Pod Mapping

Feeling supported by people around us when going through situations of harm or engaging in a challenging and uncomfortable accountability process makes a big difference on the outcome and the pace in which we get to heal. The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC) identified the need to name the type of relationship that is developed and sustained when engaging in such situations. They decided to call them Pods.

As described by Mia Mingus in a BATJC blog post in 2016, “your pod is made up of the people that you would call on if violence, harm or abuse happened to you; or the people that you would call on if you wanted support in taking accountability for violence, harm or abuse that you’ve done; or if you witnessed violence or if someone you care about was being violent or being abused.”

BATJC discovered that “most people have few solid, dependable relationships in their lives”. This mapping exercise allows people to recognize the difficulties in building this type of relationships but also opens the door to deepening existing ones. The current dominant culture makes it challenging for people to allow themselves to be vulnerable with others and keeps us in a constante sense of urgency and scarcity, not only of material good but of emotional connection. Intentionally building this type of relationships is, in itself, a form of resistance that creates alternatives that reflect the vision of the many worlds that we are trying to build.

Another finding by BATJC is that is harder for people to ask for support when they’ve done the harm. It is also harder for people to be willing to support harm doers and, the ones that do, often lack the tools and/or capacity to engage in the long process of supporting others be accountable. This is one of the main reasons why intentionally building these relationships prior to a situation of harm is so important for the existence of strong communities based on care and accountability.

Here is a guide from BATJC for you to start mapping your pods:

Above is our Pod Mapping Worksheet, which you can download here. We use this as a template to help people start to identify who could be in their pod(s). We invite people to fill out multiple worksheets for their different pods. This is only a basic template, people are welcome to create their own pod maps.

1)   Write your name in the middle grey circle.

2)   The surrounding bold-outlined circles are your pod. Write the names of the people who are in your pod. We encourage people to write the names of actual individuals, instead of things such as “my church group” or “my neighbors.”

3)   The dotted lines surrounding your pod are people who are “movable.” They are people that could be moved in to your pod, but need a little more work. For example, you might need to build more relationship or trust with them. Or maybe you’ve never had a conversation with them about prisons or sexual violence.

4)   The larger circles at the edge of the page are for networks, communities or groups that could be resources for you. It could be your local domestic violence direct service organization, or your cohort in nursing school, or your youth group, or a transformative justice group.

Your pod(s) may shift over time, as your needs or relationships shift or as people’s geographic location shift. We encourage people to have conversations with their pod people about pods and transformative justice, as well as to actively grow the number of people in their pod and support each other in doing so. Growing one’s pod is not easy and may take time. In pod work, we measure our successes by the quality of our relationships with one another and we invest in the time it takes to build things like trust, respect, vulnerability, accountability, care and love. We see building our pods as a concrete way to prepare and build resources for transformative justice in our communities.

Read the original post by BATJC here