Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

For example, the survivor may express goals such as the following: I wish the person doing harm were dead or experience the same harm they did to me. I wish the person doing harm could be publicly humiliated or hurt so that they would know they could never do this again. I wish this had never happened to me. I wish that I would feel the same as I felt before this ever happened. Allies may express ideas such as the following: I wish the survivor would have walked away. I wish the survivor would cut off all contact with the person doing harm. I wish the survivor would just move on. I wish someone else would deal with this. The person who did harm may want things like these: I wish everyone would just forgive me and forget about this. I wish everyone would understand that I was under a lot of pressure and cut me some slack. I wish everyone would know that the survivor deserved it—anybody would have done the same thing if they were in my shoes. I wish this had never happened.