UPCOMING & ONGOING EVENTS (SEE COLUMN TO RIGHT)

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Free Dialogue Series on Social Healing & Restorative Justice in America and beyond with your host, Molly Rowan Leach

ONGOING EVERY THURSDAY EXCEPTING HOLIDAYS OR AS NOTED

ALL TIMES: 5PMPDT/8PM EDT - ALL CALLS FREE

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YOUR SUPPORT OF ANY AMOUNT HELPS THIS SERIES GROW AND CONTINUE AND SUPPORTS DISSEMINATION OF MATERIALS FOR FURTHERING THE CAUSES OF UNITIVE AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND PRISON REFORM. THANK YOU!

 


 ARCHIVES TO THE RIGHT TO LISTEN TO PAST FORUMS


Restorative Justice: What is it?

One of my dialogue guests said that RJ reaches beyond the duality of victim-offender and addresses the importance of having a victim's needs be met, the offender's needs be met, and the community affected's needs be met. It is imperative that true justice address the stories and needs of these three irrevocably interlinked pieces when someone has committed a crime. Of course this does not mean that RJ condones the actions of the offender, but rather asks the system and those involved to take a greater look at what is motivating all involved. It invites true atonement and often sees victims and offenders working together to help that process along--sometimes even literally rebuilding what was broken or wounded. 

Restorative Justice restores peace and does not reciprocate the cycle of the wound, in its ideal form. It addresses the deeper patterns and issues that were causative factors and also drives the duality of "us and them" out of the scenery. The landscape opens the field for eventual rebuilding of trust, understanding, and appropriate actions that harness the power of forgiveness and collaborative healing. 

In our Indigenous brothers and sisters traditions, RJ has been practiced for ancient time. They understand the power of "singing back the song" of an individual that has lost their way. We need only look to the practices of the Maori, Huna, Natives of N. America, and even the recent practices modeled by Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda to find potent evidence of the power of Restorative Justice.


Social Healing is a powerfully emergent field that asks the deepest questions that prevent us from our individual, communal, and global healing. Social Healing invites us back to our Indigenous wisdoms imprinted silently upon us and yet often forgotten, of a world that is living--of a humanity that is inextricably and so beautifully interconnected--and that when we have the courage to be vulnerable and open we find that the "other" is our beautiful face staring back at us. Point: we are 99% the same--our humanness and our shared wounds, our common needs, our similar--if not exactly the same--stories. We all suffer--and out of that suffering comes, if we allow it, great Understanding of this very principle. 

Social Healing practices set a safe field for inclusive, expansive sharing and a profound dissolution of wounding, sometimes coming more slowly, other times, instant.

Thank you for being with me along this journey and thank you to all my very special guest speakers!


-Molly Rowan Leach, Founder/Director



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