Keith Runyan

“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

“It doesn’t make sense to say “believe all survivors” if we don’t also remember that most of us are survivors, which includes most people who cause harm. What we mean is we are tired of being silenced, dismissed, powerless in our pain, hurt over and over. Yes. But being loud is different from being whole, or even being heard, being cared for, being comforted, being healed. Being loud is different from being just. Being able to destroy is different from being able to generate a future where harm isn’t happening all around 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

“Accountability isn’t punishment, though it is frequently wielded as such.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice