What do successful alternatives to policing, prosecution and prison actually look like? And how would they work? A group of Chicago’s leading community safety, health and justice innovators gathered at the DePaul Art Museum last summer to provide much-needed clarity on these crucial questions.
Artists, survivors of violence, entrepreneurs and business leaders, public defenders, policy experts, restorative justice practitioners and system-impacted people sat down for a series of conversations while exploring Remaking the Exceptional, a groundbreaking exhibition on torture and incarceration.
The conversations expose common myths about crime and punishment and explain a range of critical issues and innovations, including restorative justice, violence interruption, copaganda, pretrial detention and the criminalization of survivors, among others.
This short film — the first in a series named after the exhibition and produced by Zealous — focuses on our current, failed approach to violence, what “restorative justice” means, and how the practice offers a path forward for healing, accountability, health and safety.
The film features artist and activist Bella BAHHS, health advocate and entrepreneur Tanya Lozano, entrepreneur and trauma specialist Johnny Page, and restorative justice practitioner Jenny Viets.
Click here to read more on restorative justice.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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