Restorative Justice thoughts: Strong Boundaries, Open Heart

How can we remain open hearted in the face of difficult repair efforts?

Yesterday after publishing an overdue Substack piece, I put on some clothing layers and jetted over to a Restorative Justice talk happening in the little town where I’m staying with some friends right now in western Colorado.

Restorative Justice is a kind of conflict resolution work that focuses on restoring relationships when harm has been done rather than focus on punishment as a reaction to harm.

I had just been writing about grief, culture and morality, and then here I am in a circle of about 25 people, mostly white, mostly over the age of 50, mostly women or femmes or folks socialized as women in this culture. These folks came to express interest in conflict resolution, non-violent communication and ethical justice work. An example of justice was given in the case of a teenager stealing money from someone and what the process could look like to restore from the harm done. And justice in bigger ways needed was talked about initially, say in the case of the history of genocide and stolen land in the so-called U.S. (‘so-called’ is often used as a way to bring attention to the reality of the history of what has happened on Turtle Island to create the USA). It wasn’t the point of the talk to get into this history and what we should do about it specifically but just a big part of the way the whole thing was opened up, to set the stage for the tenants of the process.

Justice and restoration in response to harm caused happens in layers, it was mentioned.

There are pieces that have to clearly come first before the next piece can happen.

Many people are involved as who is affected trickles from the individual, to their kin, to the community and then the broader culture at large.

It was quite a different scene from a week ago, when I was visiting where I grew up in south-central Virginia where I would never imagine a group like this demographic gathering to talk about Restorative Justice or even willingly comfortably acknowledging whose traditional lands we were on.

I go to these kinds of events because they still awe me that people try to work things out in this way. That they want to change how harm is approached. I constantly want to do better and rewire my brain around what is possible. I don’t say this stuff to make any generalized broad statement about western Colorado or south central Virginia per se, as both places have their share of multitudes, ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’, people from different backgrounds or heritages (though western Colorado is in this region, overwhelmingly white).

Just that in my own experience, I haven’t seen a lot of examples of thought out processes to resolve issues in this way where I grew up, instead I often see them compounded, resentments held, harm swept under the rug, festering, harm seen as okay when it’s harm. Like say, when racially motivated violence is hidden by the cops, instead of the perpetrators held accountable—because this is how they’ve been doing it a long time.

It has me thinking about moral compass in a predominantly southern Baptist culture. Not that these things aren’t convoluted and confusing in other places and spaces, too.

I brought that up in the meeting.

“How is this possible without the community being on the same page, without a number of people in agreement that this could be a good way to go about resolving harm and willing to fairly engage in the process or restoration?”

There was not an easy answer to that. Not that western Colorado doesn’t have it’s fair share of geographic pockets where it’s more ranchers that back-to-the-landers or very rich ski rental owners, retirees, or work at home computer whiz folks. And where holding on to tradition and ‘the way it has always been’ is more important than looking forward to shift patterns that aren’t helpful to anyone, or looking back to time before the several hundred years they’ve been here to when this was traditional Ute land.

It seems like a far fetched idea to ask folks in the southern Piedmont to consider the history of the genocide of Occoneechee peoples in a process of Restorative Justice (see Bacon’s Rebellion which involved genociding the Occoneechee peoples along the Roanoke river). And a quote from Wikipedia for reflection (and intersection class/race complexities at its finest):

Bacon's rebellion was the first rebellion in the North American colonies in which discontented frontiersmen took part (a somewhat similar uprising in Maryland involving John Coode and Josias Fendall took place shortly afterward). The alliance between European indentured servants and Africans (a mix of indentured, enslaved, and Free Negroes) disturbed the colonial upper class. They responded by hardening the racial caste of slavery in an attempt to divide the two races from subsequent united uprisings with the passage of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705.[5][2][6] While the rebellion did not succeed in the initial goal of driving the Native Americans from Virginia, it did result in Berkeley being recalled to England. But in a lot of places this isn’t easily or readily done, and there’s resistance.

