Discussions of Transformative Justice and Accountability With Amita Swadihn
TW: Mentions of Childhood sexual abuse and rape In today’s episode I’ve invited Amita Swadhin to join into this conversation about transformative justice, abolition accountability and harm. Amita Swadhin is an educator, storyteller, activist and consultant dedicated to fighting interpersonal and institutional violence against young people. Their commitments and approach to this work stem from their experiences as a genderqueer, femme queer woman of color, daughter of immigrants, and years of abuse by their parents, including eight years of rape by their father. They are a frequent speaker at colleges, conferences and community organizations nationwide, and a consultant with over fifteen years of experience in nonprofits serving low-income, immigrant and LGBTQ youth of color in Los Angeles and New York City. Amita has been publicly out as a survivor of child sexual abuse since they interned at the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women in 1997. In 2016, Amita received a two-year Just Beginnings Collaborative Fellowship, allowing them to work full-time to end child sexual abuse and to help survivors heal. With this fellowship they have been working on The Mirror Memoirs project, an oral history project centering the narratives, healing and leadership of LGBTQ survivors of color in the movement to end child sexual abuse. Audio clips in this episode are from videos that are part of the Building Accountable Communities series created by Project NIA and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, which can be found here:
