What happens when we feel able to share and connect honestly with other human beings, even in the face of significant differences, views, and even conflict and harm?
Shilpa's Substack (full of incredible posts on timely topics)
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA. For the last 11+ years, she served as the Executive Director of YES!. YES! works with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, and aims to co-create a thriving, just and balanced world for all. Prior to this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network.
Shilpa has researched and written numerous books and articles, and facilitated workshops and gatherings on topics including globalization, creative expressions, ecology, democratic living, innovative learning and unlearning. Her publications include A Poet's Challenge to Schooling, Reclaiming the Gift Culture, Other Worlds of Power, Paths of Unlearning, Unfolding Learning Societies volumes one, two and three, and several issues of Vimukt Shiksha (“Liberating Learning”) and the Swapathgami newsletter “Making Our Paths of Living and Learning”. She is also co-author of “Connect. Inspire. Collaborate”, a highly sought-after facilitation manual.
Shilpa has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings in India, Jordan, Senegal, Lebanon, Egypt, Thailand, Canada, Peru, and the US, working with hundreds of young leaders from over 50 countries. She was founding coordinator of the Global Youth Leadership Collaborative, a network of 15 Jam facilitators from 14 countries that has collectively produced dozens of international gatherings for young changemakers, and distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to small-scale grassroots social change innovations worldwide.
Shilpa made the decision to leave the trappings of academia, Washington, DC, and the path of “professionalism” to live and work in greater alignment with her soul's calling. Today, she sees her work as contributing to the deep healing of internal, interpersonal and systemic breakdown. Shilpa is committed to using very simple human technologies to uncover ways for people to free themselves from dominating, soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts and deepest values, their local communities, and with nature.
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Cancel culture did not arise just in the past five years. While it has been a phenomena that has taken center stage in recent years and in this author's opinion a part of a larger social manipulation to divide and polarize, there has always been a strange acceptance that people are disposable, especially if they do something inexcusable. It postulates that anyone can make that judgment, and have the authority to deem it final. It relies on the insistence that there is no further conversation: it's final. It relies on veiling or even erasing the context of an individual's life and their story, their history. It thrives on fear and lacks any form of curiosity or humanity. It is a false and arrogant cultural phenomenon that is the antithesis of belonging. And make no mistake, it’s been a deep facet of American culture for its duration.
It is estimated (and arguably underestimated) that one of two adults or at least 113 million Americans have ever had a loved one incarcerated, and that for every individual incarcerated, there are at minimum ten people impacted.
Close to 10% of all American children have experienced the impact of a parent being locked away. It is estimated that life expectancy of someone with a parent or loved one currently or formerly incarcerated drops by 2.6 years.
Yet day-to-day, few seem to be addressing this legitimate pandemic of the human spirit and the blunt aggression of living in a society infamous for being the “Incarceration Nation”, leading the entire world in how many it incarcerates (25% of total world’s total prisoners, but only 5% of that total global population).
While a general positive arc towards awareness that our country has a massive problem has grown exponentially in the past decade, there is hanging in the air a silence of strange antipathy towards the actual impacts on actual people. In the day to day habituations of American living, just how many of us are dealing with the impact that stigma and shame have in association with emprisonment--and not just that but the accompanying social outcasting and erasure--real and imagined (equally potent)?
What is going on in America?
Cancellation and justification of erasure and dehumanizing is one of the primary “unseen” yet very real factors that keep punitive systems working in the US. Beyond the systems themselves is a silent yet pervasive adoption of valuation terms upon human beings: how we belong, or don’t, how that is wrapped tightly (and intently) with identity; that somehow actions in absolute terms define one’s being, and so on.
I for one have seen them first hand, as the daughter of a mentally ill violent offender, who also arguably herself was the victim of malpractice by her then-psychiatrist. When someone commits a violent crime, they are dehumanized and no thought is given to the context of their past, or how these abhorrent behaviors became their identity as such. No thought is given to the treatment of offenders as less than human, even within a system that proclaims that it serves to rehabilitate or “correct”, as in naming many prisons “correctional centers”. The language betrays the real motive, the real driving force, behind American justice, at least the primary normalized form of justice that has snaked itself into our culture and somehow left to fester without any thought further to the general population, who may likely be quite comfortable with it being NIMBY-esque–and who’s to blame the public? Many who know not what is really going on. Until….a loved one is incarcerated, and cancelled, made inhuman and all within the context of it being justified. This is abhorrent, unjust behavior and treatment that we as a country have signed onto, and without likely knowing.
