What does transformative justice look like in practice? What does it mean to teach transformative justice, so that we destroy the cops in our heads and hearts, and begin to build something new?

In this episode, Mia Mingus -- visionary movement builder, transformative justice organizer, and human rights + disability justice educator -- dives into these questions and more. We discuss the educational experiences that inspired Mia to her current work, Transformative Justice (TJ) frameworks for community accountability and creative intervention, pedagogies of workshopping, and Pod Mapping as a tool for organizing and movement building.

More about our guest:

Mia Mingus is a co-founder of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective: Building Transformative Justice Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (BATJC) and the founder and leader of SOIL: A Transformative Justice Project.

Mia inspires us to consider words like dignity, love, compassion, care, and justice in ways that address harm and violence and also bring concrete repair and change. For Mia, the opening question of transformative justice is: “What are the conditions that allowed for that violence or that harm to be able to take place in the first place?” The focus is on dismantling oppressive systems and building new, liberatory structures. This justice work is done in intersectional and interdependent community. 

“Magnificence comes out of our struggle,” she writes. We think that Mia and the worlds she is building are magnificent, and we encourage you to check out her many published writings, many of which are collected on her blog Leaving Evidence.

Credits:

Co-hosted and co-produced by Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Audio editor: Aliyah Harris

Intro music by Lance Hogan, performed by Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Outro music by Akrasis

Welcome to Nothing Never Happens, the Radical Pedagogy Podcast.

Our podcast guest today is a scholar, writer, blogger, activist,

movement builder, workshop leader, transformative justice and human

rights and disability justice educator.

Mia Inguez is a co-founder of the Bay Area transformative justice,

collective building, transformative justice, responses to child sexual

abuse, and the founder and leader of Soil, a transformative justice project.

Mia is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Creating Change Award from

the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a 40 under 40 award from the advocate.

An A P i, women's Champion of Change, a Ford Foundation Disability Futures

Fellow, and a Robert Cole's Call of Service Award from Harvard University.

Mia is about dreaming accountability as a title of one of her

leaving Evidence blogs relates.

The beginning question of transformative justice is what are the conditions that

allowed for that violence or that harm to be able to take place in the first place?

The focus is on oppressive systems and building new liberatory structures.

This justice work is done in intersectional and

interdependent community.

In Mia's words, magnificence comes out of struggle.

We talk with Mia about many aspects of social justice education, including

the educational experiences that inspired her to do justice work.

Her use of a transformative justice framework for community accountability

and creative intervention, her pedagogy of work shopping, and her use of pod mapping

for organizing and movement building.

MIA inspires us to consider words like dignity, love, compassion,

care, and justice, and ways that address harm and violence, and also

bring concrete repair and change.

We are thrilled to have Mia Mingus on our podcast.

Welcome to Nothing never Happens.

Mia, thank you so much for being here.

We're just gonna dive right in.

And we would love to hear from you and I know our listeners would too, about how

you got into the work that you do and some of the influences that have shaped your

approach to pedagogy and to justice work.

Hi.

Thanks for having me.

This is so wonderful to be here.

And, as an Agnes Scott alum, it's just really great, especially the way that I

got into doing this work it's so funny.

Like I, so I was born in Korea.

I was adopted to St.

Croix in the US Virgin Islands when I was six months old.

And the family that I was adopted in.

So I was adopted into a white family living on the island of St.

Croix which at that time and still is predominantly a black

Caribbean island in particular.

And occupied and colonized by the United States who are a territory.

So we, which just means we don't have as many rights as Puerto Rico,

which means we have zero rights.

Like we don't even get to vote in the presidential elections.

But.

The family that I was adopted into, my mother was part of founding

the Women's Coalition of St.

Croix along with 10, nine other women, excuse me.

So 10 total.

And so I was raised in this very activist environment and I was

raised around the women's coalition growing and it's still kicking and

it's like now a huge organization.

And I was raised in that, those like early days.

And so I.

I really got to see women organizing for themselves when no one else would.

And it was a multiracial group of women as well.

And so I feel really lucky that I got to be raised around, especially,

powerful women across the board, but then also especially a lot

of powerful women of color.

And a very early influence.

Obviously all of the, the tight-knit feminist community that I was

brought up in many of those folks.

But also, like Audrey Lorde was one of the founding members of the

Women's Coalition and her partner Gloria Joseph, who just passed

passed away just a couple years back.

And she, Audrey was a huge influence to me, and I was lucky enough to get to meet

her and Gloria, since au Audrey's passing, before then as well, but would come to

our house and spend holidays with us.

And I feel like that kind of r very rural atmosphere and though all of

those pieces were part of my early influence and I think also being from

a, and being raised in a very rural place, like there's influences of

people, but then also I think just the natural world because you're just

part of and connected to and in the natural world in ways that in cities

you just are not, and so trees and the hills and the ocean and the rainforest.

And so I feel like a lot of that was de were definitely influences, but

I think especially this feeling of we can just create what we need with

what we have and we can just do it.

And the early days of the coalition I remember were, they were very

shoestring, just patching the $2 you had and stretching them as far

as they would, making something outta nothing kind of days and like

getting to witness the growth of it.

Just, I don't know, spoke to me in this way of just We can create anything.

And it just it's just a matter of like commitment, time, effort.

Like we can do it.

And I spent my childhood going to take back the night marches

and making purple ribbons for domestic violence awareness month.

And I would say that was a huge piece.

And then I, so it'd set me on a trajectory to do social justice work, but then

there were many things along the way, obviously that got me into this specific

kinds of social justice work I do.

Yeah.

You've had a lot of experience with different groups.

