This Restorative Justice Life
Restorative Justice is often framed as an alternative to punishment, and but that’s only part of the story.
Dive deeper with David Ryan Barcega Castro-Harris in conversation with RJ practitioners and other justice seekers as they reflect on the things happening in the world around us to offer insight on how YOU can embody RJ philosophy, practices, and values in every aspect of your life.
This Restorative Justice Life
Honoring Eric Butler - Circles Outside of Circles
Eric Butler passed away this summer. We're re-airing this conversation in his honor. He was internationally recognized for his impactful work as a restorative justice practitioner, activist, and educator in Oakland and beyond. He went on to found the “Talking Peace” model of Restorative Justice, a set of practices and philosophy aimed at building relationships through shared values.
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Hello, my name is David Ryan Barsega, castro, harris all five names for all the ancestors, and today I'm bringing you another episode from the archives of this restorative justice life, featuring a conversation I had with Eric Butler Today. As I'm recording, this is November 1, and, depending on your cultural background, it's Dia de los Muertos, all Saints Day, all Souls Day, day of the Dead and Eric passed away earlier this year and as I'm restarting this specific public facing work of Amplify RJ, revisiting this conversation was very important to me for a couple of reasons. One, of course, was to honor Eric's legacy. If you're in the world of restorative justice and you don't know Eric Butler, I would ask like, where have you been? Hiding under a rock? He's done so much work within the context of schools, getting his start with the work in Oakland and, with our joy, there's a documentary about his work put out by Cassidy Freeman called Circles. I'll link that in the description. But he has shaped so much of the way that people think about restorative justice in the context of schools and neighborhoods and he really lived the work, both in the way that he used humor to connect with people, both in the way that he was able to call out harm and get people to sit down and hold space for people to be vulnerable and share and share that work, both in the training capacity and in interpersonal relationships.
Speaker 1:A couple of other major things stood out to me as I revisited this conversation. I was recording this before I became a parent. Next week I'll talk a little bit about a little bit more about the break that I've been on, and a lot of it has to do with being a parent now and hearing myself, from three years ago, talk with Eric, a very, very experienced parent, about how to navigate that world was just mind-blowing to reflect on two, three years later, having the experience that I've had. And the other thing that became really clear to me was like how desperately this work is needed. At the same time, we have to figure out sustainable ways to do this work. Figure out like how desperately this work is needed. At the same time, we have to figure out sustainable ways to do this work. Figure out ways to do this work in community so we don't lose ourselves as people in the work.
Speaker 1:Eric died at the age of 49 for medically unknown reasons. He felt an immense amount of responsibility to this work and people in his life and he and it was a heavy burden and I'm not saying that this was a direct contribution to his early end. But as I'm thinking about living this restorative justice life and the way that I want to be in relationship with myself, with my children, with my partner, with my community, I have to think about ways to do this sustainably for myself, for my health, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and, as we mentioned, financially. So this work has staying power and I don't mean to be all sober.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to celebrate about, there's a lot to laugh about, there's a lot to learn from this conversation, but I'm very conscious of the hole that is left in the restorative justice community and in Eric's community because of his early death. I only hope that this conversation can serve as inspiration to others who are doing this work and others who are wanting to learn more about this work, to get more deeply involved, so this work doesn't just fall on so few of us and that we get to continue to honor Eric's legacy in the way that he would have wanted. Eric still has family who have been impacted, and so, if you want to support them, there's a link to a GoFundMe in the description of this episode, if you have the means, please give what you can, and I'll turn it over to myself from a couple of years ago to introduce the conversation. Eric, welcome to this restorative Justice Life. Who are you?
Speaker 2:I am a father of three adult children. Adult children is kind of an oxymoron, but I have three people that I'm responsible for their life.
Speaker 1:Who are?
Speaker 2:you? I am an activist of all kinds of things Human rights, racial harmony. Who are you? I'm a lover. I'm a brand new dog owner Just got a dog two days ago. Who are you? I'm a son and a grandson and a nephew. Who are you? Simple, but very, very hard to read. Who are you? Someone that goes against the grain. I'm a fighter.
Speaker 1:Who are you? I'm an educator. Thank you so much for being here. We're going to get into all the intersections of who you are in those ways in a little bit, but it's always good to start with a check-in. So, to the extent that you want to answer the question, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good. I'm kind of tired. Like I said, I got a brand new dog. I've been trying to make this dog do everything that I imagined that he could do in one day.
Speaker 1:I'm super glad to be talking to you. Some of you might know the name, eric Butler, from a documentary that was released a couple years ago called Circles, where it details a lot of what went on in Eric's life as a restorative justice coordinator in Oakland. You're not in Oakland anymore. You've been doing a lot of work around restorative justice since then and continue to do it now. But I'm curious you know you've been doing restorative justice work probably before you even knew the words quote unquote restorative justice In your own words. How did this get started for you?
Speaker 2:for you, I guess, when you frame it that way beforehand, I guess I've been groomed all my life to do restorative justice work. I'm the only son in my generation. I have four sisters and 15 girl cousins. Primarily, when I was a kid, my responsibility was and I'm the oldest, so I had to protect them all the time, and that's a lot of drama. So I had to come up with a lot of different ways of defusing situations, because even if I was a fighter, that's way too many fights to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what did that look like? What were some of those diffusion strategies? I?