I don’t even want to go into the human rights violations and racism, the stigma and maltreatment of the meek and mentally ill, that occurs within prisons. Or the treatment of birthing mothers, or those with newborns. It is horrific in and of itself. What happens inside prisons, as our own Department of Justice said in 1973, doesn’t work. They say themselves that it makes criminals. And for our youth caught in the irresponsibly vague and ambiguous juvenile systems, it locks the limbic system in fight-flight and freezes neural development and plasticity, among many other things. It also convinces youth and adults alike that they ARE what they did, not that their actions were an expression of unmet needs and behaviors–which is a wholly separate thing from one’s identity. Oh no, we really go after them with sticks, to ensure they adopt the idea that they are bad, and they have to live with that as their identity. It is nothing short of sick.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about my life's journey, as the daughter of a wonderful mother who by society's terms is a monster. She is now in her eighties, and served 15 years, solitary confinement, and additional juggling around over 3 further years between jails and mental health lockdowns. I've been thinking about how what she did destroyed a lot of lives and relationships, although I can only speak from my own journey. I know for sure that people who seem like friends and community can, do, and often will, turn on you, when the worst happens.
When I think about being cast out of my own neighborhood and monitored by association, I think about the authority people felt they had to do violence in return to me, and to my family. I feel sad about that predicament, as it arguably was not unjustified--we all know that the worst can bring out the worst in all of us. Yet a long-lingering grief continues in my heart for that shaming, public shaming, outcasting, and erasure that I endured, and on behalf of my family. I to this day want to tell the people I used to babysit for -- at least three families regularly on that street -- how much their petition and actions impacted me. How their lack of any form of compassion appeared then, and even now, as being a very violent response to the horrific original violence. I think about the Amish and their somehow innate ability to not just say they forgive, but to behave authentically as such. I wonder what the difference is between my neighborhood then, and how Amish see life. The gap is wide, maybe even to this day.
While what my mother did was horrific, and requires accountability and also the type of perspective that allows for the unthinkable to come from inherently good people--which my parents were and still are--it has haunted me how it is anyone's gamble what will occur in the aftermath. In my work as a social justice leader, researcher and educator, I've heard the gamut of stories, from types like the one I lived and live to the ones where Grace seems absolutely infused into the entirety of the circumstances, where the community offers a higher understanding while still rightfully requiring accountability and repair. It is a mystery to me to this day.
What is not a mystery is how we can actively dismantle the tendency to entangle a person with their act, their behavior, and make it their identity. The criminal justice--and arguably all social systems in the USA--manipulate human worth and value on this scale: what you do, not who you are. Doing over being. Accomplishment over presence. Justified value over inherent worth. And so on.
So if you are currently struggling with a loved one, a child, a parent, family or friend, being in prison and the media circus, the stigma, all of it that comes with it, not to mention the behaviors and actions that are justified in how your loved one is treated in custody, you are NOT ALONE.
The statistical evidence I cite at the outset of this piece, I believe, is as other criminal justice related stats: highly under-estimated. If close to half of the adults in this country have been impacted by incarceration and at least ten people or more beyond that get the seismic impacts, seen and unseen, then we have more people in this country struggling silently than we could even imagine. This is on my mind daily.
I want our kids and youth to know especially that they have implicit value, just for being who they are. Since Mr. Rogers is no longer with us, sadly, as a kids public television show, to ensure our children never forget this key foundation of life, we have to remind one another. We have to push back on what the brilliant Tema Okun terms the Supremacist Characteristics--the valuation of accomplishment, doing, expediency, and all things surface forever stamping out essence--the value of a human life as is upon birth--the value of presence, of one's story, of one's unique and singular fingerprint-gift to the world.
