WEology was written by incarcerated people about how transformative justice is practiced from behind prison walls. The book was produced by LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty and written by Qu’eed Batts, Avron “JaJa” Holland, David “Dawud” Lee, and Nyako Pippen – four incarcerated mentors, advocates, and activists in Pennsylvania.
In the words of author David Lee:
In this book, we highlight how TJ works in the heart of the prison industry. We show how transformation takes place, and how harm is prevented. We also show how we help each other heal even after harm has taken place.
We do our best to limit input or involvement from the state as we work towards our collective care. However, we are not naive, because we know that totally eliminating the state is not possible inside or outside of prison. Therefore, we do our absolute best to accomplish our goals of transformation, healing, and preventing harm or additional harm with as little state involvement as humanly possible. We are not perfect at this work, because we are still learning and teaching as we move about, but we are trying. We think that it is time for people out in the streets doing TJ work to connect with us as we discover new methods or old methods to incorporate into this important process.
The work that incarcerated human beings are doing to assist with the transformation of other incarcerated human beings is vital, because most of us will someday return to our communities. We want to return as healers, not as harm doers. We have been doing this work because we care deeply about our communities, but with the support of the community we could accomplish a lot more.
We hope that this publication proves to be both of interest and use to you. We also want you to know that we still have more copies! So if you or your organization has an idea for where or how to distribute them or incorporate them into your work, please reach out to us. We’d love to collaborate.