Speaker 2:learned early that if you can make them laugh, you can make them like you and you can make them listen, listen. So I use my sense of humor in ways to defuse a lot of situations. When I was a kid, I was really, really popular because I did all of the extracurricular things. I played football and I also sang in the choir, which is an interesting dynamic ball. And I also sang in the choir, which is an interesting dynamic um. I was always, um, always a talker and I always sought justice, even though I didn't have an understanding of what justice was yeah, what is there an example that stands out to you about, an example of trying to get to justice?
Speaker 2:When I was a kid, my mother was a single mother. I don't know if she was, she wasn't single. I lived in the house with my mother and my grandmother and my grandmother my mother disciplined me with her hands and my grandmother, my mother, disciplined me with her hands, and as far back as I can remember I would. I got most of those beatings trying to explain my case, and sometimes it would make her feel like she wasn't doing a good job as a parent, because I would ask a lot of questions and most times she would just want me to be quiet, and when I found myself in that kind of trouble I also found myself not able to stop talking. So I wanted my mother to be able to get to the truth and understand that the discipline strategy that she was using wasn't working. She never changed it, so I guess I never received justice, except I think that it made her a better grandmother, or maybe she would have just been that type of grandmother anyway.
Speaker 2:I learned earlier that justice isn't an immediate thing. Sometimes it takes the rest of your life to receive justice. I also learned that justice isn't an external thing. Justice is something that we have inside of ourselves, and that's the reason why, when we give vague definitions of justice, although we haven't experienced it together, we can all agree that justice is that thing. Justice is equity. Of course it is, but how do we know that? And we haven't had equity together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know lots of people define justice in different ways and I'm going to ask you for your definition of restorative justice a little bit later. But you know, you just defined justice as equity right and that's not my definition.
Speaker 2:okay, my definition of justice is having the freedom to practice your values, and the way I came up with that definition is defining injustice. Injustice is having those freedoms snatched away from you, and if that's injustice, justice is having the freedom to practice your values Whenever we're in a situation and we can look back and say oh, that was a just situation. It had everything to do with everybody sharing a collective of values.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was it that led you to that definition of injustice?
Speaker 2:and then you know vice versa, um so when I think about injustice, I watch a lot of television and a lot of documentaries and stuff. So, um, I'm a huge follower of history. Not, I'm not, I don't study history, but I do follow it, so I watch a lot of documentaries on justice. What comes to mind from that question is the civil rights movement in the 60s, when I first discovered it as a kid a little fun fact when I was in the first grade I played Martin Luther King in the Black History Play. So I learned a lot about Martin Luther King.
Speaker 2:I learned more than the other kids learned. I learned more than just the service stuff and I didn't grow up in a household where we were constantly talking about just politics at all. But when I think about that movement it's kind of touching that the strategy that Martin Luther King used was some of the bravest things, and bravery is definitely one of my core values and that was one of the most bravest attempts at seeking justice. And when he used his values of bravery and so many other values and other folks could see it, he was able. So everybody can feel the pain and feel everything and also feel like they have stake to do something about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I imagine growing up in New Orleans, right in the South, experiencing all kinds of injustice. I imagine, like Dr King's work was an inspiration. Where else did you draw inspiration to continue to work for justice?
Speaker 2:I also had a role model which kind of separated me from the rest of the young men that grew up in my environment who wasn't from New Orleans. Now, in New Orleans it's black and white and since I'm black I've done all of the black stuff and we were in like a box of poverty and you throw crack in that box and you throw guns and you throw miseducation in that box and then you shake the box up and whatever comes out comes out If you don't have somebody to guide you. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Big Brother Big Sister program and that's where I met my mentor, who's still my mentor to this day, to kind of guide me and show me these things about our history and how those things in our history feeds the things in our present.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what were some of those key learnings and takeaways that he showed you? And is this, ted, that we're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:When I was a young man, the first, yeah, yeah, yeah, when I was, when I was a young man, the one. The first thing that comes to mind is when I was a young man, the times I saw success from other black men. They were drug dealers and um, and when I say that it's kind of like saying like well, being being impoverished, not having means to to simple things like automobiles, and then suddenly this crack epidemic happens and now these black men that never had an opportunity to shine on the inside can at the very least shine on the outside now. So I saw that, um, until I met uncle ted, that Until I met Uncle Ted, that was all I saw. And I had men in my family that didn't take that route, but they never were successful men. They were living job to job.
Speaker 2:Jobs didn't last too long and I remember once Uncle Ted worked at Loyola University at the Institute of Human Relations. He basically did the same thing I do now and I remember once I asked him how much he made and he said $75 an hour and I thought that that was ridiculously crazy. I wouldn't do nothing for $75 an hour right now, but this was back in the 80s. I wouldn't do nothing for $75 an hour right now, but this was back in the 80s and seeing him be successful and making money for helping kids like me was just amazing to me. In fact, I thought it was a lie.
Speaker 1:I didn't think that you can be successful by your good deeds by your good, by your good deeds, you took the, the inspiration from him and others um your athletic uh achievements, um, out of out of new orleans, um, and I'm and I don't know, and so, um, you know, I'm, I know most of our listeners don't know, how did that lead you to the restorative justice work that you're doing now? What led to the restorative justice work that you're doing now?
