November 1, 2024 • 70 mins
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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my name is David Ryan Barsega, castro,
harris all five names for allthe ancestors, and today I'm
bringing you another episodefrom the archives of this
restorative justice life,featuring a conversation I had
with Eric Butler Today.
As I'm recording, this isNovember 1, and, depending on
your cultural background, it'sDia de los Muertos, all Saints
(00:20):
Day, all Souls Day, day of theDead and Eric passed away
earlier this year and as I'mrestarting this specific public
facing work of Amplify RJ,revisiting this conversation was
very important to me for acouple of reasons.
One, of course, was to honorEric's legacy.
If you're in the world ofrestorative justice and you
(00:42):
don't know Eric Butler, I wouldask like, where have you been?
Hiding under a rock?
He's done so much work withinthe context of schools, getting
his start with the work inOakland and, with our joy,
there's a documentary about hiswork put out by Cassidy Freeman
called Circles.
I'll link that in thedescription.
But he has shaped so much ofthe way that people think about
(01:05):
restorative justice in thecontext of schools and
neighborhoods and he reallylived the work, both in the way
that he used humor to connectwith people, both in the way
that he was able to call outharm and get people to sit down
and hold space for people to bevulnerable and share and share
that work, both in the trainingcapacity and in interpersonal
(01:26):
relationships.
A couple of other major thingsstood out to me as I revisited
this conversation.
I was recording this before Ibecame a parent.
Next week I'll talk a littlebit about a little bit more
about the break that I've beenon, and a lot of it has to do
with being a parent now andhearing myself, from three years
ago, talk with Eric, a very,very experienced parent, about
(01:49):
how to navigate that world wasjust mind-blowing to reflect on
two, three years later, havingthe experience that I've had.
And the other thing that becamereally clear to me was like how
desperately this work is needed.
At the same time, we have tofigure out sustainable ways to
do this work.
Figure out like how desperatelythis work is needed.
At the same time, we have tofigure out sustainable ways to
do this work.
Figure out ways to do this workin community so we don't lose
(02:11):
ourselves as people in the work.
Eric died at the age of 49 formedically unknown reasons.
He felt an immense amount ofresponsibility to this work and
people in his life and he and itwas a heavy burden and I'm not
saying that this was a directcontribution to his early end.
But as I'm thinking aboutliving this restorative justice
(02:32):
life and the way that I want tobe in relationship with myself,
with my children, with mypartner, with my community, I
have to think about ways to dothis sustainably for myself, for
my health, spiritually,mentally, emotionally and, as we
mentioned, financially.
So this work has staying powerand I don't mean to be all sober
.
There's a lot to celebrate about, there's a lot to laugh about,
(02:55):
there's a lot to learn from thisconversation, but I'm very
conscious of the hole that isleft in the restorative justice
community and in Eric'scommunity because of his early
death.
I only hope that thisconversation can serve as
inspiration to others who aredoing this work and others who
are wanting to learn more aboutthis work, to get more deeply
(03:16):
involved, so this work doesn'tjust fall on so few of us and
that we get to continue to honorEric's legacy in the way that
he would have wanted.
Eric still has family who havebeen impacted, and so, if you
want to support them, there's alink to a GoFundMe in the
description of this episode, ifyou have the means, please give
what you can, and I'll turn itover to myself from a couple of
(03:39):
years ago to introduce theconversation.
Eric, welcome to thisrestorative Justice Life.
Who are you?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I am a father of three adult children.
Adult children is kind of anoxymoron, but I have three
people that I'm responsible fortheir life.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Who are?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
you?
I am an activist of all kindsof things Human rights, racial
harmony.
Who are you?
I'm a lover.
I'm a brand new dog owner Justgot a dog two days ago.
Who are you?
I'm a son and a grandson and anephew.
Who are you?
Simple, but very, very hard toread.
(04:27):
Who are you?
Someone that goes against thegrain.
I'm a fighter.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Who are you?
I'm an educator.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
We're going to get into all theintersections of who you are in
those ways in a little bit, butit's always good to start with
a check-in.
So, to the extent that you wantto answer the question, how are
you?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm good.
I'm kind of tired.
Like I said, I got a brand newdog.
I've been trying to make thisdog do everything that I
imagined that he could do in oneday.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I'm super glad to be talking to you.
Some of you might know the name, eric Butler, from a
documentary that was released acouple years ago called Circles,
where it details a lot of whatwent on in Eric's life as a
restorative justice coordinatorin Oakland.
You're not in Oakland anymore.
You've been doing a lot of workaround restorative justice
(05:27):
since then and continue to do itnow.
But I'm curious you know you'vebeen doing restorative justice
work probably before you evenknew the words quote unquote
restorative justice In your ownwords.
How did this get started foryou?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
for you, I guess, when you frame it that way
beforehand, I guess I've beengroomed all my life to do
restorative justice work.
I'm the only son in mygeneration.
I have four sisters and 15 girlcousins.
Primarily, when I was a kid, myresponsibility was and I'm the
oldest, so I had to protect themall the time, and that's a lot
(06:11):
of drama.
So I had to come up with a lotof different ways of defusing
situations, because even if Iwas a fighter, that's way too
many fights to have.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, what did that look like?
What were some of thosediffusion strategies?
I?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
learned early that if you can make them laugh, you
can make them like you and youcan make them listen, listen.
So I use my sense of humor inways to defuse a lot of
situations.
When I was a kid, I was really,really popular because I did
(07:02):
all of the extracurricularthings.
I played football and I alsosang 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 atalker and I always sought
justice, even though I didn'thave an understanding of what
justice was yeah, what is therean example that stands out to
(07:22):
you about, an example of tryingto get to justice?
When I was a kid, my mother wasa single mother.
I don't know if she was, shewasn't single.
I lived in the house with mymother and my grandmother and my
grandmother my motherdisciplined me with her hands
(07:46):
and my grandmother, my mother,disciplined me with her hands,
and as far back as I canremember I would.
I got most of those beatingstrying to explain my case, and
(08:06):
sometimes it would make her feellike she wasn't doing a good
job as a parent, because I wouldask a lot of questions and most
times she would just want me tobe quiet, and when I found
myself in that kind of trouble Ialso found myself not able to
stop talking.
So I wanted my mother to beable to get to the truth and
understand that the disciplinestrategy that she was using
(08:28):
wasn't working.
She never changed it, so Iguess I never received justice,
except I think that it made hera better grandmother, or maybe
she would have just been thattype of grandmother anyway.
I learned earlier that justiceisn't an immediate thing.
Sometimes it takes the rest ofyour life to receive justice.
(08:49):
I also learned that justiceisn't an external thing.
Justice is something that wehave inside of ourselves, and
that's the reason why, when wegive vague definitions of
justice, although we haven'texperienced it together, we can
all agree that justice is thatthing.
Justice is equity.
Of course it is, but how do weknow that?
(09:10):
And we haven't had equitytogether.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, I know lots of people define justice in
different ways and I'm going toask you for your definition of
restorative justice a little bitlater.
But you know, you just definedjustice as equity right and
that's not my definition.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
okay, my definition of justice is having the freedom
to practice your values, andthe way I came up with that
definition is defining injustice.
Injustice is having thosefreedoms snatched away from you,
and if that's injustice,justice is having the freedom to
practice your values Wheneverwe're in a situation and we can
(09:54):
look back and say oh, that was ajust situation.
It had everything to do witheverybody sharing a collective
of values.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, what was it that led you to that definition
of injustice?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
and then you know vice versa, um so when I think
about injustice, I watch a lotof television and a lot of
documentaries and stuff.
So, um, I'm a huge follower ofhistory.
Not, I'm not, I don't studyhistory, but I do follow it, so
(10:29):
I watch a lot of documentarieson justice.
What comes to mind from thatquestion is the civil rights
movement in the 60s, when Ifirst discovered it as a kid a
little fun fact when I was inthe first grade I played Martin
Luther King in the Black HistoryPlay.
So I learned a lot about MartinLuther King.
(10:52):
I learned more than the otherkids learned.
I learned more than just theservice stuff and I didn't grow
up in a household where we wereconstantly talking about just
politics at all.
But when I think about thatmovement it's kind of touching
that the strategy that MartinLuther King used was some of the
bravest things, and bravery isdefinitely one of my core values
(11:15):
and that was one of the mostbravest attempts at seeking
justice.
And when he used his values ofbravery and so many other values
and other folks could see it,he was able.
So everybody can feel the painand feel everything and also
(11:49):
feel like they have stake to dosomething about.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, I imagine growing up in New Orleans, right
in the South, experiencing allkinds of injustice.
I imagine, like Dr King's workwas an inspiration.
Where else did you drawinspiration to continue to work
for justice?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I also had a role model which kind of separated me
from the rest of the young menthat grew up in my environment
who wasn't from New Orleans.
Now, in New Orleans it's blackand white and since I'm black
I've done all of the black stuffand we were in like a box of
(12:35):
poverty and you throw crack inthat box and you throw guns and
you throw miseducation in thatbox and then you shake the box
up and whatever comes out comesout If you don't have somebody
to guide you.
I was fortunate enough to be apart of the Big Brother Big
Sister program and that's whereI met my mentor, who's still my
(13:00):
mentor to this day, to kind ofguide me and show me these
things about our history and howthose things in our history
feeds the things in our present.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, what were some of those key learnings and
takeaways that he showed you?
And is this, ted, that we'retalking about?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
When I was a young man, the first, yeah, yeah, yeah
, when I was, when I was a youngman, the one.
The first thing that comes tomind is when I was a young man,
the times I saw success fromother black men.
They were drug dealers and um,and when I say that it's kind of
like saying like well, beingbeing impoverished, not having
(13:43):
means to to simple things likeautomobiles, and then suddenly
this crack epidemic happens andnow these black men that never
had an opportunity to shine onthe inside can at the very least
shine on the outside now.
So I saw that, um, until I metuncle ted, that Until I met
Uncle Ted, that was all I saw.
(14:04):
And I had men in my family thatdidn't take that route, but
they never were successful men.
They were living job to job.
Jobs didn't last too long and Iremember once Uncle Ted worked
at Loyola University at theInstitute of Human Relations.
(14:27):
He basically did the same thingI do now and I remember once I
asked him how much he made andhe said $75 an hour and I
thought that that wasridiculously crazy.
I wouldn't do nothing for $75an hour right now, but this was
back in the 80s.
I wouldn't do nothing for $75an hour right now, but this was
(14:48):
back in the 80s and seeing himbe successful and making money
for helping kids like me wasjust amazing to me.
In fact, I thought it was a lie.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I didn't think that you can be successful by your
good deeds by your good, by yourgood deeds, you took the, the
inspiration from him and othersum 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, Iknow most of our listeners don't
(15:19):
know, how did that lead you tothe restorative justice work
that you're doing now?
