This video features a powerful conversation between Dr. Dean Spade (Seattle University School of Law and collaborator with BCRW and Project NIA) and Dr. Xhercis Méndez (CSU Fullerton and founder of The Campus TJ Project) thinking about how best to organize responses to gender-based violence on campuses. We discuss lessons from the work that the The Campus TJ Project (now Listen Bridge Change) has done across campuses nationally to address harm. Dr. Mendez shares examples from the work she has done with faculty, staff, and administrators at institutions of higher education nationally to build local capacity to better respond to systemic harm, create adaptable accountability models, and expand the healing options available for a diverse range of survivors.

As university campuses continue to struggle to meet the call to address sexual violence, significant questions about what actually causes and could end this harm continue to surface. Movement organizing against punitive approaches have highlighted how the prosecution of individuals is a problematic and insufficient way to address sexual violence over the long-haul, which often leaves survivors without support or resolution. Transformative justice practitioners argue that we must imagine other ways forward that include addressing root causes and supporting collective transformation.