Decompiling Oppression #30
Sam McVeety
Last February, we did a riff on Black Future Month, and I wanted to explore that theme again this year, this time in our present world (for those speculative fiction and Afrofuturism fans out there, there's plenty of stuff that came out in the last year as well). Here, I want to ground us in the specific work of Black Youth Project 100, a collective based in Chicago, and their work, including their Agenda to Build Black Futures. (Content warning: various forms of violence ahead.)
What's particularly powerful about BYP100 is that they are at the center of an organizing space and movement that has done things that were regarded as all but impossible... until they happened. In particular, through decades of activism and organizing, groups in Chicago, including BYP100 successfully called for reparations in the wake of police violence and torture. In the first municipal settlement of its kind, activists won:
A formal apology for the torture; specialized counseling services to the Burge torture survivors and their family members on the South Side; free enrollment and job training in City Colleges for survivors and family members (including grandchildren) as well as prioritized access to other City programs, including help with housing, transportation and senior care; a history lesson about the Burge torture cases taught in Chicago Public schools to 8th and 10th graders; the construction of a permanent public memorial to the survivors; and a $5.5 million Reparations Fund for Burge Torture Victims to compensate survivors for the torture they endured.
It's a huge deal. While other police violence cases have ended in legal settlements (or more often, acquittals and nothing for the victims), the reparations settlement above affects not only the immediate victims, but their families and communities, as well as the broader societal context where their story will be told. Imagine, for a moment, if we could treat all state violence this way -- by acknowledging its truth and harm and honoring the intergenerational trauma it creates.
The agreement above adheres to a principle of transformative justice, defined by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba as "build[ing] support and more safety for the person harmed, figur[ing] out how the broader context was set up for this harm to happen, and how that context can be changed so that this harm is less likely to happen again." Transformative justice is a tremendously powerful idea, but can also be beautifully simple. Faced with the victim and perpetrator, it chooses not only to focus on the victim, but on all potential future victims as well; not only on an individual perpetrator, but also the society and systems that create and amplify those perpetrators. For someone who experiences harm, it asks the question of what would be better for them -- to devote all of their energy towards punishing the person they view as responsible for that harm, or to build towards a society where that harm would never (or almost never) occur?
Transformative justice is also a practice that can be applied inwardly, and BYP100 is also a critical example of how to navigate a world where harm is still present, but in different ways. When one member said that she was sexually assaulted by another member of the group, the group employed principles of transformative justice to examine the circumstances that had led to this harm, rather than focusing exclusively on the individual exchange. In addition to individual conversations, they built an entire curriculum for their membership on how to engage in healthy practices around consent, creating the conditions that would prevent future harm.
It's important to note here that movements like this aren't promising an instant end to harm. Their membership is not perfect, and not immune from causing interpersonal harm. What is different is how harm is responded to. When we view harm as the symptom of a dangerous system, our remedies include not only individuals, but the system as well. Groups like BYP100 are beginning to live out a future of their own definition, one that isn't bound by the precepts of the harmful systems that came before.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: Think about conflicts in your life that you've resolved in a way that doesn't resort to punishment. What allowed that process to flourish?
Communal: Reflect and share about whether you've seen progress in your lifetime that you wouldn't have previously thought possible. Do you see patterns or differences across identities and generations?
Solidarity: Support BYP100 and their work on transformative leadership development, direct action organizing, advocacy, and political education using a Black queer feminist lens.
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