Transcript:

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I come from many years of experience working in the the world of domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy what I found in the kind of provider world is that we talked a lot about survivor centeredness and we genuinely believed in it but that what we offered was very limited options for survivors and a lot of survivors did not want what we offered for example if we look at domestic violence they didn't want to go to a shelter they didn't want to call the police they didn't want to be separated from homes many times what they wanted was to stop violence in relationship but perhaps stay in that relationship or to leave the relationship but to leave safely and so one of the ways I came to doing the work of transformative justice or community countability is really coming to understand a very deep way that so many people in my community through my work

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and my own life did not want the options that we were calling survivor centered and that we really really needed to think differently about what that meant in terms of how we approached intervening in violence but also preventing violence so I'd say that one of the ways in which in the work that we did at creative interventions that we first questioned that was to really deepen the process through which we asked to survive is what they wanted and that seeing that people and many of us are this way in a moment of crisis or when you think your only option might be to call the police or to go to a shelter even if you didn't want to do those things might think how do I make those types of options fit how do I make the police respond in a you know in a more immediate way for example but what I have found I think many of the phone is

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if you actually ask people what kind of world you want to live in what what kind of responses would you really want to the violence that you have experienced what would you want for other people in your they will come up with other kinds of things it might take them a while but a lot of what we do and I think a lot of what we do in this work is we give people space and we give people space to imagine what they really want even if they think it might be impossible and what you find is when people really imagine what they really want we start thinking creatively about how you might actually be able to build those things you might actually even be able to get them in your immediate world with a little bit of thought a little bit of organizing with a little bit of community coming together in a different way or at least we can think of ways in which maybe we're not going to get that but we ways in which we can change things so that other people will be able

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to in the future I think that's been a really important part of this work and a important part of expanding what we think survivor-centered means the reality is most people don't use the criminal legal system most people do not go to the police most people do not go to external resources for a whole variety of reasons and big reasons are because people are often coming from marginalizing criminalized communities and also people what people really want is to be able to address it within whatever group of people it's happening you know within their family within their school within their friendship networks within their religious whatever whatever the situation is people always ask me what about the rapist you know and what about the murderers and and I really get that why that question comes up and I also get the feeling of despair and rage and upset because views of our

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own experiences and what we see in the world and I also think that a lot of times when people say that they aren't thinking about what does justice really look like for people like I think about like well what does justice look like for me as a child sexual abuse survivor was justice put it with justice have been putting my father in prison would meant that he would I don't know if you would ever been put in prison but you know or you know like that would even work but what what is what what do we need what what do survivors need what are those impacted really need what would justice really look like and I think when we really ask those questions and have the space to ask those questions I'm not sure that most people would say they want to incarceration even you know there's so many people who've had egregious harms against them and they're they still do necessarily incarceration and that whole legal process never feels like justice it never feels like healing it never feels

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like you know you could really move on from that you know so what would you need to feel like justice was done and I think for a lot of survivors it's like the people if the people around them really believe that we cared for them and sat with them and you know it's it's also about the person who caused the harm but it's also everybody around them and so I think that that question what does justice really what would that look like for you or for anyone who's been harmed in that way I think we don't ask that question and also I don't think incarceration it's never gonna it's not going to change anyone it's not gonna there's no space for accountability there's no space for really reconciling with the harm that you've caused there's no process for you to really even have to face it we're just so steeped in a culture of crime and punishment and so part of supporting accountability is also being able to have a connection long enough to actually and building

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enough amongst groups of people to actually foster the idea that know what real justice might look like is actually creating space for survivors to have agency and around what actually happens to the person that caused harm for survivors that have space for healing right to have space to be safe and for the people that caused harm to actually have to do those steps of accountability have to do those steps of actually owning up to what what you've done owning up to the actions that need to be taken in order to make things as right as possible and then transforming yourself most people really what we want if we've survived harm is for somebody to acknowledge that harm was done to make some kind of commitment to transforming their behavior and to give some assurance that they will not harm anybody again right and that takes a lot

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of work and that takes a lot of commitment and that takes a lot of labor and it calls for fundamental transformation for a lot of people and so I don't think it's fair to say it's you know prison or it's nothing I think it's prison or its transformation and so I would really prefer to see human beings have the opportunity to transform them

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(Music)