Real-World Examples
Another way of looking at safety—from harassment or other forms of harm that humans cause—is through the lens of justice. In fact, some notion of implicit or explicit justice runs through most of what we’ve talked about so far. Justice can be about what happens after harm has occurred: the reaction, the redress, the repair. It can also be about building strong, just communities in which harm is less likely. The best solutions to harassment and violence are ones that keep both in mind. This chapter will try to trace a path through various options, explaining a few different models of justice and conflict resolution—enough so you can hopefully decide what might work best in certain situations, allowing you to dive deeper into those methods when you need them. I will also share some real-world examples from people invested in safer spaces.
After the Harm: Violence and Nonviolence
Mainstream society is just starting to ask the right questions regarding what happens after harm has been caused. We worked so long to get the general public to accept the seriousness and pervasiveness of identity-based violence, but, as soon as our society started to get it, we got defensive. Instead of sitting with the pain and in the discomfort of our role in upholding a culture that silences victims and lets people who harm walk free, instead of looking to those with experience and wisdom to ask what we could do to help, we’ve done no soul searching. We impatiently want to skip several steps, hoping to jump to the end of a redemption-story arc, where victims would forgive and forget so quickly that no one would need to bother doing the actual work of redemption in the first place.
We demand that victims and their advocates tell us what to do. Or we jump to the other extreme, throwing up our hands at the seeming impossibility of undoing so much injustice, asking “Are we just supposed to put every white man in jail now?” While the answers aren’t going to come easily, giving up isn’t an option, at least not for those of us on the receiving end of oppression. There is no single response to violence in our communities. Each instance is unique and nuanced, so our approaches should be too. Victims or their loved ones might call for vengeance. Disbelievers might call for evidence, police reports, and criminal cases. People not directly affected and who don’t understand the gravity of the situation might think we can all just sit down and talk out our differences.
Luckily, the crucial work of creating methods that encourage actual resolutions (that do not involve the racist justice system) is already underway. Like most so-called radical ideas about what marginalized people need to end the violence against them, much of the research and implementation of these tactics has already been done and proven. We just need to listen and follow suit. And make sure that others listen.
Strangely, the biggest hurdle for most people is the very basic idea that no one is disposable—even people who have caused harm. It’s strange, in part, because many of the people who can’t get their heads around it are the same people who, in theory, believe that prisons should be about rehabilitation and healing and that there are serious problems with our criminal “justice” system. Maybe this isn’t so surprising though: it’s easier to feel compassion for abstractions than it is for someone who has just hurt us or someone we love.
A lot of the harm we’re talking about in this book has been inflicted by individuals who would be called “good people” by their friends and family, people who have “always been nice to me” or who volunteer on the weekends and call their mom every Sunday. They are complicated human beings, capable of doing good and bad things, just like the rest of us. They are us. Because our society has for so long treated victims with disdain, it makes sense that women’s rights activists have been figuratively shouting “Believe victims!” from the rooftops. However, it is possible to support and believe victims while also allowing an accused person the space to take responsibility for their actions, unlearn their abusive tendencies, and potentially go on to become an ally in the fight for a less violent world.
Jumping immediately to the retribution option is not always the best idea. A common mistake made by people who weren’t directly affected by the problematic or abusive behavior in question is to circumvent the victim and come up with their own definition of justice. This can be unhelpful for a host of reasons, but to me the most damaging is the fact that it diminishes a survivor’s autonomy. To publicly talk shit about the accused, for example, can very easily make the situation worse for the victim(s). It could effectively out them, putting their trauma up for public consumption and scrutiny. They might not be ready to process what they’re going through, let alone with an audience. And if they are working with close allies to get a plan together to address what has happened to them, you might tip their hand or cause them undue stress during the process. Using the Ring Theory discussed in chapter 3, it’s better to back off and ask the person one ring in from you how you can best be of help during this time.
