Audio Interview with Martyna Starosta

By Martyna Starosta

My participation in various OWS working groups taught me that safer spaces don’t simply exist. It actually takes a lot of critical analysis, effort, and patience to create those.

My comrades and I had a lot of heated discussions about the surprisingly persistent figure of the “male anarchist hero” and the often outraging paradox of patriarchal behavior in anti-oppression working groups.

I recently interviewed the Brooklyn-based collective Support New York about this question. In this conversation, the volunteers Liz, Kat and Milo analyzed harmful patterns of behavior in radical communities and talked about their methods to transform these patterns.

Support New York is dedicated to heal the effects of sexual assault and abuse within the radical community.The collective focuses on meeting the needs of the survivor, and holding accountable those who have perpetrated harm. The volunteers also strive for a larger dialog within the community about consent, mutual aid, and challenging the society’s narrow definition of abuse.

Even though Support New York operates within a narrow local radius, it can serve as an inspiring case study of community empowerment and transformative justice.