CI Toolkit: What Does Interpersonal Violence Look Like? feat. Mimi Kim & Shira Hassan

September 28, 2022 Beyond Prisons

This is the second episode in our Creative Interventions series, where we explore this fantastic and practical toolkit for stopping interpersonal violence and speak with some of the people whose organizing efforts directly informed it.

We speak with Mimi and Shira Hassan about the basics of interpersonal violence as outlined in the Creative Interventions Toolkit. If you’ve got the toolkit at home, which you can purchase from AK press or access for free at creative-interventions.org, we’re touching on some of the topics in Section 2: Some Basics Everyone Should Know. There’s a lot more in this section than what we get to in the episode, so we highly suggest checking it out.

After Shira tells us a bit about her work including a follow-up workbook she and Mariame Kaba created to build upon the Creative Interventions Toolkit, she and Mimi share what the term "interpersonal violence" means to them, and what it can look like. They explain why it’s important to assess power dynamics when determining if an intervention should be attempted, and how we can recognize how interpersonal violence impacts people other than those most involved.

The release of this episode coincides with the publication of a new workbook companion for the CI Toolkit which features useful and practical worksheets and tools. The CI workbook was just released through AK Press. A google doc version of the workbook which you can use to adapt to your own situation of harm is available for free at creative-interventions.org,

You can find links to further resources in the episode notes, including Shira’s amazing new anthology, Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction, which is available for pre-order now and comes out on October 4 from Haymarket Books. We highly recommend you check that out and support Shira's work however you can.

Shira Hassan has trained and spoken nationally on the sex trade, harm reduction, self-injury, healing justice and transformative justice. Currently working as a fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, Shira runs The Help Desk . The Help Desk offers supportive thought partnership to individuals and groups working to interrupt crises and violence without using the police. Along with Mariame Kaba, she is the co-author of Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators and the author of Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction.

Mimi Kim is the founder of Creative Interventions and a co-founder of INCITE! She has been a long-time activist, advocate and researcher challenging gender-based violence at its intersection with state violence and creating community accountability, transformative justice and other community-based alternatives to criminalization. As a second generation Korean American, she locates her political work in global solidarity with feminist anti-imperialist struggles, seeking not only the end of oppression but of the creation of liberation here and now. Her recent publications include 2020’s “The Carceral Creep” and 2018’s “From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice”. She is currently working on The CHAT Project, a non-law enforcement restorative justice project addressing domestic and sexual violence in Contra Costa County, California.

Mimi and Shira are also partnering on a re-boot of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project or STOP featuring stories of everyday people creatively and collectively ending violence. Stay tuned.

Alright, that’s it for now. You can find links to the CI website and toolkit as well as other resources in the episode notes. Thanks for listening and here’s our conversation.