Speaker 2:What led to the restorative justice work that I'm doing now is hunger. When I moved to Oakland right after Hurricane Katrina, we didn't know how long it would last. We didn't know when or if we were ever going to be able to go back home. We didn't know when or if we were ever going to be able to go back home. So it was kind of jumping into a double dutch, trying to figure out do I stay? Do I even start building a career here? Growing up in the environment that I grew up in and being the only boy and having to learn how to take care of your family and that being your responsibility? I didn't want to take anything from anybody, so I didn't want to. I didn't want any. I didn't get FEMA support and really didn't want it, didn't expect it, didn't even think it was real. But what I would do is I would stand in front of Catholic charities, which is where they was giving folks clothes and money and that kind of stuff, and I would never ask for anything and I would just stand out there and one day, one of the directors that worked with Catholic Charities came out and personally asked me to take some of these things. To take some of these things and I think we had a conversation and she probably thought that I was really charismatic and she offered me a job and the job that she offered me was helping other Hurricane Katrina survivors. Now that was the first job that I had gotten. The funds for that job, as you can imagine, ran out immediately. But there was another job in the pipeline called crisis response. This job was a job that nobody wanted. You show up at the scene of a murder and assess the scene and find out what the needs were in the community out what the needs were in the community and I would take that information back to Catholic Charities and whatever things they could do to help with those needs. I would offer those needs back. Sometimes it was paying for the funeral, sometimes it was having grief and healing circles, which is the first time I ever heard of circles. So I would bring those circles to elementary schools and it wasn't done really good, but I was consistent. I always showed up at work. That job turned into me being in meetings with the police department and one day I was in a meeting with the police department.
Speaker 2:I raised an issue and that issue was the way they notify families that their loved ones have been murdered. I thought it was very insensitive. They would tell jokes, sometimes jokes sometimes, not knowing why they would do that. I foolishly questioned them. One of them said well, if you think you can do a better job, we'll see if we can have you show up at the scene with us and you can tell the parents. I started doing that.
Speaker 2:It was some very heartbreaking stuff. In fact, my last day I went to a family's house and I can never forget it, because the kid that had lost his life, his name, was Eric. So I had to tell Eric's mother that her son was. So I show up at her house and she knows that something is wrong because there's police with me. Her assumption is that her son has been murdered and she's screaming his name, but she's screaming the wrong name, so that the name that she's screaming isn't in my file.
Speaker 2:So I had a sense of relief like, well, maybe this is one mother that I can give good news to and say well, this isn't your son, we've made a mistake. But she was screaming the name of her good son, who she didn't expect to be in that type of trouble, her bad son. But it wasn't her bad son, it was her good son. She was so heartbroken I couldn't deal with the emotional stress of it all. I just stopped working and Fania Davis had heard about me and I don't know if it was that particular thing, but I know that she was in association with Catholic Charities and she was starting a new organization called R-Joke Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, and I was her first hire and I think it was just based on word of mouth, so I was extremely lucky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. Thank you for sharing that. One of the things that I observed watching the documentary Circles, which you know we'll definitely have linked in the show notes for folks to check out for themselves is the depth to which you as a person, eric, the person, put yourself into this work. And you know, hearing this story just like further solidifies. You know, when you're about something, you're about something and you give it your all.
Speaker 1:The other thing that occurred to me and it was in the doc and just occurred to me both as we're having this conversation and as I've observed you from afar in this restorative justice world is that all of that takes a toll, right, an emotional and a physical toll. I'm curious how you were able to identify like if you were able to identify that in the moment, because I know it's been like a constant evolution of like I can't throw all of myself into this at all times Like you know you talked about like you had to quit your job at that moment because, like you couldn't do that, but like that that's not something that is, that's not like a lesson that you learned and like you know, just taking care of then and like you've been good ever since at like balancing self-care and doing this like deep, intense emotional work. How have you, how did you identify it then? How emotional work, how have you, how did you identify it then?
Speaker 2:How have you continued to navigate it now? Well, I'm still working on that part of myself. To be honest, I cry every single day, and not necessarily out of sadness, but I do know that I have some compound trauma that I've packed down and it slowly seeps out. Back then it was situational Just like everything else Any reason to quit a job.
Speaker 2:You're in the moment and it just feels bad, and being in that moment, knowing that I had other opportunities, the thing that stops us from quitting jobs when we know we should, it's the same thing that stops us from quitting jobs when we know we should. It's the same thing that stops us from ending relationships. It's the fact that I don't believe that there's something else. And when I started doing social this social work, for lack of a better term it started feeling like there's nothing else. Well, it started feeling like this is all I'm going to do for the rest of my life and I'll always be able to find a job doing something in this lane. So quitting just was. Since I've been doing restorative justice work, I've quit. Well, I've only quit once, but I've been fired like three or four times.
Speaker 1:I guess in the moments of quitting right like you can correct me if I'm misassuming there have been other moments where you might not have quit but you've like taken dramatic steps back to take care of yourself in a need that you were identifying. What? How do you identify those?
Speaker 2:I sell them, I identify them, other people around me, um, the if I've done anything right in restorative justice, it's my relationships. Um, these people are amazing and I think people are amazing once they tap into that themselves, that justice within within themselves. And I've and I've connected with these people and they make sure that I take really good care of myself, to the best that they can Stop me from going too far. I go all the way, since restorative justice isn't something that you do. It's hard to turn it off, so I never turn it off. Somebody has to physically stop me from doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you fight them?
