SECTION 1: ONGOING PRACTICES
SECTION 2: INTERVENTION
1. Get clear
2. Direct communication
3. Plan
4. Take community action (naming, goal setting, action steps)
5. Follow through
SECTION 3: RESOURCES
 
What is this guide?
- Build an infrastructure of support
- Fundamentally exploitative power relationship --> organize to build tenant power, overturn power relations

Why a transformative justice approach?
"Make ending violence an everyday skill." - Creative Interventions Toolkit

Practice politics of wholeness instead of disposability (no longer punish/ banish the accused)

"It is impossible to hold others accountable - we can only create the space for them to hold themselves to account."


Terms
  • Harm intervention: 
    • Notice, name, take action to stop immediate harm. 
    • Community members ensure that harmed person's needs are met +
    • commit to transform behaviors & conditions that allowed harm to take place
  • Contradictions:
    • organizing against gentrification as a new resident
    • build a movement made up of the most vulnerable having least resources to give to movement
    • What matters is not how you got here, but that you are here. Widen perspectives, acknowledge these oppositional truths co-exist.
  • Community Accountability:
    • May have participated in allowing/ causing harm
    • Responsible for stopping & engaging (not ignore) interpersonal conflicts
  • TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE: 
    • A collective approach to changing social relationships that recognizes harm caused by systems and social conditions. 
    • The roots of transformative justice are in the work of BIPOC sex workers, survivors of assault, and anti-violence organizers, who have practiced transformative justice as a way of getting in right relationship within their communities without relying on the criminal justice system and the state. 
    • Models the culture we will need to build in order to abolish prisons and policing. 
    • Unlike Restorative Justice processes, which are more structured, formal, better-resourced, and sometimes tied to the criminal justice system, transformative justice is an umbrella term that holds a diversity of informal, peer-facilitated, flexible, and adaptable processes.
    • Megyung Chung, Xhercis Méndez, Donna Harati.Transformative Justice 101. Workshop with the Northeast local of the LA Tenants Union, November 2020.

SECTION 1: ONGOING PRACTICES
  • Be curious: "What did you mean yesterday when you mentioned ...?"
  • Gently step in when we see discomfort/ micro-aggressions
  • Community agreements
    • We strive to create space where we can be brave, make mistakes, and learn.
    • Make space for time-outs: 
      • "Oof, I think we need to pause. You just said something that don't feel right with me. I'm not sure if that's what you intended, but I don't feel right moving forward without addressing this."
      • __, I'm sorry, but the way you talk to women here is unacceptable. It has to stop. So what do we need to do? Training? Therapy? Are you committed to shifting the culture within our group?
      • What happened there? I'm on your team and I want to understand what was going on for you when you said that.
    • Long-term members commit to skill up and practice de-escalating & mediating
    • Commit to engage in productive conversations to seek positive transformation of all parties involved
  • Time-outs:
    • Name behavior
    • Invite the group to support/ call on the group's purpose
    • Provide an opening for that person to change their behavior in the future


Brain Traps:
  1. People-pleasing: take on too many tasks
  2. Always bring right: speak more than once during a meeting to defend my points, despite not everyone having had a chance to speak yet
  3. Blaming
  4. Disqualifying the positive: let a false sense of urgency keep us from pausing to reflect on relational wins
  5. Fallacy of change: wait for someone else to address misogyny instead of taking steps where I am
  6. Jumping to conclusions: assume someone's class by their appearance
  7. Magnification & minimization: obsess over someone's faults/ make excuses for not addressing a member's bullying
  8. Should statements: shut down group debates about anything that's been discussed before, without allowing new factors & experiences to influence an ever-evolving group dynamics
Pod Mapping: Trust (not political analysis or orientation) is the most important factor in creating strong pods.
Your pod is made up of the people that you would call on if violence, harm, or abuse happened to you; if you wanted support in taking accountability for violence, harm, or abuse that you’ve done; if you witnessed violence; or if someone you care about was being violent or being abused. —Mia Mingus

SECTION 2: INTERVENTION

1. Get clear


TYPES OF TENSION
  1. Personalities incompatible
  2. Political: disagree about tactics and goals of organizing work
  3. Harm stemming from unequal power dynamics (often embodied in sexist, ableist, ...) - micro-aggressions
  4. Hidden agendas
  5. Cultural differences
  6. Boundary conflicts
  7. Erratic personal behavior
  8. Harm stemming from poor communication (e.g. a new member feeling unwelcome because experienced members haven't helped plug them in)
ARE PEOPLE BEING HARMED?
  1. Who starts harmful behavior?
  2. What ends up getting harmed?
  3. What is the impact of this harm?
  4. Whose actions are motivated by
    1. power & control?
    2. attempt to maintain safety & integrity in an already harmful situation?
  5. What other people/ dynamics are relevant in positive ways / been harmful or worsen things?

