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Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
Afraid to call 911 but not sure what to do instead? Transformative justice and other community-based approaches to violence have existed for centuries, yet are often under the radar and marginalized. This is How We Survive focuses on concrete alternatives to policing and prisons. From practical tool-kits and personal essays, to supporting people in mental health crises, to community-based murder investigations, this text delves deeply into the “how to” of transformative justice. Along the way, this volume documents the history of this radical movement, creating space for long time organizers to reflect on victories, struggles, mistakes, and transformations.
347 pages, Paperback
First published January 21, 2020
507 people are currently reading
13099 people want to read
About the author
Ejeris Dixon
2 books9 followersEjeris Dixon is an organizer, consultant, and political strategist with twenty years of experience organizing within racial justice, LGBTQ, transformative justice, anti-violence, and economic justice movements. She is the Founding Director of Vision Change Win Consulting where she partners with organizations to build their capacity and deepen the impact of their organizing strategies. Her essay, "Building Community Safety: Practical Steps Toward Liberatory Transformation," is featured in the anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States.
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September 26, 2020
A book containing strategies and stories for transformative justice, this was one I wasn't sure what to do with after. I find the idea of justice seeking and conflict resolution outside of the punitive criminal justice system appealing but at the same time there were some things in there that made me extremely uncomfortable, most of it having to do with abusers who do not take responsibility for their actions and continue to harm others.
There was one chapter in there about a women whose father sexually abused her then her half sister and may have been doing so to others. That women was approached by someone who had met her father when he offered to do some one on one services for the man's sister. The man looked up her father and found out he had abused her as a child and let his own parents know. That is amazing but what about those people who do not have anyone in their family who would get suspicious and go search out information about her father. Are we just to allow someone free access to moving around the world and engaging with children when it's clear they will most likely continue to harm those children and take no accountability or even try to change.
I also don't know of how much use the things discussed have for me day to day in my own life and the things that I do. Like there aren't really that many opportunities for me to apply this and do some kind of community accountability or whatever else.
I do think it was a good for challenging my own assumptions about what is possible and expanding how I think harm can be addressed though. Totally worth it to read this if you're interested in prison abolition and the alternatives to prison/retributive punishment.
There was one chapter in there about a women whose father sexually abused her then her half sister and may have been doing so to others. That women was approached by someone who had met her father when he offered to do some one on one services for the man's sister. The man looked up her father and found out he had abused her as a child and let his own parents know. That is amazing but what about those people who do not have anyone in their family who would get suspicious and go search out information about her father. Are we just to allow someone free access to moving around the world and engaging with children when it's clear they will most likely continue to harm those children and take no accountability or even try to change.
I also don't know of how much use the things discussed have for me day to day in my own life and the things that I do. Like there aren't really that many opportunities for me to apply this and do some kind of community accountability or whatever else.
I do think it was a good for challenging my own assumptions about what is possible and expanding how I think harm can be addressed though. Totally worth it to read this if you're interested in prison abolition and the alternatives to prison/retributive punishment.
April 11, 2020
I started reading this book and had to put it down to adjust to life in the time of Corona virus. Deciding to pick it back up seems timely especially since inter-personal violence and harm is now happening as many of us are being ordered to shelter in place.
Overall I thought there were really useful and illuminating things that this anthology offered. I found myself bookmarking a lot of practical tools and insights for survivors (namely of sexual violence) that I hope to apply in thinking about my own survivorship with dating violence.
With that being said, there were some things that left me pretty flummoxed:
- I found the lack of reflexive hubris throughout the book kind of startling. Many contributors kept repeating "we all make mistakes" but very few would actually detail what those mistakes are. I find queer failure (see Halberstam) useful for thinking about things like alternative visions to the carceral state. So I'm wondering why in a book about presenting alternatives very few felt comfortable saying "I messed this up, here's how, and here's how you can learn from my mistake." Not to say there weren't examples of this present throughout the book, but they registered as kind of glossed over in many respects.
- To this end, I find the inclusion of an essay by the Audre Lorde Project kind of curious. I remember when Olympia Perez went public about the transphobia she experienced while working at ALP. To my knowledge, ALP has yet to make true remediation that is satisfactory with Perez, as evidenced by yet another statement she released in June of 2019 (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...). This is not to say that readers have nothing to learn from ALP. But I would think a HUGE part of learning from ALP is learning how they held themselves accountable for the harm they've caused Perez (or didn't), how they plan to do better in the future with respect to their treatment of Black trans women, and how this experience informs the very safety work they detail in their essay. Silence, cover ups, and denial don't strike me as alternatives to carceral systems and logic. If anything, they are hauntingly reminiscent of the treatment Black trans and gnc folk experience at the hands of the carceral system. It's one thing to say "everyone harms." But when you're a non-profit that has harmed a Black trans woman and fails to actually remedy that, maybe you're not in the place at the moment to be dishing out advice and that's okay. So the inclusion of their essay without actually addressing the harm they've caused compromises the vision and integrity of this book.
- Similarly, I think ALP owning their shit could have opened up a conversation about how to transform harms that happen outside of the framework of jurisprudence. Anti-blackness, transphobia, ableism, etc "harm people" and aren't inherently "criminal offenses" unless something physically violent happens. What would it mean to envision ways of repairing harm in communities that completely divests itself from definitions of harm rooted and subsequently informed by carceral logic.
-I would have liked to see more inclusion of how to do TJ processes around forms of harm that are not sexual violence. I am a survivor of dating violence & stalking. I've yet to see the inclusion of the spectrum of dating violence taken seriously in books trying to carve out alternatives to carceral violence. It seems odd especially given how rampant dating violence is in activist communities and how it goes unspoken of a lot of the time to not have more essays about how transformative justice can work in instances that aren't sexual violence.
Some of these things I can chalk up to the complexity of assembling an anthology, while other aspects of this book leave me wondering what could have been different about this anthology if the principles informed curation in a different direction.
