COUNCIL TOPICS: Restorative Justice and Circles in action; Discovering conflict's gift, and more. Linda is changing the system day by day from within, as an attorney. I am so grateful to her for taking time to share with us insights from the "trenches".

Linda Alvarez's work as an attorney and as a business consultant transforms the way contract negotiation, drafting, and enforcement impact business relationships. Linda facilitates a wide range of transactions and relationships, enabling the parties to design worthwhile, sustainable and enjoyable transactions and relationships, conduct their business and legal affairs with integrity, and establish reliable frameworks for addressing conflict productively.

The Discovering Agreement approach:

Calibrates alignment of the parties' intentions, values, and expectations - allowing them to gauge in advance whether the proposed relationship or transaction will be workable and worthwhile in the long-run;
Aligns content and language in legal contracts with the Vision-Mission-Values of the parties - so that contract terms and provisions harness the power of the conventional legal system to support the parties in conducting business and engaging crisis in accordance with their declared Vision/Mission/Values; and
Produces contracts that function as guidebooks for keeping the enterprise/transaction/relationship on track and productive - by orienting and re-orienting parties towards collaborative, creative responses to unexpected change or disagreement (as opposed to destructive adversarial posturing).

About Linda

The first twenty years of Linda Alvarez's professional life were spent pursuing a successful career in the Arts. Trained in theatre, she and her husband produced and managed theatrical and media productions across the United States. In the mid-1990's Linda reentered the academic world earning her law degree, magna cum laude, in 1997. She entered private practice in the large firm environment - including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (Palo Alto) and Vinson & Elkins (Houston).

Beginning with her engagement as a member of the team successfully defending the first mp3 player to come to market[1], Linda has remained active on the frontier where digital technology pushes the boundaries of legal concepts designed for the analog and print-based era. As Senior Counsel for Litigation and Trademarks at Align Technology, Inc., Linda managed major litigations on behalf of the corporation as well as shepherding the company's valuable consumer trademark portfolio. With the successful conclusion of the litigations in 2005, Linda chose to re-focus her career toward transactional work and launched her solo practice. Linda's Website: www.discoveringagreement.com

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RESTORATIVE & UNITIVE JUSTICE TUESDAY, MARCH
Sylvia Clute, Attorney, Author of Beyond Vengeance, Beyond Duality and one of the world's foremost advocates and practitioners of "Unitive Justice"

Sylvia Clute is a former trial attorney and holds an M.A. in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law, and an M.A. in Public Administration from the University of California at

Click for info and to purchase. Highly Recommended!

Berkeley. After graduating from law school and establishing a practice, Clute co-founded the only women's bank in the South, became chairman of the board, and helped move Virginia's laws relating to women and children into the twentieth century. She is currently Program Coordinator of a restorative school program and serves on the board of Restorative Youth Services of Virginia, and her recent book, Beyond Vengeance, Beyond Duality: A Call for a Compassionate Revolution has received profound and significant praise and exposure as mapping a new territory for systemic change in criminal justice and beyond--in how we heal ourselves, our communities, and our world.

More about Sylvia and her work: www.sylviaclute.com

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KENNY JOHNSON, AUTHOR: The Last Hustle, FORMER PRISONER, FOUNDER: THIS SACRED SPACE
Thursday, March 22nd 5pm PST/8pmEST

Kenny Johnson devoted his life to crime, beginning in his early teens and served over twenty years in various city, county, state, and federal prisons.
During his early years in prison, he spent most of his time participating in all sorts of religious and substance abuse groups. Hopefully, in one of these groups he would hear the magic words that would release him from the grip of his inner and outer prisons. It was his inner desire for freedom that led him and a band of truth-seekers to a meeting in the prison chapel. Antoinette Varner, his spiritual teacher answered his most pressing question.