What led to the restorativejustice work that you're doing
now?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
What led to the restorative justice work that
I'm doing now is hunger.
When I moved to Oakland rightafter Hurricane Katrina, we
didn't know how long it wouldlast.
We didn't know when or if wewere ever going to be able to go
back home.
We didn't know when or if wewere ever going to be able to go
(15:46):
back home.
So it was kind of jumping intoa double dutch, trying to figure
out do I stay?
Do I even start building acareer here?
Growing up in the environmentthat I grew up in and being the
only boy and having to learn howto take care of your family and
that being your responsibility?
I didn't want to take anythingfrom anybody, so I didn't want
(16:08):
to.
I didn't want any.
I didn't get FEMA support andreally didn't want it, didn't
expect it, didn't even think itwas real.
But what I would do is I wouldstand in front of Catholic
charities, which is where theywas giving folks clothes and
money and that kind of stuff,and I would never ask for
(16:29):
anything and I would just standout there and one day, one of
the directors that worked withCatholic Charities came out and
personally asked me to take someof these things.
To take some of these thingsand I think we had a
conversation and she probablythought that I was really
charismatic and she offered me ajob and the job that she
(16:52):
offered me was helping otherHurricane Katrina survivors.
Now that was the first job thatI had gotten.
The funds for that job, as youcan imagine, ran out immediately
.
But there was another job inthe pipeline called crisis
response.
This job was a job that nobodywanted.
(17:13):
You show up at the scene of amurder and assess the scene and
find out what the needs were inthe community out what the needs
were in the community and Iwould take that information back
to Catholic Charities andwhatever things they could do to
help with those needs.
I would offer those needs back.
(17:34):
Sometimes it was paying for thefuneral, sometimes it was
having grief and healing circles, which is the first time I ever
heard of circles.
So I would bring those circlesto elementary schools and it
wasn't done really good, but Iwas consistent.
I always showed up at work.
(17:54):
That job turned into me beingin meetings with the police
department and one day I was ina meeting with the police
department.
I raised an issue and that issuewas the way they notify
families that their loved oneshave been murdered.
I thought it was veryinsensitive.
They would tell jokes,sometimes jokes sometimes, not
(18:18):
knowing why they would do that.
I foolishly questioned them.
One of them said well, if youthink you can do a better job,
we'll see if we can have youshow up at the scene with us and
you can tell the parents.
I started doing that.
(18:44):
It was some very heartbreakingstuff.
In fact, my last day I went toa family's house and I can never
forget it, because the kid thathad lost his life, his name,
was Eric.
So I had to tell Eric's motherthat her son was.
So I show up at her house andshe knows that something is
(19:06):
wrong because there's policewith me.
Her assumption is that her sonhas been murdered and she's
screaming his name, but she'sscreaming the wrong name, so
that the name that she'sscreaming isn't in my file.
So I had a sense of relief like,well, maybe this is one mother
(19:28):
that I can give good news to andsay well, this isn't your son,
we've made a mistake.
But she was screaming the nameof her good son, who she didn't
expect to be in that type oftrouble, her bad son.
But it wasn't her bad son, itwas her good son.
(19:54):
She was so heartbroken Icouldn't deal with the emotional
stress of it all.
I just stopped working andFania Davis had heard about me
and I don't know if it was thatparticular thing, but I know
that she was in association withCatholic Charities and she was
(20:14):
starting a new organizationcalled R-Joke Restorative
Justice for Oakland Youth, and Iwas her first hire and I think
it was just based on word ofmouth, so I was extremely lucky.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, you know.
Thank you for sharing that.
One of the things that Iobserved watching the
documentary Circles, which youknow we'll definitely have
linked in the show notes forfolks to check out for
themselves is the depth to whichyou as a person, eric, the
(20:48):
person, put yourself into thiswork.
And you know, hearing thisstory just like further
solidifies.
You know, when you're aboutsomething, you're about
something and you give it yourall.
The other thing that occurred tome and it was in the doc and
just occurred to me both aswe're having this conversation
(21:09):
and as I've observed you fromafar in this restorative justice
world is that all of that takesa toll, right, an emotional and
a physical toll.
I'm curious how you were ableto identify like if you were
able to identify that in themoment, because I know it's been
(21:31):
like a constant evolution oflike I can't throw all of myself
into this at all times Like youknow you talked about like you
had to quit your job at thatmoment because, like you
couldn't do that, but like thatthat's not something that is,
that's not like a lesson thatyou learned and like you know,
just taking care of then andlike you've been good ever since
at like balancing self-care anddoing this like deep, intense
(21:55):
emotional work.
How have you, how did youidentify it then?
How emotional work, how haveyou, how did you identify it
then?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
How have you continued to navigate it now?
Well, I'm still working on thatpart of myself.
To be honest, I cry everysingle day, and not necessarily
out of sadness, but I do knowthat I have some compound trauma
that I've packed down and itslowly seeps out.
Back then it was situationalJust like everything else Any
(22:29):
reason to quit a job.
You're in the moment and it justfeels bad, and being in that
moment, knowing that I had otheropportunities, the thing that
stops us from quitting jobs whenwe know we should, it's the
same thing that stops us fromquitting jobs when we know we
should.
It's the same thing that stopsus from ending relationships.
It's the fact that I don'tbelieve that there's something
else.
And when I started doing socialthis social work, for lack of a
(22:55):
better term it started feelinglike there's nothing else.
Well, it started feeling likethis is all I'm going to do for
the rest of my life and I'llalways be able to find a job
doing something in this lane.
So quitting just was.
Since I've been doingrestorative justice work, I've
(23:16):
quit.
Well, I've only quit once, butI've been fired like three or
four times.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I guess in the moments of quitting right like
you can correct me if I'mmisassuming there have been
other moments where you mightnot have quit but you've like
taken dramatic steps back totake care of yourself in a need
that you were identifying.
What?
How do you identify those?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I sell them, I identify them, other people
around me, um, the if I've doneanything right in restorative
justice, it's my relationships.
Um, these people are amazingand I think people are amazing
once they tap into thatthemselves, that justice within
(23:58):
within themselves.
And I've and I've connectedwith these people and they make
sure that I take really goodcare of myself, to the best that
they can Stop me from going toofar.
I go all the way, sincerestorative justice isn't
something that you do.
It's hard to turn it off, so Inever turn it off.
(24:18):
Somebody has to physically stopme from doing it.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, do you fight them?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
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 andit's kind of like a thing in my
when I was young.
It's like I was surroundingmyself.
I didn't surround myself, but Iwas surrounded by women that
(24:48):
made choices for me and it wascomfortable for me.
And now all of my everybodythat's on my team and they're
really strong and pigheaded, andone of them's right there.
So they fight back and I losemost of those battles.
(25:10):
But I do fight and I try tomake it make sense.
But the thing that makes sensethe most is no matter how bad I
want to do this work, if I'm notaround to do this work, I won't
be able to do this work, andthat makes more sense and it
overrides anything that I haveto say and it's usually like
(25:31):
somebody's got to do it rightnow.
So if I'm not going to do it,you're definitely going to do it
, so they'll do it.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, it's the sense of urgency that, um, we, we fall
into a lot of time and like I'midentifying that for myself as
well.
Um, I think the other thingthat why I'm personally like so
curious about having thisconversation with you is, you
know, I'm on the precipice offatherhood right, um, uh, you
(25:59):
know, probably about a monthwhen this conversation airs or
about two months from right now,um, and you know, thinking
about there is so much work todo and like, as I was watching
you, um, give so much to, uh,the students at the school and
(26:19):
in the doc, while alsosimultaneously balancing being
your son's sole parent in thehousehold, like there's, I'm
concerned for myself about likethat balance of that work.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's a hard balance, and what's harder about that
balance is you're not going tobe able to mathematically figure
it out.
It's going to happenspontaneously where you
prioritize and you prioritizedifferently depending on who
raised you and the things thatyou've learned throughout the
(27:01):
time.
I've done things so differentlythan my parents did, which is
kind of scary because that meansthere's absolutely no roadmap.
So like raising my kids was ablank slate and I did some
really, really cool things.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
But I fucked up sometimes.
Yeah, I always take some of myfriends and I joke.
Like you know, your kids aregoing to end up in therapy for
one reason or another.
Like you, you've messed them upone way or another.
But, like you know, beingpresent and doing your best is
all you can do and I takecomfort in that and just like
(27:45):
still don't want to mess up.
Like urgency, perfectionism arestill things that I'm working
on.
I mentioned I mentioned theschool that you had worked at.
You know, from coming to ourjoy, you did lots of different
things within restorativejustice in the Oakland world.
Can you highlight some of thosefor the folks listening?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
All right.
So when I was hired, I washired with the understanding
that NAACP or something weresuing the school district
because they were suspending toomany black boys, which was
interesting to me, that we weregoing to do something in
reaction of little black boysdoing something.
(28:30):
I immediately saw the whitesupremacy in that idea, so I
wasn't turned on by that ideathat we were reacting to what
Black boys were doing.
I didn't agree with that notionand the way I got my training.
(28:53):
I went to a Mennonite collegein Virginia.
In theory it was great, but Ifound myself being taught how to
talk to black and brown boys bywhite women who, more times
than not, weren't even from thiscountry.
So while the theory was tight,the content was a little bit off
(29:16):
.
So I had to think about how canI take the theory and put it
into a different context At theschool that's highlighted in the
documentary.
On my first day of school Iremember feeling very, very
uncomfortable and wanting to dosomething different,
(29:37):
understanding that thefoundation of restorative
justice was relationships.
I thought that if I go outsideand greet the kids or the young
people as they walk in, thatthat would give me a leg up on
building these relationships andbuilding these connections.
But there were other teachersdoing the exact same thing, but
(30:00):
in a different way, becausewe're all kind of standing
together and I remember oneteacher saying hey, you're the
restorative justice guy.
And they called me therestorative justice guy, which
meant you're not a teacher,you're not, you're not faculty,
you're not, you're somethingelse, like your support staff.
(30:21):
And that's exactly how theytreated me on the first day and
paid you yeah, you're anotherand we're not sure about you.
But this particular teacher wasabsolutely sure about me.
She read me and she read mewrong, or she read restorative
justice wrong.
It's like we know all aboutrestorative justice.
We've read both of the booksthat was written about it, so we
(30:43):
have to know everything.
And here's the thing it's agood concept, but it's not going
to work for all of the kids.
Now, this is the firstconversation that I'm having
with the people that I'm goingto be working with, and I didn't
acknowledge her.
I didn't talk to her.
In fact, I didn't even look ather, but she continued to talk.