Speaker 2:Yes, I seldom win and it's the way I set up my friend group. It's on purpose. My team they're all women and it's kind of like a thing in my when I was young. It's like I was surrounding myself. I didn't surround myself, but I was surrounded by women that made choices for me and it was comfortable for me. And now all of my everybody that's on my team and they're really strong and pigheaded, and one of them's right there. So they fight back and I lose most of those battles. But I do fight and I try to make it make sense. But the thing that makes sense the most is no matter how bad I want to do this work, if I'm not around to do this work, I won't be able to do this work, and that makes more sense and it overrides anything that I have to say and it's usually like somebody's got to do it right now. So if I'm not going to do it, you're definitely going to do it, so they'll do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the sense of urgency that, um, we, we fall into a lot of time and like I'm identifying that for myself as well. Um, I think the other thing that why I'm personally like so curious about having this conversation with you is, you know, I'm on the precipice of fatherhood right, um, uh, you know, probably about a month when this conversation airs or about two months from right now, um, and you know, thinking about there is so much work to do and like, as I was watching you, um, give so much to, uh, the students at the school and in the doc, while also simultaneously balancing being your son's sole parent in the household, like there's, I'm concerned for myself about like that balance of that work.
Speaker 2:It's a hard balance, and what's harder about that balance is you're not going to be able to mathematically figure it out. It's going to happen spontaneously where you prioritize and you prioritize differently depending on who raised you and the things that you've learned throughout the time. I've done things so differently than my parents did, which is kind of scary because that means there's absolutely no roadmap. So like raising my kids was a blank slate and I did some really, really cool things.
Speaker 1:But I fucked up sometimes. Yeah, I always take some of my friends and I joke. Like you know, your kids are going to end up in therapy for one reason or another. Like you, you've messed them up one way or another. But, like you know, being present and doing your best is all you can do and I take comfort in that and just like still don't want to mess up. Like urgency, perfectionism are still things that I'm working on. I mentioned I mentioned the school that you had worked at. You know, from coming to our joy, you did lots of different things within restorative justice in the Oakland world. Can you highlight some of those for the folks listening?
Speaker 2:All right. So when I was hired, I was hired with the understanding that NAACP or something were suing the school district because they were suspending too many black boys, which was interesting to me, that we were going to do something in reaction of little black boys doing something. I immediately saw the white supremacy in that idea, so I wasn't turned on by that idea that we were reacting to what Black boys were doing. I didn't agree with that notion and the way I got my training. I went to a Mennonite college in Virginia. In theory it was great, but I found myself being taught how to talk to black and brown boys by white women who, more times than not, weren't even from this country. So while the theory was tight, the content was a little bit off. So I had to think about how can I take the theory and put it into a different context At the school that's highlighted in the documentary. On my first day of school I remember feeling very, very uncomfortable and wanting to do something different, understanding that the foundation of restorative justice was relationships. I thought that if I go outside and greet the kids or the young people as they walk in, that that would give me a leg up on building these relationships and building these connections. But there were other teachers doing the exact same thing, but in a different way, because we're all kind of standing together and I remember one teacher saying hey, you're the restorative justice guy. And they called me the restorative justice guy, which meant you're not a teacher, you're not, you're not faculty, you're not, you're something else, like your support staff. And that's exactly how they treated me on the first day and paid you yeah, you're another and we're not sure about you. But this particular teacher was absolutely sure about me. She read me and she read me wrong, or she read restorative justice wrong. It's like we know all about restorative justice. We've read both of the books that was written about it, so we have to know everything. And here's the thing it's a good concept, but it's not going to work for all of the kids.
Speaker 2:Now, this is the first conversation that I'm having with the people that I'm going to be working with, and I didn't acknowledge her. I didn't talk to her. In fact, I didn't even look at her, but she continued to talk. In her rant she began to tell me the kids who weren't going to be able to benefit from restorative justice as they were walking into the school and, ironically, all of the kids that she thought wouldn't benefit, they all look like me. Um, and when I do trainings I tell folks to search for a why before they start doing the work, because before that moment I didn't have a why and my why became because she pissed me off and I wanted I wanted to prove her wrong.
Speaker 2:As she was talking, she spoke about this young man who had this sense of urgency of stopping as he walked to school smoking a blunt, and she completely read this dude. In my ear. She talked about his, his home life. In my ear she talked about his home life. She talked about having him in the eighth grade and how he wasn't a good student then and he's not a good student now. And she also said that I am going to send him to your classroom every single day. Now she's telling me what type of classroom I'm going to have. So basically it's going to be like a punishment room. So I immediately knew that I had to dispel that idea that I'm going to be punishing people. But she were right.
Speaker 2:She sent that boy to my classroom and I tried my best to build a relationship with him for about a week and I just kept getting cussed out every day and I had to put my armor on and just take it, and he would cuss me out every day, religiously. And one day he broke and he said do you know why they don't like me? And I'm like, no, but I am all ears. So he told me that the math teacher particularly didn't like the fact that he can do algebra without doing the formula, so like he could just look at it and come up with a number, and so it didn't make sense to him to write all that other stuff when he just knew the answer and they would argue we. We became really close and he was sent to my classroom every single day when he wasn't suspended, because they were still suspending kids at that time. So when he wasn't suspended he would be in my classroom and sometimes he would get suspended to my classroom. He would do all his work and all of the tests. He had the best grades in the school. So he's our valedictorian. The thing that he's missing is seat time, which is their responsibility, and they have to pay a price if he doesn't have seat time. So they have to give him his grades. So this kid graduated valedictorian and he has to give the valedictorian speech, and he wasn't a man of many words Two of them and he said both of them as he accepted his diploma.
Speaker 2:And that was the moment I realized how important it was to be in relationships. Just this kid realize how important it was to be in relationships? Just this kid.