Next essay: How restorative justice reconnects us and our humanity
*This is part one of a series of essays formulating an upcoming book devoted to the topic.
In this episode, we hear from the founder of The Circle Keepers, Martin Urbach, and three youth keepers, centering their voices and ideas about restorative practices, how to build unity across divides, and more.
RJOTR believes strongly in this program and was deeply honored to host this very special episode that you won't want to miss. Listen in now to hear how youth -- directly from their voices and lived experiences -- are advocating and practicing on-the-ground!
The Circle Keepers started in 2017 as a volunteer-run after school program for high school students to learn restorative justice practices such as peer mediation protocols, conflict resolution circles and community building activities as well as to hone their leadership skills, engage in political education, civic participation and produce community service/social justice projects and thus, create change in their school and in their neighborhoods.?
100% of student participants surveyed report that The Circle Keepers program made their school experience more meaningful
Started youth-led restorative justice cohorts in 8 different public schools, across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx.
Helped reduce suspensions by 95% at one Manhattan borough school in District 2 in the span of 4 years (2019-2023)
Testified for City Council to successfully restore over $32M of funding cuts towards restorative justice justice programming in NYC Public Schools from 2022-2024.
Developed a comprehensive Restorative Justice Curriculum for grades 6-8 and grades 9-12, currently offered as semester long electives in a D2 and a D15 school.
Trained over 1000 students as restorative justice peer mediators,
Trained over 100 NYC Public School staff in school based restorative justice practices.
Traveled to Austin, TX to present a sold-out workshop at the SXSWedu 2023 conference of over 100 guests.
Traveled to Washington, DC to meet with Leader Charles Schumer to learn about federal policy and explored the National Museum of African American History and Culture to develop a stronger sense of Black epistemologies and ontologies.
Produced a “Green New Deal for Public Schools” roundtable with Congressman Jamaal Bowman at Sarah Lawrence College.
Produced youth led conference for 250+ NYC youth, rooted on the theme of “peace and justice”, bringing together 50+ stakeholders, including youth development organizations, city agencies, elected officials and even private businesses donating food and supplies!?
HOSTED BY: Founder & Executive Producer Molly Rowan Leach (she/her), and Social Media and Marketing Manager Logan Ward (he/him), who is also an accomplished Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker (Remarkable, 2024)
ABOUT MOLLY: https://restorativejusticeontherise.org/about-us/host-executive-producer/
Molly’s writing: https://medium.com/@mollyleach
ABOUT LOGAN: https://www.loganward.net/about
Logan’s portfolio: https://www.loganward.net/
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This webinar was recorded on May 9th, 2025.
In this episode, social anthropologist and experienced mediator Deborah Heifetz will explore her groundbreaking Map to Compassion — a non-hierarchical framework recently published in MIT’s Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change. She will guide us in understanding how we can sustain curiosity in environments dominated by fear and distrust. Drawing on over 30 years of global peacebuilding experience and somatic education, Heifetz illuminates how our developmental needs, culture, and tribal affiliations shape our emotional responses. Her emphasis on fairness over punitive justice aligns with Restorative Justice principles, inviting inquiry through the question: “What can be done to feel fairly treated?” This focus on fairness elicits deeper, more feelingful inquiries and reveals choices that support repair with the intent on rebuilding relationships and communities. Over many years, Heifetz has worked at the nexus of inner and outer peace. In this webinar, she will offer compassionate approaches to conflict resolution, providing practical tools for balancing emotionally charged needs during challenging times.
ABOUT DEBORAH:
Deborah Heifetz (she/her) is a social anthropologist, mediator, and professional facilitator with over 30 years of experience in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and somatic education. She developed the systems-based model – the Human Needs Map, a circular matrix representing the interconnections between human needs at different levels of scale and reflecting the synergies and tensions between needs. Her model has been considered a breakthrough framework by founders of Human Needs Theory for its non-hierarchical approach to human needs and for the way human needs and emotions are tied to human development. A co-founder of BraveHearts International, she has worked globally in mediation, sustainability, and leadership training, integrating movement-based and somatic practices like Laban Movement Analysis and Somatic Experiencing with her knowledge and sensitivity for culture and community building. A Chevening Scholar, she recently published The Map to Compassion in MIT’s Journal for Awareness-Based Systems Change. Heifetz works at the nexus of inner and outer peace.
