RPP Colloquium: The Restorative Justice Approach

[Music] so welcome to the opening session of our fourth annual religions and the practice of peace colloquium series here at Harvard I'm David Hempton Dean of the Divinity School so thanks to all of you for being with us tonight those of you joining us for the first time members of our cross-disciplinary RPP working group and colleagues and friends from across Harvard University in the local area thank you for coming we're very pleased to have you we'd especially like to thank our guest speakers Vanya Davis and to Jaffa Baliga for travelling all the way from California to be with us tonight so thanks for coming I would also like to thank the co-sponsors of tonight's session the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for race and justice at Harvard Law School the prison studies project and the transformative justice series at the Harvard Graduate School of Education we'd also like to express our gratitude to our peepees generous supporters and including the reverend karen vickers bob ney and mr. Albert Budd me for helping make these and other RPP activities possible and to all the RPP team for their work and organizing this event there a lot of people do remarkable work behind the scenes to get all of this together so thank you so much for that a great deal has happened in our country and in our world in the months since we last met with in need for concerted efforts for sustainable peace growing war origin by the day here in the US we see deepening divides around politics race religion and immigration a resurgence of hate groups and extremism and shocking incidents of mass violence of frightening frequency and increasing scale around the world societies are torn by war and sectarian strife minorities are suffering persecution and violence and the threat of nuclear war appears evermore imminent meanwhile Humanity is also facing other big problems some imperiling our very survival as a species from climate change and devastating natural disasters to mass migration and deep economic inequality all of these big problems intersect with destructive conflict in complex ways as we've been finding out over the previous three years and all these things will demand from us unprecedented local and global cooperation if we're going to surmount them the gravity of our present moment calls upon each of us to examine our role in our human family situation and to seek creative ways to cultivate healing bridge-building constructive engagement and positive transformation in all our spheres of influence reflecting on our responsibilities and opportunities here at Harvard this year a number of our faculty students fellows alumni and staff from across the university are launching a sustainable Peace Initiative SPI to seek ways to advance leadership collaboration and creativity for sustainable peace at Harvard and beyond so some of the questions we'll be exploring are these what what different perspectives do we bring to the meaning of peace and what is needed to make peace substantive shared and sustainable how does humanity's quest for sustainable peace intersect with our quest to address our other big problems can mainstreaming sustainable peace as a coule of leadership across all sectors and collaborating strategically to develop innovative ways of operationalizing this goal can this help humanity bring about a more humane and harmonious world what holistic approaches will enable us to address the many dimensions of conflict and peace from the spiritual and cultural to the institutional and structural to the political and economic what insights on these questions can we draw from our academic disciplines and our spiritual ethical and cultural traditions these are all big questions and they're all big questions for all of us to address so these will be the themes in this RPP colloquium series this year and we look forward to engaging with you on these questions in our public sessions month by month since it's imperative for our human family to shift a holistic and spiritually engaged approaches to dealing with these difficult matters we can think of no better speakers to help us begin our exploration this year than the guests were fortunate to have with us tonight who will share with us on the topic of the restorative justice approach wisdom and spiritual resources for sustainable peace and our communities Janet Gyatso who was to be our moderator this evening regrettably learned that she is unable to join us and we're very delighted that timely filling that role for us will be Elisabeth ruqaiya Lee hood who has been research associate for religions in the practice of peace since our peepees inception growing out of her experiences as a person of multiracial and multicultural background on her early encounters with mentors and african-american Muslim and transnational Islamic communities this has been studying for over three decades the ways in which the wisdom traditions of diverse religions and cultures have empowered and continue to empower people here in the United States and run the globe in the practice of peace on positive individual and social transformations a graduate of Harvard College and social studies Women's Studies and Chinese and the Harvard Divinity School and world religions Islamic studies in Arabic she is currently a PhD candidate in the study of religion at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences her professional and community activities have focused on civil rights social justice and intercultural internal relations she co-founded the first discussion and support group from multiracial students at Harvard College she has been a community mediator and coach for the Harvard mediation program at Harvard Law School and other Boston area and mediation organizations and Co designed and delivered the Harvard mediation programs first mediation training tailored for divinity students she's worked in civil rights law intercultural skills and conflict management training for international professionals and culturally sensitive Hospital and end-of-life care she's a consultant trainer and facilitator for central partners a non-profit working domestically and internationally to transform conflict to a constructive dialogue so her doctoral research doesn't her spare time on prayer explores the traditional Islamic teachings on the relationship between spiritual practice spiritual formation live spiritual ethics and intimacy with the divine so it's a great pleasure to invite Liz to introduce our two very distinguished visitors tonight Liz thank you so greetings friends and family thank you so much for being here we're really honored to have you all here it's really energizing and really brings a lot of hope and upliftment to us because there are so many people here who are so serious about positive change and about thinking together deeply about how we can bring about a more humane and harmonious world so we want to thank you very much for that just to say a couple of words too about the sustainable peace initiative so an impetus for our launching the sustainable peace initiative this year is a recognition on the part of so many of us that addressing the magnitude of the challenges that we're facing as a human species predominantly self created ones will demand not only a cross sector approach but also a major shift in our consciousness and our modus operandi touching virtually every sphere of our lives three big types of big-picture questions that we're asking ourselves and one another include first whether it's in our families or communities our nation here in our world how can we shift to and begin acting upon a sense of we that's commensurate with the reality of our human entered in other words how can we begin to think and act like the human family that we are I often think about it as taking on grandmother's mind Tina or that isn't shift into thinking and acting like a more functional family rather than the kind of dysfunctional family that we too often are in particular how can we begin to heal and bridge our divisions and develop more positive relationships in the face of very real and often grave and traumatic harms both historical and continuing second how can we take on the daunting task of facing up to and beginning to seriously address our big structural and institutional problems that perpetuate cycles of harm violence and division ones that usually feel so daunting we feel helpless in the face of them and so we you know give up dealing with them problems such as mass incarceration deep socio-economic inequities and entrenched racial disparities and in Justices the types of things we'll be discussing tonight and where can be gained the vision to develop holistic approaches capable of dealing effectively with the immense complexity of these problems third what role do we ourselves play and what have we been playing in this web of interdependent relationships that is our human family if we wish to be effective agents of positive transformation in our spheres of influence what shifts will that actually require of us personally relationally ethically and spiritually so tonight as we consider specific big problems such as mass incarceration and our criminal justice system here in the United States we'll also be seeking to glean wisdom on these broader questions wisdom that we can apply through our pursuit of sustainable peace more generally so the two practitioners who were very blessed to have with us today have I believe been through the crucible of the issues in their lives and their careers they've been blazing trails that are transforming the lives of many our institutions and pointing out paths forward for us on many levels the first speaker will be dr. Tanya Davis co-founder and director of restorative justice for Oakland youth and a national thought leader in the field she's a longtime social justice activist a restorative justice scholar and professor and a civil rights attorney with a PhD in indigenous knowledge coming of age in Birmingham Alabama during the social ferment of the civil rights era the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday school bombing crystallized within dr. Davis a passionate commitment to social transformation for the next decades she was active in the civil rights Black Liberation Women's prisoners peace socialist anti imperialist anti racial violence and apartheid movements after receiving her law degree from the University of California Berkeley in 1979 dr. Davis practiced almost 27 years as a civil rights trial lawyer with the subspecialty in academic discrimination during the late 1990s she entered a ph.d program in indigenous studies at the California Institute of integral studies and apprenticed with traditional healers around the globe particularly in Africa dr. Davis has since taught restorative justice and indigenous peacemaking at graduate and undergraduate levels she's also served as counsel to the International Council of 13 indigenous grandmothers dr. David speaks and writes on the subject of school-based restorative justice race and restorative justice the indigenous roots of restorative justice social justice and restorative justice truth and reconciliation youth based restorative justice the school to Prison Pipeline mass incarceration and other topics her numerous honors include the Ubuntu service to humanity award the Moloney Award recognizing exceptional contributions in youth based restorative justice world trusts healing justice award the tikkun repair the world award the Bioneers changemaker award and the Lafarge social justice award she is also a Woodrow Wilson Fellow the Los Angeles Times named dr. Davis a new civil rights leader of the 21st century she's a mother grandmother dancer and yoga and Qigong practitioner Sujatha ba liga is director of the restorative justice project and vice president at impact justice and adjust beginnings Fellow her work is characterized by an equal dedication to victims and persons accused of crimes she speaks publicly and inside prisons about her own experiences as a survival of child sexual abuse and her path to forgiveness a former victim advocate and public defender in New York and New Mexico Bali NGO was awarded a Soros justice fellowship in 2008 which she used to launch a preach are dressed or ative juvenile diversion program in Alameda County during the restorative justice project Sujata helps communities implement restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero tolerance school discipline policies she's also dedicated to using this approach to end child sexual abuse and intimate partner violence Sujatha is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences she's been a guest on NPR and The Today Show and the New York Times Magazine scene and the Atlantic have profiled her work Sujatha earned her a B from Harvard and Radcliffe colleges her JD from the University of Pennsylvania has held to federal clerkships and teaches a seminar on restorative justice at Berkley law school her personal and research interests include the forgiveness of seemingly unforgivable acts restorative justices potential impact on racial disparities in our justice system and Buddhist notions of conflict transformation sujata's faith journey undergirds her justice work a longtime Buddhist practitioner she is a lay member of the Utah foundation a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Richmond California where she teaches meditation on Monday nights she makes her home in Berkeley California with her partner of 20 years Jason and their 11 year old son Satya so thank you very much for being here [Music] [Applause] so first I'd like to invite up to the lectern dr. Davis who will be speaking on the spiritual roots