV, and they have to make their money somehow. But recently, I’ve been seeing a commercial that – well, “annoys me” isn’t exactly the right phrase. Offends me? Terrifies me? Grosses me out, in a way I can’t exactly explain? See for yourself:

Read more: Virgin Mobile's Stalker Ads Are "Crazy" Offensive

By Sara Molinaro

Love it, hate it, laugh at it, or all of the above, there’s no question: MTV’s Jersey Shore is a hugely successful show. Its record ratings make it the most viewed series that MTV has ever broadcast, and as a result, its unique vocabulary -- GTL, smush, grenades – have entered the zeitgeist. (Unfortunately.)

Anyone who watches the show knows who JWoww is – she’s the gorgeous badass with fake boobs. She rocks her club outfits, stays fresh to death, and doesn’t take crap from anyone -- she once started a bar fight with some stranger who called Snooki fat.

Until recently, JWoww (aka Jenni) was also always the girl on the show with the steady, non-cast member boyfriend, Tom. Tom makes a few appearances on the show during the first two seasons, but is most often featured talking to Jenni on the house’s one phone. 

Not much is revealed about the dynamic of Jenni and Tom’s relationship in the first two seasons, but a few clues are dropped. In the first season, when Pauly D is flirting with JWoww, Tom says that “there’s going to be a fistfight” if he visits. In the second season, when Tom travels to Miami to visit Jenni, he threatens to leave and go back to NY after being in the house for 10 minutes – because he saw that Jenni had written down the phone number of a friend he didn’t approve of.

Read more: Is Jersey Shore more feminist than the Today Show?

By Chris Wilhite

I really like the Economic Empowerment work that we do at RICADV. It is one of those strategies that really gives people the tools to end domestic violence. That's why I'm writing this. This blog is about the words we use.

In working with victims of domestic violence, a couple of the central themes that comes up again and again is control and isolation. Abusers set up a paradigm in which they have total control over the victim's life, including financial and social. Because of this the victim becomes more and more isolated in the nightmare of abuse that they are living in, with little hope for reaching out and finding help.

Read more: Empowered? or Just Self-Sufficient?