Another reason to take a victim’s wishes into account when it comes to deciding what justice looks like is that violence begets violence. It’s almost a stereotype that any cisgender men who are friends/partners/family members of a sexual assault victim will be inclined to default to violence as a solution. Obviously, jumping someone or punching them out will contribute to the violence of the situation, but even the threat of that violence could ricochet back to the victim. It’s likely that if the accused feels threatened or is actually harmed, they will blame the victim and could take revenge on them. The entire point of the tactics laid out in this book is to help create a less violent world. We can’t do that if we solve our problems with violence, even when they are violent problems.
Bottom line: do not assume to know what is best for the victim of hate- or identity-based violence. Not only are they the ones who know best for them, but retaining some control after something harmful has been done to them is an important part of the healing process.
As mentioned in chapter 2, victims often experience secondary traumatization. Let’s help them avoid that by allowing them to deal with one trauma at a time. Your role is to support a victim through a tough time, not decide guilt or innocence—or punishment. Help them reclaim some of the power that was just stolen from them by letting them take the lead on what to do next. What you can help with is giving them some realistic choices and letting them decide.
A commonly overlooked choice can be some version of transformative justice.
We’re trained to think that the justice system is always fair and always gets it right, but that is far from true. Study after study shows that the crimes of rape and sexual assault have some of the lowest conviction rates, that people with black and brown skin, but especially Black men, are convicted of nearly all crimes at a higher rate than white men, and the news keeps showing us stories of women being assaulted while in police custody and undocumented women being assaulted in ICE detention centers. Simply the idea that there is such a thing as for-profit private prisons should be a red flag to us that the justice system isn’t interested in a less violent society at all. But a less violent society is possible. It is not unrealistic or an unattainable utopia. It takes work, but it’s worth it if it means keeping families together, normalizing tolerance, consent, and kindness, and preventing further harm. In fact, there are many groups and communities working out experiments, pushing forward, and building the framework for what this alternative form of justice could look like.
A Community-Led Confrontation
Maybe the best way to think through some of this stuff is to dive right into one of my own attempts. This all happened before I’d done much research into alternative forms of justice, so it’s a good example to learn from. I think we did a good job, even without the theory to back it up.
A few years ago, a string of spiked drinks around Baltimore put everyone in my scene on edge. They were hitting all our favorite places—the bars and clubs we felt comfortable in—and my bartender friends were understandably stressed but doing their best to stay hyper-vigilant. One night Daphne, a bartender at Bar X, complained of getting drunk really fast from one drink and told her coworkers she suspected Jake.49 Jake was a regular, and he’d been observed by staff touching women’s drinks, knocking into women, tipping drinks to encourage women to drink faster, inappropriately touching women (being a little too friendly with strangers), leering, and generally being a creep.
Even though no one could say for sure that he had drugged Daphne’s drink, he was there that night and in the context of this dangerous summer, his actions were suspect. When you added them up, all his little behaviors seemed intentionally harmful, even if, on their own and witnessed by different people at different times, the case to ban him wasn’t strong. He hadn’t been caught doing anything illegal, and management was reluctant to kick him out permanently without a trusted eyewitness account of an illegal activity.
Fed up and wanting the behavior to stop, a group of women and nonbinary folks decided to take matters into their own hands. That’s where I come in. They asked me to join them to meet up in person and discuss the specifics of Jake’s behavior and talk about options. After meeting with this small group, I wrote up a plan based on their knowledge of events and their actionable goals. They wanted to confront Jake.
The goal of the confrontation was to inform him about how others viewed his behavior, to have him hear how others were affected by it, and to encourage him to change. We also wanted to let him know that as long as he was able to change his ways, he would be allowed to continue his social interactions at Bar X. This group was confident someone else in the scene would use violence against this man if he kept engaging in harmful behavior at public bars. This was their effort to reform him. They agreed that they’d rather he stay local and change his ways, than move away in order to avoid threats to his physical safety, only to engage in the same harmful behavior against others in another town.
Looking back, I know to call this a community-led confrontation. How a victim (or a victim’s advocate) might confront someone who has harmed would be a different process with different goals. In our case, everyone involved in the process was either a suspected target, a potential future target, or a concerned community member with a stake in how it played out, due to their relationship with the bar and their responsibility toward its patrons.
