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We can and must find ways to reduce harm within the harm reduction community – racialized & gendered harms, including harassment, abuse, and violence, particularly of sex workers & of women. [thread]
What would our lives and relationships and work look and feel like if we committed ourselves to growing the tools & skills, support & resources to navigate conflict, harm, and accountability better?
A different question I keep coming back to – what’s been holding us back, keeping us stuck, from confronting these challenges, and why have we instead tolerated the cumulative toll and damage wrought by the status quo?
Some of the work to be done is individual, and some is relational, but for true transformation, we need to be looking at the structural and cultural dimensions -- the work of actually becoming the community we aspire to be.
A few resources and ideas I'm turning to:
I’m revisiting the concept of pod mapping developed by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, articulated in a worksheet by Mia Mingus https://batjc.wordpress.com/pods-and-pod-mapping-worksheet/
The pod concept moves beyond the abstraction of "community" and is about who you can turn to "for support around violent, harmful and abusive experiences, whether as survivors, bystanders or people who have harmed."
I also rewatched this dialogue from last October between Mariame Kaba, Stas Schmiedt, and Lea Roth on Transforming Harm: Experiments in Accountability, which feels even more vital and valuable http://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/transforming-harm-experiments-in-accountability/
And I found a lot of clarity and hope in Shannon Perez-Darby’s essay The Secret Joy of Accountability: Self-Accountability as a Building Block for Change from The Revolution Starts at Home on DV/IPV in activist communities https://www.akpress.org/revolutionstartsathome.html
Women of color in restorative & transformative justice, anti-violence, and abolition movements have developed amazing theory and practice around the issues we’re struggling with. As a harm reductionist, I’m ready to engage w/ that work more deeply & intentionally. [end]