In her rant she began to tellme the kids who weren't going to
(31:09):
be able to benefit fromrestorative 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 Itell folks to search for a why
(31:30):
before they start doing the work, because before that moment I
didn't have a why and my whybecame because she pissed me off
and I wanted I wanted to proveher wrong.
As she was talking, she spokeabout this young man who had
this sense of urgency ofstopping as he walked to school
(31:50):
smoking a blunt, and shecompletely read this dude.
In my ear.
She talked about his, his homelife.
In my ear she talked about hishome life.
She talked about having him inthe eighth grade and how he
wasn't a good student then andhe's not a good student now.
And she also said that I amgoing to send him to your
(32:14):
classroom every single day.
Now she's telling me what typeof classroom I'm going to have.
So basically it's going to belike a punishment room.
So I immediately knew that Ihad to dispel that idea that I'm
going to be punishing people.
But she were right.
She sent that boy to myclassroom and I tried my best to
(32:35):
build a relationship with himfor about a week and I just kept
getting cussed out every dayand I had to put my armor on and
just take it, and he would cussme out every day, religiously.
And one day he broke and hesaid do you know why they don't
(32:55):
like me?
And I'm like, no, but I am allears.
So he told me that the mathteacher particularly didn't like
the fact that he can do algebrawithout doing the formula, so
like he could just look at itand come up with a number, and
so it didn't make sense to himto write all that other stuff
(33:18):
when he just knew the answer andthey would argue we.
We became really close and hewas sent to my classroom every
single day when he wasn'tsuspended, because they were
still suspending kids at thattime.
So when he wasn't suspended hewould be in my classroom and
sometimes he would get suspendedto my classroom.
(33:40):
He would do all his work andall of the tests.
He had the best grades in theschool.
So he's our valedictorian.
The thing that he's missing isseat time, which is their
responsibility, and they have topay a price if he doesn't have
seat time.
So they have to give him hisgrades.
So this kid graduatedvaledictorian and he has to give
(34:02):
the valedictorian speech, andhe wasn't a man of many words
Two of them and he said both ofthem as he accepted his diploma.
And that was the moment Irealized how important it was to
be in relationships.
Just this kid realize howimportant it was to be in
(34:23):
relationships?
Just this kid.
I remember us having aconversation about math, algebra
, particularly because we talkedabout algebra to the point
where I was telling him how muchI hated it when I was in high
school and hate it now and don'tknow nothing about it.
And he said why do we need itanyway?
It's like I literally walk overdead bodies to and from school
(34:44):
every day.
How is algebra going to help mewith my life?
And I didn't have an answer forit.
But I asked him until we findout how you're going to be able
to use algebra, would you do itfor me?
And he said he'll do it for mebecause we have a relationship.
And that kid taught me and theother kids taught me more about
(35:06):
restorative justice than thetime I spent in Virginia.
All of the classes that I'vebeen to learning how to do
circles and that stuff being inrelationship with those kids for
real taught me how to dorestorative justice but not be
restorative.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
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 aprocess where we're saying what
happened, who was impacted andhow, 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 towhat you know, you've, you've
(35:54):
experienced, like there arelimits to like how much of
yourself you can pour intorelationships with people,
because the first relationshipyou have is the relationship
with yourself, right, and ifthat relationship isn't right or
able to function, you can't doany of those other things.
But the way that we areteaching restorative justice
often gets reduced to the thingfor the bad kids, right, or the
(36:18):
alternatives to punishmentgenerously, and that can't all
be on one person in a school,right?
I'm thinking back to what thatlooks like in the documentary.
When you know you're having aconversation with the principal.
She was like I'm on board, Igot your back, we're going to do
this, we're going to win, we'regoing to win them over all the
other teachers in the school,because you know to her point,
(36:42):
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 therelationship that I have as a
teacher have with the student,right?
Like, why couldn't they be likehey, I understand.
You don't understand that, uh,application of algebra to your
daily life.
Can you do it for me?
(37:03):
Right?
It's because they didn't dothat proactive relationship
building with that person andseeing 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 inschools, how have you been able
to bring people teachers intothat relational way of being, as
(37:29):
opposed to like, oh, just thealternative to punishment.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
All right.
So I'm just like the averageAmerican.
I resist connection, just likeeverybody else.
I'm in the grocery storepretending like I'm on my phone
when I see people I know, justlike everybody else.
So it's constantly working onthat muscle that does what we're
(37:52):
supposed to do, like we'rebuilt to connect with each other
.
So it's constantly working onthat muscle to connect.
And when you're working, whenyou're doing that, it's kind of
like working on any muscle.
It's kind of like I'm doing anykind of exercise where you're
trying to manipulate your bodyto do something.
(38:13):
The same way with therelationships.
I am trying to manipulate peoplethat don't have an already set
attraction to my humanity.
So I try to do something and weall do it.
I love women and physicallythere's a type of woman that I
(38:34):
like, and if I see that womanand she goes to church, suddenly
I go to church.
If it was easier than that, Iwouldn't even brush my teeth in
the morning.
If it wasn't for the fact thatwomen appreciate an apartment, I
wouldn't pay $1,700 to staysomewhere.
(38:56):
I live on the street.
I just said that we even MissSteele.
It's funny you use Miss Steelebecause Miss Steele was the
champion of restorative justicein that school, but not until we
built a relationship.
The first words that she saidto me is I am the queen of
suspensions.
(39:16):
So she didn't have arestorative bone in her body.
She had been a principal for 20plus years and her tactic was
always suspension.
If you come to my office,you're going to leave sorry,
manipulating relationships andpeople don't like the word
manipulation, and that's cool.
Use another word if you want to, but my word is manipulation.
(39:37):
It just sounds fresher to me.
I remember there was a fightthat was happening right in
front of her office.
This is another example.
She comes outside of her officeand 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
(39:57):
watching her say key things thatmake me know who she is or make
me assume who she is.
She said words like Lord, havemercy and please Jesus, and all
that kind of stuff.
So my assumption was thosewords, mixed with her accent,
(40:20):
that she's a black woman fromthe.
She's a black Christian womanfrom the South, which is well
within my wheelbarrow, becausethat's everybody in your family,
yeah, or in the neighborhoodyou grew up in Right right.
Although I'm not a Christian, Iknow Christian lingo and so I
(40:43):
just asked her does she wannapray about it?
And of course she does.
So we went to our office and Iled the prayer in a way that
Baptist preachers lead theprayer, and I'm not even closing
my eyes, mind you.
I'm just watching her and asI'm praying, she's saying, yes,
lord, and I'm like I got you andthat was the birth of our
(41:09):
relationship Me pretending tobelieve in the way that she
believes.
Now, as we continue thisrelationship, 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 stopsuspending people.
I need you to listen to mystory, and if you listen to my
(41:31):
story, we can come to some kindof agreement.
Most times when restorativejustice isn't appreciated, it's
because the person that you'retrying to convince isn't
listening to you.
They're waiting on their turnto talk, and the thing that
fosters the idea of a realconversation is relationships.
So I had to have her in arelationship so she can champion
(41:53):
restorative justice.
I couldn't do it by myself.
She had the power to maketeachers be inserted.
Now, that's not restorative atall, but it's a start.
What usually happens is teachersdie out.
We live in a culture where ourego leads the way.
Once I say I don't believe inthat thing, there's nothing that
(42:15):
you can do that's going to turnme away from that, unless you
can manipulate thoserelationships.
By my third year at Bunch, wehad gotten rid of all of the
teachers that wasn't down withrestorative justice and
recruited new ones.
In fact, I was also doingtrainings all around the country
(42:35):
.
I had folks from Texas move toOakland just so they can work at
Bunch.
And that's just therelationship.
That's the power ofrelationships, and it doesn't
hurt to be a little charismatictoo, and it doesn't hurt to be a
little charismatic too, forsure.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
But like you know, we're talking about that point
of connection, right, and like Ithink people might bristle,
like, oh, you pretended to be aChristian in order to you know,
right, but like, think about thepeople in your life.
You pretend to like sports toconnect with whoever.
You pretend to like a certaintype of music to connect, and
(43:15):
like maybe you do find someconnection point with there and
that becomes an authentic thing.
But like, what's important atthe end of the day is that
relationship, uh, with people,and you know where that can lead
and what benefit that can dofor not only you and them but
for the community at large andthe way that that's impactful.
I'm'm thinking, I think a lotabout how to further amplify
(43:39):
restorative justice work.
Right, that's the name of mycompany and so many of the
things that I see in marketingworld are around senses of
urgency, and restorative justiceis not like, while it is urgent
, like like we can't go about itin an urgent way.
Right, it takes time, it takesrelationship building and I'm
wrestling with can I use urgencyand scarcity to market
(44:03):
restorative justice just to getpeople in the door?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, I think that you have to and you would be
right you wouldn't be lying.
This is urgent and you would beright you wouldn't be lying.
This is urgent Now.
It's going to take time, but weneed to move on this right now
because the examples Now I'vehad people turn their nose up at
(44:30):
the fact, like telling thatstory about pretending to be a
Christian to have a relationshipwith me still Now.
Here's the results that year nokids were suspended.
Now here's the results thatyear no kids were suspended.
100% of the kids graduated.
The following year no kids weresuspended.
100% of the kids weregraduating.
(44:52):
And the next Satan.
To get that, I'll pretend, andif 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 (45:06):
What was her reaction when you finally came clean
about that?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
She knew it.
She knew it.
She said she knew it.
She knew I was full of shit.
Um, she used to call me jodyand, um, I didn't know what jody
was, but jody was a man.
They called jody.
When she was younger, she saidthey, they would nickname men
that would, um, manipulate women, jody, they would be attractive
to the woman and they would woothe woman.
(45:35):
So she would call me Jodi.
So she knew that I was full ofshit, but she also knew that in
that moment that was exactlywhat she needed and I didn't
need it, but she needed it.
And if I can supply you with oneof your needs as a Christian,
(45:56):
why don't you give me somethingthat I need in return?
Let's do the whole Christianthing, and I love arguing with
Christians anyway.
In fact, if your job as aChristian is to lead me to the
fold, lead me.
Stop judging me, because if youjudge me and shame me, it's
going to make me stop talking toyou or not stop talking.
(46:16):
I'll keep talking, but I'llstop listening.
If you want to lead me to thefold, convince me.
Your job is to convince me.
My job is to prove that you'rewrong, and let's just have a
conversation about it.
Let's pass the talking piece sowe won't interrupt each other.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Absolutely, I'm thinking about.
I don't know that I want to golike too far down that, because
I I'm imagining that's going tobring up your, your, and I know
(46:51):
that you've told it before Inthe context of this conversation
.
It's not exactly where I wantto go, but we can.
All of that is acknowledged forsure, and thank you for being a
person who shared that and beenvulnerable with that.
