Furthering Transformative Justice, Building Healthy Communities: An Interview With Philly Stands Up - Organizing Upgrade

An internationally
renowned collective,
Philly Stands Up is
engaging in some of
the most innovative
work around sexual and
gender-based assault,
intimate partner
violence, and sexual
consent in North
America. Utilizing a
transformative justice framework, the group supports survivors through
working primarily with those who have perpetrated assault or abuse.
Transformative justice recognizes the interrelatedness of systems of
oppression at the root of harm, how harm affects all individuals involved -
including the larger community - and that these understandings must inform
processes aiming to bring about just responses to acts of harm. Cognizant of
the potential for the perpetuation of harm caused by turning to the criminal
justice system or pushing people out of town, Philly Stands Up works directly
with the person who has caused harm through community-based systems of
accountability. In addition to coordinating local accountability processes, the
group has published several pamphlets, conducted workshops across North
America, and is actively involved in a growing network of groups utilizing
transformative justice frameworks in their communities. Responding to the
growing interest in accountability processes among radical and sister
communities, this interview draws out the collectives history, core principles,
and lessons learned through its organizing work. More information about
Philly Stands Up can be found at: www.phillystandsup.com
Furthering Transformative Justice, Building Healthy Communiti... http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/...
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This is the third in a series of interviews exploring health, care, and radical
movements. The first, an interview with the Rock Dove Collective, is available
on Organizing Upgrade and the second, is with the Rosehips Medic
Collective.

Can you briefly discuss when, how, and the reasoning behind forming
the collective?

About seven and a half years ago, there was a music festival in West
Philadelphia where there were several instances of sexual abuse. Several
different men sexually assaulted several different women. People were really
pissed. Out of this, what was called a womens group formed to support the
survivors and to get together and support each other. In tandem, a group of
men formed with the purpose of saying, This not acceptable. We also want to
support these women who are abused. And we dont want this to be
happening in our community.

But even after this festival was over and a lot of these people had left West
Philly, the groups realized that sexual assault was not uncommon in their
communities. This was really grounded in a mostly white, straight, punk
community. The womens group eventually turned into Phillys Pissed, which
is a group working to advocate for and support survivors. The mens group
eventually turned into the Philly Stands Up collective to have hard
conversations with and to deal with people who perpetrate harm.

Several months into the existence of these groups a member of Philly Stands
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Up was called out for sexual assault. These were all open meetings. Fifteen,
twenty, thirty people would show up at a meeting until someone stated to a
collective member, you were called out for abuse. And everyone was like,
Thats bullshit. Youre in Philly Stands Up. Youre not sexually assaulting
people. Thats bullshit. Thats a total lie. We have your back, man. We believe
you. A couple of people in Philly Stands Up said, Actually, the whole point of
this group is to believe survivors and to recognize that no matter how often
your politics are about this or anything else, its still possible to sexually
assault people. We actually think its not going to work for us to pretend like
this didnt happen or to ignore it. We really want to deal with this. So the
meeting ends. Its contentious. And then, the next meeting, only two people
showed up out of thirty. So there was a clear split in Philly Stands Up. The
remaining members said, This is bullshit. We are going to take this seriously
and be real about what we say were doing. And then the group rebuilt from
that.

Around that time, both groups got a little bit of a gender analysis. Phillys
Pissed became not just a womens group and it was recognizing that people
of all genders can and are sexually assaulted and that all people can support
them. Its not just men who perpetrate sexual assaults and its not just this
gender of men who can work with and hold people who perpetrate assault
accountable. It was still pretty punk and pretty white, but it began to have
different genders and queer folks. A couple of years went on and Philly
Stands Up became a closed collective with anywhere between six and nine
people in it.

Over the course of the last three years, Philly Stands Up really started
zooming out of just doing rogue service provision toward bigger political
analyses around transformative justice movements, prison abolition, and
gender and racial justice. Currently, we are a collective of six and we are all
queer, with all different genders, in terms of like life-as-gender-ness and
trans-ness. We have parents in our collective. Half of the collective is made up
of folks of color. We still kind of have a foot in the punk community door, but
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we are involved in other communities too.

