The Modern Roots of Transformative Justice

Summary

The video, featuring Mimi Kim and Shira Hassan, delves into the evolution and foundational aspects of transformative justice, originating from grassroots methods by communities often marginalized and criminalized, such as sex workers and undocumented individuals. It highlights the importance of self-accountability and community-led solutions over state-reliant systems, which have historically failed them. Both speakers reflect on the journey from informal practices to recognized movements, and the current challenge of maintaining the essence of transformative justice amidst cooptation by traditional systems and organizations.

Highlights

• Mimi Kim talks about founding INCITE! and how it was a pivotal moment for the anti-violence movement. 🎉
• Shira Hassan shares about the organic development of community accountability and transformative justice. 🚀
• Communities developed methods like 'bad date sheets' to protect each other outside of state systems. 🛡️
• Young people created their own food banks as a response to systemic barriers like ID requirements. 🍏
• Making relationships with drug dealers to distribute Narcan is seen as transformative justice. 🌍
• Shift in anti-violence movements from pro-criminalization to more restorative practices. 🔄
• Concerns about the cooptation of transformative justice by traditional law enforcement partnerships. ⚠️
• Emphasis on learning from past movements to guide current and future transformative justice efforts. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Transformative justice originated from grassroots and marginalized communities seeking non-state solutions. 🌱
• Community accountability involved innovative methods for self-protection and empowerment. 💪
• There is a shift in anti-violence movements towards more restorative practices, though concerns of cooptation exist. 🌊
• Maintaining the integrity of transformative justice amid external pressures is a current challenge. 🔐
• The importance of collective practice and learning from historical movements is emphasized for continued justice efforts. 🧠

Overview

In the early 2000s, transformative justice emerged organically as marginalized communities sought non-state solutions for accountability and support. INCITE! Women, Transgender, and Gender Non-Conforming People Against Violence was at the forefront, addressing systemic failures and creating new paths forward. This era saw the birth of innovative methods like 'bad date sheets' and self-organized food banks, which provided crucial support outside traditional systems.

As these practices gained recognition, they were formally identified as transformative justice and community accountability. This shift allowed communities to better track their efforts and refine their approaches. Advocates like Mimi Kim and Shira Hassan highlight the importance of building relationships and networks as central to these movements. They emphasize that community-driven solutions are key to meaningful change and reducing harm within marginalized groups.

Today, the challenge is maintaining the core values of transformative justice against attempts to co-opt the movement. The anti-violence field is gradually embracing restorative approaches, but pressures from traditional law enforcement and systemic frameworks threaten the integrity of grassroots efforts. Leaders in this field strive to draw on historical lessons, ensuring the movement remains accountable to its foundational principles while adapting to contemporary challenges.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Founding of INCITE! and Shira Hassan's Introduction to Transformative Justice In this chapter, Mimi Kim discusses her significant journey with the founding of INCITE!, originally known as Women of Color Against Violence and now expanded to Women, Transgender, and Gender Non-Conforming People Against Violence. She reflects on how their coming together in the year 2000 marked a pivotal moment for her personally, for the anti-violence movement, and, by implication, for broader societal change.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Evolving Practice and Resistance to State Involvement This chapter discusses the evolution of transformative justice and community accountability practices. It highlights the experiences of individuals like Shira Hassan, who, in the absence of effective state intervention, took it upon themselves to devise strategies for community-based conflict resolution and justice. The emerging practices aim to address harm and find solutions where traditional authorities like the police and social services fall short, often causing further harm rather than providing protection or aid. It underscores the grassroots nature of these movements, growing out of necessity and communal effort rather than established systems.
• 03:30 - 05:00: Challenges of Cooptation and Looking Forward This chapter discusses the organic evolution of community practices that were later identified as community accountability or transformative justice. It highlights the challenges of operating outside legal boundaries, such as undocumented existence, involvement in the sex trade, or drug use. The label of transformative justice provided a framework for previously unrecorded community efforts.
• 05:00 - 08:30: Current Focus on Building Collective Capacity The chapter titled 'Current Focus on Building Collective Capacity' begins with the notion of tracking progress due to enthusiasm for emerging achievements. Initially, there was a recognition of successful practices, which were naturally repeated. However, with a newfound excitement, there was a deliberate effort to align with a broader movement. Mimi expressed that there was a significant moment of ambition geared towards transformative change. Many individuals remained committed over time, even during periods when their efforts faced rejection by others.