Our first step was to inform the bar’s management of our plan and ensure that all staff knew to hold off on getting involved because there was a group of women and nonbinary people handling the situation. We wanted to be sure we had full autonomy and respect while pursuing a nonviolent confrontation.
Next, we prepared a written response in case the confrontation went poorly, so everyone concerned could react in real time as a united front. If things went south, we would be able to send a quick message to Bar X’s management and staff telling them to ban Jake from the bar before he had a chance to show up there. The third step was, through our safety networks, to inform bar staff around the city of Jake’s activities and the general outline of our plan. We thought this could lead to more witnesses coming forward. We reasoned that, even if Jake had never drugged anyone, his general creepy behavior had made women feel uncomfortable and it deserved to be kept track of.
I helped turn everyone’s ideas and desires into an actionable plan, and our friend Lauren was elected to do most of the talking in the confrontation itself. I would be there as a (mostly) silent support person. Lauren’s calm demeanor, lack of previous one-on-one interactions with Jake, and relationship to the bar as well as knowledge of de-escalation techniques, made Lauren the perfect choice for this role.
We messaged Jake online to say that we represented a small group of people that had a community concern that affected him. We kept it vague and simple, assuring him we just wanted to talk but that we felt it was important he hear from us. Luckily for us, he agreed to meet. Lauren and I met up early to go over our notes together, ensuring we were on the same page about content and tone. Talking through what we wanted to say really helped keep our points factual, direct, and succinct.
We had encouraged Jake to bring his own support person to the meeting, which we held in a public coffee shop. We started by making it clear that we didn’t actually know if he’d spiked anyone’s drinks, but his other behaviors were making people suspicious. We told him what those behaviors were; he was invasive of people’s space—specifically women’s space—sometimes being too touchy or handsy with them; he’d been seen touching other people’s drinks, which, even if it was accidental, didn’t come across well; on multiple occasions, people seemed suspiciously intoxicated after interacting with him; he misinterpreted women’s politeness for consent or interest; in general he was making people feel uncomfortable.
We knew just saying what he was doing wrong was not enough, that we needed to provide alternative behaviors for him to demonstrate. So we told him what we wanted him to do instead: be aware of how your actions affect others around you; stop staring at people; stop touching people’s drinks; stop touching people without asking (because women are raised to be polite even when they are uncomfortable, you must obtain explicit and enthusiastic consent before touching, grabbing, or kissing anyone); stop asking us to marry you; consider therapy; read a book about boundaries and consent. We had a card up our sleeve to play if he was overly defensive or dismissive or aggressive: if he did not stop these behaviors, he not only wouldn’t be allowed into several different establishments around the city, but we also could not guarantee his safety.
While he denied ever engaging in any of the behaviors we had listed, or at least claimed to be unaware of them, he did listen and take in what we said. It is common for someone who has been called out for harmful behavior to deny the allegations or play dumb, so we expected that. But we also knew he would know the community was watching him, and that we wouldn’t put up with that behavior from him anymore. We kept it calm, and we let him save face. Our goal was not to be right or put on a dramatic show for the table next to us. The goal was only to have him change his behavior to keep our community safe. I don’t think Jake ever became a feminist ally marching on the front lines, but he did stop bothering women at Bar X. When he would see Lauren out in public for a while, he seemed a little uncomfortable, perhaps embarrassed, which is a natural response that shows promise. No one on our side was working to actively shame him after the confrontation, and he’s been free to participate socially ever since. We’ve not had any reason to confront him again.
Restorative and Transformative Justice
Our homemade approach worked and, however small a difference we made, it still had an impact. How many women’s nights out have been made better by getting that one guy to check his behavior? When I look back at it now, on the other side of my research into harassment and sexual assault, I can see that our approach had a number of elements used by community accountability models of justice. It relied on the basic principles of transformative justice, even if that’s not what we called it.