With Kara's books and more, shout out to our feminist bookstore that's now

across the street from Agna Scott and spark Reproductive Justice Now and

the national human rights education.

Group that sadly is no more.

But, so out of all that, you had a lot of experience with just so many

systemic issues as well as, specific women's lives being affected by this.

And you were out doing trainings and workshops using that

human rights framework and one eventually transformative justice.

So I'm cramming everything in here at once, but I attended a workshop of yours

that you did at Agnes Scott many years ago on reproductive justice, and I was

cleaning out some notes the other day, and I found the notes from that workshop.

It was such a good workshop.

And that prompts me to ask the question with these frameworks

that you have and these, this, multi issues of commitment, how.

What's your pedagogy of workshopping?

How do you enter into, getting a group of strangers usually that you don't

know their needs and wants, but to get them on, to begin to listen and do

some deep listening on these issues.

That's a really huge question.

But I appreciate it.

It's so interesting.

I, so one, I think just being somebody who is from multiple oppressed identities

and having to live that every day, like having to engage with people who

maybe I share zero identities with, or maybe just one, or maybe just two,

and engaging with them in a way that.

That they're either open to hearing about the other pieces or in a

way where their guard drops and they're not as threatened by it.

I feel like has prepared me a lot to be able to do teaching in that way.

And I feel really lucky that I get to teach, by the way, like it's hard work,

but it's also really just Yeah, very, it feels very like, nourishing to me.

I think a lot of it is just instinctual things that I don't even, that almost feel

like air I don't even realize necessarily.

So I think a lot of it is like the tenor and tone that the facilitator or

the educator brings to the class or the training or the workshop or what have you.

And you set help to set the tone because so I definitely I'm silly or I joke around

as a way to just get people to cut, to loosen their shoulders up, so to speak.

Metaphor and literally and metaphorically.

But also, all of the things that I teach about.

So I'm thinking about transformative justice in particular but also disability

justice, reproductive justice, when he used to do a lot of RJ work.

All of them are frameworks that everybody can re, in my mind, at least everybody

can and should be able to relate to because everybody is connected to.

Even if you're not disabled, for example, you still interact with ableism.

And whether you, whether that means you benefit off of it, whether you

leverage it for your benefit or other people's benefit --every single

person, whether they're disabled or not, knows somebody who's disabled.

I think I always enter in through that door of just there's already

a connection here and how do we help, how do I help to unearth that?

But also I feel like a huge part of the way that I think about teaching

is that oftentimes we already have these things inside of us.

It's just more about giving permission to people to, to try new things or to

experiment, for example, or tap into their creativity to, especially with

transformative justice, for example, where an abolition work where it's

like the notion of, for example, like safety or accountability or healing.

These are universal concepts that everybody has had some type

of interaction with and exists in some ways in people's lives.

Whether that's, the lack of accountability, or watch witnessing

accountability that's not, that's actually more about punishment, not necessarily

about being generative and proactive.

So I also feel like there's a sense of.

In my mind, teaching, a lot of the teaching I do is really just about

welcoming people into this and inviting them to join these conversations

and to join this work and letting them know that there is a space,

there's space for everybody here, and obviously, you have to be respectful.

You need to there, there's conditions around that in terms of

like how you are part of the work.

And that is different in terms of different people's location

and different people's identities and experiences, for example.

And both.

And I really truly believe that if we're gonna get to a, the world that we all

long for and want, it's gonna take.

All of us, it's gonna take all of us.

And it's not just gonna be the cool kids.

It's not just gonna be your friends.

It's not just gonna be the people that you like.

It's gonna have to include as many people as we can.

And so I really believe in like reaching outside of the kind of like social

justice bubble and reaching into like our families, our intimate networks.

Like a lot of us, for example, who are social, who are activists or

who are engaged in social justice work in whatever way that looks.

A lot of us don't necessarily have those same kind of conversations with

like our parents or our neighbors or, and so I think that is where

a lot of the work needs to happen.

And I, so I'm always like in that mindset.

I don't know if that answers your question.

I hope it does.

That's really thoughtful, and makes me wanna follow

up to ask if you have concrete examples for how you work through particular

issues or particular group dynamics.

I'll tell you one that and that I am particularly cognizant of in my own

organizing and teaching practices right now is about the ways that

systemic oppression and hierarchies and interpersonal violence can reproduce

its itself within collectives and groups that are fighting to dismantle those

same systems outside of themselves.

Miram Kaba and her writing sometimes talks about this as, the systems it

exist inside of us and outside of us.

And when our organizers who are working towards abolition being

cops to one another when are people making each other disposable while

working to stop harm in other ways?

One thing that I observe within myself within collaborators and students and

teaching contexts is how the profound vulnerabilities of living in a world

that is structured in so many kinds of violence spill over into places that

are trying to be about transformation.

As a mode of self-defense and protection and putting up guardrails that keep

folks from entering into relationships that can produce transformation.

And so that's a rambly way of introducing the question, but I'm curious to hear you

reflect on that, and especially if you have some concrete examples of how you've

worked through that, whether in your own life or with groups you've been in process

with that many of our listeners could also learn from and think with you about.

Yeah, no, thank you.

That's that particular phenomenon or dynamic happens all the time

and I think, in some ways it's yes, it is a dynamic and a phenomenon.

In other ways though, it's just what it means to be human in this inhumane world.

Like of course, the conditions that we're operating in are going to arise

and come up inside of our work, inside of our relationships, inside of ourselves,

because, We, I say this all the time, our social justice movements and ourselves

as well, we don't exist in a vacuum.

Our work doesn't exist in a vacuum.

It exists in the same conditions that have shaped this very

violent and oppressive world.