of restorative justice resources for cultivating peace in our communities thank you thank you to all of all of you and especially to the organizers of this event I want to say that I'm really grateful and honored to be invited to help kick off the Harvard Divinity School our PP colloquium series to explore restorative justice and how it might advance sustainable peace I'm doubly honored to be able to do this with my dear friend and colleague Sujata Baliga we've been walking this restorative justice path together for at least 10 years now and worked closely together especially in the early years and I want to honor all of you in the audience for being here because I know you're here because you see so much suffering in the world all of the suffering that that Dean Hampton listed earlier the overwhelming amount of suffering in the world and you're here because you want to do something to reduce that suffering I also wish to honor the ancestors of this land the Wampanoag and others praying that we might walk this land in ways that honor them and their peacemaking and healing wisdom in invoking the wampum one I know I'm sorry we acknowledge this is an occupied land upon which we stand and this is a post genocidal land and like the harm of slavery we have yet as a nation to tell the whole truth about this genocide about this slavery to take responsibility and to make amends because we have not heal from this original trauma it perpetually reenacts itself albeit in different guys's in different forms slavery and genocide are not dead they have only evolved as Brian Stevenson says I want to acknowledge the community of Cambridge how many of you are community people here tonight wonderful I want to acknowledge all of you for the city of Cambridge's decision to declare the second month of October indigenous peoples day in 2016 this is an act of decolonizing our history and it is an important step on the road to sustainable peace I also wish to acknowledge the work that Harvard Law is doing a catalyzed by the activism of black students and students of color and all students of conscience Harvard is telling the truth about its complicity its direct complicity in slavery and in the slave trade and they are taking the first steps toward making amends whether removal of the official shield renaming buildings to honor slaves who served in them and most recently unveiling a memorial during the biennial celebration honoring enslaved people whose labor made possible the founding of Harvard Law when Sujatha and I were walking over here stumbled on it it was just such a wonderful thing on our way here so these are all steps toward sustainable peace and especially toward beginning to take the first steps to transform historical harm in my elder years I won't say how many I'm coming to realize the importance of embracing both the warrior and the healer in me not embracing one and rejecting the other but embracing both harmonizing what we often view as opposites it took me a while to get there but I believe this another step toward peace but in my own inner peace or as I'll talk about a little bit later its peace for our communities in the world embracing the warrior and healer let me share with you the story of my own personal journey leading to this realization and also share how this coupling of warrior and healer looks in the context of my work in Oakland schools and in efforts to transform legacies and aftermath of slavery I'll talk a bit to you about what RJ is how many of you have read a book about restorative justice oh good so I don't have to say too much how many of you have had a training okay so on the story my own personal story so I was born in the most segregated City of the South bombing ham Alabama you may know it as Birmingham but we called it bombing ham because of the frequency of the bombings that targeted the homes in churches of activists of the civil rights movement I was born believe it or not a top dynamite Hill I kid you not that was my neighborhood this is part of my origin story it was called dynamite Hill because we as a black family moved into a previously all-white neighborhood other black families followed the response of the white Citizens Council and of the Ku Klux Klan was to bomb our homes we were very fortunate our home was not bombed but houses all around us were we would wake in the wee hours of morning to the sounds of explosions going off I went to church just down the hill about two blocks our church was bombed because of our interracial discussion groups right across from the church the home of we call them lawyer Shores sometimes some people call them a tarnish that's that's our black sort of colloquialism eternity Shores rather than an attorney Shores you get it yeah eternity Shores or we call them lawyer Shores anyway he was an amazing civil rights attorney who worked with Thurgood Marshall while he was an attorney with the n-double-a-cp and engaged an incredible litigation to desegregate the city of Birmingham his home was bombed not once not twice but three times with a fourth attempt that was unsuccessful and then there was the Birmingham Sunday school bombing which all of you I'm sure know about September 5th 1963 I lost two friends in that bombing Cynthia Wesley Carole Robertson and so I left from these formative experiences and from this experience of racial terror every day of my life to go north to go to school and I left the south with this ferocious this fierce this intense an irreversible commitment to be a warrior for justice I won't list the movements you've listed them already earlier but I was involved in almost every major movement of my time when my husband and I moved to California and became active in solidarity with the Black Panthers police broke into our home and shot my husband almost killing him with a bullet just millimeters away from his spine we were charged with attempted murder of police thank goodness the judge whose career has been ruined ever since dismissed the charges and found that breaking into our home it was unconstitutional they had no probable cause no reason to be in our home so the charges were finally dropped after they were dismissed and weary indited this happened three or four times and then not long after that incident occurred my sister Angela Davis is everybody know who Angela Davis is in here okay good all right was targeted because of her political activities for really to be silenced to be eliminated that's not too strong a word by then Governor Reagan and President Nixon she was charged with capital murder kidnapping and conspiracy and she went underground because all of her comrades all of her friends were being killed and shot at him like my husband so she thought that she might be killed she went underground even though she was clearly innocent and she was captured October 13th 1970 and I immediately started to travel all over the world speaking on my sister's behalf organizing the International movement I was in my early twenties I think and after that after she was freed by a massive movement I became a trial lawyer because I really admired the lawyers the civil rights lawyers and criminal justice lawyers who were working on my sister's case so I became a trial lawyer thinking that I could be a more effective agent of social transformation in doing so so then after decades of cultivating the hyper rationalist hyper masculine Asst hyper aggressive qualities that I was required to cultivate to be successful as an activist and as a lawyer I started to feel burnt out and I kind of knew I intuitively knew that I was being invited to bring more healing and spiritual energies into my life to regain balance synchronicity dreams led me to shut down my law practice and I found a program an indigenous knowledge recovery of indigenous now and I ended up a princessing with healer with healers especially in Africa then when I came back from Africa and finished the dissertation I had learned about this thing called restorative justice and it was an epiphany for me it integrated the healer and warrior in me I no longer had to choose to be just the warrior and not the healer or vice versa this was a justice that is more concerned with getting well than getting even this is a justice that that is more concerned about healing instead of punishing so let's talk a bit about what restorative justice is it is a worldview rooted in indigenous principles and the theory of justice that emphasizes bringing together everyone affected by wrongdoing to address their needs and responsibilities and to heal the harm as much as possible so first up it's a worldview it's not just a conflict resolution method although it can be effectively used to do that it is also a worldview and a way of being present in the world a way of being present in the world it brings about healing and wholeness rather than a way of being present in the world it brings about harming and devastation and discord note2 needs responsibilities healing it's a needs-based justice it promotes accountability and it heals the harm to the degree possible you could say that ours is a system that harms people who harm people to show that harming people is wrong if I caused harm to you then I create an imbalance of the scales of justice the only way we can rebalance the scale under our system is for harm to be caused to me if I caused if I caused suffering the only way to rebalance the scales is to cause me to suffer and so we replicate harm we respond to the original harm with another harm and the harm replicates indefinitely a good way to understand the difference between the two kinds of justice is to go through this three question exercise what law or rule was broken who broke it and what punishment is deserved normally when I do this I hide the questions and I ask the audience to figure out what those questions might you don't have time to do it now and restorative justice flips the script rather than blaming adjudicating and punishing which sums up our criminal justices restorative justice as who was harmed what are the needs and responsibilities of everybody impacted and how does everyone impacted come together to address those needs and responsibilities and heal the harm to their be possible so some people confuse restorative justice with ADT or with arbitration with me nation with youth court and all of these are wonderful alternatives to our punitive justice system but what sort of Justice is different in that it challenges the dominant assumptions and the way that we think about and do justice and none of those others may be transformative mediation does but most of the other ADRs do not challenge the paradigmatic assumptions even though restorative justice has only been around for the last 45 years or so it is grounded in ancient ways of thinking about and doing justice it is grounded in the bedrock principle today affirmed by quantum mechanics that humans and all the Earth's presences and energies participate in a vast and luminous web of interrelationship and wholeness to embrace restorative justice is to embrace a relational world you are relational justice humans are constituted by their relationships though frequently translated as a person as a person through other persons perhaps a more accurate English rendition of Ubuntu would be a person is a person through their relationships through all the relationships not just to humans a person is a person through their relationship to the land to the waters to the animals to the air and so on Ubuntu emphasizes inter identity and interracial relationally with all dimensions of existence criminal justice sees crime as broken laws and justices punishment restorative justice sees crime is broken and lives and justice as healing let me say that again criminal justice sees crime as broken laws and justice as punishment restorative justice sees crime as broken lives and justice as healing and I think a justice that is healing is a path to a sustainable peace I want to talk just a little bit about the work that we're doing in schools Sujatha will talk about justice applications so we started a pilot in 2006 the pilot was successful in eliminating violence at the school reducing suspensions by 87% eliminating teacher attrition increasing academic outcomes it got the attention of a lot of principals and administrators in the school district with some youth organizing and with a study by the UC Berkeley Law School restorative justice became official school distant discipline policy and that is part of the whole theme of being a warrior and healer it's important that we as restorative justice practitioners not only a be skilled in facilitating those circles and facilitating what I call liberated spaces where people can be heard where their voices can be spoken and heard and where people feel seen and heard and where we get to connect with one another in ways that are beautiful in ways we ordinarily don't get a chance to do and we do this primarily through the circle process and through this process amazing healing can happen girls who've been fighting all their lives become good friends young men who are not expected to graduate with a thick jacket of suspensions and arrests and a 0.0 grade point average end up graduating sometimes with honors because they have been seen they have been heard they may be sagging let me be wearing a hoodie but they are not stereotyped as thugs which happens so often in schools where restorative justice is a norm our youth thrive because they receive because they're heard it's important that we not only create that space for healing to happen and for people to be seen and people to be heard and and and for there to be this sensitive connectivity that's amazing we also need to transform systems through which