The two main models of alternative justice practiced today are known as restorative and transformative justice. The terms are often used interchangeably because there is a lot of overlap between them, but for our purposes transformative justice takes the basics of restorative justice a little further.50 Both see crime as more than a single act that breaks a law. It is also something that harms both individuals and communities, and justice is the attempt to somehow repair that harm. Restorative justice can take place within or outside the existing criminal justice system, but prison is not its goal. It involves some form of mediation between the victim and the abuser aimed at negotiating a solution that both parties agree to. The goal is to somehow repair the harm done by getting the abuser to understand what they did, take responsibility for it, provide some form of restitution, and not do it again. It seeks to restore a previous equilibrium. Transformative justice, as I use the term, does much of the same but also understands that the former equilibrium may not have been particularly just to begin with and therefore seeks to transform both the individuals and the social context in which the harm became possible.
State-run models of justice are inherently punitive. When someone is found guilty, they “pay their debt to society” and we consider the matter resolved. This process effectively leaves out the victim’s wishes, the potential growth or rehabilitation of the person who caused harm (essentially reducing people to one or few of their actions), and it ignores the circumstances that lead to the harm in the first place—which in all likelihood are still there after “justice” has been carried out. It also assumes that whoever decides the final verdict of guilt or innocence is always right. In a criminal justice system focused so intently on winning, the definition of harm remains dangerously narrow, an either/or scenario in which broader social and community needs disappear.
So much of the harm caused in everyday life is relatively minor and persistent. How can we realistically deal with everyday harm, the kind not addressed or even taken seriously by a punitive justice system? We didn’t want Jake to go to jail for leering. But if his behavior wasn’t put in check, if he didn’t show remorse for crossing other people’s boundaries, then research shows he could easily commit more severe transgressions, resulting in much more serious harm to others or others seeking vigilante justice against him.51
When left unchecked, harmful behavior can get worse. Locking someone away doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Punishment is a short-term, superficial solution to bad behavior. In that sense, transformative justice is proactive, as it can prevent future victims. It actually addresses harm that is often overlooked by state-run punitive systems; it is responsive. When a resolution is agreed upon that does not include jail time, the root cause of the problem is still being addressed even without the usual, recognizable punishment of incarceration.
Does it really make sense to avoid society’s maladies by locking up and forgetting the people that remind you of them? Sure, the alternatives are harder to do. They require looking at someone holistically, knowing that they weren’t born bad, and understanding that they may have been victimized in various ways too. For the perpetrator, it takes work to get people in the same room, allow them both to tell their side, and work with everyone to reach a resolution that feels like justice to the people involved. It’s work to take a hard look at yourself, seek treatment or help for your issues, and replace bad habits with good ones. It is also difficult work for the victim to forgive the person who harmed them, or at least not want to lock them away forever and accept that they can become a better person.
So let’s consider how some groups have approached these difficult questions.
Community Conferencing
There is an organization in my hometown called Restorative Response Baltimore. Its members practice a type of community conferencing that is a good example of a basic form of restorative justice. They offer their service to schools, workplaces, and communities as a “process that includes everyone involved in and affected by an incident, crime, or conflict, and their respective support networks.”52 Meetings are led by an “all-partial” facilitator, and the meetings they lead provide “participants the opportunity to discuss 1) what occurred, 2) how they were affected by it, and 3) ways to repair any harm and move forward so that it does not happen again.”53 The idea is that the effects of harm are felt by the entire community and that the community itself should help come up with a way to move forward.
The ultimate goal is for people to resolve conflicts on their own, with the assistance of trained mediators who help to provide the structure in which dialogue happens and to facilitate healthy communication.
Clearly, the traditional setup of, say, a room full of neighbors discussing what happened and how it affected them does not work well when it comes to sexual assault. The violation and harm involved is a little different than a mere squabble about graffiti or even burglary. There is no scenario where forcing a victim to sit down with her attacker in front of a crowd and talk it out is going to work. Still, the abuser’s necessary work of atoning for gross sexual misconduct should be done whether or not the victim wants to be involved in that process. What that absolutely requires, victim involvement or not, is for the accused to take responsibility for what they’ve done. This is often done without cops or a goal to litigate—by design! The point is not to put people in jail but to heal the community by changing bad behavior and building trust. So owning up to actions, while your lawyer might advise against it, is the only way to get through a process like this.