You are not in Oakland anymore.
What are the things that youhave been working on in the
(47:13):
restorative justice world since?
Speaker 2 (47:21):
All right, mostly what we've been doing,
especially since the pandemic.
Folks have not beenface-to-face, so when you're
working virtually it's easier tobe in conflict, it's easier to
say what's on your mind whileyou're sitting behind this
computer.
So people are in conflict andpeople are looking for people
(47:42):
that can help them mediate theirconflicts.
So I've been doing a lot ofwork around conflicts the world
has been in a conflict with andwe like to criminalize
everything.
So we've been in a conflictwith the pandemic and the
problem with it, with us beingin conflict with the pandemic,
(48:06):
is we don't have anybody tocriminalize and we try.
That's not because we didn'ttry.
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 wholecountry, tried to blame China
for it.
So we've been having intentionalconversations around how we're
going to be together andanti-Blackness and racism.
(48:30):
So most of the work that I'vegotten from the pandemic to the
present is around race and justwhite women afraid to be called
racist and Karen, they're veryoffended by that, so they're
trying to figure out a way thatthey can have a conversation.
(48:50):
Restorative justice is the wayto hold that space.
So I've been getting a lot offolks hiring me for their
companies, like here recently,since I live in Austin.
Now there's been people thatknow about restorative justice,
that are we're going to be doingsome work with the district
attorney's office, where they'rediverting cases to restorative
(49:15):
justice as opposed to sendingyoung folks to juvenile hall.
So that's one thing that we'reworking on this piece and I
think that's probably thebiggest project.
But primarily we've beenworking on and last year we did
some work.
I was a coordinator on onlinecoordinator at a school last
(49:37):
year, so we've been doingeverything that we could
possibly do um and restorejustice, like if somebody needs
it, if somebody asks for atraining, we'll do it.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
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 havethose things linked in the show
notes for people.
You know, as we're thinkingabout continued growth through
(50:10):
the pandemic, because it's notover and beyond, how do you want
to continue to grow in thiswork?
Speaker 2 (50:18):
I think that we have.
I think that we're in theUnited States.
We're beginning to have theseimportant conversations because
we don't have a choice.
We're running out of lies totell.
We're running out of lies totell, so we have to have this
conversation, where I hope I andTalking Peace fit into that
(50:41):
conversation is we'd like tolead some of these conversations
because they stop at a certainpoint and it just stops.
As a country, we need to heal.
It's been a long time coming andin celebration of Black History
(51:09):
Month, this one month thatwe're given, there's a lot of
talk that needs to happen aroundrace.
We're disconnected in the waythat we do this thing with CRT,
for example, where CRT isn'teven taught in schools the legs
of it, just talking about race.
There are folks that don't evenwant to have the uncomfortable
conversation.
So as an organization, we wantto encourage people to have that
(51:32):
conversation and it's hard, butit's only hard because at some
point people are going to feellike I'm being too vulnerable
and I'm giving away pieces ofmyself 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 twothings out of the conversation
(51:54):
and if there's a talent, we'vebeen able to do that.
I'm taking shame and the fearof being vulnerable out of those
conversations and we've beenable to have great conversations
.
We don't always agree, but weat least have a really good
conversation and I know it'sgoing to work and I just hope
(52:17):
that we can become illuminatedenough that people will see
Talking Peace as a vehicle tohave these important
conversations and hire us so wecan eat.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yes, absolutely.
Food is important, eating isimportant, shelter is important
and I think one of the thingsthat I've thought a lot about
over the last few days, weeks,months, is the tension of you
know, relationship yourself.
(52:54):
Make sure that you're settingthose boundaries around your
time, but like you can'tself-care your way out of
oppression, yeah.
Right, and how do we balanceboth, like that internal work,
those practices that willcontinue to sustain us, and like
working for change externally,communally?
(53:14):
There's so much in there.
I want to transition shortlyinto the questions that
everybody answers when they comeonto this podcast.
But is there anything else thatyou feel like that's been
unsaid around these ideas ofrestorative justice, racial
justice and all that?
Speaker 2 (53:30):
You're the pro man.
I'm just following your lead.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
All right.
So I told you earlier thateveryone who comes here gives us
a definition of restorativejustice.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
So, in your own word, restorative justice is
Restorative justice is a way offinding out what is our common
values and how do we use thosevalues to get the things that we
need and want from ourcommunity.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
Love that, as you've been doing this work.
What's been an oh shit momentand what did you learn from it?
Speaker 2 (54:00):
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 ithappening with the young people,
it's like, oh my God, we'vebeen doing it wrong the whole
time.
In fact, there was a smartaleck news reporter, probably
(54:25):
from the New York Times gothrough the records and she said
something like I see that youguys haven't suspended anybody
in like seven years.
Are you guys just notsuspending or is the behavior
changing?
And I actually thought about itand the answer is the adults
(54:47):
absolutely changed theirbehavior.
And once the adults changedtheir behavior, the kids follow
suit.
The kids have been acting likethe adults the whole time.
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 beenfired a long time ago, but
(55:07):
instead what we do is we do itto the kids, so we suspend them,
we fire them, we kick them outof their own communities.
The lives that's been saved,it's like it's some.
I have so many stories that'sbeen recorded of beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful stories,and as I sit back and I watch
(55:29):
those stories a thousand timesin 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 whatthey've always gotten, and the
(55:50):
people that lead those kids arehoping for different results,
even though they're doing thesame thing that they did
yesterday.
And that's dangerous.
So like, so like, while Diongraduated the kid that I was
telling you about earlier andwent to an Ivy League college,
there's another Dion that goesto jail in that same situation,
and that's the urgency that youwere speaking of to jail in that
same situation, and that's theurgency that you were speaking
(56:13):
of.
Now we have to be urgent and inour urgency we may save the
lives of two or three families.
But if we keep doing the workand we have other people doing
the work, that number grows andgrows and grows.
(56:35):
And if we stop, the work stops,we're right back where we
started, and that's very scary.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
I mean, I think that speaks a lot to like.
This can't just belong inschools, this belongs everywhere
.
Right, you know 3.2 millionteachers in public school.
Right, 48 million students.
You know 15 to 1, you knowthey're there.
I do think, like if all 3.2million teachers had a radical
(57:06):
education around restorativejustice and an attitude shift
towards relationship, and youknow they were incentivized to
do so and compensated betterthan they're being compensated
right now, like things wouldabsolutely be different and that
still wouldn't solve all ofsociety's problems, because this
work belongs in so many places.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
I always say that the moment you feel like we got
this thing down pat, restorativejustice is already work.
That's also the moment yourealize that you have not been
doing restorative justice.
You've been doing somethingelse.
The moment you don't haveanything else to do, you're not
doing restorative justice oryou're not living restorative.
(57:47):
You're not living a restorativelife because you just had a
goal and that was it.
So ending suspensions wasn't mypersonal goal.
I didn't really care.
I didn't care if the schoolsystem got sued by the Office of
Civil Rights.
I didn't care.
I started caring about it whenI noticed that we were able to
(58:09):
impact not only that one studentbut also the families that have
been harmed by this system.
We were able to have theparents be partners with the
teachers in their child'seducation because they were in a
relationship and parents areable to tell teachers the reason
(58:32):
why I never answer your phonecall because your phone call
tells me that I'm a bad parentand teach teachers to not only
call when the kid does somethingbad, but when the kid is doing
something good, which is most ofthe time.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
As a parent yourself, right?
I'm just thinking back to yougetting calls when Trey, your
son, was getting in trouble atschool, right?
How would that have changedyour relationship with Trey and
that school if you had gottenthose positive calls as well?
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Well, that wouldn't have been the important change.
The important change would havebeen the relationship that Trey
had with the school.
So, if Trey's relationship withthe school is different, trey
and I's relationship isdifferent, because I'm getting
something that I want from himand he's getting something that
he wants, and instead of want, Iwant to say need, he needs from
(59:27):
the school, and we're allacting as partners in this
relationship.
It was a dysfunctionalrelationship, though, for sure,
and even if it's a three-wayrelationship, like you said, if
you don't have a goodrelationship with yourself, it's
hard to have a goodrelationship with anybody else.
(59:47):
So we internalize thesedysfunctional relationships and
we also have dysfunctionalrelationships with ourselves,
and I treat them like and how doyou do that?
Like, because you got to bewith yourself.
You can't like, you can'tdivorce yourself, so you just
have to, you have to re-get toknow yourself.
Like, you have to recommit toyourself, like this is who I am
(01:00:11):
now.
These are the things that Idon't like about myself.
These are the things that Iwant to keep, and you have to
keep on doing that, and that'sthe reason why long term
marriages work that are longterm.
Most of them don't work, butthe reason why they don't work
is because we don't reconnect,we don't renew our vows, and if
(01:00:35):
we do renew our vows, it's justa pageantry.
If I'm renewing my vows withmyself, it's internal and y'all
don't even see it.
It happens when I say I am notgoing to stop myself from crying
.
I'm going to feel this thingand think about what it is that
made me feel that way and alsohow can we fix it so other folks
(01:00:56):
won't feel that way.
I think about values and thisidea of empathy so like.
Empathy is always a value, butfolks seldom want to practice it
, and the way I prove it is likewho's the person that you find
it most difficult to haveempathy for?
So for me, it's Donald Trump.
(01:01:19):
Now, how can I not empathizewith somebody with whom I have
no idea who this man is?
All I know is his acts, andacts should be way easier to
empathize with than your person,be way easier to empathize with
than your person.
I can empathize with somebodythat I like, no matter how bad
(01:01:45):
or egregious the thing they did,but an act so like.
I have to try to find a way torehumanize myself and become a
better person.
That means I'm going to have toempathize with the hardest
people.
I'm going to have to try tobuild a relationship with people
that have opposing ideas.
That's the work.
The work isn't going into aschool and everybody's saying,
yeah, we're on board withrestorative justice.
The work is finding out who'snot.
Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
If there's one person that's not on board, our job is
to manipulate that relationshipfind the ways to invite folks
in to this work, find theconnections, find the points
right, all all the differentwords to to get that and I think
like to something that you saidearlier right, if you don't,
(01:02:30):
you will be evaluated out ofyour job.
Right, right and like that'slike a manipulation point,
beautiful, you get to sit incircle with four people, living
or dead.
Who are they and what questiondo you ask?
The circle, oh man.
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
So I watch a lot of TV.
So, like when you just saidthat, the first thing I thought
about is JonBenet Ramsey and herparents, because I just watched
a documentary about themyesterday.
Martin Luther King, malcolm X,tupac All these people don't
have to be dead.
All right, ok, and I will.
(01:03:08):
I think I probably should go.
White guy Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
What is the question?
