In our hands: Community accountability as pedagogical strategy

If we feel that things are calm, what must we forget in order to inhabit such a restful feeling? — Jasbir Puar

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
Knowing that they hold future promise…
We cannot do everything and there is
A sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something
And to do it very well….
We may never see the end results.
But that is the difference between
The master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders — Oscar Romero

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Halfway through the spring semester of 2007, a student in the course I co-taught with Katie Ojeda Stewart at San Francisco State announced that he had committed an act of sexual violence against another student at the university. The class engaged in a profound dialogue about sexual violence that led to the pedagogical application of community accountability practice.

In Chican@/Latin@ Studies, many students have witnessed the state’s failure to keep them safe. Coming from families of migrants, they/we have survived xenophobic, racist, and punitive immigration policies; the communities of color they/we inhabit are under constant state surveillance. Many have survived military invasions, ethnic cleansings, and civil wars. Like most other university students, they have experienced or witnessed intimate violence in their own lives or in the lives of those they love. They are motivated to learn how to respond and reach the mostly shared goal of ending violence.

Our Spring 2007 course offering, Raza Feminisms, focused on Chicana/Latina experiences, conceptualizations of violence, and relevant social movements across the Americas. The course addressed manifestations of violence in intimate relationships and communities, as well as the role of the state and colonialism in the production of violence. I purposefully use the term “intimate violence” instead of “interpersonal violence” because the latter term overemphasizes the personal at the expense of showing the ways in which public violence shapes and produces intimate forms of violence. By calling it personal, we narrow the scope of analysis to an individualized account. Violence is never just personal.

Early in the semester, each student selected a course reading to present, teach, and facilitate to the class. The readings included an essay entitled “Taking Risks: Implementing Grassroots Community Accountability Strategies,” by CARA (Communities Against Rape and Abuse, 2006), a grassroots anti-rape organizing project in Seattle. A student named Gerardo chose to present the CARA article to the class.

I provided opening remarks that covered INCITE! and community accountability movements in their relevant historical and social contexts. Our students were urged to rethink how we can, as community members, conceive of, articulate, and put into action strategies for anti-violence movement building and alternative responses. CARA’s article is extremely useful because communities may creatively adapt its accountability principles in ways that are relevant to their unique settings and circumstances. Detailed descriptions are provided, as are examples of how to apply the guidelines in real-life scenarios.

Gerardo said this article meant a lot to him. In a quick breath, he said that he identified as a sexual violence aggressor, having committed an act of sexual violence against a fellow student at a MEChA conference. MEChA is an acronym that stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán. According to its website, it is “a student organization that promotes higher education, community engagement, political participation, culture, and history” striving for self-determination and “a society free of imperialism, racism, sexism, and homophobia.”

With astonishment and anguish, Gerardo related that he never imagined himself to be capable of committing such an act of transgression or of being identified as the aggressor in an act of sexual violence. Gerardo was mortified and incredulous that he had committed this act. He spoke at length about his feelings and his shocking capacity to commit violence. His presentation of the article included only CARA’s first principle: “Recognize the humanity of everyone involved” (Ibid.). Instead of continuing, Gerardo repeatedly stressed to the class — and to himself — the idea that aggressors are also human.

Another student, confused and alarmed by the admission, questioned Gerardo: “Are you telling us that you raped another student?” Gerardo had never explicitly used the word “rape.” When confronted with it, he immediately began to backpedal. Although prepared to present his own account, he stumbled when the class engaged his admission. His varying responses included that: (1) he could not remember what he had done to her or had no memory of the event; (2) he did not know whether he had raped her; (3) it was difficult for him to imagine that he did rape her; (4) he had been inebriated and woke up on top of her, feeling shocked and frightened. His contradictory statements caused increasing confusion and frustration in the class; they continued to push for clarity about the events. As Gerardo struggled with this reality, he shuffled and deflected the potential for self-accountability through denial and minimization; he depicted himself as a victim of a generational history of colonization, displacement, and alcohol abuse.

Everyone was stunned by the swiftly unfolding events. I was prepared to teach about the praxis of community accountability, but a classroom enactment of a pedagogy of community accountability is another matter. I asked the class to pause and take some breaths. It occurred to me that I knew the female student Gerardo had attacked; I had mentored her closely and supported her while healing after the attack. Next we slowed the process down and recognized that this public admission of sexual violence had likely triggered reactions in many of us who had experienced or witnessed violence, or knew someone who had.

In a room thick with tension, faces showed fear, anger, and discomfort. The customary, one-dimensional institutional rules had been abandoned, exposing contradictions and polyvalent personas that lie below the surface of the reductive masks we wear: a student as aggressor and survivor, other students as survivors and witnesses, and teachers as survivors.

Since our books were open to an article on taking risks through community accountability strategies, we asked the students whether they wished to use CARA’s principles to begin a process of community accountability. With nods from around the classroom, the students jumped in and boldly took the risk that CARA urges. To undo existing power arrangements in the process of creating consensus, we made participation voluntary. The process does not work if the participants are not interested in taking part. Only one student chose to leave. The remaining 28 students pushed forward as a community. They taught one another and worked together to implement an intervention in our classroom-community space.

One hour into our three-hour class, we discussed starting principles — to “recognize the humanity of everyone involved” — and set the day’s goals for accountability. To ground our work and mark the beginning of our community accountability praxis, we shifted away from the dramatic confession, while holding the memory of the prior discussion. Students were encouraged to take the lead. Dialogue concerning the first principle reminded the group that the heat of the moment might trigger anger. That would be a justified response, but we should be careful not to lose sight of the humanity of everyone involved in the process by resorting to dehumanizing language. We began with the recognition that Geraldo was asking for help, and that we believed it was possible for him to be transformed.

The situation was unique for community accountability in that the survivor was not present. We remained committed to centering her voice and experience. How could we apply the principle, “prioritize the self-determination of the survivor”? Cynthia, a student in the class, was a close friend of the survivor; we gave her a lot of space to speak. She asked the class to respect the survivor’s wish not to involve law enforcement. We also centered the voices of other survivors in the classroom. This principle is central to the accountability process, as it ensures that the survivor’s voice and needs are respected throughout.

Cynthia and other women in the class — many of whom were also survivors — spontaneously began what we later called SurvivorSpeak. These women provided a narrative and testimony of their own survival. They called out Gerardo for backpedaling, pointing out that he was co-opting accountability. Cynthia, one of the first to speak, looked Gerardo in the eyes and told him that he had violated her friend and knew what happened. She was there that night and the violence had a resounding and devastating impact on her friend’s life.

Gerardo disclosed that he was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. He added that as a Latino man, his actions should be understood within the larger context of his childhood experiences in the United States and Guatemala, with the relevant histories of violence and colonization. These contextual nuances are vital to understanding and transforming violence and helped the class to understand generational cycles of violence and connections to state and colonial violence. Yet the class also viewed Gerardo’s recounting as a move away from accountability because his presentation of his own suffering was disconnected from the survivor’s experience of suffering. The accountability process invited participants to find a balanced, joint commitment to the aggressor’s humanity, while centering and respecting the survivor’s experience of suffering engendered through the aggressor’s actions. The class observed that Gerardo, and potentially others who use violence, may (consciously or unconsciously) use their experiences of surviving violence in ways that excuse or minimize their own acts of violence. When self-protection becomes a manipulative dimension to evade responsibility, deter introspection, and deny the survivor’s experiences, it moves away from the possibility of accountability.

Many thought Gerardo had used his experiences to influence the class into accepting an apology rather than true accountability. Accountability is not the pursuit of redemption or forgiveness. “To expect survivors to forgive is to heap yet another burden on them” (Minow, 1998). Forgiveness is not a right to be claimed; it is a gesture from the survivor. Another Latino student would play a very important role in the sessions, providing a model of how to hold another man accountable. He felt that Geraldo was co-opting the space and urged him to take full responsibility for his actions and to own the act of violence he had committed. The principle of humanization, he explained, urges us not to dehumanize the aggressor. However, the presence of colonial violence or past traumas does not mean that we should forgive and forget when someone in our community commits an act of violence without seeking resolution for the survivor and for the larger community.

“To expect survivors to forgive is to heap yet another burden on them” (Minow, 1998). Forgiveness is not a right to be claimed; it is a gesture from the survivor.

The CARA article anchored our process, reminding us that community accountability also encompasses the creation of a transformative space capable of healing and community building. We applied another principle, “to identify a simultaneous plan for safety and support of the survivor as well as others.” SurvivorSpeak called attention to the many survivors in the class and we discussed options for safety that included self-care and care for each other given the potential for triggering trauma. By consensus, the planned course content for the following three class meetings was suspended in favor of pursuing community accountability.

Reflections

Transformation involves risking death of part of the self/selves that is no longer necessary. Decolonization implies a painful process of exposing deeply rooted weeds that may need to be removed. The process is frightening because one enters it without an exact destination; there might be a semblance of a path, method, or guide, but unknowns characterize the endpoint and places along the way. Fear has multiple triggers: past experiences with trauma and the possibility of new traumas. The process undeniably depends on courage in the face of an exhausting procession of sweaty palms, nausea, pressing silences and tumultuous words and gestures. Yet it was as if a ribbon of faith floated above our class, somehow getting us through the difficult moments. There was light and laughter too. The feeling that we were going somewhere and that change was imminent lifted us and inspired the courage that let the fear fall away. In collective formations and praxis, the weight of suffering coexists alongside the lightness of the possibility of healing and transformation.