Can you describe Transformative Justice and how it differs from
punitive or restorative justice? How does transformative justice inform
the work of Philly Stands Up?

To start, well say a word about punitive and restorative justice. Punitive
justice, of course, is the type of system we live under now thats law and
orderwhere actions which are breaking the law have consequences of
punishment in terms of fines and incarceration, sexual offender lists, and
these sorts of things. Its about punishing for breaking the law. Restorative
justice, hinging on the word restore, recognizes that punitive justice is
insufficient and that when harm is done it affects the entire community. It
affects bystanders, it affects family, it affects communities. So restorative
justices project is to restore a relationship to the way it was before harm was
done. It works hard to include community in that and to do that in a wide
variety of different ways. Restorative justice, as we know it, has extremely
strong and crucial roots in indigenous communities and practices.

Transformative justice wants to kind of wrap restorative justice in a hug and
then run faster with it. It recognizes that at the roots of every act of harm,
violence, or abuse are other systems of oppression: racism, classism, trans-
and homophobia, ableism, misogyny. So transformative justice has sort of a
bigger project, which is to try and address the harm thats been done, but to
do so by also addressing these sort of bigger systems of harm that are at play.
Since transformative justice believes that other types of oppression are at the
root of the harm caused, it doesnt actually want to restore things to the way
they were; it wants to transform relationships and to acknowledge and work
with whats happened with the harm and move all those relationshipsthe
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person who has caused harm, the person or people who have survived it, the
bystanders, the communityfurther along to make actual concrete changes
and shifts in their behavior and their analysis and their understanding of
relationships and privilege and community, to make big, meaningful changes
that are also addressing those roots of violence and harm.

What are Philly Stands Ups major purposes and strategies for attaining
its goals? What specific activities have the collective been engaged in to
work towards these goals?

The core thing is that were an organization that supports survivors by working
with people who perpetrate harm. Thats what a lot of people know us for. We
want to intervene and radically change the analysis and behavior of those who
perpetrate abuse, so that it doesnt happen again and so those people can
take on responsibility to recognize, curb, and challenge abusive and harmful
behavior around them.

Surrounding this intervention is our desire to offer a viable alternative to
calling the cops and our commitment to abolishing the prison industrial
complex. Inextricably linked to this is our commitment to achieving a totally
different world, one that realizes racial justice, queer liberation, the love and
empowerment of all bodies, ages, abilities, and then to end capitalism.

In additional to accountability processes we also host workshops, public and
peer education. We try and keep our feet anchored, as much as possible, in
Philadelphia, even though we know we have work and reputation that takes
us all over the place, which is exciting. It is really important to us that we do
local movement building and put the majority of our time and effort and energy
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into our community in Philly. We are supporters of the Decarcerate PA
coalition thats working to challenge the prison expansion project thats
happening in Pennsylvania and are in the process of doing some work with
The Attic Youth Center, which is the queer drop-in center in Philadelphia. Even
though we do a really different type of work, Philly Stands Up also has a
relationship with JUNTOS, which is an organization in Philly thats all about
immigration solidarity. We also have a relationship with Women Organized
Against Rape.[i]

Additionally, we are involved in transformative justice movement building in
the US and Canada. As an example, we hosted a four-day transformative
justice action camp on confronting sexual assault. It brought together
twenty-five of some of the hardest working, most amazing and intelligent folks
working with transformative justice and sexual assault all together in
Philadelphia. We had folks from Creative Interventions, Generation FIVE, The
Revolution Starts at Home, The Challenging Male Supremacy Project,
UBUNTU, Decarcerate Monroe County (Indiana), Support New York, The
Audre Lorde Safe OUTside the System Project, The Chrysalis Collective, and
many more.[ii] It was an amazing weekend in that we worked on sharing our
strategies, strengthening and challenging our own analysis around
transformative justice, and really trying to make this more of a network
because this work can be really isolating, painful and challenging. Hopefully,
within the next year, a comprehensive book will come out of all of the work
that was done at that action camp.