So I think on the one hand, for us to naively act as if

that would not, we wouldn't be affected by those things, right?

Because here's the thing.

Oftentimes when something happens, so on the one hand many people in social justice

communities, we can dissect everything down to like oblivion and analyze it.

And we know we're like, these are the problems.

This is what's wrong.

This is terrible.

This is what privilege is, this kind of oppression is happening, whatever.

And then on the other hand, we expect people to act as if that is not the

world that they were shaped and molded in and that they were born into.

And we, and then so when somebody exhibits anything resembling those

systems or conditions, we like fly off the handle around it.

We're like, how dare you?

Oh my gosh, you're a terrible person.

You're toxic, you're pre press it, whatever.

And.

I feel like there's like a cognitive dissonance that happens where we

don't seem to understand that.

Like we're super smart on the one hand to be able to analyze

and identify these things.

And then on the other hand, it's as if we've just have totally

forgotten all of those things.

And so to me, I feel like part of what we are trying to do is, or at least in

my mind is to understand that, and this is what I think where transformative

justice comes in often, right?

Like where abolition the framework of abolition comes in terms of just

saying we all will make mistakes.

We are all molded in these oppressive and violent conditions, and we have

to figure out a way to deal with.

Harm, mistakes hurt, problematic behavior, whatever term you wanna use.

We have to figure out a way to deal with that generatively in a way that's

not destructive and in a way that can actually help to deepen and grow

relationship and grow love, and healing and accountability, all of these things.

And so when I like engage, or what am I saying when I meet these kind of things

in, or I'm face-to-face with them in like work that I'm doing oftentimes.

In TJ, a core concept is, that we're connecting incidences of

harm with the conditions that created them and perpetuate them.

And w and we are saying in transformative justice that incidences of harm

or violence cannot be separated.

From the conditions that created them and allowed for them to

happen in the first place, and then continue to perpetuate them and,

continue to deepen them, et cetera.

So in doing that, oftentimes when something happens, when these kind of

dynamics come up, I look to the conditions like, what are the conditions that we're

in and how do we not just go toe to toe with whatever the thing that happened

was, whether it's, very common things like people who are working to end domestic

violence, for example, inside of their organization there is abuse happening

and like abuse of power, for example.

The, there's so many examples of it, but that's just one, right?

Instead of looking at the one particular harm, we say what

are the other conditions?

The organization that I started is named SOIL, and I named that it's named SOIL:

a transformative justice project, and I named it SOIL because we have to stop

planting plants in toxic or barren soil and expect them to grow and thrive,

and we have to look at what our soil is, what our conditions are, and work

to shift our conditions, rather than just screaming and yelling at the plant

and saying why didn't you grow better?

What happened?

Or expecting a giant harvest instead of understanding that.

This plant is probably gonna plant, gonna produce maybe one or two

peppers this season, but we're gonna save those seeds, plant them again.

Next time it might produce 10 or 15.

And then we're gonna save those seeds.

And the whole w while we're gonna be building up our soil, if you ask any

gardener or farmer worth their salt, they tell you have to build up your soil.

Sometimes they do that for a year or years before they even plant anything.

And obviously plants are part of build, can be part of building up the soil too.

But, so I'm, I say all that to say that when I talk about these conditions, the

other part of the dynamic that you're talking about is trauma and that we are

living in a time of incredible amounts of trauma, both individual and collectively

and generational trauma as well.

That, and most of us don't have access to the ki healing practices or practitioners.

We don't have access to healing that is comprehensive or that is attuned

to, and what am I trying to say?

That is a about our, that is grounded in our particular

cultural histories and lineages.

And so that is a huge part of it as well.

So I guess what I would say is, one, we look to the conditions and we look at

what are the conditions surrounding this and how have they helped to create this?

And I say that to say it's not about letting anybody off the hook for

their own individual behavior, but it is about saying how, because to me

this is about how do we end violence and harm, not just how do we respond

to this one particular incident.

And of course, because if you just are about responding to one

particular incident, yeah, you could scream at somebody all day long.

But if yelling and screaming at somebody created accountability and a

shift and a change in that behavior, we would all be totally accountable.

And we would be in a very different, we would live in a very different world.

But the other part of that is to also then say, Okay, then how can we respond to this

in a way that meets the immediate needs of what happened, whether that's immediate

accountability or what have you but that also changes and shifts the conditions?

And how do we not get thrown off by it?

How do we be like, expect it and be like this makes sense.

It makes sense that somebody raised in a white supremacist country or world would

exhibit white supremacist behaviors.

We're not accepting the that or to, we're not gonna tolerate that, but we are gonna

understand it because we can't respond.

If we don't understand, we can't respond well to harm if we don't understand it.

And that's a little bit, that was a long and rambly.

No that's amazing.

Yes.

You're talking about accountability and, engaging the groups that you teach and.

Getting toward working to understand the conditions and to name 'em and

to name their own social locations in that individually, systemically,

generation, general racially as you said.

How do you concretely to go further with Lucia's previous question, engage

people in the examination of this to of harm and violence as you're

working toward the concept of repair and getting to the heart of these

things so that there can be healing.

Yeah, the beginning of engaging with folks, at least

what I, the way that I do it is I always start with yourself.

And so we always begin with, because the thing about accountability and

repair is that we always, most, 99.9% of the time people are like,

that person needs to be accountable.

We're always looking outside of ourselves, right?

Whether it's to another person, to a system, whatever.

But one, so the way that I always begin is to start looking at ourselves.

And we all have places that we can grow around our own accountability.

And it's because we all cause harm and or have the capacity to cause great harm.

