Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

The Safe OUTside the System Collective started from the audacity of a small team of people who believed that we could prevent and intervene in violence without the police. For over a year, through weekly meetings, we discussed our experiences of violence and brainstormed responses. During these times, LGBTQ people of color were reporting physical attacks to us at least once a month, and two or three people were murdered each year in Central Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the NYPD was operating like an occupying army. It was common to walk home from the subway and see officers stationed on every block or large groups of police officers walking down the street. We had no choice but to create a community safety campaign. Our campaign recruited local businesses and organizations and trained them to recognize, prevent, and intervene in violence without relying on law enforcement. At first, we had no idea how to work on this, but we researched, experimented, and talked with the business owners themselves to understand how they already addressed violence and then worked with them to ensure that their strategies included LGBTQ people of color. At the time, we did not think we were doing something innovative. We just knew we needed to build new structures for our ultimate survival.