loveWITHaccountability®

What if we didn’t weaponize accountability in the name of justice? What if we viewed accountability as a radical form of love grounded in the belief that we are all capable of causing harm? Harm is on a vast spectrum. Most of us have caused some form of harm on our life’s journey, and it is often not the sum total of our humanity. "loveWITHaccountabilty® is an experiential invitation to center the harmed without discarding the harm doer.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons’s award-winning cultural work expresses its voice through the art of documentary filmmaking, writing, and activism for 27-years. Her work is informed by her lived experiences as a Black feminist lesbian, a childhood sexual abuse survivor, an adult rape survivor, and a 19-year Theravadin Buddhist student and practitioner.  Aishah is the producer/director of the 2006 groundbreaking and acclaimed Ford Foundation-funded film, NO! The Rape Documentary  (AfroLez® Productions) and the editor of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press, 2019). The anthology emerged from Aishah’s #loveWITHaccountability® Project. Her third project will complete a trilogy of Black survivor-centered cultural works that utilize storytelling as a praxis for healing and ending adult rape and childhood sexual violence without relying on the criminal (in)justice system. Presently, Aishah is one of nineteen 2020 Soros Justice Fellows, and a student in the 2021-2023 Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program.  She is on Twitter and Instagram, @afrolez