And we all have hurt people we, we love or care about.

We all have made mistakes.

We all have acted not in alignment with our values.

And we all have done things that we are ashamed about or that we are not proud of.

So I think beginning with ourselves is a very powerful way to do that.

And for example, I have this intro transformative justice intensive that

I do that's really just an extended introduction, a transformative justice.

Who knows?

Maybe one day I'll do it at Agnes Scott.

I don't know.

And one of the things we do in that training is we, it's we have multiple,

many sessions in that training.

And so over the course of the training I say pick one thing that you wanna

be accountable to yourself about, not to anybody else, but just to yourself.

Maybe it's, you wanna.

Make more time for your art.

Maybe it's that you wanna drink more water in the day.

I know that's something that I every day struggle with.

Maybe, one person I remember in one workshop was like, or one of the

trainings was like, I, my thing is that I wanna try to eat one green

thing a day at least because I really struggle with eating green things.

And they're like, I don't care if it's one P, but that's what I'm gonna choose.

And then you are buddied up with somebody else who is also doing the same thing.

And so in that, you're learning through that very benign little

activity on accountability that runs throughout the entire course.

You are learning about your own accountability.

You're learning about what you do and what you don't do because you have to

not only be buddied up with them, but you have to be accountable to them and

check in with them and say, Did you do your 10 minutes of meditation today?

Did you go on a walk today?

Whatever it is that you're doing.

And it's so fascinating because I think when we talk about accountability

you, even when things are small, we are, reactions are still very big.

So if somebody, if you didn't do your, if I didn't, if I didn't get my, if I

didn't go to sleep at whatever, 10 o'clock that night, if that was my thing, right?

Instead of staying up till one in the morning watching Netflix and

binging shows, I, what I find in these trainings is that people exhibit the

same kind of behaviors as if they didn't do something much bigger, right?

Like they, they don't, they hide away or they just stop texting or

co communicating with the other person, or they feel so much shame

or they don't wanna talk about it or.

And it's a way for you to learn about what you do, right?

And what your particular behaviors or things come up around accountability.

But then it's also on the other side, a way for you to learn about when somebody

is accountable to you, what do you do?

So if it's me and you Tina, right?

And I didn't do my thing, for example, then that's also on you to think through,

oh, Mia has stopped communicating with me.

She doesn't respond when I call her, or email whatever The mode of

communication we've decided is right?

Like when I text her, she doesn't respond anymore.

What's going on?

And then it's also for you to learn and start to experiment.

One, to confront the stuff that comes up for you around that, right?

It might be like a conflict of avoidance stuff, but it might be

fear around I don't wanna, I don't wanna reach out to her again.

Maybe she'll be mad at me, whatever.

Or it might be getting mad at me.

Or might be this kind of over a harsh teacher vibe that comes up.

But then also then you get to think through what are the ways that I might be

able to assist Mia in, in, in just coming to the table again so that we can talk

about what happened, not even, and then of course helping me to do what I need to do.

But, so that's just like one very concrete example of beginning to

engage people in this, because before we can even get to talking about

repair, we have to get some of these basics down around accountability.

And we have to get some of these basics down around what your specific

pieces around accountability are.

Because they're different for everybody.

Some people run and hide, other people rush to address the problem, but

it's about fixing it and getting it to go away because they can't handle

how uncomfortable it feels, right?

And et cetera, et cetera.

There's a thousand different manifestations of it.

Yeah, that's really helpful.

Thanks.

I love that.

Especially because I think about, okay what if you stayed up, past 10 last

night and were binging Love Island.

Yeah.

And and then we're hiding and didn't wanna talk about it.

But then if you came to me and finally we're at the table, it pains me

to imagine that I would be like, Mia what the hell were you doing?

Love Island is trash.

And imagine myself berating you or being like, how dare you?

You're a bad activist, you're a bad feminist.

I think that that's so much easier to do if I imagine myself as not

in relationship with you, if like I've transferred the, I if I'm like

saying, oh, I'm an abolitionist.

But what that really means is that I'm actually just gonna

be a vigilant a casual cop.

This exercise is so useful because asks people to imagine how would I respond to

someone who , hadn't been accountable?

And what does that mean Accountability is and how do we manifest accountability in

our relationships and what is helpful?

Yes.

And because one of the things we know is that accountability

only happens in relationships.

It's also, I feel like a piece of that is also about how do I build

relationship just, period, with this person who maybe I'm not as close to.

And then hopefully some of that transfers out into your real life with people who

you are friends with or who you are in loving and caring relationships with,

where you know, of course then, You have that relationship, which might help it.

It's so interesting what you're saying though, because some people, when they do

this exercise, they do it like perfectly because it's about being a good student.

It's about getting that, it's about that feeling of superiority, right?

Like maybe we're paired up together and I'm like doing everything right.

I'm doing my meditation every single day, or my yoga or whatever it is, right?

And you are not doing it, and it's a way for me to feel superior to you.

And so also in talking and the check-ins that happen between the

buddies, it's also talking about what is motivating you, right?

Like why, how are you doing that?

Because a part of this is not only just to do it, but it's also to reflect on if you

are doing it what has been allowing that?

Sorry?

What makes that possible?

What allows for you to be able to practice it and to also examine that

in so cuz there's like the not doing it and then you talk about why you

didn't do it and what are the things.

But then there's also, when you do it, Huh, isn't that interesting?

And why is it that I can do it for this exercise, but I can't do

it on my own in my everyday life?

It's like that thing of where you like, you'll super clean your

house if somebody's coming over and you have a guest, but you don't.

And it's so wonderful.

Like for, one day after and then it just goes back and like, why

don't we do that for ourselves?