Has reparation happened?

Has an apology happened?

I don’t know.

This is Virginia’s deep, complexly woven history.

And I don’t even know if it is something that even comes across most people’s minds or even feels relevant, necessary or even good.

But I’m very open to being wrong. I want to be wrong about this.

It is a well known event in the area where I grew up, and most people agree it was bad that it happened.

It was so far in the past, right?

And slavery ended hundreds of years ago right?

Why focus on what happened so long ago?

Why not move forward?

I can ask the same to those holding onto the ‘Make America Great’ nostalgia, a fixation on romanticizing the post WW2 nuclear family single household solid middle class era through rose-colored glasses only giving us a glimpse into how it was for one subset of people for a specific moment in time, or at least the image of it.

We HAVE to look at the past to glean anything about where we are right now, and have a critical lens into the culture that defines us. We don’t always know the full story of the past, both socially and ecologically. We can’t know fully. But, we can’t pick and choose what to remember and what not to, just because some things are more comfortable to remember.

Like I try to emphasize in all of my work, just because I feel frustrated by the fact that say a Restorative Justice resolution process in schools, prisons, public hearings or among families seems impossible where I grew up, it doesn’t mean I hate the place where I am from or that I think every single person there is bad or irredeemable. In fact, people surprise me all the time. I don’t have to agree with folks’ politics in entirety to have something in common. I can still be critical of (or merely ask curious questions about) racism, classism, sexism, and ecocide without it meaning I hate the place where I grew up or feel victim to it somehow. I can also bring attention to the fact that these things are just as rampant in places and spaces that claim to be ‘woke and aware’ like the Bay area of California where I’ve seen different versions of the same stuff. Don’t put me in a category, either.

During the talk, one women spoke up and said something like…

“What about the oppression I have experienced? I’ve also had the cops target me and I’m a white woman.”

And she proceeded to tell a story of getting profiled and stopped by three cops on a highway that was popular for migrant transportation from south to north and had a horrible experience.

But, it actually wasn’t about who had it worse. That wasn’t the point of the conversation at all actually.

It was about, what do we do now.

How do we address harms differently and have cleared energy moving forward?

Sometimes healing trauma, especially deeply rooted stuff that goes generations back, can happen from a simply sincere apology, and commitment to action that is in service to making things right, even if it is symbolic, even if it isn’t our personal responsibility to do so, because it is just the right thing to do.

Talk about morality.

More kindness and compassion and unconditional love?

Isn’t that what Jesus spoke about? And Buddha too?

The facilitator was sure to ask that question again to redirect the discussion back to the point of learning about this kind of repair process.

“What do we do now to bring more Restorative Justice approaches to our institutions and communities?”

Bringing up the complexity of the ability of a community in a place to do a Restorative Justice process, especially somewhere with a deep history of racism and classism, is a tricky one.

The Utes and a local town, Delta, CO, are currently dealing with some recent conflict, like the cutting down of a special Ute Council Tree, a Cottonwood tree that Utes would gather around for ceremony and celebration, without consulting the tribes. The town did not think was worthy of keeping there, and the tree was considered it a hazard.

The conflicting worlds are happening everywhere, and not just the South. And harm continues to happen, and isn’t just in the past.

Conflict happens in the plant world too. In the existential underlings of how we understand the living world around us. And the differences in opinion don’t always make for pretty conversation. If I bring up questions that explore deeper the narrative and history of invasion biology, I’m often told then I must hate native plants. That I must be saying this broad other things, about how we should just let Kudzu kill everything. Or asking questions about how we decide what plant is ‘native’ or not, or what actually creates ‘diversity’ in ecological communities, has people quick to jump to assumptions that I am anti-diversity, or pro-weed.

That whole you must hate native plants thing because you ask questions about the narrative is frustrating, because I’ve never once said that I hate native plants or think Kudzu should take over everything. But this is how people’s brains work often, this kind of assumption of another thing when we question something else.