You ask that circle.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
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 (01:03:36):
I love this.
I love that question Becauseyou don't know.
But what I do is now ask youthat question, eric.
So we are now in the year 2050.
All of our dreams have cometrue.
How did we get there?
Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Intentional relationship building.
We had a lot of difficultconversations.
We told the truth, and I don'tlike truth.
And the reason why I don't liketruth is because whenever truth
shows itself, truth is becausewhenever truth shows itself, the
audience does not give a softlanding for truth.
(01:04:20):
So what I'm imagining is thatnow there's a soft landing place
for truth.
In America, we lie to ourselvesso we can feel comfortable with
the truth that we imagine.
So we'll tell ourselves, lieafter lie after lie, just so we
(01:04:43):
can be comfortable.
And the example I can give isslavery.
Slavery Like we'll.
As Americans, we'll lie aboutthe tragic situation and as
Black people.
Of course, white people do,because they don't want to be
(01:05:04):
connected to the wrong side ofhistory, but Black people either
, some of our own people sold usto slavery, and you could call
it indented servitude orwhatever it is.
It's still like one of thebiggest sins ever committed.
(01:05:25):
Um, I think that there wouldhave to be some changes in our
faith community, where we're not.
So I think that people needthat faith and that hope.
Hope and faith is kind of thesame thing to me.
I think people need that hopeso much so that they'll pay for
(01:05:47):
it, and I think that we need tobe more inclusive in our faith
communities.
We say certain people areallowed.
In fact, certain people are anabomination.
So I think when we fix the faithcommunity, we have more
(01:06:09):
intentional conversations abouthard things.
We allow what we've neverallowed before, and what I mean
(01:06:30):
by that is we allow women, andparticularly Black and brown
women, to do their thing,because they're so much better
than us in so many ways, and wejust block them all the time,
and I think that there'sbecoming a revelation of more
and more black women doingthings and leading the way and
teaching us how to be betterpeople.
I think that instead of havinga football draft, we have a
(01:06:54):
football draft.
We have a teacher draft wherethe teachers make the most money
.
Like, you get first round draftpick for being an algebra
teacher based on yourperformance as a human being,
and you pay them the most money,and then football players make
$30 an hour.
That'll make more footballplayers want to be teachers.
Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Instead of the other way around.
Those are some beautiful steps.
Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah.
Sorry say that again.
I'm just thinking out loud ofthis teacher draft.
I can see these teacherswaiting at home for their names
to be called.
Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Man, what a world.
What a world.
What is one thing, a mantra oraffirmation?
Do you want everyone listeningto know?
Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Find something truly worth dying for, then live for
it.
Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Who's one person I should have on this podcast and
you have to help me get them onall right, oosh cc.
Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Jordan, um cecilia.
Jordan moved from austin tooakland with me and she has also
moved back to austin fromoakland with me.
She's working on her um phsomething.
She is the restorative justicemind.
She actually studies this workin a real way.
(01:08:22):
She's very collegiate.
I don't understand half theshit she be saying, but she's
really really smart and reallyreally dope and she's a queer
black woman and she's got a lotto say.
In fact, she's writing herwhat's the name of that thing?
Dissertation on restorativejustice and a lot about how it's
(01:08:45):
been interwoven into the samesystem that our school system is
, which is a white supremacistsystem, and it's some really
complex work and it's realBeautiful.
The same system that our schoolsystem is, which is a white
supremacist system.
Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
And it's some really complex work and it's real
Beautiful, so I'll be lookingforward to that introduction.
And finally, we mentioned atalking piece already, but how
can people support you and yourwork in the ways that you want
to be supported yeah, um, justthrough.
Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Um.
I think that our talent istrainings.
Um, have a training with us andum don't don't lean on the fact
that you've already beentrained, because once you have a
training with us, you're goingto feel like you've never been
trained before.
So one way to support us is tosupport your school by getting
(01:09:36):
more tools for your tool belt todo this work and, of course,
have a budget when you do it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Absolutely, Absolutely, David back in 2024
here.
Thank you so much for listening.
We'll be back with anotherepisode remembering another
member of the restorativejustice community, ted Lewis,
tomorrow, and just anotherreminder that the link to the
GoFundMe for Eric's family is inthe description and if you have
(01:10:07):
the means, please get what youcan.
Thanks so much.
Take care, stay safe.
Hello, my name is David Ryan Barsega, castro,
harris all five names for allthe ancestors, and today I'm
bringing you another episodefrom the archives of this
restorative justice life,featuring a conversation I had
with Eric Butler Today.
As I'm recording, this isNovember 1, and, depending on
your cultural background, it'sDia de los Muertos, all Saints
(00:20):
Day, all Souls Day, day of theDead and Eric passed away
earlier this year and as I'mrestarting this specific public
facing work of Amplify RJ,revisiting this conversation was
very important to me for acouple of reasons.
One, of course, was to honorEric's legacy.
If you're in the world ofrestorative justice and you
(00:42):
don't know Eric Butler, I wouldask like, where have you been?
Hiding under a rock?
He's done so much work withinthe context of schools, getting
his start with the work inOakland and, with our joy,
there's a documentary about hiswork put out by Cassidy Freeman
called Circles.
I'll link that in thedescription.
But he has shaped so much ofthe way that people think about
(01:05):
restorative justice in thecontext of schools and
neighborhoods and he reallylived the work, both in the way
that he used humor to connectwith people, both in the way
that he was able to call outharm and get people to sit down
and hold space for people to bevulnerable and share and share
that work, both in the trainingcapacity and in interpersonal
(01:26):
relationships.
A couple of other major thingsstood out to me as I revisited
this conversation.
I was recording this before Ibecame a parent.
Next week I'll talk a littlebit about a little bit more
about the break that I've beenon, and a lot of it has to do
with being a parent now andhearing myself, from three years
ago, talk with Eric, a very,very experienced parent, about
(01:49):
how to navigate that world wasjust mind-blowing to reflect on
two, three years later, havingthe experience that I've had.
And the other thing that becamereally clear to me was like how
desperately this work is needed.
At the same time, we have tofigure out sustainable ways to
do this work.
Figure out like how desperatelythis work is needed.
At the same time, we have tofigure out sustainable ways to
do this work.
Figure out ways to do this workin community so we don't lose
(02:11):
ourselves as people in the work.
Eric died at the age of 49 formedically unknown reasons.
He felt an immense amount ofresponsibility to this work and
people in his life and he and itwas a heavy burden and I'm not
saying that this was a directcontribution to his early end.
But as I'm thinking aboutliving this restorative justice
(02:32):
life and the way that I want tobe in relationship with myself,
with my children, with mypartner, with my community, I
have to think about ways to dothis sustainably for myself, for
my health, spiritually,mentally, emotionally and, as we
mentioned, financially.
So this work has staying powerand I don't mean to be all sober
.
There's a lot to celebrate about, there's a lot to laugh about,
(02:55):
there's a lot to learn from thisconversation, but I'm very
conscious of the hole that isleft in the restorative justice
community and in Eric'scommunity because of his early
death.
I only hope that thisconversation can serve as
inspiration to others who aredoing this work and others who
are wanting to learn more aboutthis work, to get more deeply
(03:16):
involved, so this work doesn'tjust fall on so few of us and
that we get to continue to honorEric's legacy in the way that
he would have wanted.
Eric still has family who havebeen impacted, and so, if you
want to support them, there's alink to a GoFundMe in the
description of this episode, ifyou have the means, please give
what you can, and I'll turn itover to myself from a couple of
(03:39):
years ago to introduce theconversation.
Eric, welcome to thisrestorative Justice Life.
Who are you?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I am a father of three adult children.
Adult children is kind of anoxymoron, but I have three
people that I'm responsible fortheir life.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Who are?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
you?
I am an activist of all kindsof things Human rights, racial
harmony.
Who are you?
I'm a lover.
I'm a brand new dog owner Justgot a dog two days ago.
Who are you?
I'm a son and a grandson and anephew.
Who are you?
Simple, but very, very hard toread.
(04:27):
Who are you?
Someone that goes against thegrain.
I'm a fighter.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Who are you?
I'm an educator.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
We're going to get into all theintersections of who you are in
those ways in a little bit, butit's always good to start with
a check-in.
So, to the extent that you wantto answer the question, how are
you?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm good.
I'm kind of tired.
Like I said, I got a brand newdog.
I've been trying to make thisdog do everything that I
imagined that he could do in oneday.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I'm super glad to be talking to you.
Some of you might know the name, eric Butler, from a
documentary that was released acouple years ago called Circles,
where it details a lot of whatwent on in Eric's life as a
restorative justice coordinatorin Oakland.
You're not in Oakland anymore.
You've been doing a lot of workaround restorative justice
(05:27):
since then and continue to do itnow.
But I'm curious you know you'vebeen doing restorative justice
work probably before you evenknew the words quote unquote
restorative justice In your ownwords.
How did this get started foryou?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
for you, I guess, when you frame it that way
beforehand, I guess I've beengroomed all my life to do
restorative justice work.
I'm the only son in mygeneration.
I have four sisters and 15 girlcousins.
Primarily, when I was a kid, myresponsibility was and I'm the
oldest, so I had to protect themall the time, and that's a lot
(06:11):
of drama.
So I had to come up with a lotof different ways of defusing
situations, because even if Iwas a fighter, that's way too
many fights to have.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, what did that look like?
What were some of thosediffusion strategies?
I?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
learned early that if you can make them laugh, you
can make them like you and youcan make them listen, listen.
So I use my sense of humor inways to defuse a lot of
situations.
When I was a kid, I was really,really popular because I did
(07:02):
all of the extracurricularthings.
I played football and I alsosang 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 atalker and I always sought
justice, even though I didn'thave an understanding of what
justice was yeah, what is therean example that stands out to
(07:22):
you about, an example of tryingto get to justice?
When I was a kid, my mother wasa single mother.
I don't know if she was, shewasn't single.
I lived in the house with mymother and my grandmother and my
grandmother my motherdisciplined me with her hands
(07:46):
and my grandmother, my mother,disciplined me with her hands,
and as far back as I canremember I would.
I got most of those beatingstrying to explain my case, and
(08:06):
sometimes it would make her feellike she wasn't doing a good
job as a parent, because I wouldask a lot of questions and most
times she would just want me tobe quiet, and when I found
myself in that kind of trouble Ialso found myself not able to
stop talking.
So I wanted my mother to beable to get to the truth and
understand that the disciplinestrategy that she was using
(08:28):
wasn't working.
She never changed it, so Iguess I never received justice,
except I think that it made hera better grandmother, or maybe
she would have just been thattype of grandmother anyway.
I learned earlier that justiceisn't an immediate thing.
Sometimes it takes the rest ofyour life to receive justice.