"It is my understanding that we have to wait until we die before we can receive God's Grace. Is that so?" She replied, "Kenny, God's Grace is here now! Kenny you think you are a convict, you think you are your name, you think you are a black man. Kenny you are none of these things."
Instantly he knew he would never be a thief again. But how do you re-enter the world outside without resorting to old weaknesses? How would he survive and how would it be possible to maintain his newly found experience of grace?
"This ever present Grace supports me in each moment now."

Paroled from prison in 1997 and successfully discharged from supervision, Kenny now resides in California. He visits inmates at the San Quentin Prison, and around the world. Kenny has founded This Sacred Space a non-profit corporation dedicated to sharing the timeless message that real freedom resides within each one of us.

"If there is anything worth serving, it's this love. If there is anything worth being, it's this love. If there is anything worth talking about it's this love. If there is anything of real value it's this love". - Kenny Johnson

The Last Hustle
Kenny Johnson is the author of the book “The Last Hustle” chronicling his years as a criminal and how he was transformed while incarcerated. His story proves that however hard and unpromising our particular life circumstances, we can discover true happiness.

He speaks of this freedom at correctional facilities the world over. His story is an inspiration to hundreds of others.
For thirty-one years Kenny Johnson’s most fervent desire was to hear his name ‘ringing in the streets’ as a hustler, thief, and pimp. Running parallel with that desire was a persistent seed of spiritual longing that would not leave him alone.
Kenny was arrested thirty-seven times and spent much of his life in prison, or on the run. Each time behind bars sent him into a deep and profound despair. Eventually his desire for lasting freedom would drive him to find a power that could not only get him through his final sentence, but free him from prison forever.
“I had to find a power that would not only get me through my current sentence, but would free me from prison forever.”

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Dominic Barter has studied the interface between societal and personal change, and the role of conflict, since the 1980s. Since 2004 he has worked as consultant and training program director for the Brazilian Restorative Justice pilot projects, in collaboration with the UN Development Program, UNESCO, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Education and Special Secretariat for Human Rights. He has focused on developing effective models and training programs for practitioners to address youth crime and its consequences, as well as working with judges, school administrators, police, social services as well as youth and community leaders in supervising implementation. Dominic coordinates the Restorative Justice Project for the international Center for Nonviolent Communication.

www.restorativecircles.org
Follow on Twitter: @restoracircles

A Restorative Circle is a community process for supporting those in conflict.

As developed in the favelas of Brazil in the mid 1990s, where it later became known as Círculos Restaurativos, it brings together the three parties to a conflict - those who have acted, those directly impacted and the wider community - within a chosen systemic context, to dialogue as equals. Participants invite each other and attend voluntarily. The dialogue process used is shared openly with all participants. The process ends when actions have been found that bring mutual benefit that nurtures the inherent integrity of all those involved in the conflict.

Círculos Restaurativos are facilitated in 3 stages that arise in an approximate sequence and identity the key factors in the conflict, reach agreements on next steps, and evaluate the results. As a circle form, they invite shared power, mutual understanding and self-responsibility within community.

Círculos Restaurativos are facilitated by community members who identify themselves as impacted by the conflict at hand. They commit to serving the emergent wisdom of the participants through their willingness to offer questions sourced from an agreed upon basis and to track the co-creation of meaning and intra-personal, inter-personal and social action by those present.

Restorative Systems Videos: http://www.restorativecircles.org/systems-and-facilitation

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How a small group of people have made extensive change in Canada and Worldwide towards Peace & Restorative Justice

Very special guests Penny Joy & Saul Arbess of Restorative Circles and the Canadian Dept. of Peace Initiative

In her own words...Penny Joy

Born in England in the Blitz, I think perhaps my whole life has been directed into a spiraling path of exploration into peace.

Growing up in Malta, Sri Lanka, Germany, working in England and Spain engendered a love of travel, people and stories. Repertory theatre work in England morphed into a decade of creative work with BBC TV. My first experience of Canada, came through living, with my first son, in a commune on the land of the Penelakut people on BC's Gulf Islands. It was there that I first gained knowledge of First Nations stories. A journey to Africa followed, which included an overland expedition from S. Sudan to Kenya through many tribal areas.