And, when it comes to appropriately resolving conflict, this kind of didactic process often inhibits the healing process, the process of actionable clearly defined accountability or respectful apology, important and necessary steps in Restorative Justice (of course apology comes first and foremost before anything else, and clear sincere adknowledgement of harm done). It was good for me to get it laid out in front of me, as I have navigated the frustration and disappointment most of my young adult and adult life not feeling like I had the tools to navigate conflict with people in my world, and feeling the pain of layers upon layers of unresolved or insincere apologies build up,

well yeah, I do consider the past.

I do hold onto the past.

Ok I do.

And then in the past few years navigating some hard conflict coming from a few different directions, the hardest I’ve ever dealt with, and trying to fix the harm but rushing it, or not having appropriate containers or processes for making it happen well and safely. Sometimes more harm than good happens when conflict tending is stumbled through rather than super intentional. So, I appreciate that the Restorative Justice process is laid out carefully for a reason, that one thing has to come before the next. That a community of support has to be in place to not cause more harm, or shame, blame.

It was a thing, this little evening meeting. It was a mindmelt, because it is easy for me to be convinced by others that I’m the problem for even bringing unresolved conflict up. Or that I speak about my grief in a certain way, but clearly, as many of us can agree, we shouldn’t hide grief.

We shouldn’t sweep conflict under the rug and try to keep a positive stance at all times.

I see this sweeping and gaslighting (blaming you for harm others did to you because of this idea that you attracted it with your thoughts or attachments) is a popular kind of thinking in the new age super spiritual cultish circles (and again, not a broad judgement against all those who find meaning in alternative spiritualities) and also in other realms.

It definitely can be a way of doing things in the place where I grew up too, not sure if its a southern thing, or a broader cultural thing, or a generational thing, or what, whatever it is.

Sure, we all ride fine lines, like I said in the recently published grief piece, about the play between the internal boundaries we must have to not take on others’ shit, but also don’t get too wrapped up in ourselves that we can’t consider constructive critique, or feedback.

But we can’t do that in a harmful way.

If we have a problem, there is a kind method to go about it. Again, I appreciated this meeting because of the focus on kindness most of all.

If I could snap my fingers and everyone was kind to everyone else from here on out I would. I personally don’t take it well when folks are unkind to me, especially people I know well, or who are close to me. I’m not always so good at letting those things slide through me without making deeper etchings in sand or stone.

I can’t claim I have a good grasp on Restorative Justice work, but after this session, it’s got me curious to learn more how it is being slowly integrated into mainstream culture, worldwide. It’s been used to restore sticky relations in Africa, the Middle East, eastern Europe and beyond. It’s overwhelmingly working. If it can happen in these places with such big deep seated wounds, restorative justice work seems worth trying on a smaller scale.

And maybe I’m wrong, maybe it would be more possible in the place that I grew up than I think. Or other places that seem daunting to imagine changing.

In my own personal ecosystem sphere, where I am navigating personal life unresolved traumas with others or events, trauma has caused deeply rooted grooves that affect the physiological makeup of the nervous systems’ wirings and firings.. for me and for others… that in the end, after the daily roller coaster of having many feelings about things at any moment, and the body responding, I’m left with desiring love before all else.

I mean the Restorative Justice teacher emphasized that, too.

There are many kinds of love. We must come from love. It’s hard not to tell someone who hurt you that you hate them, but the reality is that you actually really love them and that’s why it hurts so bad. Hating someone doesn’t help anything. We can love with clear boundaries.

A prayer: strong boundaries, open heart.

Martin Luther King was quoted in the class as saying,

“I don’t like my ‘enemies,’ I love them.”

And so it is. How do we love in the face of immense pain, seemingly impossible restorative efforts and large scale cultural oppression? Keep loving, keep trying. Stumble along. Try again and again. Be willing to stay focused on love.