our youth move transform systems that are causing them harm in their lives that are causing them to cause harm because if you're harmed that harm is an idea you're going to replicate at home so what this looks like in Oakland the warrior part is that we not only do the work of transforming helping youth to transform their lives and teachers as well but we do the work of transforming systems so in 2010 as a result of the work that we were doing the trainings the coaching the pilot programs the school district adopted restorative justice as official school policy today there are there are there's a great study that I'm not going to really go through it because I don't want to spend go over my time but from the five years in the five years between 2012 and 2017 suspension rates dropped 55% from seven point four the three point three and of course there are racial disparities in school discipline and we saw that for blacks dropped from fourteen one point one percent to seven point three percent and for Latinas Latinos five point four to two point three and in doing this we're not just bringing the numbers of suspensions down okay we are doing that but a lot is happening with us we know that when a child is suspended just once their chances of being incarcerated triple according did UCLA Civil Rights Project their chances of dropping out double and once you drop out your chances are overwhelming that you will be incarcerated because most of the inmates in our prisons today are high school dropouts and if you end up being incarcerated you're as a as a juvenile that's a strong predictor of adult incarceration and if you're incarcerated as an adult all kinds of negative short and long term consequences ensue including having children who are more likely to also be suspended and go through that school to Prison Pipeline so this work is not just about it's about saving lives and keeping kids out of the school to Prison Pipeline when we reduce suspensions if we don't do both this healing work on interpersonal levels and this transformation of systems we are like gardeners who though devoted to healing the plant totally ignore the state of the ecosystem the state of the soil so that's why it's important for us as restorative justice practitioners and I've been I've been kind of on a bandwagon about this since I began working in restorative justice because the restorative justice movement unfortunately and it's early it actually in its first three to four decades had no racial justice no social justice consciousness it's really changing now I'm happy to say so I want to talk in my few remaining minutes about this work of healing historical harms which is dear to my heart and that's why we're so moved when I came over and we saw the stone commemorating the in slave labor making Harvard Law School possible we are a nation born in the blood of the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Native Americans we are a nation that embracing white supremacy from it's very inception they deliberately constructed fabricated the pseudo-scientific notion of race to justify the unspeakable horrors of slavery we are a nation that has been love ever since to confront and be honest about the meaning of slavery genocide lynching segregation the internment of the Japanese in World War two and the continuing we see it today abuse of communities of color and the failure to undertake this national reckoning and national healing has precluded our ability to overcome the past slavery didn't end it just evolved restorative justice is known for its efficacy in healing interpersonal harms whether to address fights and schools or even homicide and crimes of severe violence and Sujatha we'll talk about some amazing work that she's doing in that regard restorative justice is less known for healing systemic harms and historical harms but it's my belief that if the this amazing healing can happen between family members who have lost their loved ones to violence and the killer of those family members if reconciliation and healing could happen there that I have the hope and I have the belief that we can also utilize RJ restorative justice to address racial harm historical harm healing is so important for us in this nation we are like a person who had a terrible trauma at birth we're well into our years but we have never healed that original trauma a person who has never healed that original trauma and a person who has never heal a bet original that birth trauma what's gonna happen they're gonna keep reenacting that same trauma maybe in a different form but that is exactly what has happened to us as a nation we have had important proteomic Radek struggles in this country that succeeded in abolishing slavery yet the racial terror and racial violence that was the essence of slavery survived and continued on with the convict leasing system and the Thirteenth Amendment exception to the entity to the abolition of slavery for persons who are incarcerated the racial terror that was at the essence of slavery continued with Jim Crow and lynching and though we had movements we made amazing advances to end Jim Crow and to end lynching they have been transformed and morphed they have morphed to mass incarceration the school to Prison Pipeline police terrible I think we've gotten to the point in this country where we realize where we realized that if we don't undertake this healing of that original trauma we will continue we will continue to see this harm replica in generations over generations if we do not interrupt the internet intergenerational transmission of the original trauma of slavery we require requiring us as a nation to embark upon a collective healing journey this trauma will perpetually reenact itself we're seeing truth telling and racial healing initiatives and processes and reparations processes bubbling up all over the country we don't have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission going like South Africa did but it's got to be different here for us it's got to bubble up we've got to be doing healing circles in communities it's got to be very participatory not a top-down process where commissioners and experts hear the the stories and make the recommendations we need to be doing encounter circles between police officers and families who have lost their loved ones to police the violence that is actually happening in this nation unfortunately though we know whenever a police killing occurs and this is great and it's all due to the Ferguson activists to the young people in Ferguson that whenever a police killing occurs we will know about it it will have international headlines but what we don't know is about this amazing racial healing work that's going on we know about Harvard's work to tell the truth about its complicity and we know maybe about Browns work in Georgetown but there is a group of more than 30 universities it's called university studying slavery that is doing this work across the nation and of course you probably know about Bryan Stevenson's work developing a lynching Museum a slavery Museum and taking soil from lynching sites in various parts of the country and bringing them to this lynching Museum to the future site of this lynching Museum and mixing the soil into the cement that is going to be used to create those museums so just talking a little bit about the things that are happening in the nation that are bubbling up that so many of so few of us know about one of the things that we and our joy are doing is a mapping project every day I find out about a new racial healing of reparations or memorialization initiative and so what we're doing is a mapping project so we'll end up with an electronic map that shows where all of this work is happening all over the country and I hope is that eventually and hopefully in the sooner rather than later that we will have a national convening to bring it together all of these people who are doing this work so that we will have a sense of ourselves as a movement right now the efforts are pretty silo eyes of course after Charleston we saw the Confederate flags coming down we saw the memorials 16 memorials were brought down after Charleston and I think that had a lot to do with the amazing forgiveness of the families who were victims whose loved ones were killed by Dylan roots people said things like after witnessing the forgiveness of these families I was moved to reconsider flying the Confederate flag in my home I was moved to think about taking it down and detect I take memorials Confederate memorials down in ways this forgiveness accomplished that in ways that political argument and and and reading our words had never done for them there is an organization called coming to the table you know about that they take their name from dr. King's speech I have a dream that one day the descendants of slaves will come and sit at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood with the descendants of slave owners and they will create a beloved community or words to that effect well that is happening coming to the table is doing these healing these racial healing circles with chapters all over the country I am going to close and I close with this challenge be a healer and a warrior for justice don't succumb to a binary space where you feel you have to be one or the other see activism as a form of social healing and healing as a form of social transformation history is calling on us to be both these things history has long called us to be warriors for justice it is now calling for us to be warriors and healers in the same way Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was in the same way that Mahatma Gandhi was in the same way that the spiritual warriors of the International Indigenous Youth Council who started the actions at Standing Rock and who engaged in beautiful silent marches and prayer actions in the same way that the youth in Ferguson and in the black lives matter movement talk about the need for love and for healing we never talked about that when I was when I was an activist a revolutionary in the 60s and 70s so I was really pleasantly surprised to go to Ferguson during all of the demonstrations there and we had a demonstration where they called for love they call for healing as well as for justice the youth are leaving our way Rjay restorative justice is one way to be both a warrior and a healer there are others find your own way whether it's through liberation theology through black prophetic justice engaged or engaged Buddhism lasts have hope this is the time of the victory of a u.s. president who was a billionaire and has created a cabinet of billionaires the 1% the a time of victory of a racist Islamophobe homophobe misogynist xenophobe transphobic climate change denier in the White House but let us not forget it is also a time of activism that is bubbling up with energy and power all over the likes of which I have never seen in my long life hopefully also to be longer so though the poison is very much present as in nature the antidote is close by this is also a time of great hope but be hope don't just have the hope as brother Cornel West has said having hope is too abstract to detach to speck tutorial instead we must be hope an active an activist a warrior healer and a force for a sustainable peace as we move into the future [Applause] Thank You dr. Davis so now I'd like to invite Sujatha Baliga to speak to us on the question have you been angry long enough faith forgiveness and restorative justice ask that we start actually with a moment of silence 30 seconds to be exact obscene in something Jonathan Simon a dear friend and colleague at Berkeley Law School actually there's a whole minute he makes his law students meditate for a minute because it is mindful minute and so I'd love for us to just take a moment and we just heard a lot and incredible stories and let's take a moment to be in our bodies just be in silence or if you have a practice you want to do now you'll hear a bell in about 30 seconds thanks everyone mostly I do that for myself I appreciate you all taking the time to do that with me so it is really really good to be here with all that's going on in the world and to see beloved faces from other places in my life so it's really great to be here and so I say particularly thank you to the Dean and to to RPP the dip school to Andrea for all the wonderful Oh for all the wonderful organizing that was done and and to Liz to everyone here thank you so much for creating the space and particularly grateful to Konya for going first as she's always sort of goddess of sharing the beauty of everything restorative justice is as a spiritual immoral a practical thing which gets it all in there it's it's amazing and we were just recently marveling about over ten years ago like 2006 I sat in her office and on our first meeting and and and our first meeting actually wasn't about how are we gonna reduce racial ethnic disparities or we didn't actually go there which is where we usually live Oh are we gonna get recidivism rates down by this much how about you be convinced this District Attorney to divert these cases we actually spent that entire hour talking about our spiritual journeys to where we are and what it meant for we were sitting in her law office to step away I was doing death penalty appeals oh she was still doing civil rights litigation and an employment discrimination cases and we were like how do we transition out of this and shortly thereafter she convinced me and and literally we prayed over my Soros fellows application and walked to the what we'd like to literally held it together and mailed it off together and pretty soon I was I was working with fun yet had restorative justice for Oakland youth and so it's amazing to think about