report - Winston Churchill Memorial Trust

1
THE WINSTON CHURCHILL MEMORIAL TRUST OF AUSTRALIA
Report by
- LAUREN CAULFIELD
- 2013 Churchill Fellow
To research community-based safety projects and strategies to combat gender
violence - USA
I understand that the Churchill Trust may publish this Report, either in hard copy or on the
internet or both, and consent to such publication.
I indemnify the Churchill Trust against any loss, costs or damages it may suffer arising out
of any claim or proceedings made against the Trust in respect of or arising out of the
publication of any Report submitted to the Trust and which the Trust places on a website
for access over the internet.
I also warrant that my Final Report is original and does not infringe the copyright of any
person, or contain anything which is, or the incorporation of which into the Final Report is,
actionable for defamation, a breach of any privacy law or obligation, breach of confidence,
contempt of court, passing-off or contravention of any other private right or of any law.
Signed:
Dated:
2
3
Index
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................. 7
Background .......................................................................................................................................... 9
Terms and definitions ........................................................................................................................................ 9
What is Community Accountability? ........................................................................................................... 9
Transformative Justice ................................................................................................................................. 11
Alternative phrases ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Restorative justice versus transformative justice – Is there a distinction? ............................................ 13
Other terms and notes on language .................................................................................................................14
Research and local context .............................................................................................................................. 16
Challenges and questions in Australian community accountability work.................................................. 18
Burnout, fatigue and vicarious trauma ....................................................................................................... 18
Interpersonal dynamics ................................................................................................................................ 19
Structure of organisations and collectives ......................................................................................................19
Phases of the work ....................................................................................................................................... 20
Who are the community?............................................................................................................................. 21
Dynamics of interaction between groups and the community in which they are situated ................. 21
Dealing with complexity and critique ..............................................................................................................22
Are we ready as a community? Questions of capacity-building and order of work ............................ 23
Privacy and conceptualising harm .............................................................................................................. 24
Avoiding replicating systems of oppression in our community-based practice ................................... 24
Interface with formal services and the criminal legal system .................................................................. 25
What role do the survivor's wishes play? ................................................................................................... 25
How do we evaluate community accountability work? ...............................................................................26
Time period for work ................................................................................................................................... 26
Additional challenges.................................................................................................................................... 27
Translating local reflections into questions of North American groups ............................................... 27
Programme ............................................................................................................................................... 28
Critical Resistance ......................................................................................................................................... 29
Creative Interventions .................................................................................................................................. 30
Northwest Network ..................................................................................................................................... 30
API Chaya ...................................................................................................................................................... 31
For Crying Out Loud ................................................................................................................................... 31
Philly Stands Up ...................................................................................................................................................32
4
AORTA ......................................................................................................................................................... 32
AMC – Allied Media Conference ............................................................................................................... 33
Additional organisations .............................................................................................................................. 33
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................... 34
Why do Community Accountability? .......................................................................................................... 34
The alignment between community safety and primary prevention work ........................................... 39
Beyond violence-prevention to healthy communities ............................................................................. 41
Focus areas and lessons from North American groups .............................................................................. 42
How to work together: Structure, principles and processes in accountability groups ........................ 42
Collective ethics and resisting burnout ...................................................................................................... 44
Implementing anti-oppressive politics in practice .................................................................................... 45
The building blocks of accountability: Laying a framework for transformative justice with selfeducation, discussion and training .............................................................................................................. 46
Creating the conditions for accountability: How do we build community capacity? .......................... 49
Building movements for safety: Laying the foundations and community mobilisation...................... 50
The “Accountable Communities” Framework: NW Network and stepping
accountability processes to build community skills
back from
................ 51
What does it take to ‘show up’ for each other? ........................................................................................ 54
Creating spaces for community dialogue: Storytelling as a tool ............................................................. 55
Outreach: Training in the community ....................................................................................................... 58
Safety, Harm Reduction & Managing risk in community interventions ............................................... 61
What next when someone is ‘called out’ for using violence? ................................................................. 63
A toolkit approach ........................................................................................................................................ 66
Supporting and resourcing communities to run their own interventions ............................................. 70
Facilitated accountability processes and working with people who cause harm .................................. 71
The interface with formal services and the criminal legal system .......................................................... 80
How do we measure 'success'? Examining the effectiveness of community response ....................... 81
Challenges and directions in North American transformative justice projects .................................... 84
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................... 86
Recommendations .............................................................................................................................. 87
References .......................................................................................................................................... 90
Appendix 1: Community Accountability and Transformative Justice Resources ............................... 94
Appendix 2: Survey.......................................................................................................................... 103
Appendix 3: Dissemination (Blog and articles)................................................................................ 105
5
Introduction1
Safety and justice for survivors of gender-based and intimate partner violence is often treated as being
synonymous with a strong crisis response from agencies and support services, coupled with punitive
criminal legal remedies. Improving responses to family, intimate partner and sexual violence and
tackling gender violence is subsequently equated with increasing police responses, convictions and
prison sentences. As such, a lot of feminist anti-violence work has been focused on these agency and
criminal legal measures as a response to violence, as well increasingly on violence prevention
programmes and work to address the drivers of violence.
This paper focuses instead on community-based anti-violence work – specifically community
accountability, transformative justice and grassroots approaches to gender-based violence, and the
different innovative methods applied to this work by host groups and US projects. It examines the
application of community accountability by groups in America to gendered, intimate partner and family
violence and sexual assault, looking at the challenges they have encountered in the work, and drawing
on these for their insights, lessons and ongoing application for their relevance to Australian work.
Like any other strand of crisis response, intervention or violence prevention work, community
accountability work alone does not offer a panacea for gendered violence or a magic potion for
transforming communities where violence is prevalent into those that are violence free. Gendered
violence is of course more complicated than that. What it does offer is another string to the bow of
anti-violence work, the development of additional options to the often singular ‘call the police’
response frequently issued to survivors, and a set of practices that warrant reflection, discussion,
critique and development. It also offers a framework for community activism and movement-building people taking action to intervene into violence, and communities stepping up to reclaim safety, rather
than assuming that this is solely the work of an outside team of ‘experts’ or agencies.
The dynamics and lived experiences of violence are complex, as is responding to them in our
immediate communities. There is no such thing as easy answers. This paper is intended as a
contribution to the ongoing dialogue and discussion about community accountability and communitybased responses to violence in Australia as we consider the methods, tactics, challenges and directions
of our work.
Prior to embarking on the Fellowship trip, I distributed a written survey and conducted a series of
recorded interviews and discussions with Australian organisers and activists involved with communitybased safety work and responses to violence and sexual assault, to gather their reflections and input.
The content from these was used to identify some of the local thematic issues and challenges, and to
craft a series of questions for US host projects and organisers. Many of these discussions built on and
consolidated my own perspective of the challenges facing us locally, and my experiences working
individually and collaboratively across community organising as well as family violence crisis support,
advocacy and training in a service setting. This report is structured to firstly outline the main challenges
identified in local community accountability work as background and context, followed by the main
1
Please note that this report and discussion is written in a personal capacity, rather than on behalf of any of the
organisations or projects with whom I work.
6
body, covering the methods and key insights and lessons from US-based community accountability
projects.
Twenty-seven recommendations are made at the end of the report. These are aimed at reviewing and
consolidating local community-based safety strategies, developing new tools, trainings and resources,
increasing community dialogue and outreach, and building an Australian community accountability
network.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for funding the Fellowship, and giving me the
opportunity to meet and work with projects and organisers from the USA whose work on community
accountability is instrumental and inspiring. Thank you also to Deb Bryant and Scott Ludlam for
original support for the project.
Community accountability work is deeply collaborative, and this project was made possible by the body
of work by local organisers and collectives, and the bold work of survivors and people looking to
develop creative and community-based ways of preventing, intervening in and responding to violence
in Australia. I wish to extend gratitude and respect to local community accountability activists - many
of whom it feels strange not to name individually here, but who are represented anonymously in this
report via their quotes and ideas - for reflections, interviews and critical thought, as well as amazing
ongoing work. Particular thanks to Undercurrent Community Education Project, for collaborating with
me as a roaming collective member on this research, and for your insights and dedication to building
this work, as well as to Phoebe Barton for the introductions and assistance. Thank you to Rodney Vlais
for ongoing deep discussions about radical responses to gender violence, and the Domestic Violence
Resource Centre Victoria (DVRCV) for hiring me and then giving me extensive leave for the
Fellowship trip, and supporting the project.
I would like to express my deep appreciation to the organisers, activists, hosts and facilitators in the
USA who welcomed myself and family so hospitably, and generously shared knowledge and resources,
blew my mind with remarkable insights, wisdom and critical thought and made introductions to
networks around the country – most particularly Jenna Peters-Golden and Philly Stands Up, Kiran
Nigam and the AORTA trainers, Lilsnoopy Fujikawa and FCOL, Rachel Herzig and Isaac Ontiveros
from Critical Resistance (as well as to Mimi Kim who first responded to my cold-call email about
visiting), Connie Burk and Shannon Perez-Darby from NW Network, and Billie Rain. Your work is
ever-inspiring, radical and important.
Finally thank you to Fiona Vera-Gray, Emma Belfield and Ada Conroy, for your assistance, cleverness
and excellence, to Felicity and Brian for ongoing help and backing, and to Timmy Roach and Billie
Bean Roachfield for your support, good humour, general brilliance and boots-and-all commitment to
this adventure.
7
Executive Summary
Lauren Caulfield
Training & Advocacy (The Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria) 2
Researcher and Advocate (Undercurrent Community Education Project)
292 Wellington St Collingwood VIC 3066
Ph: 03 9486 9866 Email: laurenvcaulfield[at]gmail.com
Description
Gender-based violence in Australia is at epidemic proportions.3 Community accountability and
transformative justice approaches to gender violence present a suite of community-based approaches to
violence prevention, interventions, accountability and cultural change, with an emphasis on
community-led anti violence work, rather than service-based responses, policing or prisons. Australian
work already underway in this sphere is at an important point of reflection and development with
robust discussion of philosophy and methods underway, and a series of challenges highlighted by local
interventions to date. The work of long-running community accountability projects overseas offers
important lessons and comparative thinking instructive for the development of our local approaches to
accountability, as well as tools, tactics and resources relevant for discussion, adaptation and application
in Australia.
Highlights4
-
-
Interviews with long-term anti-violence activists and facilitators of community accountability
processes for their wealth of knowledge on the issues that arise and their commitment to
creative thinking to meet these challenges - particularly Northwest Network (Connie Burk and
Shannon Perez-Darby), Philly Stands Up (Jenna Peters- Golden), AORTA trainer and mediator,
Kiran Nigam, and Rachel Herzig of Critical Resistance.
The array of resources, training templates, facilitator guides and tools for intervention
generously shared by hosts, and made available for use locally.
Each of the panel discussions and opportunities to witness community dialogue and debate –
notably those facilitated through the AMC ‘Transforming Justice’ track.
Lessons
Community-based interventions to violence and strategies for safety can be effective, creative and
lasting. The challenges related to community accountability work are strongly thematic across different
contexts and geographic locations. The community-based nature of this work means that we can learn
This report was written in a personal capacity. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of
my employer.
3 One in three women have experienced violence or sexual violence since the age of fifteen, most by a known person,
including a partner, ex-partner or family member. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) ‘Experiences of
Violence’, Personal Safety Survey
http://www.abs.g ov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4906.0Main+Features12012?OpenDocument
2
8
from each other’s work, and continue to develop new tactics and approaches cooperatively. Issues and
challenges are best met in a collaborative way, with ongoing dialogue between projects and the
communities in which they exist.
Recommendations
This report makes a series of recommendations encompassing: Developing a series of new trainings on
transformative justice tactics and tools for community-based interventions to violence; Collating local
and international resources and making these more widely available to Australian projects and
organisers; Building a local community accountability network, for the sharing of resources, tactics,
trainings and development of work, and hosting a national community accountability symposium;
Documenting and critically reflecting on local community accountability work to date, and developing
new locally relevant resources and toolkits; and creating forums for community dialogue and training
Dissemination
-
-
This report will be distributed to survey participants, local transformative justice organisers and
projects, community activists, anti-violence workers and agencies, as well as projects and
organisers undertaking prison solidarity, support or abolition work
Surveys, interviews, audio transcripts compiled and distributed via the workshops and trainings,
will be made available for ongoing use as podcasts and open-source resources.
Journal articles, blog posts, interviews, presentations and workshops to local organisers, and via
community accountability symposium (see Appendix 2)
Research and resources gathered via the Fellowship will be copied and made available online
and via Community Resource Library
9
Background
Terms and definitions
What is Community Accountability?
Taken from the foundational work conceptualising community accountability by Incite! Feminists of
Colour Against Violence5, this paper uses a definition that encompasses four cornerstone strands of
practice:
1. Providing support and safety to community members who were violently targeted, that respects
their self determination
The self-determination aspect is a central acknowledgement that people are the experts in their own
safety, and thus support and responses victim/survivors must hold respect for agency as the core tenet
of the response. This is an important point of agreement with mainstream feminist family violence and
anti-violence services. This work includes survivor support, and survivor-central community
interventions to enhance safety.
2. Committing to ongoing development to transform political conditions that reinforce
oppression and violence
This involves engaging in anti-oppressive community organising work and examining where and why
violence occurs and seeking to transform the conditions that drive, condone, excuse and permit it. This
will include directly working on gender inequality, rigid gender roles and violence-supporting attitudes
in the community.
3. Developing sustainable strategies to address community members’ abusive behaviour, creating a
process for them to account for their actions and transform their behaviour.
This includes work directly with people who cause harm, such as accountability processes and
facilitated behavioural change work.
4. Creating and affirming values and practices that resist abuse and oppression and encourage
safety, support and accountability
This is the work to move beyond responses to violence to actively foster respectful communication,
agency and equitable relationships, and to engage in violence prevention by developing practices that
support and engender safety and responsibility in a community setting.
Incite! Feminists of Colour against Violence, Community Accountability Fact Sheet
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/6685_toolkitrev-cmtyacc.pdf
5
10
Image from Incite! Feminists of Color against Violence6
This holistic approach to violence prevention and response is very useful particularly in an Australian
context where the third strand dealing with facilitated accountability processes and other similar work
to respond to incidences of violence, often entailing a ‘call-out’ and follow-up process is often seen as
the sum total of community accountability work.
The four areas of work intentionally interact with a view to creating lasting movements for safety.
Without viewing the strands of work as related and interactive, and planning accordingly, attempts at
conducting response and accountability processes with the person causing harm risk lacking context,
shared understandings, uptake, community knowledge and capacity, and thus not being sustainable
over the longer term. In an emotionally charged environment, a solid theoretical framework also ideally
provides the scaffolding for the different pieces of the work and their intended focus, the structures
and processes that hold it all together, support for the people involved, and a sounding board for
decisions and direction.
It is essential to note and pay tribute here to the foundational role that Incite! and other organisations
and projects led by People of Colour (POC) have played in shaping understandings of community
accountability and transformative justice, and the communities undertaking this work out of necessity.
Much of the thinking and work around community accountability has emerged from the thinking and
work of communities of colour who have sought to develop alternative models of community safety, in
the context of systemic racism and discrimination, and where police and prisons have not been sites of
safety or support. 7
Ibid.
INCITE! (2010) ‘Community Accountability Within People of Color Progressive Movements’
http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/2406_cmty-acc-poc.pdf Accessed 7 March 2014
6
7
11
Schools of thought on community accountability have also developed out of the experiences of other
marginalised communities, including LGBTIQ communities, whose problematic and often traumatic
experiences of policing and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) have led to the exploration of options
for safety outside the criminal legal and mainstream community service system, and prompted the
development of alternative community-based models to achieve safety.
This in turn raises issues around the potential for co-option of work by POC and marginalised
communities, whether intentional or unintentional, and the practice issues related to transferring tactics
into different contexts with very different community characteristics. A more detailed discussion of this
is contained in the section 'What is a community'.
Transformative Justice
The other oft-adopted phrase to describe the approach of community-based work to respond to and
prevent interpersonal violence outside the mainstream system is ‘transformative justice’.
In their work to end child abuse within 5 generations, San Francisco-based Generation 5 describe
transformative justice as “a liberatory approach to violence…[which] seeks safety and accountability
without relying on alienation, punishment, or State or systemic violence, including incarceration or
policing.”8
They define three core beliefs:
“Individual justice and collective liberation are equally important, mutually supportive, and
fundamentally intertwined—the achievement of one is impossible without the achievement of
the other.
The conditions that allow violence to occur must be transformed in order to achieve justice in
individual instances of violence. Therefore, Transformative Justice is both a liberating politic
and an approach for securing justice.
State and systemic responses to violence, including the criminal legal system and child welfare
agencies, not only fail to advance individual and collective justice but also condone and
perpetuate cycles of violence.
Transformative Justice seeks to provide people who experience violence with immediate safety
and long-term healing and reparations while holding people who commit violence accountable
within and by their communities. This accountability includes stopping immediate abuse,
making a commitment to not engage in future abuse, and offering reparations for past
abuse. Such accountability requires on-going support and transformative healing for people
who sexually abuse.”9
Generation 5 (2007) ‘Toward Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Child Sexual Abuse and other forms of
Intimate and Community Violence (A Call to Action for the Left and the Sexual and Domestic Violence Sectors)’, P 5
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/G5_Toward_Transformative_Justice.pdf Accessed 7
May 2014
8
9
Ibid.
12
Image from Generation 510
As such, transformative justice is a philosophical strategy for responding to conflict or harm that uses
similar principles and practices to restorative justice, taking these beyond the criminal legal system.
Transformative justice uses a systems approach, seeking to see problems as not only the harm itself, but
also the causes of the harm. It approaches these as a transformative educational and relational
opportunity for victim/survivors, the person causing harm and all other members of the affected
community.11 It is concerned with looking beyond alternatives to imprisonment and towards
opportunities for healing justice in a community-led way.12
Alternative phrases
In describing the body of work on community-based interventions, responses to violence and
community led anti-violence work, the other phrases used include ‘liberatory interventions,’
'community safety' and ‘community response’.
In Australia the term ‘community accountability’ is used more frequently as the catch-all phrase for
grassroots responses and interventions into violence, with ‘community response’ often used to describe
a specific response or attempt at accountability process around an assault or incidence of violence. In
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Gen5_HomeCenterImage2.png
Candice smith (2013) Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice: Definitions and Debates, Sociology Lens, the Society
Pages
http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/03/05/restorative-justice-and-transformative-justice-definitions-anddebates/ Accessed 19 June 2014
10
11
12
Ibid.
13
North America the term Transformative Justice was often used as the emergent term to capture this
body of work, and name the ideological framework that guides its approach.
While the phrases ‘community accountability’ and ‘transformative justice’ are variously used by groups
working in this area, often interchangeably, it should be noted that there is ongoing discussion about
the boundaries and some of the tactics related to community accountability – most particularly debate
about tactics related to shaming or exclusion and the “ethics and efficacy and of community-based
authority, force, coercion and even violence or the threat of violence”13 that might be utilised to achieve
community accountability objectives, and the ongoing contention as to whether these fit with a
transformative justice philosophy and approach, and what the threshold is for considerations of force.14
As such, both terms are used throughout this paper, together with the other commonly used phrases,
with an emphasis on using the preferred terms for a group’s work or local context, where discussion
centres on that location.
Restorative justice versus transformative justice – Is there a distinction?
“TJ seeks to change the larger social structure as well as the personal structure of those involved”.15
Whether a distinction between restorative and transformative justice should be made is sometimes
debated, as often many of the goals and attributes of the two are shared16. However it can be useful to
delineate the two and compare approaches in order to examine the political and strategic differences.
Where restorative justice is aimed at providing restitution and restoring the conditions prior to the
harm occurring, transformative justice is instead concerned with transforming the conditions that
provided the context for and drivers of the harm17 – particularly examining systems of oppression, and
the role these play in supporting hierarchies of power, privilege and entitlement.18
Further to the distinction between the two is the matter of interface with the criminal legal system and
PIC, their respective analysis of state and systemic violence and questions of state co-option. Many
restorative justice options exist as an alternative or re-route out of traditional sentencing pathways, but
nonetheless interact closely with criminal legal pathways or are hosted out of courts and legal services,
13Mimi
E Kim (2011) ‘Moving Beyond Critique: Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of Community Accountability’
Social Justice; 2011/2012; 37, 4; Alt-Press Watch (APW)pg.14
14 Some of these tactics are referenced and the ongoing discussion further explored in Incite’s ‘Community Accountability
Working Document’: http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-working-document Accessed 2
March 2014
Wozniak, J. F. (2008). Transformative justice: critical and peacemaking themes influenced by Richard Quinney. Lanham, Md, Lexington
Books.
15
Ibid.
Some practitioners of transformative justice have a position that in contrast to restorative justice, no quantification or
assessment of loss or harms or any assignment of the role of the survivor is made, and no attempt to compare the historical
and future conditions is made either. The survivor is not usually part of the accountability or transformative process, but
may choose to be. Participants generally agree only on what might be effective harm reduction measures, which might
include no contact/separation between perpetrator and survivor.
16
17
18
Candice Smith (2013) op cit.
14
and as such can be participatory in and implicitly endorse these institutions, even whilst providing a
diversionary path. In contrast, transformative justice projects exist deliberately independently of state
institutions and the PIC.
An additional important distinction is that by operating independently of criminal legal pathways,
transformative justice initiatives are decoupled from some of the limitations of post-conviction
restorative justice programmes19, and thus may have more flexibility of application.
While the two approaches often share many tactics or objectives, may work in alliance, and indeed
often share critique of criminalisation as an overarching approach to anti violence work, for the
purposes of research such as this, it is useful to hone in on the unique attributes and emergent work of
transformative justice projects and organisers, their differing scope for circumstances of application,
and the points of difference that occur as a result of the differing structural analysis and approach.
Other terms and notes on language
In this paper the term ‘survivor’ is used as the preferred term for the person experiencing violence, as
opposed to ‘victim’, in acknowledgement of their survivorship, and the importance of the centrality of
their agency in relation to any consideration community accountability options.
The term ‘criminal legal system’ is used instead of the term ‘criminal justice system’ as a note of
question to the premise that the legal system seeks or delivers justice.
When discussing the types of violence and abuse for which community accountability responses might
occur, the terms ‘harm’, ‘violence’, ‘abuse’, ‘sexual violence’ and ‘assault’ are used at various points, in
acknowledgement that gender-based violence occurs along a continuum, from harassment and everyday
intrusions to more criminalised forms of violence and sexual violence.20 In examining the application of
transformative justice to different situations and types of violence, these terms are also applied at
different points in reference to the different dynamics involved in individual incidences of harm,
violence and sexual violence, as compared to sustained patterns of power and control and dynamics of
abuse typical of ongoing intimate partner or family violence.
In describing the person using/committing violence, the phrases ‘person causing harm’ and ‘person
using violence’ are more frequently used in the spirit of transformative justice and opportunity for
change rather than affixing permanence, however the terms ‘aggressor’ and ‘perpetrator’ are also used
in quotes, in reflections on processes and some commentary.
An exhaustive discussion of either feminist critique of restorative justice responses to gendered and sexual violence, or
the debate regarding pre and post-conviction restorative justice approaches is outside the scope of this paper, but these
differences in critique are importantly examined in:
Miller, Susan (2011) After the Crime: The power of restorative justice dialogues between victims and violent offenders (New York University
Press, New York)
And: McGlynn, C. (2013) ‘Feminism, rape and the search for justice.’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 31, (4), pp 825-842.
20 This concept was first outlined by Liz Kelly in Surviving Sexual Violence (1988), Cambridge : Oxford : Polity Press ; B.
Blackwell.
It is widely used as a foundation theory for understanding violence against women and sexual violence, and is an accepted
understanding in the context of Australian anti-violence work (see VicHealth (2014) ‘How violence affects women’s
health,
http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/Programs-and-Projects/Freedom-from-violence/PVAW-overview.aspx
Accessed 18 July 2014.)
19
15
This paper does not use the term ‘allegations’ when referring to incidences of violence or sexual assault,
as it takes a position of believing people who disclose their experiences of violence and sexual violence.
This paper focuses on ‘gendered/gender-based/ gender violence’, using those terms interchangeably,
and noting that such violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men and overwhelmingly experienced
by women and children – in many cases the language is in this paper is gendered as such to reflect this,
including the use of the phrases ‘violence against women’/ ‘violence against women and girls’ and
‘men’s violence against women [and girls]’ where applicable. In taking an intersectional view of
gendered and interpersonal violence, as well as of community accountability responses to this violence,
it also notes that women and children are not exclusively at risk of this violence. Queer and trans
people, radicalised or marginalised minorities, men perceived to be diverging from a normative version
of masculinity, or targeted to assert another male’s social supremacy - these and other marginalised
people are also often the targets or sites of patriarchal/male violence and relevant to the examination of
transformative justice responses.
The terms ‘intimate partner violence’ and ‘relationship violence’ are also used in reference to violence in
intimate relationships, and ‘family violence’ to denote violence occurring in any family-like relationship.
Violence is taken to include a suite of abusive and controlling behaviours by one person towards
another, including rape and sexual assault, child abuse, physical violence, emotional abuse, financial
abuse, spiritual abuse, social abuse and pet abuse.
The phrase ‘prison industrial complex’ (PIC) is used to refer to the “overlapping interests of
government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic,
social and political problems.”21
Finally, in line with the approach taken by community accountability and aimed at accessible dialogue
and tactics for community activism, this paper draws heavily on community resources, discussion and
first-hand lessons from accountability work, and attempts to avoid academic language in favour of plain
language where possible.
Critical Resistance (2014) ‘What is the PIC?’
http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/
21
16
Research and local context
A number of projects, collectives and organisers have undertaken and continue to do community
accountability work, training and facilitated responses to violence in Australia.22 The opportunity to
learn from the experiences of the work to date, insights from local organisers and those involved, what
has worked and hasn’t, and the challenges thrown up by local interventions to violence is important,
including as a comparative basis for discussions with organisers overseas.
In the lead up to the fellowship trip I distributed a survey and conducted recorded interviews with
people involved with community accountability work in and around Melbourne, and in other locations
in Australia23 (See appendix 1). 24 I did this to gather personal stories about community accountability
and transformative justice work to date, garner perspectives on what is working and what isn't in local
initiatives – particularly structural and process approaches, and to discuss tactics and personal
experiences over time. The responses gathered were used with a view to identifying areas of work that
we can learn from in our local initiatives and to augment the research questions for US projects, to
ensure their relevance for others involved in this work in Australia.
Local experience offers a body of knowledge and an important experiential resource to document,
reflect on and develop our community accountability work, to look at overseas community
accountability work and think creatively about meeting challenges. One of the issues related to
community accountability is that time for documentation and collaborative reflection can be difficult to
come by. Projects emerge, seek out and utilise available resources, proceed with the demanding work,
and then often run for a time and cease, or alternatively change form into new projects. One of the
most useful aspects of the Fellowship work was as a rare opportunity for reflection and discussion – for
some survey and interview participants, several years on from the work being considered. The process
served as a debriefing and reflection opportunity, include for projects that are no longer active, and a
means to connect with a specific network of people to feed Fellowship findings back to and work with
in an ongoing way to formalise a community accountability network in Australia.