Colonial intimate violence: When Gerardo was 11 years old, Guatemala’s 36-year-old genocidal war was coming to an end. But the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996 did not end intimate violence against women. The violence was mostly enacted by the state; the state police systematically used sexual violence as a weapon of war and so violence against women received immunity and was socially condoned.

Gerardo described how he had witnessed and survived sexual violence and how his uncles had experienced near-death violence, but used it against their partners nonetheless. Understanding and transforming Gerardo’s use of violence is impossible without recognizing the pervasiveness of state violence and its intimate expressions, which shaped, and continue to shape, him, his family and communities. The multiple enactments and reenactments of colonial and neo-colonial violence and their legacies are very much alive.

Gerardo’s admission fluctuated between remorse and, to the participants, an interest in achieving power in the classroom. Neither approach amounted to being accountable for his abuse of power through sexual violation. Was his admission coded in “a show of power”? When the class refused to accept sexual violence or his admission, Gerardo employed multiple maneuvers to regain power. A community accountability process can be challenged or undermined when an aggressor manipulates its commitment to humanization, shifting from accountability toward a claim for power or an effacing of responsibility.

Gerardo’s insistent affirmation only of the first principle spoke to a legacy of war and colonization that stripped the Guatemalan people of their humanity. As a mestizo, he had a privileged and protected position in a genocidal war primarily against Mayans, which was complicated by the fact that some within his family were members of the federal police force. Disclosing his own experience of surviving sexual assault was mired in the complexity of the polyvalent forces at play in his testimony. Narratives of colonial histories and contemporary reenactments of sexual violence against men can potentially undo the patriarchal legacy of rape that attaches itself to masculinized nation building projects (Casteñada, 2005; Das, 2007). That potential is compromised when discussion of the victimization of men emerges outside of, or instead of, a critical accounting of heteropatriarchal violence.

Group Dynamics: Although most of the class, and certainly the strongest voices in it, moved to hold Gerardo accountable, not everyone did. One young man made at least two comments that reflected his interest in protecting Gerardo’s maneuverings. Two young women also condoned his disavowal, focusing repeatedly on what they called his courageous admission. Those who identified as survivors, or close friends or family of survivors, voiced the clearest opposition and concerns over his attempts to evade accountability. We attempted to ensure that everyone had a voice and repeatedly returned to the principles that anchored the progression of accountability by centering survivors. Facilitators invited participants to reflect on how the admission could either promote accountability or further condone violence and the violation of women.

Community accountability models help to recognize and apply the interconnectedness/interdependence between community and violation.

According to Audre Lorde (1984), “the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.” We hoped the class-community would reflect upon itself and the multiple ways in which we potentially collude with violence against women and along the way work toward accountability for Gerardo and all of us. Community accountability practices revealed that speaking about internal discord and violence are necessary for the class-community to transform that violence. Community accountability models help to recognize and apply the interconnectedness/interdependence between community and violation.

Outside the classroom: After that class session, a stream of students poured in during office hours and sent emails. They spoke about their survival experiences, identified their triggers, and described their frustrations with Gerardo’s maneuverings. Office hours were an important way for survivors to check in about their reactions to the accountability session and to address the issue of self-care and support. Katie and I identified plans for safety and support for survivors and communities. Check-ins informed our strategy on how to proceed.

In an email to the class, we invited students to continue SurvivorSpeak, noting its impact and effectiveness. It was a way to express some of the strong reactions students still had to sexual violence and Gerardo’s response. For an optional, ungraded assignment, students could write (in any shape or format, length, including freewrite, poems, stream of consciousness, etc) and share (anonymously if they chose) anything they wanted to communicate about Gerardo’s response, the experience of surviving violence, or the issue of intimate violence. To avoid any potential harm, students were to express the range of emotions they might feel while maintaining compassion.

“Se hace el camino al andar” — the path unfolds as you walk it*

In the next class session, students deepened their collective ownership over the accountability process. The short-term suspension of planned course content, the optional ungraded assignment, and SurvivorSpeak strengthened the students’ sense of the classroom and our meetings as a collective space and process. Gerardo listened intently while students, predominantly women, spoke to him and the class about the consequences of his actions. Many of the women, engaging in SurvivorSpeak, looked Gerardo in the eyes as they shared their painful stories of surviving intimate violence. Others simply told him that what he had done was wrong and that he needed to be fully accountable for his transgression.

When this class ended, the students decided to apply the principle, “Make sure everyone in the group is on the same page with their political analysis of sexual violence” (CARA, 2006). Although the day’s content had focused on violence against Latinas, they asked for a lecture or discussion on the general history and politics of sexual violence against Latinas, noting the colonial legacies of gender and sexual politics.

