Hearing, Mapping, and Contextualizing: How South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, and South West Asian (SAMSSWA) Hate Violence Survivors Perceive Healing and Justice

Why a new approach to addressing hate violence?

Since our for­ma­tion in 2001, SAALT has his­tor­i­cal­ly approached our work around end­ing hate vio­lence as a pol­i­cy- and doc­u­men­ta­tion-dri­ven insti­tu­tion, mean­ing that our efforts have been focused on col­lect­ing data on hate vio­lence impact­ing our com­mu­ni­ty and advo­cat­ing for fed­er­al hate crime leg­is­la­tion to rec­og­nize and pros­e­cute per­pe­tra­tors of indi­vid­ual inci­dents. After two decades we face the real­i­ty that hate vio­lence against com­mu­ni­ties of col­or has not decreased. And, that is because the root caus­es of this vio­lence are tied to the very poli­cies of the gov­ern­ment from which we kept seek­ing recourse. As a result, we find it urgent and imper­a­tive to engage in a more direct, sur­vivor-cen­tered way that is not just short-term reform, but heal­ing and trans­for­ma­tive over the long-term. 

We are liv­ing in a water­shed moment, with great poten­tial for both hope and harm. Hate vio­lence has surged in America—from police bru­tal­i­ty against Black Amer­i­cans to the attacks tar­get­ing East Asian Amer­i­cans and those racial­ized as East Asian. Fight­ing hate vio­lence is vital—now more than ever—and the South Asian com­mu­ni­ty must build coali­tions with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties of color. 

Our new approach to hate vio­lence, launched in 2022, is to enable the par­tic­i­pa­tion and lead­er­ship of hate vio­lence sur­vivors by think­ing out­side con­ven­tion­al par­a­digms of heal­ing and jus­tice, often tied to pol­i­cy and law enforce­ment. Instead, we will offer trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice (TJ) as a modal­i­ty of heal­ing. We must be com­mit­ted to hon­or­ing and uplift­ing the inter­re­lat­ed prax­es of abo­li­tion and trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice in Black and Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties as well as the lead­er­ship of BIPOC folks, many of whom iden­ti­fy as LGBTQI+, in shap­ing abo­li­tion and trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice over the cen­turies, includ­ing those at Project NIA, INCITE!, Bay Area Trans­for­ma­tive Jus­tice Col­lec­tive, Gen­er­a­tionFIVE, Cre­ative Inter­ven­tions, Inter­rupt­ing Crim­i­nal­iza­tion, and Sur­vived & Punished. 

Such prax­es and lead­er­ship arise from America’s very found­ing being premised upon—and defined by—hate vio­lence. The cre­ation and per­pet­u­a­tion of Amer­i­can sys­tems and insti­tu­tions were pred­i­cat­ed both on the dis­place­ment and geno­cide of Indige­nous peo­ple and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Such sys­temic vio­lence root­ed in hatred thus formed the basis and roots of carcer­al ide­ol­o­gy, with racist xeno­pho­bia serv­ing as the pri­ma­ry sen­ti­ment. Trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice, with roots in end­ing child sex­u­al abuse, asks, as Mia Min­gus writes: “What kinds of com­mu­ni­ty infra­struc­ture can we cre­ate to sup­port more safe­ty, trans­paren­cy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, care and con­nec­tion?” and “What do sur­vivors need?” We aspire to dis­cuss trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice with sur­vivors and then go to the next lev­el by active­ly visu­al­iz­ing a TJ-led com­mu­ni­ty, with the vir­tu­al hang­outs over food, work­shops, inter­views, and an in-per­son heal­ing ses­sion serv­ing as safe and pow­er­ful alter­na­tive out­lets of heal­ing, expres­sion, and needs.