Overall I thought there were really useful and illuminating things that this anthology offered. I found myself bookmarking a lot of practical tools and insights for survivors (namely of sexual violence) that I hope to apply in thinking about my own survivorship with dating violence.
With that being said, there were some things that left me pretty flummoxed:
- I found the lack of reflexive hubris throughout the book kind of startling. Many contributors kept repeating "we all make mistakes" but very few would actually detail what those mistakes are. I find queer failure (see Halberstam) useful for thinking about things like alternative visions to the carceral state. So I'm wondering why in a book about presenting alternatives very few felt comfortable saying "I messed this up, here's how, and here's how you can learn from my mistake." Not to say there weren't examples of this present throughout the book, but they registered as kind of glossed over in many respects.
- To this end, I find the inclusion of an essay by the Audre Lorde Project kind of curious. I remember when Olympia Perez went public about the transphobia she experienced while working at ALP. To my knowledge, ALP has yet to make true remediation that is satisfactory with Perez, as evidenced by yet another statement she released in June of 2019 (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...). This is not to say that readers have nothing to learn from ALP. But I would think a HUGE part of learning from ALP is learning how they held themselves accountable for the harm they've caused Perez (or didn't), how they plan to do better in the future with respect to their treatment of Black trans women, and how this experience informs the very safety work they detail in their essay. Silence, cover ups, and denial don't strike me as alternatives to carceral systems and logic. If anything, they are hauntingly reminiscent of the treatment Black trans and gnc folk experience at the hands of the carceral system. It's one thing to say "everyone harms." But when you're a non-profit that has harmed a Black trans woman and fails to actually remedy that, maybe you're not in the place at the moment to be dishing out advice and that's okay. So the inclusion of their essay without actually addressing the harm they've caused compromises the vision and integrity of this book.
- Similarly, I think ALP owning their shit could have opened up a conversation about how to transform harms that happen outside of the framework of jurisprudence. Anti-blackness, transphobia, ableism, etc "harm people" and aren't inherently "criminal offenses" unless something physically violent happens. What would it mean to envision ways of repairing harm in communities that completely divests itself from definitions of harm rooted and subsequently informed by carceral logic.
-I would have liked to see more inclusion of how to do TJ processes around forms of harm that are not sexual violence. I am a survivor of dating violence & stalking. I've yet to see the inclusion of the spectrum of dating violence taken seriously in books trying to carve out alternatives to carceral violence. It seems odd especially given how rampant dating violence is in activist communities and how it goes unspoken of a lot of the time to not have more essays about how transformative justice can work in instances that aren't sexual violence.
Some of these things I can chalk up to the complexity of assembling an anthology, while other aspects of this book leave me wondering what could have been different about this anthology if the principles informed curation in a different direction.
August 14, 2020
Incredible resource.
January 25, 2020
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from The Transformative Justice Movement is definitely one of the most important books I will read this year, if not this decade. Edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the text expands upon information offered by previous texts like The Revolution Starts at Home. As the editors state in the introduction, TRSAH was the "why" and Beyond Survival is the "how." This is severely needed because, while various transformative justice tactics and techniques have been used by communities over time, the process is almost always labor intensive, draining, and sometimes leaves everyone feeling worse off before they went in. That is not to say there have never been successes. This book includes many examples. But, many writers state that even the failures have something to teach and that rigid purity politics do not allow us to make mistakes and to grow. This book also tackles many different types of conflicts and events that may require accountability and transformative justice practices. Entries range from what many people think of when they hear TJ- sexual assault and intimate partner violence- to creating safer spaces for youth, LGBTQ parties, sex workers, and others.
Couched in between a beautiful foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and poetic afterword by adrienne marie brown is a slew of information from many wise voices. What struck me the most about this book is how kind, grounded, and realistic the ideas, stories, and strategies put forth were and how everyone presented these things with great humility. These are not people living in a fantasy world where suddenly the police can be avoided in every scenario. Rather than saying "don't call the cops, period," they say things like, "here are many things you can do instead, and if all else fails, here's how to deal with the cops if they arrive."
In the first section, "Making the Road by Dreaming: Stories of Accountability," we get a little bit of the "why" of transformative justice. This and many other parts of the book make it readable regardless of if you have read "The Revolution Starts at Home." As we progress through this section, we hit an excerpt from "Black Queer Feminism as Praxis" where we are told with brute honesty that it ain't gonna be pretty. These processes can suck and they cannot erase harm as if it never existed. Also included in this section is Kai Cheng Thom's "What to do if You've Been Abusive," which explores the reality that we are all capable of causing- and have caused- harm to others. Rather than reinforce cancel/callout culture's victim/perpetrator for life binary, Thom asks that we be kinder, gentler, and more realistic. "Doesn't the feminist saying go, 'We shouldn't be teaching people how not to get raped, we should be teaching people not to rape'? And if so, doesn't it follow that we shouldn't only support people who have survived abuse, but should also support people in learning not to abuse?" I want to be clear, Thom is not claiming that everyone is a rapist and a rape victim, but more like someone who rapes someone may also have a history of violent abuse from a parent that influences their decision making. Someone who survives rape may have also been abusive or toxic towards a partner in the past and may be afraid to come forward both because they were raped and because they are afraid of their past. Someone who pushes past boundaries at a party may also be struggling with alcoholism and PTSD. Someone whose boundaries were violated may be overwhelmed by memories where they violated others' boundaries. It is almost more exhausting and shame inducing to try to be only one thing on either side of that coin. By healing everyone, even though revenge feels very good in fantasy land, we are able to create safer environments for everyone, especially when they are victimized.