Currently we are also participating in a six-month long Books Through Bars
project, in which folks who are incarcerated and in solitary confinement
receive readings weve put together about transformative justice and sexual
assault. They do the readings, write ideas and reflections, and then they send
them back to Books Through Bars. Then Books Through Bars makes copies
of everything everyone had to say and includes each others responses in the
next months readings. Its not just folks who are incarcerated that are
participating but it puts primacy on those folks. Additionally, in couple months,
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were very lucky and privileged to be going to Southern California to host
workshops at the La Jolla Indian Reservation around restorative and
transformative justice practices and consent, specifically with the youth and
womans council.

Can you describe the importance of language to you work, especially
with terms such as trigger and triggering or survivor and
perpetrator, rather than the more common victim and abuser?

A trigger is when something you hear, see, or feel or experience somehow
wakes up memories, senses, and parts of your body. Usually, people use
trigger to mean something bad, like you are physically or emotionally or
sensor-ally brought back to a time where you survived abuse or experienced
harm. One thing that we really love about the Philly Survivor Support
Collective is that they talk about triggering as often being a really positive
thing.[iii] Its really common, when you survived sexual assault, to disassociate
and to check out of your body. And so, when you get triggered, sometimes
that can be a really amazing way to come back to your body and to remember
things and to dig in there. So thats what triggering means: bringing
something that flips that switch and brings you back to an experience, which
can both be positive or negative.

We think language is important: specifically the way that we distinguish
between survivor, perpetrator, and victim and abuser. Victims are people
who are no longer with us; survivors are people who have experienced harm
and assault and are still with us. So, it feels a lot more important to use the
term survivor for people who are with us.

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We think its important to recognize that people are people and are not only
the actions theyve done. Often, abuser is a sort of stamp on someone,
which doesnt get at the complexities of who they are, and can also bully and
threaten them in to feeling really shut down and defensive. We think that
perpetrator is a term that we are working to get away from ourselves
because it feels a little bit too snuggled up with abuser. But its descriptive,
right? Its someone who has perpetrated harm. But we also use the term
people who have caused harm, or someone who has caused harm, or
someone who has caused abuse. Thats why we use those words.

What is accountability and specifically what do you mean by an
accountability process?

Accountability is a kind of simple word for a lot of really complicated ideas.
But, as close as we can get, accountability is when someone who has
perpetrated harm or abuse is able to fully recognize and accept what theyve
done, regardless of its intention, and to see all of the ways that it has affected
the people who are surviving itthe community, themselves, etc. By doing so
they are able to recognize and make changes that respect their relationships,
support the survivor, and shift their own behavior.

When we say an accountability process, an accountability process can look
a lot of different ways. In general, two Philly Stands Up collective members
work with one person who has caused harmthe perpetratorfor anywhere
between six months and twenty months. And an accountability process has
several different stages, but we work to move the person and facilitate their
development to achieve accountability or setting them up to continue to
achieve accountability on their own. This includes recognizing the harm
theyve done, all of the impacts that it made and had, and concrete ways to
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really change and shift who they are and what the repercussions of what they
have done has been.

Philly Stands Up describes the work of organizing an accountability
process as having five stages. Can you describe what each is
comprised of and how each typically is carried out?

Again, there is no normal accountability process, but that being said, the first
stage is beginning the process and that kind of exists on our end. First, when
we get a situation and we see what we are working with, we need to check in
about a couple of things. We first need to see, internally, if Philly Stands Up is
able to take it on and that means: Do two collective members have the time
and capacity to do this process for the long term? Do we have the kind of
emotional capacity to do it as well as time? Is this process going to be
triggering? Is this going to be too challenging? Is it not a good fit for the
identity of the collective members who can do it? And if we can confidently
answer all of those questions, then we check to see: Do we have the skill set
to do this? Its really important to us that we work hard to challenge ourselves
and our own skills and whats possible, but also that we are extremely
responsible with what we really can do. None of us are mental health
professionals. And even though professionalism isnt important to us, there
are moments that we need to be really clear about if its something that is
appropriate for us to take on with our skill sets. Once that is done, we are,
really, authentically able to begin a process: meeting with the person, making
sure that they are up for it. They need to consensually participate. We dont
bully anyone or coerce anyone into showing up.

