When Life After Hate was established nearly 14 years ago, it was launched with a very simple goal – to help individuals successfully leave behind violent extremism and hate-based ideology. Former violent extremists themselves, LAH’s founders were able to exit their lives of hate, and they sought to be a resource, a sounding board, a support, a coach, and a cheerleader for those seeking to follow a similar path.
Two and a half years ago, I began my tenure as executive director of Life After Hate with a clear goal. By further professionalizing the organization, instituting high standards, committing to data-based decision-making, and putting our participants – those exiting individuals – first, we could build safer communities while providing a second chapter in life to those wanting to leave violent extremist groups and online hate spaces.
Even more so than when LAH was founded, our nation needs organizations like ours and individuals like those who do this work here each and every day, those who are committed to combating violent extremism with their words, deeds, passion, and commitment. By offering practical paths to help individuals disengage from their lives of violent and destructive hate, today Life After Hate is without peer in providing a place where violent extremists can take accountability for their past actions and reintegrate into society in meaningful, productive ways.
During my tenure at Life After Hate, I’ve learned that violent extremism assumes many forms. It is white supremacism, antisemitic, male supremacism, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-government, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-LGBTQ+, accelerationist, and it is all pro-hate.
I’ve also learned that it doesn’t have to be this way. For those who are prepared to account for their pasts, for those who are ready to leave violent extremism behind, for those who are prepared to write a second chapter of their life focused on second chances and doing good, there is life after hate. It is witnessed each and every day in the exiting individuals that LAH helps, it is seen in the friends and family of extremists and exiting individuals we assist, and it is embodied in the LAH staff that make all of it possible.
The end of the year also serves as the end of my time at Life After Hate. I will forever be grateful to this organization, to the people who make Life After Hate the success it is, and to those who entrust us with their futures and the futures of those that they care about. In reflecting on my gratitude, I am provided the opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate just how far Life After Hate has accomplished in the last 30 months and the very real impact it now has on our civil society.
Industry-Leading Standards
This starts with laying the foundations for being a nimble, successful national non-profit organization. To do this, Life After Hate issued several white papers related to our pursuit of the highest standards and the utmost professionalism in this space. As executive director, I took our role as the leader in the U.S. violence intervention space seriously. That means being publicly clear on our social work standards, the role of formers as peer mentors, the mental health realities of this work, and how we responsibly handle requests for access to our clients.
It also meant publicly declaring our commitment to ensure that our clients and the safety of our communities come first. That commitment is detailed here. To me, there was nothing more important than publicly declaring our belief in compassion with accountability, a mantra that now guides all internal and external activities within the organization.
Innovation
This time was also used to innovate and develop new initiatives that would help Life After Hate better reach those on the extremist-to-former continuum. That started with the creation of The Daily Former. TDF is an online property –with a podcast at its center – which serves as both a public education tool and a mechanism for reaching many extremists who may be thinking of getting out of the life. As part of TDF’s season two this year, we officially launched a TDF Discord channel, allowing LAH to reach out and engage with those active in extremism directly, but potentially seeking a way out.
That innovation continued with the establishment of our Center for Exiting Violent Antisemitism. With the majority of individuals seeking LAH’s help having engaged in violent antisemitism, and with virtually every violent extremist group being rooted in antisemitism, we saw a need to provide primary services, tertiary services (such as Exit), and public education on the threats of violent antisemitism and interventions available to combat it. The Center has risen to meet that need.
And just last month, we launched HateEraser, a national public education effort targeting hateful, yet non-violent, expressions of extremist ideology. Working in partnership with local law enforcement agencies and acclaimed street artists, we are now providing the physical tools necessary to help non-violent offenders remove the expressions of their hateful ideology from our communities while demonstrating the dangerous path they may currently be traveling.
Helping Individuals Exit Violent Extremism
All of these efforts, of course, are done in support of the direct services we provide to exiting individuals, their families, and their loved ones. In addition to committing to develop innovative initiatives that meet the changing needs of the field, we began 2024 with the goal of cementing LAH as the premier disengagement program in the nation.
To accomplish this, Life After Hate expanded the reach of our tertiary interventions (available through Exit) to help members of violent extremist groups and online hate spaces disengage from extremist activities, educated the public on the threats of violent extremism and the interventions available to help families and loved ones exit such spaces, and provided primary interventions to help at-risk individuals avoid a life of violent extremism.
Our work this year has been fairly simple, but essential. Our primary focus remains on successfully delivering Exit, our tertiary care program, to as many people as possible. This year, Life After Hate has provided more engagements with exiting individuals than it ever has in its history. We are providing more extensive services to this growing pool of clients, with the number of client engagements expected to significantly increase moving forward.
Today, as Life After Hate works with court-mandated cases, we are finding that to be a growing source of participants. This work is also more challenging, as many of our participants are not committed to the Exit process at first. We have needed to develop policies and procedures to ensure that all exiting individuals are doing all that is necessary, and we have had to add additional policies to govern how we engage with the legal, prison, and parole systems. This is doubly true now that LAH is also working with juveniles. This required us to develop additional procedures to ensure we can successfully deliver Exit services to those currently in juvenile detention.
