RESOURCES
ZINES
DICTIONARY
ARCHIVE
An archive is a collection of records, testimonies, stories, artworks, or items that have been assembled together, often with the goal of preserving information about particular events, people, and periods. Archives are often used to shape the historical record and to influence public opinion and memory on what and who gets remembered.
COMMUNITY ARCHIVE
Community archives are collections of records, testimonies, stories, artworks, or items that have been created and assembled together by the people whose lives are documented in the archive. In Community Archives, members of respective communities make decisions about what is collected, how it is described, who has access to it, and what the aims or goals of the archive are. Community Archives often emerge out of resistance to historical records born out of erasure and colonization.
NARRATIVE POWER
Narrative power is the power to shape perspectives and depictions of events, systems, and histories by ensuring that the people most impacted by them have the power to decide:
- if they want to share their story,
- how they want to share their story,
- when they want to share their story,
- who they want to share their story to,
- and who they are sharing their story for.
ABOLITION
Abolition is the effort to end prisons, policing, and surveillance and radically re-imagine how we keep us safe. It invites us to hold each other accountable and build models of community care. Abolition is collective. It can be neighborhood safety plans, accessible healthcare, education, housing, food, clean air and water. At AVP, we believe in storytelling as a powerful tool for abolition—to combat state narratives that justify carceral punishment and to guide our freedom dreams.
DIRECTLY IMPACTED
While we are all affected by systems of oppression, “directly impacted” people are those with firsthand lived experiences facing the most direct and harsh consequences of state violence. We often say that experience is expertise. We honor the expertise of directly impacted people as those with the most intimate understanding of state violence and its impact on individuals and communities.
STATE VIOLENCE
State violence refers to the harm inflicted by governing authorities that seeks to undermine our humanity, deprive us of our essential needs, and exert control over us. This harm can manifest in various ways, including but not limited to:
- psychiatric institutionalization,
- housing instability,
- mass incarceration,
- in-custody abuse and death,
- immigration enforcement,
- and the death penalty.
TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE
Broadly, transformative justice is a living framework and set of practices seeking to dismantle the systems that create conditions for violence in the first place. Transformative justice guides our dreams for a world that centers care instead of punishment in our response to harm and loss. We practice this through liberatory memory work, advocacy for decarceration, and direct support for our community.
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Restorative justice is a practice and culture of care where people are held accountable to harm they cause or inflict. With an emphasis on relationship-building, restorative justice at AVP includes collaborative agreements, regular check-ins, and restorative circles. AVP considers restorative justice to be a practice that’s more than just repairing harm. Rather than relying on punishment, the focus is on meeting the immediate and direct needs caused by harm.
WRITINGS & REFLECTIONS
AVP staff, collaborators, and our communities often write and reflect on violence and its aftermath, as well as individual and collective journeys of healing, resilience, memory, joy, meaning making, and reclamation. We also write and reflect on the intersections of liberatory memory work, abolition, and transformative justice.
TOOLS
Children who are Impacted by a Family Member’s Death Sentence or Execution
This fact sheet offers guidance for supporting children who have family members on death row or who have been executed after serving a death sentence. The tool provides information on what children may be experiencing and how you can help them.
TAVP Spanish Language Metadata
Para solicitar que se traduzca una transcripción de la entrevista al español, comuníquese con archive@texasafterviolence.org con el título de asunto: Solicitud de traducción de la entrevista. [To request an interview transcript be translated into Spanish, please contact archive@texasafterviolence.org with the subject heading: Interview Translation Request.] El metadatos fue traducido por Katie Coldiron.
Trauma-Informed Interviewing Resource List
Resources that may be useful for those considering or planning an interview project around topics that deal with trauma.
The Death Penalty: An Overview for Mental Health Clinicians
The After Violence Project views the death penalty as a public health issue and seeks to draw attention to the traumatic impact of the practice on a range of stakeholders. We’ve created this brief overview to address some common questions, point you to useful resources, and highlight some intersections between the death penalty and the mental health community.
Should I Collect and Archive These Videos? A Decision Tree
We collaborated with WITNESS to bring you this decision tree about whether or not to collect and archive videos documenting state violence and human rights abuses. Video collections can be used in many ways to protect and defend human rights – illuminating patterns, telling fuller stories, or as evidence to strengthen advocacy campaigns or legal efforts for justice. But collecting and archiving videos takes time, persistence, and resources, and can put people at risk. Before you go down that road, ask yourself the questions in this decision tree to make sure it’s the right move.
Interviewing with Care: Documenting Stories of State Violence
We collaborated with WITNESS to bring you this zine about interviewing with care in the aftermath of state violence. This guide is for activists, advocates, journalists, filmmakers, and anyone conducting interviews on camera for advocacy, media, historical or artistic purposes with individuals who have been directly impacted by state-sanctioned violence.
Consent Flowchart
Ongoing and informed consent is a process that takes place before, during, and after an interview. Follow these steps to make sure you are adequately communicating about consent with the person you are hoping to interview.
Death Penalty and the Victims
In 2016, the United Nations for Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner published the book Death Penalty and the Victims. Both our Access to Treatment Director, Susannah Sheffer, and Founder and Board Member, Walter C. Long, were featured in this incredible publication. Find their articles in Chapter 3, “The ‘Hidden’ Third Parties as Victims.”
Preparing for Your Virtual Interview
Being interviewed can raise a lot of questions, concerns, or unknown feelings. TAVP worked with And Also Too to create a resource for folks to read through prior to their storytelling experience. Narrators can understand the why and how of sharing your story, as well as what to expect before, during, and after their interview. Feel free to use and share this resource.
REPORTS
2024 IMPACT REPORT
2023 IMPACT REPORT
2022 IMPACT REPORT
2021 IMPACT REPORT
2020 IMPACT REPORT
NOBODY TO TALK TO (2019)
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