Speaker 2:I remember us having a conversation about math, algebra, particularly because we talked about algebra to the point where I was telling him how much I hated it when I was in high school and hate it now and don't know nothing about it. And he said why do we need it anyway? It's like I literally walk over dead bodies to and from school every day. How is algebra going to help me with my life? And I didn't have an answer for it. But I asked him until we find out how you're going to be able to use algebra, would you do it for me? And he said he'll do it for me because we have a relationship. And that kid taught me and the other kids taught me more about restorative justice than the time I spent in Virginia. All of the classes that I've been to learning how to do circles and that stuff being in relationship with those kids for real taught me how to do restorative justice but not be restorative.
Speaker 1:We talk about all the time on this podcast how restorative justice isn't. I think it can be both right. It is the description of a process where we're saying what happened, who was impacted and how, and how do you make things as right or as right as possible. But it's also that way of being, that way of being deeply interconnected with people. I think there are limits to what you know, you've, you've experienced, like there are limits to like how much of yourself you can pour into relationships with people, because the first relationship you have is the relationship with yourself, right, and if that relationship isn't right or able to function, you can't do any of those other things. But the way that we are teaching restorative justice often gets reduced to the thing for the bad kids, right, or the alternatives to punishment generously, and that can't all be on one person in a school, right? I'm thinking back to what that looks like in the documentary. When you know you're having a conversation with the principal. She was like I'm on board, I got your back, we're going to do this, we're going to win, we're going to win them over all the other teachers in the school, because you know to her point, it can't all be on you. You can't be like, oh, restorative justice, send him to Mr Butler's room, right? It can't. It's got to be like what is the relationship that I have as a teacher have with the student, right? Like, why couldn't they be like hey, I understand. You don't understand that, uh, application of algebra to your daily life. Can you do it for me? Right? It's because they didn't do that proactive relationship building with that person and seeing them for, uh, who they were, as opposed to like, oh, that's the kid that just doesn't show his work on math. He's a problem for me. Um, in your time working in schools, how have you been able to bring people teachers into that relational way of being, as opposed to like, oh, just the alternative to punishment.
Speaker 2:All right. So I'm just like the average American. I resist connection, just like everybody else. I'm in the grocery store pretending like I'm on my phone when I see people I know, just like everybody else. So it's constantly working on that muscle that does what we're supposed to do, like we're built to connect with each other. So it's constantly working on that muscle to connect. And when you're working, when you're doing that, it's kind of like working on any muscle. It's kind of like I'm doing any kind of exercise where you're trying to manipulate your body to do something. The same way with the relationships.
Speaker 2:I am trying to manipulate people that don't have an already set attraction to my humanity. So I try to do something and we all do it. I love women and physically there's a type of woman that I like, and if I see that woman and she goes to church, suddenly I go to church. If it was easier than that, I wouldn't even brush my teeth in the morning. If it wasn't for the fact that women appreciate an apartment, I wouldn't pay $1,700 to stay somewhere. I live on the street. I just said that we even Miss Steele.
Speaker 2:It's funny you use Miss Steele because Miss Steele was the champion of restorative justice in that school, but not until we built a relationship. The first words that she said to me is I am the queen of suspensions. So she didn't have a restorative bone in her body. She had been a principal for 20 plus years and her tactic was always suspension. If you come to my office, you're going to leave sorry, manipulating relationships and people don't like the word manipulation, and that's cool. Use another word if you want to, but my word is manipulation. It just sounds fresher to me.
Speaker 2:I remember there was a fight that was happening right in front of her office. This is another example. She comes outside of her office and she's suspending everybody. Teachers are getting suspended. She's losing control. But as she's losing control, I'm watching her and I'm watching her say key things that make me know who she is or make me assume who she is. She said words like Lord, have mercy and please Jesus, and all that kind of stuff. So my assumption was those words, mixed with her accent, that she's a black woman from the. She's a black Christian woman from the South, which is well within my wheelbarrow, because that's everybody in your family, yeah, or in the neighborhood you grew up in Right right.
Speaker 2:Although I'm not a Christian, I know Christian lingo and so I just asked her does she wanna pray about it? And of course she does. So we went to our office and I led the prayer in a way that Baptist preachers lead the prayer, and I'm not even closing my eyes, mind you. I'm just watching her and as I'm praying, she's saying, yes, lord, and I'm like I got you and that was the birth of our relationship Me pretending to believe in the way that she believes. Now, as we continue this relationship, we're going to have to fix that up. I'm going to have to fix that. But what I need right now? I need you to listen to me. I don't need you to stop suspending people. I need you to listen to my story, and if you listen to my story, we can come to some kind of agreement.
Speaker 2:Most times when restorative justice isn't appreciated, it's because the person that you're trying to convince isn't listening to you. They're waiting on their turn to talk, and the thing that fosters the idea of a real conversation is relationships. So I had to have her in a relationship so she can champion restorative justice. I couldn't do it by myself. She had the power to make teachers be inserted. Now, that's not restorative at all, but it's a start.
Speaker 2:What usually happens is teachers die out. We live in a culture where our ego leads the way. Once I say I don't believe in that thing, there's nothing that you can do that's going to turn me away from that, unless you can manipulate those relationships. By my third year at Bunch, we had gotten rid of all of the teachers that wasn't down with restorative justice and recruited new ones. In fact, I was also doing trainings all around the country. I had folks from Texas move to Oakland just so they can work at Bunch. And that's just the relationship. That's the power of relationships, and it doesn't hurt to be a little charismatic too, and it doesn't hurt to be a little charismatic too, for sure.
Speaker 1:But like you know, we're talking about that point of connection, right, and like I think people might bristle, like, oh, you pretended to be a Christian in order to you know, right, but like, think about the people in your life.
Speaker 1:You pretend to like sports to connect with whoever. You pretend to like a certain type of music to connect, and like maybe you do find some connection point with there and that becomes an authentic thing. But like, what's important at the end of the day is that relationship, uh, with people, and you know where that can lead and what benefit that can do for not only you and them but for the community at large and the way that that's impactful. I'm'm thinking, I think a lot about how to further amplify restorative justice work. Right, that's the name of my company and so many of the things that I see in marketing world are around senses of urgency, and restorative justice is not like, while it is urgent, like like we can't go about it in an urgent way. Right, it takes time, it takes relationship building and I'm wrestling with can I use urgency and scarcity to market restorative justice just to get people in the door?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that you have to and you would be right you wouldn't be lying. This is urgent and you would be right you wouldn't be lying. This is urgent Now. It's going to take time, but we need to move on this right now because the examples Now I've had people turn their nose up at the fact, like telling that story about pretending to be a Christian to have a relationship with me still Now. Here's the results that year no kids were suspended. Now here's the results that year no kids were suspended. 100% of the kids graduated. The following year no kids were suspended. 100% of the kids were graduating. And the next Satan. To get that, I'll pretend, and if the God that you love truly is the God that you say he is, he understands my heart and I'm going to go to heaven with y'all.
Speaker 1:What was her reaction when you finally came clean about that?
Speaker 2:She knew it. She knew it. She said she knew it. She knew I was full of shit. Um, she used to call me jody and, um, I didn't know what jody was, but jody was a man. They called jody. When she was younger, she said they, they would nickname men that would, um, manipulate women, jody, they would be attractive to the woman and they would woo the woman. So she would call me Jodi. So she knew that I was full of shit, but she also knew that in that moment that was exactly what she needed and I didn't need it, but she needed it.
Speaker 2:And if I can supply you with one of your needs as a Christian, why don't you give me something that I need in return? Let's do the whole Christian thing, and I love arguing with Christians anyway. In fact, if your job as a Christian is to lead me to the fold, lead me. Stop judging me, because if you judge me and shame me, it's going to make me stop talking to you or not stop talking. I'll keep talking, but I'll stop listening. If you want to lead me to the fold, convince me. Your job is to convince me. My job is to prove that you're wrong, and let's just have a conversation about it. Let's pass the talking piece so we won't interrupt each other.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I'm thinking about. I don't know that I want to go like too far down that, because I I'm imagining that's going to bring up your, your, and I know that you've told it before In the context of this conversation. It's not exactly where I want to go, but we can. All of that is acknowledged for sure, and thank you for being a person who shared that and been vulnerable with that. You are not in Oakland anymore. What are the things that you have been working on in the restorative justice world since?
Speaker 2:All right, mostly what we've been doing, especially since the pandemic. Folks have not been face-to-face, so when you're working virtually it's easier to be in conflict, it's easier to say what's on your mind while you're sitting behind this computer. So people are in conflict and people are looking for people that can help them mediate their conflicts. So I've been doing a lot of work around conflicts the world has been in a conflict with and we like to criminalize everything. So we've been in a conflict with the pandemic and the problem with it, with us being in conflict with the pandemic, is we don't have anybody to criminalize and we try. That's not because we didn't try. We tried to blame China Well, we didn't, but our leader at the time tried to, didn't try. We tried to blame China Well, we didn't, but our leader at the time tried to blame a whole country, tried to blame China for it.
Speaker 2:So we've been having intentional conversations around how we're going to be together and anti-Blackness and racism.
Speaker 2:So most of the work that I've gotten from the pandemic to the present is around race and just white women afraid to be called racist and Karen, they're very offended by that, so they're trying to figure out a way that they can have a conversation. Restorative justice is the way to hold that space. So I've been getting a lot of folks hiring me for their companies, like here recently, since I live in Austin. Now there's been people that know about restorative justice, that are we're going to be doing some work with the district attorney's office, where they're diverting cases to restorative justice as opposed to sending young folks to juvenile hall. So that's one thing that we're working on this piece and I think that's probably the biggest project. But primarily we've been working on and last year we did some work. I was a coordinator on online coordinator at a school last year, so we've been doing everything that we could possibly do um and restore justice, like if somebody needs it, if somebody asks for a training, we'll do it.
Speaker 1:We'll train your dog, restore it if you got the money beautiful, uh, and you know, you know where do people engage with you all? Is that through? We Are Talking Peace? Yeah, and we'll definitely have those things linked in the show notes for people. You know, as we're thinking about continued growth through the pandemic, because it's not over and beyond, how do you want to continue to grow in this work?
Speaker 2:I think that we have. I think that we're in the United States. We're beginning to have these important conversations because we don't have a choice. We're running out of lies to tell. We're running out of lies to tell, so we have to have this conversation, where I hope I and Talking Peace fit into that conversation is we'd like to lead some of these conversations because they stop at a certain point and it just stops. As a country, we need to heal.
Speaker 2:It's been a long time coming and in celebration of Black History Month, this one month that we're given, there's a lot of talk that needs to happen around race.
Speaker 2:We're disconnected in the way that we do this thing with CRT, for example, where CRT isn't even taught in schools the legs of it, just talking about race.
