My social justice commitment was instilled at a young age, during my upbringing amongst social justice agitators within the United Methodist Church, influenced by my mother's work with women, children, and youth, and my stepfather's decades in national and global racial justice ministry. During a recent backyard hangout, myself and two friends who are also the children of white progressives or leftists bonded over our shared lack of childhood access to grapes while our families participated in the United Farmworkers' final California grape boycott. My favorite childhood stories include being corrected by my mother when I came home from my first day of elementary school and recited the Pledge of Allegiance during evening prayers, which in our home incorporated inclusive language for God, including she/her pronouns. "That is not a prayer," she said, "And we do not pledge allegiance to flags." The next day at school, as other kids began reciting the pledge, I stood on a chair and shouted, "OUR MOTHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME..."
I had my first formative organizing experience in high school, as part of the movement for LGBT inclusion within the United Methodist denomination, which was more broadly an effort to protect the church's social justice efforts from co-optation and dismantling by the religious right. My time in this movement showed me the extent to which the right wing ultimately does not care about queer individuals or our lives, but exploits anti-queer sentiment to consolidate power for a broader agenda that reinforces Christian nationalism, capitalist imperialism, white supremacy, and cishet patriarchy. We continue to see this dynamic at play in the current virulent targeting of trans people. Other movements that were ascendant during my high school years—including anti-globalization and anti-sweat organizing, and efforts to address police violence and the prison industrial complex (my senior year, Amadou Diallo was murdered by the State—my parents participated in the civil disobedience that followed) introduced me to the participation of many liberal leaders in the violence and exploitation perpetrated under neoliberal racial capitalism.
Pursuing my undergraduate degree in Women's and Gender Studies at DePaul University, I found my political grounding in Black feminist intersectionality, which provided a language for explaining how major systems of oppression are interlocking, and an understanding of how centering the lived experiences of people who live at the intersections of these oppressions can focus our values and politics. Following college, I entered the nonprofit workforce both excited about the opportunity to build relationships with and learn from experienced organizers and change-makers, and also anxious about the inherent constraints of a sector that often functions within and ultimately reinforces the established rules and power structures of racial capitalism (often referred to as the "nonprofit industrial complex"). Throughout my career, during which I've worked with everything from radical grassroots activists to the staff of large, powerful institutions, I have strived to stay grounded in my values. These include centering the leadership of people directly affected by systems of oppression, telling the truth about root causes, aiming for collective liberation, and reducing any potential harm caused by efforts for change that are incremental, risk reinforcing existing power structures, or are otherwise limited.
Increasingly, I also believe it is important to name my personal stake in collective liberation, and to more openly express how my lived experiences shape my work. For instance, my growing practice in police and prison abolition has roots in my childhood experience of anti-queer school bullying. As a preteen, the harassment I experienced in response to my gender expression was an institutionally supported source of trauma that thwarted my potential. As pressure built up, I would eventually physically retaliate, resulting in frequent school disciplinary contact directed at me, but rarely those who targeted me. I've reflected often on how different my outcome might've looked, were I Black or Brown, and/or in a school with police presence. I strive to hold this complexity in my current work, striving to act in solidarity with communities relative to whom I hold power and privilege, while also understanding how this contributes to my own healing as a trans person.
When I speak of benefiting from privilege, I don't just mean this conceptually. My legacies aren't only those of justice seekers. Ancestors on both sides of my family benefited from their labor in the racially exclusionary railroad industry. A physicist great uncle helped create the proximity fuze, which detonates an explosive device automatically when it approaches within a certain distance of its target. One of his greatest regrets was not being chosen for the Manhattan Project to design the first nuclear bombs. My pharmacist grandfather's stock in Abbott Laboratories—a multibillion dollar profiteer in the systemically oppressive medical industrial complex—paid for my undergraduate tuition. The are likely just a few examples of the inheritances for which I strive to be responsible through acts of repair.
People are what keep me grounded, and most motivate me in my work—whether this takes the form of teaching and mentoring youth; calling out the influence of individuals on broader systems; coaching leaders in skills such as collaboration, trust-building, and navigating power; supporting foundation staff in making their institutions more equitable and accountable to communities; or helping consulting clients pursue projects that will have meaningful, transformative impact.
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
—Aboriginal movement wisdom, often attributed to Lilla Watson
"The major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives."
—Combahee River Collective Statement
"Abolition is about abolishing the conditions under which prison became the solution to problems, rather than abolishing the buildings we call prisons."
"Abolition is about presence, not absence. It's about building life-affirming institutions."
—Ruth Wilson Gilmore
"Transformative Justice (TJ) is a political framework and approach for responding to violence, harm and abuse. At its most basic, it seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence and/or engaging in harm reduction to lessen the violence. TJ can be thought of as a way of “making things right,” getting in “right relation,” or creating justice together. Transformative justice responses and interventions 1) do not rely on the State; 2) do not reinforce or perpetuate violence such as oppressive norms or vigilantism; and most importantly, 3) actively cultivate the things we know prevent violence such as healing, accountability, resilience, and safety for all involved.
—Mia Mingus
"When I use the phrase “healing justice,” I am reflecting on how the systems we seek to change outside of our bodies are also carried within our bodies. I am recognizing that the systems of care in western medicine that we depend on are also part of the systems of dominance and oppression that we want to transform. And finally, I recognize that all of our people and most recently, indigenous, Black and Brown people have culturally grounded systems of care and support that have been violently disappeared and then often repackaged and sold by people outside of those cultural traditions."
— Susan Raffo