In 2022, the Peer Reentry team launched the first reentry dinner, which are now typically held every month or every other month. The reentry dinners are for our survivor and system-impacted community to gather, commune, and enjoy one another's company. For many, these dinners serve as a reunion with friends and loved ones they once only knew on the inside. The Peer Reentry Program is a survivor-led and envisioned program that provides holistic support to survivors returning home from incarceration.

Led by CTJC art therapist Shalom Parker, the Grief Vessel Workshop is a place for survivors and system-impacted folks to safely explore grief and honor it by creating a container to hold it, while also learning a new medium of ceramics. The workshop is currently ongoing and will culminate with an art show over the summer.

After a two-year pause caused by the pandemic and the shifting needs of our community, we re-launched the Realizing and Implementing Strategies to End Police Violence (RISE) meetings in 2022. Held monthly, RISE meetings are a place for CTJC organizers and those who have experienced police violence directly or indirectly to build power, strategize, and share knowledge about campaigns that impact our community.

CTJC coordinates a Speakers Bureau, where survivors and family members share their personal testimony about their experiences and perspective regarding incarceration, the reparations campaign, and the ongoing work at the Center. More than 1,200 students and educators have heard directly from survivors in classrooms this year through our Speakers Bureau.

Since the early days of CTJC, our team—from community organizers to Learning Fellows to therapists—have accompanied survivors to their court dates. Navigating the legal system is incredibly emotional and traumatizing, and especially for survivors. In 2022, we stood with 118 survivors at 131 hearings. Learn more about ways to plug into the Court Support program below.

Over many months and many conversations, the CTJC team collectively wrote this piece as both an analysis to name the direct links between systemic and intracommunal violence, and an invitation for folks join us in an ongoing conversation to explore the questions our communities have faced for generations. We know that the conditions that our communities face are no accident when we live in a system that defines safety as locking people away and separating individuals from their families and communities.

Launched at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, the Survivor Repair Fund is our mutual aid fund for survivors. It is community funded and 100% of the proceeds are distributed directly to survivors. Since May 2022, The Survivor Repair Fund has moved $23,000 in mutual aid directly to survivors. We are so grateful to be able to support our survivor community in this way through radical resourcing.