How many of us have called for the abolition of prisons and police through one side of our mouth while branding someone for life as forever boiled down to the worst thing they've done out of the other? I know I've done it. Many of these writings had me repeatedly asking myself, "Do I want to be righteous or do I want to be effective?" This is not to say that we remove room for survivors' pain, anger, revenge fantasies, and so on. Multiple writers discuss how venting (and "vent diagrams" of) our frustrations and kill-your-rapist fantasies in healthy ways can be quite healing. This is also not to say that many people who have done harm don't automatically respond with defensiveness and refusal to be accountable. There are stories of this in the book. What is being said is that many of us can and want to do better. Philly Stands Up discusses in their entry how often people came to them to confess that they'd done something harmful and wanted to be accountable and prevent it from happening again. Basically, if we truly want to transform our communities with as little police and prison involvement as possible, then we have to also leave room for those doing harm to be human, to change, to heal, and to be accountable.
The next section of the book, "We Got This: Tool Kits and Road Maps," is full of entries by various people and groups who have learned quite a lot through their trials in transformative justice work. All of the entries in this section had a ton of useful information to offer, but a few really stood out for me personally. These were: Fireweed Collective's, "When it all comes crashing down: Navigating crisis," Oakland Power Projects', "Maybe you don't have to call 911: Know your options," Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Mijente, and Puente Arizona's, "Excerpt From Community Defense Zone Starter Guide," and Safe OUTside the System Collective and Audrey Lorde Project's, "Excerpts from the Safer Party Toolkit." There are so many reasonable and creative ways that these groups and communities have come up with to prevent, manage, and deescalate conflicts. But, as this book makes quite clear, activist groups are not the only ones doing or capable of doing this work. These practices have been going on particularly in marginalized communities long before the words 'transformative justice' began being applied to them.
This leads us into part three, "We didn't call it TJ, but maybe it worked anyway? Messy, real stories." I have to say, I found these messy stories to be remarkably organized. It is in this section that we get to hear from sex worker and anti-violence proponents and what they have learned from their pratices to keep themselves and their communities safe. Sex workers have a ton of interesting and creative ways of doing this in a world where there is danger at every corner from both those intent on doing harm and those who claim to help. My favorite entry in this section was "Facing shame: From saying sorry to doing sorry," by Nathan Shara. This is another entry that really opened my eyes to the ways that all of us contain a massive amount of experiences where we have harmed and been harmed. Thinking of things this way seems to really invite healing from and for all parties. Slow, slow healing. Shara states in the beginning, "Solving violence is rarely as much about the moment at hand as it is about everything else the preceded it." And, "If we cannot reveal what we have done and what has been done to us without being seen as inferior, damaged, tainted, broken, monstrous, irreparable, and so on, then out of a core human drive toward dignity, we will not do it." Now, reading this review, I know some people may bristle and these quotes out of context. It may be difficult to think about some of the people who have harmed you or your friends as being deserving of kindness. Please consider still reading the larger texts before making a judgment based on ideological purity about what accountability and healing must always look like. In another favorite in this section: adrienne maree brown's, "What is/isn't transformative justice," where she discusses callout/cancel culture and asks, "Is this what we're here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherance to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there's no one left beside us?"
The final section, "What did we dream then, what do we know now? Movement histories and futures," we hear from "TJ Old Heads" about what they have learned in their work over the years and decades. The interviews with Shira Hassan and Mariame Kaba really stood out for me here as exceptional. Hassan offers all kinds of advice and information, including something I have discussed many times in my own circles. Regarding what she would like to see an end to in Transformative Justice: "There's this thing of everyone thinking all forms of violence are the same. And that all the tools we have are also the same. And they're actually really different for lots of reasons... where I think it gets tricky, and I think we're afraid to have these conversations, is that it's so important that everyone is validated in their experience of survival, and that my experience of sexual harrassment can dislocate me for years, and that is still different from someone else's experience of childhood sexual abuse."When Kaba is asked why she wants to do fewer trainings, she states, "I don't think this is a work that is about experts. I want this work to be work that anyone and everyone who wants to try to do it does... I don't want people to feel that this work is something you have to get some certification in in order to be able to do." There is so much more wisdom in this section that I would have to copy the entire book to portray it. What I will say is that, once again, the common thread is humility, care, humanity, love, and an understanding that while "hurt people hurt people," it's also true that "healed people heal people.*"
*I did not invent this phrase. I saw it on a beautiful banner held by Let's Get Free.
This was also posted to my blog.
Couched in between a beautiful foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and poetic afterword by adrienne marie brown is a slew of information from many wise voices. What struck me the most about this book is how kind, grounded, and realistic the ideas, stories, and strategies put forth were and how everyone presented these things with great humility. These are not people living in a fantasy world where suddenly the police can be avoided in every scenario. Rather than saying "don't call the cops, period," they say things like, "here are many things you can do instead, and if all else fails, here's how to deal with the cops if they arrive."
In the first section, "Making the Road by Dreaming: Stories of Accountability," we get a little bit of the "why" of transformative justice. This and many other parts of the book make it readable regardless of if you have read "The Revolution Starts at Home." As we progress through this section, we hit an excerpt from "Black Queer Feminism as Praxis" where we are told with brute honesty that it ain't gonna be pretty. These processes can suck and they cannot erase harm as if it never existed. Also included in this section is Kai Cheng Thom's "What to do if You've Been Abusive," which explores the reality that we are all capable of causing- and have caused- harm to others. Rather than reinforce cancel/callout culture's victim/perpetrator for life binary, Thom asks that we be kinder, gentler, and more realistic. "Doesn't the feminist saying go, 'We shouldn't be teaching people how not to get raped, we should be teaching people not to rape'? And if so, doesn't it follow that we shouldn't only support people who have survived abuse, but should also support people in learning not to abuse?" I want to be clear, Thom is not claiming that everyone is a rapist and a rape victim, but more like someone who rapes someone may also have a history of violent abuse from a parent that influences their decision making. Someone who survives rape may have also been abusive or toxic towards a partner in the past and may be afraid to come forward both because they were raped and because they are afraid of their past. Someone who pushes past boundaries at a party may also be struggling with alcoholism and PTSD. Someone whose boundaries were violated may be overwhelmed by memories where they violated others' boundaries. It is almost more exhausting and shame inducing to try to be only one thing on either side of that coin. By healing everyone, even though revenge feels very good in fantasy land, we are able to create safer environments for everyone, especially when they are victimized.