The second stage is life structures. Weve learned the hard way that quite
frequently when people who have caused harm come to us, they are in really
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low moments in their life. They probably have been having a hard time
connecting to their community. Maybe theyve gotten kicked out of their house
or projects theyve worked on. Maybe their friends have split. Maybe they are
struggling to find work. Maybe they have substance abuse or addiction
problems. Maybe their health isnt where it should be. And we really realize
that people cant fully commit and be present in a process if they are sick all of
the time and they dont have any support for health. If peoples mental health
is not in the place where any of the three of us can work with it or predict it, if
people are struggling to find work or to pay rent or are couch surfing, theyre
not going to go to meetings on time, grounded to prepare to talk about really
hard things. So, its really important to us that we spend some time really
assessing whats going on with this person and we try hard to try and identify
where their life is at and to support them in making some changes, to get
grounded as best they can. Thats meant that weve found people jobs, weve
hooked people up with housing. Weve spent a lot of time, often, in addition to
working with us, hooking them up with counselors, with therapists, with group
support, help them with addiction, in a non-punishing way. Were not putting
ourselves up for success if we dont support them in getting their life as in
order as can be.

The third stage we call recognizing the harm thats been done and survivor
demands. And this often is the longest and hardest. Its really important that
we go through, in moderate detail with the person who has caused harm, to
really work through and to break down stories and narratives, so that were
clear that they understand how they have done harm, regardless of whether it
was intentional or not. Its really common for someone to show up and be like,
Yeah, Im invested, or Im here to do this process, but also say I dont
actually think that I did anything that wrong. And that can take a lot of time,
telling stories and going over what happened, and situating things in new and
different ways, with maybe different language or visualizations or using our
bodies, all different types of ways that can work for a person to learn, to really
understand what they did: why that it hurt someone, why it hurt many people
maybe. And once we do that, we start working with our survivor demands. We
dont always have these, but often demands are a list of just what they sound
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like: demands that the survivor has given to us and/or the person who has
caused harm. Thats a list that indicates, to the person who caused harm,
what they need do to, in the survivors eyes, to be fully accountable.
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; dont date without disclosing that you have
perpetrated assault and that you are in an accountability process; stop
drinking; write me a letter of apology; dont say my name in public; give me my
t-shirt back. All these things are sort of common and differing types of
demands that can happen. We cant really touch the demands, to do them
justice, until the person who has caused harm really can recognize the harm
thats been done and feels concrete and solid, that, actually, they did
perpetrate violence or abuse or harm. Demands are the things that dont really
stay steady; they kind of are bred into the whole rest of the process. Often
demands have to do with life structures, like sobriety or counseling or dealing
with mental health things. Sometimes weve already actually done some of the
demands by life structures. Sometimes, its working to set up things like
payment plans.

The fourth stage is identifying patterns and behaviors, and making concrete
changes and interventions. Its uncommon that the dynamic and actions that
were a part of an instance or ongoing assaults have happened randomly.
Maybe theyve happened before. Maybe its less concrete. Maybe a patterned
behavior is actually rooted in misogyny, patriarchy, or transphobia and its less
easy to sort of name and articulate. Or maybe its something very clear like
when I drink more than eight drinks, I stop listening to people and I touch them
or something like that. Once you know what these patterns and behaviors are,
you can start making plans to intervene in them. The patterns and behaviors
are and can be are pretty varied. Usually, theyre on either sides of the
spectrum, these sort big things around gender, around class, around race, or
ability that are informing patterns and behaviors. And maybe theyre small
things like: its real that someone actually doesnt understand consent or does,
but doesnt think its that important for some reason. So we really get in there
and start identifying what those behaviors and patterns are and sort of placing
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them in narratives, and seeing where theyve shown up in the persons life
before and where they are coming from. And that often means we do readings
or, right now, were in the process of trying to create audio recordings of some
of the common readings that we do for folks who cant read or dont learn best
reading. That often means writing exercises, visioning, or journalingdifferent
types of things to sort of get at these patterns and behaviors. Maybe the
intervention is doing some really long term and deep work in unpacking things
around gender binary and misogyny and finding maybe a very good friend or
a mentor or someone who can really deeply work with youor usto start
unpacking what some of those issues are and figuring out concrete ways to
interact with peoples bodies and genders in a new and different way. So,
coming up with these sort of concrete interventions, of changing behaviors in
long-term ways and coming up with solutions, thats a very long fourth stage.