Methodology

We will select 15 sur­vivors affect­ed by inter­per­son­al and struc­tur­al hate crimes—including but not lim­it­ed to ones dri­ven by racism, Islam­o­pho­bia, casteism, col­orism, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, immi­gra­tion sta­tus, phys­i­cal and men­tal abil­i­ty, and a his­to­ry of carcerality—both at the hands of unknown attack­ers (e.g., gen­dered Islam­o­pho­bia, harass­ment and vio­lence in pub­lic spaces, van­dal­ism and prop­er­ty destruc­tion, and dox­ing and oth­er forms of dig­i­tal vio­lence) and at the hands of known attack­ers (e.g., gen­der-based and domes­tic vio­lence, child abuse, and insti­tu­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion in work­places, health and edu­ca­tion settings).

We are orga­niz­ing dis­cus­sions with our Nation­al Coali­tion of South Asian Orga­ni­za­tions (NCSO) part­ners and oth­er South Asian orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als who direct­ly work with sur­vivors and learn­ing from their work, ask­ing them to col­lab­o­rate on the project as work­shop facil­i­ta­tors, and iden­ti­fy­ing sur­vivors in their net­works who would be eager and inspired to par­take in this project. By con­nect­ing and engag­ing in a rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship with these orga­ni­za­tions, we hope to build with and uni­fy the NCSO and our larg­er community—another one of our project goals, as exhib­it­ed by the work­shop facil­i­ta­tors we will invite. 

Timeline

This project will have six mov­ing parts from Sep­tem­ber 2022 to August/September/October 2023 in the fol­low­ing order: 

• (1) an ini­tial pre-inter­view between the Heal­ing & Jus­tice Researcher and the sur­vivors, 1:1, on form­ing rela­tion­ships, likes and dis­likes, etc., to estab­lish a rela­tion­ship filled with trust, mutu­al dig­ni­ty, reci­procity, agency, and familiarity
• (2) an online demo­graph­ic ques­tion­naire that will allow our researcher to cre­ate small groups dur­ing the in-per­son heal­ing ses­sion based on answer and iden­ti­ty align­ment and to dis­ag­gre­gate the data
• (3) six vir­tu­al hang­outs for the 15 sur­vivors to bond over food, to pre­emp­tive­ly set up the sur­vivor net­work that will sus­tain this project. The last vir­tu­al hang­out in August/September/October 2023 will serve as a reflec­tion ses­sion on the project and its process. 
• (4) back-and-forth between 13 work­shops and (5) 10 1:1 semi-struc­tured inter­views with our researcher. These work­shops, which will also help build coali­tions by includ­ing speak­ers from with­in and beyond the NCSO (e.g., Sikh Coali­tion, Jen­ny Bhatt, Sur­vived & Pun­ished), will pro­vide the back­ground infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to devel­op­ing sur­vivors’ informed per­spec­tives on hate crime leg­is­la­tion, restora­tive and trans­for­ma­tive jus­tice, police reform, etc. 
  • Two of these workshops—one, on what is heal­ing and two, on what is justice—will be survivor-led. 
  • Detailed, safe, and inno­v­a­tive inter­views will help iden­ti­fy per­spec­tives on the police, hate crime leg­is­la­tion, and alter­na­tives to the police such as trans­for­ma­tive and heal­ing jus­tice. They will explore access to heal­ing path­ways, such as pos­i­tive and mal­adap­tive cop­ing skills, com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, men­tal and phys­i­cal health ser­vices. Sur­vivors will offer their per­spec­tives on jus­tice, such as police involve­ment in their cas­es, access to resti­tu­tion struc­tures such as restora­tive jus­tice cir­cles and vic­tim-com­pen­sa­tion funds, and def­i­n­i­tions of fair­ness, safe­ty, and account­abil­i­ty. They will express their thoughts and needs on relat­ed issues such as gun con­trol, edu­ca­tion­al reform, food jus­tice, and eco­nom­ic security. 
  • Our Heal­ing and Jus­tice Researcher wrote the sur­vey and inter­view ques­tion­naires and con­sult­ed 50 schol­ars, orga­ni­za­tions, and heal­ing prac­ti­tion­ers (e.g., Restora­tive Jus­tice for Oak­land Youth, South Asian Sex­u­al and Men­tal Health Alliance, and Puni Kalra, founder of the Sikh Heal­ing Col­lec­tive fol­low­ing the Oak Creek shoot­ing) both inside and beyond the NCSO in the process for feed­back. An excerpt of the ques­tion­naires can be found here.
• (6) We will hold an in-per­son week­end ses­sion in July 2023 to max­i­mize heal­ing. Sur­vivors will spend the first day engag­ing in activ­i­ties offered by our Somat­ics Con­sul­tant; cre­ate some­thing of their choice (e.g., a meal, song, dance, gar­den, cloth­ing); and close the day with activ­i­ties offered by our Heal­ing Jus­tice Con­sul­tant. The sec­ond day, sur­vivors will engage in activ­i­ties offered by our Somat­ics Con­sul­tant and a sto­ry­telling cir­cle facil­i­tat­ed by our Restora­tive Jus­tice Facil­i­ta­tor as well as map out a future world (What does it con­sist of? What makes it safe, fair, and just?) with the help of our Trans­for­ma­tive Jus­tice Facilitator.