How many of us have called for the abolition of prisons and police through one side of our mouth while branding someone for life as forever boiled down to the worst thing they've done out of the other? I know I've done it. Many of these writings had me repeatedly asking myself, "Do I want to be righteous or do I want to be effective?" This is not to say that we remove room for survivors' pain, anger, revenge fantasies, and so on. Multiple writers discuss how venting (and "vent diagrams" of) our frustrations and kill-your-rapist fantasies in healthy ways can be quite healing. This is also not to say that many people who have done harm don't automatically respond with defensiveness and refusal to be accountable. There are stories of this in the book. What is being said is that many of us can and want to do better. Philly Stands Up discusses in their entry how often people came to them to confess that they'd done something harmful and wanted to be accountable and prevent it from happening again. Basically, if we truly want to transform our communities with as little police and prison involvement as possible, then we have to also leave room for those doing harm to be human, to change, to heal, and to be accountable.
The next section of the book, "We Got This: Tool Kits and Road Maps," is full of entries by various people and groups who have learned quite a lot through their trials in transformative justice work. All of the entries in this section had a ton of useful information to offer, but a few really stood out for me personally. These were: Fireweed Collective's, "When it all comes crashing down: Navigating crisis," Oakland Power Projects', "Maybe you don't have to call 911: Know your options," Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Mijente, and Puente Arizona's, "Excerpt From Community Defense Zone Starter Guide," and Safe OUTside the System Collective and Audrey Lorde Project's, "Excerpts from the Safer Party Toolkit." There are so many reasonable and creative ways that these groups and communities have come up with to prevent, manage, and deescalate conflicts. But, as this book makes quite clear, activist groups are not the only ones doing or capable of doing this work. These practices have been going on particularly in marginalized communities long before the words 'transformative justice' began being applied to them.
This leads us into part three, "We didn't call it TJ, but maybe it worked anyway? Messy, real stories." I have to say, I found these messy stories to be remarkably organized. It is in this section that we get to hear from sex worker and anti-violence proponents and what they have learned from their pratices to keep themselves and their communities safe. Sex workers have a ton of interesting and creative ways of doing this in a world where there is danger at every corner from both those intent on doing harm and those who claim to help. My favorite entry in this section was "Facing shame: From saying sorry to doing sorry," by Nathan Shara. This is another entry that really opened my eyes to the ways that all of us contain a massive amount of experiences where we have harmed and been harmed. Thinking of things this way seems to really invite healing from and for all parties. Slow, slow healing. Shara states in the beginning, "Solving violence is rarely as much about the moment at hand as it is about everything else the preceded it." And, "If we cannot reveal what we have done and what has been done to us without being seen as inferior, damaged, tainted, broken, monstrous, irreparable, and so on, then out of a core human drive toward dignity, we will not do it." Now, reading this review, I know some people may bristle and these quotes out of context. It may be difficult to think about some of the people who have harmed you or your friends as being deserving of kindness. Please consider still reading the larger texts before making a judgment based on ideological purity about what accountability and healing must always look like. In another favorite in this section: adrienne maree brown's, "What is/isn't transformative justice," where she discusses callout/cancel culture and asks, "Is this what we're here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherance to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there's no one left beside us?"
The final section, "What did we dream then, what do we know now? Movement histories and futures," we hear from "TJ Old Heads" about what they have learned in their work over the years and decades. The interviews with Shira Hassan and Mariame Kaba really stood out for me here as exceptional. Hassan offers all kinds of advice and information, including something I have discussed many times in my own circles. Regarding what she would like to see an end to in Transformative Justice: "There's this thing of everyone thinking all forms of violence are the same. And that all the tools we have are also the same. And they're actually really different for lots of reasons... where I think it gets tricky, and I think we're afraid to have these conversations, is that it's so important that everyone is validated in their experience of survival, and that my experience of sexual harrassment can dislocate me for years, and that is still different from someone else's experience of childhood sexual abuse."When Kaba is asked why she wants to do fewer trainings, she states, "I don't think this is a work that is about experts. I want this work to be work that anyone and everyone who wants to try to do it does... I don't want people to feel that this work is something you have to get some certification in in order to be able to do." There is so much more wisdom in this section that I would have to copy the entire book to portray it. What I will say is that, once again, the common thread is humility, care, humanity, love, and an understanding that while "hurt people hurt people," it's also true that "healed people heal people.*"
*I did not invent this phrase. I saw it on a beautiful banner held by Let's Get Free.
This was also posted to my blog.
February 1, 2020
this book is a GIFT and a must-read for anyone exploring community-based strategies for responding to harm and violence without prisons or policing.
February 10, 2020
on transformative justice...and how it isn’t an “alternative” to the police; and how it is direct practice of a world without police; and how messy it is; and how it can’t be turned into a quick concept for academia or the non-profit industrial complex; and how there are no “experts” because to have “experts” is to be moving towards institutionalization; and how it can work; and how it doesn’t always work; and how it’s different from restorative justice, mediation, and more; and how it depends on connection, community, and relationality; and how it must hold space for many truths, even when truths seem contradictory (see “vent diagrams”); and how it grew from necessity in organizing communities because police and the state were never even an option; and how “transformation is not a realistic goal within a process” but “It is a realistic goal within a lifetime” (Mariame Kaba interview, 298); and how consequences and punishment are different (Mariame Kaba); and how boundaries and disposability are different (Mariame Kaba); and how institutions and systems and oppression have always tried to severe our connections to each other, tried to get us to move in a direction in tension with our spirit;
a timely, honest, and love-filled anthology of essays from people who want to see better, do better, and experience better, together. always together
“Relationship and trust, not always political analysis, continue to be two of the most important factors in successful TJ interventions, whether in supporting survivor self-determination and healing or in accountability processes.” (Mia Mingus for the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, 123)
“We surrendered to how deeply we need each other.