Website: https://heifetzmatrix.com/
HOSTED BY: Founder & Executive Producer Molly Rowan Leach (she/her), and Social Media and Marketing Manager Logan Ward (he/him).
ABOUT MOLLY: https://restorativejusticeontherise.org/about-us/host-executive-producer/
Molly’s writing: https://medium.com/@mollyleach
ABOUT LOGAN: https://www.loganward.net/about
Logan’s portfolio: https://www.loganward.net/
ABOUT RESTORATIVE JUSTICE ON THE RISE
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Author (Being Restorative, April 2024) and restorative practitioner Leaf Seligman invites us to the tenderness of humility, listening, and towards the values and principles that unite us as a humanity, as we face intense and urgent polarization and violence in our world. Our host Jabali Stewart of Huayruro, himself a martial artist of nonviolence and unification, weaves us in conversation to implore deepening inquiry into what this thing we call ‘restorative’ really is, how it makes its way into the world, and how it ameliorates connection and context.
Tenderness is often considered weak or scary, and yet it is itself a revolutionary act. Leaf’s work within prisons and communities, as well as her personal experiences as a partially sight-impaired person, illuminate the “lens” and approach to this work that grounds individuals much beyond the field of restorative justice, in times of great upheaval and disconnection. Tenderness is a powerful bridge that acknowledges the other, that asks also of accountability of self first, and of others, yet from an understanding of our global interrelationship as a baseline for life, and life well lived. And alongside her perspective, we keep in mind the indigenous of our world who came long before this movement, knowing we are related to all life, humans and animals, trees, waters, skies, and cosmos. With this there is honor in having responsibility to all. This awareness is welcomed throughout our dialogue.
Oftentimes it is easy to misunderstand restorative as only relating to conflict and the modern justice systems in our world, yet it is a much larger scope of practices that center our common humanity and ask us to hear from one another in ways that build or rebuild, reshaping trust and meaning, offering powerful and sustaining agency for change on every level imagined.
ABOUT
Leaf Seligman
Leaf Seligman is the author of Being Restorative which was published in April 2024 and is available from the publisher, Bauhan Publishing, and online retailers. Leaf considers herself a daughter of the trees, grateful to live in Maple Nation and be close enough to spend time among beloved copper beeches. She has taught in colleges, prisons, and community settings since 1985. As a restorative practitioner, Leaf draws on her experience as a jail chaplain, prisoner educator, congregational minister, college instructor, and human being. She facilitates peacekeeping circles, immersive learning experiences, and restorative processes of accountability, healing, and transformation. Leaf delights in bringing tenderness everywhere. Her previous books include Opening the Window: Sabbath Meditations, A Pocket Book of Prompts, and From the Midway: Unfolding Stories of Redemption and Belonging. She lives in New Hampshire.
Jabali Stewart
Jabali is an organizational consultant, a leadership coach, a public speaker, a youth worker, and a circle keeper. He has kept Peacemaking Circles in schools (K through College), businesses, families, government, and community settings. He has trained in and practices the lineage of Circle Keeping connected to Mark Wedge, Kay Pranis, Barry Stuart and Tahnaga Myers for over a decade. Besides Circle, he also practices other Art of Hosting and Participatory Leadership modalities. Jabali is a former independent school administrator, a public speaker, and has also cultivated a practice of one-on-one counsel. He enjoys collaborative problem-solving, and his work is deeply informed by his belief and practice of sensible, love-based leadership.
Find Jabali on Linkedin
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This episode features Dr. Tema Okun who gives us a brief rundown of the characteristics of White Supremacy Culture, which can be understood in-depth on her website: www.whitesupremacyculture.info
Dr. Tema Okun offers her knowledge of relationships that people may have with White Supremacy Culture as well as suggestions to dismantle this broken system. We welcome listeners to step outside of thinking that these systems are working for us in any shape or form.
