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.

Proposed by Chandre Gould and Verne Harris in 2014 for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, liberatory memory work aims to release ourselves from cycles of violence and create conscious and just societies. We practice liberatory memory work by remembering the lives, stories, and nuances of people most impacted by state violence to challenge dominant narratives entrenched in systems of oppression. 

Narrative power is the agency to decide 1) if someone wants to tell a story, 2) how they want to share it, 3) when, and for whom. While narrative power can appear in commercials, legislative sessions, or a speech, AVP recognizes the narrative power inside every person. When those stories are told in authentic ways, together they can change collective understandings of an issue, an experience, and even history.

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.

In our work, we aim to center people who are “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 is systemic harm caused by public and private forces that violates our humanity, deprives us of our needs, and exerts control. This includes but is not limited to: 

• police violence, 
• psychiatric institutionalization,
• significant housing instability,   
• mass incarceration, 
• in-custody abuse and death, 
• immigration enforcement, 
• and the death penalty.  

AVP gathers and shares stories of those affected by state violence to hold institutions accountable. By telling their stories, individuals resist state violence and reclaim their narratives.

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 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.