The final stage is the closing of the process. To close the process is to make
sure that all of the demands are on the path to being met. If a demand was to
write a letter of apology, it wouldnt be appropriate for the person who caused
harm to write that in stage two, because they havent really worked a lot of
stuff out. They havent really fully recognized the harm that theyve done.
Theyre carrying a lot of resentment and anger still. They dont care about the
demands. They dont understand where these things are coming from. And
one thing thats our job, as facilitators of this process, is to make sure that the
demand is met, not just as a task but also in the spirit. So we can assume that
the spirit of the survivor requesting a letter of apology is to see that the person
who abused them has come a long way, has made big shifts and changes,
and has empathy, has understanding, has self-recognition, has plans, and has
changes in mind for how theyre going to behave. So it would fulfill the task of
the demands, at the end of life structures, for the person who caused harm
to say, Dear survivor, Im sorry. I did a bad thing to you that youre so upset
about. Sincerely, me. That would fulfill the demand of writing a letter, but it
wouldnt fulfill the spirit. Our job is to really make sure and challenge and push
that the spirit of the demand is being solved. The other types of demands,
maybe weve made progress in terms of payment plans for paying someone
back or paying for medical fees or counseling or something like that. Maybe
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weve gotten tools for disclosing to current and future lovers or partners that
they have a history of sexual assault and they have more confidence or
practice. So we make sure the demands are met to the best of our ability.

Whats really important about a closing process is that accountability
processes dont ever end. This is life work that were doing. This person could
be in an accountability process with us for fifty years, but thats not
sustainable for anyone. Our hope is that at the end of this process, this person
also is really clear on what their network of support looks like, what resources
in their town or community are available to them, whether its AA or free queer
friendly counseling services. Theyve joined groups that they feel really
invested in, they have a housemate that really supports them and they can
talk to, that they have their own resources and tools for knowing how handle
their lives as they come up. And so theyre not going to be fully done, but our
hope is that they are confident about services and resources and ideas and
creative ways of engaging and thinking through harm or assault as they come
up again. Often, instead of having a last meeting, we sort of peter out. We say,
Okay, weve gone from meeting two times a week or two times a month, and
Now, we gonna meet once a month, and Now, were gonna check in, once
every three months, and Now, were gonna check in six months and see how
its going, and Now, give us a call if you ever need anything.

How do you differentiate between harm and abuse? And how does a
community, specifically the radical community in which you work,
determine what is harm and what forms of harm require accountability
processes?

Harm and abuse are on a spectrum. We all create harm, sometimes
intentionally, sometimes unintentionally and its often unavoidable. Specifically
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in radical communities weve also seen a lack of clarity around the distinction
between what types things really require demands, an accountability process,
and what types of things dont. This is slippery territory and we dont always
have exact answers for these sorts of things. There are words we can use to
distinguish between abuse and harm that might actually be unhelpful, such as
improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, or unfairly, to improperly
make gains, and what benefits one person. Often, what we find more
helpful is being prepared to ask challenging questions.

That being said, we would say that abuse, distinguished from harm, is a
singular or ongoing act of power over someone. We have all different types of
power and not all of them are bad. Utilizing power over somebody is often a
good indication of abuse and thats not always whats happening in harm. If
two people feel different ways about each other and its harmful and it hurts
someones feeling, thats not necessarily one person having a power over the
other person, although sometimes its very complicated. But power over
someone could be clear acts of intentional manipulation and control:
controlling someones behavior, controlling someones mobility, threatening
someone, isolating them from their community and friends. Were giving
examples of specifically emotional abuse because those are often the places
that get the most sticky and slippery. We think that ways, in terms of
prevention, to start really decreasing these things, are really encouraging
communication and creative ways of talking about desires and sex, and limits
and boundaries.