it shortly thereafter some point around there Fania also reminds me there was a walk around the lake where where she was like we're gonna end youth incarceration and and I was like I'm watching myself to this person because yeah we're gonna do that and and the questions were in those early conversations um so who did that who's done that and who's done it from a place of looking at racial and ethnic disparities and an indigenous and folks of color really driving that and you know before we even knew that that was the case these were findings questions and I would often research them and find out actually that happened in New Zealand right that the Maori folks were saying hey don't be locking up our kids at this disproportionate rate and and it resulted in a pilot that grew and in 1989 a nationwide act and they effectively ended youth incarceration it doesn't mean that the ended racial and ethnic disparities they're restorative justice system that addresses even the most serious crimes through family group conferencing a restorative justice model it still has a disproportionate number of Maori youth but in a minimum the number of youth that are actually detained for any period of time is microscopic in New Zealand um it's funny I'm going to New Zealand in a couple of weeks they asked me to keynote a conference there and I thought what am I going to say cuz I usually run around at keynote things and say so New Zealand this is what they working on that work on that so just a little bit about what brought me to this work in 1991 I transferred to Harvard and Radcliffe colleges as they were known back then because I wanted to study son spent and I was also struggling with unaddressed childhood trauma from a decade of sexual abuse by my father and my soul who was really longing for something called justice since he passed away when I was 16 so somewhere in my first week of school I I decided that Sanskrit wasn't a sufficiently practical thing for ending gendered and sexual violence and I changed majors and I became a victim advocate for a few years after college and both in the United States and in India working in domestic violence sexual abuse rape crisis and and I ultimately ended up in law school and so David Anderson hooker whose name has been evoked a few times tonight and as I think who suggested both funny and I for this talk I love this story he tells it is for he's he's a man of the cloth but he's also an attorney and in his first week of Law School he kept talking about justice justice and the law professor took him aside and said son if you wanted to learn about justice go to did school so here a minute did school maybe where I was always supposed to be and it is really wonderful to be here and really was wonderful to be invited here to be able to grapple with the original conversation that Vanya and I had over ten years ago so I said somewhere that I could think that published somewhere that that this talk was going to be about the following things how restorative justice makes space for a full accounting of the injustice 'as we suffer how our religious faiths and the secular values distilled from them can help us heal even unthinkable harms how we can avoid cultural appropriation and it's a byproduct spiritual bypass that happens in that distillation process and how both my Julie journeys to healing from child sexual abuse and my journey from legal practice to restorative justice were propelled by advice I received about forgiveness from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in my early 20s and how that advice is still impacting my work and my life today so that's a tall order for the next 20 minutes I'll do my best on all those friends so what is restorative justice where you heard beautifully from fine and I don't want to repeat any of it Howard's there who's one of my heart mentors in this work is you know created sort of some formulation about three questions that Vanya brought up here and really just that paradigm shift the first time I read it I was like oh this this is what this is what we're supposed to be doing Howard also talks about a continuum of restorative practices right so we're sort of justice as fine you said is a way of life it is it's much larger than like a conflict resolution tool or conflict transformation tool and there's a continuum of practices that sit within under this umbrella and you know he is this continuum he talks about is from sort of the psuedo of and non restorative the fully restorative and when I think about like what would a definition be on that fully restorative end I've been toying around with different things but one that comes to mind is face-to-face dialogue in which families and communities support those who harmed to be directly accountable to the self-identified needs of the folks they've harmed and I'm still playing with that I don't think that it's it can't capture it all in a sense but my mind likes to play with these definitions and what do things mean and I get really excited so at my temple when we get into these debates about whether or not Juniata should be translated as emptiness or voidness and you know I'll really get into that but my other heart mentor in this work is the former chief justice of the Navajo Nation robert Yazzie and justice Yazzie just gets a kick out he's an attorney obviously and he still gets a real kick out of this desire I have to like really pinpoint like what is it and in words he's very clear that you can't possibly define restorative justice and in the end I have to agree with him as with Buddhist notions of emptiness it really is something to be experienced and so I would strongly encourage all of you that haven't to find your way into a circle of some kind or another at some point in your lives um so if we're gonna ask these questions or who was harmed and what do they need and whose obligation is it to meet those needs we can't gloss over this word harm right sometimes even unthinkable harm another way some people start restored of justice enquiries is with simply the words what happened what happened some of you may have read an article about a case I facilitated in in 2012 it was in The New York Times Magazine titled kin forgiveness play a role in criminal justice and it was about a team dating homicide case in which a young man by the name of Connor McBride killed his fiancee and grammaire Ann's mother Cate has written a beautiful book about it it's called forgiving my daughter's killer and it really comes from a place of their Catholic faith to journey and it's an incredible book you should check it out so this so so little caveat so while the girl mayor's forgiveness was a large part of that process for them as Catholics forgiveness shouldn't be a requirement of restorative justice participation in restorative justice practices nor is it even an expected outcome but it is really lovely when it happens and I get to witness it from time to time so a little bit about that case after working with everyone impacted involved in for over six months Anne's parents Connors parents Connor the district attorney who had charged the case the defense attorney and families priest victim advocates in a whole lot of people in the Tallahassee community where this happened we ended up ultimately having a five-hour circle inside Connors jail and that jail resulted in a plea deal thank you to a plea deal that was designed to meet Anne's parents needs as best as could happen when something as terrible happens is the loss of your own child but the process itself was also designed to meet people's needs and particularly Anne's father's need Andy grow mares need to know what happened what happened so before asking what may be the most important question when things go terribly wrong what happened there are some things that restorative justice facilitators and people who are gonna be in the circle really need to sit with for me as a facilitator I serve sit with these questions do I have what I need to be fully present to the whole answer to that question is the other person ready for me to ask them have they received what they need to speak the whole answer to weep the whole answer to rage the whole answer the best circle keeper is embodied love and patience and equal compassion for everyone involved until all of these questions are answered in the affirmative whether talking to some one who caused or experienced that harm and often people are both it's astounding to be on the receiving end of that kind of presence at a critical time in my own life when I was trying to unpack painful things I met someone who had that kind of presence whose way of engaging with suffering is what I try to emulate on some micro microscopic measure in my own life in my work and my parenting my friendships don't do a great job in my marriage with it but um so when I was 24 years old I mailed in my law school applications and moved to India to help my van by friend who was working with trafficked women and children in Mumbai and I was failing miserably miserably at being of any assistance to him whatsoever I had a full-blown breakdown and left to go backpacking to either find myself or end my own life and my journeys took me to Dharamsala and there I befriended a Tibetan family and our conversations were they found me curious on a number of levels cuz there was this Indian American person American accent and the cookie and the jeans and the backpack and the and I didn't want to make them prisoners of shangri-la right I really wanted to actually know like how did you escape how did you make decisions about which family and they hadn't met somebody who's like trauma trauma trauma trauma let's talk about some trauma ok so at some point they asked me like so what are you so angry about and so I shared with them my own history and they were horrified and they said you know you should ask the dalai lama about this and i said you know how does one do that so he's busy like i don't know i gotta get on this calendar right and there so they were like well write to him so I tore this page out of my like a ratty travel journal and I wrote a note and it said a couple things about my work it said nothing about my own personal history is it's too ashamed to name it at the time but I did say anger is killing me but it motivates my work how do you work on behalf of abused and oppressed people without anger as the motivating force so we they told me to come back a week later and I did and I got sure all the way into his holiness is private Secretary's desk he said to the holiness was really moved by your note and he'd like to meet you next Wednesday wait what so I changed my plane ticket and a week later I was sitting with the Dalai Lama and that hour remains to this day the most important hour of my life so when I shared with him that my father had sexually abused me he leaned in he leaned in it's a whole other meaning of the word leaned in right like this is leaning in this is leaning in in a way from the heart I literally felt compassion as if it were a physical thing coming out of his body when he held my hands when I cried and when I was telling him about what happened he said your own father your own father I also confessed to him my conflicted feelings about my father's death about how having despite having prayed for his death from time to time I also tried to save him when he died I did CPR on him when he died when I was 16 years old and I didn't talk about that you know therapists had pathologized it they said it was Stockholm Syndrome or one therapist said it was a it was an indication that I had hadn't assimilated properly I was over identified with my Indian culture that I would that I would try to you know protect my father in some way so fascinating things that I heard that Lama didn't say any of that stuff and so in the course of our conversation I wanted specific advice on how to forgive my father he was gone and I was the one with the blinding migraines and the nervous breakdowns and the disastrous relationships and oh my god how am I gonna go to law school when I am this hot mess of a human being and you know I loved hearing his stories about his own journeys with forgiveness but I also you know that mind of mind that needs it really narrows like no I need really specific what's the one two three of how to forgive my father and I kept see him and and he said and he finally paused and he said do you feel you've been angry long enough do you feel you've been angry long if he wasn't gonna give me that and so we sat together in silence and I surveyed angers diminishing returns on my life which there were many and I said yes you know yes so it's funny one other I've heard other people tell this story other Buddhist teachers in particular and they really misunderstand what His Holiness said it was actually a literal question do you feel you have been angry long enough it wasn't His Holiness or saying okay little girl are you all done with your anger and out like that is not what he was saying he wanted to know if I was done from my side from me so so when I convinced him that I was he did give me some advice he gave me two pieces of advice the first was that he said my mind was very bright but it was completely out of my own control which remains true to this day um he said you know this level of Rage which I had expressed several times in my meeting with him I cursed I yelled I cried while I was talking with him about all the things I had seen and done and experience he said this is this is you out of your mind out of your control so he said you need to meditate that's the first step so once you've done that for a while you're gonna want to think about aligning yourself with your enemies it was a piece of advice too he said without excusing