Speaker 2:There are folks that don't even want to have the uncomfortable conversation. So as an organization, we want to encourage people to have that conversation and it's hard, but it's only hard because at some point people are going to feel like I'm being too vulnerable and I'm giving away pieces of myself and I don't know what you're going to do with them, and on the other side it's I'm scared that you might shame me. So we could take those two things out of the conversation and if there's a talent, we've been able to do that. I'm taking shame and the fear of being vulnerable out of those conversations and we've been able to have great conversations. We don't always agree, but we at least have a really good conversation and I know it's going to work and I just hope that we can become illuminated enough that people will see Talking Peace as a vehicle to have these important conversations and hire us so we can eat.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. Food is important, eating is important, shelter is important and I think one of the things that I've thought a lot about over the last few days, weeks, months, is the tension of you know, relationship yourself. Make sure that you're setting those boundaries around your time, but like you can't self-care your way out of oppression, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and how do we balance both, like that internal work, those practices that will continue to sustain us, and like working for change externally, communally? There's so much in there. I want to transition shortly into the questions that everybody answers when they come onto this podcast. But is there anything else that you feel like that's been unsaid around these ideas of restorative justice, racial justice and all that?
Speaker 2:You're the pro man. I'm just following your lead.
Speaker 1:All right. So I told you earlier that everyone who comes here gives us a definition of restorative justice.
Speaker 2:So, in your own word, restorative justice is Restorative justice is a way of finding out what is our common values and how do we use those values to get the things that we need and want from our community.
Speaker 1:Love that, as you've been doing this work. What's been an oh shit moment and what did you learn from it?
Speaker 2:It's all around adults that somehow we're going to be able to change the culture, and when I see it not happening, when I see it happening with the young people, it's like, oh my God, we've been doing it wrong the whole time. In fact, there was a smart aleck news reporter, probably from the New York Times go through the records and she said something like I see that you guys haven't suspended anybody in like seven years. Are you guys just not suspending or is the behavior changing? And I actually thought about it and the answer is the adults absolutely changed their behavior. And once the adults changed their behavior, the kids follow suit. The kids have been acting like the adults the whole time.
Speaker 2:We've been suspending the kids, but we should have been suspending the adults. If we're going punitive, there's a lot of teachers and principals that should have been fired a long time ago, but instead what we do is we do it to the kids, so we suspend them, we fire them, we kick them out of their own communities. The lives that's been saved, it's like it's some. I have so many stories that's been recorded of beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stories, and as I sit back and I watch those stories a thousand times in every training and have people stand up and applaud. They're not really good stories, because it's one student, it's one school and in the meantime, we have a nation of young people that are getting what they've always gotten, and the people that lead those kids are hoping for different results, even though they're doing the same thing that they did yesterday.
Speaker 2:And that's dangerous. So like, so like, while Dion graduated the kid that I was telling you about earlier and went to an Ivy League college, there's another Dion that goes to jail in that same situation, and that's the urgency that you were speaking of to jail in that same situation, and that's the urgency that you were speaking of. Now we have to be urgent and in our urgency we may save the lives of two or three families. But if we keep doing the work and we have other people doing the work, that number grows and grows and grows. And if we stop, the work stops, we're right back where we started, and that's very scary.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that speaks a lot to like. This can't just belong in schools, this belongs everywhere. Right, you know 3.2 million teachers in public school. Right, 48 million students. You know 15 to 1, you know they're there. I do think, like if all 3.2 million teachers had a radical education around restorative justice and an attitude shift towards relationship, and you know they were incentivized to do so and compensated better than they're being compensated right now, like things would absolutely be different and that still wouldn't solve all of society's problems, because this work belongs in so many places.
Speaker 2:I always say that the moment you feel like we got this thing down pat, restorative justice is already work. That's also the moment you realize that you have not been doing restorative justice. You've been doing something else. The moment you don't have anything else to do, you're not doing restorative justice or you're not living restorative. You're not living a restorative life because you just had a goal and that was it.
Speaker 2:So ending suspensions wasn't my personal goal. I didn't really care. I didn't care if the school system got sued by the Office of Civil Rights. I didn't care. I started caring about it when I noticed that we were able to impact not only that one student but also the families that have been harmed by this system. We were able to have the parents be partners with the teachers in their child's education because they were in a relationship and parents are able to tell teachers the reason why I never answer your phone call because your phone call tells me that I'm a bad parent and teach teachers to not only call when the kid does something bad, but when the kid is doing something good, which is most of the time.
Speaker 1:As a parent yourself, right? I'm just thinking back to you getting calls when Trey, your son, was getting in trouble at school, right? How would that have changed your relationship with Trey and that school if you had gotten those positive calls as well?
Speaker 2:Well, that wouldn't have been the important change. The important change would have been the relationship that Trey had with the school. So, if Trey's relationship with the school is different, trey and I's relationship is different, because I'm getting something that I want from him and he's getting something that he wants, and instead of want, I want to say need, he needs from the school, and we're all acting as partners in this relationship. It was a dysfunctional relationship, though, for sure, and even if it's a three-way relationship, like you said, if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, it's hard to have a good relationship with anybody else. So we internalize these dysfunctional relationships and we also have dysfunctional relationships with ourselves, and I treat them like and how do you do that? Like, because you got to be with yourself. You can't like, you can't divorce yourself, so you just have to, you have to re-get to know yourself. Like, you have to recommit to yourself, like this is who I am now. These are the things that I don't like about myself. These are the things that I want to keep, and you have to keep on doing that, and that's the reason why long term marriages work that are long term. Most of them don't work, but the reason why they don't work is because we don't reconnect, we don't renew our vows, and if we do renew our vows, it's just a pageantry. If I'm renewing my vows with myself, it's internal and y'all don't even see it.