Accountability processes is one of many, many tools to address a specific
type of harm and violence. When people feel like thats the only tool that
exists, they sort of put every hurt that they have in that category. Actually,
whats important and beneficial is to start really flexing our muscles and really
widening our tool belts. And so, there are other things that can go towards
addressing different types of harm, such as direct communication, having
really good friends and support networks that listen to you and share with you.
Writing letters, doing art projects, going to kickboxing classes. These are little
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things that we believe are crucial tools that make a really big difference in
terms of what people feel like is available to them. Not everything is an
accountability process. One thing that we want to do is really encourage
communities to start going beyond accountability processes because when
thats all that it feels like there is, thats where everything goes.

What limitations is the collective facing in its organizing? How are you
addressing these limits? How has the collective succeeded in this
respect and what difficulties have it faced?

We have lot of limitations. Theyre mostly time and money, like everything
else. Were a volunteer collective and it has felt important to be volunteer and
to not be a non-profit. Thats so important to us, politically. But its a real
limitation. This is work that, often, is not so much answering an e-mail as it is
being prepared or available to have a two hour phone call with someone who
is in crisis or who is needing support and changing your schedule around to
accommodate other peoples schedules. So that really is a big limitation for
us.

Also, weve often produced a lot of writing and we have lot more materials we
could publish than we have time for. So the idea of writing something and
putting it out and getting funding to publish it or print it, these types of things
just take up so much work and we dont get paid to do it. We all have other
jobs. In fact, one thing that really informs the success of this work is that we all
are doing other types of political organizing.

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How does the collective address secondary trauma members mayand
likely, sometimesdo face?

The first is that when were actually working accountability processes, we
never work without a partner. So you always have a buddy and you meet
beforehand, you talk afterwards, you support each other. This is our primary
way of addressing and supporting each other. We take a lot of time to know
whats going on with people in the collective. We know a lot about the harm
were surviving or where were coming from.

We know about what limits we have. We really encourage individual care. If
someone cant make a meeting because theyre having a hard time, thats
fine. If someone in the collective wants to borrow fifty bucks because they
really need some acupuncture and a massage, thats okay. We work hard to
alwayseven though we have a lot to do, and never enough time to do it
inprioritize slowing down or taking a break, because thats how we dont
burn out. We encourage each other to try different things on, whether its
therapy or talking to our partners or these sorts of things. We have retreats, at
least once or two times a year, where we take time to be with each other, to
assess whats important and what we want to prioritize. We love a pie chart,
where we mix slices of all our time and capacity and we determine how big a
slice each of the things we do should be. And we try to really stick with that.
We also really talk through these things with each other. And we always take
time to love each other and challenge each other and remind each other to
slow down when we need it. And so, sometimes things have to fall off our
radar because of our capacities, specifically our emotional capacity.

Often people join Philly Stands Up because it sounds really good and they
really believe in it. And then they actually realize that theyre not in a place
where they can work with perpetrators of sexual assault and that they cant sit
down across the table from them and spend a couple of hours supporting
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them or talking to them. Working hard to do that when its not the right thing
for them is a major way of burning out because its really overwhelming and
scary. Its taken us a while to understand that theres a shit-ton of things to do
in Philly Stands Up. And we do a lot of other things other than accountability
processes. Once we started really fleshing out all of the different types of work
there was to do, we became much better equipped to match people with what
makes sense. The primary way is just recognizing that there are other things
to do than working with people who have perpetrated harm or even dealing
with specific instances of sexual assault in general. We write things; we give
workshops; we do fundraisers; we have administrative stuff that happens; we
make art. There are so many things that can happen and, if people have
something come up in their lives, and theyre like, You know, I actually cant
do this. They dont necessarily need to leave the collective; there are just
other ways they can do work with collective. Thats a big lesson there.

How does the collective deal with confidentiality and objectivity?