All of us matter, to ourselves, to each other.” (adrienne maree brown, 324)
a timely, honest, and love-filled anthology of essays from people who want to see better, do better, and experience better, together. always together
“Relationship and trust, not always political analysis, continue to be two of the most important factors in successful TJ interventions, whether in supporting survivor self-determination and healing or in accountability processes.” (Mia Mingus for the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, 123)
“We surrendered to how deeply we need each other.
All of us matter, to ourselves, to each other.” (adrienne maree brown, 324)
April 17, 2020
[trigger warning: review mentions rape/suicide/child sex abuse] BEYOND SURVIVAL is absolutely essential. I learned SO MUCH reading this anthology. Transformative Justice is the practice of addressing violence, harm and abuse at the grassroots level without involving police, incarceration or punishment.
We all (hopefully by now) know that police & prisons disproportionately target BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ people, poor people and sex workers and don't *actually* make our communities safer from violence. This anthology looks at the alternatives - from Trans Support Hotlines that don't mandate reporting suicide risk, to alternatives to calling 911, to how to support families and child sexual abuse survivors without involving the state.
There's so much nuance and complexity - both/and thinking - required in digesting this book. We must center survivors while also recognize that those who cause harm are often survivors of violence or abuse themselves. No one is disposable, and people must be held accountable. The anthology brilliantly includes concrete examples of TJ in action, and conversations with longtime practitioners of TJ on the deep challenges and rewards of this work. This book was inspiring and I highly recommend it. A different world is possible.
We all (hopefully by now) know that police & prisons disproportionately target BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ people, poor people and sex workers and don't *actually* make our communities safer from violence. This anthology looks at the alternatives - from Trans Support Hotlines that don't mandate reporting suicide risk, to alternatives to calling 911, to how to support families and child sexual abuse survivors without involving the state.
There's so much nuance and complexity - both/and thinking - required in digesting this book. We must center survivors while also recognize that those who cause harm are often survivors of violence or abuse themselves. No one is disposable, and people must be held accountable. The anthology brilliantly includes concrete examples of TJ in action, and conversations with longtime practitioners of TJ on the deep challenges and rewards of this work. This book was inspiring and I highly recommend it. A different world is possible.
July 5, 2020
4.5 stars.
this book is truly a beautiful tool. I had to stop reading it momentarily (started reading on a library ebook) because after a couple of essays, I knew that I needed my own copy. to hold. to share. to underline. the only reason it does not get five stars is a matter of my own personal preference, as I think that some essays were not as strong as others. regardless, it's a gift of a text that I know that I will re-visit again and again.
this book is truly a beautiful tool. I had to stop reading it momentarily (started reading on a library ebook) because after a couple of essays, I knew that I needed my own copy. to hold. to share. to underline. the only reason it does not get five stars is a matter of my own personal preference, as I think that some essays were not as strong as others. regardless, it's a gift of a text that I know that I will re-visit again and again.
August 31, 2020
I learned a lot about transformative justice from this book (considering that I knew very little before reading), and the stories of people's experiences provided clear examples of how this process has worked. The second section and some of the later readings on how to implement the process in an organization were less relevant to me, but I still recommend reading the important and diverse collection of TJ stories in this book.
January 21, 2022
required reading for organizers
June 21, 2024
I believe in transformative justice like I believe in abolishing prisons and police, like I believe in a utopian anarchist society; it's mostly theory and there are many steps to achieving these far-fetched goals and dreams. There are a lot of steps we have to take to get there, and they make take generations if ever to achieve, but there are people out there doing the work to make it happen. The ends don't justify the means; the ends are the means. I think this is where anarchists and communists disagree.
Beyond Survival is three hundred plus pages of writings by people who have put in the work, against all odds. There are stories of success (few), stories of learning from failures (many), interviews with people who have been knee deep in accountability processes for decades, and more. Progress has been made and there are pockets in the world where communities don't call the police or rely on the injustice system when someone has been wronged. They get together as human beings and figure out what works best for everyone involve to try and make things as right as possible.
As much as I thoroughly enjoyed this book there were definitely parts that I skipped through because I found them irrelevant or boring, but that doesn't mean everyone will. This is the kind of book that I'm glad to own because I know (hope?) there will be many times where I take it off the shelf and use it to help guide my dream of creating a better world.
Every community should have at least one copy of this book, and you can order yours from AK Press.
Beyond Survival is three hundred plus pages of writings by people who have put in the work, against all odds. There are stories of success (few), stories of learning from failures (many), interviews with people who have been knee deep in accountability processes for decades, and more. Progress has been made and there are pockets in the world where communities don't call the police or rely on the injustice system when someone has been wronged. They get together as human beings and figure out what works best for everyone involve to try and make things as right as possible.
As much as I thoroughly enjoyed this book there were definitely parts that I skipped through because I found them irrelevant or boring, but that doesn't mean everyone will. This is the kind of book that I'm glad to own because I know (hope?) there will be many times where I take it off the shelf and use it to help guide my dream of creating a better world.
Every community should have at least one copy of this book, and you can order yours from AK Press.
August 11, 2020
so grateful for the history, wisdom, vision, and spadework that led to this beautiful collection. i appreciated the explicit reckoning with how hard TJ can be: the way it sits with the messiness or process and opens the reader into its learnings. the examples and activities, the pod maps, venn diagrams, and focused questions are critical tools for all of us. i left with many more questions, and i’m sure many other readers did too since this invites the reader into deeper practice of emergent work. would love to see more learnings from “getting it wrong,” ambiguities, hubris.
March 24, 2020
Really interesting read; focuses on the how of something I had so far only seen as theory, when there are people out there that are doing this and pretty much have been for decades.
May 22, 2021
this book is like a big hug. i really needed to read this when i did.
November 28, 2021
Practical, useful, and well outlined. Really helped describe the reality of Transformative Justice behind the generic title.