The Modern Roots of Transformative Justice Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 MIMI KIM: So a really important part of my journey has been the founding of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence which is now Women, Transgender, and Gender Non-Conforming People Against Violence. And I think our coming together in 2000, which now is a couple decades ago, was a really important moment for me personally, an important moment for the anti-violence movement, and a really important, I think,
• 00:30 - 01:00 starting point for much of the work that we see right now that's called transformative justice or community accountability. SHIRA HASSAN: How I started out doing community accountability and transformative justice was just, I didn't know what it was called, we were just figuring out what to do because the police couldn't help us, they weren't safe to go to, they were causing more harm. And also social services didn't know what to do with us. And so, because I was part of a community
• 01:00 - 01:30 that were doing illegal things all the time, or existed illegally, either without documentation, or because they were involved in the sex trade, or because they were using drugs, we just had to figure these things out. So it started out really organically and then somewhere around 15 years ago, someone labeled what we were doing as community accountability or transformative justice and we were like, oh, there's a thing for this? And then once we knew we were doing a
• 01:30 - 02:00 thing we started tracking what we were doing because we got excited that it was a thing. I mean we had always kind of paid attention to what worked of course, and replicated it. But once we realized we fit into something we started figuring it out. MIMI: At that moment of course we were really excited and we were really ambitious about what we could do in terms of change. And many of us have just stayed in there during the longterm, a time when many people rejected our work,
• 02:00 - 02:30 a time when many people in the anti-violence movement rejected this work. And yet we truly believed that it was not only necessary, but possible. SHIRA: One thing to remember about transformative justice that's really important is that communities have been solving problems without the state for generations. And what we were doing was specific to us. So there were things like, for example, bad date sheets. And bad date sheets were things that
• 02:30 - 03:00 people in the sex trade and sex workers would use to track harmful johns, write down who they were make sure that everyone who was working that week literally got a flyer that described dangerous people. We were supporting people who were living in squats, who couldn't get into shelters, who couldn't get housing, but were living really successfully outside the system. The young people at Young Women's
• 03:00 - 03:30 Empowerment Project started their own food bank, which just meant whenever they went, they would get a little bit extra and then bring it to the office and then people could take, and that was because food banks required id in so many neighborhoods. And those were all ways that we were responding to institutional and systemic violence without deepening our dependence on the state, that were not specifically about a community accountability process. And then later we tried to do community
• 03:30 - 04:00 accountability work with people who had experienced sexual harm and were also having lots of success. So it was about showing up and saying, I see you, I'm watching you, I know that this is happening, you can't do this. Building deeper relationships was actually the most TJ thing we could do. Building relationships with people who caused harm to so many young women and trans people that we knew was actually the most transformative thing we could do because then we could hold them accountable inside those relationships. Another example I
• 04:00 - 04:30 think about is when we started making relationships with drug dealers so that they would distribute Narcan so that they were a part of reducing overdose in their community. That's transformative justice. So when that got named for us we were like, whoa, all these strategies have a place, like we finally have a place somewhere. We didn't know that. MIMI: In the past few years we've seen a shift. We've seen a shift in the anti-violence
• 04:30 - 05:00 movement that is finally, in many many different forms, looking at itself and saying we made an error, we made a mistake, we have to turn around from the kind of pro-criminalization stance that we've taken. The term carceral feminism, although I think that's still unfamiliar with many, has started to strike a chord. We have seen changes in the last couple years
• 05:00 - 05:30 where many, many anti-violence coalitions for example, domestic violence and sexual assault, who really turned away from our work for so many years, are starting to turn towards it. And not only turn towards it, but ask us to come and speak at their coalition meetings. They're starting to actually change policies in different states where they would have supported almost any pro-criminalization policy, and now are fighting against them. That is
• 05:30 - 06:00 something that we hoped would happen, but something that's shocking all the same. I would say in the last couple years, though, there has been such a demand that it is also, comes from a space where I think we couldn't call it anything but cooptation. And that is people calling work transformative justice when they actually want to partner with law enforcement to do work that is really diversion.
• 06:00 - 06:30 Where there's, I believe that there's going to be a lot more money coming in to restorative justice, and this is not meant to be disrespect for people who are using the term restorative justice, but there are forms of restorative justice that are much more compliant with or in partnership with law enforcement, for example. I think we're looking at this kind of wave coming that, it's so close in some ways and it's also something I've never experienced before in my lifetime,
• 06:30 - 07:00 that I'm really struggling to understand both what it means, but also what we need to do. I don't know if it's resist it, or to keep what we've built intact so that it doesn't get washed away by what I see as this, this tide coming in. This is a conversation many of us are having right now. Different people have different thoughts about this. I think it's something that is a very serious concern, and one that I am hoping that we
• 07:00 - 07:30 can look back and learn from other people in history that have faced the same, these same dynamics of cooptation. But we're in a different era. SHIRA: And I started being contacted so often when harm happened, particularly sexual violence, that and when, when things were going wrong, like when people were trying to use community accountability and it wasn't working. So now my project is Just Practice and the idea is to build our collective
• 07:30 - 08:00 capacity, so that we know how to do this together. The idea is that the more we can practice, the more we'll have justice. And so if we can just simplify what we're doing and just practice this, then we can get somewhere together. MIMI: We need to learn from the past, but we also need to think about the present moment and be, I think, very wise and strategic
• 08:00 - 08:30 about what we do next. And we also need to be collective in our efforts.