Because we do work closely within our community, a situation may come to us
where we know one of the people that may be involved or perhaps someones
housemate does. If someone is too close to the person or the process, they
are not a good fit for working with them. Every situation that we have or
person that were working with, as soon as we decide to talk about them in a
meeting, they get a code name. Thats a small thing thats had a really huge
impact on how we operate. So, for the situations that Philly Stands Up takes
on, the other members who arent the point persons have no idea of the actual
identity of the people involved. It could be the person who serves them coffee.
It could be someone that theyre in a collective with. Thats 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
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to go next, the others are a lot more able to give good advice or help make
meaningful decisions if they dont actually know who this person is. And so
confidentiality and objectivity actually really go together.

In the collectives workshops you have stated that your work takes place
within the reach of our community. How might this limit your work in
terms of who you reach? How can we utilize transformative justice to
transform neighborhoods and other communities outside of typical
activist ones?

Our work does take place within the reach of our community and it absolutely
limits our work, with great intention. We do not want to be listed in
Philadelphias Yellow Pages of what to do when sexual assault happens
because we dont have the capacity for it and its a great possibility that
someone who reaches us doesnt have the same hopes or goals in terms of
politics. We dont beat around the bush that our work and framework is highly
politicized and some survivors might be really upset and offended that were
not gonna pursue the criminal legal system. And thats real.

Also, weve found that we work best with people who can recognize parts of
themselves in us. That is something that changes the sort of state-based or
institutionalized way of intervening, where theres great distinction between
the person and the professional. So who we are reaching and who our
communities are looks really different depending on whos in their group: What
types of queer folks are in there if there are queer folks in there. What kind
of band do you play in? If youre from Philadelphia, if you are a person of
color, if youre white, if youre Jewish, all these things are really key. So it does
limit our work, but its with great intention that it limits our work.

18 of 23 10/11/12 9:29 PM
And the regionality and locality of what we do is really important to us as well.
Utilizing transformative justice to have strong geographic connections is
just as important as having strong political analyses and connections. That
means really being a part of your neighborhood or your community outside of
the Food Not Bombs meeting. Those are maybe your community members
and friends and thats totally okay. But its also really important to know your
neighbors. And its also really important to know your block captainif you
have thator your building captain. And those are things that are going to
make you really connected to your community and challenge what community
looks like. Its okay to be comfortable and to feel excited and at your best
when youre among people who are like you, in whatever way that means.
Theres nothing terrible about that. Its pretty normal. But we need to locate
our activist communities and actual geographic communities and share
ourselves, in terms of other organizations that it might be worthwhile to reach
out to and work with. And that can be people who dont have a hundred-
percent match up with what your politics are, but are really amazing and have
been doing work for a long time in your city or in your neighborhood.

How do communities interact proactively to prevent intimate and sexual
violence? And can you speak a little more about creating a culture of
consent and communication?

In addition to all of the consent workshops that happenor, hopefully, happen
there should be things about building healthy relationships, about things like
communication, limits, boundaries, and how to fuck up gracefully. But often
folks that need to hear hard things are often not in the position to hear them,
right? And so, how do we create proactive ways that are about injecting our
communities with possibility and resources? In addition to those workshops,
there are all different types of things like throw a rager of a party that is all
about preventing intimate and sexual violence, where you have an emcee
making statements, interspersed with really good music and dancing. And
19 of 23 10/11/12 9:29 PM
theres a place where people can go talk to mediators and can meet each
other. And theres sober space there, but there is also drinking and its fine.
You have appropriate safer spaces policies. So just being creative in those
sorts of ways. Its really important to make talking about intimate and sexual
violence and harm fun, for the lack of a better word. It doesnt always need to
be at a really depressing study group and it doesnt always need to exist in
and of itself. What if, at every single amazing dance party there was literature
somewhere or every hour of every party there was a two-minute blurb about
prioritizing checking in with each other and having healthy and safe
communities? This can be a part of everything that youre doing!

In some ways, creating a culture of consent is something that some
communities are really good at. For instance having awesome posters around
that say This is what consent means or This is sexy to me is part of this.
Encouraging each other and ourselves to practice really good consent with
our partners and with other people too. Sometimes you ask if you can give
someone a hug. Sometimes you just practice asking and saying no and
saying yes. Thats doing really important work toward creating a culture of
consent.