I'm sure, maybe some people listening are like, I have a

perfect clean house all the time.

That's wonderful for you.

I don't think most of us are like that.

No.

And I think about the moment of sharing.

Is the person who has a wonderful clean house, we're like, I

can help you clean your house?

What's going on there in the sharing that you're able to do something

and I'll just help you along.

Like in what ways does paternalism show up in these moments of accountability?

Or not?

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

It's a fascinating experiment.

Even just to imagine how it plays out, I think I'm doing a

class, this class is called ORGANIZE!

Solidarity in Theory and Practice.

And one of the parts is everybody is in a small group that's

consistent across the semester.

Groups interact with each other outside of my presence as the instructor.

So they have their own dynamic.

I give a little bit of a framework for rotating chairs, rotating timekeeper,

and a number of their groups have decided they're gonna hold each other

accountable for different practices, like going to community meetings or

doing the reading, doing the assignments.

That is not something that I asked them to do, but the language of accountability

is so pervasive, but it helps me imagine like, how could we use the sort of

mainstreaming of accountability as as a term that's happened that's circulating in

social justice circles, but also certainly is not exclusive to them and is often

like quite carceral in it's manifestation.

Yeah.

And how can we like lean into that?

So I'm grateful for this moment of reflection.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting with the, with that activity, I

don't check in on them at all.

It's a, because it's, for you, it's not about did you do the assignment?

It's, and if you don't do it some pairs they fall off and they don't do it.

And that's, that and it's not even there's zero judgment.

Like it's really up to you.

Or maybe it's not the time in your life where you're able to practice

that's totally fine, but it's here's an opportunity to do this.

And, because.

TJ is self motiv.

It, you have to be self motivated to do it.

It's not, accountability should be proactive.

It's not something where, we don't wanna, we wanna move away from

like holding people accountable.

We want instead support people to take accountability.

Those two things are so different because holding people accountable,

oftentimes, as you're referring to, replicates a lot of the punitive

culture and caral culture we're in.

Yeah.

And this seems so important to lay the groundwork for dealing with these really

massive systemic issues that you do in terms of abolitionism disability justice

prison we talked about prison abolition child sex abuse, really heavy stuff.

And you've created interaction and hopefully some community building

that people can get to know each other in sometimes difficult ways.

But and then be able to have some fuel or something, I don't know what

the right word is, as they as they approach these more overwhelming issues.

Yeah, definitely.

Is there a bridge from that to, okay, we're gonna talk

about reproductive justice, or.

Prison reform or

...? To me that is the bridge because listen,

each other, how are we gonna demand accountability from like another entity

or another large group of people?

If we don't even know what accountability is between each other,

how will we know what it actually is?

Because again, like I said, we, or maybe I didn't say this here, but we

throw the word accountability around all the time, but I don't think that

most of us know what that means.

And I don't think that most of us know what it looks like, because listen,

questions about accountability are inevitably questions about justice.

Questions about justice are inevitably questions about accountability.

So what we are trying to do let's start small and build our muscles

up small because you don't go to the gym and just start bench

pressing 500 pounds immediately.

Like you gotta build up to that.

You don't sit down at a piano and just play a, a beautiful classical music piece.

You start with the basics.

So let's start small and figure out what does justice look like between each other?

Meaning what does accountability look like between each other so

that we can actually be able to fight these systems of oppression.

And the other side of that, Tina, is not only so that we're able to know what we're

asking for and demanding, have a better vision of how we want accountability and

justice to look like, but also, and this is the kicker, a lot of our movements and

initiatives and campaigns to fight against these systemic forms of oppression.

Fall apart because of internal conflict, because of, because we

don't know how to practice generative conflict because we don't know how to

practice and take accountability for ourselves, for and with each other.

And what we don't know how to do repair and how to do healing.

And healing, I should say, individually and collectively.

Especially collectively.

And so when those things fall apart organizations fall apart, for example,

or campaigns or coalition work, and oftentimes you can trace it back.

So very small things that were never handled well, or large things

that were never handled well.

And again, if we can't handle the small things between us, how will we be able

to handle the big things between us and handling the small things can help

prevent the big things from happening.

So to me, they're all bound up together because, work around accountability,

transformative justice work like it is, it cuts across every, there's no

demographic community group of people to, that are meeting together as an

organization, as a class at, whatever.

As a family.

There's no place where there's not harm or hurt happening or conflict happening

or full-blown violence and abuse.

And so to me these are like, Not even just about like systemic

oppression conversations or whatever, this is just about general life.

Like why aren't children taught how to give a genuine apology in schools that

is more than just like this kind of, just say you're sorry and then it's done.

Like, why aren't we taught these things?

Why aren't kids in school learning about repair, learning about accountability,

obviously in age appropriate ways, but like this should be a part of

everything we do at Agnes Scott, at every college campus, at every conference,

there should be a track or course dedicated to these types of things.

It should be unthinkable that people can reach adulthood without learning about

and practicing some of these skills.

I,

I am looking at, I'm looking at the our time and

we've already been talking for so long and we could talk forever.

I am curious, so I think one of the themes that, oh wait,

can I just add one more thing?

I'm so sorry.

Of course.

Course.

No, go for it.

I just wanna add one more thing to what I saying.

Sorry.

It's just that because I also feel like in learning these individual

skills, For, let's just take white supremacy for example.

Let's just take racism and white privilege.

If we learn these skills, can you imagine how that would shift and change people

who benefit from white privilege, how that would shift and change their behavior

and how they like respond to and orient to right their privilege when they have

enacted their privilege, how they're a part of a sys this broader system right of

racism, white supremacy, et cetera, that is actively harming so many people and

actively abusing and being violent towards so many people like that would be amazing.