People's reflections were strikingly consistent in terms of the challenges that community accountability
work throws up, and often the passage of engagement with different tactics – particularly facilitated
accountability processes and behavioural change work versus trainings and prevention-orientated and
capacity building work.
Short extracts from survey responses and the interview transcripts are woven through this report,
particularly the following section on local challenges. Given the focus on local challenges and any
applicable lessons from work in the USA, the quotes selected from local organisers centre on some of
The survey and interview work was focused on people who have been involved with organising grassroots safety initiative
and community-based interventions and responses to violence and assault. Several people discussed their survivorship or
personal histories in the context of reflecting on this work, but given the parameters of the research, the background
survey and discussion did not seek to gather stories and reflections from either survivors or people called out for
violence who had been engaged in a community response. These latter pieces of work are warranted, and crafting a
separate process or project to collect these stories, reflections and critique is an important task for the development of
local community accountability work - including for some of the reasons covered in this paper.
24 'Grassroots organising for Safety – Community Research Project', hosted on Plan to Thrive,
http://plantothrive.net.au/2014/05/grassroots-organising-safety/
23
17
the issues and difficulties of local community accountability work, and don’t represent the positive
outcomes, support or enhanced safety related to local work also discussed.
Following its completion, excerpts and transcriptions of interviews will be collated into a reflective
resource for distribution back to the people and projects involved, and made publically available25. The
discussions emerging from the survey and interview process are ongoing, and because of the usefulness
of the reflections, further interviews will be conducted.
The survey work sits alongside the existing discussions, published reflections, writings on and critiques
of local accountability work – many of which clearly elucidate the challenges, thinking and direction of
accountability in the local context.26
25 Note that collating survey responses and personal anecdotes for distribution involved obtaining permission, and a
collaborative process of de identifying people and situations referred to in responses.
26 Notably, at the time of writing, Rebecca Winter’s article ‘Silent No Longer: Confronting Sexual Violence in the Left’ had
just been published in Anarchist Affinity: http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/2014/03/silent-no-longer-confrontingsexual-violence-in-the-left/ as well as Erin Buckley’s ‘community responses to sexual assault on ‘the Left’.
In addition: http://rapeisreal.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/my-story-2/ and the Historical Materialism protest letter
http://hmaustralasiaopenletter.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/hm2013/
18
Challenges and questions in Australian community accountability work27
Burnout, fatigue and vicarious trauma
“Because people know that I’m involved with this work, I am often told about the violence or sexual assault that people I
know experience… sometimes they are telling me in confidence and don’t want any follow up. When it is violence
perpetrated by someone I know, this can be really difficult and over time started to feel quite traumatic and I started
wanting to go to [particular events and venues] less”28
Because community accountability is by nature something that happens in a location closer to home
and in a more personal setting than other forms of more professionalised support work or responses to
violence, this proximity in turn raises some unique challenges regarding boundaries, self-care and
interpersonal dynamics, as well as a series of challenges around community capacity and interface,
shared understandings, approaches and uptake.
Local reflections repeatedly raised discussion about the challenges around the emotional impact and
thus the sustainability of community-based anti-violence work. Given the prevalence of gender-based
and intimate partner violence and sexual assault, and motivations to challenge violence in a community
setting, many people engaged in the work are personally affected by violence. The community-based
nature of the work means that people are generally unpaid, and that projects often have limited if any
budget, and rely on fundraising to cover costs. Additionally, while workers in direct service settings at
family violence and sexual assault services usually receive debriefing and supervision, community
accountability projects must often rely on the core project team or collective, and often have limited
external debriefing or supervision.
The further strand of this is the additional emotional impact of community interface. As an emergent
area of work, transformative justice initiatives are often piloting the work in their communities. As
such, the ideas and practices are often new and undergoing debate and critique. Where mainstream
services and the PIC are well-established, and individual workers may have a degree of insulation from
the critique of the broader institutions of which they are a part, people engaged in transformative
justice are generally directly engaged with the dialogue about the work, and critique around it. While
this is both a core facet of community accountability, in its opportunity for critical dialogue closest to
home, it is also something that poses challenges for anti-violence activists engaging in this work, as it
means they are up close and personal with any of the challenges of the work, community opinion/s of
it, and any backlash or divergent views. Additionally, several people spoke anecdotally about how being
identified as someone involved in community accountability work meant that they experienced an
increased number of disclosures from people experiencing violence, and also about how they felt a high
level of responsibility for outcome of interventions.
27
28
Themes drawn from interviews, survey and discussion
Community Safety Survey (Interviews) (2014): Quote drawn from interview responses
19
Interpersonal dynamics
“People did develop a lot of trust and rapport with each other. But it was also very hard because it was very emotional,
and it ended up being that a lot of the time people had talked about their experiences of sexual assault, supporting each
other… And maybe people weren’t quite ready to do the community accountability that they wanted to do, or we wanted
to do as a group. And we didn’t envisage that. We didn’t envisage conflict resolution, or that certain things would be really
tricky for some people and not for others… and how emotionally affecting everything was going to be.”29
In turn many of the relationships in community accountability work will extend beyond collegial
relationships to closer and more personal relationships, friendships and family bonds. This is absolutely
part of what enables it to occupy a different space to interventions by formal services and agencies, but
can also raise issues for community accountability projects as to how to take the authentic, useful and
important aspects of this connection to each other and to the work, while also creating structures and
processes that safeguard mental health, assist with boundaries and enable us to limit the stress and
trauma involved with responses to violence and to avoid re-traumatising people or replicating harm in
the response itself.
Structure of organisations and collectives
“We did often just have people rocking up for one meeting/one workshop and that was kind of crap. Because people
would sort of come, give a lot of criticism and then leave… without even really knowing what we were doing… and people
were quite affected by that because this is actually really difficult… it’s not easy”30
In discussing issues around interpersonal dynamics in community safety work with local activists and
practitioners, several specific areas of challenge, interest and research inquiry emerged, including the
structure and membership of community accountability projects, including the matter of open versus
closed collectives or projects. It also included discussion around creating structures that allow for
shared decision-making, skill-sharing and capacity building, while also recognising disparities in
knowledge and experience.
This discussion also extended to the interface between survivorship, personal healing and outreach
work, and included queries as to the most sustainable group process, and processes to build trust while
balancing this with the purpose of the project.
“[Our lesson was to] keep the personal stuff quite separate – if you want to have a therapeutic support group (and maybe
people do need to do that before they engage in response stuff, because it will come up), but keep the collective focused on
skills rather than the deep connection… And to really separate survivor support from confronting perpetrators, and then
community engagement as a separate thing.”31
.
Ibid.
Ibid.
31 Ibid.
29
30
20
Phases of the work
“What we started to do first as a collective was doing workshops. So I guess it was the community response side seemed so
difficult, we felt like we weren't ready as a collective to do that.”32
“Trying to do it all at once: heal, be honest, develop trust, do everything. It's too much, I think.”33
Another matter of local discussion and challenge concerned the order and passage of accountability
projects and processes, including the phases of the work. Specifically, challenges around clearly identify
and planning the stages of the work. Most particularly including allocating time to self-care and healing,
sufficient work on self-education and developing shared understandings and approaches, followed by
outreach, training, accountability work, debriefing and development.
People also reflected on the pressure associated with being approached to respond to incidences of
violence before the group is prepared or individuals are ready, and thus commencing responses
(particularly attempts at facilitated accountability) before the structure, frameworks and processes of the
project are adequately in place. People discussed the tension between the pressure to respond to crisis
situations and adequately support a victim/survivor, assessing a group's readiness to respond, and
allocating adequate time and resources to structural and preparatory work:
“Once people knew you were in [the collective] they'd tell you about assaults and violence they’d experienced, and you'd feel
like you wanted to help them, even though we weren't doing it as a collective. 34
“That's such a key point, the urgency – which means you do it, or the collective does it before you're ready. That sense of
almost crisis work where you go perhaps we need to organise before we might be ready to do that work. But then as soon as
you're formed or identified and you have a purpose
Someone will always ask you
(And it's very difficult to say no)
And then you have the fallout before you've even set up the process. You're obviously going to make mistakes and you are
going to do things that are wrong, but also it's a sensitive issue and the friends of the perpetrator are going to be like 'who
are these bitches' or whatever, which was definitely an attitude.”35
Ibid.
Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
32
33
21
Who are the community?
“As long as communities are fragmented and the moment that anything happens people can go 'oh no they're not my
community,' - we don’t have any geographic or cultural ties. Well I mean we have cultural ties but they are through choice
rather than from geography, language, necessity – from needing each other to survive. So we have an opt in or an opt out
community, which leads to it being fragmented. It's a community when you want it to be and not when you don't want it to
be. And that community can split immediately.”36
Community safety work in Australia has been undertaken by a number of different projects in radical
or progressive communities, sometimes attached to specific campaigns or social justice convergences.
Attempting this work in communities that are often self-selecting and bound by politics rather than
geography or race, raises a series of challenges in establishing who exactly the community is defined to
include, whether that is an opt-in/opt-out matter, and who is doing the defining – is it the group
engaged in community response work, or each person individually in a process of self-definition. This
raises questions as to how much can be asked of people in the community, or what can be realistically
expected to be a shared response to violence.
Working in communities of identity or politics throws up different dynamics to communities bound by
race and cultural identity, occupation, economic necessity and geography, which may offer more clearly
delineated margins of definition. This local challenge is thus related to issues in translating work into
different settings in a way that makes sense and is applicable, while avoiding co-opting the work and
thinking of POC and marginalised communities elsewhere.
Dynamics of interaction between groups and the community in which they are
situated
“People from [the collective] got criticised for being dominating, dogmatic, police, kicking people out, saying what's okay
and not, people feeling like they were taking the moral high-ground and criticising everybody else… also people thinking
that we hadn't thought about this kind of stuff and just wanted to be the police or wanted to get on a power trip kicking
people out...and saying what was okay and not okay … It was very much put within this sort of power thing, which I
think maybe existed to an extent but was far too simplistic for what was actually going on and missed a lot of the
complexities of the situation, and of community response. “37
The challenges around defining the community are linked with questions as to how a community
accountability group or project interacts with the community. There are a variety of different dynamics
and questions around how community accountability work and groups doing this interface with the
community in which they are situated. How are you empowered as a group? What's your role? Does
the community want to work with you on responses or will be there be resistance? And conversely,
how is a community able to engage with an accountability project, give feedback, and feel like the
interaction is two way or there is room to input?
36
37
Ibid.
Ibid.
22
Locally this has raised questions as to how projects come together and are empowered to undertake the
work with and by the community, including what the role of a collective or project should be and
whether the community wants to undertake this work, whether it is shared, welcome and understood,
or whether there will be resistance.
It is noteworthy that where the analysis of power is central to communities of politics, this is relevant to
questions of organising structure, and the challenges of developing shared understandings of
community safety and baseline positions on interventions to violence. These discussions of power
tended to emerge particularly in progressive and activist communities where critiques of power are
really present and central.
Locally, particularly around responses to specific incidences of violence, organisers have also talked
about challenges in developing sufficient shared understandings and community ownership of work
that can hold through the emotionally charged work of addressing the use of violence by a known
person. Thoughts and positions on responses to violence or the most useful and appropriate methods
of violence prevention are highly varied, and thus developing sufficient shared understandings or unity
of approach within a community is a significant challenge. In some conversations, organisers spoke
about the tension in the debate between different positions:
“Sometimes being a proponent of community response feels like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, where you’re
being criticised from both angles – on one hand some people think you are wannabe police who are vilifying people called
out for violent or some kind of kangaroo court, and on the other hand others people equate the idea of dialogue or
openness to change and accountability as being rape apologists or looking for a softer option and failing to name that
sexual violence is a crime.”38
“While [the community response] was underway and the person who committed the assault was willing to take
responsibility for it, there were still people in the community disputing whether it had occurred, and downplaying it”39
Dealing with complexity and critique
“People had useful and legitimate critique, but it was hard to find a way to talk about that, channel it usefully, and not
have it pull apart a process that was ongoing, or just wind up in a polarised debate”40
The above dynamics then relate closely to questions around how to craft the work so that it is dynamic,
open to critique, yet able to proceed and develop. In a societal context where interpersonal violence is
rife, and grassroots measures to address this are generally lacking, concerted community safety work is
new and evolving. The challenges and risk factors in undertaking this with real people and the
complexity of lived experiences are very real (and discussed in this paper), and a central question for
practitioners is how to engage with and be responsive to critique and discussion, while holding the
central objectives of safety and responsibility, and facilitating the continuation of the work.
Ibid.
Ibid.
40 Ibid.
38
39
23
Are we ready as a community? Questions of capacity-building and order of work
“The idea of community response relies so much on honesty, trust, people acknowledging what's happened and wanting to
change, and a community who believes in that and wants to support that as well. Whereas in reality those things generally
don't exist, so what community response becomes narrowed down to is kicking someone out of a party or excluding
someone from a space who's been called out for assault.”41
Many of the difficult dynamics around community accountability relate to the lack of shared
community understandings, objectives, agreements and concepts of violence and safety, and the nature
of interventions and response. This includes foundational understandings of the continuum of
violence42, and what constitutes violence that is 'worthy' of a response/intervention. The pervasiveness
of patriarchal understandings and its product rape culture, with dynamics of victim-blaming and
confused positions on consent and entitlement, is striking even in progressive communities. This,
combined with the challenges in crafting an approach different to the binary crime/punishment,
guilt/innocence approach of criminal legal responses, and to develop a shared understanding and
approach around this, throws up questions as to when and how a community can be 'ready' to
undertake safety work. What about when the person being called out doesn't recognise the harm? What
about when the friends of the perpetrator don’t call him/them to account, and instead collude?
Where the person causing harm is willing to take responsibility for it, the options offered are clearer.
But what about when the harm is disputed or the person isn’t interested in accountability? This is when
people talk about interventions commonly coming down to attempts to create safe spaces for the
victim/survivor, and defaulting to requests of the person causing harm not to attend spaces, extending
to exclusion – which is often controversial, critiqued as replicating the tactics of the PIC, and may not
be the desired approach of even those involved in the community response. Breaking away from PIC
related concepts of punishment and court-based mandates, local organisers are seeking additional ideas
about tactics and the options and pathways for community safety where the harm is unacknowledged
by the person causing it, or they are not a willing participant in addressing it.
This relates to other challenges and questions flagged by local activists –
-
What about when the person who has caused harm starts gaslighting43 the survivor? This is
when local responses have tended to strongly emphasise survivor support, but also when some
of the controversial moves to request a person not attend spaces, or exclude them from these
has been adopted in the attempt to create safe spaces, because it's basically come down to a
choice between who is being excluded.
-
How to deal with resistance from people connected with or around the person causing harm,
often even after the initial discussion is very positive?
41 Ibid.
42 Liz Kelly (1988) Op cit.
43 Gaslighting is a term that describes actions that 1) make another person believe he or she is crazy, and 2) discredit the
person by making others think they are crazy. The term comes from the play and 1944 movie Gaslight starring Ingrid
Bergman. In this movie, the abuser (played by Charles Boyer) manipulates the gas light in the house from the attic.
When Ingrid Bergman’s character talks about the noticing the fluctuations, he responds as though her perception is
wrong. Because she has no explanation and because his manner is confident, she begins to doubt herself.
24
“I don't think that people necessarily want [to condone violence], but they don't want to believe that their friends are
perpetrating. It's easier to believe that someone is a crazy bitch making things up, because that's the social stereotype, than
it is to believe that your friend is a perpetrator. It's easier to believe that what they have done isn't bad enough to warrant
[a response], than to believe that anything like that needs to be dealt with”44
- Is to more useful for community accountability groups to be directly facilitating processes or
‘running’ interventions, or is it better to play an advisory role, focus on training and capacitybuilding and support people to run their own processes?
Privacy and conceptualising harm
“It was really difficult to manage confidentiality, and there was all of this information kind of flying around and being
discussed informally or via a rumour mill. And that made it hard as we were trying to balance respecting the survivor’s
privacy with concerns about safety and also to create some space [at the survivor’s request] for accountability and the person
[called out] taking responsibility”45
Community accountability work locally has raised questions about how harm is conceptualised, and
how information can be handled and a response crafted in a way that maximises both safety and
respect.
This particularly relates to issues around how widely the situation is discussed, questions of informal
information-sharing and gossip, and how we ensure that processes are survivor-centric. It also relates to
how we conceptualise a person’s choice to use violence or enact harm, while leaving room for the
possibility of behavioural change and without affixing permanence to the idea of someone as a
'perpetrator'. Local organisers discussed challenges around how to support accountability and
behavioural change without demonising someone or precluding the possibility of the change that we
are hoping for, and also how to craft processes that honour the privacy of survivors, and avoid creating
re-traumatising processes or damaging community dialogue.
Avoiding replicating systems of oppression in our community-based practice
“[A major ongoing challenge is ] women putting far too much energy into rehabilitating dudes who demonstrate no interest
in being allies or being sorry…Women have to stop worrying about what will happen to him and start from the
commitment to have women involved in struggle. If the dudes want to come along, they have to prove they can play nice.”46
In seeking to apply anti-oppressive practices to our community accountability work, one of the core
challenges is how to ensure that we don't reinforce and replicate systems of oppression either in the
work we do in the community, or in our encounters with each other in projects and collectives aimed at
Community Safety Survey (interviews) (2014) op cit.
Ibid.
46 Community Safety Survey (2014): Quotes drawn from survey responses
44
45
25
building safety. This includes challenges around working to ensure that the power structures that we are
critical of are dismantled our own organising style, the ways that we relate to each other, and what
tactics we consider for our interventions. How do we avoid creating a situation where ‘community
accountability’ equals a group of women undertaking a great deal of work to try to hold men who
perpetrate violence and sexual assault to account, while simultaneously supporting friends who have
been assaulted?
This also extends to the debate about tactics that involve shame or the discussion around ‘eviction’ or
exclusion, whether it be temporary or long term. Often at a philosophical level, local accountability
projects have aspired to avoid the exclusionary practices of the PIC, but when other options are tried
and there is no engagement or option for facilitated accountability work, processes can come down to
creating safe spaces for the survivor, and thus look at exclusion:
“[We were] trying to engage in a process with a survivor in the left, whose ex-boyfriend raped her. We tried to get some
dudes to talk to him and she offered him some non-cop solutions. He didn’t go for it. His mates in the left kept on
insisting on knowing the details so they could make their own decision. We managed to get at least one guy to agree to talk
to him, but he wouldn’t engage. Then we moved to trying to exclude him from spaces”47
Interface with formal services and the criminal legal system
“It was all pretty disastrous and I think she ended up considering legal options”48
A number of local initiatives have grappled with questions about what to do when we don't have all the
skills or capacity we need within the community, and how to work well in interaction with services,
agencies or individual practitioners, such as sexual assault counsellors or mental health workers. This
includes questions around consciously building relationships with services or practitioners, and
preparatory work.
When it comes to interaction with police and court-based proceedings, the challenges for community
accountability work become more complex, often around the central question as to whether there is
there still a role for community accountability if these processes are in train, and how to ensure that in
working to establish community-based options, we aren’t pressuring survivors or limiting their choices.
Further to this discussion is the question as to how we interact with formal services if accountability
options aren’t working effectively, how this is determined, and whether there is any role for
accountability work to support people who are seeking other recourse.
What role do the survivor's wishes play?
“When we first started doing community response stuff, we would work with the survivor to craft a list of requests or
demands that related to restitution or what they would need to feel safe and heard, and that would form the basis of the
47
48
Ibid.
Ibid.
26
process with the perpetrator. Now I see it differently, and think that those requests are a central factor, but should not
form the only way to respond. Also, in order for a process to be worth exploring, there has to be some openness to the
possibility of change – it has not worked in the mediations I have been involved in to try and use the language of
community response to actually evict someone permanently from the community. That’s a different thing.”49
The role of the survivor in community accountability is the subject of ongoing discussion. While it is
broadly accepted that transformative justice operates from a position of believing survivors, and
holding survivor support central to the work, discussion has emerged around what exact role that
person or those people’s wishes play in cultivating a community response - does it wholly drive a
response, or is it one factor?
Particularly when it comes to facilitated accountability processes, there is some discussion as to how
directly related a process is or should be to the requests, demands or wishes of the survivor, and also as
to what kind of involvement or communication a survivor might have through the process.
How do we evaluate community accountability work?
“One woman that we worked with told us that [the response] was essential in helping her get through it – being believed
and having active support and people to help plan for safety. But it’s hard to capture that feedback, and also how do we
kind of measure that against the bits we get wrong or that we need to change so that we can get a sense of what works,
especially because that same response came under heavy criticism.”50
A lot of the time the discussions about community accountability work and its effectiveness is
anecdotal, and perspectives of a single process may differ greatly based on who is being asked and their
role. As an emergent and generally grassroots response to violence, there are a series of issues around
how we might measure ‘success’ in community accountability, and how to approach evaluating the
work. This includes queries as to what information we might look to gather, from whom, and at what
point - during, immediately, or some time after an intervention?
It is worth noting that in discussing past interventions or responses with local organisers, most noted
that they would view the effectiveness of a community response differently several years after it took
place as compared to immediately afterwards, generally reflecting that in the immediacy of the process,
it was much easier to see everything that had gone wrong or hadn’t worked, and to therefore take on
board any criticism to a high degree or without discernment.
Time period for work
The challenges around evaluation also relate closely to local questions on the time period for the work
– how do we know when a process is ‘done’? How long should we expect to be engaged in a scenario,
or to work with a particular situation or people? How long does it take to effect meaningful change?
49
50
Community Safety Survey (Interviews) (2014): op cit.
Community Safety Survey (Interviews) (2014): op cit.
27
Again it is worth noting that many of these questions around time period for interventions and
behavioural change are not confined to community-based work, and are mirrored in some of the
questions concerning the duration of formal Men’s Behavioural Change Programmes and violence
prevention work with men, and any correlation with violence reduction.51
Additional challenges
Other challenges discussed in interviews and critical reflection included those around diversifying the
work and getting different voices, where local initiatives have often been confined to urban activist or
left-leaning communities, the challenges of developing shared language in different contexts, how to
create dialogue and share strategies between different regions or projects, how to build community faith
in transformative justice and the ongoing question of how to provide support for the person doing
harm/using violence as they go through a community response, without collusion or becoming
apologists, and ensuring that the survivor remains centred in the work.
Translating local reflections into questions of North American groups
The thematic areas of discussion by local organisers were used to guide the interviews and work with
host groups. These themes are thus revisited in the main body of this report, which rather than
covering terrain dealt with in existing resources and writings about community accountability, focuses
on the different approaches and strategies that host groups take to the challenges articulated in
Australia, and reflections on their work and methods that may be useful for local contemplation.
Citation: Flood, M. (2004) Changing Men: Best practice in violence prevention work with men.
Home Truths Conference: Stop sexual assault and domestic violence: A national challenge,
Melbourne, 15-17 September
51
28
Programme
Date
Place
th
th
29 - 30 April
st
th
1 – 7 May
th
st
8 - 21 May
Organisation
Notes
Transit Melbourne –
San Francisco
San
Francisco/Oakland
Critical Resistance
Host - Internship and placement
(Contact:
Rachel
Herzig)
Oakland
AORTA Oakland
Host - Internship, observation and co(Contact:
Kiran working/placement
Nigam)
Network interviews.
Additional interviews and meetings
with Bay Area Transformative Justice,
Accountability and abolition networks
st
th
21 May – 28 May
th
th
28 May – 4 June
th
th
4 – 18 June
th
rd
18 – 23 June
th
24 June
Seattle
For Crying Out Loud
API Chaya
(Contact:
Lilsnoopy
Fujikawa)
TJ Panellists
North West Network
(Contact: Connie Burk
and Shannon PerezDarby)
Interviews
scheduled
with
organisations/projects working across
Transformative Justice and community
accountability. FCOL central contact,
Facilitated
debrief
and
panel
discussion.
Transit, Seattle –
Philadelphia
(nonresearch week)
Philadelphia
Detroit
New York:
Fellowship concludes
Philly Stands Up & Host - Internship, observation and coworking
AORTA Philadelphia
(Contact:
Jenna
Peters-golden)
'Philly's Pissed'
Interviews and debrief
AMC Conference
(Audre Lorde Project,
PSU,
Critical
Resistance,
AORTA,
YWEP, Project Nia,
everyday Abolition et
al)
Allied Media Conference – Community
response to gender-based violence,
Transforming Justice track: Workshops,
trainings and panel discussion.
ALP/Support NY
Visit and workshop
Interviews and discussion with TJ track
organisations and presenters
29
During the Fellowship trip I elected to focus on work with host organisations and projects whose
structure and work is most applicable in a local context and whose research and resources have been
most influential for emergent local initiatives. The trip was structured to include core time based with
hosts, together with interviews and discussions with networks and allies in the area. This enabled me to
spend some time based with and meeting people involved in each host organisation and project, to
observe work and participate in a more in-depth way, to attend trainings, conduct interviews, gather
resources and have more extensive discussions about the specific challenges facing Australian
organisers. I was also then able to reach out to a broader network and meet and interview additional
organisers, and attend the panels, workshops and the ‘Transforming Justice’ track of the Allied Media
Conference.
Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance (CR) work toward a vision of creating “genuinely healthy, stable communities that
respond to harm without relying on imprisonment and punishment” and to stop the Prison Industrial
Complex by challenging the “belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe”. 52 As such, much
of CR’s work focuses on reformulating remedies that refuse mainstream anti-violence movement turns
to the criminal legal system, and they provide useful insight into the intersections between gender
violence and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), as well as strategies to bridge the anti-violence and
the abolitionist movements.
Critical Resistance produce a news broadsheet that is distributed to people in prisons, and conduct
ongoing campaign work against the expansion of the PIC in North America. In working to
reformulate, document and share alternative responses to violence outside the PIC, CR are currently
hosting an internship project interviewing people about how they feel about police and what kind of
responses/alternatives they would like to see in their communities.
Critical Resistance are also a partner on the Storytelling and Organising Project (STOP), and CR staff
previously worked with Creative Interventions, including on resource development and the production
of the ‘Creative Interventions Toolkit’ (see below).
Notably, in 2001 CR and Incite! Feminists of Color Against Violence articulated a foundational
statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex, calling on social justice movements
to develop analysis and strategies that address both state and interpersonal violence – particularly
violence against women, and emphasising the need for holistic strategies for addressing violence that
speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.53 Importantly, this statement is critical of the idea
that criminalisation is effective as an overarching strategy for ending violence, noting that the
exponential increase in the number of men in prison in the USA has not resulted in a reduction in rates
of violence and assault. Indeed the statement emphasises the role of the anti-violence movement in
increasing the proliferation of prisons.
Critical Resistance (2014) http://criticalresistance.org/about/
Incite! & Critical Resistance (2001) ‘Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex – Statement’
http://www.incite-national.org/page/incite-critical-resistance-statement#sthash.XjtXKO5d.dpuf
Accessed 7 May 2014
52
53
30
Given the heavy emphasis on the criminalisation of violence in Australia, these issues have interesting
and important applications for local anti-violence work.