What frameworks and lessons can you provide to others looking to
create a similar project or address intimate and sexual violence in their
community?

One thing we say to this is to start with an understanding of sustainability and
clear cutoffs. Doing more than you can is the absolute best way to totally fuck
up and burn out and leave with a very bitter taste in your mouth for
accountability processes in general. Starting before moments of crisis and
starting with best practices around how you want your organization to function
20 of 23 10/11/12 9:29 PM
are important. Even small ways, like: we will never meet for more than two
and a half hours, we will always have check-ins, it is always okay to miss a
meeting, we will always do this, we will always take notes. Whatever those
things are, its really important to start by having these really healthy norms of
an organization.

A second thing is that we really are big proponents of this two-model system,
where we have two different and separate collectives: one that works just with
survivors and one that supports survivors by mostly just working with people
who perpetrate harm. And thats been crucial for our success even though the
groups have seen different formations of themselves. This just avoids a lot of
messiness, a lot of confusion, a lot of burnout and a lot of sticky places. And
so, if you have the capacity for it, its a really, really great thing to explore:
trying to have two separate groups that have a really good relationship with
each other but function as autonomous organizations.

We all have practice in transformative justice and anti-violence work; we are
all experts, we do this all the time, and this is especially true in queer
communities and communities of color. As of yet we just dont have practice in
writing it down and in naming it. For instance many of us have stories of
intervening with a high school bully or helping a friend with options in regards
to a relationship with their partner: we are always doing this work. Philly
Stands Up and related initiatives are just working to talk more about
transformative justice and anti-violence work as we build skills and
resources.

Suggested Resource List:
Chen, Dulani & Piepzna-Samarasinha (eds.), The Revolution Starts at Home:
Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities (Brooklyn: South
21 of 23 10/11/12 9:29 PM
End Press, 2011).

Generation FIVEs Towards Transformative Justice:
http://www.generationfive.org/downloads
/G5_Toward_Transformative_Justice.pdf

INCITE! Women of Colors Against Violence (eds.), Color of Violence: The
INCITE! Anthology (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006).

Creative Interventions, Toolkit: http://www.creative-interventions.org/tools
/toolkit/

Benjamin Holtzman's work has appeared in Upping the Anti, Left History,
Space and Culture, Radical Society, and the collections Constituent
Imagination and Uses of a Whirlwind. He is the editor of Sick: A Compilation
Zine on Physical Illness (Microcosm Publishing, 2009).
Kevin Van Meter is a member of the Team Colors collective and has recently
relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota to complete his doctorate in Geography.
Van Meter appears in the collection Constituent Imagination; with Team
Colors, co-edited the collection Uses of a Whirlwind; and with Team Colors,
co-authored Winds from below and other interventions (forthcoming). Van
Meters work has appeared in New York Newsday; as well as the Earth First!
Journal, Organizing Upgrade, Left Eye on Books, Radical Society,
Groundswell, Perspectives, and other radical publications.

22 of 23 10/11/12 9:29 PM
[i] Decarcerate PA: http://decarceratepa.info; The Attic Youth Center: www.atticyouthcenter.org; JUNTOS: www.vamosjuntos.org;
Women Organized Against Rape: www.woar.org.
[ii] Creative Interventions: www.creative-interventions.org; Generation FIVE: www.generationfive.org; The Revolution Starts at
Home: http://revolutionathome.tumblr.com; The Challenging Male Supremacy Project: http://zapagringo.blogspot.com/2010/06
/challenging-male-supremacy-project.html; UBUNTU: http://iambecauseweare.wordpress.com; Decarcerate Monroe County
(Indiana): http://dmccoalition.org/; Support New York: http://supportny.org; The Audre Lorde Safe OUTside the System Project:
http://alp.org/community/sos; The Chrysalis Collective; additinally see: Communities United Against Violence: http://www.cuav.org/
and Colorado Anti-Violence Program: http://www.coavp.org/.
[iii] Philly Survivor Support Collective: http://phillysurvivorsupportcollective.wordpress.com/.
Organizing Upgrade 2012 / Built by Union Labor
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