And the same with, men and sexism, et cetera, et cetera.

So I just wanted to add that because I feel like.

There's the campaign work, there's the social justice movement work around, like

fighting these systems of oppression.

But then there's also, if we all learned this, it would be on an individual and

collective basis that then would, I think, radically shift and change the

kinds of work we could do to dismantle these systems on literally every level.

Okay.

I'm ready for a question now.

No,

That's perfect.

I'm so glad you said that because what I was gonna ask is about frameworks for

overcoming or dis dismantling or rendering illusory or the binary that is often

set up between praxis like individual interpersonal justice work and like going

to a protest and being on the streets.

I think sometimes it's hard to recognize that the, internal work that people

do, or the work that they do to talk to their families that is TJ work.

That is transformative and often some of the hardest, some of the hardest

conflicts to have aren't the ones that involve dressing someone down from

a microphone, but in fact being with people you love and deeply care for.

And I wanna transition this into a question about pod mapping.

I would love for you to explain to us what pod mapping is.

The reason I'm asking about it in this context is that, I think one of the

things that pod mapping is identifying who one is in community with both

sort of immediate deep bonds and connections, but also ones that are

further out within a larger network.

Sometimes those kinds of very close community context are the places where

we work out exactly the how to be in conflict in more macro ways and how to

be in transformation in more macro ways.

I'm curious if you could tell us what is pod mapping and how does it relate

to some of these practices of justice, transformation, and care that we've

been, that we've been talking about?

Okay.

So first of all, I just wanna say personal and systemic

transformation are bound up together.

They cannot be separated.

There is no way that we are going to, take down systems of oppression

and then continue to like, go home and beat up on each other.

Like we, or vice versa have this like a politicized personal transformation

that's not connected to any, they're bound up together, they're inter,

mutually interdependent on each other.

And so the work is to transform ourselves as we're also working

to transform the world together.

Both/ and.

I think about Grace Lee Boggs, who who spoke a lot about that.

So in terms of pod mapping.

POD mapping, I could talk forever about it.

Okay.

So your pod are the people that you would call on if you were experiencing violence,

harm, or abuse, even emergency crisis.

So like during the pandemic, for example, pods became a very big popular concept.

But the way that I know it, which is how it originated, which is through

the B A T J C and which I was lucky enough to get to be a part of helping

to found and then was a member for nine years before I transition.

And that's the Bay Area transformative, justice

Collective for those who don't know.

There you go.

There you go.

And so we created pods, the concept of pods as basically it grew

in transformative justice work.

And now it has become, in my mind, at least a ver like a cornerstone

and a foundational piece of TJ transformative justice, not Trader Joe's.

And because the thing about abolition work is that, and specifically TJ work, but

abolition as a whole, is that if we're not gonna call the cops and we're not

gonna rely on prisons or even the court systems, for example, or foster care,

ice, et cetera, that means that it's us.

It's us who will have to respond to all of these many different forms of harm.

And I don't think people put that together.

I think it's very easy to go out and hold up a sign in a protest or put it

on Facebook or Twitter and no police, no prisons, it's much harder to build the

kind of infrastructure and relationships that we're actually gonna need to do that.

So pods is a way to build out that web of support and build out.

In my mind, pods is a form of community infrastructure that we're building.

So basically you look at your life and you say, Who are the people in my life

that I already do or that I would call on to support me if I was surviving

violence, meaning violence targeted to me.

Or maybe if I did harm or caused harm or even hurt somebody or made a

mistake and really royally messed up.

Or if I witnessed violence or harm, or maybe if I, know somebody

who has caused harm, for example.

Pods is a way to concretely start to name, like literally name those individuals.

Who would you call?

Who are you gonna call?

Ghostbusters?

No, but to li literally list those individuals and say, okay, my, these

are my, two or three pod people.

And I do have to say, just as a side note It is not uncommon for people to have

one or two pod people in the beginning.

Totally.

It's not a popularity contest.

And mapping your pod is a very, it can be a very sobering process because you

have to remember we live in capitalism.

Capitalism relies on the breaking of relationships, and so we are not

encouraged, nor are we supported to have deep, accountable quality

relationships with each other.

Most of our relationships, most people have a lot more like surface level

relationships and so your pod there, you can have as many pods as you want to.

I, the two pods that I think everybody should have though I should say three but.

The first one, everybody usually has like people who can support

them when something happens to them.

Most of us have those people, most of us have those folks who are like, I'm

down with you no matter what you do.

I love you to, to the end of the earth, whatever.

Most of us have at least one person in our life.

Not all of us, but most of us do.

But the two other ones that most people don't have is one, an accountability

pod, meaning people that you pod your accountability pod, meaning

people that you can go to and talk to about your own accountability.

Maybe I had a friend and we had a falling out or a fight and I, and it, and I know

it's my fault and I wanna apologize, but I wanna talk with my pod p people

first, get support on how, I apologize.

Maybe even run, do roleplaying and run that apology by them first, right?

And then maybe they could say, Hey Mia, that actually feels like you're

centering yourself more in this apology.

Let's do some more work.

But the second one is a local pod.

Everybody should have people that they can turn to in their city, town,

neighborhood, maybe even on your street.

And we saw this during the pandemic that was really critical for so many

folks when people couldn't, especially during lockdown, when people really

couldn't leave their house in a real way.

So accountability pod, local pod are two of, I think, the most important

pods that we can have because then, If something does happen, you

have people that you can turn to specifically around your accountability.