To enhance the one-on-one interventions we provide to exiting individuals and friends and family, LAH has created a range of regular group meetings for those in need. These groups include those for women seeking to exit extremism, former extremists, parents of extremists, and family and loved ones of those involved in violent extremism. To supplement this, we recently launched No Formers Left Behind, a digital engagement community hosted on Discord to provide support and information to those who have successfully disengaged from VFRE, whether through LAH or other means, to ensure that they remain successfully reintegrated into our civil society.
To supplement these efforts, this year Life After Hate also created a comprehensive digital resource map that is now used by all members of our team. As many know, LAH is unable to directly deliver mental health services to our participants, as we do not have individuals on staff who are licensed to practice in each state in which our exiting individuals reside (thank you, U.S. healthcare laws). The core of the resource map is a collection of crisis responders and other mental health professionals who have been vetted by the Exit team, educated in violent extremism, and willing to work with the sort of clientele that LAH works with. We are now able to direct all those who seek our help to licensed professionals in the states in which they reside. This resource map also offers similar local resources in areas like job training, housing, legal support, and even tattoo removal.
Funding
All of this had to be done in a challenging policy and funding environment. Six years ago, Life After Hate won its first federal grant, only to have the grant rescinded before a single dollar was ever dispersed. That foundational experience demonstrated the instability that comes from relying on federal funding to deliver the needed services LAH is responsible for. After successfully winning grants from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to support our work, this year, Life After Hate was no longer dependent on federal dollars. This was a strategic decision we made as an organization, an important one as we see the dollars committed by DHS to violence intervention slashed year after year. I am proud to report that, after an aggressive embrace of zero-based budgeting, LAH has ensured that our resources are all being directed successfully toward our mission and we are effective stewards of the dollars provided to us by our donors. And I will forever be grateful to the growing number of philanthropic organizations, companies, and individuals who have made it possible for LAH to establish a strong financial footing, without federal dollars.
Challenges
Despite these collective improvements, achievements, and successes, it does not mean that Life After Hate does not face challenges moving forward. The greatest challenge faced by the LAH team is its ability to meet the rising demand for both its tertiary care and its public education services. Requests for services have risen regularly, month by month, and we are now working with more individuals than we ever have in our previous 14 years. In addition to the increased needs of those seeking to exit violent extremism, we are also witnessing a significant increase in the number of families and loved ones seeking our help. And because of the growing complexity of the cases we now work with, we are finding our exiting individuals are requiring more frequent engagement from our team to successfully disengage from VFRE.
These demands have again increased as we have agreed to meet the needs of incarcerated individuals and juveniles (between the ages of 16-18, to start). Working with these new populations has required us to develop additional processes and protocols, those that remain aligned with NASW and PPN standards, while also meeting laws regarding privacy and consent imposed by the criminal justice system.
Because the needs of the individuals we are serving continue to grow, LAH is finding it necessary to refer exiting individuals out for specific services we do not provide, requiring us to build our proprietary resource map of providers that have been vetted by our organization and are prepared to work with the population we serve.
Looking Ahead
I cannot fully express the respect, faith, trust, and love that I have for all of those individuals who work at Life After Hate. This organization is a success because of its licensed professionals, trained social workers, exit specialists, content creators, and leaders who make everything possible. Each member of this small, but mighty team plays an integral role in its shared success. I leave Life After Hate knowing that each and every one of them recognizes that our primary mission is to help individuals disengage from lives of violent extremism and reintegrate into our civil society.
This dedicated crew provides services at the individual, family, and local community levels, designed to halt the growth and impact of violent extremist groups by showing individuals pathways away from hate and ideology-driven violence. Life After Hate is clear that our priority is the safety and well-being of individuals and our community at large. Heather, Shannon, Rhashida, Kathleen, Angela, Sam, Brad, Lauren, Jamie, Jeanette, and Melissa, you are the collective heart of this organization. I could never have asked for better colleagues, and I leave knowing that there is no collective group of individuals better suited, more strongly committed, and more capable than you to carry on with this essential work.
As part of its strategic plan, Life After Hate has several ambitious goals for 2025. To achieve these goals, we will need to continue to provide ongoing support and professional development to this incredible multidisciplinary team. This organization succeeds because of its team, not because of one individual. It needs to ensure it continues to do all it can to support, develop, and recognize that team.
In closing, this work is getting more and more complex with each passing year. But the complexity of these efforts pales in our recent commitments to take on court-mandated cases and to work with juveniles (often also court-mandated). We do this not only because we are asked, but also because we know it is necessary to make our communities safer and to confront the growth of violent ideology in society.
I step away from Life After Hate knowing that this team, and this organization, are committed to rise to any challenge, to help all those who seek our assistance in exiting from violent extremism, and to build a safer society for all. Our mission is just as important today, if not more so, than when we were founded in 2011. I am confident that the next chapter of Life After Hate will be more compassionate, more supportive, and more successful than the previous ones.