Why now? 

We will har­ness the pow­er of speak­ing and lis­ten­ing. Greater infor­ma­tion, freer par­tic­i­pa­tion and informed analy­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to anti-Black racism in the US, will help us devel­op a shared lan­guage for change togeth­er with our NCSO and beyond. We will present our find­ings from the sur­veys and inter­views, and make rec­om­men­da­tions for com­mu­ni­ty-based advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions, men­tal health and legal pro­fes­sion­als, TJ prac­ti­tion­ers, and gov­ern­ment offi­cials through a pub­lic, inter­ac­tive web­site with mul­ti­ple purposes—a toolk­it, mem­oir, report, doc­u­ment, and historiography. 

We will also be offer­ing the fol­low­ing ser­vices and com­pen­sa­tions: (1) an infor­ma­tion and informed con­sent form empha­siz­ing con­sent (i.e., vol­un­tary and selec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion), con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, anonymi­ty, and full veto pow­er over writ­ten con­tent; (2) $2,500 com­pen­sa­tion to each sur­vivor as an expres­sion of our grat­i­tude for their time, com­mit­ment, and fullest selves; (3) indi­vid­ual and group coach­ing ses­sions with a Licensed Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gist; (4) local­ized resource sheets (e.g., con­tacts to faith-based lead­ers); (5) somat­ic and heal­ing jus­tice activ­i­ties; (6) trans­la­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion sup­port; (7) a reflec­tion cir­cle and sur­vey on the process at the last vir­tu­al hang­out; and (8) a sur­vivor-led net­work out­liv­ing and out­last­ing the project. 

This project has numer­ous impli­ca­tions. Fol­low­ing the schol­ar­ly inter­est in and debate over the effi­ca­cy of Brazil and India’s all-women police sta­tions in address­ing gen­der-based vio­lence and lis­ten­ing to sur­vivors, our insights might well be extrap­o­lat­ed to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tems of oth­er nations and inspire glob­al models. 

Hate vio­lence takes too many lives every day. We rec­og­nize the urgency of a response, and this project, with its demo­c­ra­t­ic ways of sto­ry­telling cen­tered on a just tran­si­tion, or “a vision-led, uni­fy­ing and place-based set of prin­ci­ples, process­es, and prac­tices that build eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er to shift from an extrac­tive econ­o­my to a regen­er­a­tive economy”—is our contribution. 

This project will con­tribute to the trans­for­ma­tion of jus­tice for indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties. It will expand the notion of jus­tice from sim­ply one sur­vivor going to the gov­ern­ment for help, to one where an entire soci­ety is deeply aware of struc­tur­al vio­lence and injus­tice, and open to form­ing new and more equi­table method­olo­gies and institutions. 

This mul­ti­lay­ered project will involve a rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship with par­tic­i­pants, in which we will uncov­er our deep­est, truest selves. We will share our stories—the way in which we are sto­ried, unsto­ried and resto­ried. We will dream of rad­i­cal­ly new worlds. And through this indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive work, we will devel­op a roadmap for rad­i­cal heal­ing and justice.

Ways to get involved

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