Survived & Punished (S&P) is a national abolitionist organization led by survivors of domestic and sexual violence who are criminalized for defending their lives. The organization emerged from the Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign (2013–2017), a global effort to free Marissa Alexander, a Black mother of three sentenced to decades in prison for surviving and resisting domestic abuse.
Through the Marissa campaign, organizers exposed how legal systems routinely punish survivors—particularly Black women, immigrants, and gender-nonconforming people—while protecting abusers and expanding the carceral state. Local organizing by the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander (now Love & Protect) helped raise significant resources for Marissa’s defense and built a base for survivor-led abolitionist strategy.
In 2015, organizers from the Marissa Alexander campaign convened with other survivor defense campaigns at INCITE!’s Color of Violence 4 conference, including the Stand With Nan-Hui campaign and members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). Through shared analysis and collective storytelling, participants named the deep connections between gender violence, criminalization, incarceration, and immigration enforcement. In March 2016, the group formally came together in Chicago as Survived & Punished, launching a national organizing vision rooted in abolition, survivor leadership, and collective liberation.
Today, Survived & Punished works to free criminalized survivors, challenge systems that punish survival, and build responses to harm that do not rely on policing, prisons, or deportation.
Why It Matters: Survived & Punished reframes survival itself as an act of resistance—and exposes how carceral systems perpetuate violence under the guise of justice. By centering survivors as leaders and abolition as a practical strategy, the organization offers a transformative vision of safety grounded in care, dignity, and self-determination.