Let’s look at a few approaches to transformative justice that specifically address sexual violence. While reading, think of a specific conflict known to you, whether you’re directly involved or not. How might these different methods serve your situation? What would be most appropriate? Would any get you to a resolution that works for everyone?
INCITE!
INCITE! is a group held in very high regard in conversations about transformative justice. Their work of reliably documenting alternative justice methods over the last couple decades is often referenced and, rightfully, considered an important pillar of the movement. Led by and focused on women of color to address sexual violence, INCITE! has a deep understanding of why the state and its police force do not always have a victim’s best interests in mind and why it’s worth repairing communities from within.
To say that INCITE!’s analysis starts from a holistic, macro understanding of violence is something of an understatement. They see harassment and assault of women and LGBTQIA people not only as a form of violence but also as part of an overall project of gender oppression.54 They are unambiguous about the cultural practices that keep that oppression in place and shield abusers from being held accountable. This clear-eyed view of the ugly structural forces we face is in part what leads them to suggest transformative justice as a solution: the rules of the game itself have to be changed if violence is to be stopped. Otherwise, we’re just continually treating symptoms without addressing causes.
INCITE! believes that collectively we have more options (and more power) than we do individually. That community-level perspective does not prevent them from knowing that a survivor’s safety is paramount in any accountability process. In a 2004 report, they address survivors directly. The list of their advice for survivors is worth sharing in full:
They provide similar advice for the survivor’s supporters, as well as for abusers and their supporters. The advice for the latter two, however, revolves around accepting responsibility and making amends, not making excuses, preparing their defense, or expecting anything from the survivor. And, importantly, they also (in a separate document) address the responsibilities a community has in preventing the conditions under which inequality and abuse thrive. They define “community” broadly as “a group of friends, a family, a house of worship, a workplace, an apartment complex, a neighborhood, and so on,” and they recommend that each proactively:
I think what’s important about INCITE!’s approach is that community is more than just a group of individuals; it can be a set of common values or affiliations that provide the connection necessary to hold someone accountable. Communities must be built up proactively so they have the courage to hold their members accountable when necessary. Another strength is INCITE!’s understanding that the criminal justice system is inherently flawed and does nothing to stop violence against women, especially women of color. To quote from their website, “In the end, the only thing that will stop violence against women of color is when our communities no longer tolerate it. Developing these strategies are difficult because they entail addressing the root causes of oppression—racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic exploitation—but in the end, it is only through building communities of resistance and accountability that we can hope to stop violence against women of color.”57
Communities Against Rape and Abuse
CARA was an organization in Seattle that advocated “a broad agenda for liberation and social justice while prioritizing antirape work as the center of our organizing.” They used “community organizing, critical dialogue, artistic expression, and collective action as tools to build safe, peaceful, and sustainable communities.” Although CARA no longer exists, the INCITE! website describes an instructive example of how they approached accountability, developing a model that worked for them while trying to get an organization to hold a perpetrator accountable. “First, the survivor worked with a supportive organization to develop strategies to address the situation. Then, she developed a collective of allies within the organization, including male allies. These male allies confronted the perpetrator with the demand that he resign his positions of power, leave the organization, and seek counseling. These allies then follow[ed] his progress. The idea was not so much ostracism, but for him to not be in positions of power within progressive groups.”58
Did you catch all the key elements? The plan for dealing with the situation was victim-led. She had a support group and a separate but connected group of allies in charge of confronting the person accused of harm. They had a clearly laid-out list of actionable requests, and the male allies were entrusted to hold him accountable by keeping track of his progress, presumably until he could hold himself accountable and be let back into the fold again. This way the victim never had to have contact with her abuser if she didn’t want to. While the account doesn’t give any details about what happened after this specific process, it’s unlikely that man would ever hold a position of real power in their group again, but he was not shunned or made to feel disposable.