(08:49):
I also learned that justiceisn't an external thing.
Justice is something that wehave inside of ourselves, and
that's the reason why, when wegive vague definitions of
justice, although we haven'texperienced it together, we can
all agree that justice is thatthing.
Justice is equity.
Of course it is, but how do weknow that?
(09:10):
And we haven't had equitytogether.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, I know lots of people define justice in
different ways and I'm going toask you for your definition of
restorative justice a little bitlater.
But you know, you just definedjustice as equity right and
that's not my definition.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
okay, my definition of justice is having the freedom
to practice your values, andthe way I came up with that
definition is defining injustice.
Injustice is having thosefreedoms snatched away from you,
and if that's injustice,justice is having the freedom to
practice your values Wheneverwe're in a situation and we can
(09:54):
look back and say oh, that was ajust situation.
It had everything to do witheverybody sharing a collective
of values.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, what was it that led you to that definition
of injustice?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
and then you know vice versa, um so when I think
about injustice, I watch a lotof television and a lot of
documentaries and stuff.
So, um, I'm a huge follower ofhistory.
Not, I'm not, I don't studyhistory, but I do follow it, so
(10:29):
I watch a lot of documentarieson justice.
What comes to mind from thatquestion is the civil rights
movement in the 60s, when Ifirst discovered it as a kid a
little fun fact when I was inthe first grade I played Martin
Luther King in the Black HistoryPlay.
So I learned a lot about MartinLuther King.
(10:52):
I learned more than the otherkids learned.
I learned more than just theservice stuff and I didn't grow
up in a household where we wereconstantly talking about just
politics at all.
But when I think about thatmovement it's kind of touching
that the strategy that MartinLuther King used was some of the
bravest things, and bravery isdefinitely one of my core values
(11:15):
and that was one of the mostbravest attempts at seeking
justice.
And when he used his values ofbravery and so many other values
and other folks could see it,he was able.
So everybody can feel the painand feel everything and also
(11:49):
feel like they have stake to dosomething about.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, I imagine growing up in New Orleans, right
in the South, experiencing allkinds of injustice.
I imagine, like Dr King's workwas an inspiration.
Where else did you drawinspiration to continue to work
for justice?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I also had a role model which kind of separated me
from the rest of the young menthat grew up in my environment
who wasn't from New Orleans.
Now, in New Orleans it's blackand white and since I'm black
I've done all of the black stuffand we were in like a box of
(12:35):
poverty and you throw crack inthat box and you throw guns and
you throw miseducation in thatbox and then you shake the box
up and whatever comes out comesout If you don't have somebody
to guide you.
I was fortunate enough to be apart of the Big Brother Big
Sister program and that's whereI met my mentor, who's still my
(13:00):
mentor to this day, to kind ofguide me and show me these
things about our history and howthose things in our history
feeds the things in our present.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, what were some of those key learnings and
takeaways that he showed you?
And is this, ted, that we'retalking about?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
When I was a young man, the first, yeah, yeah, yeah
, when I was, when I was a youngman, the one.
The first thing that comes tomind is when I was a young man,
the times I saw success fromother black men.
They were drug dealers and um,and when I say that it's kind of
like saying like well, beingbeing impoverished, not having
(13:43):
means to to simple things likeautomobiles, and then suddenly
this crack epidemic happens andnow these black men that never
had an opportunity to shine onthe inside can at the very least
shine on the outside now.
So I saw that, um, until I metuncle ted, that Until I met
Uncle Ted, that was all I saw.
(14:04):
And I had men in my family thatdidn't take that route, but
they never were successful men.
They were living job to job.
Jobs didn't last too long and Iremember once Uncle Ted worked
at Loyola University at theInstitute of Human Relations.
(14:27):
He basically did the same thingI do now and I remember once I
asked him how much he made andhe said $75 an hour and I
thought that that wasridiculously crazy.
I wouldn't do nothing for $75an hour right now, but this was
back in the 80s.
I wouldn't do nothing for $75an hour right now, but this was
(14:48):
back in the 80s and seeing himbe successful and making money
for helping kids like me wasjust amazing to me.
In fact, I thought it was a lie.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I didn't think that you can be successful by your
good deeds by your good, by yourgood deeds, you took the, the
inspiration from him and othersum 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, Iknow most of our listeners don't
(15:19):
know, how did that lead you tothe restorative justice work
that you're doing now?
What led to the restorativejustice work that you're doing
now?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
What led to the restorative justice work that
I'm doing now is hunger.
When I moved to Oakland rightafter Hurricane Katrina, we
didn't know how long it wouldlast.
We didn't know when or if wewere ever going to be able to go
back home.
We didn't know when or if wewere ever going to be able to go
(15:46):
back home.
So it was kind of jumping intoa double dutch, trying to figure
out do I stay?
Do I even start building acareer here?
Growing up in the environmentthat I grew up in and being the
only boy and having to learn howto take care of your family and
that being your responsibility?
I didn't want to take anythingfrom anybody, so I didn't want
(16:08):
to.
I didn't want any.
I didn't get FEMA support andreally didn't want it, didn't
expect it, didn't even think itwas real.
But what I would do is I wouldstand in front of Catholic
charities, which is where theywas giving folks clothes and
money and that kind of stuff,and I would never ask for
(16:29):
anything and I would just standout there and one day, one of
the directors that worked withCatholic Charities came out and
personally asked me to take someof these things.
To take some of these thingsand I think we had a
conversation and she probablythought that I was really
charismatic and she offered me ajob and the job that she
(16:52):
offered me was helping otherHurricane Katrina survivors.
Now that was the first job thatI had gotten.
The funds for that job, as youcan imagine, ran out immediately
.
But there was another job inthe pipeline called crisis
response.
This job was a job that nobodywanted.
(17:13):
You show up at the scene of amurder and assess the scene and
find out what the needs were inthe community out what the needs
were in the community and Iwould take that information back
to Catholic Charities andwhatever things they could do to
help with those needs.
I would offer those needs back.
(17:34):
Sometimes it was paying for thefuneral, sometimes it was
having grief and healing circles, which is the first time I ever
heard of circles.
So I would bring those circlesto elementary schools and it
wasn't done really good, but Iwas consistent.
I always showed up at work.
(17:54):
That job turned into me beingin meetings with the police
department and one day I was ina meeting with the police
department.
I raised an issue and that issuewas the way they notify
families that their loved oneshave been murdered.
I thought it was veryinsensitive.
They would tell jokes,sometimes jokes sometimes, not
(18:18):
knowing why they would do that.
I foolishly questioned them.
One of them said well, if youthink you can do a better job,
we'll see if we can have youshow up at the scene with us and
you can tell the parents.
I started doing that.
(18:44):
It was some very heartbreakingstuff.
In fact, my last day I went toa family's house and I can never
forget it, because the kid thathad lost his life, his name,
was Eric.
So I had to tell Eric's motherthat her son was.
So I show up at her house andshe knows that something is
(19:06):
wrong because there's policewith me.
Her assumption is that her sonhas been murdered and she's
screaming his name, but she'sscreaming the wrong name, so
that the name that she'sscreaming isn't in my file.
So I had a sense of relief like,well, maybe this is one mother
(19:28):
that I can give good news to andsay well, this isn't your son,
we've made a mistake.
But she was screaming the nameof her good son, who she didn't
expect to be in that type oftrouble, her bad son.
But it wasn't her bad son, itwas her good son.
(19:54):
She was so heartbroken Icouldn't deal with the emotional
stress of it all.
I just stopped working andFania Davis had heard about me
and I don't know if it was thatparticular thing, but I know
that she was in association withCatholic Charities and she was
(20:14):
starting a new organizationcalled R-Joke Restorative
Justice for Oakland Youth, and Iwas her first hire and I think
it was just based on word ofmouth, so I was extremely lucky.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, you know.
Thank you for sharing that.
One of the things that Iobserved watching the
documentary Circles, which youknow we'll definitely have
linked in the show notes forfolks to check out for
themselves is the depth to whichyou as a person, eric, the
(20:48):
person, put yourself into thiswork.
And you know, hearing thisstory just like further
solidifies.
You know, when you're aboutsomething, you're about
something and you give it yourall.
The other thing that occurred tome and it was in the doc and
just occurred to me both aswe're having this conversation
(21:09):
and as I've observed you fromafar in this restorative justice
world is that all of that takesa toll, right, an emotional and
a physical toll.
I'm curious how you were ableto identify like if you were
able to identify that in themoment, because I know it's been
(21:31):
like a constant evolution oflike I can't throw all of myself
into this at all times Like youknow you talked about like you
had to quit your job at thatmoment because, like you
couldn't do that, but like thatthat's not something that is,
that's not like a lesson thatyou learned and like you know,
just taking care of then andlike you've been good ever since
at like balancing self-care anddoing this like deep, intense
(21:55):
emotional work.
How have you, how did youidentify it then?
How emotional work, how haveyou, how did you identify it
then?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
How have you continued to navigate it now?
Well, I'm still working on thatpart of myself.
To be honest, I cry everysingle day, and not necessarily
out of sadness, but I do knowthat I have some compound trauma
that I've packed down and itslowly seeps out.
Back then it was situationalJust like everything else Any
(22:29):
reason to quit a job.
You're in the moment and it justfeels bad, and being in that
moment, knowing that I had otheropportunities, the thing that
stops us from quitting jobs whenwe know we should, it's the
same thing that stops us fromquitting jobs when we know we
should.
It's the same thing that stopsus from ending relationships.
It's the fact that I don'tbelieve that there's something
else.
And when I started doing socialthis social work, for lack of a
(22:55):
better term it started feelinglike there's nothing else.
Well, it started feeling likethis is all I'm going to do for
the rest of my life and I'llalways be able to find a job
doing something in this lane.
So quitting just was.
Since I've been doingrestorative justice work, I've
(23:16):
quit.
Well, I've only quit once, butI've been fired like three or
four times.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I guess in the moments of quitting right like
you can correct me if I'mmisassuming there have been
other moments where you mightnot have quit but you've like
taken dramatic steps back totake care of yourself in a need
that you were identifying.
What?
How do you identify those?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I sell them, I identify them, other people
around me, um, the if I've doneanything right in restorative
justice, it's my relationships.
Um, these people are amazingand I think people are amazing
once they tap into thatthemselves, that justice within
(23:58):
within themselves.
And I've and I've connectedwith these people and they make
sure that I take really goodcare of myself, to the best that
they can Stop me from going toofar.
I go all the way, sincerestorative justice isn't
something that you do.
It's hard to turn it off, so Inever turn it off.
(24:18):
Somebody has to physically stopme from doing it.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, do you fight them?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
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 andit's kind of like a thing in my
when I was young.
It's like I was surroundingmyself.
