Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from The Transformative Justice Movement is definitely one of the most important books I will read this year, if not this decade. Edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the text expands upon information offered by previous texts like The Revolution Starts at Home. As the editors state in the introduction, TRSAH was the "why" and Beyond Survival is the "how." This is severely needed because, while various transformative justice tactics and techniques have been used by communities over time, the process is almost always labor intensive, draining, and sometimes leaves everyone feeling worse off before they went in. That is not to say there have never been successes. This book includes many examples. But, many writers state that even the failures have something to teach and that rigid purity politics do not allow us to make mistakes and to grow. This book also tackles many different types of conflicts and events that may require accountability and transformative justice practices. Entries range from what many people think of when they hear TJ- sexual assault and intimate partner violence- to creating safer spaces for youth, LGBTQ parties, sex workers, and others.
Couched in between a beautiful foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and poetic afterword by adrienne marie brown is a slew of information from many wise voices. What struck me the most about this book is how kind, grounded, and realistic the ideas, stories, and strategies put forth were and how everyone presented these things with great humility. These are not people living in a fantasy world where suddenly the police can be avoided in every scenario. Rather than saying "don't call the cops, period," they say things like, "here are many things you can do instead, and if all else fails, here's how to deal with the cops if they arrive."
In the first section, "Making the Road by Dreaming: Stories of Accountability," we get a little bit of the "why" of transformative justice. This and many other parts of the book make it readable regardless of if you have read "The Revolution Starts at Home." As we progress through this section, we hit an excerpt from "Black Queer Feminism as Praxis" where we are told with brute honesty that it ain't gonna be pretty. These processes can suck and they cannot erase harm as if it never existed. Also included in this section is Kai Cheng Thom's "What to do if You've Been Abusive," which explores the reality that we are all capable of causing- and have caused- harm to others. Rather than reinforce cancel/callout culture's victim/perpetrator for life binary, Thom asks that we be kinder, gentler, and more realistic. "Doesn't the feminist saying go, 'We shouldn't be teaching people how not to get raped, we should be teaching people not to rape'? And if so, doesn't it follow that we shouldn't only support people who have survived abuse, but should also support people in learning not to abuse?" I want to be clear, Thom is not claiming that everyone is a rapist and a rape victim, but more like someone who rapes someone may also have a history of violent abuse from a parent that influences their decision making. Someone who survives rape may have also been abusive or toxic towards a partner in the past and may be afraid to come forward both because they were raped and because they are afraid of their past. Someone who pushes past boundaries at a party may also be struggling with alcoholism and PTSD. Someone whose boundaries were violated may be overwhelmed by memories where they violated others' boundaries. It is almost more exhausting and shame inducing to try to be only one thing on either side of that coin. By healing everyone, even though revenge feels very good in fantasy land, we are able to create safer environments for everyone, especially when they are victimized.
How many of us have called for the abolition of prisons and police through one side of our mouth while branding someone for life as forever boiled down to the worst thing they've done out of the other? I know I've done it. Many of these writings had me repeatedly asking myself, "Do I want to be righteous or do I want to be effective?" This is not to say that we remove room for survivors' pain, anger, revenge fantasies, and so on. Multiple writers discuss how venting (and "vent diagrams" of) our frustrations and kill-your-rapist fantasies in healthy ways can be quite healing. This is also not to say that many people who have done harm don't automatically respond with defensiveness and refusal to be accountable. There are stories of this in the book. What is being said is that many of us can and want to do better. Philly Stands Up discusses in their entry how often people came to them to confess that they'd done something harmful and wanted to be accountable and prevent it from happening again. Basically, if we truly want to transform our communities with as little police and prison involvement as possible, then we have to also leave room for those doing harm to be human, to change, to heal, and to be accountable.
The next section of the book, "We Got This: Tool Kits and Road Maps," is full of entries by various people and groups who have learned quite a lot through their trials in transformative justice work. All of the entries in this section had a ton of useful information to offer, but a few really stood out for me personally. These were: Fireweed Collective's, "When it all comes crashing down: Navigating crisis," Oakland Power Projects', "Maybe you don't have to call 911: Know your options," Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Mijente, and Puente Arizona's, "Excerpt From Community Defense Zone Starter Guide," and Safe OUTside the System Collective and Audrey Lorde Project's, "Excerpts from the Safer Party Toolkit." There are so many reasonable and creative ways that these groups and communities have come up with to prevent, manage, and deescalate conflicts. But, as this book makes quite clear, activist groups are not the only ones doing or capable of doing this work. These practices have been going on particularly in marginalized communities long before the words 'transformative justice' began being applied to them.
This leads us into part three, "We didn't call it TJ, but maybe it worked anyway? Messy, real stories." I have to say, I found these messy stories to be remarkably organized. It is in this section that we get to hear from sex worker and anti-violence proponents and what they have learned from their pratices to keep themselves and their communities safe. Sex workers have a ton of interesting and creative ways of doing this in a world where there is danger at every corner from both those intent on doing harm and those who claim to help. My favorite entry in this section was "Facing shame: From saying sorry to doing sorry," by Nathan Shara. This is another entry that really opened my eyes to the ways that all of us contain a massive amount of experiences where we have harmed and been harmed. Thinking of things this way seems to really invite healing from and for all parties. Slow, slow healing. Shara states in the beginning, "Solving violence is rarely as much about the moment at hand as it is about everything else the preceded it." And, "If we cannot reveal what we have done and what has been done to us without being seen as inferior, damaged, tainted, broken, monstrous, irreparable, and so on, then out of a core human drive toward dignity, we will not do it." Now, reading this review, I know some people may bristle and these quotes out of context. It may be difficult to think about some of the people who have harmed you or your friends as being deserving of kindness. Please consider still reading the larger texts before making a judgment based on ideological purity about what accountability and healing must always look like. In another favorite in this section: adrienne maree brown's, "What is/isn't transformative justice," where she discusses callout/cancel culture and asks, "Is this what we're here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherance to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there's no one left beside us?"
The final section, "What did we dream then, what do we know now? Movement histories and futures," we hear from "TJ Old Heads" about what they have learned in their work over the years and decades. The interviews with Shira Hassan and Mariame Kaba really stood out for me here as exceptional. Hassan offers all kinds of advice and information, including something I have discussed many times in my own circles. Regarding what she would like to see an end to in Transformative Justice: "There's this thing of everyone thinking all forms of violence are the same. And that all the tools we have are also the same. And they're actually really different for lots of reasons... where I think it gets tricky, and I think we're afraid to have these conversations, is that it's so important that everyone is validated in their experience of survival, and that my experience of sexual harrassment can dislocate me for years, and that is still different from someone else's experience of childhood sexual abuse." When Kaba is asked why she wants to do fewer trainings, she states, "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... I don't want people to feel that this work is something you have to get some certification in in order to be able to do." There is so much more wisdom in this section that I would have to copy the entire book to portray it. What I will say is that, once again, the common thread is humility, care, humanity, love, and an understanding that while "hurt people hurt people," it's also true that "healed people heal people.*"
*I did not invent this phrase. I saw it on a beautiful banner held by Let's Get Free.
This was also posted to my goodreads.