Read
July 2, 2024reading this in 2024 felt dated, in part because so much of TJ language has been misappropriated, but I also know many of these authors have developed the framework further in the last four years. still glad to have this as a resource in our group, the practical strategies in part 2 were particularly useful to start building/fall back on structures during situations of interpersonal violence
want to follow this with more militant materialist politics and also expansive disability justice frameworks/genealogies that center colonialism and environmentalism
want to follow this with more militant materialist politics and also expansive disability justice frameworks/genealogies that center colonialism and environmentalism
June 13, 2020
This book really floored me. I learned so much from reading it.
December 13, 2020
This was a hard read (because it aches to read and think about harm for 320 pages) but also hopeful and practical, but extremely well worth it. Everyone should read.
October 7, 2022
"Be here. Be all over the place. Be messy. Be wrong. Be bold in your hopefulness. Be confused in community. Be reaching past isolation. Be part of the problem. Be hungry for after. Be helpful in the midst. Be so early in the process. Be broken by belief. Be bolstered by brave comrades. Be unbelievably unready. Be alive."
"Many people have told us that when they think of transformative justice, they think it is “a really long process where people talk about what happened, cry, get overwhelmed, and eventually stop answering their emails.”"
This is an immensely cheering book - which I went into, and came out of, pretty cynical about community accountability processes. Transformative Justice is a set of practices much broader than community accountability, and there is some really interesting pieces here about community programs to protect from violence without police, sex worker organising for defence, as well as sexual and interpersonal violence prevention. A fair bit of the book does deal with community accountability processes, mostly with the problems they entail, and the reflections on this were just as much about the limitations as the successes (I particularly enjoyed Piepzna-Samarasinha's wry rejection of community accountability circles as an effective response to organised crime). There is much acknowledgement that sometimes there simply is no right answer:
"So then you have this tension of like, I don’t believe in activating the state, but I’m witnessing horrific violence, and I need to take an action that doesn’t lead to violence against me as the worker, and that doesn’t increase the violence against the people who are being harmed, and so now I’m in this conflict because I don’t believe in being complicit with the state, and this is the only solution that I have going, and I need to sit with how I resolve this effectively, but the truth is that there is no effective resolution for that tension."
The book's contributors often disagree with each other, and projects vary enormously in scale and intent. Some are reflective, others more like a "guide to a safe party" or mental health 101 (some of the latter frightened me in how it needed to articulate some basic things, including that most people in crisis are not better off in hospital).
The contribution by adrienne maree brown, is of course, astonishing in asking whether activist circles are on the right track at all: "But I also wonder: Is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us? I’ve had tons of conversations with people who, in these moments of public flaying, avoid stepping up on the side of complexity or curiosity because in the back of our minds is the shared unspoken question: When will y’all come for me? The places I’m drawn to in movement espouse a desire for transformative justice—justice practices that go all the way to the root of the problem and generate solutions and healing there, such that the conditions that create injustice are transformed. And yet … we don’t really know how to do it. We call it transformative justice when we’re throwing knives and insults, exposing each other’s worst mistakes, reducing each other to moments of failure. We call it holding each other accountable. I’m tired of it. I see it everywhere I turn. When the response to mistakes, failures, and misunderstandings is emotional, psychological, economic, and physical punishment, we breed a culture of fear, secrecy, and isolation. So, I’m wondering, in a real way: How can we pivot toward practicing transformative justice? How do we shift from individual, interpersonal, and interorganizational anger toward viable generative sustainable systemic change?"
In the end, while there is a lot of messy in this book, that so many people are engaging meaningfully with community solutions is just … happy-making. And the determination to look the problems in the eye is pretty good too.
"Many people have told us that when they think of transformative justice, they think it is “a really long process where people talk about what happened, cry, get overwhelmed, and eventually stop answering their emails.”"
This is an immensely cheering book - which I went into, and came out of, pretty cynical about community accountability processes. Transformative Justice is a set of practices much broader than community accountability, and there is some really interesting pieces here about community programs to protect from violence without police, sex worker organising for defence, as well as sexual and interpersonal violence prevention. A fair bit of the book does deal with community accountability processes, mostly with the problems they entail, and the reflections on this were just as much about the limitations as the successes (I particularly enjoyed Piepzna-Samarasinha's wry rejection of community accountability circles as an effective response to organised crime). There is much acknowledgement that sometimes there simply is no right answer:
"So then you have this tension of like, I don’t believe in activating the state, but I’m witnessing horrific violence, and I need to take an action that doesn’t lead to violence against me as the worker, and that doesn’t increase the violence against the people who are being harmed, and so now I’m in this conflict because I don’t believe in being complicit with the state, and this is the only solution that I have going, and I need to sit with how I resolve this effectively, but the truth is that there is no effective resolution for that tension."
The book's contributors often disagree with each other, and projects vary enormously in scale and intent. Some are reflective, others more like a "guide to a safe party" or mental health 101 (some of the latter frightened me in how it needed to articulate some basic things, including that most people in crisis are not better off in hospital).
The contribution by adrienne maree brown, is of course, astonishing in asking whether activist circles are on the right track at all: "But I also wonder: Is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us? I’ve had tons of conversations with people who, in these moments of public flaying, avoid stepping up on the side of complexity or curiosity because in the back of our minds is the shared unspoken question: When will y’all come for me? The places I’m drawn to in movement espouse a desire for transformative justice—justice practices that go all the way to the root of the problem and generate solutions and healing there, such that the conditions that create injustice are transformed. And yet … we don’t really know how to do it. We call it transformative justice when we’re throwing knives and insults, exposing each other’s worst mistakes, reducing each other to moments of failure. We call it holding each other accountable. I’m tired of it. I see it everywhere I turn. When the response to mistakes, failures, and misunderstandings is emotional, psychological, economic, and physical punishment, we breed a culture of fear, secrecy, and isolation. So, I’m wondering, in a real way: How can we pivot toward practicing transformative justice? How do we shift from individual, interpersonal, and interorganizational anger toward viable generative sustainable systemic change?"
In the end, while there is a lot of messy in this book, that so many people are engaging meaningfully with community solutions is just … happy-making. And the determination to look the problems in the eye is pretty good too.