Returning to Canada to become a citizen, I pursued documentary film work in Vancouver, where I acquired a BA in Community and Communications from Antioch University. I met and was deeply impacted by Jean Houston, with whom I continue to study. She became godmother to my second child who was born in Victoria where I started a documentary film and TV production company Gumboot Productions. This resulted in the production, direction and writing of documentary programs that included The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice and The Art of Compassion. www.gumboot.net

Through interest in First Nations and justice issues I joined the Restorative Justice Coalition at William Head Penitentiary and co-founded the Victoria Restorative Justice Society, where I am a facilitator of Restorative Justice circles, taking referrals from Victoria Police Department and Attorney General. I also co-founded the Victoria chapter of the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative www.departmentofpeace.ca in 2003 and co-convened the 2nd Summit of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace held in Victoria in 2006, in which 18 countries participated.

Saul Arbess, Ph.D.

Cultural anthropologist and futurist dedicated to creating a new architecture of peace in the world. His activism is devoted to building a culture of peace in Canada and abroad, in which restorative practices are at its heart. Has worked with Jean Houston for over 30 years and been trained in Nonviolent Communication NVC)

National Co-chair, Canadian Department of Peace Initiative ( 2005-2011). We are working in concert with other countries including the US, Australia, South Africa and Japan to form departments of peace in all nations. There are 12 chapters across Canada. Co-founder, and Chair, Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace (2005-2011), representing 30 plus country initiatives and 3 countries with Ministries of Peace.Currently working on my home town, Victoria, becoming a city of peace and non-violence and protecting the wildlands surrounding our city.

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Special Guest Anael Harpaz, born in S. Africa and living in Israel, Poet, Author of upcoming childrens book on peace and nonviolence. She will share her profound personal journey of transformation and share what she witnessed working with young Israeli and Palestinian women during her time with Creativity For Peace, a camp that immerses young women and girls from Israel/Palestine in sharing, NVC, creative arts, deep expression and understanding.

Anael, In Her Own Words...

Anael Harpaz
I am a person who grew up in a land of separation- South Africa in the fifties, and at the age of seventeen left the apartheid I hated only to go to another country of deep separation, Israel, without even being aware of this separation, because I only knew my narrative as a Jewish child born soon after the Holocaust. I grew up hating Arabs and Germans - had I met any? No, but this was my cultural conditioning!

About twenty years after I had immigrated to Israel, I started on my spiritual path and took part in a workshop on suffering. I had lost a baby and wanted to heal the terrible pain I was feeling. I had no idea that the workshop was taking place in Nablus, in the West bank. For the first time I met Arab people and I met their suffering! This was a life changing moment for me.

I felt that all my life I had been standing on thick glass, I knew what I so deeply believed, who my enemy was and what I was fighting for- in a moment someone dropped a big hammer on the glass....my whole belief system smashed into a million pieces! It took me years of work on myself, and much courage to move from a person full of hate to a peace maker. In 2003 two American friends and I started a peace organisation for teenage girls from Israel and Palestine called Creativity for Peace.

I worked there for nine years and amongst other things facilitated the compassionate dialogue which is part of the program. I learned so much from these courageous young woman who have chosen the path to peace and now being here in the States for a while, where I am on a writers retreat, have come to a place where I see that violence is not only in the war zones in this world. It is in the schools, in poor areas, there is domestic violence, we are showing our children violent movies and computer games where the solutions are to kill each other.

I have written a children's story about Billy Bully....a child who is a bully because all he experiences is violence- hurt people, hurt people....the story is called Billy's Wake Up Dream. It is about his journey of 'waking up' to see that there could be a different reality....that peace starts within....