Creative Interventions
Creative Interventions (CI) was established in 2004 as a resource centre to develop and promote
community-based responses to interpersonal violence. CI worked based on the assumption that
“the relationships, families and communities in which violence occurs are also the very locations for
long-term change and transformation. It assumes that those most impacted by violence are the most
motivated to challenge violence. It assumes that friends, family, and community know most intimately
the conditions that lead to violence as well as the values and strengths which can lead to its
transformation.”54
As a resource focused project, the institutional form of CI underwent its planned wrap up, handing
over the tools, knowledge and models created and documented for communities through STOP and
the ‘Creative Interventions toolkit’. The development, content, distribution and use of these two
projects was the focus of the CI fellowship research component, via interviews and discussion with
contributors and organisers using the resources, and both are examined more closely in the main body
of this report.
Northwest Network
Founded in 1987 by lesbian survivors of battering, the Seattle-based Northwest Network (NW
Network) works to end abuse in diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities through
education, organising and advocacy.55. As a network emerging from and situated within a community
context, they “work within a broad liberation movement dedicated to social and economic justice,
equality and respect for all people and the creation of loving, inclusive and accountable communities.”
Both Connie Burk and Shannon Perez-Darby from NW Network authored chapters in 'The Revolution
Starts at Home'56, a foundational anthology of experiences of and reflections on community-based
organising around accountability and transformative justice, and a text that is widely used and
referenced locally in Australia. NW Network's focus on the community conditions required to improve
safety, their extensive experience organising in the Seattle queer community, writing on trauma, safety
and accountability and their thinking on approaches to organising are important and persuasive.
Meetings and interviews with Connie Burk, CEO and Shannon Perez-Darby covered the research
questions and challenges from Australia, and strongly focused on the content and approach of
54Creative
Interventions (2004) ‘About us’
http://www.creative-interventions.org/about/ Accessed 27 March 2014
55North West Network (2011) ‘Who are we’ http://nwnetwork.org/who-we-are/
56 Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha & Andrea smith (2011) The Revolution Starts at Home:
Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities’, South End Press.
31
Northwest Network's training work to build the framework for accountable relationships and
community transformative justice capacity in the Seattle area.
API Chaya
API Chaya is an Asian & Pacific Islander led and focused domestic violence service, formed from the
merger of two organizations in 2011: the Asian & Pacific Islander Women & Family Safety Center and
Chaya.57
API Chaya operate a queer youth programme with strong transformative justice focus and who
facilitate workshops on community accountability and transformative justice. In thinking from a
community-based perspective, API Chaya are interested in How are Asian & Pacific Islander
communities responding to violence and what questions or challenges this raises for traditional models
of responding to domestic violence and sexual assault.58
Recently API Chaya hosted a panel to discuss the successes, challenges, gaps and visions for
transformative justice in Seattle.59 Individual interviews and discussion with the Queer programme
coordinator provided an opportunity to discuss the dynamics of conducting transformative justice work
in a service setting, API Chaya’s work on digital storytelling as a tool, comparative responses to the
challenges identified in Australian project work, as well as the Seattle local experience of organising
around community accountability.
For Crying Out Loud
For Crying Out Loud (FCOL) were a Seattle-based grassroots collective and networks of survivors and
allies working on community accountability.60 Established in response to a number of rapes that
occurred in Seattle, FCOL worked on survivor support, aggressor accountability and sexual violence
prevention, and organised community based trainings around their work and affirmative consent. Their
size, structure and organising approach is strongly comparative to a number of community safety and
accountability collectives in Australia, and thus their experiences are very relevant for local organisers.
Interviews with FCOL took the form of de-brief and recorded discussion, with some of the Australian
challenges as discussion prompts, and a focus on the nature of working as a small collective,
community dynamics, organising structure and separation of areas of work, resources and
timeline/order of the work. Many of the FCOL collective members continue to work on
57API
Chaya (2012) ‘Who We are’
http://www.chayaseattle.org/index.php/who-we-are/our-story Accessed 1 July 2014
58API Chaya (2012) ‘Who We are’
http://www.chayaseattle.org/index.php/what-we-do/queer-network-program Accessed 1 July 2014
59 API Chaya Queer Network Program (2014) Panel on Transformative Justice and community Accountability
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4ejZFUjNZMHVOWFk/edit
60 For Crying Out Loud (2010) ‘About Us’
http://forcryingoutloud206.wordpress.com/about/ Accessed 9 May 2014
32
transformative justice and accountability projects in the Seattle area, and offered comment and content
based also on this ongoing work and trends in organising approaches.
Philly Stands Up
Philly Stands Up (PSU) is a long-running community accountability collective that has focused on work
with people who have used violence or caused harm. They are self-described as, “a transformative
justice collective working with perpetrators of sexual assault in radical communities.”61 Established
more than ten years ago following a festival in Philadelphia at which a number of women were sexually
assaulted, PSU was established to focus on accountability, while their partner collective, Philly's Pissed,
focused on support work with survivors.
Over the course of their work, PSU has conducted facilitated accountability processes, authored
resources and articles, conducted training and spoken widely about evolving approaches to TJ. In their
collective structure, focus and approach, PSU's experience is instructive for local organisers, and their
resources, including 'Anatomy of Accountability- a portrait of praxis' have been instrumental in shaping
local thinking about accountability work.62
PSU also organised and hosted the Transformative Justice Action Camp, a three day national skill-share
and facilitated training for North American community organisers.63 More recently, PSU has conducted
a TJ distance education unit for incarcerated people in collaboration with Books Through Bars, and
two rounds of their three month training programme for local organisations and activists, as well as
contributing to Project Nia’s ‘Chicago Transformative Justice Fall’ curriculum guide – an education
guide on transformative justice.64
Because of their work specifically facilitating accountability processes and work with people who use
violence, PSU are a wealth of experience, knowledge and thinking in this area. Their collective
structure, community basis, volunteer nature, and the pillars of the work they do – including training,
resources and activism, are didactical and informative when it comes to our own local thinking,
approach and comparative sphere of work.
AORTA
The Anti-oppression and Resource Training Alliance (AORTA) is a network of educators who work
specifically to expand the capacity of collective, co-operative and community-based projects through
61Philly
Stands Up (2010) ‘Our work’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/ourwork.html Accessed 3 April 2014
62Jenna Peters Golden & Esteban Lance Kelly ‘Philly Stands up Portrait of Praxis: Anatomy of Accountability’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/portrait%20of%20praxis.pdf
63For more information see: http://www.phillystandsup.com/actioncamp.html
64 Project Nia (collaboration) (2013) Transformative Justice: A Curriculum Guide
http://niastories.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/tjcurriculum_design_small-finalrev.pdf
33
training, facilitation and planning, grounded in an intersectional approach to liberation and antioppression analysis - including providing training to combat sexism and gender violence.65
In interviews AORTA organisers gave reflections on their role in facilitating workshops for the Philly
Stands Up 'Transformative Justice Action Camp' – the three day residential conference skill-sharing
transformative justice tactics and approaches, as well as on their ongoing training work, approach to
mediations and interventions, and enacting an anti-oppression framework.66 This includes their
thinking, writing and training on approaches to challenging violence - workshops such as 'call out/call
in' culture, resisting 'divide and conquer tactics', and “Institutionalised Patriarchy: Framing our
resistance” - run with community projects and campuses experiencing high rates of sexual assault, as
well as their work delivering movement connecting workshops, including on the intersection between
prison abolition, gender-based violence and disability justice work.
AMC – Allied Media Conference
The AMC is a network of networks – social justice organisers, community technologists, transformative
artists, educators, entrepreneurs, and many others – who each year host the Allied Media Conference67
- a “collaborative laboratory of media-based organizing strategies for transforming our world”. The
conference is held every summer in Detroit, and this year's conference included a 'Transforming
Justice' track, with workshops, presentations and panel discussions by a number of North American
projects and organisers. Both AORTA and PSU presented at the AMC, together with other organisers
from projects such as the Audre Lorde Project, Project Nia, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
and others.
This cross section of transformative justice organising work provided samples of a range of approaches
and work in this area, as well as the opportunity to attend short trainings, workshops, discussions and
strategy sessions, and to gather resources and ask questions of additional activists and projects.
Additional organisations
In addition to the formal programme hosts, the fellowship trip research facilitated opportunities to
meet with other local organisers for formal and informal discussion, and to attend panel discussions
and events with presenters from other groups doing transformative justice work. These notably
included Project Nia, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Network, Philly’s Pissed, Badass visionary
Healers, The Audre Lorde Project and Support NY.
Anti Oppression Resource Training Alliance (2013) ‘about’
http://www.aortacollective.org/about and http://www.aortacollective.org/ourwork
66 http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/apply-now-for-our-transformative-justice-action-camp/
67 Allied Media Conference (2014) http://amc.alliedmedia.org/
65
34
Main Body
This section explore the specific approaches taken by host groups and projects to the task of
re/envisioning solutions to intimate partner, family, sexual, gender and other forms of interpersonal
violence, from a position that embraces the values of liberation and social justice.68 Different groups
have different approaches, tactics, and areas of emphasis, and where there are alternative ideas and
methods of work or points of differing analysis, these are outlined for local consideration.
Why do Community Accountability?
“When we turn away from each other we are sort of turning towards these oppressive institutions–prisons, immigration
systems, like the violent systems that keep us fighting for survival. And then when we display a willingness to try holding
each other accountable…what we are saying is that we have faith in each other…So I feel like maybe that’s the positive
thing. That we are actually showing we believe in each other. That we have faith in each other. Enough to try.” – Billie
Rain69
When case studying the work of host groups, it is useful to understand what drives their work on
community-based safety, and the way that this guides their approach and focus. Particularly for our
analysis of how these drivers and tactics might operate in a local context.
Interviews and discussion with North American hosts, and particularly NW Network, PSU, and the
work of Creative Interventions revealed similar themes in the impetus for transformative justice and
community accountability work, outlined below. It is worth noting that these closely mirror local
reflections on the impetus to further develop these initiatives at home.
Because people often turn to family, friends and community when they experience violence
and help needs to come from this location
Host groups reported that in their communities, people experiencing intimate partner, family or
interpersonal violence often disclose the violence to family, friends or others in their community, rather
than to formal support services or police. As such, communities and informal networks are vital
Please note that a comprehensive discussion of gender-based, intimate partner and family violence is outside the scope of
this paper, including detail on indicators of violence, dynamics, increased risk and vulnerable groups and community
attitudes. This paper will not explore in depth the various barriers and challenges for people experiencing violence to
achieve safety, including economic and social hurdles, access requirements, limited service and agency related options,
mental health and self-esteem hurdles related to the violence, and the complexities of loyalty and relationships.
68
69
Billie Rain quoted in API Chaya(2014) , Panel on Transformative Justice and Community Accountability, API Chaya’s
Queer Network Program
More information about this event and the Queer Network Program at:
http://apichaya.org/index.php/whatwedo/queernetworkprogram/74
35
locations for support, safety and interventions into violence, and important sites for anti-violence
capacity building.
Community interventions can work alongside assistance from social support and crisis services and
police, but are not reliant on these services/agencies being involved if these other forms of help are not
sought by the person experiencing harm, or if they do not wish to or feel safe to access them.
Depending on situations and needs, community responses may also be more suitable, quicker, safer and
more effective than other options.
In Australia people experiencing violence or sexual assault are also more likely to talk to friends or
family, rather than contacting a crisis or support service or reporting to police. As noted, the Australian
Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey found that one in three Australian women (34%) have
experienced physical violence since the age of fifteen, and one in five Australian women (19%) have
experienced sexual violence since the age of fifteen, most by a person known to them.70 However an
estimated 67% of women did not contact police following the most recent assault.71
Because people experiencing violence often choose to, or need to, remain in their relationships
and/or in their community
A core tenet of community accountability work is listening to survivors. For those who wish to or need
to remain in their community, and/or in the relationship, groups have found that community
interventions that support an end to violence, and focus on ongoing safety and accountability are
important. In addition, there was thematic discussion about the ways that community responses that
respond to the violence in the context of a person's life and situation 'in-house' rather than via external
agencies or a removed context can be capable of holding complexity and building long term support.
This is very relevant to Victoria and Australia, where people experiencing violence often describe not
wanting to leave the relationship, the home or the community, but wanting the violence to stop.
Additionally, there may be a host of social, economic, family, religious and other reasons that people
choose to remain in their communities if they have left the relationship, or indeed in the relationships
themselves.
This is noted in the service sector where there has been and is an ongoing re-orientation by many
women's and family violence support services away from the emphasis on leaving violent relationships,
and often the shared home, as the only option for those experiencing violence. Based largely on
advocacy by women's services, increasingly options to safely remain in the home, often partnered with
the exclusion of the person using violence are being explored.72
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) Personal Safety Survey
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4906.0Main+Features12012?OpenDocument Accessed 8 June
2014
70
ibid.
Robyn Edwards (2004) Staying Home, Leaving Violence: Promoting choice for women leaving abusive partners, Australian domestic
and Family Violence Clearinghouse
http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/pdf%20files/shlv.pdf Accessed 3 March 2014
71
72
36
Because police or criminal legal system responses may not be appropriate or sought by people
experiencing violence
“There is a great distrust in our communities of police. And that's largely due to police brutality and the criminalization
of our communities, of queer and trans communities, of communities of color, of disabled people, of immigrants, sex
workers, and many, many, many more. And so, maybe a question that might come up, people might be like “but why
don't you just go to the police?" But we're starting from the framework that our communities can't and don't go to the
police”73- Lilsnoopy Fujikawa
“The youth connected with YWEP, which works with young women impacted by the sex trade, are often subject to police
surveillance, harassment, and arrest, and thus do not see the police as a place to seek assistance, safety, or
accountability.”74- Young women’s Empowerment Project
Often mainstream women's and children's support and family violence/sexual assault services advocate
police or criminal legal responses to violence and/or have relationships with these agencies. Crisis
workers and support agencies often suggest that women and children experiencing violence contact
police. Overwhelmingly, host groups and interviewees talked about exploring community based safety
strategies because people in their communities were not going to the police when violence occurred.
This is mirrored in a local context where there are many reasons that people experiencing violence may
not report to police or that police or criminal legal pathways often advocated by support services may
not be sought. Some people may not want to risk arrest themselves, or their own experiences of law
enforcement or those of their partner/the person using violence may make this a high risk or unsafe
option, including if the person using violence is themselves a police officer. Others may be concerned
that legal measures such as Intervention Orders (IOs) will be ineffectual (including based on past
experience) or exacerbate the violence, or that the conditions of Intervention Orders may prove
impractical around life arrangements such as shared accommodation or parenting.75
For some, previous experiences with police have been unhelpful or problematic, or their cultural
background, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or immigration status might mean they fear
discrimination or police violence, rather than assistance. Indeed for women who come from
communities that have fraught relationships with local police, contacting police as a response to
violence may be frowned upon or compromise her support from the community. For others, some in
progressive or activist communities, political critique may mean that police involvement is undesired.76
It is particularly important to note that for people who have experienced both state and interpersonal
violence, particularly criminalised women, police and the PIC are often not sites of safety or support.77
The interaction between these harms and associated trauma, and the often parallel dynamics of power
and control require alternative options for support and response.
73 Lilsnoopy Fujikawa, quoted in API Chaya(2014) Op cit.
http://apichaya.org/index.php/whatwedo/queernetworkprogram/74
74 http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/communities_engaged.pdf
75 Notes taken from facilitated discussion between Women’s Domestic Violence Service survivor Media Advocates, and
Minister Mary Wooldridge (2012).
76 Community Safety Survey (2014) op cit.
77 Incite! (2005) ‘Stop Law Enforcement Violence’, Stop Law Enforcement Violence Project
http://incite-national.org/page/stop-law-enforcement-violence Accessed 13 May 2014
37
While groups all note that frequently criminal legal responses are not the pathway sought by survivors,
some groups, in particular NW Network, are critical of framing community accountability as an
alternative to the criminal legal system, especially for the pressure that this can exert on survivors to
effectively demonstrate their politics by avoiding calling the police or seeking legal remedy. This fits
closely with issues emerging from Australian community safety work. Please see the section on
‘Accountable Communities’ for further discussion.
Because the strong focus on criminalising gender violence and increased incarceration rates
are not resulting in a reduction of violence
In line with the formative work by Incite! and Critical Resistance on the issues with criminalisation as a
strategy to recue violence, while criminal legal approaches to violence against women may deter some
acts of violence in the short term, as an overarching strategy for ending violence it has not been
effective. In North America mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence have led to the decrease in the
number of bettered women killing their partners in self-defence, but not to a decrease in the number of
batterers who kill their partners.78 While the number of men in prisons has increased exponentially, the
rates of sexual assault and domestic violence have not decreased.79
When it came to rape and sexual violence, the lower rates of reporting, prosecution and conviction,
together with survivors who experienced the criminal legal system as re-victimising, silencing or
marginalising, prompts the search for alternative options to deliver ‘justice’ for survivors.80
Also noted was the way that the criminalisation approach has brought many women into contact and
frequently conflict with the law – particularly women of colour, sex workers, and undocumented
women who face deportation. Organisers noted that a tough law and order agenda can be difficult to
decouple from women who kill batterers in self-defence, and thus may result in longer sentences.81
They also observed that channelling public funding into police and prisons often results in reduced
funding for social services, including refuges.82 Host groups and activists in North America also
emphasised the clear intersections between interpersonal gender violence, and the violence of the PIC –
including the chronic and well-documented sexual abuse and harassment endured by women in the
prison system.83
Incite! & Critical Resistance (2001) Op cit.
American Bar Association (2014) Domestic Violence Statistics
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html
80 Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (2014) ‘Rape: Reporting rates’
www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
81 Incite! & Critical Resistance (2001) Op cit.
82 The dynamics of this funding and the implications and considerations for refuges receiving government funding are
further explored in:
Merle H Weiner (1991) ‘From Dollars to Sense: A Critique of Government Funding for The Battered Women’s Shelter
Movement’, Law & Inequality: A journal of Theory and Practice, Volume IX, March 1991, number 2.
83 Victoria Law (2009) Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, PM Press and
"Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self Defense" in Dan Berger (ed) The Hidden
1970s: Histories of Radicalism.
78
79
38
This analysis is very relevant for local discussion, particularly in the context of in the context of
increasing police focus on family violence, and should be explored further in collaborative conversation
between family violence and sexual assault agencies, together with those undertaking PIC-critical work.
Individual and community anti-violence action and activism
“Never before have I seen so many cisgendered, heterosexual men step up. It was just amazing. And to see that happen in
the community that for a long time I knew that were doing some really amazing, progressive things, and yet there was this
piece around patriarchy and sexism that just loomed throughout.
And when they came to the meetings, and they stepped up, and they went to the book reading club and they start to talk
about having a men's group. A lot of skills that were built, certainly a deeper analysis was built, and to a certain extent
the paradigm has shifted.” NS, reflecting on community accountability work in Seattle over the past decade.84
It is widely acknowledged that addressing the drivers of gender violence and interpersonal violence
requires taking action at the community level. As in Australia, one of the strongest motivators for
transformative justice work was as a logical avenue for individual and direct anti-violence activism that
in turn enables communities to address patriarchy, sexism, and interlinked systems of oppression in an
immediate and community-based way, rather than waiting for outside agencies to do it for us.
At the theoretical level, many anti violence activists, practitioners, advocates and services hold some
elements of intersectional analysis – acknowledging the way that linked systems of oppression establish
hierarchies of entitlement and privilege that support and encourage violence. The intersections
between these systems also mean that people will be subject to and will experience violence differently.
However in the momentum of ongoing crisis work and the need for swift response, the interaction
with policy frameworks and law, alliances with other groups and agencies and relationship with their
different approaches and agendas, the complexities of funding and the prioritisation of work that is
urgent or opportune, sometimes this analysis is pushed and pulled and compromised in favour of a
neater linear approach.
Engaging in transformative justice work in a community-based way sits in a different location to the
work of services and non-profits and is often not subject to the same constraints, offering us the
opportunity to roll up our sleeves and deal with the complexity of intersectional violence where it most
closely impacts our communities. Transformative justice enables communities to put an intersectional
analysis of violence into practice.
NS quoted in API Chaya (2014) Op cit.
http://apichaya.org/index.php/whatwedo/queernetworkprogram/74
84
39
The alignment between community safety and primary prevention work
Having discussed the ways that transformative justice work differs from mainstream service-based antiviolence work, importantly there are areas of significant alignment. Additionally, because the
complexity of lived experiences of violence and safety extend beyond service settings, meaningful
service-based prevention work or interventions to violence necessarily cross over with informal
conditions in the community, and thus capacity building for community anti-violence work is an
important step to build safety, even when considered from an agency perspective.
Particular attention by services and agencies in Victoria has been given to examining the seriousness,
prevalence and preventability of violence against women, including the work by VicHealth in
developing their ‘Preventing Violence against Women: A Framework for Action’.85
The diagram thus breaks violence prevention work into what can be done at the societal level, “the
culture, values and beliefs that shape the other three levels of the societal ecology”; the
community/organisational level, “the formal and informal social structures that impact on a person”;
and the individual, “the developmental experiences and personality factors that shape a person’s
response to stressors in their environment, and relationship, “the intimate interactions a person has
with others.”86
“We have all embodied domination based practices and what is so powerful about transformative justice is naming that.
We live in conditions that train us to be harmful and how is it that we actually and collectively build our relationships and
our ways of being that shift our practices to a life affirming way of being.” NS
This analysis is shared by a community accountability approach. The diagram below, developed by Men
stopping Violence (2005), represents a community accountability model of men’s violence against
women, and examines the tiers of community-based prevention work.87 In this model, communityVicHealth (2009) Preventing Violence against Women: A Framework for Action
http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/~/media/ResourceCentre/PublicationsandResources/PVAW/VAW_framework_2009.ash
x Accessed 2 April 2014
86 Ibid.
87 Men Stopping Violence (2005) ‘Community Accountability model of violence prevention’
http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/?s=community+accountability+model+of+violence+prevention Accessed 8 June
2014.
“Men Stopping Violence is a national training institute that provides organizations, communities, and individuals with the
knowledge and tools required to mobilize men to prevent violence against women and girls. We look to the violence
85
40
based accountability work is orientated at the primary community, and thus intersects usefully with a
service-based primary prevention framework, including aligned/overlapping work to address rigid
gender roles, gender inequality and violence supporting attitudes, and to build community skills to
intervene in harassment and violence along the continuum (‘bystander intervention’).
Community response and accountability initiatives and their work on developing resources such as the
Creative Interventions Toolkit, offer tangible tactics for interventions into violence, dialogue, safety
planning and accountability work for those encountering or responding to disclosures of violence in the
community, and at the same time, as part of prevention work, the very dialogue and discourse around
community accountability can address the identified drivers of gender violence, gender inequality
violence supporting attitudes in the community88, across settings and in a sustained way.
against women’s movement to keep the reality of the problem and the vision of the solution before us. We believe that
all forms of oppression are interconnected. Social justice work in the areas of race, class, gender, age, and sexual
orientation are all critical to ending violence against women.
88 VicHealth (2009) Op cit.
41
Beyond violence-prevention to healthy communities
"Our goal is not ending violence. It is liberation." – Creative Interventions89
While community accountability provides pragmatic tools for responding to individual incidences of
violence, it is tactically and philosophically grounded in increasing community towards mutual respect,
safety and self-determination, and beyond resisting violence to building healthy communities.
This impetus for accountability work is very relevant in a local context where ‘zero tolerance’
campaigns targeting violence against women articulate a position of no tolerance for violence, but do
not drill down into the essential detail of attitudinal and behavioural change, nor articulate the vision
for safe communities where relationships are modelled on respect. The work translating this position
into skills for intervention and action for safety is necessarily community-based work.
To enable creative solutions that account for the often complex and long term pathways to
safety and accountability
Because gender violence occurs along a continuum, and lived experiences of violence are more
complex than theoretical frames, one of the strongest reasons for developing community accountability
and transformative justice option was to envision creative solutions and responses to violence that
work with individual needs, and that can build flexibility and survivor-centrality into responses to
violence.
Creative Interventions (2004) Op cit.
http://www.creative-interventions.org/about/
89
42
Focus areas and lessons from North American groups
Host groups and organisers encountered in the project provided a wealth of experience, thinking and
discussion pertaining to the specific issues, challenges and directions of Australian accountability work,
and the evolution of transformative justice approaches to gender-based and other types of violence. In
discussing the challenges facing US projects, issues emerging from the work, and direction of
transformative justice projects, it is interesting to note the strong parallels with Australia.90 Core tactics
and approaches by host groups relevant to local work are explored here in sections divided by theme.
Tools and resources: A comprehensive resource list with links and citations is included as an
appendix to this report. Where key tools or resources are particularly useful to specific topics and
locally-identified challenges, these are listed (with hyperlinks where applicable) with the relevant topic
below.
How to work together: Structure, principles and processes in accountability groups
Delineated areas of work
Host groups and organisers commonly utilised structures that delineate the core areas of work, and
provide for separate strands of work to be conducted – most commonly divided into with survivors,
with perpetrators/aggressors, and often also work with the broader community. As groups working
across several areas, both Philly Stands Up and For Crying Out Loud are useful case studies of this
separation of work, and the way that working groups or independent projects can operate
collaboratively and within the parameters of the same approach and ethical frame.
For Crying Out Loud split their work into specific working groups or sub-collectives – Survivor
Support, Aggressor Accountability, Men’s Group and Consensuality. They note that “each working
group is bound to the whole by a dedication to a pro-survivor environment and we work within each
area completely confidentially. We aspire to provide safe, confidential support for both survivors and
aggressors, while bringing transparency and dialogue to the greater community”.91
For Philly Stands Up (PSU), their work with people who have carried out sexual assault has been
undertaken in tandem with the work of Philly’s Pissed – the survivor support group and partner
collective. They note that in addition to working in tandem, they ‘hold our group accountable to theirs
[Philly’s Pissed]. They also note that, ‘certain situations may also call for Philly’s Pissed to be
accountable to us’.92 This separation of work enables the different working groups to focus on the skills
More information about this is available in records from network gatherings and collaborative spaces, such as the notes
from the US Social Forum National Network Visioning Session:
Philly stands Up (2010) ‘Notes from the US Social Forum National Network Visioning Session’
http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/category/tactics-resources/
91 For Crying Out Loud (2012) ‘About Us’
http://forcryingoutloud206.wordpress.com/about/
92 Philly Stands Up (2009) ‘Points of Unity’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/about_faq.html Accessed 19 March 2014
90
43
and processes necessary for a useful intervention, while the accountability to survivor support work is a
strategy to ensure survivors needs remain held at the centre of any response. It is also relevant to
tracking the survivor’s experiences of a process, whether they experience any further harmful or violent
behaviour by the person engaged in it, ensuring support and managing risk, similar to the way that
men’s behavioural change programmes now more commonly seek to involve a partner contact worker
(see the section on ‘managing risk in community accountability’).
These structures are also important mechanisms to centre the work, and to guard against a situation
where transformative justice turning into support for perpetrators rather than survivors, or either
colluding with or excusing harmful behaviour. (Please also see the section on paired work and collective
reporting in ‘Facilitated accountability processes with people who have caused harm). For local projects
who have struggled with the weight of trying to do everything at once, the delineation of areas of work
and building in structures to reflect this is an important consideration.
Membership and the question of closed projects or collectives
While the community basis of transformative justice work lends itself to an ethic of openness, host
groups consistently described structural processes to ensure that, beyond the initial project or
establishment of the group, there is a clear process for when new members will be considered, and the
process that they will go through before becoming active in the work.