their behavior you want to consider their positions and their needs and really to encourage me to maybe consider their humanity well I was about to start law school to be a prosecutor to lock those up right and so I just I was I was back in rage I was like what am I who I'm going to law school and I said I'm not aligning myself with anybody so he starts laughing right that's my niece it's okay okay you just meditate you just so a few weeks later a few months later I took my first of many hapana courses something that I committed myself through - - at least once a year go to do a 10-day sit from that point on and at the end of the first one during metha paavana practice loving-kindness I had a complete experience of forgiving my father and it's interesting in the weeks and months that followed I noticed so no more my grades and we're stomach problems my disaster relationship ultimately resolved in a positive way that I think well hopefully we separated in a way that was good for both of us and I also quickly discovered during my first week of law school which came shortly thereafter that I couldn't be a prosecutor and so they went to my criminal law professor so I'm gonna drop out now um thank you for the public service fellowship I'm gone and he said hold up you know watch consider being a defense attorney I was like no chance I still had this feeling that there were these bad guys and good guys right but um but he said we want to defend women who killed their abusers I was like oh that's genius that's what I'm gonna do with my life nobody told me that that's not a job I mean like I got to work out a few of those cases but basically had to go be a public defender where I really learned that there are no good guys and bad guys and I got to actually follow His Holiness a second piece of advice in a very powerful way so but the whole time I was victim advocate and I was restored and I was a public defender and I did death penalty appeals appeals ultimately when I met Fania at work was killing me surely um I I never felt right I never I felt like I was constantly trying to figure out like how to be just on this side of the line right and I was getting better at it but ultimately you know I'd been reading and going to a million restorative justice trainings during all of these years and I was really inspired by the Tibetan system of justice prior to Chinese occupation and it's lessons for how we might be better in the law and my friend Susan Marcus is a longtime death penalty lawyer saying you need to learn about restorative justice finally listen to her and I read and I went to trainings that I was like this this is the answer um so my work today is in helping communities adopt restorative justice in lieu of criminalization but I always keep one case alive and maybe why I do this particularly in sexual harm cases is that I get a sort of vicarious glimmer of what would have happened if this had been available to me right if my father were alive today I would want to ask him a million questions that mostly I'd want to know what happened it's the same question that Andy grammaire wanted to know of Conor what happened both about that night but about Conor you know we knew you Conor what happened what happened to you it's what we're all scanning the papers for right now isn't it we want to know more about Steven paddock right we want to know what happened his brother wants to know what happened are you gonna do an autopsy does he have a brain tumor what happened and some of us will want to simply make people evil I meet folks all the time and try to convince me that there is this thing evil and I feel fairly sure that there isn't I don't think it's that simple what I know from every death penalty case I've worked on is that every one of my clients had a backstory not to excuse what they did but there was always something whether it's trans generational trauma born of genocide or a head injury or sexual abuse or all of the all of the above and as activists really we want to do that to want to make the prosecutors and the prison guards and everybody the enemy and I really do think it's killing us and it really I think is a false view I have a brilliant friend Sonya Shah who does restorative justice circles for prison guards what is that really and I've brought prosecutors into circles at archery from - uh from Nashville we brought the prosecutors and the police from Nashville to Oakland to sit in circle with our Joey youth amazing amazing experiences and we had the young people there lead the circle and one young woman decided that the thing we were gonna do Circle because there were so many of us we're gonna keep it short so she said give us a one-word poem about your race that's what she asks so love this the district attorney is sitting next to the judge who also came and she's a very dark-skinned african-american woman and he is a white man and when it was his turn he said something to be effective we've always had a leg up and I literally felt the kids like melt and they're like oh I can talk to this guy and then the judge said blacker the berry the sweeter the juice phenomenal so so there are always causes and conditions that give rise to every circumstance that we're in so if my father were alive today I'd really want to ask him what happened to you I knew what happened that you did this to me to us to our family Fania once said when I was talking about the experience that I had and wanting to save my father she said this word of wound to lubuntu it's a bunch of word that means I am because we are or a person is a person through other people and you know I really think about that a lot in relationship to that to my childhood and my father I used to pray that he would stop doing what he was doing to both of us so in healing spaces you often hear this a Dodge right like the only way out is through and so personally I'm so grateful to the term of the Four Noble Truths because they offer tools for getting all the way through to the cessation of suffering right the kindness of my gurus and guiding me in that way and again I I really do make a commitment next week I'm leaving for a 10-day sit I continue to do this even though I have a kid even though I'm running of this and that in the other it's really important to keep these things alive for me and my work path restorative justice also offers a path for getting all the way through and it acknowledges that the only way out is through but RJ can't do that if we fall prey to the dangers of American secularism and conversely appropriation and spiritual bypass so in packaging the restorative in packaging restorative justice as secular adda spiritual eyes tool to be used for the forty-five minute class period or the judges calendar ceremony is replaced with protocol prayer with preambles and the magic really is lost at the same time passing a feather around or starting with a little oming in a cursory way potentially disrespects sacred practices and having lived in both Santa Fe New Mexico and Berkeley California I'd get to see my fair share of that there's also a risk that we'll just adopt the groovy parts right that we are all one parts that we are all one spiritual bypass absolves spiritual healing of its justice obligations the ending injustice part right the Reverend doctor dr. Martin Luther King jr. didn't do that Gandhiji didn't do that right Archie Fishman our Bishop Archbishop Desmond Tutu does not do that and my in my personal experience His Holiness the Dalai Lama I didn't do that do you feel you have been angry long enough your own father right he doesn't shy away from those things and none of us should what a gift those words are really and what a gift it would be if we gave ourselves time for those for that kind of reflection so the challenge for the restorative justice facilitator been is to leave intact the values and practices that make restorative justice true to its sacred nature while simultaneously avoiding appropriation of other spiritual and indigenous wisdom this balance can be best found by allowing the faith journeys of the participants to guide in the planning of the restorative justice process that's what I do with the grow mirrors and the McBride's and there was awfully Catholic thing that we ended up doing about jail cell and you know it wasn't about me so I can step back and allow that to be what it was so the process should always and only reflect the religious and spiritual experiences of those who are coming together to transform the harm this can also be better achieved when we work within our own faith in cultural communities right we always say restore of justice facilitators should reflect the folks that they're working with right I found myself at my personal restorative justice best when I was in India two years ago training a group of organization who worked to end child sexual abuse and why was keeping a circle in my own back at home for South asian-american child sexual abuse survivors incredible so um a couple more minutes okay so how do we do this in America we have to remember that it takes more time to do things in a sacred way time is a great challenge to our work I recently read that there's a Native American elder who says who calls the wristwatch the white man's handcuff I want my work to create the causes and conditions that that results in the end of youth incarceration inspired by funniest words and we walked around that lake so many years ago to end our racialized mass criminalization and and child sexual views here and in India and all our dives for communities so might not see that all in my lifetime but I'm emboldened by the long view that justice yahzee once shared with me I want to asked him how he maintains his optimism in the face of all that his people have lost and suffered and he said to me I am optimistic about what its gonna look like in a thousand years so here's the thing anyone who knows him who's met with him or seen him move knows that despite this along longview he works with more urgency and intensity than anyone I have ever met today my team at impact justice is working with similar urgency to help 10 cities replace youth criminalization with restorative justice the first study of our work shows a 44% reduction in youth reoffending in Oakland and 91% satisfaction rate for participating victims including felonies such as burglary robbery sexual assault and teen dating violence and these programs actually prevent youth from ever even being charged with a crime so this is why we say pre-charge pre-booking like you don't actually even have to hit the courthouse doors to do this kind of work it actually works better when you don't right we can do this instead of criminalizing our youth but that work does take time and if we shortchange the practices and even the implementation we won't see these kinds of results it takes time to be sacred so when I'm overwhelmed by the state of racialized mass criminalization in the US and the global pandemic of child sexual abuse by all that's happened and is happening in our world it's important to remember that restorative justice moves at the speed of trust and that it moves like water to places that are open to it and that that is the power to carve canyons to literally change the world I just texted Kate grammaire a second ago and I said do I have permission to tell the stories I want to close with this really brief story and it it's astounding so Conor after the circle we did this incredible five-hour circle that the first hour and a half was simply the grammaire of sharing who was who was an from her birth on right and then we ultimately am who it was that they'd lost and then we spent a lot of time with Conor explaining what it is that had happened and it was a brutal brutal situation that resulted in her death and in the end there was the the grammaire have felt that they had forgiven him before even starting that process and the facts that came out that day did test their forgiveness and afterwards at the end of the circle they were able to embrace this young man they hugged him at the end of the circle after hearing all the details of how he took their daughter's death took their daughter's life after that a few I think a few months later Connor converted to Catholicism because he was so moved by their capacity to forgive and then a few months after that Andy became a deacon in the Catholic Church and then he was placed in Connors Jail to offer prison ministry and Andy would offer the sacrament to Connor im9 Catholic I don't believe any of this and see I can't even talk right and then ultimately so I found out this happening or something happened around the prison rules are such that you both can't be a volunteer and be a visitor and so Andy had to give up his prison ministry because he chose to continue to be a visitor to Connor so I just share this in closing to show what it is that is possible right and that these individual stories really we have great hopes for systemic change right I have great hopes that by proving and by having the data that we will be able to change the world it's also my hope that if you know the system as it is isn't ready to dismantle itself because it will take the work of prosecutors and police and and and systems partners to really say we don't need to be doing things and we mustn't if we were truly interested in public safety were truly interested in the needs and desires of victims we mustn't do it the way we're doing it now and at a minimum we will leave some cave paintings with our data and our stories so that those who come after us will be able to take us all the way across the finish line so thank you all very much [Applause] [Music] so we're most honored and grateful to have been the recipients of these