TRANSFORMING JUSTICE | Partnership for Safety and Justice talks with Latino Network’s Alejandra Galindo about listening to survivors’ stories
What do crime survivors of color need in the aftermath of trauma?
While decades of research have informed services that best meet crime survivors’ needs, remarkably little attention has been paid to the experiences of survivors of color. To better understand this gap, Partnership for Safety and Justice worked in deep collaboration with community-based advocates and leaders across the Portland area.
Following several community-led conversations with 40 Black, Indigenous, Latinx and multiracial survivors, we released the report “When We Tell Our Stories: How Survivors of Color are Most Harmed and Least Helped by the Public Safety System.”
[The full report is available in both English and Spanish.]
While participants’ experiences are as diverse as the people themselves, their voices converged over shared themes of invisibility, strength, distress, resilience, unhealed trauma and determination. The report’s insights pointed to four findings and four recommendations.
Among those findings was that most survivors of color do not have access to opportunities to heal.
We concluded that the need to heal — to restore one’s sense of safety and self — is critical to the person who has been harmed, and also to the health and strength of our families and communities. Without the opportunity to heal, survivors can continue to experience trauma personally, within families, and into future generations.
“When shit happens to you, it’s like normal,” one crime survivor said. “This is what happened to us. This is what happened to our parents. This is what happened to their parents. This is the way shit was set up for us.”
If you go
Webinar: “When We Tell Our Stories,” Survivors of Color and the Public Safety System
When: 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25
Register: Safetyandjustice.org/register
Survivors of color shared experiences of discrimination that included feeling invisible, lack of access to services, being disbelieved by law enforcement or, more commonly, being blamed for what happened to them. They described experiencing violence and racism at the hands of systems that are supposed to be supportive and protective.
When incidents like these happen repeatedly to one’s friends, family and community across generations, there is increased mistrust, and survivors are less likely to seek critical help for trauma, crime and violence. Such unresolved trauma can lead to devastating outcomes.
Latino Network was one of the key partners on this collaboration. After the release of “When We Tell Our Stories,” I spoke with Latino Network’s Alejandra Galindo, Community Healing Initiative manager. We talked about some of the themes that inspired our collaboration, including trauma, healing and why we need to make more space to listen to crime survivors’ voices.
Amy Davidson: People have been telling their personal stories as a way of advocating for themselves, and their families, and their communities for centuries. Why do you think that telling stories is especially important today, and particularly for Latinx folks?
Alejandra Galindo: It’s very important to share our stories. Sharing our stories is a way for people to heal. This is especially true for people of color.
When there’s unresolved trauma, it has an effect on the family or relationships. It’s hard to create a healthy or safe environment for our loved ones because we are hurting inside. That is reflected through our words or actions, and the family gets affected by unresolved trauma, and it affects our youth.
Davidson: What’s your story about why you advocate for better public safety?
Galindo: I’ve been working with my community for over 16 years in different settings. And of course, I have my own story. I just see the need and the challenges, the trouble that our community goes through in everyday life.
Our families experience stories of inequity, abuse, domestic violence, and most of the time, they don’t know where to go to get resources. They don’t know if it’s OK for them to call the police because of barriers like legal status here in the country. They fear calling the police and instead of being treated as a victim, being treated as an offender, and that they themselves will get caught in the system. Language is a huge barrier as well.
But by educating our community about their rights and the resources are that are available, we’re empowering them to speak out and share what happened to them. Not to be afraid. Instead, making them aware that the resources should be available to everyone in the community no matter their age, legal status, race, or if they’re able to speak the language.
Davidson: Can you share an example of how the families and communities you work with are affected by trauma?
Galindo: We may start working with a family, for example, where a youth struggles heavily with addiction. But when we get to know the family, we might find out that the mother was a victim of domestic violence. There may be heavy, heavy stuff that, just in listening, I am like, “Wow. How can anyone survive that? How can they wake up in the morning being willing to offer support her children and be optimistic?”
In a situation like that, the mother wouldn’t have the energy mentally or physically, and that definitely would have a negative impact on her children. There’s a domino effect where that youth now has a bucketful of challenges, trauma and barriers.
And the youth want to be recognized. They want to feel like they belong in the community. That can lead to getting involved with gangs, gun violence or different kinds of crimes. If the family doesn’t have a solid foundation, it can have negative consequence on the rest of the family.
Davidson: What is working? As somebody who’s working with people that are directly impacted by harm and violence, what gives you hope?
Galindo: The families. We never lose hope in the families that we work with. We believe in the youth. We believe that they have opportunity to change their life around. We see that every day.
Violence not only affects one person, but everybody around that person. We’re providing the tools or the skills to the family to overcome the barriers, to heal from trauma, and to thrive in the community.
That’s what I think is working: culturally specific services, services from people that they identify with — same color, same language and same culture — because they feel like we understand their struggles. They identify with the service providers, and we understand where they’re coming from.
Davidson: How can Latinx communities and other communities of color be better supported to share their stories?
Galindo: We contribute a lot to this country in different forms, and I hope that more services become available for at-risk youth and families who have been victims of crime. We need more culturally specific mental health services for our families, because healing is super important in order to thrive in the community.
We have a new president, a new administration who seems to understand and who wants to support our community. I hope that more resources become available for our community, that we’re not forgotten.
Amy Davidson is the Crime Survivor Program director at Partnership for Safety and Justice. Transforming Justice is periodic column from Partnership for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for public safety and criminal justice reform in Oregon.
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