Transcript:

0:00

SONYA SHAH: Centering the needs of survivors is really about acknowledging the harm that was done to them, really believing them, and really giving them the time, the time to explore the impact of the harm, the trauma, the long- lasting changes and effects.

00:20

ELLIOTT FUKUI: When someone's experienced a trauma or a harm, you kind of go through different stages. It can be heartbreaking, it's grief, it's anger, it's wanting to hide, it is all of these different things. Meeting a survivor where they're at and not pressuring folks to be somewhere they're not, not pressuring folks into process or accountability processes if they're not ready. And also just recognizing, right, I think, a lot of times, people wanna fix things. You can't fix a person, that's not actually the goal. So supporting a survivor is really allowing a survivor to be as messy and complicated as they need to be in their process and just holding that with them. And doing what they ask you to do within reason, and also being very honest about what your capacity is as someone who's offering support. And I think when we're honest with each other, and we collectivize that support, that we can do a lot more for survivors and for ourselves in the process.

01:24

adrienne maree brown: So often what gets centered are the people who caused harm. So when I think of Kevin Spacey or Harvey Weinstein, they're like these people, these public causes of harm, R. Kelly, all these people. It's really like, "What do they need to do? "How do they need to be punished? How do we do this stuff with them?" And everything becomes about them. And to me, at the first level of it, is on a narrative level, how do we start to make that shift? So it's like we're focusing on the people who have survived, who are going to survive, hopefully, what has happened to them.

01:55

SONYA SHAH: So much of this work about survivorship and accountability which is about narrative change, it's about creating a culture where we believe people when something's happened, where we understand that if you lost someone to a murder, you're not just gonna, quote, unquote, get over it one day. If you've been sexually abused as a child, you're not gonna just get over it one day. And then all the ways that PTSD show up are real, that we have to make accomodation for those when they show up, that we don't shame and blame people and make them feel bad when they can't sit in room or when something's happening and it's triggering. So we make really trauma-informed spaces that make it really safe for people to still be a part of the world even though they might've survived a severe harm.

02:41

adrienne maree brown: As someone who's been a survivor, I found that the pace was often way too fast, and the pace of the person's who's caused harm, where they were like, "I know I caused harm, I'm sorry. "I just wanna very quickly move to saying I'm sorry." And I'm like, "Well hold on, I'm not done being mad at you yet. "Like I'm not even done understanding the wound yet. "I'm still exploring the wound, "or it's gotten infected, or I have to figure this out." So that to me, the first and biggest piece of it is we follow the pace of person who is actually surviving. And then I think the second piece is that we actually structure our society around the idea that we're all survivors.

03:19

STAS SCHMIEDT: We came from doing mostly survivor work, and there was this projection into the people who did harm as not being survivors. And now that we work a lot with folks who do harm, I'm just like, not everyone's a survivor, but like, most people involved in these processes are survivors, I'm a survivor. So when I'm centering the needs of survivors, I'm like, I too have needs. But I think that in this situation, what centering the needs of survivors means is recognizing the agency of survivors to determine what happens in their lives and to determine what happens on their behalf. Because I think the whole point of, or what happens when someone experiences violence, is that their voice, their agency, their self determination doesn't matter, and it is recreating that violence for us to not care, or to not center their needs in whatever it is that we do. But also being honest about what's realistic, what we have the capacity for, because I think it could also be harmful to promise everything under the rainbow to survivors and then let them down. And so I think it's this tension between you have agency, we're gonna follow your lead, and we're gonna be honest with you about what's possible and what our needs are too, yeah.

04:34

LEA ROTH: Yeah, and you and your process might not be able to, it's important to help a survivor, support a survivor, in identifying needs, and I think that's where safety and self care planning is a really great tool to do at the beginning of a process. And, you're not then responsible for meeting those needs, you could have a resource list of local organizations that have aligned values that you can refer that person to. A survivor probably is not going to get their healing or their needs met through a process. That needs to happen through other things, which is why you need to have an ecosystem of support, an ecosystem of intervention.

05:15

nuri nusrat: Really being clear about what's possible and what's not. Even though I'm a people pleaser and I want to give everybody everything, and I cannot stand the fact that I have to be like, this is where this process can begin and end, and there might be things that can't happen. I hate that answer. But I think not telling people is disingenuous, it's lying, and it actually sets up false expectation. And so, being really creative about what the resources are, that like, aren't on the books in the community, that aren't on websites. But also I think what is super usefuland has helped me as a people pleaser, and wanting to fix everything in the world, is, so I do some restorative justice stuff. The fundamental principles are like, I'm nobody, I'm no expert, I'm gonna leave your life, and so what we're trying to do is reinforce your natural connections and make you remember that you have these natural connections and also see what needs to happen to strengthen them. And so the next time you have something going on, who are your people that you can actually go to? Which, like, Mia [Mingus] will talk about with the transformative justice pods, and so many people will talk about. But like, who are your people and how do we support you in getting reconnected to them, so that when something happens, you can call on them, and what are the skills that we can all share together to make this happen, right?

06:35

RJ MACCANI: Some of the pieces of centering the needs of survivors, a core one, is just actually listening, active listening. Like what is this person really saying, both with their words, but also non-verbally, like where's this person at? What am I getting from them about what they need?

06:54

SONYA SHAH: Part of being a survivor is that something's been broken, there's a lot of isolation, there's not feeling understood. So there's something about not just expecting survivors

to go somewhere, but coming to them, and having some opportunities and mechanisms to set that up.

07:11

(upbeat music)