I didn't surround myself, but Iwas surrounded by women that
(24:48):
made choices for me and it wascomfortable for me.
And now all of my everybodythat's on my team and they're
really strong and pigheaded, andone of them's right there.
So they fight back and I losemost of those battles.
(25:10):
But I do fight and I try tomake it make sense.
But the thing that makes sensethe most is no matter how bad I
want to do this work, if I'm notaround to do this work, I won't
be able to do this work, andthat makes more sense and it
overrides anything that I haveto say and it's usually like
(25:31):
somebody's got to do it rightnow.
So if I'm not going to do it,you're definitely going to do it
, so they'll do it.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, it's the sense of urgency that, um, we, we fall
into a lot of time and like I'midentifying that for myself as
well.
Um, I think the other thingthat why I'm personally like so
curious about having thisconversation with you is, you
know, I'm on the precipice offatherhood right, um, uh, you
(25:59):
know, probably about a monthwhen this conversation airs or
about two months from right now,um, and you know, thinking
about there is so much work todo and like, as I was watching
you, um, give so much to, uh,the students at the school and
(26:19):
in the doc, while alsosimultaneously balancing being
your son's sole parent in thehousehold, like there's, I'm
concerned for myself about likethat balance of that work.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's a hard balance, and what's harder about that
balance is you're not going tobe able to mathematically figure
it out.
It's going to happenspontaneously where you
prioritize and you prioritizedifferently depending on who
raised you and the things thatyou've learned throughout the
(27:01):
time.
I've done things so differentlythan my parents did, which is
kind of scary because that meansthere's absolutely no roadmap.
So like raising my kids was ablank slate and I did some
really, really cool things.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
But I fucked up sometimes.
Yeah, I always take some of myfriends and I joke.
Like you know, your kids aregoing to end up in therapy for
one reason or another.
Like you, you've messed them upone way or another.
But, like you know, beingpresent and doing your best is
all you can do and I takecomfort in that and just like
(27:45):
still don't want to mess up.
Like urgency, perfectionism arestill things that I'm working
on.
I mentioned I mentioned theschool that you had worked at.
You know, from coming to ourjoy, you did lots of different
things within restorativejustice in the Oakland world.
Can you highlight some of thosefor the folks listening?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
All right.
So when I was hired, I washired with the understanding
that NAACP or something weresuing the school district
because they were suspending toomany black boys, which was
interesting to me, that we weregoing to do something in
reaction of little black boysdoing something.
(28:30):
I immediately saw the whitesupremacy in that idea, so I
wasn't turned on by that ideathat we were reacting to what
Black boys were doing.
I didn't agree with that notionand the way I got my training.
(28:53):
I went to a Mennonite collegein Virginia.
In theory it was great, but Ifound myself being taught how to
talk to black and brown boys bywhite women who, more times
than not, weren't even from thiscountry.
So while the theory was tight,the content was a little bit off
(29:16):
.
So I had to think about how canI take the theory and put it
into a different context At theschool that's highlighted in the
documentary.
On my first day of school Iremember feeling very, very
uncomfortable and wanting to dosomething different,
(29:37):
understanding that thefoundation of restorative
justice was relationships.
I thought that if I go outsideand greet the kids or the young
people as they walk in, thatthat would give me a leg up on
building these relationships andbuilding these connections.
But there were other teachersdoing the exact same thing, but
(30:00):
in a different way, becausewe're all kind of standing
together and I remember oneteacher saying hey, you're the
restorative justice guy.
And they called me therestorative justice guy, which
meant you're not a teacher,you're not, you're not faculty,
you're not, you're somethingelse, like your support staff.
(30:21):
And that's exactly how theytreated me on the first day and
paid you yeah, you're anotherand we're not sure about you.
But this particular teacher wasabsolutely sure about me.
She read me and she read mewrong, or she read restorative
justice wrong.
It's like we know all aboutrestorative justice.
We've read both of the booksthat was written about it, so we
(30:43):
have to know everything.
And here's the thing it's agood concept, but it's not going
to work for all of the kids.
Now, this is the firstconversation that I'm having
with the people that I'm goingto be working with, and I didn't
acknowledge her.
I didn't talk to her.
In fact, I didn't even look ather, but she continued to talk.
In her rant she began to tellme the kids who weren't going to
(31:09):
be able to benefit fromrestorative 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 Itell folks to search for a why
(31:30):
before they start doing the work, because before that moment I
didn't have a why and my whybecame because she pissed me off
and I wanted I wanted to proveher wrong.
As she was talking, she spokeabout this young man who had
this sense of urgency ofstopping as he walked to school
(31:50):
smoking a blunt, and shecompletely read this dude.
In my ear.
She talked about his, his homelife.
In my ear she talked about hishome life.
She talked about having him inthe eighth grade and how he
wasn't a good student then andhe's not a good student now.
And she also said that I amgoing to send him to your
(32:14):
classroom every single day.
Now she's telling me what typeof classroom I'm going to have.
So basically it's going to belike a punishment room.
So I immediately knew that Ihad to dispel that idea that I'm
going to be punishing people.
But she were right.
She sent that boy to myclassroom and I tried my best to
(32:35):
build a relationship with himfor about a week and I just kept
getting cussed out every dayand I had to put my armor on and
just take it, and he would cussme out every day, religiously.
And one day he broke and hesaid do you know why they don't
(32:55):
like me?
And I'm like, no, but I am allears.
So he told me that the mathteacher particularly didn't like
the fact that he can do algebrawithout doing the formula, so
like he could just look at itand come up with a number, and
so it didn't make sense to himto write all that other stuff
(33:18):
when he just knew the answer andthey would argue we.
We became really close and hewas sent to my classroom every
single day when he wasn'tsuspended, because they were
still suspending kids at thattime.
So when he wasn't suspended hewould be in my classroom and
sometimes he would get suspendedto my classroom.
(33:40):
He would do all his work andall of the tests.
He had the best grades in theschool.
So he's our valedictorian.
The thing that he's missing isseat time, which is their
responsibility, and they have topay a price if he doesn't have
seat time.
So they have to give him hisgrades.
So this kid graduatedvaledictorian and he has to give
(34:02):
the valedictorian speech, andhe wasn't a man of many words
Two of them and he said both ofthem as he accepted his diploma.
And that was the moment Irealized how important it was to
be in relationships.
Just this kid realize howimportant it was to be in
(34:23):
relationships?
Just this kid.
I remember us having aconversation about math, algebra
, particularly because we talkedabout algebra to the point
where I was telling him how muchI hated it when I was in high
school and hate it now and don'tknow nothing about it.
And he said why do we need itanyway?
It's like I literally walk overdead bodies to and from school
(34:44):
every day.
How is algebra going to help mewith my life?
And I didn't have an answer forit.
But I asked him until we findout how you're going to be able
to use algebra, would you do itfor me?
And he said he'll do it for mebecause we have a relationship.
And that kid taught me and theother kids taught me more about
(35:06):
restorative justice than thetime I spent in Virginia.
All of the classes that I'vebeen to learning how to do
circles and that stuff being inrelationship with those kids for
real taught me how to dorestorative justice but not be
restorative.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
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 aprocess where we're saying what
happened, who was impacted andhow, 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 towhat you know, you've, you've
(35:54):
experienced, like there arelimits to like how much of
yourself you can pour intorelationships with people,
because the first relationshipyou have is the relationship
with yourself, right, and ifthat relationship isn't right or
able to function, you can't doany of those other things.
But the way that we areteaching restorative justice
often gets reduced to the thingfor the bad kids, right, or the
(36:18):
alternatives to punishmentgenerously, and that can't all
be on one person in a school,right?
I'm thinking back to what thatlooks like in the documentary.
When you know you're having aconversation with the principal.
She was like I'm on board, Igot your back, we're going to do
this, we're going to win, we'regoing to win them over all the
other teachers in the school,because you know to her point,
(36:42):
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 therelationship that I have as a
teacher have with the student,right?
Like, why couldn't they be likehey, I understand.
You don't understand that, uh,application of algebra to your
daily life.
Can you do it for me?
(37:03):
Right?
It's because they didn't dothat proactive relationship
building with that person andseeing 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 inschools, how have you been able
to bring people teachers intothat relational way of being, as
(37:29):
opposed to like, oh, just thealternative to punishment.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
All right.
So I'm just like the averageAmerican.
I resist connection, just likeeverybody else.
I'm in the grocery storepretending like I'm on my phone
when I see people I know, justlike everybody else.
So it's constantly working onthat muscle that does what we're
(37:52):
supposed to do, like we'rebuilt to connect with each other
.
So it's constantly working onthat muscle to connect.
And when you're working, whenyou're doing that, it's kind of
like working on any muscle.
It's kind of like I'm doing anykind of exercise where you're
trying to manipulate your bodyto do something.
(38:13):
The same way with therelationships.
I am trying to manipulate peoplethat don't have an already set
attraction to my humanity.
So I try to do something and weall do it.
I love women and physicallythere's a type of woman that I
(38:34):
like, and if I see that womanand she goes to church, suddenly
I go to church.
If it was easier than that, Iwouldn't even brush my teeth in
the morning.
If it wasn't for the fact thatwomen appreciate an apartment, I
wouldn't pay $1,700 to staysomewhere.
(38:56):
I live on the street.
I just said that we even MissSteele.
It's funny you use Miss Steelebecause Miss Steele was the
champion of restorative justicein that school, but not until we
built a relationship.
The first words that she saidto me is I am the queen of
suspensions.
(39:16):
So she didn't have arestorative bone in her body.
She had been a principal for 20plus years and her tactic was
always suspension.
If you come to my office,you're going to leave sorry,
manipulating relationships andpeople don't like the word
manipulation, and that's cool.
Use another word if you want to, but my word is manipulation.
(39:37):
It just sounds fresher to me.
I remember there was a fightthat was happening right in
front of her office.
This is another example.
She comes outside of her officeand 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
(39:57):
watching her say key things thatmake me know who she is or make
me assume who she is.
She said words like Lord, havemercy and please Jesus, and all
that kind of stuff.
So my assumption was thosewords, mixed with her accent,
(40:20):
that she's a black woman fromthe.
She's a black Christian womanfrom the South, which is well
within my wheelbarrow, becausethat's everybody in your family,
yeah, or in the neighborhoodyou grew up in Right right.
Although I'm not a Christian, Iknow Christian lingo and so I
(40:43):
just asked her does she wannapray about it?
And of course she does.
So we went to our office and Iled the prayer in a way that
Baptist preachers lead theprayer, and I'm not even closing
my eyes, mind you.
I'm just watching her and asI'm praying, she's saying, yes,
lord, and I'm like I got you andthat was the birth of our
(41:09):
relationship Me pretending tobelieve in the way that she
believes.
