May We Be Accountable

True strength of life includes accountability. It's such a buzz word these days, but what does it really mean to take accountability. As is the case with most things in life there's intrinsic and extrinsic truth that are parts of a holistic reality. Extrinsic accountability is demonstrated change of actions over time by letting our mistakes change us. Intrinsic accountability is often much harder. This is shifting the understanding of our beliefs to more deeply reflect our core values. None of this can happen over night or in a social media post or on a podcast. An apology is a small, but very important part of any accountability process. When done well, saying I am sorry for our actions stating our intentions for not doing the thing that was outside of our values and integrity or it hurt someone.

So how does a society, community, or organization take accountability for its actions?

First it starts by identifying the harmful actions and de-escalating. For where we are right now it seems like there are so many harmful actions happening at so many levels. This is where bystander training comes in. (If you've never heard of bystander training you should check out https://righttobe.org) While it may sound crazy some of these concepts that can be applied to individual situations as well as larger groups of people like corporations and organizations. Remember that when directly engaging with Tesla owners about why they shouldn't own Teslas a lot of people sold them. One of the most powerful things we can do is engage more with the people who are being harmed. In bystander training when somebody is being harmed you are supposed to tell the aggressor to stop, but the majority of your focus is meant to be on offering support to the people who are most impacted.

By supporting those who are actively being harmed by an aggressor we draw the attention away from the person who's doing harm and showing them that they are hurting people. Doing this type of thing is often deeply impactful and it's one part of how true restoration can happen. It is very difficult for a justice process to move forward when the aggressor is still causing harm, but it's not impossible. When we are talking about justice on a systemic level its going to take a large group of people doing all parts of the 5 Ds of bystander training, but the majority of our focus needs to be on those harmed and not the people in our society causing harm. This gives power to the people we want to have the power.

This type of system change must also come with internal accountability. For example, when the USA hired Nazi scientists after WWII their actions perpetuated an intrinsic systemic belief that doing something like that was okay, when it was not. If the internal beliefs change in a direction of getting better at hiding our hate and not dismantling that hate then we are actually causing more intergenerational harm because the entire system of hate gets better at oppression. To best understand a true accountability process we must look at the beliefs of our forefathers and mothers and identify which of their beliefs we need to dismantle within us. Where some get this wrong is the belief that accountability itself is somehow tarnishing our history. I'd argue that it's actually honoring it more fully. By honor indigenous culture in the United States and the genocide perpetrated we acknowledge the violence of our culture. When we acknowledge that the Confederate system of economics that centered slavery was wrong and dehumanizing we can truly change our beliefs about what's happening right now by seeing how we are being dehumanizing towards one another right now.

In a lot of ways it's my job to do this work for TCN. To say that we are learning, growing, dismantling our ancestors beliefs and our own and that we will make mistakes. No organization is perfect and TCN and I have certainly made mistakes. I would rather be somebody who takes the risk of stepping in and checking on my trans community and telling the aggressors to stop hurting us than be somebody who sits on the sidelines. In today's world it's so hard to know what the right thing to do is because people are weaponizing this model to flood the zone and distract us. It's a fog to confuse and disorient us. In all of that we must keep things very simple. So I will leave you with these questions to reflect on:

• Am I doing more good for my community or am I trying to take something away from somebody else?

• Am I actually living up to my beliefs right now?

• Do I need to give an aggressor my attention right now or can I empower those who are being harmed?

With love and joy,

Remelya Jackalope