gems of wisdom and gems of the heart from really your life experiences and your amazing amazing work and we really do thank you for everything that you're doing to blazed these trails for us because as we all know our world needs it if I may ask as I give myself the opportunity now when you mention paradigmatic assumptions of justice I often think that one of the assumptions in our current system and one hears it a lot is a lack of faith in human transformation the ability of people to transform the belief that there is definitely a good guy and a bad guy and and so and I think part of that is you know sometimes it has to do with assumptions and beliefs and sometimes it has to do with being in life experiences or not being in life experiences we have the opportunity to actually witness that and actually experience that yourself so if you haven't been in situations that have allowed you that kind of transformation or to see it you know you can't fathom it so I'm wondering about it seems to me that you all have been exposed to a lot of transformation of kinds that many of us and I can certainly speak for myself you know haven't necessarily so are there some insights into the dynamics of change or how you see this question about the good guy and the bad guy because that seems to be fueling so much of the polarization you know having that kind of assumption yeah restorative justice challenges these dualistic either-or good bad guilty innocent right wrong formulations that we are socialized into you and especially as lawyers you know we are we are those dualistic thinkers and people by par excellence and of course that runs counter to the whole notion of our reality as they continuous one the whole notion that I am because we are the whole notion that we all participate in this web of oneness and many respects it may have been the Renaissance the Scientific Revolution you know the Cartesian Revolution I think therefore I am versus I am because we are I am Who I am because of my relationships one is unitive the other is more sort of atomistic so I think since the 1500s we have entered into what Native American prophets have called a dark Sun of human consciousness and in many ways it was started with the papal doctrine of discovery giving Spain and Portugal the right to go into every pagan territory and enslave the people and take their lands and we're still sort of that is the dark Sun of human consciousness the good news is that these prophets say after 500 years which we are about there now that we will enter into a bright Sun of human consciousness where the knowledge of the earth the ancient knowledge of the earth will re-emerge and the eagle will fly with the Condor the South with the global South in the north and we are seeing a renaissance of indigenous wisdom in many different fields including in the field of justice I think restorative justice is so so we're yeah I think you said something earlier about how we are being asked to reimagine who we are as human beings we are being asked to you might say reinvent what it means to be human to let go of those ways of being present to one another that bring discord and devastation and to embrace ways of being present to one another that bring about healing and I think restorative justice is helps us to get there because of its rootedness and indigenous teachings and insights just a little bit on that on that question of cultural appropriation I say you know a lot of the times I say white people have indigenous roots to the Celtic how many people that have researched their own indigenous ceremonies and and herbs and songs great yeah and I'd love to see millions more because I think that's part of the path to sustainable peace it's not just people of color that have origins maybe I would just add to that just the tiniest that that um it's also individual work of unconditional love for oneself I think that we don't want to believe that we don't want to believe that wherever bad guys and so it's been really liberating for me to see when I am and if I can find a way to love myself unconditionally through that in the same way that I could love my clients then I am you know we don't have to go find some transformation story outside ourselves right you have them yourself within you so that's always that's always a good place to start and what you said earlier what happened to you you know what happened to Steven paddock harmed people go on to harm other people if they are not healed and there's no bright line then restorative justice is it gives us a gift in that way to you see that there's no bright line separating person causing harm from person harmed some might say victim looked under we don't use that language sujod that I don't typically there is no bright line we know if you scratch just a little bit just beneath the surface you will find that this person who caused harm experienced harm that the person we call the offender is a victim and that again the unitive way of experiencing reality there's just not all bad all good all right all wrong I love restorative justice because it challenges these splitting and fracturing ways of being present of viewing our reality and that ultimately is what leads to all of the devastation that we see all around us and the violence just be taking questions yes or no yes was offered a job as a secretary when she graduated from Stanford restorative justice disproportionately members of the alleged gentler sex aren't restorative justice the child who kills kittens and puppies and grows up to be a serial murderer do we give him restorative justice or do we throw away the key and keep him in jail so you know I think that there's a non-profit world generally I tend to see more women than men across all sectors whether it be you know at least the criminal justice reform world in the school world other than in senior leadership where there's a lot of men that's we have these problems that we need to be working on in all of our fields I do not believe that there is any out or a way that we can throw people to just to solve crime there is no away there is nowhere to lock anyone up where we will solve I personally am an abolitionist that doesn't mean that I don't believe that we have any purpose for punitive confinement let me be clear there may be times when people need to be protected from themselves and and and and others need to be protected from them but but things like solitary confinement throw a lock throw my black there are words that just making no sense what we've seen is that it just doesn't work and it's a slippery slope where we end up walking up a whole lot of people so that's to serve where I sit with it you think our serration is criminogenic it increases the chances that you will to cause cause more harm when you're released it'd probably be better if we just let all children get away with everything I'm not kidding like this there are studies that show that if we just let kids get away with it that they would be less likely to commit future crimes and if we incarcerate them so I'm hoping that restorative my data on restorative justice isn't just because it's not incarceration but that there's actually an additional benefit sort of justice and then I think in addition to that that kid who's hurting puppies I just you brought an image to my mind and it was it that the the squirrel was already dead when I did it but I chopped off the tail of a squirrel when I was a child I wanted to take it home because I wanted something soft to touch so I just you know it's who knows who these kids are and why they're doing what they're doing who knows who these adults are and why they're doing what they're doing I would like to know and I also wanted to say that restorative justice is not a panacea I don't thinking that it we don't do a sort of Dusty's in schools and we typically don't we don't do it in the justice system either if the person causing harm refuses to take responsibility always we just can't do restorative justice for those persons we can't reduce sort of justice for a person who is really innocent you know they need a trial so they can prove their innocence we sort of justice doesn't always work when people have very serious mental health problems that require a clinical intervention so even though I think we're sort of justice can transform the way we think about and do justice it is not a panacea that can be used all the time in all of the circumstances especially when a person causing harm refuses to take responsibility why would we bring a person who's been harmed into a circle with this person only to be harmed again by that's right no that's so that's right so yeah it's there are times when it's just not appropriate I'm a child adolescent psychiatrist and I I work with adults too I like to say I work with children of all ages with a boy who had killed some kittens and the horrors of his life I hope none of you have had to experience and what was remarkable was the the inpatient unit where I was working was one of the most compassionate places I could imagine and within about a week of that child being treated like a human being like a child I remember reading his start and thinking wow it's really scary and then I met him like he's not scary he's a child and after a week he looked like a normal kid he looked pretty psychotic when he arrived even meds are not he did get removed from the family that was abusing him the teachers didn't understand him either he was labeled as a bad kid but I I think one of the things that is struck by I thought I was listening to someone to a group of people talking about the work that I do it's such a process it is such a human process that takes deep commitment deep compassion collaboration with others when your compassion is waning when the horror that you've just heard about is just too much to bear because some of these things can't be borne by just one person that's why you need to circle and I was also struck by you know there's a lot of stuff in the psychoanalytic literature about say how to deal with bullies and then you don't deal with bullies by punishing the bully I mean duh you deal with the environment what is the system that created the bully and the bystander whether the bystander is victimized or vicariously enjoying being empowered or is just blank and it's so much of the psychoanalytic literature these days is about being with being fully present all those not all the psychoanalyst agree that Buddhism has any relevance to anything it's all you know I do think that maybe we are getting closer to a time where this realization that to be human you actually have to be how do you how do you keep going in the face of the just the insanity of the current political I'm free every every Friday night and every Sunday morning every Friday night and every Sunday morning and every Monday night I am at the Kyoto foundation every week that I am in Oakland or Berkeley I am that is I am I go to Richmond I go to my temple and I don't ever miss it period okay one time I missed my son's soccer game was at the same time but you know that's it's um it is there's literally no way I could do what I do and I wake up every morning and I sit I do my practice every day I do practice of the morning I'd to practice in the night I've forgotten to do one of them and I just went into your library and I did it before I started right so this is a this is a requirement for me to do the work I also yeah go on retreat I surround myself with with really hopeful people that is one of the things that I have I have people in my life who have a lot of needs and then I have a handful of folks who are just super positive my best friend is really she lives in New York I talked to her as often as possible because she's just a complete light at all times and so I keep myself in contact with good more 30 because she's a light so that's that's another part of how I I do it you have to fill the well you could only give as much as you have yourself to give so my answer would be very very similar I don't think I said I don't think I'm as disciplined as Sujatha is about doing her morning and afternoon practice rhythmically but I aspire toward that I also find that for me self-care needs to involve movement I'm just at the stillness is very very important but there's still missed stillness through movement through Chico more dance also balances and just seeing how much goodness there is you know and all of your faces and and seeing the you know after the inauguration of Trump the largest demonstration demonstration and international history occurred with the women's March millions of people and you know the march on Washington in 1963 J philip Randolph and others organized that for years and there were twenty fifty thousands it was an historic march that changed history this March it just kind of bubbled up and it started when a woman after Trump won said we need to march on Washington and she woke up the next morning and there were 20,000 people saying yes let's do it and that's how it happened of course there there was some intervention by women of color to ensure that this was an inclusive march to ensure that there was not a narrow feminism but more of an intersectional feminism that saw as women's issues mass incarceration that saw as women's issues water and weather in Palestine or in Detroit that saw as women's issues environmental catastrophe and claimed that so that was kind of the first time historically where I went to a women's March where the message was so thoroughgoing lee and and and and profoundly intersectional but that's all of that is to say that that gives me hope I mean we have had more demonstrations just in the last seven or eight months of the Trump administration probably than I haven't