Creative Interventions
Like most of the projects mentioned in this chapter, Creative Interventions was started in response to the lack of options given to victims and community members who wanted to end interpersonal violence. Focusing mainly on domestic violence and sexual assault, they worked with partner organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent three years developing an alternative strategy for dealing with harm. One of their main goals is to “shift the anti-violence movement away from individualized social services and criminalization towards community-based responses to violence.”59 The uniqueness of their approach can be seen in the list of questions their project seeks to answer:
From that starting point, they created their own easy-to-follow toolkit, based on actual interventions and research. It’s free and readily available online—all 608 pages. All of their experience in conducting community-based interventions is laid out, step by step, in a visually appealing PDF. If your town has no restorative or transformative justice organizations or options, I highly recommend using the Creative Interventions’ guide as a starting place to facilitate your own community-based solutions.
Chrysalis Collective
The Chrysalis Collective began in response to a specific incident of acquaintance rape within their activist circle. Taking their cues from the victim, a group of “womyn and trans folk of color” came up with a plan to hold the accused accountable for their actions, without involving the police or justice system. Throughout the process, they were mindful of the power imbalances between the victim and the “aggressor” (their preferred term for someone who has harmed), as well as the potential for everyone in their community to grow and learn from the experience.
Based on that initial incident, they wrote a very helpful guide about their process, describing their thoughts and concerns, how they planned for everyone’s safety, and their overall goals every step of the way, from when they were first told about the rape all the way to accountability meetings with the aggressor. They broke their process down to a number of clear and discrete steps that have been helpful to many groups seeking to develop their own transformative accountability processes. I’ll give a brief overview but highly recommend going to the source.61
Again, read the Chrysalis account. It’s a very helpful and clear plan to draw from. I especially appreciate the way they describe all the issues that came up during the process that they did not anticipate, like having to balance the victim’s needs for privacy with the desire to keep the community at large informed of the aggressor’s behavior, or how easy it was to forget to check in on the victim while they concentrated on the aggressor’s journey. The broadest lessons to learn from their experience would be to always center the victim, do your research, come up with a plan, follow through, and be patient and intentional.
Forgiveness Circle
We’re trying to think of new ways to conceive of justice, right? Well, let’s get extreme.
There is an interesting story about an African tribe’s approach to wrongdoing that has been circulating for years. It is all over the internet and has shown up in a number of books including Leonard Zunin’s self-help book Contact: The First Four Minutes and Alice Walker’s We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For. Here’s the version that appears in the latter:
In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered.
All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length.
This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.62
Now that you’ve read it, let me be clear: this story may not be true. Its origins are unknown, and no version I’ve seen cites a reliable source.
That doesn’t matter for our purposes. The point is: as you read it, could you imagine it? Did it seem unrealistic? Wrong? Did it make you uncomfortable? Hopeful? Well, we have to be willing to start thinking in such “extreme” ways if we want to break away from our current punitive logic. The solution, as they say, looks nothing like the problem. There are various forms of forgiveness and accountability circles being used in the real world. Maybe this idea seems like too much to you; maybe it’s not right for your situation; maybe you aren’t ready for that level of forgiveness. That’s fine. Take it just as an option to keep in mind.
And also keep this in mind: on one of the internet sites that published the story above, the widow of Leonard Zunin left an interesting comment about what she thought the story meant to him: “This wondrous process isn’t about forgiveness as much as it is about reminding the community and especially the person who has transgressed that they are beautiful and worthy. By sharing tales of their good deeds and good qualities, the transgression is seen as part of the whole of the person’s life. We will all misstep, no matter how hard we try to live a just life. So the ceremony ends with celebration and re-commitment to seeing the good in others and in ourselves.”63
Preventing Harm: The Talking Circle
In addition to responding appropriately to specific harm done, proactively building a strong community can interrupt cycles of harm as or before they happen. When #MeToo broke, I led a discussion for local men who were interested in what actions they could take to become better male allies. From that discussion, we decided to create a men’s group, essentially a talking circle, where men and people benefiting from male privilege could get together and talk about common hurdles they face when trying to implement feminist practices into their lives. A talking circle like this is great for a group of similar people (common age, gender, or recurring issues) to 1) meet on a regular basis, 2) give voice to their feelings and concerns, 3) sort through their experiences and learn how to support each other, problem-solve together, and find ways to be a positive part of their community. Meeting monthly, our male ally group will read and discuss certain articles or books, invite local nonprofits to share their perspective on pressing local issues for women and LGBTQIA folks, and practice tough conversations. By learning from each other and challenging their own biases, this group is able to be better feminists, making it easier to challenge any sexist behavior exhibited by their friends and family. After all, if you are used to meeting up and expressing yourself in healthy, constructive ways when things are good or low stress, then it will be easier to do so when things are more complicated.
