Survivors Know

Survivors Know is a membership-based organization that works at the intersection of survivor justice and workplace organizing to address sexual harassment and violence in the workplace and in our communities. Our mission is to create a world that places survivors’ needs, rights and hopes over those of perpetrators and institutions.

.We center our work in these core areas:

• Organizing + Solidarity Circles + Mutual aid
• Corporate Accountability + Responsibility
• Culture Change + Workplace Tools 
• Transformative Justice + Systems Change

Through the Midwest Anti-Violence Solidarity Circles (MAVSC), frontline advocates (survivors themselves) set out to disrupt how gender-based violence is addressed in their communities by co-creating systems where survivors actively define what justice looks like for them & where communities work alongside advocates to end violence. Approach: (1) address challenges faced by survivor-advocates: secondary trauma, burnout, the constant triaging of survivors with limited pathways to “justice”, and lack of support within their institutions; (2) explore tangible alternatives to policing to implement reforms that address survivors’ needs.

Our Chicago Worker Solidarity Circle addresses reasons for workers’ mass exodus from the restaurant industry - racial, economic, & gender injustice. The pandemic’s cultural & financial blows to hospitality laid bare truths that were only ever told through whisper networks of survivors- that abuse was rampant, that media darlings are horrendous leaders and perpetrators of violence, and that for too long workers have gone silent out of fear of retaliation. We are working with survivors to move into their own power to organize for complete culture change within the service industry in Chicago.