I think the fear and the isolation when you mess up when you don't have that is

part of what le one of the many conditions that helps to perpetuate unaccountability

or unaccountable behavior.

Maybe that's a better way to say it.

No that's so helpful and I'm really excited

for what you're gonna write about.

We'll put in the show notes the resources about pod mapping but we'll

also look forward to another version of that we have heard through the

grapevine that, that you're writing.

The best way to stay in touch is that, is to sign up for our

soil lister, which I know you're gonna put the website in the thing too.

So people can, yeah.

Great.

Great.

To go off that a bit, what are you really excited about teaching in

the moment and in the near future?

What's coming up?

So one of the things is this new, these new pod maps and like this more

sended pod write up, and then the trainings that will come with that.

But really Tina, one of the things that I talked to I'm talking on a, like a

talk show or something really, Tina.

But one of the things that I'm most loving right now is doing these TJ

facilitator trainings that I've been doing which are much more in depth.

They're like multi-year trainings and then the TJ intensives the one-on-ones

which are just like entry level.

Those are, those have been so fun.

I've really been enjoying those.

But the, but.

The thing that I love, like one of my favorite trainings that I do, that

I get to do in the, at least in the facilitator trainings, I get to do

these but I do standalone ones as well, is trainings on communication.

Like basic things like how to listen, how to share accountably, what is like

active listening and how to how to even do basic things like reflect back

to the person what they're saying.

I literally had a call last year, last fall where I reflected back cuz I didn't

understand what the person was saying and I was like trying to get clear and

I had to reflect back 16 times before we actually got to, I thought I was clear

at certain points before we actually got to what they were actually trying to say.

We, again, we have a lot of work to do.

We don't even know these basic things about communication and we

don't communicate well, which leads to all different types of conflict.

So yes that's one thing I'd love doing.

Do you

do these trainings with institutions of higher

education to help them heal?

We could do it with, I'm sure I could work it out with anybody.

Let's talk.

Oh,

okay.

Before we ask our last standard question about what you're listening to, reading,

consuming, watching, whatever that you would, that we would all like to recommend

to our listeners, I'm wondering if there's anything that we haven't covered before

that, that you wanna make sure that you that we name or lift up here today?

Questions you wish we had asked us that we didn't?

Things you wanna plug?

Yeah.

I want, I always wanna plug soil, but I do wanna

say, I don't know if I said this.

One thing I should say is that transformative justice to me at least is

everything that I talked about on this podcast, but like all the way up to, and

most importantly, it's a transformative justice was created to respond to really

specific types of harm and violence, like domestic violence, sexual assault,

child sexual abuse, child abuse.

And so I think sometimes we can get lost in the.

Kind of low level things, and that kind of work.

Accountability in our healing, our communication, our apologies.

But just to, I really wanna be explicit and say like, all of that

is in service of being able to respond to these forms of violence

that are, have been just notoriously historically, so hard to respond to.

And that the state has really done a number on in particular

and criminalized so heavily.

And that, part of TJ and abolition at large is about not outsourcing these

responses that then end up coming to bite us in the, probably can't curse on here.

End up coming to.

We curse all the time on this podcast.

Oh, great.

But don't end up coming to bite us in the ass later, through,

whether it's around criminalization, punishment, et cetera, more violence more

entrenchment of social control and power.

So I always wanna be clear with that because I think those forms of violence

in particular, even though we have this contradiction of, there's some of the most

common forms of violence, and yet they're things that nobody really wants to talk

about, they don't wanna listen about.

They don't wanna look at it.

They don't.

And that's part of why they continue.

It's not the only reason, but it's part of it.

So I do wanna say that.

And then oh, there was one more thing that now I've forgotten about.

I.

Oh, I can't remember.

But if it comes to me, I'll say it.

If you come, if it comes to you, we'll just

have a little you'll say, stop.

I, it came

to me.

Yeah.

And I wanna do a plug for me as science fiction short story in Octavia's Brood,

which when I got the book and I saw you were in it, I'm like, oh, I know her.

Hello.

It's a, it's it does a lot of, it includes a lot of these themes about

working through and and addressing violence and interdependence.

Thank you to create the future.

Anyway, Octavia's brood

interdependence is the way forward.

It is the only, it's our only chance of survival.

Yeah.

Lu, do you wanna ask the last question too?

Sure.

What are we.

Only because if I ask the last question, I don't have to answer it first.

So what are we listening to?

Reading, enjoying basking and that we would like to that we would like to pass

on to our our listeners and to each other.

That's so good.

And Mia or Tina, you can both go first

as long as I first or second.

As long as I get to go third.

So I can

think while you talk.

Oh

we

know Lucia's watching Love Island, right?

Yeah,

that's right.

No judgment.

No judgment.

No judgment here.

Yes, that's right.

Do you wanna go Tina or do you want me to go?

You go.

Okay.

So I finally was able to just watch everything everywhere

all at once, which was so good.

And so I was very much basking to use your word in that.

And just Really just blown away.

I thought it was, I thought it was amazing and I loved it so much.

Another thing something that I watched recently that I would've never watched.

It is this western called the English, and it's on, I think it's

on Amazon Prime is how you watch it.

And it starts Emily Blunt and Chake Spencer and I listen, no matter what

you think about the story or what have you, it's about colonization

and it's, the cast is pretty much all like white folks and native folks.

And, but I, the plug I wanna say is, or the thing I wanna say is

that Chass Spencer's performance, he's a Native American man

playing a Native American man.

His performance and acting in that is just, It's so good.

And so there's other things with e everything we watch.

Nothing is perfect, but I do think that like it's so rare that we get to see

native people getting to play native people and also in a lead role like that.

Yeah.