Build and Sustain
Building safer spaces and maintaining them takes work. People are complex and spaces are unique. Addressing harm has no one-size-fits-all approach. I asked Melanie Keller, co-creator of the Safer Spaces Program of Baltimore and my dear friend, to write something for this book. Her reflections on the trainings we ran in the early days capture the complexities and necessity of doing this work, as well as the necessity of talking honestly about harassment. So I’m going to quote her at length:
The most important, and my favorite, part of the Hollaback! Baltimore Safer Spaces campaign was always the group discussion part of the mandatory training sessions. We first discuss what the Safer Spaces campaign is, why it’s important and what signing onto it means for everyone present. Then the group discussion begins once we open the floor to the trainees and ask about the kinds of situations or complaints that they usually encounter. Every type of space has its own issues based on its physical layout, purpose, the collective’s organizational structure, etc.; the response to harassment has to adjust accordingly. This group discussion was almost always the first time that any space had come together to talk openly and only about harassment. Considering how rampant harassment in bars really is, it is mind-boggling to think that employees in any bar in Baltimore City had full staff meetings before, but harassment was never a topic or never the purpose of the meeting.
Providing this opportunity for everyone to sit together and only talk about harassment with expert facilitators was an integral part of the campaign, and to me it was completely nonnegotiable. If you wanted to sign our pledge, the majority of your staff or members had to attend and participate in these trainings. They were always difficult to schedule, but we tried to be as flexible as possible and even did multiple training sessions for the same space to offer everyone several dates of trainings to choose from. In sticking so strongly to this requirement and believing in the transformative power of story-sharing, my hope was that this group discussion would be just the first of many for these spaces. I hoped that this would start a good habit after people recognized how necessary and useful these types of frank, difficult conversations were.
People would share stories of harassment happening in their space and discuss how frequent or rare specific instances were. They would detail how they handled things in the moment and whether they thought they could’ve done something better. Hollaback! Baltimore would facilitate a brainstorming session with the group to find alternative solutions. People would chime in with different ideas and we really worked through them to see how these solutions could likely impact the harassed, the space itself, all the people in it, and ultimately the external business or collective. This was a wonderful role-playing exercise that helped spaces work towards establishing norms for how the unique harassment incidents in their space were to be handled from then on. People also shared incidents that they felt they had responded to well and we would pick apart why it worked so well. Again, all of this was in an effort to create norms of response: when X happens, in this space we handle it by doing A usually, but sometimes B or C depending on the circumstances.
I learned so much from these group discussions about the complexities of coordinating a fun, safe, and comfortable social space. I learned new strategies from the trainees, who honestly were not all new to these ideas, and many times they knew much better than I how to handle things. It was helpful for all involved to work through tough scenarios of harassment together and address issues as a community. The group discussion and role play is where the facts and figures from the beginning of the training and the victim-based approach from the crisis response portion all come together and make sense. There were always more reluctant participants who seemed completely unimpressed by the whole campaign, but during the group discussion it was so encouraging to see these particular participants suddenly “get it” and add their own commentary once their coworker or colleague shared a story of harassment that they had never heard before.
While agreeing upon norms of response for each space when harassment occurs, it was clear that not everyone in the space had the same priorities and boundaries. A foundational part of this process was first negotiating what the space’s collective priorities would be—obviously, safety from harassment for women and LGBTQ folks. Hollaback! Baltimore would at times have to reiterate facts and figures and re-make the case for prioritizing these marginalized groups. Then, once their priorities were clear, what those priorities look like in action exactly when harassment happened had to be crystal clear and role-playing exercises became easier to work through and standard responses surfaced with little effort.
