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In these edited highlights from an episode of their 鈥淗ow to Survive the End of the World鈥� podcast, hosts adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown talk to Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, veteran activists and editors of Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (AK Press, 2020). The book is a go-to manual for transformative justice, or 鈥淭J,鈥� a movement that aims to create an entire ecosystem of community alternatives to calling the police. 

Autumn: How do y鈥檃ll define transformative justice? And what do you believe to be the conditions that actually make transformative justice possible? 

Ejeris: I think of transformative justice as a framework that includes strategies on how we prevent and intervene and hold people accountable and heal from violence and harm. And also how we transform the social context and conditions that fuel and feed a culture of violence. And how we do all of those things without relying on state systems鈥攑olice, prisons. 

Leah: I don鈥檛 think that transformative justice always has to mean that the perpetrator transforms in a deep way. For years going back, we would talk about this idea that there鈥檚 no place to throw people away. If someone is violent or abusive or rapes, we want to have as part of the work a deep transformation with that person: 鈥淲hat made you do that? And how do you change so that doesn鈥檛 happen again?鈥� 

That鈥檚 incredibly important. However, I鈥檓 coming from more of a harm reduction place where I often describe TJ as 鈥渁nything that creates more safety, justice, or healing for people who have survived violence, abuse, or harm that doesn鈥檛 rely on the cops or courts.鈥� It could be that the perpetrator transforms, or it could just be that the survivor got out alive. 

Emphasizing transforming perpetrators鈥攖hat鈥檚 not wrong, but sometimes people feel like, 鈥淏ut they didn鈥檛. So I guess we failed.鈥� But the survivors are alive, the survivor got out of the relationship. The survivor was able to set up structures where they were able to live and work and be free and heal. And those are wins. 

I鈥檓 a long-term survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And for most of my life, I鈥檝e sat with the fact that my abuse perpetrators are probably never going to say they鈥檙e sorry or admit what they did. I鈥檝e wondered, 鈥淒oes that mean I failed?鈥� A really good friend of mine said, 鈥淭hink about it this way. Your life is your justice. Look at the life you created for yourself. That鈥檚 justice. And it doesn鈥檛 depend on them ever admitting what they did or not.鈥�

I helped reclaim my life and my community through non-state solutions, through my friends. I think self-defense is TJ. If you have ever told somebody hassling someone at the bus stop, 鈥淗ey, can you shut up?鈥� that鈥檚 TJ, you know? 

Building community safety strategies and squads proactively is transformative justice. Creating resources for mental health disability, for emotional crisis, that don鈥檛 rely on calling 911 is transformative justice. It鈥檚 a really big ecosystem. It鈥檚 not just: You take out the cops and replace them with something that fits in the same spot, but it鈥檚 a different color. It鈥檚 a completely different worldview. 

Think about it this way: Your life is your justice. Look at the life you created for yourself.鈥�

Ejeris: We know that there are so many conditions that create a more violent society. And for every person who caused harm, there are people in their lives who looked away. So I think it鈥檚 also about the role of community and what are all of these other roles? 

I have a history of doing this work with stranger-based violence, which is complex. Because you鈥檙e like, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the relationship?鈥� But there鈥檚 so much of the work that鈥檚 actually building relationships between people and building relationships between communities because people change and we change conditions in connection. What makes TJ more possible is also practice, right? We practice this work, we practice learning, we practice deepening. We learn from our mistakes. 

It鈥檚 pretty impossible to commit to TJ without also committing to the relationship-building work and the small and big parts of practicing transformation. 

I got asked to apply for a job at the Audre Lorde Project where they had a really long history of doing work around police violence. There鈥檇 been a series of attacks on queer and trans people of color, mostly Black and Latinx folks, in central Brooklyn. There weren鈥檛 a lot of models for stranger-based work, and that鈥檚 often what鈥檚 happening in many forms of homophobic and transphobic violence. 

Through that process of literally being on my street and recruiting friends and loved ones, and outreach in the club at 3 a.m., I started to understand myself as a survivor and understand a broader sense of the work, and through building conversations and strategies with other folks in community around how we were going to keep each other safe. What do we do if we鈥檙e running from violence? What do we do if someone鈥檚 been attacked and we want to support them? How do we get each other home safely? 

…

Leah: I was in a relationship that became abusive physically, with somebody who was a movement comrade, who was my lover, who had already done time, was a working-class, queer kid of color, and who was my immigration sponsor. So I was just like, 鈥淲ell, I can鈥檛 call the cops on you because you鈥檒l be arrested and I鈥檒l be deported. So I guess I鈥檓 going to figure something else out.鈥� So many people have a version of that coming into TJ. Everyone I know who co-created TJ got into it because we were survivors. 

I鈥檝e heard Ejeris say, 鈥淚 was a queer Black kid trying to get home alive.鈥� And yeah, I was a queer Brown femme trying to stay alive. That鈥檚 where it came from. 

Sometimes you hear people saying, 鈥漈his has never been done before. There are no models.鈥� One thing that [Ejeris and I] were adamant about was, 鈥淣o, we鈥檝e been doing this!鈥� You can go back to 2005 to Safe OUTside the System, which Ejeris was co-leading in New York, to all the many different people who鈥檝e already done this work, role models to learn from and study and emulate. There are more TJ success stories than we think. 

I want many people to write many, many different TJ how-to-do-it books with examples, or zines or podcasts or whatever. I want some things to come out that are both documenting what we鈥檝e already done and documenting the works-in-progress that are going to be happening in this moment of abolition. 

adrienne: Transformative justice really is about community. So thank you so much for everything that you鈥檙e offering us and our movements right now. And for leading with a bad-ass, no-holds-barred way of dealing with it directly. We鈥檙e really grateful to be in the same time as y鈥檃ll.