Transformative Justice

Angela Davis taught us that abolition needs feminism. Learn about bringing our histories to abolition as a vision and practice, as well as healing after harm and community-based processes for care and accountability in our communities and movements. This open event is part of the Building an Asian American Feminist Movement Network Gathering for the 2020 Allied Media Conference. We see Asian American feminism as both a political and identity home. Like a home, it requires care for both the space and also the people who live within. By bringing together our lived experiences, memories, and collective histories, we aim to confront the multi-dimensional ways we encounter systems of power and structures of harm in order to create pathways towards liberation and justice. Come dream, create, and build with us towards moving and acting in solidarity within and across our communities. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled femme writer, organizer, performance artist and educator of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. The author of many books including Tonguebreaker, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Bodymap , and Consensual Genocide; with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, she co-edited The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities; she co-edited Beyond Survival: Stories and Strategies from the Transformative Justice Movement with Ejeris Dixon. Leila Raven is a queer mama, prison abolitionist, community organizer, and New York City native. From 2015 to 2018, she served as Executive Director of DC-based grassroots organization Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) where she worked to develop comprehensive, community-based strategies to address racialized, gendered harassment. She also worked to build educational programs like the Safe Bar Collective to equip bar and restaurant workers with strategies for intervening to stop harassment and prevent violence in nightlife. Leila was an organizer with DecrimNow DC to end the criminalization of sex work in the nation's capital, and she now organizes with Decrim NY to decriminalize, destigmatize, and decarcerate sex work in New York City and State. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Slate, and more. This event is coordinated by 18 Million Rising and the Asian American Feminist Collective. Co-sponsored by Equality Labs and the South Asian Power Building Network Gathering.