Talk: “Cripping TJ: Survivors as Organizers, Vicarious Trauma and Disability Justice in Transformative Justice” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

• Event Date: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
• Time: 4:00 pm (CST)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Part of the Center for Advance Study Initiative on Abolition

Disability is everywhere in the world, including in transformative justice. How does it show up in our work to create alternatives to police and prison to create safety, healing and justice by and for survivors of violence? In this lively talk with lots of swearing, disability and transformative justice movement worker and writer/editor Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha will examine just what happens when we "crip" TJ- what does it mean when so many transformative justice movement workers are themselves survivors with lots of anxiety and PTSD, how to create anti-ableist accountability strategies as disabled survivors and people who have caused harm, how to look at abuse through a disability justice lens, and what it means to move slow, vulnerable and strong in doing TJ work.

Abolition is an exciting new initiative examining the radical, yet realizable, possibilities of abolition in its many forms. Abolition is not solely defined by the negative process of dismantling destructive structures and systems, but primarily seeks to build the type of society we want to live in, one that does not require disposing of entire sectors of our social world, but creates the conditions where all can survive and thrive. It is about redirecting the massive resources spent on systems of oppression toward positive investments like education, public health, and restorative justice. The goal of this new initiative is to examine the multiple, convergent forms of power in the at times intersectional areas of prisons, police, immigrant justice, gendered and sexual violence, environmental justice, disability justice, and more, in order to propose an abolitionist democratic present and future.

This Center for Advanced Study event is cosponsored by the Department of Asian American Studies, Department of Gender & Women's Studies, Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES), Education Justice Project, and the Student Cultural Programming Fee.