Description

Philly Stands Up: Inside the Politics and Poetics of Transformative Justice and Community Accountability in Sexual Assault Situations

As an all-volunteer collective working in Philadelphia to hold perpetrators of sexual assault accountable for their behavior, Philly Stands Up! (PSU) is widely viewed as a model group, successfully enacting transformative justice principles through “interventions,” bringing perpetrators of sexual assault to a fundamentally deeper awareness of feminist politics and of the harm they have caused. This article elucidates their process for doing this work and illustrates how PSU’s success stems from a deep realization of what it means to be in community and to truly make care, liberation, and feminist praxis an everyday precept of relating to one another.

sexual assault, transformative justice, restorative justice, grass-roots organizing, working with perpetrators, community accountability, intersectionality, prison abolition

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 37, No. 4 (2010-11): 44-57.