"It doesn't make sense to say "believe all survivors" if we don't also remember that most of us are survivors, which includes most people who cause harm. What we mean is we are tired of being silenced, dismissed, powerless in our pain, hurt over and over. Yes. But being loud is different from being whole, or even being heard, being cared for, being comforted, being healed. Being able to destroy is different from being able to generate a future where harm isn't happening all around us."

- Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us, and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

Guys I will defend NAMOR until death do me part. Yes he killed the queen of wakanda. He fucking drowned her and probably a lot of other fictional people too. But am I the only one reading into the theme that imperialism pits marginalized groups of people against each other.  and by doing that it can cause drastic affects in marginalized communities that might make us lose sight of the systems in place that’s function is to harm us. And by succumbing to vengeance we only cause more damage to ourselves.

I would even personally understand if Shuri killed Namor but just imagine the effect It would’ve had on his people. If shuri had killed Namor I would still think the best option is for the people of Atlantis to forgive her and understand what she was going through.  but honestly how could you ask that of them 2 when all they see is someone who killed their Protector just like namor did to shuri killing her mom. If they don’t want perpetual war at some point somebody is gonna have to forgive somebody else and it’s better if it’d be earlier than later so less damage is caused.

It’s either forgiveness or damnation on both empires and never actually dealing with any of the problems that got them they’re just worsening them.

Neither of them are the center of the problem at the end of the day in the story. The problem is Those who want to cause Instability with vibranium. The battle between their armies is just causing both fictional empires unnecessary harm. They Need to stop their war and if they really want to reduce these kinds of tragedy. They need to focus their strength on those who threaten their empire/communities and who oppress people across the marvel Cinematic universe. if they want to reduce harm they need to kiss and make up.  They need to fight together and not against each other anymore.

That’s a strong fucking message about how we all need to stop falling for scapegoats. And how we all need to become more critical of our justice system for Blinding us by seeking vengeance instead of healing The wounds it has caused.  how we need to become more critical of just actively causing our communities more harm instead of trying to actually reduce the harm. By radically changing systems that keep people oppressed. and that’s how I’m choosing to connect to the story the protagonist, antagonist, and team that worked on Wakanda forever presented us. 

[11/01/23] Announcement:

Today, we find it necessary to make a public announcement regarding recent events within our Discord server, which serves as the primary source of communication for our global community. While the decision to share these incidents publicly is not obligatory, we believe transparency is essential. Over the past several weeks, we have encountered four consecutive instances, three of which originated from the same group of youth, and one involving an adult, where white (or one white-passing) individuals failed to acknowledge their privilege and perpetuated harm against youth of color. These incidents escalated to the point where our youth of color were incessantly guilt-tripped, subjected to derogatory language, and pressured to maintain unwavering composure. The abandonment by two recently registered volunteers, without any communication to our Black and Brown admins, left us exhausted and disoriented, compounded by one particular individual's decision to reach out to multiple other white participants, thanking them for their supposed support.

These transgressions ranged from the dissemination of misinformation about Indigenous communities and repeatedly dismissing the lived experiences of BIPOC to perpetuating racist, colorist, zionist, Islamophobic, and/or antisemitic rhetoric, often simultaneously depending on the individual, causing further harm and distress within our community. While all of these occurrences began in public channels, their harm was frequently amplified through private direct messages and threads with Black and Brown youth, likely emboldened by an assumed absence of a unified collective.

Upon gathering the courage to express the toll of these incidents on us, the youth of color, we were brought to tears by the profound realization that we were not regarded as humans in the eyes of those involved. As a horizontally organized group, our registered volunteers and community members alike collectively resolved to all work toward holding one another accountable, prioritizing concrete actions over superficial apologies. The subsequent journey has already borne witness to significant growth, particularly among our more privileged participants, serving as a profound and challenging learning experience for our entire community. The turmoil brought about by these events has only reaffirmed our unwavering commitment to love, community, and transformative justice. And despite everything we have faced, we still harbor no hate against the individuals described above. In fact, we extended an invitation to one of the main perpetrators to join us for an educational movie night centered on casteism. Unfortunately, though, it appears their will to make amends and truly learn was only cosmetic.

Moving forward, we expect all Discord participants to uphold our social contract upon joining and to embrace the potential for constructive dialogue and feedback, to embrace discomfort! Since our inception in 2016, we have meticulously nurtured a sanctuary for youth of color, and it is only recently that admin of color have begun to question this foundational truth. Our youth are tired of nicely asking for our humanization by those who claim to care for our liberation. We refuse to compromise our sense of safety and humanity in the home we have painstakingly built. We extend an earnest invitation to all to join us in this collective journey of learning and growth, fostering a resilient and compassionate environment for the foreseeable future, and generations to come.

