Vision and principles

From HarmFreeZone

The Harm Free Zone (HFZ) project provides tools and trainings to local communities to strengthen and develop our ability to confront and transform state violence, intra-social conflict, and interpersonal conflict. We believe in a vision of justice that comes from within the community without the need for law enforcement, the court system, or the prison industry. Genuine security derives from strong relationships between community members, an understanding of power and inequality inside and outside our communities, and spaces for dialogue and growth.

Our goals are two-fold:

1. To facilitate community-driven strategies and methods to prevent or intervene in incidences of state violence, intra-social conflict, and interpersonal conflict.

2. To uncover and document intervention practices that already occur within distinct communities and/or networks, such as those among prisoners, sex workers, street organizations (gangs), vendors, immigrants, communities of color, queer & trans folks of color and everyday people.

We envision Harm Free Zones developing around the world that all share the following principles:

• Collective Action - When an individual is injured or threatened, it is a problem for the all of the community, not just for the individual or individuals involved. Harm Free Zones take collective responsibility for solving problems that arise.

• Understanding Power - Conflicts are addressed with an understanding of power and how it shapes our lives. Resolving a conflict often requires an understanding of oppressions, such as sexism and racism and how they interact with race and class.

• Commitment to Accountability - the peeps and organizations who make up Harm Free Zones are prepared to intervene during conflicts AND regularly work on developing the individuals' and the group's trust, conflict transformation skills, and commitment to building the inclusive communities.

• Respect - we will constantly seek to learn and implement ways of treating each other which honor who we are as complex human beings who are and have been targeted and are resisting genocide.

• Abolition - Harm Free Zones share a political vision that seeks to eliminate the need for prisons, policing, and surveillance by creating sustainable alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. Harm Free Zones are about living our vision for a better world through accountability, respect and hope.

• Hope - as people who are constantly targeted for annihilation, we commit ourselves not to internalize the hatred, conflict and inability to work with each other which was and is imposed on us by racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ableist institutions. We believe, and indeed see today, in our communities, new realities where our people are constructing new ways of loving each other, dealing with conflict and constructing a new world. Although we were never meant to survive as sister Audre Lorde told us, we are here living, thriving, loving and we are transforming the world!