Fear vs Risk Assessments, with Che Johnson-Long

In this episode, Yashna Maya Padamsee talks with guest Che Johnson-Long, Community Safety Director at Vision Change Win, about how we can be making grounded risk assessments in these times of escalated fear.

We’re in a moment where there is a chance that fear can lead our planning and decision making. It is a particularly escalated and scary time. And this time is calling for us to do clear organizational risk assessments and find, create or improve upon operational scaffolding to meet the risk assessment, not the fear assessment. 

This topic has come up in many conversations throughout 2025, and Dear Rad Ops received a question with some context: I am in an operations role, and my Executive Director wants to implement a new security protocol for our organization. It seems to me like a decision based on fear without a grounded assessment of the real risk to our organization, but I don’t know how to distinguish between fear and risk in this situation. 

Question: How can I support my ED to reflect on whether asking for a new security protocol is an individual concern based on fear, or an organizational level concern grounded in a risk assessment for our particular conditions?

Resources from this episode:

• Vision Change Win offers many resources on community safety, including:
  • Get in Formation Training Series is an intro level training for basic community safety skills around verbal deescalation, event safety and organizational safety.
  • Organizational Safety Planning Risk Assessment Tool will guide your group through building a risk assessment, the first step in organizational safety planning.
  • Safety Recommendations from Sept 2025 can help you understand where to prioritize if you’re not sure where to start.
• Fascism Barometer podcast by Ejeris Dixon, helps us understand the current political moment which can inform our assessments.

Discussion questions to take to your team:

• To get a sense of how to make a fear assessment rather than a risk assessment, you can start by asking yourself and your group these two questions:
  • What is the likelihood of this happening?
  • What is the impact it might have?
• To help discern the likelihood of something happening to your particular organization or community, talk with partners and ask questions like these:
  • I’m worried about this scary thing happening. Has it happened to you?
  • I’ve heard about this thing in the news. Have you heard about it at our local level or in our communities/sector?
• As you are making assessments around safety and security, regularly pulse check within your group: Are our assessments making us move away from or toward organizations we are in partnership with?

Subscribe & Support Rad Ops and Convergence Magazine

• Subscribe to Rad Ops substack to get notified when we post new content
• Explore the Rad Ops Resources page
• Follow RadOps on Instagram
• Donate to Rad Ops
• Support Convergence Magazine producing this show and movement media like it

Guest Speaker

Che Johnson-Long is an abolitionist security practitioner and community organizer who can’t leave well enough alone. She is currently the Community Safety Director at Vision Change Win and serves as a board member of Third Wave's Accountable Futures Fund Advisory Council. Before this, Che organized with the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative of the Racial Justice Action Center, the Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative, and the Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project. She holds a Juris Doctorate, comes from a long line of Blues singers, and calls Atlanta, GA home.