— BFP’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team, Health team, and both racialized and non-racialized volunteers from every committee

Anyone who excludes paraphiles from anarchism is not punk. If you police people's attractions and identity, your being authoritarian and you need to kill the cop in your head. Equating attractions and "thought crimes" to actual abuse is promoting fascist rhetoric.

No one is inherently harmful for existing. Being a paraphile does not equate to being a predator and saying so is being anti self-governance (saying people are unfit to govern themselves is an authoritarian talking point). That is a myth created by conservative groomer panic which sadly ignores the needs of grooming victims. Rather than demonizing and policing paraphilias, we should be creating open honest dialogue and adressing people's needs.

Being punk means imagining a radically transformed vision of justice for ALL people. If paraphiles are not considered or accounted for in a utopian future, it's still a dystopia. A radically transformed world includes paraphilias in comprehensive sex education and helps people establish healthy boundaries. We will still need an age of sexual and romantic consent in a transformed world, but using that to justify an oppressive state or forced institutionalization lacks imagination for alternative forms of self and peer governance and youth liberation.

Sure, it's ok to prevent abuse and harmful contact and to provide care for victims, but when you start condemning paraphiles for simply existing you are promoting systemic harm and oppression. Attractions and thoughts do not equate to actions. A transformed world helps both victims and abusers to recover and move on. No one is inherently irredeemable or needs to die for the sake of some twisted form of punitive justice.

We should be finding ways to to support paraphiles and reduce harm. Fascists think that the only way to prevent abuse is to censor and erase the existence of queer people and paraphiles, but to be punk is to accept people's lived realities and see people as they are rather than comparing them to some flawed ideal of a person that doesn't actually exist. There is no default identity and any attempt to define a "natural default human" has already been reduced to a false ideal construct that doesn't exist in reality. In the transhumanist sense, the lines between natural and artificial are basically arbitrary and made up. Normality is an illusion created to maintain the status quo.

i think the hardest pill for leftists/progressives/liberals/whatever you want to call yourself to swallow is that it’s not that simple. it’s not that easy.

i was the victim of a violent crime, and i personally do not want my perpetrator to go to prison. i do not think it will serve to protect anyone in the future or help me heal from what happened. but that’s my own feeling about my own experience. i do not get to dictate what other victims and their loved ones feel is justice for them. i support transformative and restorative justice as an option, but it can’t be the only one.

i work with young kids (2mo-7yrs) and try to keep up to date on discussions about child development to make sure i’m aware of what behavior is considered age appropriate. i ended up following a mom on tiktok who has been sharing her story about her son (who remains anonymous) and his progressive diagnoses of ODD, conduct disorder, and eventually antisocial personality disorder. he has threatened to kill his family, physically assaulted and severely harmed his family and neighbors, damaged private and public property, and has been arrested on several felony charges before his sixteenth birthday. this mom is distraught. he has no known history of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, was raised in a stable household where all his needs were met. he tried to kill one of the kids at the psychiatric hospital he was placed in, eventually leading to the state taking custody of him because it wasn’t safe for his family to be around him. not every person with his diagnoses is like him. but he is. and there needs to be a solution for him and his family.

my cousin was born to parents who were on a host of illicit drugs throughout the pregnancy and her early life, leading to her and her brother being placed in foster care. they were adopted by my aunt and it was revealed that my cousin has an intellectual disability called borderline intellectual functioning because her brain couldn’t develop properly in utero. fast forward to now, she’s in her early 20s and my aunt is raising the baby she had after being impregnated by her abusive boyfriend (we tried to get her to leave, called the police, my uncle nearly killed the guy) because she literally does not have the ability to raise a baby. she cannot process the complex thoughts you need to take care of a baby - her brain literally can’t do it. so now my aunt and uncle are raising their grandchild while caring for their daughter, who will never be able to live independently. was it ethical for that child to be born? i don’t know! i don’t even know if it was ethical for my cousins to be born! but i know it’s not as easy as “everyone should be able to have kids whenever they want and if you say otherwise its eugenics”.

people aren’t political issues. they’re people. and pretending like you have the answer to every problem doesn’t make you better or more in control; it makes you disillusioned. it’s not that easy. it never has been.

