Discussions on Downstate
In offering engagement around the questions raised by Downstate, we’ve gathered voices that are deeply invested in the question: Where do we go from here?
Downstate tells the story of four formerly incarcerated men, all of whom have been convicted for sexual abuse of children, whose lives are shaped by the restrictions of the sex offenders registry. Abuse can take everything away from a person, from a child, with immeasurable and debilitating consequences. But the registry, and the laws that surround it, are not effective in keeping our children or our communities safe. There are statistics that support this reality, as Literary Director Lizzie Stern lays out in her Almanac essay, American Tragedy. And in many cases, the registry and the carceral system do not provide healing, justice, or increased safety to the survivor.
As a society, we otherize, isolate, and punish people convicted of these crimes. In many cases, we take away nearly everything they have, as we see from the stories of the men in this play. But what does “an eye for an eye” offer? Taking everything away from someone who took everything from another does not interrupt the systems that cause abuse. It is reductionist, and presupposes that these categories are mutually exclusive, ignoring the reality that many people who abuse have themselves experienced abuse. It does not interrupt the powers of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and rape culture. It does not interrupt the root causes in society that continue to create the conditions that lead to child abuse.
Transformative Justice and Abolition offer a vision for an alternative. Transformative Justice is an approach to violence built around individual justice alongside communal liberation, imagining and practicing anti-carceral responses to interpersonal harm. Abolition is a goal, strategy, and political organizing tool focused on ending institutions of punishment such as incarceration, policing, and surveillance, and instead investing in lasting, life-giving institutions and community support systems.
The thinkers and activists we have assembled in this series offer a range of perspectives to engage with the challenging questions the play surfaces. There are individuals whose lives have been fundamentally shaped by abuse, individuals with convictions affected by registry laws, abolitionists, academics, justice workers, and storytellers who have been dreaming and building toward where we go from here – from this home in Downstate Illinois, and the many living rooms, prisons, and homeless shelters where similar stories tumble forth.
Theater asks us to use our imagination, to dive into worlds and possibilities, sometimes familiar and sometimes new, in service of what we might discover in this new space. There, we might be surprised by what we learn about ourselves, about the world at large. In this place, what might have previously seemed implausible sits right before our eyes, just as real as anything else. Transformative Justice and Abolition ask the same of us as theater; they call us to imagine new realities, realities that meet harm with care, accountability, and justice as “love in public,” in the words of Dr. Cornel West. When we allow ourselves to imagine this world, the prospect of building it grows more tangible. Let’s imagine a different world; from there, we can build it together.
-- Sivan Battat
Curator of Public Programming Series
"Care is the Antidote to Violence”*
Saturday, November 19th, 2022 @ 5:00 pm
with panelists Amita Swadhin, RJ Maccani and Jenani Srijeyanthan
When harm happens, how do we hold it within community? What does a survivor-centered justice process look like, and how might it support healing? What modules exist outside of carceral and punitive systems to address harm and support survivors? Join activists, academics and abolitionists at 5:00 pm on November 19 as they discuss forgiveness and transformative justice after sexual harm at the personal and collective levels.
*From Saidiya Hartman, via Mariame Kaba
Click here for a transcript and audio recording of the event.
"Prisons Cannot Protect Us"*
Saturday, December 3rd, 2022 @ 5:00pm
with panelists Dr. Emily Horowitz and Willie Trent, and Judith Levine
“Why should we care about those who have done terrible things to others? After all, society tells us, they made a choice to do something that caused their predicament. Yet the reality is that registries do absolutely nothing to deal with the scourge of sexual harm. They don’t make us safer. They’re merely a punitive tool of social control that subjects millions to cruelty and harm that then spreads to their families and communities.”
-Dr. Emily Horowitz
Downstate asks: What do we do with these individuals in society? What might we do better? How do we heal from harm without repeating the cycle? Join us at 5:00 pm on December 3rd for a conversation with justice field experts and those affected by the registry on the challenging, visceral questions around the justice system brought up by Bruce Norris' gripping work.
Click here for a transcript and audio recording of the event.
Downstate programming has received generous support from the Roy Cockrum Foundation.
