Prefigurative Community Building (Part 25)
Consent-Based Conflict Transformation Circles: A Power With Approach to Healing Harm
The default ways society handles harm (punishment, banishment, shame, and carceral logic) don't actually transform it. They rarely create safety, and they often cause further trauma, especially for those already marginalized. Many of our movements and communities mirror these systems, responding to conflict with exclusion, escalation, or silence. But there is another way.
Consent-Based Conflict Transformation Circles offer a framework rooted in Power With, not Power Over. These are non-hierarchical, non-punitive methods of responding to conflict and harm that center consent, accountability, healing, and collective responsibility. Unlike punitive systems that seek retribution or institutional processes that impose top-down decisions, these circles emphasize relational repair and co-created processes, with no one forced to participate, speak, or forgive.
Instead of deciding for people what justice should look like, these circles ask:
What does healing look like for everyone involved?
And then they work, slowly and consensually, to move toward that.
Step-by-Step Guide to Starting a Consent-Based Conflict Transformation Circle
Step 1: Learn the Foundations of Transformative Justice and Consent Culture
Start by studying the principles of Transformative Justice (TJ), which offer an alternative to carceral and punitive systems. Understand that TJ is not a one-size-fits-all method, it’s an evolving set of practices grounded in accountability, community-based safety, and healing.
Resources:
Step 2: Build a Container of Trust
Before facilitating a circle, form a group of 3–5 trusted people to begin learning and practicing together. This isn’t a committee or an authority, it’s a relational scaffold. Ensure that everyone understands and agrees on the basic ethics: no coercion, no forced outcomes, no rushing. This group might eventually serve as circle facilitators, but the first step is building a shared sense of purpose and commitment to collective care.
Resource: Creative Interventions Toolkit (Chapter 2 – Values and Principles)
Step 3: Establish Community Agreements
Write shared agreements about how the group will operate. These should include things like emotional safety, confidentiality, consent, ability to pause, trauma-informed practices, and anti-oppression commitments. The goal is to create a space where no one feels pressured to speak or resolve something before they are ready.
Resource: Philly Stands Up – Building Accountable Communities
Step 4: Practice with Low-Stakes Conflict Scenarios
Before facilitating real cases of harm, rehearse. Use fictional or historical examples to practice navigating tension, expressing needs, active listening, and facilitating without controlling. Rotate roles, everyone should practice being a facilitator, listener, and participant.
Resource: The Relational Uprising Toolkit – Practice Scenarios
Step 5: When Harm Happens, Start with Consent and Slowness
If you’re invited to help with a real conflict, don’t rush to fix it. First, ensure that everyone involved consents to the process. If even one person does not, the process pauses. Co-create the structure together, who will be present, what format the circle will take, what language will be used, and what safety looks like.
Resource: AORTA’s Conflict Resolution for Radical Groups
Step 6: Facilitate the Circle with an Emphasis on Listening and Repair
During the circle, prioritize listening, not adjudication. Encourage people to speak from their experience, express their needs and boundaries, and offer or request accountability. Facilitate shared understanding, not agreement. Avoid centering punishment. Look for actions that repair harm without creating more.
Resource: Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (book)
Step 7: Follow Up with Community Care and Iteration
Accountability doesn’t end with the circle. Support everyone in the process with ongoing care, check-ins, and space to reflect. Document learning (anonymously or privately) to evolve your practices. Encourage participants to become future facilitators and create more care webs.
Resource: Building Accountable Communities Zine – Philly Stands Up
Two Examples of Existing Projects Using This Model
1. Spring Up (US-based)
Spring Up is a queer abolitionist collective offering consent-based education and transformative justice trainings. They use circles and practice-based learning to respond to harm in community, rather than through institutional punishment.
https://www.thelivingbody.online/
2. Creative Interventions (Oakland, CA)
Creative Interventions offers one of the most comprehensive toolkits for addressing harm through community-led processes. Their focus is on empowering people to resolve conflict without involving police, courts, or top-down interventions.
https://transformharm.org/creative-interventions-toolkit/
Conclusion: Building Cultures of Consent from the Ground Up
If we want to build a better world, we can’t just replicate the punitive tools of the old one. Consent-Based Conflict Transformation Circles show us that justice doesn't come from control, but from care. They help us practice what it means to stay in community through difficulty, and to respond to harm in ways that heal rather than divide.
Designing for Power With from the start doesn’t just avoid reproducing harm, it helps us practice the world we want to live in. Every time we choose listening over punishment, consent over coercion, and collective care over isolation, we plant seeds of relational resilience.
Because in the end, how we respond to harm is how we build or destroy trust, and trust is the only real foundation for liberation.