You are invited to feel the weight of community struggle; to question how we understand harm and healing; and to remember our responsibility to one another.

Why we made this film?

We are 4 Vermonters who spent a year talking with folks on the frontlines of the struggle we are witnessing on our streets, in patches of woods and in our vestibules. We wanted to understand the roots of this struggle, rather than just emotionally react to what we are seeing and hearing.  

This film is first and foremost about how we might see each other as neighbors and not as “problems to be solved”.

 Granted, how we put this caring ethic into policy is more complex. How we balance and negotiate accountability, punishment and healing and the ways that this materializes when crime has occurred requires deliberate, nuanced and compassionate dialogue with all of us. 

These questions are crystallized in an ask byVermont’s Department of Corrections’ for over 90 million dollars to build a new facility for the 100-125 women who are incarcerated in Vermont.

Is this the best allocation of our collective monies in order to make our communities safer?

Local Organizations who are actively addressing the carcertal system: 

FreeHerVT and ACLU and Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform 

There are 17 Community Justice Centers around Vermont that all have concrete ways the public can be involved in meaningful work with directly impacted folks.

COSAs and Restorative/Reparative Panels are a great way to connect and learn from and with those folks who have committed crimes.