Transcript:

0:00

RJ MACCANI: I think one of the things about survivor support that's really important for us to wrap our heads around is that the person who's most likely to be a victim of violence in our society is a young man of color. And that's not the person that we're sort of taught to picture when we think about a survivor of violence. And it's also now who is focused on when victim services are constructed and provided for. So I think another aspect of meaningful survivor support and healing has to do around having resources that are culturally relevant to people who are actually experiencing violence, and that are responsive to the people who are actually experiencing the most violence in our society, as well as catering things to figuring out things for everybody.

00:51

PRIYA RAI: So, I'm somebody who works at an anti-violence organization, and in the anti-violence movement, we love using the term survivor-centered. And I actually think, like accountability, that is a term we throw around a lot, but we don't really have a shared idea of what that means. I've become really interested in thinking about the idea of who gets to be a survivor. We live in a world where, it's kind of, you either caused harm or you're a survivor, and we don't really let anyone live in the complicated space in between. And the reality is that oppression is the root of harm. And Mariame Kaba likes to talk about no one enters violence for the first time by causing it, which I think is so important, right? How do we complicate the narrative of who gets to claim the idea of survivorship? And in a specific kind of accountability process, how do we make sure that we are being survivor-centered, but not necessary survivor-led? And what that means to me, is truly asking the survivor, what do they want? And if what they want isn't in line with maybe our values, or the values of that process, getting curious with them. For example, if somebody is like, "I want them to not work where they work anymore, "and I need them to leave town, and not come back," that might not be something that's in line with the values of what we're talking about around transformative justice of moving towards getting well, and thinking about healing. And, deep harm and trauma is real, so how do we make space for the anger, or the deep feelings of someone who was harmed, and then get curious about, "Well, what does that take care of for you?" So, if you want that person to leave town, like, "What does that take care of for you? "Are you scared about what they might do? "Is it too hard to share space with them?" So, survivor-centered to me really means taking the time to understand what are the roots of these needs that that survivor has, and the things that they are asking for. Also in line with complicating who gets to be the survivor is really stepping back and saying, what are the needs of all the people involved in this situation? I think that's at least what transformative justice seeks to do, is saying I understand that harm is not only between two individual people, that the whole community is impacted, and also, the whole community is responsible. And so how do you bring in the needs of all of the folks who are involved in situations of harm, so that it becomes that you can open the door to trying to shift the conditions that led to the harm in the first place.

03:27

RACHEL HERZING: We have survivor-informed processes rather than survivor-centered processes. And we do that not to diminish the role of a survivor in any kind of accountability process or community-based intervention, but to say that while the survivor should be involved, they don't have to take the primary responsibility or burden for making something go, for being at the center of it, and driving it. And also to say that sometimes we might not agree with what the survivor wants, and we wanna have room to negotiate that. And that could be understood as controversial, but I think the idea is, again, not to minimize the survivor, or diminish them in any way, but to say, you know, if what they want, for instance, is a beat-down, and we think that's probably not the most effective way to transform somebody's behavior in the long term, to say, "Just because you're the survivor "doesn't mean that you get the last word on this, "we wanna be in dialog with you "about why we think a beat-down "might not be the best in the long term. "Can we have a conversation about that?" So that it is informed by what the survivor wants, what the survivor needs by way of repair or remedy, but it's not up to them solely to drive the entire process.

04:44

ESTEBAN KELLY: Centering the needs of survivors is an important guiding principle, and we need to remember to hold that in a complex way, that it doesn't mean the survivors are suddenly, that they dictate everything. These are people who are coming from a place of harm and trauma, from a place of rage, and so what's tricky is how do you honor that, how do you create tremendous amount of latitude and agency for their voice in shaping what needs to happen, including naming what their needs are, without being paternalistic, by balancing it, and being like, "Yes, and we need to think about "what's in your longer term interest, "not just what you're feeling just in this moment." So you need to be multi-partial in the sense that you're like, "Absolutely, what does the survivor need?" And if part of what they need is to feel rage, is there a way for them to do that without insisting that that rage looks like a social media campaign to shame this person and call them out? Or to make you complicit in that. Is there a space for them to do their thing, and for you to not necessarily get in the way, but to not amplify them doing a call-out culture, or like, printing a bunch of flyers with someone's name on it? And what does it mean to hold that tension, or to actively contradict, and be like, "I hear that you wanna do this thing, "and we're gonna come and tear down "every flyer that you're putting." It forces us, that contradiction forces us to wrest with the deeper question. Let's go back, and actually, it's a higher sign of respect for survivors to say, "Yeah, but what do you really need? "What is the deeper, underlying interest? "Where is your demand coming from, "and how do we go beyond face value? "You're saying, 'I want this person beat up,' "You're saying, 'I want this person "actually physically harmed, or socially publicly shamed.'" And it's like, cool, cool, cool, how do we validate the feelings behind that, and then have enough curiosity to be like, "What's really going on? "Like, what is it that you're feeling? "Is it that you need to feel powerful? "Is it that you need to emote rage? "Is it that you need a space for that? "Is it that you need to feel some agentive power, "where you are the agent of a whole team of other people "who are doing something on your behalf "in acknowledgement of what happened?" "And maybe something that feels like "it's of equal magnitude of what happened?" Because all of that is possible. So when you start going the deeper and deeper layers of questions in a way that's not patronizing or paternalizing, that's not invalidating, and that is holding a very hard line, which is like, "We are not doing further harm. "We're not doing it." We're not doing it intentionally. We're gonna do further harm, that's what the messiness of accountability is. We're gonna mess up, we're gonna not do right by you, or by our community, at so many moments along the way, because guess what? We're human! And that's what it means. So, how do we constantly come back to what our full intentions are? So it's centering survivors, but that's not to the exclusion of a bigger picture. There's a whole sphere of agency, of design of intent, of what needs to happen in a process, and saying that survivors are at the center of it, is not saying that there's like a walled city and the only game in town is what the survivors are saying, and the literal execution of their demands. And so it means we need to have multiple spaces probably. It means that the people who are immediately responding to the survivor are probably able to fully hold those feelings, and maybe they're able to fully do 85%, 90%, 99%, of what the survivor says that they want to have happen, and maybe that's not the same team of people who's holding the bigger picture of transformative justice, of how are we reducing harm, how are we transforming our relationships throughout this process, and doing it at a pace that's actually gonna work for the shifts to happen, including among the person who's caused harm? And so I'm able to say that with conviction, because my work was, I was like, I was privileged to be able to work in tandem with a community of people who are really, fully, holding that survivor support work, and that freed me up to be like, "The timeline that you're saying, "is not in the best interest "of this person's transformation." And I am privy to a whole set of information that the survivor doesn't know about, about the harm, the trauma, the mental health issues, the unstable housing, the survivorship of the person who's caused harm, who is also a survivor of other abuse also. And so yes, we're gonna be able to get to this place where they're doing that work, and the first word out of their mouth to you is not gonna be an apology. And it's not gonna be all ten points in your ten-point plan of what it is that they need to do. And so we as community are big enough to hold contradiction and complexity, but not if we're just saying, "The three of you all are responsible "for holding the accountability process." That's not big enough. We need to lean into a broader community in order to do that, and Philly Stands Up was able to do that, by saying, "You know, we're focusing on this side." It doesn't mean we're coddling people who've caused harm, it doesn't mean that we're not centering the survivors, we are. I t's just that the bigness, most of our attention and the work, and the emotional labor we're doing is around the person who's caused harm, and is around addressing that, and is centering the transformation rooted in the principles, and doing right by the survivor community.

10:39

(upbeat music)