NOTE: Anael's book has just been accepted into Kickstarter.com so look for it there and support her work! The book will include a "peace pillow" that will be exchanged with children all over the world.

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Susan Partnow and The Power of Compassionate Listening, Restorative Circles and Bringing Peace into Everyday Practice.

Susan Partnow is passionately committed to grassroots citizen action,

Susan Partnow peacemaking, dialogue and community building. She facilitates processes that transform conflict and promote co-intelligence - all arising from a deep belief that we can and must 'listen our way to wholeness' and find our essential humanity through connection and dialogue. For decades, Susan has helped create grassroots networks that work collaboratively and compassionately, from the founding of Families for Peace in the early 80's to Global Citizen Journey in 2003. Susan has joined delegations of The Compassionate Listening Project to the Middle East, Peace Trees Vietnam, and the Citizen's Train to Washington D.C. Along with local partners in each country, Susan led Global Citizen Journey's inaugural trip to the creeks area of the Niger Delta where they built friendship, leadership, and the area's first library. Subsequent Journeys included Ghana 2006 where they built an Orphanage/Community Center; Burundi 2008 where GCJ helped a women's' cooperative buy land, seed and tools; and most recently Liberia 2010 and 2011 to launch the Liberia Peacebuilder Initiativeby training a group of extraordinary, diverse Liberian leaders as trainers in Compassionate Listening, Restorative Circles and reconciliation, as well as facilitators of Open Space and World Café. She is currently working on a project to bring Restorative Circles to a women's state prison outside of Seattle as an empowering, transformative way to bring healing and reduce violence in the prison.

http://www.compassionatelistening.org/

http://www.partnowcom.com/

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A SPECIAL FREE TELECOUNCIL IN HONOR OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT WITH INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED FILMMAKER AND

Velcrow "Crow" Ripper on the ground at Occupy
MOVEON.ORG'S FEATURED OCCUPY DOCUMENTARIAN; OCCUPY LOVE'S VELCROW "CROW" RIPPER

DOCUMENTARY AT WWW.OCCUPYLOVE.ORG

Velcrow will share about the Occupy Love Movement and his first-hand experiences on the ground in NYC since the beginning of the Occupy Movement. He'll share his insights as a globally renowned documentarian as to the profound state of our world's possibility to shift into love and human-based systems. Join us Monday evening in honor of Martin Luther King Jr's life and conscience.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Today the Occupy Movement will be engaging in global actions centered around the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The heart of Dr. King's vision offers wonderful inspiration for the movement - one that is deeply rooted in love. King's approach to activism was all about "love in action."
The activists of the civil rights era faced incredible repression and brutality, yet remained firm in their conviction to love, their conviction to non-violence. This gave them tremendous "moral capital." Violence, as an activist tactic, very rarely is successful. It is speaking the language of the opressor, and they respond with even greater violence. But the images of loving activists in contrast to brutality, is poignant, moving and transformative. It opens the hearts of the undecided, and calls them to join in the quest for justice. Those who seek to undermine the Occupy Movement, or any activist movement, invariably point to acts of violence.
King taught that while legislative changes were important, such as desegregation (a focal point for the movement at that time), unless we also change our hearts and minds, we would end up with, "a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts apart. It gives us social togetherness and spiritual apartness. It leaves us with a stagnant equality of sameness rather than a constructive equality of oneness." He beautifully said that, "we are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."

Dr. King's greatest vision was that the world would come together in a "Beloved Community." The civil rights movement represented an attempt to created that Beloved Community in microcosm. Today, within the Occupy Movement, we can also create this kind of community, founded on compassion, non-violence and mutuality. This is turn can help lead to the tipping point, towards that day when we are able to live in a world that works for everyone. King's profound dream was to enlarge "the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness." If he were alive today, I believe he would have recognized the incredible potential of this remarkable time in history.
By remaining firmly grounded in love, we are practicing "prefigurative politics." Instead of waiting for some far off dream of a peaceful, loving world, we are living it, right now, in real time. The principles of participatory democracy, central to the Occupy Movement, allow us to practice a world where everyone is important. Having a leaderless movement is also a radical step - we all are leaders today.

"Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace." -MLK, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of my deepest heroes. He faced insurmountable hatred, prejudice, and systemic challenge and yet the force within and through him of love made an indelible mark upon our world and collective heart. Likewise my friend and colleague Velcrow "Crow" Ripper has been around the world filming in the name of love and truth. See you tonight for this very special telecouncil!
TRIBUTE TO HERB BLAKE

The continuation of this series is dedicated to the memory and life of Herb Blake, former prisoner and advocate of Restorative Justice, and recent guest on this series. Bless your life-spark, Herb.

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JAMES O'DEA was Director of the Washington D.C. Office of James O'Dea, Former Director of Amnesty Int'l Washington DC Office, and Internationally renowned Peacebuilder Amnesty International for a decade, represented the US to the UN and is famous for challenging both former Presidents Clinton and Bush Sr. on their human rights records. O'Dea is an internationally renowned Peacebuilder and has teamed up with fellow leaders Arun Gandhi and Deepak Chopra for last summer's World Peace Festival in Berlin. He has an international student body from over 25 countries who participate in ongoing trainings and he is an author of multiple works including Creative Stress (2010) and the upcoming Cultivating Peace (Spring 2012). He has consulted with numerous governmental organizations and has led reconciliation talks in N. Ireland, Rwanda, Israel/Palestine and in the US. He is considered to be one of the most knowledgeable facilitators of peace and conflict resolution in our world. Recently he also began working directly with Law firms in the US and is co-hosting an Intensive for Lawyers in February 2012 with J. Kim Wright, "Lawyers as Agents of Evolutionary Change".

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FOCUS:
At the Heart of Justice: The Role of Spiral Dynamics and Beyond in Societal and Global Transformation

Dr.Don Beck brings a lifetime dedicated to societal healing and true justice. We'll engage him about his service in South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, his take on Prisons in the US and beyond and what he has done and has in the works to help reform them, and his profound theories and wisdom from research and experiences over 5 decades.

Don Beck has been developing, implementing, and teaching the evolutionary theory of Spiral Dynamics for more than three decades. Beck has elaborated upon the work of his mentor, Clare Graves, to develop a multidimensional model for understanding the evolutionary transformation of human values and cultures. As co-founder of the National Values Center in Denton, Texas, and CEO of the Spiral Dynamics Group, Inc., Beck is employing the Spiral Dynamics model to effect large-scale systems change in and among various sectors and societies of the world. He is the author of Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership & Change, written with Christopher Cowan in 1996.

Beck's long consulting career has taken him to such diverse settings as 10 Downing Street to consult with Tony Blair's Policy Unit; the south side of Chicago to address the problems faced by inner-city schools; the World Bank to consider the future of Afghanistan; and the boardrooms of major banks, energy companies, airlines, and government agencies. In his 63 trips to South Africa between 1981 and 1988, he had significant impact on political leaders, the business sector, religious leadership, and the general public in order to help bring about the peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. Out of his experiences there, Beck wrote The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future (1991) with Graham Linscott.

Before his work in South Africa, Beck taught for twenty years at the University of North Texas. There he was named Outstanding Professor in 1978, named Honor Professor in 1979, and listed as an "Outstanding Educator in America" in 1980. Beck has also been the team psychologist for The South African Springboks, winners of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and has been associated with the Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, the Texas Rangers (baseball), and the U.S. Olympic Committee for Men's Track and Field. He writes a "sports values" column for the Dallas Morning News. He makes his home in Denton, Texas.

IMPORTANT LINKS TO DON'S WORK:
Center for Human Emergence: http://www.humanemergence.org
Spiral Dynamics website: http://www.spiraldynamics.net

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