Keith Runyan

“But if we want to create a world in which conflict and trauma aren’t the center of our collective existence, we have to practice something new, ask different questions, access again our curiosity about each other as a species.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

“Knee-jerk call outs say: those who cause harm or mess up or disagree with us cannot change and cannot belong. They must be eradicated. The bad things in the world cannot change, we must disappear the bad until there is only good left.
But one layer under that, what I hear is:
We cannot change.
We do not believe we can create compelling pathways from being harm doers to being healed, to growing.
We do not believe we can hold the complexity of a gray situation.
We do not believe in our own complexity.
We do not believe we can navigate conflict and struggle in principled ways.
We can only handle binary thinking: good/bad, innocent/guilty, angel/abuser, black/white, etc.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

“But lately, as the attacks grow faster and more vicious, I wonder: is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

“While all harms are not equal, even the most heinous require a way home.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice