Our Holistic Vision of Community Safety
Credit: Denny Khamphanthong
Community safety is a complex issue that can become divisive and give rise to reactive and narrow approaches. Our legal system often focuses on punishment, but not necessarily true accountability for the person who committed harm, nor healing for the victim or survivor of harm. Furthermore, the threat of punishment is insufficient to prevent harm from occurring in the first place. A holistic approach, on the other hand, is grounded in the belief that healing, community-building, cross-racial solidarity, and addressing the root causes of harm can create lasting community safety. It is a multi-pronged approach that addresses harm in the short-term, harm prevention for the long-term, and community thriving for a fuller sense of safety.
True community safety—not just the absence of violence, but also community thriving—is a hefty goal.
It will take multiple, interconnected communities building power together to work toward this vision of safety. But to work together, we must heal from trauma, strengthen connections within our own communities, and close cross-racial divides. That is why healing, community-building, and empathy are embedded throughout our work.
We’ve named several goals to make our vision more concrete:
Survivors have the tools and resources to heal from harm from crisis to long-term recovery
Communities of color come together for ongoing cross-racial healing and solidarity
Effective community-based and long-term solutions are implemented to increase public safety
Narrative and culture change supports victim-centered safety, cross-racial healing and policies that address structural causes of harm
Society is free from racism and other systems of oppression
We recognize that fully achieving some of these goals will take decades or multiple generations. Our partner organizations’ long histories of community-based work provides a vantage point that allows us to build a longer term path while addressing immediate needs.
Not just anti-Asian hate crimes: A holistic view of harm
Anti-Asian hate crimes are deeply harmful and destabilizing for our community members. However, they are not the only incidents that threaten community safety. When we see anti-Asian hate crimes decrease, but community members still feel unsafe, we must remember that there is a wider world of harm that people experience.
Note: This image explains how hate crimes fit into a broader category of hate acts. Hate acts harm our community even if they are not considered crimes. Reprinted from Stop AAPI Hate, Shades of Hate: A Deeper Understanding of Asian American & Pacific Islander Experiences (p. 4), 2023, San Francisco, CA: Stop AAPI Hate.
Many acts of anti-Asian hate (Figure 1), such as verbal harassment and discrimination, make our community members feel unwelcome and unsafe, but are not crimes and are often unreported. CCSJ focuses on survivors and their healing, whether or not their experience is classified as a crime.
Furthermore, violent anti-Asian hate crimes are far from the only violence we experience. Many violent incidents are not motivated by anti-Asian hate and many are committed by people that we know, as opposed to strangers. Finally, our community members experience harms beyond violence and anti-Asian hate that cause physical, psychological, and economic insecurity. These harms can include property theft, wage theft, evictions, and gender-based harassment. To achieve community safety, which includes community thriving, we must address all of these forms of harm through long-term and root cause solutions.