After the lecture in the next session, the class selected the principles to be applied in the upcoming last session. Following CARA’s principles, they discussed the importance of working with the aggressor’s community to strengthen accountability. We decided to reach out to MEChA to work with us in the accountability process. The class-community decided it was ready to take on the following CARA principles: “Be clear and specific about what your group wants from the aggressor in terms of accountability” and “Let the aggressor know your analysis and demands.” The students’ thoughtful dialogues on these principles reflected the concern that the complexity and multi-layered conditioning that prompted his violation would not be undone overnight. That would require continued and persistent work to transform his understanding of himself and his sexuality. It was necessary, they believed, to work with a group whose political and cultural analysis encompassed the effect of colonial legacies of violence and war on Latin@s. Despite wavering on the issue, Gerardo expressed a willingness to meet the class accountability agreements. He was to:

• Complete service learning with “Men Overcoming Violence”
• Begin counselling at Pocoví, a peer support and counselling group for Latino men who use violence;
• Continue to work with other men committed to antiviolence (in part, this work would be with MEChA);
• Work with Pocoví during the summer;
• Attend (with the entire class) a follow-up class lecture on peaceful masculinities in Latin@ communities;
• Agree to adhere to these demands.

Our strategy for the lecture was to build community by positioning everyone as learners responsible for the classroom — the relationships and communities we create.  We paired the analytical work of understanding violence and Latin@** masculinities with the creative work of imagining and identifying peaceful and feminist expressions of Latin@ masculinities and sexualities. We discussed the political and historical conditions that produce violence.

As the class-community demands illustrate, an awareness emerged that community accountability processes in the classroom, among participants and the aggressor, had to extend beyond those limits. Multiple spaces had to be incorporated to create an infrastructure of contiguous spaces of accountability, which is a concept that has been very useful for communities to seeking to address sexual violence.

Transcending the immediate classroom space shifted tendencies away from violence to conjure an even greater possibility of social transformation. This final lesson serves as reminder to consider developing responses to violence in all the spaces in our lives. At each step we must ask: How are each of us implicated? All of us are constituted or made by and in violence. How does our participation in the social fabric make us complicit? What, then, is our commitment to the transformation of violence?

We plant the seeds

Accounting for Gerardo: Gerardo attended all community accountability sessions, including the peaceful masculinities lecture. He met all the class-community demands. We continued to meet with him after class, creating a secondary space for him to engage in self-reflection and consider the lessons learned. We also monitored his participation and attendance in community spaces. A few sessions after ending the classroom accountability process, Gerardo stopped coming to class. He said he had fallen behind in all of his schoolwork and requested an incomplete.

Gerardo’s completion of the demands allowed him to learn through praxis. The demands created an infrastructure of accountability for violence against women for him and the class-community. His social and activist spaces (MEChA), academic spaces (the class and service learning), and counseling and volunteer spaces (Pocoví) would hold him accountable.

Survivor(s): I remained in contact with the survivor after the class, informing her about the community accountability sessions. She had interrupted her studies at the university partially because she did not feel safe on campus. Since Gerardo and she were pursuing the same major, she feared taking classes with him; also active in MEChA, her trust in the group as a safe space for women had diminished. A second painful violation occurred in MEChA when members cast doubt on her experience. MEChA had been her community, so she felt betrayed and isolated from the support she needed.

Our task is to read the etchings of violence no matter how faint; as the musical ear, we sense every note and reckon with the presence of its magnitude, similitude, and its persistent refrain. If we miss so much as a single uttering, its seeds will multiply.

A year earlier, I had asked whether she wished to return to MEChA through an accountability process. Her three priorities were that she did not want to see Gerardo, involve the police, or let her family know. She feared that male members of her family could retaliate with serious violence. Turning to the police would have consequences for her and Gerardo. She chose to focus on her own healing and took a break from the university. Eventually, she told her family about the incident, completed her B.A. in Raza Studies, and returned to activism.

As curanderas (healers) in the classroom and participants in a community accountability process, we behold testimonies of violence, and we heal and seek to transform our trauma and our communities. Our task is to read the etchings of violence no matter how faint; as the musical ear, we sense every note and reckon with the presence of its magnitude, similitude, and its persistent refrain. If we miss so much as a single uttering, its seeds will multiply. We clean as healers, comb and sift through time, through terror, through nights of make-believe. We render the invisible visible, the unspoken spoken, and deliver the trespasses delivered against us. In doing community accountability work, we resolve to point out the proverbial elephant in every room. The skill of the committed participant/observer finely tunes a panorama of peripheralities, and every site, word, and gesture carries the culprit of the potential violence. We seek to see, name, and transform it. In the practice of community accountability, we are beholden to praxis and each other; we are the beholders of violations, of survival, of healing. It is in our hands.

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* This is a line from a poem by Mexican poet Antonio Machado.

This is a shortened version of an article that was shared with the survivor prior to publication. She expressed her full support for it, hoping that her story and experience can help other survivors to heal.

All names of students are pseudonyms.