The live webinar was recorded on January 23rd, 2025 and it is hosted by Molly Rowan Leach, founder of RJotR, and Logan Ward, Restorative Justice on the Rise’s new Social Media Manager.
Logan then relates a statement from the website to his recently released documentary, Remarkable, Voices from the Trans Community, which covers the similar topic of objectivity’s irrelevance when in dialogue with oppressed (marked) and non-oppressed (unmarked) groups.
Logan’s film can be found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PpjhMnVsFk
And the subsequent discussion space can both be found on his website: https://www.loganward.net/film
Key notes from this episode:
Dr. Tema Okun recommends that if we are going to engage in restorative justice work we need a:
The instructions from Tema’s mother are:
ABOUT
Tema Okun
Dr. Okun has spent over 40 years working with and for organizations, schools, and community-based institutions as an educator, facilitator, and coach focused on issues of racial justice and equity. She currently facilitates, consults, mentors, and offers talks for and with leaders and organizations locally and nationwide.
She is the author of the award-winning The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know (2010, IAP) and the widely used article White Supremacy Culture. She has published a revised version of this article on an extended and expanded website at www.whitesupremacyculture.info
Tema is a fierce Jewish advocate for Palestine solidarity as a member of the Triangle Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. She is on the board of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and belongs to the Bhumisphara Sangha under the leadership of Lama Rod Owens. She is a graduate of the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute. She is an artist, a poet, and a writer. She lives in Durham NC where she is fortunate to reside among beloved community. Her current project is deepening her ability to love her neighbor as herself. She is finding the instruction easy and the follow through challenging, given how we live in a culture that is afraid to help us do either or both.
Reach her on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tema-okun-0a14311a1
Logan Ward
Logan Ward (he/him) is an illustrator, writer, and filmmaker who values dialogue, challenging societal norms, and mutual respect. He graduated with a master’s in Media Design in August 2024, where he studied community-centered and participatory approaches to research and design.
Reach him on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-ward-860620218/
Check out his illustrations on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/l.ward.draws/
And also on his website: https://www.loganward.net/
ABOUT RESTORATIVE JUSTICE ON THE RISE
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**Disclaimer** Audio was recorded with limited resources, please listen with good headphones to properly hear the valuable information in this episode.
recorded at Expanding Restorative Justice in Oregon in 2021.
In 2021, the Criminal Justice Commission created rules regarding the administration of the Restorative Justice Grant Program. Those rules require applicants to propose community based restorative justice programs that serve as alternatives to prosecution. This requirement is in alignment with best practices from across the country that speak to the importance of community held restorative justice programs.
This panel discussion will explore the importance of keeping restorative justice programs based in community and separate from the criminal legal process. Panelists will provide background on their experiences with community based restorative justice programs and will speak to the critical differences between the restorative and punitive approaches to harm.
Danielle DeCant
Deputy District Attorney in Hood River County
Member of Circles of Peace Advisory Team in the Columbia River Gorge
danielle.decant@hoodrivercounty.gov
Debra Pennington-Davis
Circles of Peace Program/Six Rivers Dispute Resolution Center
Restorative Justice Coordinator
Laura Diamond (She/her)
Conflict Artistry LLC
Co-owner, Coordinator, Facilitator
Emily B. Naylor
Emerging Adult Program / Community Solutions of Central Oregon
Restorative Justice Specialist & Lead Facilitator
In Partnership with:
Restorative Justice Coalition of Oregon
RJCO is a coalition of Oregon restorative justice practitioners and programs.
We promote and support the implementation and practice of restorative justice principles and models in Oregon’s justice, law enforcement, educational and other community institutions.
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with Shaylie Pickrell
Director of Operations & Infrastructure, RJ Facilitator - Restorative Roots Project (PDX, OR, USA)
In this 1:15h episode, we drop deeply into the concept that our greatest losses might just be our greatest powers to serve our communities, and our world.
We explore key topics such as:
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Media That Matters:
Public Dialogue On Justice
Restorative Justice on the Rise is an international live dialogue via Webcast and Telecouncil platform that reaches an international constituency of invididuals, organizations, professionals, academics, practitioners, and more. The mission is 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.