Because of the nature of the content, a high level of trust is required between those involved in a group
or collective, and the importance of shared understandings and agreed approaches means new
members must necessarily be able to go through education on the group’s approach and positions to
enable the work to continue. Many of the groups said that they were either closed collectives, worked
by invitation only, or had stringent membership requirements. They described this as necessary to
ensure high levels of trust, cohesion of approach, the development of skills to enable difficult work to
be handled carefully, and to balance the time spent on interventions themselves with the work,
administration, energy and time of involving new members. People’s membership and involvement
with the projects tended to be long term, and a number of people said that they would open up their
collectives to new members when required due to people leaving.
Organising principles
In a similar vein as above, there was a strong emphasis on the importance of developing and
articulating a set of organising principles of ‘points of unity’ to outline the philosophy and approach,
guide the work, and provide a framework for the communication style and dynamics of the group or
collective. Rather than merely a background policy, people talked about this as a dynamic document
that could be used in an ongoing way – a foundational statement of politics to guide work, a reference
point for considering tactics, interventions and trainings, as a way of articulating the work to the
community and others outside the collective, a roadmap for any issues around interpersonal dynamics,
and something to reflect and evaluate against.
44
These approaches to structure, process and articulation of politics relate closely to the local challenges
around interpersonal dynamics, with a view to establishing clear parameters for the work, building trust
and defining approaches to communication and conflict resolution.
Creative Interventions Toolkit: Working Together93
Philly Stands Up, ‘Points of Unity’94
Sylvia Rivera Law Project, ‘Sylvia Rivera Law Project Collective Member Handbook’95
Support NY, ‘Pillars’96
Collective ethics and resisting burnout
“I am inspired by questions not so much of resisting “burnout”, but of how we can act in solidarity to keep the spirit of
our collective ethics alive in our work and lives… In contrast to the ethics we hold collectively, “burnout” is an idea that is
very individually structured, as if there is something about us personally that makes us measure up to this work or not…
My understandings of solidarity are derived from time-honoured activist traditions of envisioning collective ethics,… We
are meant to do this work together… Our work is profoundly collaborative. We do this work on the shoulders of others
and we shoulder others up.”97
As well as establishing the philosophical underpinnings, approach and tactics of the transformative
justice work, this emphasis on both developing organising principles and clarifying the purpose and
direction of the work plays an important role in developing the ethic of solidarity that can assist us in
resisting burnout. Organisers described this as a philosophical frame that emphasises what binds us
together in the work, rather than what separate us, and that articulating this is a central tactic to build
shared responsibility and move away from the idea of individual struggle that risks burnout.
These collective ethics can also be an important aspect of relationship and network building, discussed
in more detail in the section ‘interface with formal services’.
Link: http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4.G.CI-Toolkit-Tools-Working-Together-PreRelease-Version-06.2012.pdf
94Link: http://www.phillystandsup.com/about_faq.html
95 Link: http://srlp.org/files/collective_handbook.pdf This member handbook outlines an intentional organizational
recruitment process and buddy system for membership as well as an intentional exit process. The toolkit includes
Member and Staff evaluations as well as an outlined grievance policy.
96 Link: http://supportnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/supportnypillars.pdf
93
97 Reynolds, V. (2009). ‘Collective ethics as a path to resisting burnout’ Insights: The Clinical Counsellor's Magazine & News.,
December 2009, 6-7.
45
Workshop tools: Reynolds, V. (2011) ‘Resisting burnout with justice-doing’98
Reynolds, V (2012) ‘Witnessing Our Collective Ethics’99
See also the PSU Points of Unity and Support NY Pillars (above)
Implementing anti-oppressive politics in practice
In seeking to take an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach to anti-violence work, there are
different measures that host groups adopted to translate this into practice and avoid replicating abusive
structures and internalised patriarchy in community accountability work, that are relevant for local
consideration and application.
From articulating these guiding politics in foundational documents, organisers also discussed way to
embed these approaches via self-education, interpersonal communication, meeting facilitation,
designing anti-oppressive processes and interventions, and developing specific anti-oppression
trainings.
AORTA have developed a specific set of resources to aid in implementing anti-oppressive politics,
including a set of practical resources that can be used in different contexts and cover: what is
facilitation anyway?, tips, tools, techniques, fighting the systems, the iceberg and titanic metaphors,
infiltration, tactics for interrupting and change-making and deconstructing ableism.
AORTA have also worked on a set of ‘red flags’ and indicators to assist groups in noticing and
addressing the infiltration of oppressive values, most specifically racism and white supremacy,
patriarchy and male supremacy, classism, ableism, homophobia and heteronormativity. These are a very
useful ongoing tool to track the replication of oppressive practices in accountability work.
It is very relevant to note that the legacies of perpetuating oppressive practices include the ongoing
disenfranchisement of already-marginalised people, and the burnout and high turnover associated with
replicating unequal space, access and power.100 As such, implementing anti oppressive practices is both
a political act, and a matter of sustainability and preventive action against burnout and trauma. As lived
experience is never as neat as theory, having tools and tactics to assist translating theory into practise is
important.
Resisting burnout with justice-doing. The international Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. (4) 27-45.
(page 30)
99 Link: http://www.vikkireynolds.ca/documents/WitnessingOurCollectiveEthics2012.pdf
98
100
http://sandboxproject.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/a-great-workshop-on-anti-oppression-and-activist-burnout-byr3collective/
46
AORTA Anti Oppressive Facilitation Guide101
AORTA Anti oppression Resource Zine, Spring 2014102
AORTA, ‘Infiltration: How the Values of Systems of Oppression Tend to Arise in Coops’103
Incite! Women of Color against Violence Ad-Hoc Community Accountability Working
Group, ‘Community Accountability within the People of Color Progressive
Movement’ 104
AORTA Trainings and workshops 105
The building blocks of accountability: Laying a framework for transformative justice
with self-education, discussion and training.
“Time on the foundational politics, micro-politics, personal-as-political, understandings around gendered power, basic
myths and realities about gendered violence, what this means for gender diversity and gender fluidity ... this foundational
reflection and exploration stuff is like something that continuously needs to be focused on and nurtured, (and if a few years
goes by during which the focus on this stops or is absent, it then does become a situation of going back to the beginning).
This stuff can’t be skipped. It’s like a live, bubbling well or stew that continuously needs to be topped up and reconstituting. Then the conditions might be available for community accountability work.” – R106
With the urgency and prevalence of violence, it is easy to be overcome by the imperative for action. In
the context of community responses to incidences of violence and assault, this can often mean a
response is in train before some of the foundational thinking, shared understandings, agreed principles,
skills and processes are in place. It is an uncomfortable reality that the ongoing use of violence and
sexual assault in our communities offers no shortage of opportunities for community response.
However building our capacity to show up for each other, to cultivate the thinking and skills around
how we conceptualise transformative justice and accountability and how we envision moving beyond
violence to safety is an essential building block of this work. This must include establishing a frame that
considers community accountability as a multi-strand approach to violence, rather than as just a series
of interventions or facilitated processes that take place in response to specific incidences or assaults,
and are not supported by shared understandings or intentions. This framework thinking and work
developing shared understandings is a vital piece of scaffolding to hold us and to refer back to when
Link: http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/ao_facilitation_resource_sheet_july_2014.pdf
http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/2014_resource-zine_final.pdf
103 Link: http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/infiltration_handout.pdf
104 Report outlines ways to address gender oppression within progressive, radical, and revolutionary people of color
organizations and movements.
105 Link: http://www.aortacollective.org/ourwork/workshops
106 Community Safety Survey (2014), quote from written response from Australian organisers.
101
102Link:
47
the complexities of lived experience and the difficulty and big emotions of this work loom in immediate
view.
This work is new and difficult, and as with any response that seeks to intervene into the complex space
of intimate relationships, violence and harm, our processes will be imperfect and we will make
mistakes. But without shared understandings to ground our intentions, we risk pulling in different
directions, and adding further complexity and conflict to existing trauma and harm. As such, it is our
responsibility to do the work on ourselves, and together build the conditions for accountability and
transformation. This entails both internal self-education work undertaken individually and within
groups and projects that will be carrying out accountability work, as well as deliberately and
intentionally focusing on providing trainings that form the building blocks of accountability.
Self-education and training for groups doing community accountability
There were a number of approaches to self-education work and the dialogue around it elucidated by
North American groups. Many of these resources, templates and training programmes may be applied
to both internal and self-education within projects or collectives, as well as used for training run by
accountability groups in the community (see also section on Training for community capacity).
Chicago Transformative Justice Fall
From October to November 2013, Project NIA coordinated the ‘Chicago Transformative Justice Fall’
with a series of transformative justice-focused discussions, film screenings, an art exhibition, and other
activities. This focused on raising public awareness about transformative justice and encouraged critical
reflection on the practice of mass incarceration, including as a response to interpersonal violence.
Events sought to “examine how we respond to harm and injustice— both in our own choices as
individuals and in what we ask our institutions to do in our names.”107 Project NIA developed a
curriculum guide, that included contributions from PSU and others, supported people to organise
discussions with youth, neighbours, colleagues and friends, and made this available to educators for use
with students. People were encouraged to organise their own events or co-sponsor existing events,
submit art and attend the two exhibitions108, and to get along to the activities organised through the
Fall. The curriculum guide is now available as a stand-alone resource for self-education and the basis of
a transformative justice learning programme.
Transformative Justice Action Camp (PSU)
PSU’s 3 day action camp in West Philadelphia focused on community strategies to confront sexual
assault. The camp was organised as an opportunity to push past the challenges of doing community
accountability work by deepening understandings of transformative justice, “sharing and developing
107 Project NIA (2013) ‘Chicago Transformative Justice Fall’ NIA Dispatches
http://niastories.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/chicago-transformative-justice-fall-calendar-october-december-2013/
Accessed 24 May 2014
108 Miniature Cities of Refuge: http://www.micahbazant.com/call-for-tiny-cities/ and Picturing a World Without Prisons:
http://tinyurl.com/q84gsvn
48
strategies and practices for supporting our own healing and safety... and [relating] the ways in which our
work intersects with other movements.”109
The PSU Action Camp format and approach is also instructive in the way it was organised. Attendance
at the camp was by application process, which enabled organisers to get geographic representation and
also contact groups and projects directly with invitations to attend, in order to build alliances. The
venue was selected as a deliberately nurturing meeting space with accessibility as a primary concern.
The camp agenda was structured to move people working on transformative justice projects through a
collaborative process aimed at strategizing to meet challenges and move forward, and billeting and
community liaison/contribution to the conference was undertaken so as to build strong interaction
between the camp and the community of West Philadelphia, and a sense of community welcome and
ownership.
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
Several of the facilitators and educators interviewed in the Fellowship are also involved with the
establishment of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC) - a community collective of
individuals working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse in the
San Francisco Bay Area. “BATJC is focusing on interventions into incidences of child sexual abuse in
ways that not only prevent future violence and harm, but actively cultivate healing, accountability and
resiliency for all — survivors, bystanders, and those who have abused others.110
Their approach to the preparation phase is noteworthy in its structure and long term view. It provides
an interesting model for laying the framework, building community capacity and ensuring the collective
and support networks are well prepared and well resourced. This is also a relevant consideration
pertaining to the interface between personal healing work and community accountability detailed in the
‘Challenges’ section of this report: their structured approach to forming a transformative justice
network provides greater time to address this interface, and to allow issues related to personal healing
journeys to surface before interventions are underway.
The BATJC is engaged in self-education, preparatory and community capacity-building work preparing
for the first trial intervention in 2017. In this phase of preparatory work, BATJC are building
community capacity through a six month Community transformative justice Study; community
workshops and trainings; developing an accountability model to be used with those who have abused,
bystanders, and survivors; and building a network of community support people. 111
http://www.phillystandsup.com/actioncamp.html
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (2014)
http://batjc.wordpress.com/ Accessed 12 May 2014
111 Ibid.
109
110
49
Project Nia (collaboration) Transformative Justice: A Curriculum Guide 2013 112
Toronto Transformative Justice reading group’s 10-week curriculum113
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective ‘A one-year, once a month Transformative
Justice curriculum’114
Ann Russo & Melissa Spatz, ‘Communities Engaged in Resisting Violence’115
Jane Hereth and Chez Rumpf, Community Accountability for Survivors of Sexual
Violence Toolkit116
Creating the conditions for accountability: How do we build community capacity?
Who is the ‘community’?
Key to undertaking community accountability work is defining community. Critical Resistance note that
otherwise “sometimes we fall back on a common idea that a “community” is something that already
exists and that all the people in it want all the same things.”117 If we are basing this on assumption, then
what kind of requests can we make of others in the community? CR and other North American
organisers instead tend to define community as something that is not static, but rather is always being
made and remade, and will “keep changing it as the people inside it keep re-defining it.”118 A
community “can be geographical (a town, a neighbourhood, an apartment building), based on identity
or situation (black people, queer people, white anti-racists, people on public assistance), or something
as small as a group of friends”. If Communities are groupings in which people are accountable to each
other, then the making of community and the dialogue to create alternative responses to violence and
harm are integrally linked and mutually reinforcing. This is particularly relevant to the idea of
accountability as a shared and reciprocal process, not something that a group of people enforce on
behalf of a community. North American organisers spoke a lot about this, and what it takes for us to
“show up” for each other, and for the community to show up for accountability work (see the section
on ‘training’, self-accountability and relationship skills for accountability).
This evolving and changing nature of communities can be a challenge for accountability, but it is also
one of its strengths, in that often new and flexible ways of responding to harm can be best created in
112Link:
http://niastories.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/tjcurriculum_design_small-finalrev.pdf
Link: http://transformativejusticetoronto.blogspot.com/2011/06/toronto-learning-to-action-community.html
114 Link: http://batjc.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/tj-draft-timeline.docx
115 Link: http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/communities_engaged.pdf
116
Link:
http://carceralfeminism.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cassv-reading-group-toolkit_shifting-from-carceral-to-tjfeminisms_final.pdf - This toolkit is a product of the Shifting from Carceral to Transformative Justice Feminisms
Conference held at DePaul University on March 8, 2014. The toolkit provides background on a reading group held for
survivors of sexual violence, the curriculum for that group, and a workshop curriculum on community accountability for
survivors of sexual violence
117 Critical Resistance () The Abolitionist Toolkit, part 7.
http://criticalresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ab-Toolkit-Part-7.pdf
118 Ibid.
113
50
groups of people looking at responding to violence or harm among themselves or in their immediate
surroundings. While this does not resolve all of the challenges in the local context, it does emphasise
the importance of the set of dialogue tactics discussed in the ‘community dialogue’ section, for their
relationship to community self-definition.
Building movements for safety: Laying the foundations and community
mobilisation
“I think a lot of the time, the way that people start engaging with community accountability or
transformative justice is like, there is an incident and we’re trying to figure out what to do and
there’s this really rad approach that we’ve heard about and we end up trying something, burning
out and then there’s another phase and another phase of people going through that sort of arc.
And I remember a few years ago someone saying what would it be like if we knew there was going
to be an incident of harm in our community in 3-5 years. And what would we do now to actually be
ready by then, rather than just leaping into action because we know something’s happening right
now—which is totally coming out of a well-intentioned impulse to help, but often, not having laid
that groundwork” NS119
When we consider community accountability work as a collaborative body of work that relies on shared
understandings, and building community knowledge, skills and willingness to prevent, intervene in and
respond to violence, then examining this work through the lens of community mobilisation and
movement building can be useful. The following sections examine several specific methods for
community-accountability capacity and movement-building in our communities.
The Community Engagement Continuum: Outreach, Mobilization, Organizing and
Accountability to Address Violence against Women in Asian and Pacific Islander
Communities (Toolkit for community organizing against violence in API
communities).
Mimi E Kim, ‘Moving Beyond Critique: Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of
Community Accountability’120
Norma, Reflecting on community accountability in the Seattle area, debrief May 2014.
Mimi E Kim, ‘Moving Beyond Critique: Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of Community Accountability’ Social
Justice; 2011/2012; 37, 4; Alt-Press Watch (APW) pg. 14
http://communityaccountability.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/moving-beyond-critique.pdf Accessed 15 February 2014
119
120
51
The “Accountable Communities” Framework: NW Network and stepping back
from accountability processes to build community skills
NW Network has a specific approach to community accountability, with an emphasis on building
accountability skills in the community alongside shared critical analysis of violence, and selfaccountability as a building block for change.
Over the twenty five years of their work to end domestic violence and create the conditions for loving
and equitable relationships, the NW Network noticed recurring limitations in the applications of many
of the central principles of accountability processes, and over time arrived at an alternative ‘accountable
communities’ approach. (For further discussion of groups engaged in accountability processes and
long-term, ongoing work in this area, see the section on ‘Working with people who cause harm”
Facilitated accountability processes’).
In their work on accountability processes, they noted that the idea of “holding someone accountable”
had become mistakenly understood as an external process, rather than an internal skill.121 They perceive
that “as more people develop these skills, the community becomes better able to expect and support
ethical, organic accountability processes.”122
NW Network found that in queer relationships, gender on its own was not useful as a predicting factor
to determine who was the abuser and who was the survivor in abusive relationships, and that in activist
communities the question as to who was believed was complex: “A survivor of domestic violence is
likely to use violent behaviours to resist the objectification of being abused.. a person who is battering
can report actions taken by their partners that are mean, cruel, scary or confusing… Out of context
they could be seen as abusive. In context they can be seen as resisting power and control.”123 They note
that when it comes to navigating this complexity and avoiding mobilising against survivors, activist
communities are, “the least immune because we are the most compelled by the interplay of the
individual condition with the systems of oppression operating in our world.”124 They found that people
are most inclined to believe their friends over those they are less connected to, that getting clear about
who is abusive is additionally complicated when survivors internalise responsibility and blame, and that
even when there is an accurate assessment of whose behaviour s abusive, this does not guarantee a
positive outcome or ethical process.
NW Network also assert that framing community accountability as an “alternative to the criminal legal
system” is a problem, as it creates a situation where, “‘Not calling the cops’ becomes a litmus test for
121 In discussions, Connie Burk and Shannon Perez Darby use a phrase ‘harder is harder’ when discussing their approach to
practising accountability with the smaller stuff, noting from their experience that while communities often assume that it will
be easier or less conflicting to take action to address the most serious forms of violence when they occur, rather than the
less criminalised forms of violence, actually often these harder or more serious situations are exactly that.
Connie Burk (2011) ‘Think. Re-think. Accountable Communities,’ in Ching-In Chen, ching-In & Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi
Piepzna-Samarasinha & Andrea smith (2011) The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist
Communities’, South End Press, p265 - 279
123 Ibid.
124 Ibid.
122
52
radical realness”.125 They note that community accountability processes were rarely convened to address
other harms, such as theft or drunk-driving, and were instead almost exclusively applied to “gendered”
violence – sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking and domestic violence. The combined effect of
this framing “creates the false idea that we can eliminate the harms of the criminal legal system through
community accountability, and it requires women to bear the brunt of the community accountability
learning curve”.126 This strongly echoes observations from Australia on both this and the distribution of
work driving such processes.
From their experience with accountability processes, they note that the criminal legal system is
desperately flawed, and that accountability processes are humbling: “While… it’s proven nearly
impossible to achieve the idealised outcomes of the legal system (justice, restitution, rehabilitation), it is
fairly easy to replicate its “re-victimisation” of survivors… We have seen this happen again and again…
survivors are exhausted, the community divided and angry, and the folks who caused the harm suck up
the attention, community resources and all the air in the room.”127 They also note that without some of
the protections of due process that exist in a criminal legal system, such as the right to a timely trial, it is
easy to harm the person who has been called out for violence .
They noted that community accountability processes can feel contrived and imposed , with people
either experiencing these as drawn from therapy or professional non-profits, or attempting to replicate
cultural models for accountability that were never fully realised in their original contexts, and thus
offering theory or aspiration with less success in practice.
Finally they noted the limitations of applying ideological frameworks in action, and that while the
personal is political, “the personal is frankly a lot messier than the political”. They found that they
rarely designed, implemented or participated in processes that worked in the ways they were intended
to, or with outcomes on par with the huge input of “time energy and human endurance they seemed to
require”. They acknowledge that there have been some incredible successes through facilitated
accountability work, but found these difficult to achieve reliably, even with their “best work, most
critical thinking and deepest commitment to sound practises and fierce compassion.”128 Many of the
challenges and limitations they observed are strongly mirrored in the issues emerging in Australian
accountability processes.
As such they came to the conclusion “with a lot of love and humility… that our activist communities
do not presently have the skills, shared values and cultural touchstones in place to sustain community
accountability efforts.”129 Since then, rather than working on accountability processes, they have been
experimenting on and working with an “Accountable Communities” framework, that they note may act
as a precursor to community accountability models, and may have different goals, but that they “hope
will be helpful to current and future accountability processes” undertaken by allies.
The Accountable communities approach includes the core concept of self-accountability as a building
block. NW Network suggest that the traits of an Accountable Communities approach might include:
Ibid.
Ibid.
127 Ibid.
128 Ibid.
129 Connie Burk (2014), Recorded discussion
125
126
53
-
-
-
-
The shared expectation that people must develop their individual accountability skills as a
precondition of effective accountability processes
Training for individuals and groups on the complex power and control dynamics of abuse
“Raising the expectation of loving kindness in our communities”. This relates to viewing
practices of gossip and isolation as related to accountability work, and avoiding collusion with
these to be integral to effective accountability and avoiding mobilisation against survivors
Promoting “engagement before opposition” – the idea that while a boycott or a cold shoulder
may demonstrate loyalty to the survivor and declare a position of no tolerance for the violence
or harm, that taking an engaged stance when people use violence or cause harm might be more
effective in moving towards a positive solution and creating the conditions for accountability.
Including the work of involving friends and family to strengthen responses to violence and
abuse, noting that friends and family can be well placed to recognise the signs of abuse, and that
the best option is to begin intervention early (at the first opportunity).
Exploring and sharing culturally relevant practises for accountable communities.130
This approach fits closely with Creative Interventions, “Accountability is the ability to recognize, end
and take responsibility for violence. We usually think of the person doing harm as the one to be
accountable for violence. Community accountability also means that communities are accountable for
sometimes ignoring, minimizing or even encouraging violence. Communities must also recognize, end
and take responsibility for violence by becoming more knowledgeable, skilful and willing to take action
to intervene in violence and to support social norms and conditions that prevent violence from
happening in the first place.” Their toolkit work operates through the lens of accountability as a
collective skill and community process, with a focus on individual accountability work of facilitated
processes with the person doing harm (for which they provide methods and tools) one tactic.
Connie Burke (2011) ‘Think. Re-think. Accountable Communities’131
Creative Interventions Toolkit: Taking Accountability132
To implement this Accountable Communities framework into practice, NW Network works on two
specific projects – the Relationship Skills Class and the F.A.R OUT framework.
The Relationship Skills Class (RSC) is a six week class that explores relationships through the lens of
personal agency. It emerged from a support group for queer domestic abuse survivors who wanted to
follow up their work unpacking abusive relationships and dynamics of power and control with a
programme focusing on what kind, equitable relationships would look like. Content for the RSC was
initially developed out of the support group’s work, and it has run as a programme since 2002.
Connie Burk (2011) Op cit., p 274-275
Ibid.
132Link: http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4.F.CI-Toolkit-Tools-Taking-AccountabilityPre-Release-Version-06.2012.pdf
130
131
54
What does it take to ‘show up’ for each other?
“When people are abused, they become isolated. The domestic violence movement further isolates them, and they have to go
to a shelter where they cannot tell their friends where they are. In addition, the d.v. movement does not work with the
peoples who could most likely hold perpetrators accountable - their friends.”133- NW Network F.A.R OUT
This work to strengthen existing networks, elevate discussions of violence and build skills for
intervention and response is a core tent of community accountability work.
F.A.R OUT (Friends Are Reaching Out), a NW Network programme designed and implemented by
and for queer women of colour, organised friends and family of survivors to support survivors in their
social networks, and worked to build a shared analysis of violence. These discussions were held in
informal environments ranging from dinner parties to one-on-one conversations over coffee, and
covered relationship values and goals, how to give and obtain support without “putting one’s business
in the street”, being responsible for one’s choices in context and what agreements they might make
about resisting isolation, open communication and how to respond if and when abuse occurs.
Participants reported an increase in tools to reach out and support loved ones, and to seek such
support themselves.
NW Network: F.A.R OUT134
NW Network Relationship Skills Class135 (see also hard copy facilitators guide)
National Sexual Violence Resource Center Bystander Intervention Resources136
Other models:
Sista II Sista: Sisters Liberated Ground137
Quoted in http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-working-document
Link: http://farout.org/a-project-of-the-northwest-network/
135 Link: http://nwnetwork.org/what-we-do/community-engagement/
136 Link: http://www.nsvrc.org/projects/bystander-intervention-resources
137 http://incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/7731_siis-slg.pdf :
“In 2000, the police murders of two young women of color sparked a dialogue about violence against women among
members of Sista II Sista, a collective of women of color in Brooklyn, New York. The group’s work to empower young
women of color to identify and work towards solving their own problems led them to form Sistas Liberated Ground, a
zone in their neighborhood where crimes against women would not be tolerated. Sista II Sista instituted an “action line,”
which women could call, inform the group about violence in their lives, and explore the options that they—and the
group—could take to change the situation. In addition, Sista II Sista established Sister Circles which provided space for
women to talk about the violence and other problems in their daily lives but encouraged the community—rather than
the individual woman—to find solutions.” Victoria Law (2013) ‘What does justice Mean Besides Police and Prison’, Bitch
Magazine, November 14, 2013
http://bitchmagaz ine.org/post/what-does-justice-mean-besides-police-and-prison-renisha-mcbride
133
134
55
Creating spaces for community dialogue: Storytelling as a tool
“Transformative justice
begins with sharing our experiences and strategies”138
Without community dialogue about violence and safety, shared ideas about interventions to violence,
accountability and response, and forums to flesh out this thinking without it being attached to a specific
crisis, incident or person/people, attempts to provide meaningful alternative responses to those of the
criminal legal system or the PIC when violence does occur are often fractured, with the potential to
create additional layers of community conflict.
Transformative justice is not work that is farmed out to one specific collective or set of people, and
divorced from community and environment in which it occurs. This work relies on there being some
level of understanding, support, and efforts to hold and build it in the relationships and people
surrounding it. As such, interventions and responses to violence have a greater chance at effectiveness
when space is intentionally created for discussion, critical reflection and storytelling as points of
engagement between the projects intentionally focusing on community safety work, and the
communities in which they are situated.
Harnessing community creativity and safety tactics already in practice
Community accountability entails supporting practices and interventions that people already do
informally, and storytelling is a key process for sharing and building on these. Sometimes the
seriousness and heaviness of the issues, or service-bound discussions can lead to dialogue that separates
community responses from more professionalised and formalised discussions about crisis response and
violence interventions, or casts community into the role of 'bystanders,' connoting that their role is
passive until activated. In reality often communities, friends and family networks have a myriad of skills
and creative strategies that they are using to maximise safety, often outside the system.
Having said that¸ storytelling can also enable people to talk also about their experiences of violence, or
responses that were problematic in a way that can be more easily heard without defensiveness and
discussed.