2. Direct communication

  1. What do you want to make sure the other person hears?
  2. What can they do to show you that they've heard you and taken your concerns seriously?
  3. What would be the best outcome of this conversation?
To determine whether direct communication is appropriate:
  1. Identify attitudes/ behaviors that were hurtful
  2. Get help to prepare what to say
  3. Bring someone to stand by (to support, hear & see the other's response, provide safety)
  4. State the harm & how we felt. Ask the other to listen without excuses, interruptions, arguments.
  5. Ask the other to think and come back at another time for continued discussion

3. Plan & prepare

To determine whether structured process is appropriate:
  1. What do the people who were most affected want? What do they need from this process?
  2. Which community members (in and outside the org) are available to help?
  3. What are the power dynamics at play?
  4. How much time will this take? How many hours per week/ month can your group realistically commit to a structured process?
STEPS
  1. Grounding exercises
  2. Inform the other person that you'd like to work through conflict with them
  3. Assemble 2-4 supporters team
    1. At least 1 should be able to engage with person doing harm (accountability ally)
    2. What do the person experiencing harm needs immediately to stop the harm (e.g. space away from the other)?
    3. Survivor Involvement
  4. Name bottom lines: Minimum accommodation needed to engage. (e.g. meet once a week, interpreter, childcare, no text message)
  5. Create group consensus around the scope of the issue at hand.
    1. Is this bigger than just 2 ppl?
    2. Have others been involved that need to be folded into this procesS?
    3. Is this a structural issue? --> bring to public forum (e.g. How will we combat English-language dominance in our group?)

4. Take community action (naming, goal setting, action steps)

4A. NAME WHAT HAPPENED
  1. Goal: Each parties describe what happened, come to common understanding of the particular actions that contributed to the conflict/ experience of harm.
  2. Choose a facilitator
  3. Choose a coordinator (track logistics, process information)
  4. Plan first meeting (time, place)
  5. Prepare
    1. For person experiencing harm 
      1. What do I want out of this? What do we want out of this?
      2. What will help me to see the other person as a whole, complex being?
      3. Have I already seen the potential for this situation to change?
      4. (If they care about self-centered things, can you leverage those to reach your goals? How can you protect yourself from worst results? What might they/ your pod says that can jeopardize your experience?)
    2. For supporters*** (Am I avoiding - e.g. I don't know, maybe they didn't mean it? How can I separate compassion from colluding - e.g. how is challenging them a gift for me? Practice saying SHORT SIMPLE PHRASES of requests & support.) 
    3. For person doing harm 
      1. Can I imagine myself as someone who can listen without being defensive? What is that person like? When are times that I've been like this?
      2. What can I share so that they know me better, and can help me feel connected to them instead of rejected? What can I share that isn't making excuses for myself or blaming others?
      3. Prepare: 
        1. I BELIEVE: I'm a good person. I'm imperfect.
        2. I CAN LISTEN: What struct me as most "real in what ___ said? How has my understanding of their experience of me changed my own story about what happened?
        3. I MAKE TRUE REPAIR ATTEMPTS: I offer my apology as a gift, expecting nothing in return. I understand nothing I do can fully make up for the harm.
        4. CHANGE MY ATTITUDES & BEHAVIOR OVER TIME: I will stay connected to people, places, activities that support these changes. If I commit harm again, I will do ... and expect these consequences ...
    4. For facilitator: 
    5. Supporting Survivor Checklist (small help)
  6. First Conversation: 5 rounds
    1. Check-in: Feelings/ Intentions/ Hopes/ Fears
    2. What happened? Chronologically, objectively.
    3. What has this affected you? Hurts you experienced. Any regrets.
    4. Summarize what you heard the other party say, without trying to debate.
    5. What you appreciate about the group as a whole?
    6. Check-out: How do you feel that went? What felt positive/ challenging? What do we need to keep in mind for the future?
4B. GOAL SETTING
  1. Guided questions for individuals & collectives
    1. Full range of feelings (wish you were dead/ humiliated, just move on)
    2. What do I want for myself/ survivor/ others/ person doing harm/ larger community? What is important?
    3. Value-fit? Achievable? Good enough bottom lines? Long & short term?
  2. Conversation about short and long term goals:
    1. Check-in
    2. What each want/ don't want
    3. Short-term:
      1. Clarity
      2. Increased conversation
      3. Recognize harm: admit action & consequences
      4. Apologies: Harriet Lerner's 9 rules & Mia Mingus' Genuine Apology
      5. Boundaries
    4. Long-term
      1. Make repairs
      2. Shift behaviors (tools, therapy, workshops)
      3. Collective transformation (e.g. series of circles about white supremacy)
      4. Revise/ introduce new processes
    5. Assess: Realistic & healthy goals? Any compromises? Capacity? Enough agreement to move forward?
    6. Check-out
4C. ACTION STEPS
  1. Remind everyone of the bottom lines
  2. Check-in
  3. Review goals & brainstorm concrete action steps
  4. Check-out & Mark transition to Phase 5

5. Follow through

  • Share their experience & lessons with the larger group
  • Set time for review/ follow-up conversations
  • E.g. learning: The Will to Change by bell hooks, anti-oppression workshop
  • E.g. personalities clash: how can we better communicate from now on? Deloconizing Nonviolent Communication meenadchi
To facilitate means to "make it simple to be complex together" - adrienne maree brown

SECTION 3: RESOURCES

Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop In- terpersonal Violence

Miriame Kaba and Shira Hassan, Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Practicioners adrienne maree brown, Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation meenadchi, Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication Jovida Ross and Weyam Ghadbian, Turning Towards Each Other: A Conflict Workbook Joe Biel and Faith B. Harper, How to Be Accountable: Take

Responsibility to Change Your Behavior, Boundaries, and Re- lationships

Prentis Hemphill and BLM Healing Justice Working Group, Tools for Addressing Chapter Conflict Podcasts and videos Mixtape series on Transformative Justice Mars Goetia on Conflict Engagement, episode of the Final Straw podcast Take Care, Give Care: Dean Spade on the Rebel Steps Podcast Self-Accountability and Movement-Building with Shannon Perez-Darby

Harm, Punishment, and Abolition: Miriame Kaba on the Find- ing Our Way Podcast

nelo.transform@gmail.com


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