The word "accountability" has many definitions that seem to mean roughly the same thing. If I knock your cupcake off the table, I should answer for the harm I've caused. The least I can do is apologize, notice what I've done and acknowledge the fact. But for me, accountability is also a reckoning with the consequences of my actions. When we seek accountability from others, we want them to right their wrongs. We want justice, whatever that means to us. Accountability shows up in so many places that I have been wondering what it means deep down. Why are calls for it so prevalent? Is it standing in for something else, something that we really want?

doing what you said you’d do

Accountability takes many forms in the workplace. Lily Zheng says it's how organizations and their leaders are "held to task" for doing what they say they'll do. A quick online search led me to so many good-advice folks who promised to break it down for me. Accountability in these guides tilted towards managers holding their employees accountable. Some writers offered 5 easy steps for accountability. Others, 10. Still others said we could demand accountability from our colleagues with 7 steps, or 3 steps.

But even when it's not sanctioned, accountability often flows in both directions. The work of a team, organization, or collective asks us to be accountable to each other. Taking on too much might mean burnout or actions we forget to take. Doing something wrong means delaying the next step while we redo that work. We can promise organizational change or better wages, but people will know if we don't deliver. The basic steps of accountability are the same:

1. Agree on the expectations we have for each other
2. Deliver on those expectations
3. If that doesn't happen, settle the consequences

The 10-step process is this but padded out. One of the steps in that guide was, "Thunderbolts!" Choose your own adventure, I guess.

accountability is not punishment

Accountability often stands in for more appropriate words. We may call it justice, but that's another word that's twisted into different meanings. Kate McCord's Harm and Accountability Conversation Seed Packet (pdf) describes another example. She reminds us that people say accountability when they mean punishment. Those aren't the same thing. Accountability acknowledges harm and the impact it's had. It tries to make right what went wrong.

Punishment is more about replying to harm with harm. It can mean revoking a person's freedom (jail) or causing them to suffer (also jail). There's often little to no expectation of repair. Punishment is often carried out by someone other than the person they harmed. "Being punished only means we have to endure the punishment."

accountability is personal

We call for accountability when we feel wronged on a personal or even a systemic level. People within a movement may call for repair when someone acts against our shared values. Communities demand action when their elected officials fail them. In Accounting for Violence, Danielle Sered wrote these 5 key elements of accountability:

• acknowledging one’s responsibility for one’s actions;
• acknowledging the impact of one’s actions on others;
• expressing genuine remorse;
• taking actions to repair the harm to the degree possible; and
• no longer committing similar harm.

Sered suggests that in true accountability, a person must hold on to their agency and dignity. It's not possible to force someone to be accountable for their actions. We can't shame someone into remorse for their actions. Who else has ever had to give a playground apology through gritted teeth? It probably feels even worse when it's a kid who has to do it.

I find Sered's framework so universal because of how linked accountability is to harm. Accounting for Violence is a handbook that offers us a way out of systems of carceral punishment. More than that, it's a guide on how we could transform our whole society.

We could all learn new ways of acknowledging and attempting repair for the harm we cause each other. Experiencing harm, committing harm, is personal! It can have an impact on us even when the harm isn't physical. Remedying that harm shouldn't feel impossible or terrifying. Mia Mingus offered a perspective on this that I loved. "What if our own accountability wasn’t something we ran from, but something we ran towards and desired, appreciated, held as sacred?" Instead of nursing old wounds, or avoiding the ones we gave to others, we could give each other the closure we seek?

what we mean to each other

Accountability is at its core about relationships. People are people. We mess up. We stumble onward. A missed chance to repair harm risks the long-term relationships we have with each other. Trust is so hard to rebuild.

Accountability is another word for respect. Through it we show people who we really are, good or bad. We show what matters to us and who matters to us. The seed of this essay began with a screenshot of a TikTok I found (cursed statement). The author wrote,

"True accountability does not seek punishment but healing, and it does not exist without care—care for ourselves, care for those impacted, and care for the futures we are building together. Even when self-love feels out of reach, we move toward accountability with the belief that everyone is capable of growth, worthy of dignity, and deserving of a future rooted in justice and healing, even ourselves.”

Accountability is not a solo project. The person harmed and the person held to account must come to the table. All sides must commit to repair. Through accountability, all sides heal.

Narratives of American “greatness” abound surrounding July 4, but by whom and for whom are they created? As we observe the U.S.’s 250th birthday, I am reminded of the words of James Baldwin, who wrote that, in the true pursuit of justice, one does not lend an ear to those who are invested in maintaining power, but instead, “one goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s…

Source

Elon Musk and his apologists are getting upset by people pointing out that his illegal destruction of USAID had resulted in the avoidable deaths of countless people in exchange for no benefits whatsoever. Always both a maximalist and a liar, he’s claiming that no deaths at all have resulted from his termination of extremely cost-effective aid programs. This is obviously false, as systematic evaluation reveals:

Elon Musk really doesn’t want you to say he’s responsible for the deaths of millions.

Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for charging him with destroying the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and putting millions of lives at risk around the world:

“There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,” Khanna said. “You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with his SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

In response, Musk called Khanna a liar, threatened to sue, and said he should be in prison.

But Khanna is making a perfectly reasonable claim here. In that quote, he is (carefully) citing a peer-reviewed study that estimated the effects of dismantling USAID. It found that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will result in 14 million deaths overall by 2030, of which 4.5 million will be children under the age of 5.

This is probably a high-end estimate, but even lower end projections with different methodologies sit between 670,000 and 1.6 million annual deaths compared to a fiscal year 2023 baseline.

In other words, the toll from USAID cuts seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people annually1; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of 14 million.

If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make.

“But where are the names? Name the names!” Well, here you go [gift link]:

“There is not even a single dead child!” Musk protested on social media. I noted that I had met many families of children who had died — and that’s when he concluded that I was lying.

Musk’s assertion that not a single child died is absurd, yet he doubled down: “They cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

On X, I began to give Musk some names. Let me elaborate:

Jibia was a 10-year-old girl, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class in Rwamwanja, Uganda. Aid cuts meant that the local clinic ran out of $2 bed nets to protect from mosquitoes, as well as anti-malaria medicines. Jibia died of malaria last July, her mother told me outside the family home. Medical records confirmed that, and health workers told me that she would have been fine without the aid cuts: Replacing her tattered bed net with a new one could have prevented malaria, and in any case drugs would have helped her to recover promptly.

Yamah Freeman hemorrhaged while pregnant with her third child in her village in Liberia. The United States had provided ambulances to the local hospital, but the aid cuts under Musk and President Trump meant that the ambulances had no fuel. The strongest young men in the village placed her on their shoulders and raced down the path toward town, shouting encouragement to her as they ran, but she bled to death along the way. Her parents and sister told me about this, and I visited her grave.

Achol Deng, 8, had been infected with H.I.V. at birth in South Sudan but had been kept alive by American-provided medicines costing just 12 cents a day. The dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and the resulting chaos meant that she lost her caseworker and access to medicines, and soon died of an opportunistic infection, health workers told me.

I could keep going. A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts have cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide. A study published in the Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates, the aid defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030.

DOGE would, in itself, suffice to make Trump one of the worst presidents in American history. And all the money in the world won’t make Elon Musk any less of a horrible person and I’m happy that it’s getting to him.

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