Panels and community discussions
Creating opportunities for the community and those engaged in accountability work to have dialogue
about transformative justice work is vital. While on the Fellowship trip there were numerous panels and
community events, including the AMC Transforming Justice stream, and the API Chaya Community
Accountability and Transformative Justice Panel. The latter focused on the successes and challenges
that Queer People of Color have faced in engaging with transformative justice and community
accountability in the Seattle area, asking the questions; “How are we imagining safety, accountability
and justice in our communities without depending on the criminal legal system? What role does and
should our communities be playing in creating and maintaining that safety? How have our communities
been successful in this work so far? What are the gaps, challenges and questions we still have?”139 These
API Chaya (2014) Op cit.
This included presentations and discussion by transformative justice and disability activist and performance artist, Billie
Rain, Norma Timbang, Nathan Shara Onion Carrillo, Georgena Frazier and Shannon Perez-Darby from the Northwest
138
139
56
opportunities to reflect on the successes and challenges outside of specific responses and situations of
violence are important opportunities to further thinking collaboratively, establish conduits of
information between accountability groups and the community, and work on thematic issues in a
collective way. They are also often the spaces to have some of the conversations about solidarity, and
working as allies, to thrash out challenges, and to continue the often complex process of building
movements for safety.
In crafting these opportunities then, matters of accessibility are absolutely central to whether a
conversation is inclusive or exclusive – considering location, format, venue, mode of communication,
accessibility, childcare, language, diet and the other considerations that make it possible for people with
differing needs to access the discussion and the space.140
Storytelling as a tool of practice: Storytelling & Organising Project (STOP)
Critical Resistance is a partner in the Storytelling & Organising Project (STOP) - a project collecting
and sharing stories of everyday people ending violence through collective, community-based
alternatives. STOP evolved from a project of Creative Interventions. The STOP project gathered
stories from people who have been involved in community-based interventions to violence, including
from people who had experienced intimate partner violence and sexual assault, from people who had
caused harm and used violence, and themselves been engaged in accountability processes, as well as
people who participated in support and safety responses for friends, family or community members.
The stories were recorded and collated as an online resource for communities to use in their own work,
and as an evidence base of community-based tactics that can and have been used to intervene into
violence and harm.
In one story gathered by STOP, a woman tells of working towards safety with her network of friends
and family after experiencing violence from her partner, a police officer. Together with her community
they established a safety plan, with emphasis on ensuring that her children felt safe, a roster of people
to be with her in her home after her partner was asked to leave, and to assist with childcare and provide
food and support. As such, utilising the skills of her community, the immediate safety, physical,
emotional and support needs of the woman and children were able to be met while they remained
within the home, with minimal disruption.
In another community, stories gathered as part of STOP were read aloud as the introduction to
community-based discussions about harm, and workshopping ideas for localised support and safety.
The act of storytelling thus became an experiential sharing, a way to elevate discussion of these harms,
Network, and hosted by API Chaya Queer Network Progarm Coordinator Lilsnoopy Fujikawa. For more information:
http://www.wherevent.com/detail/API-Chaya-A-Panel-Discussion-on-Transformative-Justice-and-CommunityAccountability#3MB5HZI2C3uk6DYi.99
140
The API Chaya panel invitation is a useful example of the consideration of access in the formulation of an event aimed
at accessible community dialogue, including accessible, fragrance-free venues and consideration of needs:
http://navigatethestream.tumblr.com/post/78954609842/billierain-a-panel-discussion-on-transformative
57
and a way to share strategies and tactics. These together with other ‘safety labs,’ where a community
would listen to stories together, read the transcript and then have a facilitated discussion centred
around ‘how do we stay safe’, and ‘how might we intervene in violence’ formed a primary strategy to
share safety tactics within and between communities.
The STOP stories have in turn been used by other communities and organisers in trainings, workshops
and discussion groups aimed at increasing community capacity for anti-violence work. The stories are
diverse and cross different communities and contexts, with relevance both as discussion starters for
communities in Australia, as well as demonstrating the usefulness of gathering and documenting our
own local examples of this work.
Queer People of Color Digital Storytelling Project
The Queer Network Program at API Chaya works to engage the Asian & Pacific Islander LGBTIQ
community to address and prevent intimate partner violence by building skills among allies and
community members, elevating the visibility of the API LGBTIQ community and concerns, and
supporting survivors of violence. They coordinated the Queer People of Color Digital Storytelling
Project, which was aimed at building the power of resilience in the face of violence, oppression &
trauma via the transformative power of arts, community-building, and story sharing. In a 4-day
workshop, participants developed their stories into a 3 to 4-minute digital narrative.141
Documentation: Generating resources from local work
“And I realised that all of our anecdotes, our notes, our zines, our reflections – these are data. So in looking for ways to
capture all of the thinking and work that we had already done on transformative justice, all of the things we had tested,
what had worked and what hadn’t, I realised that we already had this body of work and records, and that we need to
keep doing that. To keep documenting, and sharing that information as an evidence base, and to grow and develop the
work based on our different experiences.”142
Closely linked with the process of storytelling and gathering and disseminating anecdotes and tactics is
the matter of documentation. Groups and organisers repeatedly emphasised their learnings on the
importance of documenting the body of work, changing thinking, tactics and reflections of
transformative justice initiatives so that the information can be shared, and with this in mind, that it is
made accessible back to other people.
In considering documentation, and the purpose and methods of documenting work, it is worth noting
CI’s discussion regarding the influence of the marketplace and competition around innovation: “The
act of publishing can hone analysis and disseminate knowledge across social movements and among
important allies. It can also contribute to obsolescence. The market’s thirst for quickly consumable
information can move from public knowledge to stories of accomplishments, or even to postmortems
on the failures of utopian visions. Efforts to identify limitations can unwittingly fuel skepticism and
141API
Chaya (2013) ‘supporting Survivors, Strengthening Communities’
http://www.apiwfsc.org/index.php/what-we-do/queer-network-program/57 Accessed 18 June 2014
142 Quotes from ‘Love Questions’: Transformative Justice panel discussion, AMC 2014
58
demoralization in a social movement project that is facing considerable odds.”143 These considerations
are something to balance in our considerations of why we document, and how we might work to
embed momentum, perseverance and a focus on solutions in our production and use of resources and
reflections. (For further discussion, see ‘How we measure ‘success’).
Storytelling Organising Project144
Stories from the from the Creative Interventions Toolkit, including F.4. Surviving and
Doing Sexual Harm: A Story of Accountability and Healing145
API Chaya: Queer People of Colour Liberation Project146
API Chaya Community Accountability and Transformative Justice Panel transcript147
and audio148
Young Women’s Empowerment Project: Girls Do What They Have to Do to Survive:
Illuminating Methods Used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight
Back and Heal 149
Outreach: Training in the community
A noteworthy aspect of the work with all of the host groups was the focus they put on training for
community capacity-building. Even groups whose work focuses on facilitated accountability and
crafting individually tailored responses to violence, such as PSU, spend a concerted proportion of their
work developing resources and running trainings with community members, affiliated projects and
campaigns, and in crafting and running education programmes on transformative justice.
The aforementioned attention to self-education, structure and crafting spaces for community dialogue,
together with this work on training and outreach is important in that it also generates opportunities for
the group or project to establish clear boundaries, to communicate with the community about its role,
what to expect, and work the group does and does not do. This is part of the broader work of creating
dialogue around transformative justice, and supporting the conditions necessary for accountability work
to succeed.
Mimi E Kim, ‘Moving Beyond Critique: Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of Community Accountability’ Social
Justice; 2011/2012; 37, 4; Alt-Press Watch (APW) pg. 32
144 Link: http://www.stopviolenceeveryday.org/
143
Link: http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/5.CI-Toolkit-Other-Resources-Pre-ReleaseVersion-06.2102.pdf
146 Link: http://www.apichaya.org/index.php/what-we-do/queer-network-program/14
147 Link: (available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4ejZFUjNZMHVOWFk/edit?usp=sharing
148 Link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4akhKV0djT2owOUk/edit
149
Link: http://ywepchicago.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/girls-do-what-they-have-to-do-to-survive-a-study-of-resilienceand-resistance.pdf Participatory research conducted by a group of youth and allies that lays out how girls who participate
in sex work and the street economy take care of themselves and each other around issues of harm and violence.
145
59
Trainings conducted by North American and Canadian hosts and projects varied from short workshops
sessions to symposiums or action camps to several-month transformative justice curriculums (see
section on ‘self-education’), and tended to cross a set of core topics, effectively the ‘building blocks of
community accountability’ – consent, patriarchy and rape culture, communication skills, interventions
to violence to name just a few; as well as training focused at the intersections between issues and
movements, including those on anti-oppressive organising and abolition.
Several key examples of both longer programme and shorter workshops trainings are listed in the
resources below as models for local consideration, together with resources for follow up. These are
very relevant for contemplation in the further development of local trainings, particularly additional
topics to consent and respectful relationships.
Training programmes
 Training: Relationship skills Class (NW Network)
A six-week course that “builds the skills to clarify values, set boundaries, resolve conflict, foster
communication, understand cultural differences and strengthen community connections.”150
This training programme is very relevant to local discussion about creating the conditions and
community skills for accountability.
 Books Through Bars: Transformative Justice education programme
This project of PSU is a six-month long interactive education project, in which people who are
incarcerated and in solitary confinement receive readings put together by PSU about
transformative justice and sexual assault. People work through the readings, write ideas and
reflections, and “Books Through Bars makes copies of everything everyone had to say and
includes each other’s responses in the next month’s readings.” 151
Practical training: Theatre, embodiment and somatics
The emphasis on practical training for community safety and intervention to violence in North
American trainings was striking. Grounded in the understanding that people respond better when they
have had a chance to practise the skills needed to intervene, many of the trainings drew from theatre
sports, drama and somatics to include role-modelling, role playing and interactive exercise on tactics for
intervention.
While exhaustive examination of the different workshop approaches is not possible in this paper, the
Audre Lorde Project’s (ALP) ‘Our Safety Ourselves’ workshop and strategy session on transformative
justice interventions into hate crimes is a salient example of this: “In the time of Cece McDonald and
Trayvon Martin, oppressed communities often cannot rely on police or the state to keep us safe. In this
150API
Chaya (2014) ‘Relationship Skills Class’
http://nwnetwork.org/what-we-do/community-engagement/ Accessed 18 May 2014
151 Holtzman, Benjamin and Kevin Van Meter (2012) ‘Furthering Transformative Justice, Building Healthy Communities: An
interview with Philly Stands Up’, Organsing upgrade: Engaging Left Organisers in Strategic Dialogue
http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/community-organizing/item/712-furthering- transformativejustice
60
session participants will use various embodiment practices to explore community-based safety strategies
and responses to hate violence. We will draw from theatre, embodiment, and somatic practices to
generate innovative strategies for preventing, intervening, and repairing the harm of hate violence.”
In the four hour session, presented by Che J. Long of ALP’s Safe OUTside the System Collective,
scenarios covering the lead up to the violence, its occurrence and the aftermath were read aloud and
used interactively, with participants able to halt the story at any possible points of intervention to roleplay tactics, and examine any changes that these effected. These training templates are interesting to
consider locally, where embodiment and somatics is far less prominent or connected with community
accountability work.
Workshops and shorter trainings:
AORTA Training Collective: ‘Communication training’ ,’ Institutionalised Patriarchy:
Framing our Resistance’, ‘Sexual Harassment and Assault’, ‘Training for Trainers’,
‘The way we do the things we do: Healthy people build healthy communities’,
‘Fighting the systems: Destabilising systematic Oppression’ 152
Philly Stands Up: ‘Working with perpetrators – Rehearsing community accountability’
So, you are sitting down with a person who has perpetrated sexual assault. You are across the
table from each other. You are ready to move forward with the accountability process. Now
what?153
Philly’s Pissed: Learning Good Consent154
Break the silence: How to Put Together Your Own Consent Workshop155
Escuela Popular Norteña: Building Violence-Free Communities 156
(A popular education workshop aimed at addressing violence against women of color)
Link: http://www.aortacollective.org/ourwork/workshops and http://www.aortacollective.org/ourwork
Philly Stands Up (2011) ‘Rehearsing Community Accountability’
http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/tag/perpetrator-accountability/
152
153Link:
154Link:
http://phillyspissed.net/node/32
“ Focusing on training in effective communication and nonviolence is not to suggest that sexual assault is the product of
miscommunication, or that violence is about miscommunication. Sexual assault should not be understood in general to
be the result of ‘miscommunication’, as this obscures the gendered power relations and deliberate, planned choices that
typically organise sexual violence. However teaching skills in negotiating consent in sexual relations, other relationship
skills such as communication and conflict resolution, and anger management plays a role in accountability work. Such
efforts can help to reduce men’s violence, in encouraging men to take responsibility for their own actions and intentions
in relation to others.” Berkowitz, Alan D. (2004, in-press) Men’s Role in Preventing Violence Against Women. Applied
Research Forum of VAWNet P 17
155
Link: http://nwbreakthesilence.wordpress.com/zine-project/
156
Link: https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/amrit-wilson/racism-surveillance-and-managing-gender-violence-in-uk
61
Information on somatics: Generative Somatics157
Safety, Harm Reduction & Managing risk in community interventions
“What are we actually asking someone to be accountable for? Because I think sometimes we think
we know that answer, and it really differs depending on the harm. I think that if we’re talking about
sexual violence or we’re talking about rape, often it’s a different question than if we’re holding
someone accountable for domestic violence. Because all of the things that go into what is domestic
violence are actually quite complex. I mean it’s not untrue for sexual violence, but I think they are
distinct questions” – Shannon Perez-Darby, NW Network
The question of risk is an essential consideration of community-based safety work. Indeed, when the
topic of community accountability and transformative justice is introduced, particularly in a service
setting, it is often the notion of risk that proves challenging, or where people raise concerns that
community response might equate to an informal intervention that lacks skills or expertise, and thus is
incapable of managing risk. These questions are important and elevating the discussion of risk is
essential.
Where the violence is present, risk is present and community accountability options must be considered
in the context of strategies for risk assessment, risk management and safety planning. In considering
risk, the discussion around high risk situations where the violence is severe and the likelihood of
lethality potentially high is a complex one, and is not confined to considerations related to community
accountability. The challenges of managing high risk violent perpetrators are complicated, with
management tactics to ensure the safest response the subject of much ongoing discussion, examination
and evaluation – including in the Australian context.158 From a service-based perspective, high risk
situations often warrant a multi-agency or integrated response.159 A fuller discussion of the suite of
potential responses in such high risk cases is outside the scope of this paper, and it is important to note
that community accountability models are generally focused at the more common incidences of
violence, rather than the cohort of high risk violent perpetrators.
When it comes to people responding to violence in the community, because of the prevalence of
violence, people are constantly responding, in both skilled and unskilled ways. It is also worth noting
that given that some people cross between agency settings and grassroots community work, and an
activist ethic can drive both kinds of work, often approaches to risk are informed by both160. So while
there is definitely a very important conversation about risk to be had – particularly when it comes to
violence and safety, or the concern that inexperienced people could do damage to someone who has
Link: http://www.generativesomatics.org/content/what-somatics
At the time of writing it is the subject of the latest Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse discussion
paper:
Salter, Dr Michael (2014) Managing Recidivism in high risk violent men, Issues Paper 23, Australian Domestic & Family Violence
Clearinghouse
http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/IssuesPaper_23.pdf Accessed 4 August 2014
159 Ibid.
160 Reynolds, V.(2008). ‘An ethic of resistance: Frontline worker as activist’. Women Making Waves 19(1),5.
157
158
62
experienced violence or sexual assault by not having the expertise to manage and respond to trauma,
there is also a risk that by quarantining responses to the realm of the professional we add to the
disempowerment of immediate support networks and the creation of gaps between service system
responses to violence, and the relationships and community that surround the situation and people
involved in an ongoing way. Further, even where risk assessment and management happens well in an
agency setting, if there is a lack of continuity or support for safety between formal services and
informal community (including family and friends), this is often where gaps occur and many safety
challenges arise. As such, it is better to resource and support communities to prevent violence and to
respond in a skilled way when it occurs, and to link up with formal services where useful and needed.161
From this perspective, a multifaceted approach can only be a good thing, meaning that the antiviolence work of agencies and communities is overlapping and mutually reinforcing.
In another vein, often the service based options for lower risk situations may be limited to safety
planning, rather than other referral options. This is where community response may be able to help
'hold' the situations and people involved in an environment where the violence is not an unspoken or
unknown aspect, and add creative options to the suite of potential responses to violence.
The nature and role of risk assessment is heavily related to the type of community accountability work
or intervention - for instance, a conversation or intervention with a person causing harm will be
different from considerations in survivor support work, will be different from considerations around
training and storytelling. As such, the approaches taken to risk assessment are directly related to the
group, tactic and specifics of the situation. Building risk assessment into the work is also important
because of the various different types of abuse and harm for which community accountability work is
undertaken. Given that harm and violence occur along a continuum, the dynamics and complexities of
sexual harassment will be different to a situation of long term intimate partner violence – and the risk
involved in each situation must be assessed with this is mind.
In considering risk, Creative Interventions developed a specific chart for risk assessment in community
accountability work that warrants local discussion as a template. They also formulated a series of safety
plan and action worksheets, utilising safety planning approaches taken by crisis and intimate partner
violence response services, and adapted for the community-based context. Additionally, PSU discussed
the role that assessing and responding to risk plays in their discussions with partner collective Philly’s
Pissed, in their initial collective meeting when they are contacted to commence a process, and the way
that it is woven through the accountability work.
Many of the risk assessment and safety planning tools may be applicable across the community and
agency settings. This is relevant in Victoria where training in family violence risk assessment is provided
through the Common Risk Assessment Framework, and other community and health professions –
GPs, maternal child health nurses, drug and alcohol workers are expected to be able to look for
evidence based risk factors and determine whether risk is present. In a period of increasing focus on
developing shared understandings of risk and approaches to risk assessment across family violence and
sexual assault services and other community and health professions, the conversation around managing
risk in community-based work is timely.
161
This is not to assume that even responses by formal support services or agencies and workers are never problematic
when it comes to risk.
63
A word on conceptualising risk to the person who caused harm
Much of the discussion around managing risk traditionally and necessarily focuses on risk to the
survivor or person/people experiencing violence. In the context of community accountability work and
accountability processes, especially where the identity of the person using violence/perpetrating assault
has been disclosed or details of the incident are widely known, there may also be an important
conversation around managing risk to that person. The community backlash and dynamics of
movement away from a person following a call out, including the associated isolation, can also be
factored in to a conceptualisation of risk that includes an eye to risk towards the person who caused
harm. The impacts of isolation and 'social death' have been explored in critiques of the PIC and
punishment centred around shame and exclusion. While transformative justice rejects this model of
response to harm, it may nonetheless arise in anger, outrage and loss of relationships outside of the
accountability process, which is where it may be relevant to risk assessment, as well as the support
tactics and approach discussed in the section on facilitated accountability processes, and the section on
‘call in, call out culture’ and the work to create the latter.
Creative Interventions Toolkit: Staying Safe Tools162
Tool B1. Risk Assessment Chart
Tool B2. Safety Plan and Action Worksheet
Tool B3. Safety Plan and Action Chart
Tool B4. Escape Safety Checklist
Tool B5. Meeting Person Who Did Harm Safety Worksheet163
Safe OUTside the System (Audre Lorde Project) (2010) Safe Space Training for
Trainers: Safety Plan and Risk Assessment Chart164
What next when someone is ‘called out’ for using violence?
Let’s be clear that when it comes to violence and sexual, survivors don’t owe gentleness and respect
and education and patience to those who use violence and perpetrate harm. Let’s also be clear that the
rage, pain, fury and big feelings that come with instances of violence and sexual violence are warranted
and justified. The pain and devastation of these acts reverberates through lives and communities, and
demands action and response. It is not the job of survivors to shepherd their abusers through a process
Link:
http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4.B.CI-Toolkit-Tools-Staying-Safe-PreRelease-Version-06.2012.pdf
163
http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4.B.CI-Toolkit-Tools-Staying-Safe-Pre-ReleaseVersion-06.2012.pdf
164 Hard copy or via ALP contact: http://alp.org/community/sos
162
64
of recognition and behavioural change or be responsible for whether this occurs – particularly when in
many situations people who perpetrate violence and sexual violence are not interested in accountability
or engaging with a facilitated process. Nor should community accountability work be about critiquing
survivors for when and how they disclose violence.
So how do we channel the understandable anger and grief at the perpetrators into meaningful action?
Do we believe that change is possible, or do we think it is a case of excluding people or locking them
up when they perpetrate violence or cause harm? How does imprisonment address the harm itself?
Crisis responses and survivor support are absolutely essential, but what about working with people who
use violence? What does this mean for our responses to different types of harm? What about when the
person causing harm doesn’t recognise it or want to take responsibility? In what circumstances might
accountability processes be an option? What the current criminal legal system offers in the way of
response to harm is punishment. What it doesn’t offer are options for people who want to see
accountability, behavioural change or restitution, but is community accountability more capable of
offering this?
When it comes to transformative justice and accountability, the questions of how we as communities
balance legitimate rage with having the backs of survivors, and holding a strong position against
violence, together with communication and processes to drive and support behavioural change are
complex and ongoing. When the person committing the violence does not want to take responsibility,
they are even more complex. Our personal responses are often influenced by things such as our own
histories, politics, proximity to the incident/situation and the people involved. When our friends and
loved ones are subject to violence and sexual violence, or when they perpetrate it, we are often forced
to start navigating this complexity and grappling with how to create conditions conducive to
accountability and change, whilst also, responding to violence as it is occurring in real time.
A word on the debate around ‘calling-out’ and ‘call-out culture’
As a preamble, of late there has been some debate around the idea of “calling in” and “calling out”, and
what the implications of this are for the different ways of naming violence as unacceptable and the
response options around this.165This conversation covers some essential ground regarding the ways that
we approach problematic behaviour and our ideas about behavioural change and the role of ‘shaming’,
but if framed loosely as a discussion centred on a call-out, particularly if this relates to violence or
sexual violence, can become ambiguous and problematic.166 Firstly, it is noteworthy that the term
Ngọc Loan Trần (2013) ‘Calling in: a Less disposable way of holding each other accountable’, Black Girl Dangerous
http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2013/12/calling-less-disposable-way-holding-accountable/ Accessed November 2013
166 An in depth discussion of this issue is outside the scope of this paper, but it is worth noting that in ‘Calling in: a Less
disposable way of holding each other accountable’ Trần envisioned “calling in” as a practice for parties that already have
common ground and a certain measure of trust. Additional perspectives are explored in:
Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg (2013) ‘speaking Love and anger: A response to Ngoc Loan Tran’s: Calling in: a Less disposable
way of holding each other accountable’ http://www.disabilityandrepresentation.com/2014/01/01/speaking-love-andanger/
165
Veronica Bayetti Flores (2013) ‘On cynicism, calling out, and creating movements that don’t leave our people behind’
Feministing, December 30 2013
http://feministing.com/2013/12/20/on-cynicism-calling-out-and-creating-movements-that-dont-leave-our-people-behind/
Accessed 13 July 2013
65
“calling out” is itself ambiguous. As one local organiser notes, “It’s often not clear when someone
criticises calling out in relation to sexual violence what exactly is being criticised or why. Is someone
calling someone else out when they tell their friends they were raped? Or if they say this in a group
environment? What about if they write an email to event organisers or a group? Or are we only talking
about public facebook or website posts?”167
Secondly, centring any debate on the idea of the “call-out” or the point at which the assault, violence or
harmful behaviour is named as unacceptable risks creating a situation where survivors are made
responsible for how this information is managed, including by others in the community, and creating a
‘good survivor/bad survivor’ dichotomy in the name of community accountability – where the good
survivor is someone who “deals with their trauma in private” and the ‘bad’ survivor is one who “talks
publicly about their experiences or names the perpetrator”.168 This looks dangerously like rape culture
in a different guise, or creating an environment where it is even harder for survivors to disclose their
experiences. This relates to some of the aforementioned problems with framing community
accountability in opposition or as alternative to policing and prisons, as the creation of a situation
where survivors feel pressure to demonstrate the ‘radical’ nature of their politics or their commitment
to abolitionism by their willingness to avoid other pathways in favour of engaging in community
processes.
More useful then may be clearly delineating between critiquing the survivor’s method of disclosure and
naming, and the community’s actions when the violence becomes known, and focusing discussion and
critique on the latter - the actions that accompany a call-out, options for response, and our collective
responsibility for both these and our ongoing follow-up.169 This is the position from which the question
of responses to violence is discussed in this paper.
This includes central and ongoing philosophical and tactical questions about the conditions necessary
for accountability, and how a community balances survivor support with moves with/around/towards
or away from the person causing harm after violence is disclosed. It also relates strongly to our
conceptualisation of community accountability work, and whether we see community accountability as
a body of interrelated work offering a set of different tactics, rather than just facilitated accountability
processes – for if we view facilitated processes as the only option, we are more likely to consider that
community accountability has ‘failed’ if the person won’t engage in a process, or if the process ends,
rather than looking to other tactics and with a view to harm reduction and increased safety (see section
’How do we measure success’ for further discussion). In discussing these latter scenarios with US
organisers, the importance of conceptualising community response as a body of work made up of
Grimalkin (2014) ‘Calling Out Vs. Calling In: How Activist Techniques Can Be Used to Decrease Lateral Violence and
Bullying in Nursing’
http://ofcourseitsaboutyou.com/tag/call-out-culture/
A discussion of some of the broader context of the calling out discussion, and its practice in feminist discourse: Susana Loza
(2013) ‘Hashtag Feminism, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and the Other #FemFuture’, Ada: A Journal of New Media and
Technology, Issue #5 http://adanewmedia.org/2014/07/issue5-loza/ Accessed 29 June 2014
Rebecca winter (2014), comments in response to ‘Community Response Note’
Ibid.
169 Framing the debate to focus on the actions following the call-out, rather than suggesting that any public call-out is
counter to community accountability also leaves room for discussion about the importance of alerting people to
someone’s perpetrating of violence or sexual violence as a safety consideration, and the various ways that this might be
approached.
167
168
66
several strands, not just facilitated accountability processes, and not presenting accountability processes
as the best or only way to respond to violence was heavily emphasised. In the words of PSU,
“Accountability processes [are] one of many, many tools to address a specific type of harm and violence. When people feel
like that’s the only tool that exists, they sort of put every hurt that they have in that category. Actually, what’s important
and beneficial is to start really flexing our muscles and really widening our tool belts.”
What are the options for response?
When it comes to companies, celebrities and popular culture, then a call-out followed by a boycott or
movement away from the behaviour, comment or content might have the effect of demonstrating
community backlash, drawing lines regarding behaviours and attitudes, excerpting economic pressure,
prompting a change or apology (often based on this concern about loss of ‘audience’ or ‘markets’) or
contributing to some elements of cultural shift related to attitudinal change. When the violence is closer
to home, with people in our communities and in the context of ongoing relationships, the questions
regarding what comes after the call out may be quite different, and require us to think very creatively
about tactics – particularly if the person using violence is not willing to acknowledge the harm or take
responsibility, and if there are ongoing concerns about safety or abuse.