So anyways, there's, I, so I would say that, and then the other thing I

just wanna, okay, but the last thing I'll say that I really enjoyed is I

just recently listened to the book.

I'm a big book on tape person.

The book Platonic, which is about, I know attachment theory is like all the

rage, but it's about attachment theory in friendships, talking about friendships.

And it was such a good, I really loved it.

I thought it was such a good book.

And I was, Like, I was excited to listen to it, but sometimes when

I'm excited about things, they're not as good as I want them to be.

But I got so much out of it.

And I just think as somebody who loves my friends, and I love friendship,

and I think it's an underrated relationship that I wish there was

more like art and movies and things just, I wish it was like a whole genre,

just, like how we have the romcom.

Like I wish it was like a whole thing like that for a friend Calm, I don't

know what would be called, but or like a romantic friendship stories or whatever.

I know there's a, there's some that exist, but I really loved it.

Yeah.

And then, there's so many, I've already listened to so many books this year

that I could talk about too that

Okay.

One thing is one of my favorite groups, Reiki Tanky.

Out of Charleston, South Carolina.

They do a lot of roots music and they won a Grammy.

I'm real excited.

They're take a listen.

They're fantastic.

And I use 'em a lot in classes.

They do a lot of social justice roots music.

And then Neil Brennan's Comedy Hour, I think it, I forget what it's

streaming on, it's called Blocks.

It's very creative, an artist friend of his made blocks that he on

shelves behind him, and he pulls out a block and it represents some of

the humor jokes that he's telling, and they're very well written.

He talks about his own depression.

It's just, he was a writer for Dave Chappelle on the Chappelle Show.

So he goes there in ways that are really.

Oh, he went there, and then of course, because I do apocalyptic stuff, I

have to watch the last of us and more.

I just, I get so weary of zombies, but it's this is zombie 2.0.

These are zombies that the more, it's always, I'm yelling at

the tv, shoot 'em in the head.

You always shoot a zombie in the head, not the chest.

But it doesn't matter because these zombies are interconnected and

any kind of movement sets 'em off.

And the, there's a famous third episode.

I recommend everybody to watch it and then read Michelle Goldberg's

editorial and the New York Times on it.

So that's yeah, I've been binging a lot of apocalyptic stuff.

Oh, and one more that, it's funny I haven't done all, gone

through, but like two episodes.

It's a documentary called Kuk on Earth, and I'm pretty sure it's on Netflix.

And it's an actress, comedian who's British, who takes on the role of a

kind of David Attenborough going all over the world making commentary,

for example in the Islamic world.

They were known for doing maths plural, and the most famous Islamic maths was al.

Jabra, it's, and then she interviews academics and it's just, it's really quite

funny how she's skewing the whole genre as she's trampling all over the earth.

Anyway, so

That's amazing.

And if Al it took me it took me like several beats to algebra is algebra

for if you anyone is slow like me in listening to this I, we needed

to repeat that.

Yeah, that's how great.

Thank you.

I guess it's my turn.

My really lovely friend and colleague Emily A.

Owens who teaches in the history department at Brown University,

just published a book called, Consent in the Presence of Force:

sexual violence and black women's survival in antebellum New Orleans.

It's a really heavy book about anti-black violence, about sexual

terror but also about black women's survival as the subtitle indicates.

And the question that Emily asks is, in a context in anti bellum New Orleans,

when white men could have access to black women's bodies for free when

the socially economically available to them, why were there contexts where

people would have monetary and gift based transactions in the sex trade?

She reframes our understanding, not only of that historical moment, but

also about what does consent mean?

What does responsibility mean?

She makes this argument that it when Sex is understood in terms of a

transaction people become responsible for the violence against them.

And I've been thinking about discursively responsible, not actually responsible,

but I think this relates to how we think about accountability, how we think about

consent or non-consent how we think about who is responsible for violence and not.

I think relates to this conversation we've been having about repair . And I

just, if anyone is listening and wants a historical perspective on some of this,

that's also just like really beautifully written and a kind of historical

work that is full of care and love.

Is, I would just really recommend anything that Emily Owens has ever written.

And I'm really proud of this book that, proud of her for

this book in a Friend Way.

And since we're talking about friendship and care and harm and all

of that I thought I would lift her up.

It's, and University of North Carolina Press

just came out.

Oh.

I have one more book to recommend that's very much related.

And this is Humanitarian Capitalism.

It's Duke University

Lucia Hulsether: Capitalist Humanitarianism.

Yeah, capitalist humanitarianism.

And it is Duke University Press.

It just came out in January, and it's written by our own Lucia Hulsether.

It's fantastic.

It's very well written and it will make you aware of yourself in the capitalist

world and in some really important ways.

So congratulations, Lucia, on your publication.

I thank you.

I didn't know that was coming, right?

Yeah.

It's out.

It's out.

It's out.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Mia Mingus, thank you so much for coming onto this podcast, Nothing Never Happens.

Yeah.

Thank you.

No, thank you for having me.

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Too many yards in the ashtray.

Too many yards in the ashtray.

I try to catalog the way I feel about it.

Something I needed in my life.

I couldn't be without it.

I scream and shout it, but I'd rather leave a subtle trace, reach my hands

into the heavens till I'm touching space.

Just a taste of what it could be in some time though.

Confront the mysteries that linger in the minds so God is closer while the

devil wait patiently, and we just want to levitate gracefully, hesitating.

That'll be your last play.

I'm serenading cabins, empty in the cache.

Cascades from the crest.

Enough fertility as the maidens I'm addressing with ferility.

It's all respect and I've been blessed.

It's something new to me.

Do what I can in accordance with my unity.