All the pieces listed here represent years of learning, practicing, and organizing around transformative justice, community accountability, abolition, and alternatives to the criminal legal system. Thank you to all the amazing people who have created them. We share them here because we are often asked for resources and we wanted to offer a comprehensive but accessible place to direct folks. Please read, share, and learn and be sure to lend proper attribution to the creators of all the content.

Readings

In addition to linking the original pieces, volunteers and organizers with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective have read and recorded of some of the readings we recommend most often and/or use in our TJ Study. We do this in order to make the important information and learnings more accessible to those who may need or prefer an audio recording.

Great introduction to transformative justice and community accountability:

Article read and recorded by Fabiola Santiago
Article read and recorded by Ashley Kelly
Article read and recorded by marcelena
Article read and recorded by Mia Mingus
Article read and recorded by marcelena
Article read and recorded by Mia Mingus
Article read and recorded by marcelena

Great introduction to abolition:

Further reading on transformative justice, accountability, and abolition (essays and articles):

Article read and recorded Ashley Kelly
Article read and recorded by Ashley Kelly
Article read and recorded by Ashley Kelly
Article read and recorded by Sara Cantor
Article read and recorded by a Catherine Pyun
Article read and recorded by Laura Mae Northrup
  • “A World Without Walls” from The Abolitionist, Issue 16, pages 5-7. (Kim, Bassichis, Hernandez, Maccani, Jashnani, Peters-Golden, Porzig)
Article read and recorded by Catherine Pyun
(“Accountability Road Map”) Article read and recorded by Laura Mae Northrup
(“Imagining Alternatives”) Article read and recorded by Laura Mae Northrup
Article read and recorded by Sean Norris (he/him)

Further reading on transformative justice and abolition (books):

Workbooks and Toolkits

Curriculum Resources

Audio

Great introduction to transformative justice, community accountability, and abolition:

Further listening:

Video

Great introduction to transformative justice and abolition:

  • Moving at the Speed of Trust: Disability Justice and Transformative Justice – recording of live conversation and pre-recorded videos featuring: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Elliot Fukui, adrienne maree brown, Mia Mingus, Stas Schmiedt, Ann Russo, Esteban Kelly, Martina Kartman, Priya Rai, and Shira Hassan, Mimi Kim, Rachel Herzing, RJ Macanni, Sonya Shah, Stas Schmiedt, Lea Roth, nuri nusrat
  • Building Accountable Communities – recording of live conversation and pre-recorded videos featuring: Kiyomi Fujikawa, Shannon Perez-Darby, and Mariame Kaba
  • Transforming Harm: Experiments in Accountability – recording of live conversation and pre-recorded videos featuring: Lea Roth, Stas Schmiedt, and Mariame Kaba
  • On the Road With Abolition: Assessing Our Steps Along the Way – a live streamed conversation between Dean Spade, Woods Ervin & Kamau Walton from Critical Resistance, K Agbebiyi from Survived and Punished NY and Mariame Kaba from Project NIA and Survived & Punished. They discuss how to use abolition as a politic, practice and framework to move toward liberation and self-determination. Recorded on June 12, 2020.

Further watching:

Art, Graphics, & Zines

Image Description: Three slides illustrates the concepts discussed during the PODS 101 Webinar. Slide 1/3: Center title reads “POD 101 Webinar.” Surrounding text illustrates how the term “POD” was used to re-organize how we understanding “community.” A graph about violence intervention portrays different moments of responding to harm: before (preventative), during low-level harm, and when it’s too late. Slide 2/3: Title reads “Pod Mapping” and illustrates the three areas of relationships from inner to outer rings: immediate pod members, moveable members, and community resources and networks. Slide 3/3: Title reads “PODS: Lessons Learned” with surrounding text boxes with eight lessons that can also be found on the BATJC Pod Mapping Workshop.