A toolkit approach
In translating the philosophies and ideas of community accountability and transformative justice into
tangible tactics for action, the toolkit approach to the work provides a consolidated resource that
combines political underpinnings with exercises and training materials, tactics, stories, templates and
guides for facilitation and implementation. This is particularly relevant to the work of adjusting
approaches to different contexts and locations, cultivating room for the adaptation and development of
tools to fit local situations. It is also aimed at helping to develop and workshop a range of tactics that
we might use independently and in conjunction with each other in order to craft the most useful
responses to violence, think about how to remain flexible along the way when things change
unpredictably and how we might approach someone who has been called out for violence or sexual
assault.
Creative Interventions' work to capture, document and disseminate a body of information and
resources for accountability produced the 600+ pages Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to
Stop Interpersonal Violence170– a comprehensive consolidation of tactics from around North America and
a detailed practical guide for implementing the work of accountability and safety outside the system.
The pre-release version of the toolkit was made available for public use, and as part of the fellowship I
170
Creative Interventions (2012), Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence, Complete
pre-release version.
http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CI-Toolkit-Complete-Pre-Release-Version-06.2012.pdf
67
was able to interview contributors about the approach, as well as the dissemination and use of the
resources, as well as to meet with groups and organisers who use the resources in their work for
discussion about application.
Creative Interventions note that the toolkit was developed as a living document for use in whole or in
part, depending on the situation. For instance, individual tactics can be used in community
interventions or exercises for use in workshops, templates can be extracted for local processes, and the
kit can be used in its entirety as a set of training materials for CA projects and collectives. A toolkit
approach is also useful in the interface between community accountability and service-based work,
enabling us to pick and choose tactics from both to tailor the best response, with a key aspect being
honesty about all of the options and their limitations.
The flow of the toolkit is such that it can be extracted for use, but also provides a framework for
developing projects and initiatives, from the fundamental discussion of values and philosophy, through
structure, interpersonal dynamics and ways of working together, models, phases of intervention and
further resources.
CI's toolkit approach is divided into five sections and covers171:
1) Introduction & FAQ
The Community-Based Intervention to Violence: An Introduction, Who Is This Toolkit For?, What Is
in This Toolkit? , What Is Our Bigger Vision?, Real Life Stories to Share, This Toolkit as a Work in
Progress and Frequently Asked Questions about the Toolkit
2) Some Basics Everyone Should Know
What Is the Community-Based Intervention to Interpersonal Violence?, Interpersonal Violence: Some
Basics Everyone Should Know and Violence Intervention: Some Important Lessons
3)
Model Overview: Is It Right for You?
Reviewing the Community-Based Intervention to Interpersonal Violence, What This Model Is NOT,
Building a Model on Generations of Wisdom, Values to Guide Your Intervention, What Are We
Trying to Achieve, Key Intervention Areas, Interventions over Time: 4 Phases, Tools for Interventions:
8 Sets of Tools, Model at a Glance: Tools across the 4 Phases, Tools to Use Before You Get Started,
and Next Steps
4)
Tools to Mix and Match
Getting Clear. What Is Going On?, Staying Safe. How Do We Stay Safe?, Mapping Allies and Barriers.
Who Can Help?, Goal Setting. What Do We Want?, Supporting Survivors or Victims. How Can We
Help?, Taking Accountability. How Do We Change Violence?, Working Together. How Do We Work
Together as a Team?, Keeping on Track. How Do We Move Forward?
5)
171Ibid.
Other Resources
68
Definitions: Words We Use and What They Mean to Creative Interventions, Real Life Stories and
Examples from the Toolkit, Creative Interventions Anti-Oppression Policy (Anti-Discrimination/AntiHarassment), Community-Based Responses to Interpersonal Violence Workshop, together with a series
of articles and resources by other community accountability and community intervention organisations
and organisers (key resources appear in the resource list) and a list of further resources.172
Lessons
Also contained in the toolkit are reflections from CI on the lessons learned from their community
accountability experience that may act as a useful guide for others undertaking this work. These lessons,
expanded upon in discussion in the kit, are outlined below:
“Lesson One: Keep survivors at the center of concern
Lesson Two: Most of us struggle with accountability. We need to create responses which take this struggle into
account
Lesson Three: Most of us are either uncomfortable with conflict or are too comfortable with conflict. We need
better tools and opportunities for practice so that we can address conflict in a constructive manner.
Lesson Four: If we know the people involved in a situation of violence or conflict, we have our own feelings and
our own agenda. Knowing the people involved can be helpful. It can also get in the way
Lesson Five: Building teams to work together and coordinating our efforts often requires time shared in person,
conversation, and group decision-making.
Lesson Six: Because interpersonal violence is often about power and control, danger can increase when someone is about to
seek safety or help.
Lesson Seven: Change is difficult. Transformation from violence takes time.
Lesson Eight: Change is difficult. Little steps can be important.
Lesson Nine: Mental illness and/or substance abuse makes violence intervention difficult but not impossible.
Lesson Ten: There is often nothing we can do to “make up” for the original harm. Interventions can bring about positive
change but cannot make the original harm disappear.”173
This summary of lessons is useful as a synopsis for comparative discussion about the limitations and
possibilities of a transformative justice approach to violence and harm.
172
173
Ibid.
Ibid.
69
In general, the structure of the toolkit, its approach to and documentation of different tactics and
strands of the work, as well as the specific tools and worksheets warrant examination and discussion to
see how they might be adapted and applied in local work. The comprehensive nature of the toolkit
means that it offers information, resources, methods, tips and tools relating to each area of community
accountability work, and each of the topics explored in this report.
Having toolkits on hand, with the set of documented tactics they contain, together with the body of
stories gathered in STOP and others, also broadens our suite of responses, providing additional
options, tactics and discussion-starters about ways to respond to violence, including in a situation
where there may be insufficient community capacity or circumstances not suited to a facilitated
accountability process.
These toolkit resources also sit well alongside some of the documented brainstorms and resources
listing tactics for accountability and intervention, including Incite!’s ‘community Accountability
Strategies’ list, covering everything from community alarm signals to street theatre to dialogue models
with community leaders to community-based violence prevention education174 as part of a broad suite
of options for responding to violence.
Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence175
Jane Hereth and Chez Rumpf176, Community Accountability for Survivors of Sexual
Violence Toolkit177
Communities Against Rape & Abuse (CARA): ‘Taking Risks: Implementing grassroots
community accountability strategies’178
Northwest Network: It Takes a Village, People: Advocacy, Friends and Family, &
LGBT Survivors of Abuse179 (A toolkit with information, tools, and guidance for people
wanting to support queer and gender nonconforming survivors of abuse.)
174Link:
http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-working-document (NB: the working document
format of this resource means the inclusion of a number of debated tactics as part of the varied list).
175 Link: http://www.creative-interventions.org/tools/toolkit/
Link:
http://carceralfeminism.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cassv-reading-group-toolkit_shifting-from-carceral-to-tjfeminisms_final.pdf This toolkit wass a product of the Shifting from Carceral to Transformative Justice Feminisms
Conference held at DePaul University on March 8, 2014. It provides “background on a reading group held for survivors
of sexual violence, the curriculum for that group, and a workshop curriculum on community accountability for survivors
of sexual violence.”
178 Communities Against Rape & Abuse (CARA): ‘Taking Risks: Implementing grassroots community
accountability strategies’, The Revolution Starts at Home
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Taking-Risks.-CARA.pdf Accessed 28 May
2014
179 Link: http://www.nwnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/It-Takes-A-Village-People-Web-Version.pdf
177
70
Supporting and resourcing communities to run their own interventions
Rather than operating as a central project that would undertake interventions and accountability work
directly with and for communities or in response to specific incidences of violence, in developing the
toolkit of resources and materials for training and uptake, Creative Interventions instead sought to
build capacity with communities to undertake their own transformative justice work.
The difference in these approaches is crucial and worth examining. Community involvement,
ownership and agency are essential for sustaining accountability work over the long term, and it is by
nature orientated at community-based organising rather than reliance on outside ‘experts’. Where an
outside or peripheral group, facilitator or organiser may offer expertise or experience to guide an
approach, such structures rarely have the relationships, contextual insights or capacity to sustain a
response over time. Moreover, in crafting and adapting responses, it is the people, relationships and
community closest to the situations who generally have the most insights into the violence or harm,
and thus a specific and nuanced view of potential solutions or opportunities for transformation. In the
same vein, that very proximity and closeness of relationship can offer mean that those closest to the
violence are those who are most invested in finding paths to safety.
Where it is understood that people experiencing violence have the most accurate picture of risk and are
therefore the experts in their own safety, by the same token, communities have a view of the violence
that will differ to that of groups or projects coming in from outside. In seeking to build lasting
movements for safety then, it is sensible to focus on skill-sharing, storytelling, training and resourcing
communities to respond to violence, rather than creating another layer of outside 'experts' or suggesting
that the keys to safety lie outside.
Planned obsolescence
“CI experienced external pressures that affect … organizations in today’s environment. They are pressured to commodify
concepts and practices, to adapt to funder-driven appeals to create institutionally identified or “trademarked” approaches
and best practices, and to incorporate their efforts into the state institutions they have been resisting. These inescapable
conditions of institutional survival increase with each success, as well as efforts to stave off failure. CI’s deliberate strategy
was to begin with a limited institutional life cycle. It sought to gain sufficient resources to create and publicly disseminate a
rudimentary set of models and tools while minimizing pressures to compromise these goals to attain institutional
sustainability.”
Related to this issue of the difference between resourcing and supporting communities to act, versus
undertaking accountability work on their behalf, the Creative Interventions model of working to a
timeline and strategy of planned obsolescence from the outset is an interesting approach to how to
establish a body of work and resources and then hand this back over to the community to do their own
community response work, rather continuing to operate as a specialist group who do this on behalf of.
They also note the role that limited institutional life cycle played in pushing back against
commodification of concepts, and the external pressures for organisational sustainability that can
compromise the goals of the work (for further discussion see the section ‘ how do we measure
‘success’).
71
Young Women’s Empowerment Project, ‘Dissolving an organisation with love’180
Creative Interventions Toolkit: Working Together181
Facilitated accountability processes and working with people who cause harm
“We are average people, figuring out how to do thorny work and our achievements stem from being committed to our
values and purpose. We believe that people who have caused harm can change, and that we play a crucial role in catalysing
that shift” – Philly Stands Up
Much like other work aimed at behavioural change and undertaken directly with a person using
violence and causing harm, facilitated accountability processes are the subject of some controversy, and
questions as to their effectiveness and what tactics are in place to ensure that they are rigorous and
avoid collusion with the person perpetrating violence.
Understanding that gender-based violence occurs along a continuum, and that ideas of trial and
punishment offer one complicated and flawed response to intimate partner and interpersonal violence
and sexual assault, facilitated accountability work sits in the space of complexity and work-in-progress
that is attempting individual responsibility and work for change with people who cause harm, as an
additional tactic for responding to violence. This space is the subject of much robust debate, including
in Australia.
Given that local discussion and community accountability work often focuses so heavily on
accountability processes and a passage of work with a person who uses violence or has caused harm, it
is worth spending some time exploring the lessons from collectives and projects who have worked
extensively in this area. The long term work of PSU on accountability processes is instructive, and the
lessons learned over the years of their experience directly facilitating accountability processes are some
of the most informative and applicable for our own local responses to violence and sexual assault and
consideration of approach. Much important additional information is also contained in the ‘Taking
Accountability’ section of the Creative Interventions Toolkit, together with CI tools for interventions and
accountability processes.
In their writing about facilitated accountability work, “Anatomy of Accountability: A portrait of praxis',
PSU reflect on their work on accountability processes, including the mistakes and missteps, offering
their lessons and approach up to “other regular folks in communities across to North America [to]
develop and exercise their own processes for making justice in sexual assault situations internal to their
communities.” 182The following detail is taken from this writing, and its expansion in fellowship
interviews, hosting and discussion.183
Link: http://ywepchicago.wordpress.com/
Link: http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4.G.CI-Toolkit-Tools-Working-TogetherPre-Release-Version-06.2012.pdf
182 Esteban Kelly and Jenna Peters-Golden (2011)Portrait of Praxis: An Anatomy of Accountability, Philly Stands Up, social
Justice, Volume 37, No.4.
http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/portrait%20of%20praxis.pdf Accessed 5 April 2014
180
181
72
In working on accountability processes with people who have caused harm, PSU aims for the person to
1.
2.
3.
4.
Recognise the harm they have done, even if it wasn’t intentional
Acknowledge that harm’s impact on individuals and the community
Make appropriate restitution to the individuals and the community
Develop solid skills towards transforming attitudes and behaviour to prevent further harm
and make contribution towards liberation184
The Five Elements
PSU conceptualise an accountability process as made up of five elements that are described as: The
Beginning, Designing the Structure, Life Process, Tools We use and Closing a Process.185
1. The Beginning
“If someone is too close to the person or the process, they are not a good fit for working with them.”186
PSU note that people come to them in a variety of different ways, via workshops, reputation, online
resources or word of mouth, and they are often contact by the person who has caused harm (whether
historic or current), as well as by the survivor, their friends or family, or someone contacting on behalf
of either party. PSU then make a first contact with the person, and following this, meet as a collective
to outline the situation and discuss it as a group. At this point the collective considers i) if there are two
collective members available to take on the process, and ii) whether the collective is equipped to handle
it, with consideration of whether the collective is qualified to handle the content and risk. Collective
members also consider whether they are a good fit in terms of context or connection with the person
and situation, as well as whether the situation may be too emotionally triggering. If trying to work on
the situation is likely to cause more harm than good, then the collective might decline to engage with it,
and instead discuss referrals or alternative follow up.
Once the process has been assessed, an initial meeting is scheduled in a place that is public, but that is
unlikely to include encounters with known people, such as a library or outdoor cafe.
2. Designing the Process
Bench Ansfield and Timothy Colman (2012 )Confronting Sexual Assault: Transformative Justice on the Ground in Philadelphia, Philly
Stands Up
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/confronting-sexual-assault-transformative-justice-on-the-ground-in-philadelphia Accessed 2
Feb 2014
183 Ibid.
Also Timothy Coleman, Esteban Kelly and Em Squires (2008) Philly’s Pissed and Philly stands Up Collected Materials
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/3108714?access_key=key-233hntor7xmurvy1cd70, and fellowship discussion recordings
and transcripts.
Ibid.
Ibid.
186PSU quoted in: Benjamin Holtzman and Kevin Van Meter (2012) ‘Furthering Transformative Justice, Building Healthy
Communities: An interview with Philly Stands Up’, Organising upgrade: Engaging Left Organisers in Strategic Dialogue
http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/community-organizing/item/712-furtheringtransformative-justice
184
185
73
To commence designing the process, the central document is the list of “demands” – actions that the
survivor needs “from the community or the person who caused harm in order to be safe and to
heal.”187 These demands drive the design for the process, and the PSU facilitators aim to meet these
“both in letter and spirit”. This is often where requests not to attend spaces arise and are addressed.
“Sometimes demands are things like: Give me $600 towards an abortion and STI testing; pay me back the money you
owe me; drop out of this organization that we work on together; don’t date without disclosing that you have perpetrated
assault and that you are in an accountability process; stop drinking; write me a letter of apology; don’t say my name in
public”188
PSU design process along several principles i)
Involving the person who has caused harm in designing the process
Rather than the dynamics of an externally imposed programme, PSU have observed that making shared
plans, goals, time-lines and brainstorming options increases the sense of investment and thus
accountability to the process.
ii)
Looking at the best learning methods and access considerations
Considering both ability needs and learning styles, establishing the best methods or formats for content
– this might be audio, visual, and might mean creativity is employed in finding the right venues or
formats.
iii)
Modelling respect and safety in negotiating the process design
Meetings are used as an opportunity to model the behaviour that the process seeks to build. This
includes articulating and maintaining social and physical boundaries, aiming for clear communication,
communicating with total honesty, practising empathy and demonstrating respect – PSU note that this
respect is often deeply appreciated by people who have been ostracised following a sexual assault.
Responsibility is an important aspect of the process, and if the person misses meeting or arrives late,
then the communication and consideration around this is addressed. Ground rules as to how the
person and the collective members want to communicate are established, and used as the basis for
concrete agreements to hold people accountable. PSU then work with the momentum and progress of
agreements that are met as stepping stones and a tool for positive movement for broader behavioural
change.
3. Life structure
This is the more ‘human’ work of building structure and supporting balance in a person’s life, so that
they are more able to be present in the work, so the collective has a better sense of the context,
supports and challenges in the person’s life, and so the chances of following through on the
accountability process are increased. This includes a ‘check-in’ at the beginning of each session, where
Where the work with survivors and aggressors is undertaken by different groups or sub-groups, this information is
drawn from the discussion and support process with the survivor. Some of the common needs include paying for sexual
health tests, abortions or doctors appointments; addressing drug and alcohol issues; letters of apology; agreeing to leave
shared spaces. Sometimes additional demands might be drawn from the others around the survivor and in the
community.
188 Benjamin Holtzman and Kevin Van Meter (2012) Op cit.
187
74
emotions, daily life and logistics can be discussed. At times PSU has assisted with transport, housing
and employment opportunities and other life supports than can assist the stability and balance and give
the process its best chance.
This is also one of the points at which community-based accountability processes differ quite strongly
from other interventions aimed at behavioural-change, in the consideration of everyday support,
interdependence and position of being in community together.
It is also worth noting that this element of the process is very relevant to the networks around the
group and process, as well as the relationships with other agencies, therapists, services or supports. In
interviews, PSU spoke about this work as both a strength and challenge of their approach, as it enables
high levels of trust and support, as well as warranting a substantial energy and time commitment from
collective members engaged in a process. Consciously building networks of frequently used supports or
contacts, especially around housing, therapeutic and drug and alcohol support was discussed as one way
to continue the support work around life structure, while mitigating some of the demands on collective
members.
2. Tools
While each process is different, most rely heavily on dialogue, including stories, the instances of assault,
relationship patterns and connected issues and behaviours – particularly examining dynamics of power,
control or entitlement, and working with emotions such as frustration and anger. The primary tools
relied on in a process include storytelling, with an emphasis on dynamics and emerging themes; writing
and homework, including written reflections of episodes of abuse, logs of emotions such as anger and
frustration and responses, accountability process journal; role playing, using ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’
techniques to act out past or future interactions, with an emphasis on understanding and testing
behaviours, and focus on skills of perception and empathy; and using resources (reading, listening and
watching) for educational development. PSU note that there are a wealth of resources on everything
from patriarchy to family violence to substance abuse, dynamics of power, internalised oppression and
privilege and oppression. They see their role as selecting and tailoring useful resources, and working
with the person to use these meaningfully.
3. Closing: When is a process ‘over’?
The work of behavioural change and improvement is a lifelong process, and certainly for people who
have a history of perpetrating violence. PSU note that most of their processes run for between nine
months and two years, but could continue indefinitely. As with other therapeutic work, there may be no
objective answer as to when a process should be concluded, but PSU have charted some common
indicators as to when it may be appropriate to commence winding down:
-
-
When both the letter and the spirit of the demands has been met – both the practical demands,
and the emotional work and responsibility relevant to these have been undertaken, including
the time required to take responsibility for and understand one’s role in the harm, and a sense
of empathy around its impacts on the survivor and the community
This would include addressing other behaviours, such as substance use, that are linked to the
abusive behaviour (including making the connection and changing their relationship to that
substance)
75
-
If the person who has caused harm has identified ways to change the behaviours around or
leading to the sexual assault, and has demonstrated their capacity to navigate these situations
differently, and has practised this shift in everyday life
They also note that an accountability process would generally not be wound down until the person has
developed “responsible and sustainable systems of support in their life”, and that this entails looking to
whether the person has a number of reliable supports with whom they can communicate about matters
of consequence”. This aspect is very related to the ongoing relationship between the process and the
community around it, and the conditions required for sustained behavioural change.
Ending a process generally includes a phase out, where the meeting schedule is gradually tapered from
weekly through to periodic check-ins. Following its ‘closure’, PSU remain open to contact from the
person for future support or contact around issues of concern.
Phases of the process
In addition to the five elements, the PSU have charted five of the most common phases of an
accountability process, which may be useful as a model for local consideration.189
Image – Philly stands Up190
Philly stands Up ‘Accountability Road Map’ in
Critical Resistance (2004) Critical Resistance Abolition Organising Toolkit, p7
http://criticalresistance.org/resources/the-abolitionist-toolkit/ Accessed 4 June 2014
189
76
1. Identifying behaviours –Establishing an awareness and understanding of the behaviours
they were called out for. PSU note that this section can far more time than anticipated.
2. Accepting harm done (and working with the survivor’s demands) – Deepening the new
understanding with acknowledgement of the harm/s caused, and using this to build
empathy.
“We can’t really touch the demands, to do them justice, until the person who has caused harm really can
recognize the harm that’s been done and feels concrete and solid, that, actually, they did perpetrate violence or
abuse or harm.”191
3. Looking for patterns – Broadening the process beyond the specific assault to look for and
name patterns and history of abusiveness, and unpacking the assumptions and socialisation
underneath these. This is aimed at making comprehensive change to prevent future
violence.
“It’s
uncommon that the dynamic and actions that were a part of an instance or ongoing assaults have
happened randomly…Once you know what these patterns and behaviors are, you can start making plans to
intervene in them”192
4. Unlearning old behaviours – Working on analysing and understanding these behaviours,
including identifying the situations in which abusive behaviour occurs, or that enable it, and
developing strategies to make alternative choices/diffuse the pathways to harm.
5. Learning new behaviours – Building new behaviours, especially by role playing and
rehearsing consent practices, graceful acceptance of criticism or challenge, disclosure
strategies etc. This is partnered with work to become aware of and linked up with resources
and support factors to sustain positive change – including supportive friends, counsellors,
and lifestyle and health supports. This last phase is aimed at the skill of building new
behaviours, so that this fosters self-reliance and long term change.
In addition to the resources they've developed and their writing on process techniques are the lessons
learned and embedded in their parameters for engaging in work with someone, that were further
explored through fellowship dialogue:
 Only working with people who are open to doing the work
“For those just learning about transformative justice and community accountability, it is often surprising to hear that
many of the people we have worked with over the past eight years have come to us on their own. Many who have
perpetrated assault agree to work with us out of a political devotion to finding ways to address harm without calling upon
cops, courts and prisons.. this political unity [along with shared community] gives us leverage to facilitate a process..
Ibid.
Benjamin Holtzman and Kevin Van Meter (2012) Op cit.
192 PSU discussions and interviews.
190
191
77
Frequently an even greater factor than political unity in pulling someone into an accountability process is their desire to
clear their name.”193
Rather than assuming that accountability is something that can be mandated or forced on someone
who has caused harm by a community demanding redress, PSU have a position of only attempting
accountability work with a person who has perpetrated violence or sexual assault if that person is open
to the work. This may mean that in some circumstances the contact is initiated and the process
commenced at the behest of that person, but as a baseline – if the contact comes via a friend, lover,
acquaintance or family member - the person being asked to be accountable must recognise the
violence/harm, and have a degree of openness to being involved in a passage of work to address this.
Contested tactics: Leverage, coercion and power in accountability processes
PSU’s approach to facilitated processes is not one that someone who has caused harm could be
mandated or forced to participate in. However that issue is linked with holistic ideas of accountability,
and the four-pronged approach taken by Incite!, in that increasing community capacity to respond to
violence with engagement, creating alternatives to the PIC and working for a community culture of
safety is in turn aimed at increasing the likelihood that people will participate in accountability work
when they cause harm to others. In the same vein, deliberately crafting specific teams to work on
survivor support, community outreach and accountability also enhance the combined nature of the
work, increase chances that the environment is such that a person may willingly engage in an
accountability process, and provide greater alternatives if they are unwilling.
This relates to the question of contested tactics, and the ‘legitimacy of authority, force, coercion or
violence’ at points of ‘confrontation’ or in reaction to resistance to accountability in work with people
causing harm. Creative Interventions grappled with these questions in establishing their own principles
and practices, and the approach taken in the toolkit:
“Fundamental to a process of accountability is the reduction of violence or threats of retaliation to the point that deeper
levels of change can be considered. Given that some form of “confrontation” and a tendency to resist change are inevitable
in situations of accountability, CI had to contend with questions regarding the ethics and efficacy of community-based
authority, force, coercion, violence and even the threat of violence. .. We set a low threshold for authority, force and coercion.
Those undertaking community accountability processes often claimed to disavow these forms of power, but exercised them
nonetheless. Asserting righteousness or the moral highground often obscured the fact that some level of force was being used.
Elements of coercion reside even in requests for someone to listen to our account of violence, come to a meeting, or read a list
of demands – no matter how gently or civilly they are made. Transparency over the assertive use of power and the potential
consequences of noncompliance were important first steps in articulating principles and practices regarding their legitimate
use.”194
 Confidentiality: Creating non-identifying ways of working with people
Bench Ansfield & Jenna Peters-golden (2012) ‘How We Learned Not to Succeed in Transformative Justice’, Makeshift
Magazine, Issue 12.
194 Mimi Kim (2012) Op cit, p 29
193
78
“Every
situation that we have or person that we’re working with, as soon as we decide to talk about them in a meeting,
they get a code name. That’s a small thing that’s had a really huge impact on how we operate. So, for the situations that
Philly Stands Up takes on, the other members who aren’t the point persons have no idea of the actual identity of the
people involved. ..That’s really important, in terms of not being completely consumed by the work, in terms of not kind of
unconsciously keeping tabs on people all the time, in terms of just letting us live our lives. Then when a member is in a
meeting and if the two people who are working on that process are asking for support or for an opinion or where to go
next, the others are a lot more able to give good advice or help make meaningful decisions if they don’t actually know who
this person is. And so confidentiality and objectivity actually really go together.”195
PSU have a practice of ensuring that the identity of people doing accountability work with members of
their collective is kept confidential outside of the two people directly engaged with the process. The
process is given a name or identifying title, and this is used rather than the person's name when it is
discussed at meetings in terms of tactics, progress, issues arising, and for any planning, debriefing and
collaboration with the wider collective. This confidentiality affects both the person who experienced
the harm and the person causing it, and thus is relevant when considering how to manage information
and detail in a way that respect’s the survivor, their wishes, information, and ability to respond to the
harm in a way that’s non-identifying.196
Where locally the challenges of building community capacity and shared understandings as well as the
difficulty of containing information in an informal community setting can combine and risk creating a
process that is exposing, unsafe or overly influenced by interjections from outside it, this policy of
confidentiality is worth contemplation. It is also important to note that this position on confidentiality
and non-identifying work does not sit in place of considerations about safety - indeed PSU deal
specially with risk assessment and disclosures about the violence in their work, including via sections of
the accountability process that is about working with the person who has used violence on when they
will disclose and to whom.
Creative Interventions grappled differently with the question of disclosure, generating a “protocol to
balance safety and privacy considerations with the public’s need to be informed” in the STOP project,
and taking the position of “protected confidentiality while encouraging thoughtful public disclosure on
the part of participants” in its Community-Based Interventions Project. In writing about these
considerations, CI Founder, Mimi Kim notes that,
“CI’s liberatory stance concerning public disclosure was complicated by the fact that violence in the community context
remains associated with shame. Disclosure can assume the form of gossip, and public information can reveal large,
misleading gaps as those involved in the violence tire of sharing details. Survivors and those doing harm can easily confuse
disclosure with punishment in communities that view interpersonal violence through the lens of denial and shame.
