radicalsafety

radicalsafety, 3 months ago

Some other red flags we've noticed that are common in leftist spaces specifically:

• "But I/they do so much!" Not only is productivity a horrible reason to keep an abuser around, it also discounts the things their victims would have been able to accomplish had they not been run out of the space. Not to mention that they create this perception on purpose by trying to set themselves up as the center of organizing. The fact they do so much (in that kind of very visible centered way) ends up being a bad thing, because it's how they consolidate power in movement spaces, and organizing that depends on any one person is fragile. It's not a bad thing to work hard, but an abuser will constantly use their productivity to dismiss the input or criticism of others, and will need to be front and center in all things

Often this is accompanied by an explicit or implicit statement that an org will fall apart without the abuser. If your org depends on one abuser, it should fall apart, just as the state deserves to fall apart for relying on oppression. One way to prevent this is to make sure your orgs are truly decentralized so as to not depend entirely on a single person, where possible

• Appeals to opsec to shut down criticism. E.g. decrying public accounts of their abuse as "doxxing," or claiming that screenshots of their abuse are a violation of opsec, when in reality being able to take screenshots can be necessary for victims so they can counter gaslighting in the future. Security culture is meant to protect the vulnerable from state abuse, not to protect abusers from their victims

• Martyr/Savior attitude. Not unrelated, an abuser will often complain about how much work they do as a way of bringing attention to it and creating a perception that they're some long-suffering hero with the world on their shoulders. When in reality, they put themselves in that situation on purpose, and tend to only do the work that makes them look good

• Using the language of social justice in retaliation for anyone challenging them. Abusers will always learn the most "correct" language to make their DARVO attempts sound convincing. Communities need to learn to look beyond who can speak most correctly and exercise discernment of what is actually true

• Saying "I'm not a leader, we don't have leaders, we're all equal here" while refusing to acknowledge or analyze the power and influence they do have

• Intentionally invoking or appealing to established "accountability" processes as a way of avoiding real responsibility. Abusers love to say "We should focus on restorative justice, so I should just have to do some reading and maybe go to therapy and then the people I've hurt are obligated to forgive me." Many times, they already know the accountability process will work out in their favor. Victims and their needs should be centered always, and sometimes part of taking responsibility for one's actions means knowing that nobody they've hurt is obligated to feel safe around them again no matter how genuinely remorseful someone may be or even if they had actually changed

radicalsafety, 3 months ago

A great read on copjacketing specifically, and how it was used by cops in the Black Panther Party and American Indian Movement: https://twincitiesgdc.org/badjacketing/

radicalsafety, 3 months ago

@Orca Yeah, we're sure there were many factors. It's a good example of why intersectionality is so important. You can't (effectively) fight white supremacy without also fighting misogyny. Abuse and fascism are really the same thing on different scales in a lot of ways, and a lot of the same concepts apply for recognizing and fighting them. Security culture is very similar to self defense against an abuser who might be tech savvy, just the abuser happens to be the state

A lot of abusers use the rhetoric of revolution to argue we should sacrifice being anti-abuse for the "bigger issue" of fighting the state, claiming group cohesion is most important for a popular movement and therefore we shouldn't remove abusive people (as if you could ever have solidarity without standing with victims). But the reason to resist the state is because you're anti-abuse, anti-hierarchy, anti-imperialism, anti-white supremacy, etc, and the state just happens to be the most powerful perpetrator of those things. If it suddenly disappeared, they would still exist, because they're deeply embedded societal issues. And anytime a historical revolution has "succeeded" by replacing the state, these issues haven't magically gone away.

So if someone is anti state but doesn't take steps to fight abuse now in their own community, you know they really just mean they want to be the one with the state's power, rather than being motivated by ending oppression

radicalsafety, 7 months ago

@sidereal Not sure what kinds of workshops you teach, but we've found it essential for any kind of self defense training. We use more traditional roleplay to teach boundary-setting and communication, emotional regulation, and deescalation by simulating stress or adrenaline. But saying "Let's practice defending ourselves in X scenario" could also be considered a type of roleplay, especially when you emphasize the simulated attacker using agressive body language to help the defender learn to recognise and react to that

Without those things, in the context of self defense, you're just training techniques in isolation. So even if you know how to e.g. throw a strike, teaching yourself to do that in the right contexts is another matter entirely

An important part of it is resisting the urge to make jokes or be silly to break the tension, because part of the benefit is sitting in that tension and feeling how it affects you. In our workshops we make sure to talk about it explicitly, and then do some form of emotional grounding exercise afterwards