3-part speaker series When Survival is Punished: What We Can Learn and Do in Massachusetts. As one theme from this Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2021 proclaims, there is No Survivor Justice Without Racial Justice.

This series kicks off on Wednesday, November 3, 2021 at 11AM with a training by Aminah Elster of Survived and Punished who will ground us in the stark realities of how and why survivors are punished and funneled into the criminal legal system. Following the training, we will also hear from Sashi James of Families for Justice as Healing and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls about the criminalization and incarceration of survivors here in Massachusetts and what we can do about it.

JDI’s 3-part speaker series When Survival is Punished: What We Can Learn and Do In Massachusetts aims to deepen our knowledge of how many traditional system responses can fail to meet the needs of survivors of sexual assault and/or domestic violence and in fact punish or criminalize survivors for the very things they do to stay alive.

This series builds upon JDIs policy brief Racial Equity, Policing and Survivorship: JDI Examines Our Relationship to Criminal Legal System Responses and our ongoing policy and advocacy initiatives that focus on addressing the issue of “criminalizing survivorship.”

Register here for the entire series or any of the specific sessions: https://jdi.coalitionmanager.org/eventmanager/trainingevent/seriesdetails/13

• Session 1: November 3, 2021 - Overview: How is Survival Punished? 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM EST

• Session 2: January 26, 2022 - Survivors at the Intersections of Oppression: Advocacy Beyond Carceral Approaches 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

• Session 3: February 23, 2022 - Pathways to Prison: Younger Survivors and the School-to-Prison Pipeline 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

ASL interpretation and CART captioning will be available at all three sessions.

Come join JDI as they engage with local and national experts to explore how each of us can play a part in undoing the criminalization of survival in Massachusetts.