June 14, 2022
Beyond Survival aims to encourage and guide practitioners through the messy but necessary process of transformative justice. Made up of elder's voices in TJ, the book is outlined in three parts - stories of accountability, skills, worksheets, and toolkits, and stories and reflections of mistakes and (importantly) the mistake-making process.
Through storytelling we can begin to imagine what we want our world to look like through the lens of transformative justice. Secondly, the book gathers a few guides for harm reduction and community organising in various settings, including child sexual abuse, parties, and mental health crises. Lastly, as though a balm for my mounting anxiety, the third section generously shares the experiences of practitioners making mistakes, and sets expectations about the messiness of the TJ process.
This is a how to book and it's recommended that the reader gets acquainted with the whys of TJ. A good starting for those who are not familiar with TJ is this article
I still have questions about the process after reading the book:
-Should this be practiced with anarchist principles (democratic principles) or something else?
-Is there a difference between when TJ is chosen out of necessity vs created because of manner of principle?
-If certain community members should be excluded from the process, not just if they are bad faith actors, but because it's clear that they come to the process with intentions conflicting to the healing process, and if so
-Who decides who gets to be excluded?
-Or should everyone's intentions should be honored because all intentions are valid and have to be addressed for the community to buy into the process
-If there are differences between working with organic communities (eg. nuclear families) vs communities created because of the shared experience of harm (eg. a group of survivors)
As I explore restorative justice and community building in my work, a case presented itself and it continues to stick with me. A teen client has been routinely sexually abused by her stepfather since a few years ago. Her mother called a family meeting when she was told of the abuse, where they accused her of lying and being the black mark of the family. There was a religious intervention to rid her of sins. The only person who she felt was more supportive was her uncle, although she wasn't sure if he was a completely safe figure. Eventually, she reached out to seek formal help out of desperation. Unfortunately, the fallout was that she was brought to a shelter and her phone taken away, with no further intervention and a plan to return her to the family unit. Her mother said she will kill her when she gets back.
If this is community intervention, how can this process create less harm and more healing than the state intervention, given that the state also creates harm through systemic racism, dismissal of very valid religious and cultural interventions, separation of the family unit, and monitoring and control of parental figures, especially women?
Through storytelling we can begin to imagine what we want our world to look like through the lens of transformative justice. Secondly, the book gathers a few guides for harm reduction and community organising in various settings, including child sexual abuse, parties, and mental health crises. Lastly, as though a balm for my mounting anxiety, the third section generously shares the experiences of practitioners making mistakes, and sets expectations about the messiness of the TJ process.
This is a how to book and it's recommended that the reader gets acquainted with the whys of TJ. A good starting for those who are not familiar with TJ is this article
I still have questions about the process after reading the book:
-Should this be practiced with anarchist principles (democratic principles) or something else?
-Is there a difference between when TJ is chosen out of necessity vs created because of manner of principle?
-If certain community members should be excluded from the process, not just if they are bad faith actors, but because it's clear that they come to the process with intentions conflicting to the healing process, and if so
-Who decides who gets to be excluded?
-Or should everyone's intentions should be honored because all intentions are valid and have to be addressed for the community to buy into the process
-If there are differences between working with organic communities (eg. nuclear families) vs communities created because of the shared experience of harm (eg. a group of survivors)
As I explore restorative justice and community building in my work, a case presented itself and it continues to stick with me. A teen client has been routinely sexually abused by her stepfather since a few years ago. Her mother called a family meeting when she was told of the abuse, where they accused her of lying and being the black mark of the family. There was a religious intervention to rid her of sins. The only person who she felt was more supportive was her uncle, although she wasn't sure if he was a completely safe figure. Eventually, she reached out to seek formal help out of desperation. Unfortunately, the fallout was that she was brought to a shelter and her phone taken away, with no further intervention and a plan to return her to the family unit. Her mother said she will kill her when she gets back.
If this is community intervention, how can this process create less harm and more healing than the state intervention, given that the state also creates harm through systemic racism, dismissal of very valid religious and cultural interventions, separation of the family unit, and monitoring and control of parental figures, especially women?
October 22, 2022
Suosittelen tätä kirjaa kaikille, jotka esimerkiksi #punkstoon tai #hippiestoon keskellä kaipaavat keinoja käsitellä yhteisöissään tapahtunutta ja tapahtuvaa väkivaltaa, kaltoinkohtelua ja puuttumattomuutta. Niille, jotka nyt tahtovat muuttaa omaa harrastusporukkaa, musaskeneä tai järjestötoimintaa parempaan suuntaan. Niille, joita on satutettu mutta jotka eivät saa tai usko saavansa tai eivät ole saaneet riittävää tukea tai oikeutta tuomioistuimissa. Niille, joiden kavereita on satutettu ja joissa palaa halu TEHDÄ JOTAIN. Niille, jotka ovat satuttaneet ja haluavat muuttua. Niille, jotka ovat katsoneet tätä kaikkea sivusta, kun eivät ole tienneet, mitä tehdä.
Tämä kirja ei ole selostus siitä, miksi ns. TJ (transformative justice) olisi parempi vaihtoehto valtion kriminaalipolitiikalle, eikä se myöskään ole akateemiseen tutkimustietoon pohjautuva arviointi TJ-toiminnan vahvuuksista ja heikkouksista. Sen sijaan se on kuvaus ruohonjuuritason aktivistien ja järjestöjen kehittämistä toimintamalleista ja kokoelma heidän tarinoitaan. Lukijan ei tarvitse olla abolitionisti tai anarkisti saadakseen teoksesta irti paljon hyvää ja hyödyllistä: maailmaan mahtuu paljon vahingollista käytöstä, jota ei ole listattu lakikirjaan.