seen in my entire lifetime in some ways you know there was a demonstration even in space of course the scientist demonstrated all but for the first time they demonstrated in space yeah so I think that that also gives me home I'd like to I'd like to offer a little restorative justice justice here to anger I think anger I part ways with you about the negative picture of anger and to be very brief about it anger can be entirely destructive but it also there have been a lot of studies and they are recorded in full in a book called emotions in conflict by a psychologist called Erin Halperin to show that anger is expressed when you can winnow it out from other emotions by people who have hope for change and I think anger can be served many positive functions so that's one thing and the other point I'd like to make is a little more complicated my mother was an incredible verbal abuser of me throughout my life or throughout her life and until she died and we were now I would love to understand her fully but I grew to understand her quite well and I am truly most all the time free of any anger at her in a negative way I don't even have any kind of anger at her anymore but I do not forgive her because I never what the first speaker said in a comment got to that she never got to the place of actually apologizing getting into a circle so to speak with me so I am free I understand as much as I can without having talked to her and and I'm grateful for all the transformation I've been able to go through but it's not forgiveness and I think that that's a terribly important point that is not made people ask people speak about advocate forgiveness without mentioning the absolute necessity it seems to me of the perpetrator to enter who have entered the circle and be willing to acknowledge and apologize thank you so so thank you so much for um I'm glad yet there we go thank you so much for both of those things and so I bit off way too much for the amount of time I had and I think that I so I'm gonna disagree with the fact that you I'm gonna agree with you're disagreeing with me how's that and I had more time I would have certainly spent saying anger gets a bad rap you know and even His Holiness is very clear about different types of anger that we experience and the value of anger and I just remember one of the most important parts of reading the courage to heal and and see the anger is the backbone of healing and as like when I'm allowed to be angry right so I think that it's really important and that there are things there in justices about which anger is a completely natural response and this self protective there are many good things about it I think in in in thinking about forgiveness for myself that it is an individualized path to forgiveness right and that I feel that almost everything that's been written about forgiveness is prescriptive and says it's the right answer and so I just got a fellowship to work on a book and I'm so excited about it because I'm gonna definitively be saying that is not the case right that forgiveness is is something that we grapple with that it's good for some folks that other people say they didn't need to forgive and we shouldn't pathologize them is not fully healed and and and again it's why I want to really reiterate that and particularly in spaces of restorative justice that it is never a prerequisite for participation or an expected outcome it doesn't even mean the same thing to most people right and so of course I'm spending time trying to come up with like a really precise definition and it's not working out very well but I just want to really thank you for those comments so thank you so much and thank you for sharing so openly and being vulnerable it's kind of the kind of thing that happens in circle but doesn't usually happen in audiences so thank you thank you oh I got a queue here let me go over here first thanks to both of you those were really memorable and compelling talks and I think some transformation happened in here during them here's my question and he's off what what was said and also comment you made dr. davis that in the united states right now given what we've seen over the last year do you think this country is in a place to engage with respect to race in a restorative justice process when for example the faces of the men in charlottesville showed betrayed no evidence of accountability or responsibility they think they're victims and they're aggrieved and they don't understand any of the pieces that have created the structures in the United States that exist and and we've we've tried over the last year or so to understand sort of the pain of different groups of people many of whom voted for Donald Trump but the level of nuance and the depth of self-awareness necessary for this work seems utterly at odds with the parts of the United States that would need to engage in it I mean I really believe in local and and because that's you know in in actual place means everything in this kind so good or for bad your zip code determines your life trajectory and so is it really something that can happen on a national level given that we're we're like a as a country we're like barely 10 or 11 years old I mean we just sort of careened from one ridiculous thing to another in ways where this does not seem like it's well suited to this culture I can see it happening in almost any other culture except this one we're exceptional in in our lack of self-awareness and understanding yes and restorative justice isn't for everybody right when we were doing work in schools some of the teachers and counselors and other staff didn't want to have anything to do with it we didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole there were others who kind of sitting on the fence but then there were some who were very passionate and and becoming more and more skillful in doing the work and so when their classrooms became more peaceful and when their students started to thrive the ones who were sitting on the fence saw and said oh maybe I should try some of that and they're always going to be the resistors but if those who are passionate about it do it it doesn't take everybody you know what is the Margaret Mead saying that it only takes a few and yeah I think we really need to talk about working on local levels there are white people who are doing whiteness or white privileged trainings like never before now after Donald Trump was elected this organization called surge showing up for racial justice just mushroomed there now about 200 chapters in the country and their whole mission is to of course show up for racial justice and do the internal work that's needed now we talked earlier about how a person causing harm isn't ready to come into a circle into an encounter but the person that they have harmed whether we're talking about his start harm or or present-day harm so white persons get to do their own work and we are developing restorative justice trainings for white people to do that we found that in the racial justice whiteness trainings that happen there is this oppositional sort of hostile approach which we carry over from our oppositional approaches as social justice activists there is no you know in many of us and I'm one of the first I didn't have a healing bone in my body for a long time I was angry you know angry white people angry and capitalists angry at no showiness and so you know when this anger happens and when white people are being trained and they they become defensive they shut down and they're not able to really confront their own internal white privilege and things go south so what we're doing is we're developing whiteness trainings that can occur in more safe circle spaces in affinity spaces I mean in black people and people of color wanna come into those circles they're welcome but typically these are affinity spaces to get like people ready to come into these circles because if they're not ready not only will they shut down and feel like they're being accused and not their work but people of color in the room will start to have to comfort them you know that's the white fragility thing here we go again you know for centuries that's what we've been doing taking care of white people so this kind of work I think it's very important that we're doing these restorative justice whiteness trainings trainings to unlearn white privilege and get like people ready it still might not be enough for a white Citizens Council person from from from Charlottesville but a lot of people are beginning to do this and so that was exactly what I was going to talk to you and ask you about and to say that surged Boston is doing this work and is trying actually to bring the work of healing and ritual into the activism and so that it's not just social justice activism born out of a sense of the horrors of what has been wrought in the name of whiteness but that actually there's a beginning of understanding of what people who are white gave up to become white and to become supremacist and part of what people gave up was a sense of our own humanity and our own relation ality and so surged Boston is actually trying to do those practices to kind of restore the internal humanity and so I mean it's just what you were saying you know that the ability then the kind of movements that perhaps we can join in have a different quality than some of the hate oriented in a sense I mean some of the ways of creating movements which actually don't have the notion of our interconnectedness at its root so it's deep I do think this notion of hurt people hurting people does get intertwined with white supremacy which isn't necessary to be supreme but it's learning do you know what I mean it's not like a different it's a different kind of trauma than the individual person who kills puppies but it is the kind of training that enables us and then people have said recently what do you suppose it took to become slave owners what did people have to do to their own souls in order to carry that out and then how do we begin to heal it so I it's just you know and I love that Serge is taking this on and realizing that white people have skin in the game too they're not doing it for someone else they're not saving another race you know and to me I even don't think of them as allies because it's their work it's not like they're helping somebody else helping themselves and I'm so glad that sir justice is taking this whole thing on Andy you're so right we know from trauma research that there's such a thing called vicarious trauma if you cause if you're a police officer and you caused harm to another person you killed another person both the survivors of the person who's killed or the victim of an assault is traumatized as well as a person causing the trauma right in the piece though of not seeing your own I don't know there's just there's a way in which it's sort of restoring your sense of your own internal goodness to give up this place about supremacy yeah and I just I can't help but say that Serge is really walking the path of warrior and healer you know as warrior I was only interested in harming others who were arming me as warrior and healer we do both and for me that is sustainable that is a path forward to a sustainable peace there's one more organization called white awake that's good for people to know about there was like 300 people on that call a lot of social workers and and stuff so it's broader it's really broad what's happening yeah yep and it's never happened before I mean we had we've always had white anti-racist but this is going to another level that we've not seen before hi um so I had kind of a more simple question what characterizes a restorative justice circle and how would that be different from per say going to a yoga class the group of people you know there are many many different kinds of circles and so lots of different indigenous traditions have different ways of doing circle and then there are ways in which we sort of secularized them and many of us learn from someone named kay Prentiss and she'd learned from well people of the yukon that taught you to like it people of the yukon and and then sort of helped us find a way to create values for that group and there's an opening that's a ceremony of some kind and there's um there's a center we created a set of shared values there's a talking piece it goes in one direction each person holding it has the opportunity to speak from the heart or to pass everyone else is listening as it goes around sometimes it goes around two three or four times on a single single question right sometimes it involves moving towards some resolution of something sometimes we're just talking about things and they and the resolution and the healing is coming through that it's not as directed and then there's a closing so that's I mean that's a very thumbnail sketch of the thing and again it's incredibly different for different communities and different indigenous peoples and I don't want to grossly oversimplify but I'm noticing we're quite over time and so I just want to keep it to that but I would what's just reading Kate prentices a little book of circle processes and also other kinds of books on on circle and learning just different books on Navajo peacemaking things of that nature I would definitely say life comes from it he's an article that was written by justice Yazzie about some Navajo worldview and I think that there's a lot that he speaks about in the sacred circle in there so yeah you need the mic actually if you'd asked after please cuz we just called on her thank you if you could pass the mic please Peace Corps is it my working he was seeing a piece go up in respect stand for two years from Michigan Midwest and he told me a lot of community school community and