Communities contending with pervasive violence may resort to a process of public disclosure to curb it. For people doing
harm, it can help to compel compliance with processes of accountability. Survivors and communities often expect people
doing harm to engage in public disclosure as a part of the process of being accountable. Yet how much to disclose, for how
long, and to whom were questions not easily answered.”197
195
PSU quoted in : Benjamin Holtzman and Kevin Van Meter (2012) Op cit.
197
Mimi Kim (2011) ‘Public Disclosure and Navigation Beyond Shame and Punishment’ in Moving Beyond Critique:
Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of Community Accountability, Op cit. p 31
79
A word on stepping away from PIC-based approaches to guilt and innocence
Taking a transformative justice or community-based approach to accountability is operating from a
different premise to criminal legal systems, and is not about crafting an investigative process or
attempting to follow a binary pathway focused on establishing guilt/innocence in order to determine
punishment. Rather, it is about seeking remedy and transformation when harm has occurred – most
particularly when the person causing the harm notes that their behaviour has been harmful and is open
to taking responsibility for this, and taking steps to find remedies and not replicate the violence or
harmful behaviours. This foundational difference can be the subject of much misunderstanding, and is
relevant to both community capacity-building and shared understandings, as well as to facilitated
accountability processes.
Kelly, Esteban Lance & Jenna Peters Golden (2010) ‘Philly Stands up Portrait of Praxis:
Anatomy of Accountability’198
Philly Stands Up (organizing zine): A Stand Up Start Up199
Creative Interventions Toolkit: Taking Accountability (& Tips for Seeking a Therapist
[for People Who Have Done Sexual Harm): Tools –
Creative Interventions Toolkit: Tool F1 Staircase of Change
Tool F2 Level of Participation for Survivors or Victims chart
Tool F3 Self-reflection and Guiding Questions for Survivors or Victims and Allies
Tool F4 Self-reflection and Practise for Allies
Tool F5. Breaking through Defensiveness. Guiding Questions for the Person Doing
Harm
Tool F6. Preparing for Direct Communication. Affirmations and Guided Questions for
the Person Doing Harm
Tod Augusta-Scott: As If They Were Human: A Different Take on Perpetrator
Accountability [three articles in booklet form]200
Incite! What is the opposite of accountability (section from Community Accountability
Within People of Color Progressive Movements by INCITE!)201
198
199
200
Link: http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/portrait%20of%20praxis.pdf
Link: http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/A%20Stand%20Up%20Start%20Up.PDF
Link: http://zinelibrary.info/if-they-were-human-different-take-perpetrator-accountability
80
Taking the First Step (zine form)202
What to do when you’ve been called out203
The interface with formal services and the criminal legal system
“In the end, although we didn’t report to the police, we ended up having to work with the welfare
state to get this person what they needed. So they can make safer choices. And also so they could
make decisions on how to be accountable. And you know, a lot of the things the welfare state
provides are things like house care, health care, mental health care. And so even though we didn’t
use law enforcement or criminal legal, we still ended up having to go beyond our community” NT –
API Chaya panel
As with local community accountability initiatives, hosts talked about the different ways that their
transformative justice work has interfaced with formal services, and the issues around this. This
discussion was separated into the interface with the community sector, support and welfare agencies,
and interactions with police, courts and the PIC.
When it comes to the former, the less overt political critique can mean that interactions with these
services, or work in this space concurrent with transformative justice work is possible. Most commonly
this related to working alongside therapeutic processes with sexual assault or other counsellors, drug
and alcohol workers or support services. Whether there is an issue in the interface is often very
dependent on the politics and approach of the service or individual therapist/worker. Where issues
have arisen, these tended to be financial or cost related, occur where people experienced barriers or
discrimination when attempting to access services or support workers, did not find the service
accessible based on identities, politics or lifestyles, or did not fit within the ‘one size fits all’ approach
taken by the service204, or where those services or professional workers did not have an understanding
of community-based interventions and thus might advocate pathways different to those chosen by the
survivor.
Collectives and groups had tested and developed a few different ways to approach this interface.
Groups like PSU have looked at strategies to meet financial challenges, including undertaking their own
fundraising to have a small collective budget, and looking at the role that the list of ‘demands’ might
play in ensuring that cost is met by the person who perpetrated the assault.
When it comes to the gaps in understanding of approaches, barriers and discrimination, North
American groups have considered different ways of relating to individual counsellors and support
201
Link: http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-within-people-color-progressive-movements
202
Link: http://zinelibrary.info/taking-first-step-suggestions-people-called-out-abusive-behavior
Link: http://zinelibrary.info/what-do-when-youve-been-called-out
203
Ann Russo & Melissa Spatz (2007)’Communities Engaged in Resisting Violence’, Women and Girls Collective Action
Network, p3
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/communities_engaged.pdf
204
81
services. Based on an examination of transformative justice resources around the country, the BATJC
are embedding the work to develop a database of counsellors, therapists and supportive referral options
as part of the establishment phase of the work. This means that ideally a network of supportive
practitioners are established well before they are needed to respond, that relationships with these
services and people can be built and avenues established for ongoing dialogue, and that there is time for
information sharing about the different approaches and intention of the work.
When it comes to interfacing with police and criminal legal processes, the discussion becomes more
complex. Most of the people interviewed said that where police were actively involved, investigations
underway, or court processes in train, it would be less possible for transformative justice approaches to
operate concurrently, and accountability work would tend to then be more about survivor support
options. Conversely, transformative justice processes and associated dialogue could have implications
for and impacts on criminal legal pathways, with work undertaken in a transformative justice process
interpreted differently through a binary criminal legal lens. They noted that it was more common for
people engaged in transformative justice to want to see a process through to see whether it could
deliver their needs and safety, rather than diverging into a criminal legal pathway (so generally a
decision about this had already been made for the time period that a response was in train). Organisers
also spoke as never seeing it as their role to discourage someone from going to the police or following
legal avenues, but rather that accountability work operates from a different frame, and thus can offer a
different set of options or tools.
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective: Community Support Network205
Ann Russo & Melissa Spatz (Women and Girls Collective Action Network, 2007):
’Communities Engaged in Resisting Violence206’
Reynolds, V. & Hammoud-Beckett, S. (2012) Bridging the worlds of therapy &
activism: Intersections, tensions & affinities. The International Journal of Narrative
Therapy and Community Work. (4) 57-61.
How do we measure 'success'? Examining the effectiveness of community response
Because I was reflecting on the first challenge that came up that Norma was talking about, about how we were just
tracking this person and I felt like I was in a similar situation when I was working on an accountability process where
our main job for a long time was just to make sure someone didn't go to spaces where the survivor was at. I thought that
was a success, because we were showing up for the survivor and in a pretty tangible way. But I also see how it is a
challenge, and it's like “oh we were just following this person around.” LS
205
206
Link: http://batjc.wordpress.com/community-support-network/
Link: http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/communities_engaged.pdf
82
“Success presumes that there is a way to undo the harm that has occurred, to come out of an accountability process with an
unqualified victory. But in an accountability process, it is critical to remember that there is no way to undo harm, that each
moment of progress is paired with moments of failure or dismay, and that healing is not the same as curing.” 207
The community-based nature of this work can make evaluation and measuring 'success' an elusive task.
The emotionality and challenges associated with issues of violence and sexual assault add complexity
when assessing whether an intervention has 'worked'. How does one measure success? Is it improved
safety within an ongoing relationship where violence has previously occurred? Is supporting someone
to safely leave? And the answers are as individual as the people and circumstances involved.
In reflections on local projects, there is a tendency to focus heavily on criticism, and tend towards
absolutism. If an initiative wasn't absolutely perfect, and ticking every box – safety, accountability,
political rigour, met with warm acceptance from all involved - then it can be considered a failure:
“I think a lot of times we are super focused on "that went terribly, this didn't work, this sucked, everybody is burnt out.
And contrasting the results with what is coming out of our attempts with what’s being produced out of prison systems is
actually a more reasonable measure than a perfection standard and how we are doing compared to that.” NS
There is also a tendency to measure transformative justice and accountability initiatives against the
vision of a dystopian future, that has seen a drastic reduction in violence and sexual assault, and that
where harm is caused, it is redressed by means of holistic community intervention that provides both
remedy for the person experiencing it, a process of transformative accountability, insight and change
for the person causing it, and revolutionary transformation of the conditions around its occurrence.
These types of idealistic comparison are hard on people and projects working for change, and set us up
for a sense of failure when we don't meet these aspirational targets – particularly when it comes to the
complexity of community-based facilitated accountability processes. A more constructive reflective
comparison might therefore be drawn not against an idealised, violence-free future, but against the
existing alternatives – those provided by support agencies, crisis services and the PIC. In this context,
the niche work and effectiveness of transformative justice work can be more accurately reflected upon.
Usefully, some of US projects conceptualise measurement not against aspirational targets and an
idealised future, but in the context of the complexity of the work and in the context of and against the
other alternatives. As a long term project, PSU have spent many years reflecting on what constitutes
effective work or ‘success’, and responding to questions about how accountability work might be
evaluated.208
Rather than subscribing to a “success” model, they focus on a harm reduction perspective, “at the very
least, we hope to mitigate the impact of the harm that has occurred and prevent it from happening
again.” PSU describe their approach as “[striving] to celebrate triumphs without forgetting to scrutinise
Bench Ansfield & Jenna Peters-Golden (2012) Op cit.
The issues around the idea that there can be one clear method for quantifying ‘success’ is encapsulated by PSU’s logo –
the stamp and inkpad that imprints their name. This image evolved out of their experiences with accountability work and
the expectation that after undertaking a facilitated process, a person would receive the PSU ‘stamp of approval’ as a ‘safe
person’ or have their name cleared. In reality, lived experience is far more complex, and power dynamics, relationships,
individual choices and behaviours do not operate in this way. As such the work is far more about crafting the conditions,
movements and processes that support safety and healing, rather than the idea that accountability is a neat checkbox
exercise that prevents harmful behaviour from ever occurring again.
207
208
83
and learn from mistakes.” They talk about the importance of i) remaining focused on the role of
facilitators rather than on a “success” model, and ii) the importance of documenting any advances in
order to notice and build on behavioural change.
With regards to the former, PSU describe an important lesson in remaining focused on facilitation
learned in their work with a person who has perpetrated sexual assault, noting that when the person
started making headway, de-escalating violent situations, demonstrating capacity to communicate hard
emotions non-violently, the collective members got “caught up in the thrill” or participating in the
behaviour change, and instead of staying on track with the work still to do, started to feel invested in
“success”. They note:
“Once we became focused on “success”, we tended to play less attention to the patterns of abusive behaviour that
this person still needed to work through… we found ourselves working in ways that we associate with the non-profit
industrial complex: looking for easy, marketable victories with the goal of generating statistics, and glossing over
contradictions and inconsistencies that might call our work into question.”
They observed that this creep of the “success model” into their facilitation made the collective
vulnerable to burnout and compromised the process. With regards to the latter focus on documenting
small advances, PSU note that in attempting to strike a balance between the two poles – either a
fixation on breakthroughs or focusing on the tremendous amount of work to be done – documentation
is key to drawing a more accurate and nuanced map of how a transformative process evolves.
It is worth noting that many of the same challenges that face community-based interventions seeking
some measure of effectiveness also apply to behavioural change programmes that occur in a servicebased setting,209 as well as to the broader discussion of feminist approaches to evaluation that can hold
narratives, anecdotes and experiential information, rather than just statistical information. 210
A more useful reflective process then may be one that focuses on building on the positives, and
working to meet challenges and minimise risk and harm. In the same way that we don’t abandon
service-based behavioural change programmes simply because the evaluation around them is complex,
the same applies to facilitated accountability work, where the impetus is for ongoing improvement,
reductions in violence, and a developing body of work directly with people who cause harm, that fits
within a broader violence prevention movement.
Many of the community accountability evaluation challenges discussed closely mirrored local discussion by No To
Violence and Men’s Behavioural Change Programme facilitators, who assert that seeking to evaluate behavioural change
work throws up issues as to what information is being gathered and measured in relation to the programmes, and how. This
includes determining the objectives of MBCP work, and considering whether evaluation is able to capture outcomes related
to the programme but not directly occurring within it (i.e. If a man’s attendance at a MBCP means that a woman is in
contact with a partner support programme, and the violence does not cease, but the programme assists with managing risk
and supporting the woman to leave safely, would this be captured via evaluation? How is this contribution to safety
measured, if the programme acts as an intervention, but does not deliver overarching behavioural change. These questions
around establishing measurable objectives and capturing data are ongoing). (Notes taken from talk by NTV Acting CEO,
2014)
209
Tracy Castellino (2012) ‘Feminist audit of men's behaviour change programs’, Transcript of workshop at the No To
Violence Conference, Melbourne, Australia, November 2012
http://ntv.org.au/conference/wp-content/uploads/2012-ntv-conference-workshop-1f-feminist-audit-doc.pdf Accessed 9
July 2014
210
84
As a final note, when asking questions about what benefits or successes emerged from community
accountability efforts locally, often even those that were heavily critiqued at the time generated tangible
safety outcomes. This was mirrored in discussions with organisers in the USA, who have observed that
asking questions about overall success, and logically also about lasting change, from processes,
mediations and trainings, a process of critical reflection is often useful some period after completion.
API Chaya panel audio211 and transcript212
Philly Stands Up 'How we learned not to succeed at Transformative Justice'213
Challenges and directions in North American transformative justice projects
As well as discussing the lessons, changes and trends in accountability work with hosts and organisers
for insights useful to Australia, the ongoing issues and challenges faced by even long-term project in the
USA were also explored. Given that community-based work is an evolving body of knowledge and
practice, applied in different contexts, the process of surfacing issues and meeting these with creative
and flexible responses is ongoing.
In addition to the strong recognition of Australian challenges in their own work, projects in the USA
discussed many of their own outstanding questions, issues, hot topics and ongoing challenges – many
of which are the subject of the panel and network discussions and convergences mentioned in this
paper, for the purposes of collective and community strategising, as well as for prompt questions in
workshops and trainings.
These questions, together with the priority topics below were identified by organisers as some key areas
of work in the USA, and directions of transformative justice work, and may be useful to include in local
discussion and development of work, alongside some of the key insights:
How a perpetrator’s behaviour may be addressed if the survivor has shared information in confidence;
what to do when a perpetrator refuses to engage in a process; what to do when the community doesn’t
seem to care (or enables perpetrator); How to deal with community trauma; how to engage people
who feel accused right off the bat (typically white cis-men) of being “typical perpetrators”; how to help
build collective responsibility for behavioural change and building safe spaces; what to do when
unaccountable perpetrators are involved in accountability/sexual assault prevention projects in their
political work; how to challenge/work through a community that’s lost faith in accountability
processes; and how to better implement Primary Prevention techniques outside of school settings (ex.
bystander intervention models for local communities). Additionally, in workshop setting thematic
questions arose as to how can groups not necessarily doing transformative justice work might
211
212
213
Link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4akhKV0djT2owOUk/edit
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4ejZFUjNZMHVOWFk/edit?usp=sharing
Bench Ansfield & Jenna Peters-golden (2012) ‘How We Learned Not to Succeed in Transformative Justice’, Makeshift
Magazine, Issue 12.
85
incorporate thus into their group processes and how to make sure the network doesn’t turn into an
“expert” body since people are the experts of their own communities.
As such, much of the ongoing dialogue is absolutely relevant to local discussions and many of the
challenges and directions of community accountability work are operating in parallel across Australian
and US contexts, with ongoing opportunities for collaboration, resource and knowledge sharing and
solidarity.
86
Conclusion
The prevalence of gender-based violence in Australia and globally demands a response from every
angle of opportunity. While extensive work and resources, including those of feminist agencies, goes
into criminal legal responses to violence and service-based survivor support and advocacy, an essential
pillar of violence prevention and response work is that which occurs in our immediate networks –
family, friends, co-workers, neighbours and communities.
With the current, unprecedented focus on family violence by police and national conversation
underway about assessing and responding to risk and what violence prevention looks like, now is a vital
time for the anti-violence movement to not only critique institutional responses to violence and the
criminalisation paradigm as an overarching strategy to combat violence, but to move beyond this to
establish new forums and institutional spaces for creating and promoting community-based
interventions and responses to gender-based and sexual violence
Rather than being merely polemical, grassroots antiviolence organisations and collectives are engaging
with and undertaking this work, and seeking to generate further resources, and develop and refine
methods. To do this well and work towards building a newly energised anti-violence movement
involves robust and critical reflection on our local work, and the challenges and pitfalls emerging from
it. It includes story-collection, documentation and storytelling to build and diversify tactics, elevate the
value of creative and community-based responses, foster shared understandings, and strengthen our
collective capacity to challenge violence. It also entails concerted movement-building work - building
outwards from comprehensive self-education, network-building, training and skill-sharing, dialogue and
ongoing interventions to violence.
This work is made no less necessary by the fact that it is, like any response to community and
interpersonal violence, riddled with complexity and must navigate contradictions and wrestle with
pitfalls and dilemmas in an ongoing way. To benefit from and build on lessons learned here and
elsewhere, we must also continue to look to and engage with overseas examples of liberatory models
for responding to interpersonal and community violence, including gender violence, such as the
projects named in this report, and the thinking , resources and tactics they offer. The evidence from
US-based grassroots accountability work shows that community-based interventions to violence and
strategies for safety and community accountability are diverse and can be effective, creative and lasting.
In turn, many of the challenges related to community accountability work are strongly thematic, cross
contexts and geographic locations and are best met in a collaborative way, with dialogue between
projects in different locations, as well as ongoing discussion and critique with the communities in which
they exist. Community-based safety strategies are ever-evolving and we can learn from each other’s
work, and continue to develop and share new tactics and approaches. Our work now is to grapple with
and translate these lessons in to daily practise, to persist with creative interventions to violence in
Australia, and the business of building our collective capacity for community accountability.
87
Recommendations
Critical
reflection
and documentation
1. Continue survey and reflective interview process until December
2014, and transcribe these into local reflective resource for
distribution back to survey participants, community accountability
network and via resource library early 2015
2. Collate key thematic challenges for discussion at community
accountability symposium and forums (see below)
Facilitated Accountability models:
3. Establish a Melbourne-based working group for facilitated
accountability processes
4. In individual projects and via the community accountability
network (see below), reflect on and develop the methodology of
local accountability and community-based violence prevention
work:
Examine overseas best practice approaches for adaption and
implementation here. Consider pre and post intervention
assessments to examine effectiveness over time, assessing
attitudes and behaviour via both self-reporting and other
information sources (including information from survivors, family
and friends). This may include PSU model of documenting
interventions, and examining these for effectiveness, trends, and
diversity and contradiction.
Tools & Resources
5. Provide resource list to network, and make publically available via
DVRCV and Undercurrent websites at the close of the
Fellowship
6. Collate and reproduce all resources gathered on the trip in
electronic and hard copy. Make these available to Australian
projects via websites and the mobile library (see below)
7. Create an open-source Community Resource Library (CRL),
hosted by Undercurrent, for events, workshops and community
access
8. Transcribe all USA interviews and provide online. Excerpt
interview audio for radio, podcasts, and trainings
Workshop and training templates:
9. Examine the training templates and frameworks from host
organisations for consideration in the development of local
training modules on transformative justice tactics and tools for
community-based interventions to violence
10. Risk management and harm reduction: Look at the community
88
based risk assessment tool against the CRAF and other risk
assessment templates.
11. Examine and adapt the other ‘tools for staying safe’ for use in a
local context.
12. Convene a localised discussion and training around risk
assessment in early 2015.
Toolkits:
13. Gather and document information about Australian interventions
for inclusion in a local resource toolkit. Note that the interviews
conducted for the research fellowship and those that are ongoing
will provide the basis for a localised storytelling resource and
digest of lessons.
14. Using the CI toolkit as a relevant structural template, generate an
Australian Community Accountability toolkit for use in planning,
training and local CA work.214
Network building
Training, education
and
community
dialogue
15. Establish a working group to organise a 2015 Australian
community accountability symposium/action camp.
16. Develop a transformative justice network of prison
solidarity/abolitionist projects and anti-violence/gender violence
projects to share resources, develop trainings, and continue
dialogue about tactics and approaches. This is with a view to
further collaboration and consideration of a position statement.
17. Establish a national communication forum (e-list) and website for
resource sharing, support and collaboration
18. Develop a database of counsellors and service providers
supportive of community accountability approaches, as contacts
for community-based interventions
19. Generate a list of counsellors and supervisors available for
community safety debriefing, mediation and facilitation
20. Disseminate this research and resources through anti-violence
service networks, including running a Victorian workshop/forum
late 2014
21. Conduct a 12 week transformative justice self-education study
group for local organisers via Undercurrent, utilising the 12 week
transformative justice curriculum as its basis.
22. Pilot a local Relationship Skills Curriculum (based on Northwest
Network ‘relationship skills’ training) in Melbourne in February
This may involve reviewing and adapting local content from the P’tchang (Melbourne) toolkit Nonviolent Community Safety
and Peacebuilding - a handbook for increasing community safety with a range of tools to increase skills in a variety of areas
related to community-based safety and accountability, to develop a toolkit orientated at interventions into gender and
interpersonal violence.
http://criticalresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/peacekeeping_handbook_pt_chang.pdf
214
89
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
2015 via Domestic Violence Resource Centre and Undercurrent
Develop and pilot ‘practical skills for intervening into
violence’/bystander intervention training, based on DVRCV
working group discussion
Trial the relevant sections of the CR toolkit in Australian
workshops and interventions through 2015, for review and
consideration in local toolkit
Using the STOP and local stories, conduct facilitated communitysafety discussions modelled on safety labs in Melbourne, Sydney
and Brisbane in 2015
Organise a 2015 Australian Community Accountability
symposium, with an agenda structured to address local challenges
and include content on overseas models. Consider local area
panel discussion topics to follow the symposium for ongoing
dialogue.
Host a forum on transformative justice for service providers and
workers
90
References
American Bar Association (2014) Domestic Violence Statistics
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html
Ansfield, Bench and Timothy Colman (2012 ) Confronting Sexual Assault: Transformative Justice on the Ground in
Philadelphia, Philly Stands Up
Ansfield, Bench & Jenna Peters-golden (2012) ‘How We Learned Not to Succeed in Transformative Justice’,
Makeshift Magazine, Issue 12.
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/confronting-sexual-assault-transformative-justice-on-the-ground-inphiladelphia
Anti Oppression and Resource Training Alliance (2014) ‘Resources’
http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/ao_facilitation_resource_sheet_july_2014.pdf
http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/2014_resource-zine_final.pdf
http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/infiltration_handout.pdf
Anti Oppression Resource Training Alliance (2013) ‘about’
http://www.aortacollective.org/about and http://www.aortacollective.org/ourwork
API Chaya Queer Network Program (2014) Panel on Transformative Justice and community Accountability
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4ejZFUjNZMHVOWFk/edit
API Chaya (2012) ‘Who We are’
http://www.chayaseattle.org/index.php/who-we-are/our-story
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) ‘Experiences of Violence’, Personal Safety Survey
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4906.0Main+Features12012?OpenDocument
Berger, Dan (ed) (2011) "Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self Defense
"The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism.
Berkowitz, Alan D. (2004, in-press) Men’s Role in Preventing Violence Against Women. Applied Research Forum
of VAWNet
Ching-In Chen, ching-In & Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha & Andrea smith (2011) The Revolution
Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities’, South End Press.
Communities Against Rape & Abuse (CARA): ‘Taking Risks: Implementing grassroots community accountability
strategies’, The Revolution Starts at Home
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Taking-Risks.-CARA.pdf
Coleman, Timothy & Esteban Kelly and Em Squires (2008) Philly’s Pissed and Philly stands Up Collected Materials
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/3108714?access_key=key-233hntor7xmurvy1cd70
Creative Interventions (2012), Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence, Complete
pre-release version.
http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CI-Toolkit-Complete-Pre-ReleaseVersion-06.2012-.pdf
Creative Interventions (2004) ‘About us’
91
http://www.creative-interventions.org/about/
Critical Resistance (2014) ‘What is the PIC?’
http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/
Critical Resistance (2004) Critical Resistance Abolition Organising Toolkit,
http://criticalresistance.org/resources/the-abolitionist-toolkit/
Edwards, Robyn (2004) Staying Home, Leaving Violence: Promoting choice for women leaving abusive partners, Australian
domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse
http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/pdf%20files/shlv.pdf
Flood, M. (2004) Changing Men: Best practice in violence prevention work with men.
Home Truths Conference: Stop sexual assault and domestic violence: A national challenge,
Melbourne, 15-17 September
For Crying Out Loud (2010) ‘About Us’
http://forcryingoutloud206.wordpress.com/about/
Generation 5 (2007) ‘Toward Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Child Sexual Abuse and other
forms of Intimate and Community Violence (A Call to Action for the Left and the Sexual and Domestic
Violence Sectors)’
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/G5_Toward_Transformative_Justice.pdf
'Grassroots organising for Safety – Community Research Project', hosted on Plan to Thrive,
http://plantothrive.net.au/2014/05/grassroots-organising-safety/
Holtzman, Benjamin and Kevin Van Meter (2012) ‘Furthering Transformative Justice, Building Healthy
Communities: An interview with Philly Stands Up’, Organsing upgrade: Engaging Left Organisers in Strategic Dialogue
http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/community-organizing/item/712-furtheringtransformative-justice
Incite! & Critical Resistance (2001) ‘Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex – Statement’
http://www.incite-national.org/page/incite-critical-resistance-statement#sthash.XjtXKO5d.dpuf
Incite! Feminists of Colour against Violence, Community Accountability Fact Sheet
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/6685_toolkitrev-cmtyacc.pdf
Incite! (2005) ‘Stop Law Enforcement Violence’, Stop Law Enforcement Violence Project
http://incite-national.org/page/stop-law-enforcement-violence
INCITE! (2010) ‘Community Accountability Within People of Color Progressive Movements’
http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/2406_cmty-acc-poc.pdf
Kelly, Esteban Lance & Jenna Peters Golden (2010) ‘Philly Stands up Portrait of Praxis: Anatomy of
Accountability’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/portrait%20of%20praxis.pdf
Kelly, Esteban and Jenna Peters-Golden (2011)Portrait of Praxis: An Anatomy of Accountability, Philly Stands
Up, social Justice, Volume 37, No.4.
Kelly, Liz in Surviving Sexual Violence (1988), Cambridge : Oxford : Polity Press ; B. Blackwell.
Kim, Mimi E (2011) ‘Moving Beyond Critique: Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of Community
92
Accountability’ Social Justice; 2011/2012; 37, 4; Alt-Press Watch (APW)pg.14
McGlynn, C. (2013) ‘Feminism, rape and the search for justice.’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 31, (4), pp 825842.
Men Stopping Violence (2005) ‘Community Accountability model of violence prevention’
http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/?s=community+accountability+model+of+violence+prevention
Miller, Susan (2011) After the Crime: The power of restorative justice dialogues between victims and violent offenders (New
York University Press, New York)
North West Network (2011) ‘Who are we’ http://nwnetwork.org/who-we-are/
Philly stands Up (2010) ‘Notes from the US Social Forum National Network Visioning Session’
http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/category/tactics-resources/
Philly Stands Up (2011) ‘Rehearsing Community Accountability’
http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/tag/perpetrator-accountability/
Philly Stands Up (2010) ‘Our work’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/ourwork.html
Philly Stands Up (2009) ‘Points of Unity’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/about_faq.html Accessed 19 March 2014
Project Nia (collaboration) (2013) Transformative Justice: A Curriculum Guide
http://niastories.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/tjcurriculum_design_small-finalrev.pdf
P’tchang (2005) Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding
http://criticalresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/peacekeeping_handbook_pt_chang.pdf
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (2014) ‘Rape: Reporting rates’
www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
Reynolds, V. (2009). ‘Collective ethics as a path to resisting burnout’ Insights: The Clinical Counsellor's Magazine &
News., December 2009, 6-7.
