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Text of the page (random words):
if accountability wasn t scary it will never be easy or comfortable but what if it wasn t scary what if our own accountability wasn t something we ran from but something we ran towards and desired appreciated held as sacred what if we cherished opportunities to take accountability as precious opportunities to practice liberation to practice love to practice the kinds of people elders to be and souls we want to be to practice that which we can only practice in real time after all we can only practice courage when we are afraid we can only practice taking accountability when we have wronged or harmed or hurt practice yields the sharpest analysis accountability is not a destination it is a skill we can build and practice it is an art a craft an alchemy we can learn how to wield just as we have learned how to wield hurt and shame and fear if accountability is a skill we value then we must make room and make commitments to practice it ourselves each day each week each year we can start small and build up our skills from there we can start with our everyday relationships and those closest to us our families our friends our partners our coworkers the earth we can start with our self accountability and the ways that we don t show up for ourselves we can acknowledge how most of us are in an abusive relationship with ourselves we blow past our own boundaries we punish and beat ourselves up in terrible ways we can start with the ways we treat and talk to ourselves ways that we would clearly recognize as abuse if it were being done to another person after all our abusive relationship with ourselves lays the groundwork for an abusive world what if we embraced accountability as a reflection of our undeniable incredible tender humanity as a magnificent example of what it means to be human and flawed and in relationship with one another what if we welcomed the quickening of our pulse and the beating of our heart as signals of being alive and caring and what is most important to us our relationships with each other what if we listened to that fear the fear of losing someone important to us or of losing ourselves what if we rushed towards our own accountability and understood it as a gift we can give to ourselves and those hurting from our harm what if we understood our accountability not as some small insignificant act but as an intentional drop in an ever growing river of healing care and repair that had the potential to nourish comfort and build back trust on a large scale carving new paths of hope and faith through mountains of fear and unacknowledged pain for generations what if we understood the harms we ve caused and have been part of allowing not as things that don t need to be tended to or things that will blow over or be forgotten about in time but instead as one small part of a collective gaping wound that we have been taught to pretend away that sits in the middle of our hearts our relationships our families our movements our country our world what if we all understood our parts individually and collectively in that collective gaping wound what if we could understand that in a violent and oppressive world the work of love is never done what if accountability wasn t rooted in punishment revenge or superficiality but rooted in our values growth transformation healing freedom and liberation what if the work of accountability was held as so supremely sacred that people who got to practice it truly practice it were considered lucky and those who had the honor of supporting it and witnessing it were also changed for the better from its power what if we understand that no amount of tough love or punishment could ever hold a candle to the long and hard labor fear and pain of facing our demons and our traumas what if we learned to desire the challenging and the transformative instead of the easy and the comfortable after all comfort and transformation do not live on the same block what if we stopped romanticizing transformation and genuinely understood that true transformation requires a death and birth a letting go and a starting anew what if we spent more time practicing accountability not just talking about it so often we want other people to be accountable but what if we practiced our own accountability more what if we started with the small things and built up our skills for the big things what if we remembered that addressing the small things between us helps to prevent the big things what if we talked with each other about the things we re trying to be more accountable for what if we built relationships where we could have nuanced conversations about accountability shame fear guilt embarrassment insecurity trauma and healing what if we took more time to dream accountability what it could be and the kind of magic it could grow what we need in order to practice it more and better both individually and collectively what if accountability was so normalized so everyday so run of the mill that it was second nature that it was our default that it was something that everyone knew about and you could easily pass a group of children and youth of any age casually talking about it what if accountability wasn t scary it will never be easy or comfortable but what if it wasn t scary what if our own accountability wasn t something we ran from but something we ran towards and desired appreciated held as sacred what if we cherished opportunities to take accountability as precious opportunities to practice liberation to practice love comments off on dreaming accountability filed under writing tagged as accountability dreaming self accountability transformative justice january 9 2019 6 13 pm transformative justice a brief description photo of redwood trees taken from below forming a circle overhead with sun peaking through the branches and trees this was written for a transformative justice tj intervention i led and i m sharing it here for others to use in their work it was meant to be a brief description for those who are not as familiar with the framework and orientation of tj and do not have the time or capacity to read a large long document it is not a history of tj nor a complete naming of every part of tj or even a thorough fleshing out of all that is named here it is an introductory description of work that can be hard to describe it is meant to be a starting point not an end point i hope it may be useful for some of you transformative justice tj is a political framework and approach for responding to violence harm and abuse at its most basic it seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence and or engaging in harm reduction to lessen the violence tj can be thought of as a way of making things right getting in right relation or creating justice together transformative justice responses and interventions 1 do not rely on the state e g police prisons the criminal legal system i c e foster care system though some tj responses do rely on or incorporate social services like counseling 2 do not reinforce or perpetuate violence such as oppressive norms or vigilantism and most importantly 3 actively cultivate the things we know prevent violence such as healing accountability resilience and safety for all involved state responses to violence reproduce violence and often traumatize those who are exposed to them especially oppressed communities who are already targeted by the state it is important to remember that while many people