Speaker 2:It happens when I say I am not going to stop myself from crying. I'm going to feel this thing and think about what it is that made me feel that way and also how can we fix it so other folks won't feel that way. I think about values and this idea of empathy so like. Empathy is always a value, but folks seldom want to practice it, and the way I prove it is like who's the person that you find it most difficult to have empathy for? So for me, it's Donald Trump.
Speaker 2:Now, how can I not empathize with somebody with whom I have no idea who this man is? All I know is his acts, and acts should be way easier to empathize with than your person, be way easier to empathize with than your person. I can empathize with somebody that I like, no matter how bad or egregious the thing they did, but an act so like. I have to try to find a way to rehumanize myself and become a better person. That means I'm going to have to empathize with the hardest people. I'm going to have to try to build a relationship with people that have opposing ideas. That's the work. The work isn't going into a school and everybody's saying, yeah, we're on board with restorative justice. The work is finding out who's not.
Speaker 1:If there's one person that's not on board, our job is to manipulate that relationship find the ways to invite folks in to this work, find the connections, find the points right, all all the different words to to get that and I think like to something that you said earlier right, if you don't, you will be evaluated out of your job. Right, right and like that's like a manipulation point, beautiful, you get to sit in circle with four people, living or dead. Who are they and what question do you ask? The circle, oh man.
Speaker 2:So I watch a lot of TV. So, like when you just said that, the first thing I thought about is JonBenet Ramsey and her parents, because I just watched a documentary about them yesterday. Martin Luther King, malcolm X, tupac All these people don't have to be dead. All right, ok, and I will. I think I probably should go. White guy Donald Trump.
Speaker 1:What is the question? You ask that circle.
Speaker 2:Okay, shoot, we are in the year 2050 and all of our dreams have come true. How did we get there from here?
Speaker 1:I love this. I love that question Because you don't know. But what I do is now ask you that question, eric. So we are now in the year 2050. All of our dreams have come true. How did we get there?
Speaker 2:Intentional relationship building. We had a lot of difficult conversations. We told the truth, and I don't like truth. And the reason why I don't like truth is because whenever truth shows itself, truth is because whenever truth shows itself, the audience does not give a soft landing for truth. So what I'm imagining is that now there's a soft landing place for truth.
Speaker 2:In America, we lie to ourselves so we can feel comfortable with the truth that we imagine. So we'll tell ourselves, lie after lie after lie, just so we can be comfortable. And the example I can give is slavery. Slavery Like we'll. As Americans, we'll lie about the tragic situation and as Black people. Of course, white people do, because they don't want to be connected to the wrong side of history, but Black people either, some of our own people sold us to slavery, and you could call it indented servitude or whatever it is. It's still like one of the biggest sins ever committed.
Speaker 2:Um, I think that there would have to be some changes in our faith community, where we're not. So I think that people need that faith and that hope. Hope and faith is kind of the same thing to me. I think people need that hope so much so that they'll pay for it, and I think that we need to be more inclusive in our faith communities. We say certain people are allowed. In fact, certain people are an abomination.
Speaker 2:So I think when we fix the faith community, we have more intentional conversations about hard things. We allow what we've never allowed before, and what I mean by that is we allow women, and particularly Black and brown women, to do their thing, because they're so much better than us in so many ways, and we just block them all the time, and I think that there's becoming a revelation of more and more black women doing things and leading the way and teaching us how to be better people. I think that instead of having a football draft, we have a football draft. We have a teacher draft where the teachers make the most money. Like, you get first round draft pick for being an algebra teacher based on your performance as a human being, and you pay them the most money, and then football players make $30 an hour. That'll make more football players want to be teachers.
Speaker 1:Instead of the other way around. Those are some beautiful steps.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Sorry say that again. I'm just thinking out loud of this teacher draft. I can see these teachers waiting at home for their names to be called.
Speaker 1:Man, what a world. What a world. What is one thing, a mantra or affirmation? Do you want everyone listening to know?
Speaker 2:Find something truly worth dying for, then live for it.
Speaker 1:Who's one person I should have on this podcast and you have to help me get them on all right, oosh cc.
Speaker 2:Jordan, um cecilia. Jordan moved from austin to oakland with me and she has also moved back to austin from oakland with me. She's working on her um ph something. She is the restorative justice mind. She actually studies this work in a real way. She's very collegiate. I don't understand half the shit she be saying, but she's really really smart and really really dope and she's a queer black woman and she's got a lot to say. In fact, she's writing her what's the name of that thing? Dissertation on restorative justice and a lot about how it's been interwoven into the same system that our school system is, which is a white supremacist system, and it's some really complex work and it's real Beautiful. The same system that our school system is, which is a white supremacist system.
Speaker 1:And it's some really complex work and it's real Beautiful, so I'll be looking forward to that introduction. And finally, we mentioned a talking piece already, but how can people support you and your work in the ways that you want to be supported yeah, um, just through.
Speaker 2:Um. I think that our talent is trainings. Um, have a training with us and um don't don't lean on the fact that you've already been trained, because once you have a training with us, you're going to feel like you've never been trained before. So one way to support us is to support your school by getting more tools for your tool belt to do this work and, of course, have a budget when you do it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Absolutely, David back in 2024 here. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back with another episode remembering another member of the restorative justice community, ted Lewis, tomorrow, and just another reminder that the link to the GoFundMe for Eric's family is in the description and if you have the means, please get what you can. Thanks so much. Take care, stay safe.
