Listening for a change

What are the effects of serious violence in Texas?

People whose loved ones have been murdered or executed, or who themselves have been violated directly, often believe that no one can possibly understand their pain. They are right.

What would happen if we stopped to listen to the lived experiences of people whose lives have been directly touched -- and radically altered -- by acts of violence or ongoing conditions of routine violence?

How would our understanding shift if we heard from survivors of violence that shocked and disrupted otherwise calm individual lives, as well as from those for whom violence is familiar? In other words, what if we listened both to women and men who have lived through individual acts of violence as well as to those people who experience structural violence?

What if we attended to residents of colonias, rural areas, and other low-income or marginalized places? What would happen if we listened to people -- including Black people, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people - who have endured specific forms of historically ingrained, institutionalized oppression? What might people with disabilities, the formerly incarcerated, the modestly educated, the poor, immigrants, and the elderly teach us?

What if each person spoke only from her or his own experience?

Listening with empathy and without judgment to narratives of lived experience, The Texas After Violence Project seeks to understand the effects of serious violence, including capital punishment, and to engage communities in thinking collectively, critically, and constructively about how to respond to and prevent violence most effectively.

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