choose not to call the police many communities can t call the police because of reasons such as fear of deportation harassment state sanctioned violence sexual violence previous convictions or inaccessibility tj was created by and for many of these communities e g indigenous communities black communities immigrant communities of color poor and low income communities communities of color people with disabilities sex workers queer and trans communities it is important to remember that many of these people and communities have been practicing tj in big and small ways for generations trying to create safety and reduce harm within the dangerous conditions they were and are forced to live in for example undocumented immigrant women in domestic violence relationships disabled people who are being abused by their caretakers and attendants sex workers who experience sexual assault or abuse or poor children and youth of color who are surviving child sexual abuse have long been devising ways to reduce harm stay alive and create safety and healing outside of state systems whether or not these practices have been explicitly named as transformative justice tj is an abolitionist framework that understands systems such as prisons police and i c e as sites where enormous amounts of violence take place and as systems that were created to be inherently violent in order to maintain social control tj works to build alternatives to our current systems which often position themselves as protectors while simultaneously enacting the very forms of violence they claim to condemn violence does not happen in a vacuum and tj works to connect incidences of violence to the conditions that create and perpetuate them it acknowledges that we must work to end conditions such as capitalism poverty trauma isolation heterosexism cis sexism white supremacy misogyny ableism mass incarceration displacement war gender oppression and xenophobia if we are truly going to end cycles of intimate and sexual violence tj recognizes that we must transform the conditions which help to create acts of violence or make them possible often this includes transforming harmful oppressive dynamics our relationships to each other and our communities at large tj invites us to not only respond to current incidences of violence but to also prevent future violence from happening thereby breaking generational cycles of violence tj works to respond to immediate needs in a way that moves us closer to what we ultimately long for in other words how can we respond to violence in ways that not only address the current incident of violence but also help to transform the conditions that allowed for it to happen we must work to respond to current violence and its impacts in a way that does not undermine our long term visions for preventing violence responding to violence and ultimately ending violence what would it take to not only respond to rape but to end rape to not only respond to domestic violence but to end domestic violence to end child abuse to end bullying to end all forms of abuse tj is community based but it is not enough to simply not call the cops because many of our community responses to violence can be just as harmful as state responses and can sometimes be more emotionally devastating due to the breaking and loss of relationship family and community though state reform is important and useful to reduce harm tj focuses on community because we believe there is more possibility for transformation in our communities than the state our communities are not perfect and have also internalized the state and its tactics e g shame blame revenge isolation many survivors have shared their traumatic stories of not only how the state responded to them when they reported but also how their communities responded to them when they came forward as survivors often survivors are shamed blamed isolated exiled attacked or threatened with violence by their communities we must push ourselves to move beyond just saying no cops no prisons and move towards true transformation of violent behavior and conditions this is why it is critical that tj is not simply the absence of the state and violence but the presence of the values practices relationships and world that we want it is not only identifying what we don t want but proactively practicing and putting in place things we want such as healthy relationships good communication skills skills to de escalate active or live harm and violence in the moment learning how to express our anger in ways that are not destructive incorporating healing into our everyday lives in tj interventions we work to actively practice things such as healing and accountability for everyone involved not only for the survivor and the person who committed the violence tj responses are an opportunity for us to not only address incidences of violence harm and abuse but to also take stock of and collectively build the kinds of relationships and communities that could intervene in instances of violence as well as prevent violence we can ask ourselves what kinds of community infrastructure can we create to support more safety transparency sustainability care and connection e g a network of community safe houses that those in danger can use an abundance of community members who are skilled at leading interventions to violence what are the skills we need to be able to prevent respond to heal from and take accountability for harmful violent and abusive behaviors what do survivors and people who have caused harm need why do survivors and people who have caused harm have so few options in our community what are some of the harmful ways that we treat each other that help set the stage for violence and abuse and how can we change this ultimately tj understands that we have a collective responsibility when it comes to violence and that no one is born knowing how to rape or torture these are learned behaviors tj is a collective response to violence within our communities and it requires that we understand that it is not about locking up a few bad apples but that violence is a necessary norm in our current society and actively encouraged the current rates of domestic and sexual violence are at epidemic levels and violence against oppressed communities is extremely pervasive violence is collectively enabled has a collective impact and requires a collective response this does not excuse people s harmful behavior or mean that a person who has caused harm or been violent doesn t need to be accountable for their actions but it does mean that we need to understand the context in which harm and violence happen tj interventions can take different forms but more often than not they include 1 supporting survivors around their healing and or safety and working with the person who has harmed to take accountability for the harm they ve caused 2 building community members capacities so that they can support the intervention as well as heal and or take accountability for any harm they were complicit in and 3 building skills to prevent violence from occurring and supporting community members skills to interrupt violence while it is happening most tj interventions involve a community accountability process where a few members of the community work directly with the person who harmed to take accountability for the harm they ve caused this process in the best case scenario works so that the person who caused harm understands their actions and the impact they had on the survivor s and others involve...