Hope this isn’t too random, but what are your thoughts on transformative justice? Some of my favorite prison abolitionist writers also advocate for transformative justice, but I know it’s not a universal belief among them (Sorry if you’ve discuss it before, I’m a new follower!)

hi anon!

Transformative justice is definitely a topic I'm very drawn to (have discussed it a little bit in this post in a psych abolition context.) For any followers who don't know what TJ is, I'll post this quote from Mia Mingus:

"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...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." -Transformative Justice: A brief Description

A great resource for learning more is Transform Harm, which was a whole section on transformative justice. I'd also really reccomend reading Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

For me, when I'm thinking about psych and prison abolition, something I keep coming back to is that we can't replace these violent systems with a one-size-fits-all solution. Often when people are aren't as familiar with abolition ask us what our solutions are going to be to addressing harm without policing, prisons, and psych wards, they expect one answer in response--essentially creating another system to replace the current one. But it's not enough just to replace psych wards with peer respite, or prisons with community accountability processes. I think as abolitionists, we need to be able to embrace the fact that we will need many different approaches to address harm depending on the communities and contexts involved. In my mind, transformative justice should absolutely be one of the approaches.

And I like the way transformative justice focuses on building up existing efforts that communities are already doing, and transforming the conditions that are contributing to our communities experience of violence and harm. I also think that a lot of the most important transformative justice work is not necessarily labeled as transformative justice and that terminology is not always being used, because it's not terminology that the communities doing that work want to label it as, and i think it's important to expand any discussion of transformative justice beyond just what is labeled as TJ in organizing circles. Sometimes I think people categorize TJ as just community accountability processes and are unaware of how expansive TJ can be, and that can be really detrimental in terms of solidarity building and learning from all the work people are already just doing.

overall I think that transformative justice is a radical and important framework and is one of the approaches we should be engaging with as abolitionists, and that it's crucial for us to honor the work of those who have been engaging in TJ work for decades before it was named!

to my fellow organizers,

the communities we serve are not predatory job interviewers. they don't need nor want your impressively worded, complicated, and varied resumé. I fall into this trap a lot. when I facilitate affinity spaces and support groups, organize meetings, workshops, and retreats I hear the voice of my trauma saying "you HAVE to do more". but you know what? sometimes we don't need to do more. sometimes just existing in community with each other is enough for people.

I facilitate and organize trans and queer spaces but this applies to all of us doing systems change work - bigger, better, faster, stronger is not always the answer. listen to what your community tells you. really hear them. be with them. burnout and martyrdom are not glamorous, holding yourself to superhero standards does not make you worthy.

you are already worthy. worthy just by virtue of being here, fighting alongside all of us. I know how hard it is to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders but you are not alone, not all of it is on you.

let yourself grow; let yourself breathe.

living in this world is hard and thankless, especially as a marginalized person. especially as one fighting for the end of our marginalization.

to my fellow organizers, you are enough and I am so proud of you for being here.

Extending heartfelt apologies to anyone who happened to see my reposts of Clementine Morrigan's writings over the past few days.

As a messy, traumatized Harpy committed to honoring all peoples' baseline humanity regardless of what they've done --as well as someone whose lifelong CPTSD is sssllloooowwwllllyyy healing as I embrace personal accountability, avoid B&W thinking, and extend grace and compassion to myself and others-- I was taken in by a lot of what Morrigan says about encouraging non-punitive modalities. I reposted her words without learning how she herself is actively complicit in perpetuating ongoing harm to others in leftist and liberal spheres, especially as the popularity of her podcast FUCKING CANCELLED grows.

In retrospect, I see that I was moved by Morrigan's writings primarily because they're a clever, zinger-filled repackaging of more genuine and nuanced essays penned by others. Namely, by queer Black folks and other more sophisticated and culturally rooted voices.

When I posted Morrigan's stuff, I had no idea about her partner Jay Manicom's forceful silencing of several BIPOC peers and partners they'd allegedly abused and made no amends to. I didn't realize that Morrigan was publicly weaponizing abolitionist and twelve-step language in order to defend Manicom's alleged ongoing violence and harm. Said harm includes sending legal threats to several survivors, femme PoC, after they'd repeatedly asked him to join them in a circle to hash things out. When these folks spoke out about their experiences, both Manicom and Morrigan were quick to frighten, shame, and silence them. (Even while simultaneously decrying similar acts perpetrated against credibly alleged serial perpetrators! Try to make it make sense!)

