Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

transformative justice can’t be scaled. We know that TJ can’t be scaled because we know what scaling looks like. It looks like RJ, we’ve got that.

am a firm believer in the sentiment kill your rapist. And I think that you can be a firm believer in kill your rapist, and still practice transformative justice and community accountability. And that’s another tension that has to exist. And, I think the other truth is like, who’s doing the killing, in terms of, you know, this is why Survived and Punished is so necessary. Because like— Leah: Those are people who actually killed their rapists. Shira: These are people who have fought back, and when women of color fight back, the targeting increases and the state violence increases, and what TJ is trying to do is reduce the harm from state violence and to come up with other solutions.

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. And I don’t want people to feel like this is work that you have to get some certification in, in order to be able to do. I don’t want to contribute to that. To the extent that it’s useful for people to have political education together, that’s what we are hoping the trainings we’ve been doing are. That they’re in part political education, in part skill building, and also in part base building, so that we actually organize to be able to end these systems that are based in oppression. That oppress us. So, that’s why. I don’t want to do, like, the RJ thing, where everybody is now taking circle training, and, as a result of that, they think they know everything they need to know about RJ because they went to the circle training. I don’t want to be part of making that for CA [community accountability].

I also tell people, don’t minimize the effects of social media. Just cause you’re not on it doesn’t mean shit’s not happening that you’re just not aware of. And if you’re a facilitator, you not knowing information is the death knell of your facilitation ability! If a whole bunch of mess is happening outside of your knowledge, and you’re not paying any attention to it, and you’re the key coordinator for a process, then you’re gonna get blindsided, literally on all sides, when shit is hitting the fan and you are not in touch with that. So, it’s just not an option to pretend that there’s nothing happening out there.

We also have to stop acting like saying that somebody can’t be in a space is disposing of them. First and foremost, asking someone who has caused harm not to be in a space, particularly where the survivor would be, is actually a consequence of the action that they took that was harmful. It’s a consequence. It is not a punishment. A punishment would be taking this person’s liberty and locking them in a cage for three years, or a month, or ten days, because of the actions that they took. We are not taking people’s liberty through CA. We are just not. The idea of disposability in my mind is an idea that applies to the prison-industrial complex. OK? That’s it. It is not boundaries. It is not a sense of you are not allowed to do this here. It is not, you know, people say things like, “You can’t ban people.” Well, yes we can. If folks do the same thing over and over and over again, and refuse to take accountability for that, and don’t want to learn, they can actually be banned from a particular space. We do have to figure out the other side of that. Which is, somebody does take accountability, and does what people asked them to do. When are they allowed to rejoin community in good standing? That is something we have yet to figure out how to do in consistent fashion. Because you’re not gonna be able to say to somebody, “You can never come back to society,” and expect those people to join accountability processes. Why would anybody do that? What currently exists in our culture tha...

I’ve never posited TJ as, quote, “the antidote” to the PIC [prison-industrial complex]. For me, TJ is a way to do the work that needs to happen to make sure that we’re transforming our relationships with each other because, ultimately, I hope that this helps foster the conditions necessary for a world without these horrific death-making institutions that I want to see dismantled.

I’ve gotten really distressed about the attempt to say that RJ is the alternative to the PIC or TJ is the alternative to the PIC. No, it’s not actually the alternative. It isn’t at all. It is an ideology, a framework, a political vision, a practice. All those things are true, and it’s simply a way to shift and transform our relationships to allow us to build the conditions under which we will no longer need prisons and surveillance and policing, and all these other things that are part of the PIC that we, as abolitionists, want to dismantle.

transformation is not a realistic goal within a process. It is a realistic goal within a lifetime.

Are you having this process while the crisis is actually still ongoing in a very severe way? This is not a good time. Crisis intervention is its own thing, OK? It is not process time when you’re in crisis intervention mode.

When he was making that apology, he wasn’t necessarily saying ‘beat me up.’ But he was saying, ‘do anything you want to me, I deserve it.’ That way, once you do, he can walk away and say, ‘Okay, now I’m done, wipe my hands and walk away. They’ve done everything they can already.’” Some may fear a violent response most, but some could also welcome a quick but dramatically symbolic payback. “Kicking ass,” a familiar symbol of community rage, can also be a substitute for a process of repair and change.