Reynolds, V. (2008). ‘An ethic of resistance: Frontline worker as activist’. Women Making Waves 19(1), 5
Russo, Ann & Melissa Spatz (2007) COMMUNITIES ENGAGED IN RESISTING VIOLENCE, Women and
Girls Collective Action Network, p3
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/communities_engaged.pdf
Salter, Dr Michael (2014) Managing Recidivism in high risk violent men, Issues Paper 23, Australian Domestic &
Family Violence Clearinghouse
http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/IssuesPaper_23.pdf\
Smith, Candice (2013) Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice: Definitions and Debates, Sociology
Lens, the Society Pages
http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/03/05/restorative-justice-and-transformative-justice-definitionsand-debates/
93
Trần, Ngọc Loan (2013) ‘Calling in: a Less disposable way of holding each other accountable’, Black Girl
Dangerous
http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2013/12/calling-less-disposable-way-holding-accountable/
VicHealth (2014) ‘How violence affects women’s health, http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/Programs-andProjects/Freedom-from-violence/PVAW-overview.aspx
VicHealth (2009) Preventing Violence against Women: A Framework for Action
http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/~/media/ResourceCentre/PublicationsandResources/PVAW/VAW_framewor
k_2009.ashx
Victoria Law (2009) Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, PM Press
Weiner, Merle H (1991) ‘From Dollars to Sense: A Critique of Government Funding for The Battered Women’s
Shelter Movement’, Law & Inequality: A journal of Theory and Practice, Volume IX, March 1991, number 2.
Winter, Rebecca (2014) ‘Silent No Longer: Confronting Sexual Violence in the Left’ had just been published in
Anarchist Affinity: http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/2014/03/silent-no-longer-confronting-sexual-violence-inthe-left/
Wozniak, J. F. (2008). Transformative justice: critical and peacemaking themes influenced by Richard Quinney. Lanham, Md,
Lexington Books.
Additional websites and links:
http://rapeisreal.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/my-story-2/
Historical Materialism protest letter
http://hmaustralasiaopenletter.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/hm2013/
Allied Media Conference (2014)
http://amc.alliedmedia.org/
Miniature Cities of Refuge
http://www.micahbazant.com/call-for-tiny-cities/
Picturing a World Without Prisons
http://tinyurl.com/q84gsvnNotes taken from facilitated discussion between Women’s Domestic Violence
Service Survivor Media Advocates, and Minister Mary Wooldridge (2012).
94
Appendix 1: Community Accountability and Transformative Justice Resources
Below is a list of some resources for community-based interventions to interpersonal
violence, community accountability and transformative justice. It focuses on resources for
organisers/activists developed by or used by North American and Canadian organisers/organisations
and projects encountered through the Fellowship. It also includes some articles and zines that may be
helpful to survivors of violence and people who have caused harm.215 These are intended to add to the
host of locally-developed resources.
Community Accountability and Transformative Justice
What is Transformative Justice & Community Accountability
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/?page_id=16)http://communityaccountability.wordpress.com/
Generation 5: Towards Transformative Justice
http://www.generationfive.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/G5_Toward_Transformative_JusticeDocument.pdf
The Revolution Starts At Home http://revolutionathome.tumblr.com/
Timothy Coleman, Esteban Kelly and Em Squires (2008) Philly’s Pissed and Philly stands Up Collected
Materials
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/3108714?access_key=key-233hntor7xmurvy1cd70
Anne Russo & Melissa Spatz, ‘Communities engaged in Resisting Violence’
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/communities_engaged.pdf
API Chaya: Community Accountability and Transformative Justice – panel discussion
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4akhKV0djT2owOUk/edit (audio)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4ejZFUjNZMHVOWFk/edit (transcript)
http://www.newtactics.org/conversation/creating-safe-spaces-tactics-communities-risk
Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA): Taking Risks: Implementing Grassroots Community
Accountability Strategies
http://www.transformativejustice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Taking-Risks.-CARA.pdf
Connie Burk, Northwest Network of Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse:
Distinguishing between Violence and Abuse (In the Creative Interventions Toolkit)
Bench Ansfield and Timothy Colman (Philly Stands Up): Confronting Sexual Assault: Transformative
Justice on the Ground in Philadelphia
215
Many of the resources and links are drawn from the Creative Interventions Toolkit, the Bay Area Transformative Justice
Collective resource list, and AORTA’s resources.
95
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/confronting-sexual-assault-transformative-justice-on-the-ground-inphiladelphia
Sali Distro project, ‘For a Safer World’ (a guide to local groups, online resources, zines, books and films
on trauma, survivor support, communication, mental health, community accountability, anti-sexism,
addiction, and conflict mediation
http://zinelibrary.info/safer-world
The Revolution Starts at Home (booklet) Also available as a book published by South End Press.
http://zinelibrary.info/revolution-starts-home-confronting-partner-abuse-activist-communities
Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha & Andrea smith (2011) The Revolution
Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities’ (book), South End Press.
http://www.southendpress.org/2010/items/87941
Special Issue of Social Justice, 37(4), 2012. Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to
Transform Violence
http://communityaccountability.wordpress.com/social-justice-journal-issue/
INCITE! Community Accountability Working Document
http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-working-document
INCITE! Community Accountability Within People of Color Progressive Movements
http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-within-people-color-progressivemovements
INCITE! and Critical Resistance: Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.incite-national.org/page/incite-critical-resistance-statement
Philly Stands Up/Philly's Pissed articles (about their organizing models)
http://phillyspissed.net/taxonomy/term/1
Philly Stands Up:A Stand Up Start Up [organizing zine]
http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/A%20Stand%20Up%20Start%20Up.PDF
Victoria Law, ‘Protection Without Police: North American Community Responses to Violence in the
1970s and Today’, Upping the Anti #12
http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/uta/number-12
Let's Talk: Adults Talking to Adults about Child Sexual Abuse
http://www.stopitnow.org/files/Lets_Talk.pdf
Alternatives to Police
http://www.zinelibrary.info/alternatives-police-0
Revolution in Conflict: Anti-Authoritarian Approaches to Resolving and Transforming Conflict and
Harm [audio and text versions]
http://zinelibrary.info/revolution-conflict-anti-authoritarian-approaches-resolving-and-transformingconflict-and-harm
Hollow Water [film]
96
http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=50027
The Interrupters [film]
http://interrupters.kartemquin.com/
James Ptacek (ed): Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/restorative-justice-and-violence-against-women9780195335484;jsessionid=519F0E488766083E3E26BC4D9CE067C1?cc=au&lang=en&
Toolkits
Creative Interventions (2012), Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence,
Complete pre-release version.
http://www.creative-interventions.org/tools/toolkit/
Mimi Kim (Asia & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence): The Community Engagement
Continuum: Outreach, Mobilization, Organizing and Accountability to Address Violence against Women in Asian and
Pacific Islander Communities (Toolkit for community organizing against violence in API communities)
http://www.apiidv.org/files/Community.Engagement.Continuum-Report-2005(Rev.2010).pdf
Critical Resistance (2004) Critical Resistance Abolition Organising Toolkit,
http://criticalresistance.org/resources/the-abolitionist-toolkit/
Education curriculums
Toronto Transformative Justice reading group's 10-week curriculum
http://transformativejusticetoronto.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/toronto-learning-to-actioncommunity.html
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective: A one-year, once a month Transformative Justice
curriculum
http://niastories.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/tjcurriculum_design_small-finalrev.pdf
Jane Hereth and Chez Rumpf (Community Accountability for Survivors of Sexual Violence Reading
Group): Community Accountability for Survivors of Sexual Violence Toolkit
http://carceralfeminism.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cassv-reading-group-toolkit_shifting-fromcarceral-to-tj-feminisms_final.pdf
Stories and storytelling, reflections and critique
Storytelling Organising Project (STOP)
http://www.stopviolenceeveryday.org/
http://www.bellbajao.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Bell-Bajao-Most-Significant-ChangeStories1.pdf
‘It’s down to this: stories, critiques and ideas on community and collective response to sexual violence
and accountability’ (2012) (zine), AK Press
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2012/01/26/itsdowntothis.pdf
API Chaya: Community Accountability and Transformative Justice Panel
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4ejZFUjNZMHVOWFk/edit?usp=sharing
(Transcript)
97
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DO_x5TVJG4akhKV0djT2owOUk/edit (Audio)
Young Women’s Empowerment Project: Girls Do What They Have to Do to Survive: Illuminating
Methods Used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight Back and Heal
http://ywepchicago.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/girls-do-what-they-have-to-do-to-survive-a-studyof-resilience-and-resistance.pdf
More on gender Violence and the PIC
Communities Against Rape & Abuse: Making connections: The Gender violence movement actively
resisting the Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/9261_antiprisonbrochure.pdf
Survivor Support
Support
http://phillyspissed.net/node/18
Apoyo (Spanish-language version of Support):
http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/2420/
Supporting a Survivor of Sexual Assault (10 Steps)
http://brokenbeautifuldowloads.wordpress.com/
‘Support’ zine, Cindy Crabb
www.dorisdorisdoris.com
No! The Rape Documentary [film]
http://notherapedocumentary.org/
Male Survivor
http://www.malesurvivor.org
Trans and Intersex Survivors of Domestic Violence
http://www.survivorproject.org/defbarresp.html
Accountability Processes
Kelly, Esteban Lance & Jenna Peters Golden (2010) ‘Philly Stands up Portrait of Praxis: Anatomy of
Accountability’
http://www.phillystandsup.com/PDFS/portrait%20of%20praxis.pdf
As If They Were Human: A Different Take on Perpetrator
Accountability [three Tod Augusta-Scott articles in booklet form]
http://zinelibrary.info/if-they-were-human-different-take-perpetrator-accountability
What is the opposite of accountability (section from Community Accountability Within People of
Color Progressive Movements by INCITE!)
http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-within-people-color-progressivemovements
98
Alan Jenkins (2006) ‘Shame, Realisation and Restoration: The Ethics of Restorative Practice,’ Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, Volume 27, Issue 3, pages 153–162, September 2006
For people called out for violent or abusive behaviour
Tips for Seeking a Therapist [for People Who Have Done Sexual
Harm], by Anonymous.
http://www.creative-interventions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/5.CI-Toolkit-Other-ResourcesPre-Release-Version-06.2102.pdf
Taking the First Step (zine form)
http://zinelibrary.info/taking-first-step-suggestions-people-called-out-abusive-behavior
What to do when you’ve been called out
http://zinelibrary.info/what-do-when-youve-been-called-out
For Allies and Men doing work against gender violence
Why Misogynists Make Great Informants (zine form)
http://zinelibrary.info/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-left-enablesstate-violence-radical-moveme
Philly Dudes Collective Year One (and a half)
http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/1791/
On the Road to Healing
http://dualpowerproductions.com/?page_id=18
Dealing With Our Shit: Six Years of Men's Group and Accountability Work
http://zinelibrary.info/dealing-our-shit-six-years-mens-group-and-accountability-work
Experiments in Transformative Justice by the Challenging Male Supremacy Project
http://zapagringo.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/challenging-male-supremacy-project.html
When
Calling
Me
Your
Beautiful
Sister
is
Not
Enough
http://www.coloursofresistance.org/723/when-calling-me-your-beautiful-sister-is-not-enough
Going to places that scare me: Personal reflections on challenging male supremacy
http://www.xyonline.net/content/going-places-scare-me-personal-reflections-challenging-malesupremacy
Affirmative consent
Learning Good Consent
http://phillyspissed.net/node/32
Break the Silence: How to Put Together Your Own Consent Workshop
99
(Safer sex and relationships zine, facilitators guides, curriculum, resources and sample agendas)
http://nwbreakthesilence.wordpress.com/zine-project/
Generation 5: My Body My Limits My Pleasure My Choice
http://phillyspissed.net/node/9
Abuse is Not S/M and S/M is Not Abuse
http://zinelibrary.info/abuse-not-s-m-and-s-m-not-abuse
Workshops and trainings
Break the Silence: How to Put Together Your Own Consent Workshop
(Safer sex and relationships zine, facilitators guides, curriculum, resources and sample agendas)
http://nwbreakthesilence.wordpress.com/zine-project/
R3 collective: Anti-oppression and burnout http://sandboxproject.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/agreat-workshop-on-anti-oppression-and-activist-burnout-by-r3collective/
AORTA Facilitators guides and trainings:
http://aortacollective.org/sites/default/files/ao_facilitation_resource_sheet_july_2014.pdf
http://www.aortacollective.org/ourwork/workshops
Philly Stands Up (2011) ‘Rehearsing Community Accountability’
http://phillystandsup.wordpress.com/tag/perpetrator-accountability/
Vicky Reynolds: Witnessing Our Collective Ethics (2012)
An Inquiry into Ally Work (2011)
The problem with normal: A gift from queer theory (2011)
Organisations, collectives and projects (websites
information)
Incite!
http://www.incite-national.org/
Incite! Blog: http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/
The Northwest Network
http://nwnetwork.org/
Philly Stands Up
http://www.phillystandsup.com/
Philly's Pissed
http://www.phillyspissed.net/
Creative Interventions
http://www.creative-interventions.org/
Generation 5
with further resources, articles and
100
http://www.generationfive.org/
AORTA
http://www.aortacollective.org/
Audre Lorde Project
http://alp.org/
Project Nia
http://www.project-nia.org/
Everyday Abolition
http://everydayabolition.com/
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
http://batjc.wordpress.com/
Communities Against Rape & Abuse (CARA) Seattle
http://cara-seattle.blogspot.com.au/
API Chaya
http://www.apichaya.org/
Support NY
http://supportny.org/
For Crying Out Loud
http://forcryingoutloud206.wordpress.com/
Young Women's Empowerment Project
http://ywepchicago.wordpress.com/
Community accountability, anti-oppression, intersectionality and allyship: Resources for
counsellors, agencies and the interface between community accountability and services.
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective: Community Support Network
http://batjc.wordpress.com/community-support-network/
Reynolds, V. (2014, In press). A solidarity approach: The rhizome & messy inquiry. In Simon, G. &
Chard, A. (Eds.) Systemic Inquiry: Innovations in Reflexive Practice Research. London, UK:
Everything Is Connected Books.
Reynolds, V. (2013). The problem's oppression not depression. In M. Hearn & the Purple Thistle
Centre, (Eds.), Stay Solid! : A Radical Handbook for Youth. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Reynolds, V. (2010). Doing Justice: A Witnessing Stance in Therapeutic Work Alongside Survivors of
Torture and Political Violence, in J. Raskin, S. Bridges, & R. Neimeyer (Eds.), Studies in meaning 4:
Constructivist perspectives on theory, practice, and social justice. New York: Pace University Press.
Everett, B., MacFarlane D., Reynolds, V., & Anderson, H. (2013). Canadian Journal of Counselling and
Psychotherapy, 47(1), 14-28.
101
Munro, A., Reynolds, V., & Plamondon, R. (2013). Lessons from self-organizing communities: 'We
were already a community and you put a roof over us'. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy
and Community Work, 2, 61-78.
Reynolds, V. (2013). “Leaning in” as imperfect allies in community work. Narrative and Conflict:
Explorations in theory and practice, 1(1), 53-75.
Reynolds, V. & Hammoud-Beckett, S. (2012) Bridging the worlds of therapy & activism: Intersections,
tensions & affinities. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. (4) 57-61.
Reynolds, V. & White, J. (2012). Hate Kills: A social justice response to “suicide”. Retrieved from
http://discoursesofprevention.com/post-symposium-activities/.
Reynolds, V. (2011). The role of allies in anti-violence work. Ending Violence Association of BC Newsletter.
(2) 1-4
Reynolds, V. (2010). Fluid and Imperfect Ally Positioning: Some Gifts of Queer Theory. Context.
October 2010, Association for Family and Systemic Therapy, UK, 13-17.
Reynolds, V. (2008). An ethic of resistance: Frontline worker as activist. Women Making Waves19 (1), 5.
Trauma and Recovery
The Icarus Project: Emotional Trauma First Aid Handout
http://theicarusproject.net/files/trauma_first_aid_fact_sheet08-07.pdf
Connie Burk & Laura van Dernoot: Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While
Caring for Others
http://traumastewardship.com/the-book/inside-the-book/
Ellen Bass, Survivor's Guide to Sex/Healing Sex
http://www.cleispress.com/book_page.php?book_id=218
Judith Herman Lewis, Trauma and Recovery
http://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Recovery-Aftermath-Violence-Political/dp/0465087302
Thema Bryant-Davis, Thriving in the Wake of Trauma: A Multicultural Guide
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759111714
Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment
http://www.booktopia.com.au/the-body-remembers-babette-rothschild/prod9780393703276.html
Peter A Levine, Waking the Tiger
http://www.traumahealing.com/somatic-experiencing/waking-tiger.html
Burnout and self-care
102
Reynolds, V. (2011). Resisting burnout with justice-doing. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and
Community Work. (4) 27-45.
Reynolds, V. (2009). Collective ethics as a path to resisting burnout. Insights: The Clinical Counsellor's
Magazine & News., December 2009, 6-7
103
Appendix 2: Survey
Community Accountability and responses to violence
- Survey Please find below a set of survey questions regarding your experience/s of community-based
safety, accountability and anti-violence work.
The questions are asked with a view to gathering information about community accountability
organising, safety projects and actions, transformative justice, and anti-violence work and radical
or grassroots responses to and interventions into interpersonal, intimate partner and genderbased violence and sexual assault in Australia.
What kind/s of community accountability and grassroots response/s to violence have you been
a part of? Feel free to give more than one example.
Please give any relevant details such as any specific groups/projects involved, time period,
location, approach, and the tactics, type of intervention or process you used (including whether
these were centred around responding to specific instances of violence, or whether it is/was
more focused on training, capacity building, education, structural violence or violence prevention
work)
Who, if anyone, did you collaborate or work with? Again feel free to describe more than one
example.
Was there a structure to your group or process? If so, what was it and how did it come about?
Did you access any people or organisations for support or guidance, and if so, who? Was their
assistance effective?
Did you use any particular resources, or ideas from the work of other groups and projects? If so,
what?
Were police, formal support services, lawyers or other community and legal agencies involved in
the incident or process at any point? If so, please describe their involvement, how it came about,
how it played out.
If formal services were involved, do you have any comments about the usefulness or challenges
of such involvement?
What would you say were the most effective tactics you used?
What were the most positive outcomes or successes associated with your experiences and
community safety work?
104
What would you say were the main barriers and challenges that you encountered in this work?
How did you get involved in or commence community safety stuff?
Are you still involved with any community accountability work? If so, what? If not, why?
If you were involved with a collective or group project, is that still running? If not, can you offer
any reflections on when, how and why it concluded?
What support or assistance do you think would be useful for people doing community safety and
accountability organising in Australia?
Did you or your project develop any resources or materials as part of your work? Do you have
any evaluations, reflections or written materials that could be made available to other people? If
so, what and how?
Do you have an anecdote, story or any general reflections that you think might be useful (or
therapeutic!) to share with other people, and that you are willing to include?
Use of information
Are you happy for the information that you have provided in the survey to be compiled and
incorporated into a local resource or other publications?
Is there any information that you have provided that you would like excluded from any public
documents, or anything you want me/us to know about how to manage it?
Are you happy to be contacted in future for follow up, including about community safety
network stuff, publications, resource sharing and training?
Further comments or thoughts?
105
Appendix 3: Dissemination (Blog and articles)
Creating movements for safety
We know that in Australia, between one in three and one in four women will experience violence or sexual
assault, mostly by someone known to them, including a partner, ex-partner, family member or friend. This
level of prevalence demands a response from every available angle, in order to provide the maximum
number of pathways to safety for those experiencing violence.
In Victoria, a lot of important feminist-driven work has been done on crisis response to this epidemic of
violence, yet rates of violence persist. Increasingly, and largely thanks to important leadership work by
women's services and agencies such as VicHealth, at the policy and service level, more is being done on
violence prevention and work intended to address the drivers of violence against women: Gender
inequality, sexist attitudes and rigid gender roles, and violence supporting attitudes in the community, and
to prevent violence before it occurs.
If we are to address the structures of power and inequality and systems of oppression of which genderbased violence is one product, then we need to work on creating cultures of equality and safety in our own
immediate communities – be they friendship, culture, geography or otherwise based.
106
A vital part of this is building everyday tactics for safety and accountability. This includes looking at the
very real work that communities around the world have done and continue to do to keep people safe and to
respond to violence when it occurs - sharing and building on these strategies, without relegating safety and
violence prevention solely to the realm of professionals, agencies and social services (or indeed expecting
the criminal legal system to make our communities safer).
The concepts of Community Accountability (CA) and Transformative Justice (TJ) are not new – much of
the thinking on this work and development of community-based approaches to safety that do not rely on
police or prisons has been done by communities of colour and marginalised communities around the
world.
Incite! Feminists of Colour Against Violence define Community Accountability as made up of four
interrelated strands:
1. Provide support and safety to community members who were violently targeted,
that respects their self determination
Safety is an essential foundation of this work, together with building skills to provide support while
understanding that people experiencing violence know their own situation and needs and are the experts in
their own safety. This is an important point of agreement with feminist family violence and anti-violence
services.
2. Commit to ongoing development to transform political conditions that reinforce
oppression and violence
This is the community organising work aimed at shifting cultural endorsement of violence, both
interpersonal and systemic, towards cultures of respect. Looking to where and why violence happens and
seeking to transform it – including with regards to gender-based violence, challenging patriarchal beliefs,
male supremacy and rigid gender roles.
3. Develop sustainable strategies to address community behaviours, abusive
behaviour and create a process for them to account for their actions and transform
their behaviour
That is the process of working with people who cause harm, including accountability processes and
behavioural change work.
4. Create and affirm value and practices that resist abuse and oppression and
encourage safety, support and accountability
This is where we get into the business of creating everyday practices of safety and respect – not just
responding to violence when it occurs, but actively building safety.
107
Importantly, rather than assuming that the solutions to violence lie with external agencies, or that policing
and imprisonment make our communities safer, community accountability and transformative justice work
asserts that the relationships, families and communities in which violence occurs can also the locations for
accountability and long-term change, and that those most impacted by violence can in turn be the most
motivated to challenge violence.
For Australian organisers and those interested in anti-violence work, the approaches taken by long running
community-based safety and transformative justice initiatives overseas are informative and applicable to
our local thinking, and particularly the challenges we meet along the way in newer projects. Their tactics
also enable us to grapple with interpersonal violence in an intersectional way.
Snapshots from the road...
Critical Resistance, Oakland
To do this work well requires capacity-building, critical thought and the intentional sharing of strategies
and approaches.
108
Recently I have been in the Bay Area of California working and meeting with several projects,
organisations and organisers whose work centres around building the capacity for community-based safety
work, resources to keep each other safe, and interventions into interpersonal violence outside the system.
Critical Resistance is a partner in the StoryTelling & Organising Project (STOP)- a project collecting and
sharing stories of everyday people ending violence through collective, community-based alternatives.
STOP evolved from a project of Creative Interventions, the Bay Area anti-violence project who
developed the 'Creative Interventions Toolkit: An Invitation and Practical Guide for Everyone to Stop
Violence'.
The STOP project gathered stories from people who have been involved in community-based interventions
to violence, including from people who had experienced intimate partner violence and sexual assault, from
people who had caused harm and used violence, and themselves been engaged in accountability processes,
as well as people who participated in support and safety responses for friends, family or community
members. The stories are gathered as an online resource for communities to use in their own work, and as
an evidence base of community-based tactics that can and have been used to intervene into violence and
harm.
In one story gathered by STOP, a woman tells of working towards safety with her network of friends and
family after experiencing violence from her partner, a police officer. Together with her community they
established a safety plan, with emphasis on ensuring that her children felt safe, a roster of people to be with
her in her home after her partner was asked to leave, and to assist with childcare and provide food and
support. As such, utilising the skills of her community, the immediate safety, physical, emotional and
support needs of the woman and children were able to be met while they remained within the home, with
minimal disruption.
109
The STOP stories have in turn been used by other communities and organisers in trainings, workshops and
discussion groups aimed at increasing community capacity for anti-violence work. The stories are diverse
and cross different communities and contexts, with relevance both as discussion starters for communities
in Australia, as well as demonstrating the usefulness of gathering and documenting our own local
examples of this work.
In another community, stories gathered as part of STOP were read aloud as the introduction to communitybased discussions about harm, and workshopping ideas for localised support and safety. The act of
storytelling thus became both an experiential sharing, a way to elevate discussion of these harms, and a
way to share strategies and tactics.
Critical Resistance and Incite! also articulated a 2001 statement on Gender Violence and the Prison
Industrial Complex, calling on social justice movements to develop analysis and strategies that address
both state and interpersonal violence – particularly violence against women, and emphasising the need for
holistic strategies for addressing violence that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression. See
more at the Incite! website.
Importantly, this statement is critical of using criminalisation as an overarching strategy for ending
violence, noting that the exponential increase in the number of men in prison in the USA has not resulted
in a reduction in rates of violence and assault. Indeed the statement emphasises the role of the anti-violence
movement in increasing the proliferation of prisons.
Given the heavy emphasis on the criminalisation of violence in Australia, these issues have interesting and
important applications for local anti-violence work.
While here I've also been hosted by the Anti-Oppression and Resource Training Alliance (AORTA), a
network of educators who work to expand the capacity of collective, co-operative and community-based
projects through training, facilitation and planning, grounded in an intersectional approach to liberation
and anti-oppression analysis - including providing training to combat sexism and gender violence.
I interviewed AORTA organisers for reflections on the Philly Stands Up 'Transformative Justice Action
Camp' – a three-day residential conference skill-sharing transformative justice tactics and approaches, and
delved into AORTA's training work. This includes their thinking, writing and training on approaches to
challenging violence - workshops such as 'call out/call in' culture, resisting 'divide and conquer tactics', and
“Institutionalised Patriarchy: Framing our resistance” - run with community projects and campuses
experiencing high rates of sexual assault, as well as their work delivering movement connecting
workshops, including on the intersection between prison abolition, gender-based violence and disability
justice work.
110
Participants at an AORTA workshop unpack rape culture into a visual map
The importance of work by each of these projects to create opportunities for critical dialogue and focus on
education and storytelling as a mechanism for capacity-building, towards meaningful and long lasting
community-based anti-violence work cannot be underestimated. In turn the creation of forums to document
community interventions, mechanisms to share these, and work targeted at education training and building
the capacity of communities to undertake long term anti violence work is instructive if we want to build
our own local initiatives into lasting local movements for safety.
Author’s note: Many community organisers and people involved with community accountability work in
Australia kindly shared their stories and reflections on their local work with me before I visited the USA.
Some of the lessons and challenges of this work, together with comparative US experiences and tools
(including the Creative Interventions Toolkit) will be explored in future blogs and the Churchill
Fellowship report, together with workshop forums. To stay in touch on this work or contribute comments
or a story, email laurenvcaulfield[at]gmail.com