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Community Conferencing, Restorative Practices and the power of our grassroots action...

with the amazing Lauren Abramson,
Founder of the Community Conferencing Center of Baltimore, MD.

Lauren Abramson is Founder, Executive Director, Community Conferencing Center and also Assistant Professor, Child Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is a psychologist who has worked with children and families in communities for the past 25 years. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Community Conferencing Center in Baltimore, Maryland and Assistant Professor (part-time) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Lauren focused attention on Community Conferencing in Baltimore in 1995. She advances conferencing as a means of building social capital and collective efficacy on many levels, including:
• empowering individuals and communities to resolve their own conflicts
• keeping young people out of the criminal justice system, and
• mobilizing the existing untapped human assets in communities.
Lauren publishes articles on both the theoretical and empirical socio-political aspects of conferencing. The work of the Community Conferencing Center is groundbreaking for its multi-sector use of conferencing in highly distressed urban American communities.
Conferencing has helped Lauren learn that: while we can learn about conflict resolution through books and concepts, conflict--and personal--transformation happens through relationships and meaningful emotional experiences.

Transitional Justice from a restorative Lens

with Dr. Carl Stauffer of Eastern Mennonite University
Dr. Carl Stauffer teaches Justice and Development Studies at the Graduate Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University Harrisonburg, Virginia.

DOWNLOAD PDF OF CHAPTER
Finding Justice amidst the Rubble: Restorative Interventions in Post-war Contexts

Stauffer was born and raised amidst the war in Vietnam. In 1975, his family fled Vietnam and moved to the Philippines just as the Marcos regime was beginning to crumble. After completing his university education in 1985, Stauffer worked in the Criminal Justice and Substance Abuse fields.

In 1991, Stauffer became the first Executive Director of the Capital Area Victim-Offender Mediation Program in Richmond, Virginia.

In 1994, Stauffer and his family moved to South Africa under the auspices of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a faith-based international relief and development agency. In South Africa, Stauffer worked with various transitional justice processes such as the Peace Accords, Community-Police Forums, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Local Community Development structures.

From 2000 to 2009, Stauffer was appointed as the MCC Regional Peace Adviser for the Southern Africa region. His work has taken him to twenty African countries and ten other countries in the Caribbean, Middle East, Europe, and the Balkans.

Stauffer's academic interests focus on narrative studies, restorative/transitional justice, and post-war reconstruction and reconciliation. His research concentrates on the critique of transitional justice from a restorative frame, and the application of hybrid, often parallel indigenous community justice systems.
Stauffer is married to Dr. Carolyn Stauffer who teaches Sociology at EMU, and is the proud father of two university-aged children.

Mikhail is a member of the teaching faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where, among other courses, he teaches an undergraduate course called Psychology of Race and Ethnicity and a graduate-level restorative justice practicum based at a youth detention center.

Since 2009, he has been a student and practitioner of Restorative Circles, a restorative practice developed in Brazil by Dominic Barter and associates.
Mikhail also writes a blog for Psychology Today called Between the Lines. This blog is primarily about race. The name comes from a DuBois quote: "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line."

Description: We covered a great deal of ground during this conversation with Michelle sharing background from her internationally acclaimed bestseller The New Jim Crow, personal insights and motivators for her in her work, and her belief that restorative justice provides a powerful solution to many of the problems we currently face. This dialogue is packed with stats, facts, and inspiring all the way through.

Brief Bio: Michelle Alexander is an internationally-renowned author and lawyer. Her most recent book, The New Jim Crow, has gained global acclaim for its pinpointing of the very real yet hushed critical issue of racial profiling and mass incarceration. She has been featured in major media worldwide, including Moyers & Company, NPR’s Fresh Air, CNN, and many others.

Quotes/Highlights from Transcript:

“It wasn’t long into that work (with the ACLU Racial Justice Project) that I realized that even I, someone who cared a lot about racial injustice and thought that I knew a lot about our criminal justice system, that I was deeply misguided and in a lot of denial about the way in which our criminal justice system wasn’t just in need of reform but had become the primary vehicle for creating and sustaining racial inequality in our time.” (10:08)

“I think that what I’ve come to see and understand better in recent years is that the American dream is just not real for millions of Americans and its not a matter of not trying.” (15:45)

“It (restorative justice) is definitely not a pipedream. I’m so encouraged by the movement that is growing around restorative and transformative justice. I think that one of the reasons why it’s such a crucial part of the work to end mass incarceration and to break this cycle of caste like systems in America is because it helps provide an answer to, well, if we don’t have prisons, if prisons aren’t the answer then what, what are we going to do about the harms and people affected. I think there is kind of real harm that has to be acknowledged and addressed. People do violate each other’s rights, commit real crimes against each other that cause pain and suffering in our communities.” (55:29)

Open-Source Copy of Transcript:

Michelle’s full bio: http://newjimcrow.com/about-the-author

More about The New Jim Crow: newjimcrow.com

Michelle’s joint interview on Moyers & Company with Bryan Stephenson (jus
t below) of the Equal Justice Institute):
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04022010/watch.html

 

of the Metta Center for Nonviolence (www.mettacenter.org) , who've just rolled out a stellar and comprehensive Roadmap for Peace.

roadmap

Restorative Justice on the Rise

Media That Matters: Public Dialogue On Justice

To provide connection, advocacy, education and inspired action as a public service to individuals and communities seeking to proactively improve relationships and structures within their spheres and our world.

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