society you know stories when he was there and how they resolved conflict and in Central Asia you know it's a very special place and it's kind of you know they have people from Shin Jung in in Uzbekistan so that's part of China and they have Turkish roots and then they have also the Europeans there so so sometimes we share about how you know different culture resolve conflict at home in community and also you know as a whole in their society so what you take in terms of cross-cultural understanding and how do you educate people who you know don't understand because if they don't understand something they don't trust and that kind of relationship sometimes it is really depends on trust and understanding and sometimes you know like in the family education in the u.s. we help with early childhood education undecayed and also family advocate for cross-cultural family like half American half Chinese family or half you know like half a half family sometimes you know kids like a mud so in those cross-cultural multicultural family if you know you have someone who coming from a single cultural background to counsel them sometimes things can get worse and worse and not become worse before it becomes better by just keep getting worse and worse that's what I have witnessed in some of the families and communities sometimes the way we do education on family education so I would like to hear from each of you about that in depth of thoughts and and even in China there's 56 minority languages so if you say I'm Chinese but I'm from Hunan China that's also very different culture than someone from Beijing or Shanghai and the dial is different so man during it's a main language but each Providence had their own languages so that's something that people need to understand more too if you you know don't take the lead to study hard enough about that particular culture you may just make assumption about you know like Oh Asians look the same but they're Japanese Korean Chinese and a Chinese look the same but their who name is Hainanese Heineman you know you nannies Shanghainese beijing this and and that's something that i think it's very complicated and i would like to share that with you and everyone in the audience as we're getting to the end thank you so true and just a simple case of how things can go south if as a restorative justice facilitator of a circle or other process you do not have that sort of cultural sensitivity and cultural humility and one example is actually I think Howard's air talks about this somewhere that they were doing a circle between Palestinians and Israelis and the facilitator brought out a stone and that was the worst possible choice culturally because stones are the weapons of the Palestinians against the Israelis another example at school and oak at a school in Oakland they were doing a circle and the facilitator chose a monkey as a talking piece of stuffed monkey and there was a black moment of a circle who was so offended by this because of course black people had been made to have been compared to Apes and it has been said that we are so human and that was sort of justice facilitator just didn't have a clue about that the black woman expressed her discomfort she didn't do a long dissertation about all the cultural reasons why but she says I'm very uncomfortable with his talking peace and the restorative justice facilitator had she been were culturally humble and competent would have gotten that cue and put it down and reached for another yep and then another another example that comes to mind is you know with the child soldiers in Africa I think we were talking about Mozambique the I don't know what organization what NGO it was but they were trying to use thought talk therapy with the child soldiers and they talked and talked and talked and it never made a difference it was only when a ceremony was done that came out of this tribe I think it involved sending in about sending the child with the clothing of the shower soldier with whatever else the child had when she was he was killing people burning a hut wild the child is inside setting it a flame and pulling the child out just in time after that the child was healed from that ceremony after so these are the kinds of things that we as peacemakers as as restorative justice facilitators need to be very skillful about true actually so I must say that we do need to wind down now because our time is coming to an end I would like to just say one thing or pose one final question which is you mentioned about the warrior and I noticed that when you when you mentioned that we need to have the warrior and embrace that and embrace the healer as well when you actually described what you meant by the warrior one of the things that I really heard was seeking transformative change of systems seeking that change it wasn't a warrior against a person of another human beings or a group of human beings that's very different so thinking about ecosystem we often discussed here I know Dean Hempton and many others in religions in the practice of peace we have to say you know we're giving rise to the reality that we see and we have to look at how how are we learning in universities what are we doing what are we missing because we're giving rise to many of the people who become leaders who who shape institutions who shaped the patterns of relationships so do you have any kernel of advice for us where do you see a leverage point of transformation because we're here and we have the opportunities to do that that could make a big difference well first on the warrior thank you for that clarification when I say when I use the warrior term I mean it in the sense of the warrior sage or the spiritual warrior not the oppositional militaristic hostile valence of that word and I think I use this term because to stand up against juggernauts genocide and racism and racial terror and systems harm we have to be brave we have to be strong and have a lot of hearts and a lot of courage we also need to have a lot of heart and courage when it comes to dealing with our own internal challenges so that's so thanks thanks for making that clarification come like the Messiah the fierce mighty fables of Masai warrior their greeting is Castilian India how are the children they're always asking about the children the most vulnerable and I think that that's the second question how do you bring the worry and together into the curriculum and how do you how do you build on the removal of the Harvard Family shield because it was a family shield of a slave owner and a slave trader what more do you do what more that do you do other than renaming buildings after the slaves developing curricula that tells the truth about slavery and about genocide and we just in 400 years we haven't we've never done that in Germany is a possible role model they have completely overhauled their curriculum to tell the truth unflinchingly about the Holocaust I mean they didn't have to deal with 400 years like we do but the curriculum is really amazing every year teachers have to go back to school to learn teach it in better and better ways the children are required to go to all of the memorials in the country and there are thousands of them that's the other thing that we can learn from the Stovall Stein some bling stone memorials that dot the landscape of all of Europe I think there's 60,000 now in Europe to remember to commemorate those who were lost to the Holocaust there are also lots of museums the camps are now you know monuments to healing and so developing these kinds of curricula and doing research supporting people like Bryan Stevenson are all things that I would say that that what are the institutions that the Divinity School influences and I would say the religious institutions and so the religious institutions of this country in the world are not blameless for many things I have friends who are child sexual abuse survivors who are sexually abused by priests right and the statute of limitations ran on their cases and they have no justice right I have I think about going to my family's homeland go on I look at where the temples were raised and and cathedrals were built over where there had been temples what does it look like for us to look inside and I don't mean to just call it the Catholic Church certainly I'm formerly a Hindu and certainly caste ism is something that we need to be thinking about deeply in that within that religion right no religion is blameless no no institution doesn't produce harm and so so what does it look like for us even within sort of my own my own temples now like are we being welcoming why why isn't why why is American Buddhism look so white no and what can we do about that so are we being sufficiently welcoming to people of color right so these are some of the things that I would really strongly suggest what are the institutions that we influence and how can we bring both a curious a curious heart really to these things so that we are offering ourselves and our institutions and unconditional love like I really you know I really dig me some Jesus right and some of the things that have flown that have flowed from those teachings that have resulted then in quite the opposite of what he said really need to be done in in honor of his teachings right and things of that nature so that's really my strong suggestion on that front [Applause] [Music] everyone has just done this but I would like to verbally to extend our deep deep gratitude to you both again for your work and for sharing this wisdom with us and this heart with us and I think also giving us a moment of an experience of being in the presence of transformative sage warrior healers that is transformative for us and we we hope that you'll be with us and we'll be with you on this journey as we go forward so thank you and I'd like to invite Dean Hempton to come up and say a few final words just like to add my thanks to our great presenters and moderator who's stepped in at the last moment thank you all for really very stimulating and deeply moving presentation and I think this warrior healer distinction and thinking about that is something is very important getting into how to work on these structures and systems that you were getting at I think they the phrase that you mentioned about mass incarceration being criminal genic you know and the book is you mentioned by Bryan Stevenson the just mercy book which shows just how it can work I think is a something to be thinking hard about and the school systems is pipelines and how to disrupt those pipelines I remember say encouraged by those statistics that because it's you know one of the arguments that easily brought against some of the things said tonight is it well it's softer it's flaky or it's not gonna work or it's and I have that kind of as you were saying even people sitting on the fence and seeing that this really did make a difference and therefore worth pursuing and then finally this question about what happened not just in individual cases but I certainly felt that you know growing up in Belfast when things really started to deteriorate and late 1960s early 1970s you know people burning you know each other's neighborhoods and a kind of confessional cleansing going on like what happened you know to produce that degree of anger and animosity and retribution so that can work on you know not just you know individual levels but I think in more systemic national issues as well so anyway thank you for opening all of those things up for us just a few closing announcements and I'll try not to keep you too long but if you're not yet familiar with the excellent relevant work the program's a co-sponsor tonight's event please be sure to check out the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for race and justice at the Law School the president studies project and the transformative justice series at the Harvard Graduate School of Education we're really eager to build these partnerships with the other graduate skills at Harvard RPP we'll be co-sponsoring three other public events this month including on October 19th and 20th a conference on Christianity race and mass incarceration on October 24th will be a talk on victim protection and transitional justice in El Salvador on on October 30th a film and discussion on the Bears years in Utah and the successful effort of a coalition of Native American tribes to protect this territory that they consider sacred by having a designated a National Monument so please do put those events in your diary if you haven't yet done so be sure to join the RPG mailing list to receive announcements of these and future events and if you learn of events on religions and peace at Harvard or in the local area please email us the link so we can put it up under our upcoming events on our website if you're a Harvard student faculty member staff member or alum we hope you'll consider joining or emerging one Harvard sustainable peace initiative which we'd love to see grow and drop into some of the university-wide conversations we'll be hosting this year so as ever after our PP colloquium sessions we have a reception with tea and refreshments in the lobby to give everyone an opportunity to continue the conversation make connections make peace with one another so please stay on the for that if you can so many things to all of you but a very special things two or three wonderful [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Harvard Divinity School

Views: 1,784

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

Keywords: Religions and the Practice of Peace, justice, wisdom, spirituality, peace, sustainable, Fania Davis, sujatha baliga, restorative justice

Id: w8pKvJbxc2s

Length: 142min 38sec (8558 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2017