Back from an accidental hiatus to examine the intersection of accountability and belonging belonging.substack.com/p/issue-62-belonging-and-accountability?r=3rgdo&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web (1/x)
I've been thinking about accountability for a few months, largely in the need to move from accountability as a vehicle for blame, separation, judgment and suffering to a set of relational practices and beliefs about care, love, trust (2/x)
twitter.com/vanessamason/status/1542246763041390592?s=20&t=LTNHgJbv_psFH6pMKWmKKg
Activist @miamingus has crafted a brilliant 4-part framework for accountability: self-reflection, apology, repair and changed behavior (3/x)
Present-day accountability at a collective or societal level could be described as accountability-avoidant or punitive culture: outward judgment, consent-less suffering, moralized unworthiness, and maintaining the status quo. (4/x)
The components of punitive culture are embedded in our political systems such as criminal justice and policing, economies through enabling poverty, and cultures such as the violence of objectivity, hierarchies, and religious beliefs of hellfire and damnation (5/x)
Punitive culture masquerades as accountability through fear, impeding relationships we need. Our relationships experience “illness/injury” that arise w/ conflict and accountability practices are medicines that we can use to treat these conditions. (6/x)
Outward judgment relies on accounting of errors and harms by individuals and institutions with power over others without consent or care, weakening the desire and capacity for self-reflection. (7/x)
Punitive culture sees apologies as weaknesses or unnecessary, preferring to impose suffering at or above perceived levels of harm. Within criminal justice at least, the suffering incarceration is an ineffective response to harm and protecting safety. (8/x) journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715100?ai=7st&mi=3elpax&af=R
Moralizing worthiness of individuals and other populations separates people into "good" or "bad" categories as determined by unquestionable higher authorities like God or science. You can't repair that which is destined to be broken. (9/x)
Punitive culture resists accountability through co-option, dismissal, and betrayal to sustain the status quo of systems and institutions: eg. 2020's Overton window for racial reckoning has narrowed with the Biden admin's plan for 100K cops. (10/x)
Disrupting the inertia of punitive culture requires reclaiming/naming experiences and expressing the full range of emotions that arose from the harm. The contestation of what constitutes harm and who is harmed helps to move toward awareness that comes from self-reflection (11/x)
As we endure the Age of Omni-Crisis, we can expect more frequent, complex, larger-scale harms that will defy good vs. bad dichotomies, making them harder to identify, emotionally intense, with more complicated pathways to repair and changed behavior (12/x)
How might we re-imagine accountability practices and beliefs to satisfy our human needs for safety, connection and sense making and our environmental needs for stability and regeneration? (13/x)
October's events will explore accountability more in depth. Join the 30 minute signals scavenger hunt on October 12 to share disruptions and innovations of how accountability looks, feels and is experienced today to cultivate belonging:
twitter.com/i/spaces/1MYxNgbvqvwKw
Join the 90 minute monthly meetup on October 26 for an interactive workshop co-creating those new practices, policies, and beliefs of accountability-nurturing cultures: lu.ma/october2022meetup