As an aside, the power dynamics within these group discussions were unsurprisingly reflective of wider societal dynamics in general. Most of the first story-sharers were women and LGBTQ folks themselves. This was the perfect opportunity for any marginalized folks in a bar, restaurant, collective, etc. to share their experiences and simultaneously have organizational support from us and (finally) recognition from their fellow colleagues or members. Most of the people who responded, asked questions, and offered suggestions were definitely men, and usually White men. As a facilitator, I was acutely aware of this and worked to counteract it during each session. I would openly remind (or simply cut off) any one person who took up too much space and time to talk, usually White men, to please sit down and let others speak. In this way, we weren’t just discussing, presenting, and theorizing healthy norms, but Hollaback! Baltimore was modeling exactly the facilitation behavior we would like to see others do in the future—watch how we handle this; you can definitely do it, too! (Melanie Keller, linguistics PhD candidate, cat mom, and former Hollaback! Baltimore co-director)
I am so grateful that you have read this book. It has been a bit of a one-sided conversation, I know, but the point really is for you to take it from here and start your own conversations in the spaces that are important to you. Like Mel says, they are invaluable.
Reading this book is as close to one of our trainings as I can give you. While nothing will beat sitting down in a group to discuss these topics and practicing the tactics with role-playing exercises (hint, hint; what are your plans later?), you can use this text as your reference point to begin building safer spaces wherever you go. So work this book—and do the work. Were there any bits that just didn’t click, that you were hesitant to listen to? Congrats! Now you know where your weak points are and can address them. Do what you can, then figure out how you can do more. Keep a steady pace and take care of yourself, though. It’s easy to burn out, but you, your ideas, and your energy are needed in the struggles ahead.
Luckily you don’t have to do this work on your own. Share this book, or at least the basic ideas inside, with others and create your community in a way that is safe, welcoming, and fun for everyone.
49 The names in this story have been changed for privacy and safety.
50 For a good overview of the various ways people understand the differences and similarities between restorative and transformative justice, see M. Kay Harris, “Transformative Justice: The Transformation of Restorative Justice,” in Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft, eds., Handbook of Restorative Justice: A Global Perspective (London: Routledge, 2006).
51 “Men who rape tend to start young, in high school or the first couple of years of college, likely crossing a line with someone they know, the research suggests…. Some of these men commit one or two sexual assaults and then stop. Others—no one can yet say what portion—maintain this behavior or even pick up the pace.” Heather Murphy, “What Experts Know about Men Who Rape,” New York Times, October 30, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/health/men-rape-sexual-
assault.html.
52 Restorative Response Baltimore, “Addressing Conflict through Community Conferencing,” Restorative Response Baltimore, https://www.restorativeresponse.org/conferencing.
53 Restorative Response Baltimore, “Restorative Practices,” Restorative Response Baltimore, https://www.restorativeresponse.org/restorative-
practices/.
54 INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, “Community Accountability within People of Color Progressive Movements: Selections from the 2004 Report,” in Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, eds., The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities (Oakland: AK Press, 2016), 281.
55 Ibid., 288.
56 Ibid., 291.
57 INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, “Community Accountability Working Document,” INCITE!, https://incite-national
.org/community-accountability-working-document.
58 Ibid.
59 “CI Goals and Objectives,” Creative Interventions, http://www.creative
-interventions.org/about/ci-goals-objectives.
60 Preface to Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence (Creative Interventions, 2018), http://www
.creative-interventions.org/tools/toolkit.
61 Chrysalis Collective, “Beautiful, Difficult, Powerful: Ending Sexual Assault Through Transformative Justice,” in Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Piepzna-Samarasinha, eds., Revolution Starts at Home.
62 Alice Walker, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness, (New York: New Press, 2006), 203.
63 Hilary Zunin, comment on “How Babemba Tribe Forgives,” KindSpring, September 26, 2007, https://www.kindspring.org/story/view.php?sid=7535.