Beyond Survival

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

Afraid to call 911, but not sure what to do instead? Beyond Survival provides strategies for accountability beyond the criminal justice system.

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 Beyond Survival, 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.

Featuring writing, tools and interviews by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kai Cheng Thom, Amita Swadhin, Audrey Huntley, Amanda Aguilar Shank, Janae E Bonsu of BYP100, Philly Stands Up (Esteban Kelly, Jenna Peters-Golden, Qui Dorian, Bench Ansfield and Beth Blum), Creative Interventions, Trans Lifeline, Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, Oakland Power Projects, SOS Collective/Audre Lorde Project, Icarus Project/ Fireweed Collective, Raquel Lavina, Chris Lymbertos, RJ Maccani, Nathan Shara, Staci Haines, Georgia Latino Alliance For Human Rights, MIJENTE, Monica Sehovic Bowen Forrester, Elene Lam, Chanelle Gallant, Elisabeth Marie Long, adrienne maree brown, Adrian Cole, Yalini Dream, Shira Hassan, Mariame Kaba and Mimi Kim.

About the Editors

Ejeris Dixon is an organizer, consultant, and political strategist with twenty years of experience organizing within racial justice, LGBTQ, transformative justice, anti-violence, and economic justice movements. She is the Founding Director of Vision Change Win Consulting where she partners with organizations to build their capacity and deepen the impact of their organizing strategies. Her essay, "Building Community Safety: Practical Steps Toward Liberatory Transformation," is featured in the anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is the Lambda Award winning author of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Bodymap, Love Cake, Consensual Genocide, Care Work and co-editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. A lead artist with the disability justice collective Sins Invalid, they are a longtime cultural worker, educator and organizer within disability and transformative justice communities.