In a world where harm feels constant and outrage comes easy, what does it mean to seek justice without punishment? What does healing look like when the tools we’ve been given—police, prisons, shame, and exile—feel both unsatisfying and deeply entrenched?

In this powerful season finale, Michelle MiJung Kim confronts her own rage after her mother was mugged, and grapples with different approaches to addressing harm. Michelle invites us to wrestle with the hard questions: What actually makes us feel safe? Who gets punished, and who gets protected? And what might become possible if we practiced something different?

Featuring illuminating conversations with writer and disability justice activist Mia Mingus, this episode challenges the binary of good vs. bad people and opens the door to more expansive, healing possibilities.

If you’ve ever wrestled with the tension between your values and your reactions—between the world you want and the one we live in—this episode will speak directly to your heart. Honest, unflinching, and deeply human, it’s a call to imagine new ways of responding to harm that don’t replicate the very violence we’re trying to escape.

ABOUT THE EPISODE GUEST, MIA MINGUS

Mia Mingus is a writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice and disability justice. She is a queer physically disabled Korean transracial and transnational adoptee raised in the Caribbean. She works for community, interdependence and home for all of us, not just some of us, and longs for a world where disabled children can live free of violence, with dignity and love. As her work for liberation evolves and deepens, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence. Mia founded and currently leads SOIL: A Transformative Justice Project which builds the conditions for transformative justice to grow and thrive. She has been involved in transformative justice work for almost 2 decades and has supported numerous people, groups, families and communities in addressing harm, violence and abuse using transformative justice. She is an abolitionist and a survivor who believes that we must move beyond punishment, revenge and criminalization if we are ever to effectively break generational cycles of violence and create the world our hearts long for. She is passionate about building the skills, relationships and structures that can transform violence, harm and abuse within our communities and that do not rely on or replicate the punitive system we currently live in. Mia speaks and gives trainings about transformative justice throughout North America.

Follow Mia Mingus on Instagram: @miamingus

Mia’s Blog: Leaving Evidence

ABOUT THE HOST, MICHELLE MIJUNG KIM

Michelle MiJung Kim is one of today’s most compelling voices on courage, complexity, and...