Transitional justice has become the principle lens used by countries emerging from conflict and authoritarian rule to address the legacies of violence and serious human rights abuses. However, as transitional justice practice becomes more institutionalized with support from NGOs and funding from Western donors, questions have been raised about the long-term effectiveness of transitional justice mechanisms. Core elements of the paradigm have been subjected to sustained critique, yet there is much less commentary that goes beyond critique to set out, in a comprehensive fashion, what an alternative approach might look like. This volume discusses one such alternative, transformative justice, and positions this quest in the wider context of ongoing fall-out from the 2008 global economic and political crisis, as well as the failure of social justice advocates to respond with imagination and ambition. Drawing on diverse perspectives, contributors illustrate the wide-ranging purchase of transformative justice at both conceptual and empirical levels.

"Can justice be healing? Can crime victims find a new peace through transformative processes that include victims, offenders and community in creative solutions that enable all to grow? We can "turn irritation into iridescence," find ways to take the hard blows of life, and use the very power of our pain to grow from the experience, and create new hope beyond crime or other trauma. Forgiveness is an untapped force in our revenge-oriented culture. These stories show that forgiveness is not condoning or forgetting, or failing to set limits. Forgiveness is recognizing and acknowledging all that was wrong, but refusing to be destroyed by it, and refusing to be drawn into a cycle of hatred and bitterness. We can change our criminal justice system to include transformative methods. We can change our world to one with greater social and economic justice. For readers who yearn for realistic hope in these troubled times, this is a must read." --

Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at the grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. Community-based approaches to preventing crime and repairing its damage have existed for centuries. However, in the putative atmosphere of contemporary criminal justice systems, they are often marginalized and operate under the radar. Beyond Survival puts these strategies front and center as real alternatives to today’s failed models of confinement and “correction.” In this collection, a diverse group of authors focuses on concrete and practical forms of redress and accountability, assessing existing practices and marking paths forward. They use a variety of forms—from toolkits to personal essays—to delve deeply into the “how to” of transformative justice, providing alternatives to calling the police, ways to support people having mental health crises, stories of community-based murder investigations, and much more. At the same time, they document the history of this radical movement, creating space for long-time organizers to reflect on victories, struggles, mistakes, and transformations.

New York Times Bestseller “Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.” What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”

Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It’s time to think this through. “Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous “Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to take down more powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, cancel culture is seen by some as having gone “too far.” Adrienne maree brown, a respected cultural voice and a professional mediator, reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible ways beyond the impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes from even from its targets. Brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn’t, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in a way that reflects our values?

This book engages the limits of transitional justice and, more speci

In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.

Transitional justice mechanisms employed in post-conflict and post-authoritarian contexts have largely focused upon individual violations of a narrow set of civil and political rights, as well as the provision of legal and quasi-legal remedies, such as truth commissions, amnesties and prosecutions. In contrast, this book highlights the significance of structural violence in producing and reproducing rights violations. The book further argues that, in order to remedy structural violations of human rights, there is a need to utilise a different toolkit from that typically employed in transitional justice contexts. The book sets out and applies a definition of transformative justice as expanding upon, and providing an alternative to, transitional justice. Focusing on a comparative study of social movements, nongovernmental organisations and trade unions working on land and housing rights in South Africa, and their network relationships, the book argues that networks of this kind make an important contribution to processes advancing transformative justice.

Despite the current survivor-affirming awareness around sexual violence, child sexual abuse, most notably when it’s a family member or friend, is still a very taboo topic. There are approximately 42 million child sexual abuse survivors in the U.S. and millions of bystanders who look the other way as the abuse occurs and cover for the harm-doers with no accountability. Documentary filmmaker and survivor of child sexual abuse and adult rape, Aishah Shahidah Simmons invites diasporic Black people to join her in transformative storytelling that envisions a world that ends child sexual abuse without relying on the criminal justice system. Love WITH Accountability features compelling writings by child sexual abuse survivors, advocates, and Simmons’s mother, who underscores the detrimental impact of parents/caregivers not believing their children when they disclose their sexual abuse. This collection explores disrupting the inhumane epidemic of child sexual abuse, humanely.

When conflicts become ingrained in communities, people lose hope. Dialogue is necessary but never sufficient, and often actions prove inadequate to produce substantial change. Even worse, chosen actions create more conflict because people have different lived experiences, priorities, and approaches to transformation. So what’s the story? In The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing, David Anderson Hooker offers a hopeful, accessible approach to dialogue that: Integrates several practice approaches including restorative justice, peacebuilding, and arts Creates welcoming, non-divisive spaces for dialogue Names and maps complex conflicts, such as racial tensions, religious divisions, environmental issues, and community development as it narrates simple stories Builds relationships and foundations for trust needed to support long-term community transformation projects And results in the crafting of hopeful, future-oriented visions of community that can transform relationships, resource allocation, and structures in service of communities’ preferred narratives. The Little Book Transformative Community Conferencing will prove valuable and timely to mediators, restorative justice practitioners, community organizers, as well as leaders of peacebuilding and change efforts. It presents an important, stand-alone process, an excellent addition to the study and practice of strategic peacebuilding, restorative justice, conflict transformation, trauma healing, and community organizing. This book recognizes the complexity of conflict, choosing long-term solutions over inadequate quick fixes. The Transformative Community Conferencing model emerges from the author’s thirty years of practice in contexts as diverse as South Sudan; Mississippi; Greensboro, North Carolina; Oakland, California; and Nassau, Bahamas.