Koska kirjan tekijät ovat angloamerikkalaisia, jotkin ohjeet vaikuttavat pohjoismaisesta lukijasta vähintään kummallisilta elleivät jopa haitallisilta, ja etenkin yksi alkupuolen tarinoista oli minusta enemmän luotaanlyövä kuin inspiroiva. Toisinaan lukeminen vaatii esiymmärrystä angloamerikkalaisesta yhteiskunnallisesta kontekstista ja sikäläisten aktivistien ja rodullistettujen / seksuaalisten / sukupuolisten (vähemmistö)ryhmien jargonin tuntemusta. Lisäksi jotkin jenkkinäkökulmasta transformatiiviset käytännöt, kuten sovittelu, ovat Suomessa jo vakiintuneet osaksi instituutioita.
Kokoelma (tai suurin osa sen teksteistä) on joka tapauksessa lukemisen arvoinen: monet esitellyt strategiat vaikuttavat suoraan sovellettavilta tai helposti mukautettavilta, ja teos tarjoaa hyvät eväät ihmiselle, joka haluaa aloittaa maailmanparannuksen omasta yhteisöstään.
Tämä kirja ei ole selostus siitä, miksi ns. TJ (transformative justice) olisi parempi vaihtoehto valtion kriminaalipolitiikalle, eikä se myöskään ole akateemiseen tutkimustietoon pohjautuva arviointi TJ-toiminnan vahvuuksista ja heikkouksista. Sen sijaan se on kuvaus ruohonjuuritason aktivistien ja järjestöjen kehittämistä toimintamalleista ja kokoelma heidän tarinoitaan. Lukijan ei tarvitse olla abolitionisti tai anarkisti saadakseen teoksesta irti paljon hyvää ja hyödyllistä: maailmaan mahtuu paljon vahingollista käytöstä, jota ei ole listattu lakikirjaan.
Koska kirjan tekijät ovat angloamerikkalaisia, jotkin ohjeet vaikuttavat pohjoismaisesta lukijasta vähintään kummallisilta elleivät jopa haitallisilta, ja etenkin yksi alkupuolen tarinoista oli minusta enemmän luotaanlyövä kuin inspiroiva. Toisinaan lukeminen vaatii esiymmärrystä angloamerikkalaisesta yhteiskunnallisesta kontekstista ja sikäläisten aktivistien ja rodullistettujen / seksuaalisten / sukupuolisten (vähemmistö)ryhmien jargonin tuntemusta. Lisäksi jotkin jenkkinäkökulmasta transformatiiviset käytännöt, kuten sovittelu, ovat Suomessa jo vakiintuneet osaksi instituutioita.
Kokoelma (tai suurin osa sen teksteistä) on joka tapauksessa lukemisen arvoinen: monet esitellyt strategiat vaikuttavat suoraan sovellettavilta tai helposti mukautettavilta, ja teos tarjoaa hyvät eväät ihmiselle, joka haluaa aloittaa maailmanparannuksen omasta yhteisöstään.
November 8, 2021
This was such an insightful read. I liked how each chapter is an essay written by a different activist / organizer offering both theoretical and practictal ideas and perspectives. The book is rooted in an intersectional feminist perspective that focuses on the needs of survivors (particularly of domestic violence), while providing concrete information and suggestions to meet victims' needs without calling the police or using the traditional CJS. I enjoyed the explanation of the harms that the system causes, particularly for marginalized folks and the presentation of principles of transformative justice, community building/accountability and organizing, and alternative forms of accountability that aren't rooted in punishment and social exclusion.
Read
August 9, 2020A mixed bag. Many articles are too generic and high-level. Others are deep and visceral, written with nuance and sensitivity, and providing clear ways to contextualize and carry out TJ and related activities (e.g., vent diagrams) against complex, real world examples (e.g,. Zahra’s story). A common problem that grates me in much of this literature, and in this volume as well, is the reckless pushing of pseudoscience and “alternative” medicine, especially homeopathy. Perhaps the strongest point is the variety of voices and spaces covered.
February 3, 2021
This book is not pretending to be a road map. Instead it relays messy lessons, low points, failures, and moments of real transformation that come from a dedication to trial and error. It makes the reader feel that they could enact transformative justice themselves because there are no experts and no hard and fast rules. This book encourages creativity, perseverance, boundaries, compassion and an imagination vast enough to dream of a world outside of the Prison Industrial Complex. I will be returning to this book for reminders of what's possible.
October 10, 2020
Spent a lot of time going over this book, and will still be discussing some chapters with a book club, and overall this book is really helpful and a good introduction/gateway for transformative justice. Love the practical advice and techniques
April 16, 2021
Required reading.
January 23, 2021
I feel like I should say something because this is a life changing book and just giving it a rating isn’t enough. I learned so much from this and will be re-reading parts of it because of how helpful it was. It in so many ways answers the question of how do you heal (as both the perpetrator and the victim, and how everyone is both of these) from harm in all forms - where do you start and how do you progress, and how do you navigate relationships such that healing and trust is centered. Also I loved the argument against cancel culture which was something I’d been grappling with for a while. I felt so called out but also so grounded by this book and it felt like therapy to read. Just so grateful that this book exists and can not recommend it enough
May 30, 2022
soooo helpful for anyone interested in TJ but particularly for facilitators !!
February 19, 2020
An unbelievably useful and excellent collection of work on transformative justice, including what it is, what it can (and can't!) do, how its practice has evolved through success and failure and culture, and just a whole bunch of other useful stuff. Can't recommend highly enough either for people who want to learn about TJ or for people who think they know it all.
October 29, 2020
This collection of essays, interviews, and exercises, varied so much. I found many of them helpful, but others weren't memorable at all. Some of them reframed conflict and abuse such as the essay about what to do if you've harmed someone. Some pieces were very instructive, some others were simply sharing experiences. I think of transformative justice and community accountability, as a topic, as kind of emerging theory. So sometimes I don't feel it has all the answers or responses to tensions, contradictions, or questions. But I think overall, transformative justice and community accountability should be practiced (not just theorized) in organizations as a way to make them more resilient and understanding of harm and accountability. I find On Survival to be a good resource.
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