HFA Community Invited to Participate in Yearlong Reading Group and Discussion on Transformative Justice Movement

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Next month, the UMass Amherst Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) will be launching a yearlong guided reading and discussion of the book, “Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement,” edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

Reading groups will begin in early November with a whole-community launch event and then first meetings of smaller reading groups. The groups will continue reading and discussing the book into the spring semester. Additional events and workshops will also be offered.

Transformative justice approaches offer community-based alternatives to coercive and retributive systems of incarceration, policing and punishment, which shape life across the United States, including in our own communities. Transformative justice seeks to address interpersonal harm at the grass-roots level through repair and social change, rather than additional harm and violence.

The TJC reading groups are a time to think through how principles of transformative justice can be used in the spaces where individuals live, including within the UMass Amherst community. The groups are open to all members of the UMass community, including students, staff and faculty. As transformative justice is based in practices popularized by Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ, migrant, disabled, sex trading, and low-and no-income peoples, the perspectives of members of historically underrepresented groups are especially welcome.

The effort is sponsored by the Office of Equity and Inclusion, Prison Abolition Collective (PAC), Center for Education Policy and Advocacy (CEPA), Graduate Senate, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Department of Environmental Conservation, Department of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and the UMass Amherst Libraries.

For more information and to sign up for participation, visit the TJC Building Community Through Transformative Justice Reading Group form. For questions, contact Angelique Ferguson at angeliquefer [at] umass [dot] edu (angeliquefer[at]umass[dot]edu).