# data[].attributes.body
”Activism is the art of making my life matter”

# data[].attributes.body
”Maybe love with accountability is paying it forward instead of looking backward”

# data[].attributes.body
”Compassionate accountability is - as hard as it is for me to say - recognizing that they are human first before they become rapists.

They have a heart. We just need to understand what happened - something happened that steered them toward causing harm to someone else - and we need to help them through that.

Compassionate accountability involves us not judging but working to understand.”

# data[].attributes.body
”In spite of what I endured, I have no excuse for treating myself and others poorly. It is so easy for the hurt to hurt people. Love with accountability stops the cycle.”

# data[].attributes.body
”Truth is complex. My father secured my liberation and he betrayed that freedom.”

# data[].attributes.body
" Accountability moves us toward a world where Black girl won't have to inherit Black mother's trauma. Black girl and Black Mother no longer lean into the false protection of respectability politics, body policing, religion, and covering up -- they can't (be) fly all bogged down like that!"

# data[].attributes.body
"By modeling for them that we are not afraid of discussing their bodies, we are empowering them with templates to do the same. Therefore, in treating them as sole proprietors of their bodies, we are helping frame their interactions with others around their bodies so that they may be better equipped to fend off would-be abusers."

# data[].attributes.body
When I hear about “community accountability,” what I think people mean is that the whole community will work to hold a single person “accountable” to a harmful action or series of actions. This model forgets that abuse thrives in silence and isolation, and that can only occur when a community turns away from great injustice. Thus, whole communities are implicated in all instances of child sexual abuse. I don’t need anyone to confess their guilt publicly—I already know who harmed me, and in many cases, so does everyone else. I need a community where everyone recognizes the role they played in that violation.

# data[].attributes.body
"Black girl's battleground body become burden, become this thing that she didn't ask for, inherited. Her body grew fast, and as much as Black mother tried to keep her, she could not."

# data[].attributes.body
"Swallowtail butterflies rest

on petals pulsating purpureal shades of violet.

Leaves dance while oak trees wave their arms

in celebration. At last

I return to where I first saw her where I first see me as a little girl & where I tell her

I love you.

I've always loved you

& I never left you

I never will leave you."

# data[].attributes.body
"Honesty is also a crucial component of this accountability process. You have to love yourself enough to be brutally honest, because this is very important to the process. Without this, accountability is superficial at best, and healing hollow."

# data[].attributes.body
"When we ask children to be things that they are not, and to express themselves only in ways that we deem appropriate, we communicate the message that what we want for their bodies is more important than their self-determination."

# data[].attributes.body
"We first and foremost need to acknowledge that the person is human. Acknowledge their beauty. Acknowledge their ability to breathe as their right to life. This, in and of itself, is us practicing accountability on some levels. This is a necessary first step: to recognize and honor the humanity of the person(s) involved.

It is important that we recognize the person who caused harm is also a victim of their own violence. We need to examine our own fears and try to reach an understanding of how our own behaviors are reinforcing the behaviors that allowed the violence to happen in the first place."

# data[].attributes.body
"My legacy is mine to create - the hope and promise of an emergence that i dared not dream before."

# data[].attributes.body
"Cycles of sexual violence, hidden and unspoken, do not shield future generations from abuse. In our silence, we stand complicit."