Comparing "cancel culture" to the carceral state by using appropriated language and concepts that Black and Indigenous activists have been cultivating and nurturing for centuries is not an approach I want to lend any credibility to. It's DARVO. White femme DARVO. That's messed up.

When a popular, charismatic young white woman, a self-described "powerhouse" and "controversial public figure", goes so far as to compare survivors' requests for basic accountability and community-wide responsibility to "acting like a cop", there's some straight-up pastel Q-Anon dog whistle "Guru Jagat" horseshit goin' down.

Recently, I observed Morrigan on a panel with several other speakers, all healers from various lineages whom I admire and trust. I enjoyed their talks a lot. But in spite of my initial enthusiasm for Morrigan's breezy social media writings, as soon as she launched into her very polished, practiced lip service to radical compassion and acceptance, red flags started popping up for me. BIG Russell Brand energy. (And most of you already know how I feel about THAT righteous broheim. I've been roasting him years.)

Observing Morrigan's onscreen presentation, my curiosity died almost instantly. I won't say I was shocked by her performativity. I did experience rolling waves of nausea. Whether it's a fair assessment or not, I parsed her almost instantly as yet another cult-of-personality cultivator who is using hierarchical tactics to center the comfort and safety of active, unapologetic abusers ahead of everyone else. Not okay. She may have the best intentions in the world, but NO THANK YOU.

Morrigan's particular approach to justice is not what I'm about. If it were, I'd still be hanging out with a whole lot of sketchy af people I met in various green rooms over the years and making a whole lot more money while we all dance together around similar cognitive dissonance in our professional lives as celebrities, pundits, and "righteous" preachers. Again, no thank you.

I wanted to fast-forward through Morrigan's portion of the presentation, but gritted my teeth through it out of respect for the panel's curator. The wild thing is, on paper, I agree with *so much of what she says*! Still, something felt very, very off. So I went and read up further, and finally understood why my heart was sinking, my stomach, churning.

I wholeheartedly respect that the healers who invited Morrigan onto this panel have a different, more generous perception of her. I'm not making this post to demonize or dehumanize Morrigan, her partner, her friends, her listenership, or anyone else who leans into ye olde "hurt people hurt people" tenets in order to make sense of various horrors committed by them or to them.

However, the FUCKING CANCELLED fan club is most assuredly not something I want to give my time, energy, or trust to any more than I would Amanda Palmer's, or Rosie O'Donnell's, or Rose McGowan's, or Lena Dunham's, or Asia Argento's, etc.

My casual shares of Morrigan's work were a mistake. Consider this post a personal retraction. If there are further reparations I should consider, please let me know. Especially if you're a transformative justice buddy who has been quietly observing my promotions of her and feelin' barfy because of it!

Please, please know that I wouldn't have boosted her bandwidth so blithely, had I dug a bit deeper. I hope no one was too hurt or freaked out by my ignorant shares.

My apologies and my love. In solidarity. May all beings be free from suffering. Ashe.

"therapy isn't a magic pill and many abusers will use therapy not to change, but to get sneakier with their manipulation tactics" =/= "abusers are born that way actually"

There is a dissonance issue that we still need to grapple with. The Left must stop trying so hard to separate people who are and are not criminals. Then, we need to revisit and process our Punishment kink. Justice does not now, nor has it ever come from the Criminal Legal System. The CLS can only offer retribution, which is something different. Police, prosecutors, judges, corrections officers only serve to uphold the system. That's their only real job. Keep boots on necks.

The need to seek justice for harms done is real, but the "justice" that many of us are seeking isn't an effective solution, and more often than not only serves to further reinforce systemic harm, spreading it around like a virus.

Criminality is subjective, and also, only a symptom. It's not the root disease, and until we stop frothing at the mouths to send people we don't like to jail or prison instead of dismantling those systems and building something that actually helps, we're going to be stuck in this cycle of never-ending horrors.

The Prison Industrial Complex must be abolished completely. That means that we need to start being a little bit more creative when it comes to what we want to see done with people who cause harm.

In order to make progress, we're going to have to face the fact that even people who have committed grave harms and injustices still have basic human rights.

As long as they breathe, and with the right approach, people can learn and grow. And even if some of them can't or choose not to, not trying is a reflection on us, not them.

When humans are kids, experts agree that we do not have the right to physically punish them or put them in cages when they mess up. Pet trainers also generally agree that you cannot punish an animal into good behavior. Between childhood and adulthood, however, there is a disconnect that happens with our brains, and suddenly it's justified and expected to use such practices on living humans that we perceive as adults.

