Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

We are doing the work of centuries. You don’t have to get it right in one process.

It’s not about pack hunting an external enemy, it’s about deep shifts in our own ways of being.

I just want people to try shit. Just try something. Write down what worked. Write down what didn’t work. And let’s just keep moving on. Let’s just keep going and collecting it.

CI experienced external pressures that affect other 501(c)(3) organizations in today’s environment. They are pressured to commodify concepts and practices, to adapt to funder-driven appeals to create institutionally identified or “trademarked” approaches and best practices, and to incorporate their efforts into the state institutions they have been resisting.

Then we remembered ourselves, remembered that trust is not earned—it is how we begin. It is the first thing we do.