I know what I am saying is counter to what we have been taught, but we don't have the natural right to confine or harm someone simply because they have done bad things. It's not about whether they deserve to be rehabilitated based on their merits. It's about the fact that our collective soul deserves the chance to help people instead of putting them in locked facilities to be assaulted, murdered, bullied, and extorted. We deserve a social agreement that recognizes that all people should have their basic humanity respected.

People can be reformed. Systems of Oppression cannot.

Isn’t it cute how white people are all like we should all stick together and fight racism. uwu look at me I’m an ally. until you actually tell them what racism is and what behaviors actually contribute to it and what behaviors don’t contribute to it. Then performist won’t want to hear you out anymore cuz you won’t feed into their white victimhood if you know what’s racist and what’s not. A lot of them won’t stick by u anymore because they know you’re one of those minorities that’s gonna focus on the marginalized communities of colors under attack by dominating white institutions instead. You’re gonna laugh at white people who clutch their pearls when they get called ‘Cracker Jacks’ then You’re gonna continue advocating against actual racism something white people benefit from. White people who cast out BIPOC because they don’t believe in reverse racism. We don’t share the same values. I think we both know that lol :) Also I’ve come across enough of you to know your whole stick together thing is an act.

i was collecting some transformative justice resources for one of our volunteers in our discord server so i figured i'd share some here too:

for more, check out the #clarification-center channel of our server! every day, links to novels, videos, articles, and more are dropped. and this is also the same channel folks asks their questions! even if it seems silly or you feel behind in your activist journey, we trust that every question comes from an authentic place of curiosity!

-- reaux (she/they)

yes, restorative justice includes people you consider immoral or people who have done horrific things. ultimately we cannot continue to rely on a carceral system and we need to abolish it in place of systems of care. no one should be made a spectacle to be put in "bad guy eternal suffering jail". sure self defense can be necessary and justifiable in some circumstances and the victims should be listened to, but we also cannot rely on a system that dishes out punishment arbitrarily after the fact rather than restoring what was damaged. I have heard some people say that restorative type of justice does not apply to X person because they are one of the "bad ones" and this is just not acceptable. any justice system which uses violence to maintain itself is cruel and unusual punishment regardless of who it's affecting. violence doesn't justify more violence except in the case of self defense and even then there are ways of pacifying violent people and helping them deescalate before things get too bad.

it is so fucking ridiculous to me when so-called leftists think along the lines of “if you’ve abused/raped/otherwise hurt someone you shouldn’t ever be allowed to become a different person and you have to be defined by that horrible thing your entire life.” like. okay. you just don’t want people to change. you’re just admitting it. you don’t care about rehabilitation and transformative justice you just want to punish people and then get rid of them

everybody causes harm

some images & words that i have magpie collected in recent years about transformative justice.

source

there is no one who will go through life without hurting someone else, full stop. a lot of people, understandably, feel shame when they cause harm. the unfortunate truth is that shame only ever obstructs us from real growth and transformation. shame results in appeasement, not accountability.

source

really take the time to study the difference. understanding that everybody harms and you're not a special villain for hurting others will cut the legs off of your shame a bit. and once you know that you do not want to just appease a person or situation, you can use the energy that you were feeding to shame to take steps toward real accountability instead.

source

full article

in answer to a question posed by @metamatar, "what's the message for those of us who have done someone wrong and have to live with it?" i am hoping you find these messages herein: we have all been harmed and we all cause harm; causing harm is not exceptional. what is exceptional is taking true accountability. and thru it, repairing the harm you caused. every time you practice this, you will be less likely to cause harm in that way again and your relationships will become healthier as both you and the other party start to trust that you are someone who repairs harm when caused.

transformative justice is something i genuinely believe in. i'm not an expert but i am happy to point anyone to more resources.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Wednesday (TV 2022) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Characters: Tyler Galpin Additional Tags: Angst, Dark fic, Prison, Execution, Death by lethal injection, Post-Canon, Essays, Social Justice, Discussion of Restorative Justice, Sad Ending, Hyde Tyler Galpin, Mentioned Marilyn Thornhill | Laurel Gates, Laurel gates sucks, essay at the bottom, Depressing, Short One Shot, Character Death, Bigotry & Prejudice, very brief mention of - Freeform, Needles, Author Commentary, Hurt Tyler Galpin Summary:

Tyler Galpin went on trial alongside Laurel Gates. He was sentenced to death.

(Plus a mini essay on restorative/transformative justice)