Now, as we continue thisrelationship, 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 stopsuspending people.
I need you to listen to mystory, and if you listen to my
(41:31):
story, we can come to some kindof agreement.
Most times when restorativejustice isn't appreciated, it's
because the person that you'retrying to convince isn't
listening to you.
They're waiting on their turnto talk, and the thing that
fosters the idea of a realconversation is relationships.
So I had to have her in arelationship so she can champion
(41:53):
restorative justice.
I couldn't do it by myself.
She had the power to maketeachers be inserted.
Now, that's not restorative atall, but it's a start.
What usually happens is teachersdie out.
We live in a culture where ourego leads the way.
Once I say I don't believe inthat thing, there's nothing that
(42:15):
you can do that's going to turnme away from that, unless you
can manipulate thoserelationships.
By my third year at Bunch, wehad gotten rid of all of the
teachers that wasn't down withrestorative justice and
recruited new ones.
In fact, I was also doingtrainings all around the country
(42:35):
.
I had folks from Texas move toOakland just so they can work at
Bunch.
And that's just therelationship.
That's the power ofrelationships, and it doesn't
hurt to be a little charismatictoo, and it doesn't hurt to be a
little charismatic too, forsure.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
But like you know, we're talking about that point
of connection, right, and like Ithink people might bristle,
like, oh, you pretended to be aChristian in order to you know,
right, but like, think about thepeople in your life.
You pretend to like sports toconnect with whoever.
You pretend to like a certaintype of music to connect, and
(43:15):
like maybe you do find someconnection point with there and
that becomes an authentic thing.
But like, what's important atthe end of the day is that
relationship, uh, with people,and you know where that can lead
and what benefit that can dofor not only you and them but
for the community at large andthe way that that's impactful.
I'm'm thinking, I think a lotabout how to further amplify
(43:39):
restorative justice work.
Right, that's the name of mycompany and so many of the
things that I see in marketingworld are around senses of
urgency, and restorative justiceis not like, while it is urgent
, like like we can't go about itin an urgent way.
Right, it takes time, it takesrelationship building and I'm
wrestling with can I use urgencyand scarcity to market
(44:03):
restorative justice just to getpeople in the door?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, I think that you have to and you would be
right you wouldn't be lying.
This is urgent and you would beright you wouldn't be lying.
This is urgent Now.
It's going to take time, but weneed to move on this right now
because the examples Now I'vehad people turn their nose up at
(44:30):
the fact, like telling thatstory about pretending to be a
Christian to have a relationshipwith me still Now.
Here's the results that year nokids were suspended.
Now here's the results thatyear no kids were suspended.
100% of the kids graduated.
The following year no kids weresuspended.
100% of the kids weregraduating.
(44:52):
And the next Satan.
To get that, I'll pretend, andif 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 (45:06):
What was her reaction when you finally came clean
about that?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
She knew it.
She knew it.
She said she knew it.
She knew I was full of shit.
Um, she used to call me jodyand, um, I didn't know what jody
was, but jody was a man.
They called jody.
When she was younger, she saidthey, they would nickname men
that would, um, manipulate women, jody, they would be attractive
to the woman and they would woothe woman.
(45:35):
So she would call me Jodi.
So she knew that I was full ofshit, but she also knew that in
that moment that was exactlywhat she needed and I didn't
need it, but she needed it.
And if I can supply you with oneof your needs as a Christian,
(45:56):
why don't you give me somethingthat I need in return?
Let's do the whole Christianthing, and I love arguing with
Christians anyway.
In fact, if your job as aChristian is to lead me to the
fold, lead me.
Stop judging me, because if youjudge me and shame me, it's
going to make me stop talking toyou or not stop talking.
(46:16):
I'll keep talking, but I'llstop listening.
If you want to lead me to thefold, convince me.
Your job is to convince me.
My job is to prove that you'rewrong, and let's just have a
conversation about it.
Let's pass the talking piece sowe won't interrupt each other.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Absolutely, I'm thinking about.
I don't know that I want to golike too far down that, because
I I'm imagining that's going tobring up your, your, and I know
(46:51):
that you've told it before Inthe context of this conversation
.
It's not exactly where I wantto go, but we can.
All of that is acknowledged forsure, and thank you for being a
person who shared that and beenvulnerable with that.
You are not in Oakland anymore.
What are the things that youhave been working on in the
(47:13):
restorative justice world since?
Speaker 2 (47:21):
All right, mostly what we've been doing,
especially since the pandemic.
Folks have not beenface-to-face, so when you're
working virtually it's easier tobe in conflict, it's easier to
say what's on your mind whileyou're sitting behind this
computer.
So people are in conflict andpeople are looking for people
(47:42):
that can help them mediate theirconflicts.
So I've been doing a lot ofwork around conflicts the world
has been in a conflict with andwe like to criminalize
everything.
So we've been in a conflictwith the pandemic and the
problem with it, with us beingin conflict with the pandemic,
(48:06):
is we don't have anybody tocriminalize and we try.
That's not because we didn'ttry.
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 wholecountry, tried to blame China
for it.
So we've been having intentionalconversations around how we're
going to be together andanti-Blackness and racism.
(48:30):
So most of the work that I'vegotten from the pandemic to the
present is around race and justwhite women afraid to be called
racist and Karen, they're veryoffended by that, so they're
trying to figure out a way thatthey can have a conversation.
(48:50):
Restorative justice is the wayto hold that space.
So I've been getting a lot offolks hiring me for their
companies, like here recently,since I live in Austin.
Now there's been people thatknow about restorative justice,
that are we're going to be doingsome work with the district
attorney's office, where they'rediverting cases to restorative
(49:15):
justice as opposed to sendingyoung folks to juvenile hall.
So that's one thing that we'reworking on this piece and I
think that's probably thebiggest project.
But primarily we've beenworking on and last year we did
some work.
I was a coordinator on onlinecoordinator at a school last
(49:37):
year, so we've been doingeverything that we could
possibly do um and restorejustice, like if somebody needs
it, if somebody asks for atraining, we'll do it.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
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 havethose things linked in the show
notes for people.
You know, as we're thinkingabout continued growth through
(50:10):
the pandemic, because it's notover and beyond, how do you want
to continue to grow in thiswork?
Speaker 2 (50:18):
I think that we have.
I think that we're in theUnited States.
We're beginning to have theseimportant conversations because
we don't have a choice.
We're running out of lies totell.
We're running out of lies totell, so we have to have this
conversation, where I hope I andTalking Peace fit into that
(50:41):
conversation is we'd like tolead some of these conversations
because they stop at a certainpoint and it just stops.
As a country, we need to heal.
It's been a long time coming andin celebration of Black History
(51:09):
Month, this one month thatwe're given, there's a lot of
talk that needs to happen aroundrace.
We're disconnected in the waythat we do this thing with CRT,
for example, where CRT isn'teven taught in schools the legs
of it, just talking about race.
There are folks that don't evenwant to have the uncomfortable
conversation.
So as an organization, we wantto encourage people to have that
(51:32):
conversation and it's hard, butit's only hard because at some
point people are going to feellike I'm being too vulnerable
and I'm giving away pieces ofmyself 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 twothings out of the conversation
(51:54):
and if there's a talent, we'vebeen able to do that.
I'm taking shame and the fearof being vulnerable out of those
conversations and we've beenable to have great conversations
.
We don't always agree, but weat least have a really good
conversation and I know it'sgoing to work and I just hope
(52:17):
that we can become illuminatedenough that people will see
Talking Peace as a vehicle tohave these important
conversations and hire us so wecan eat.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yes, absolutely.
Food is important, eating isimportant, shelter is important
and I think one of the thingsthat I've thought a lot about
over the last few days, weeks,months, is the tension of you
know, relationship yourself.
(52:54):
Make sure that you're settingthose boundaries around your
time, but like you can'tself-care your way out of
oppression, yeah.
Right, and how do we balanceboth, like that internal work,
those practices that willcontinue to sustain us, and like
working for change externally,communally?
(53:14):
There's so much in there.
I want to transition shortlyinto the questions that
everybody answers when they comeonto this podcast.
But is there anything else thatyou feel like that's been
unsaid around these ideas ofrestorative justice, racial
justice and all that?
Speaker 2 (53:30):
You're the pro man.
I'm just following your lead.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
All right.
So I told you earlier thateveryone who comes here gives us
a definition of restorativejustice.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
So, in your own word, restorative justice is
Restorative justice is a way offinding out what is our common
values and how do we use thosevalues to get the things that we
need and want from ourcommunity.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
Love that, as you've been doing this work.
What's been an oh shit momentand what did you learn from it?
Speaker 2 (54:00):
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 ithappening with the young people,
it's like, oh my God, we'vebeen doing it wrong the whole
time.
In fact, there was a smartaleck news reporter, probably
(54:25):
from the New York Times gothrough the records and she said
something like I see that youguys haven't suspended anybody
in like seven years.
Are you guys just notsuspending or is the behavior
changing?
And I actually thought about itand the answer is the adults
(54:47):
absolutely changed theirbehavior.
And once the adults changedtheir behavior, the kids follow
suit.
The kids have been acting likethe adults the whole time.
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 beenfired a long time ago, but
(55:07):
instead what we do is we do itto the kids, so we suspend them,
we fire them, we kick them outof their own communities.
The lives that's been saved,it's like it's some.
I have so many stories that'sbeen recorded of beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful stories,and as I sit back and I watch
(55:29):
those stories a thousand timesin 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 whatthey've always gotten, and the
(55:50):
people that lead those kids arehoping for different results,
even though they're doing thesame thing that they did
yesterday.
And that's dangerous.
So like, so like, while Diongraduated the kid that I was
telling you about earlier andwent to an Ivy League college,
there's another Dion that goesto jail in that same situation,
and that's the urgency that youwere speaking of to jail in that
same situation, and that's theurgency that you were speaking
(56:13):
of.
Now we have to be urgent and inour urgency we may save the
lives of two or three families.
But if we keep doing the workand we have other people doing
the work, that number grows andgrows and grows.
(56:35):
And if we stop, the work stops,we're right back where we
started, and that's very scary.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
I mean, I think that speaks a lot to like.
This can't just belong inschools, this belongs everywhere
.
Right, you know 3.2 millionteachers in public school.
Right, 48 million students.
You know 15 to 1, you knowthey're there.
I do think, like if all 3.2million teachers had a radical
(57:06):
education around restorativejustice and an attitude shift
towards relationship, and youknow they were incentivized to
do so and compensated betterthan they're being compensated
right now, like things wouldabsolutely be different and that
still wouldn't solve all ofsociety's problems, because this
work belongs in so many places.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
I always say that the moment you feel like we got
this thing down pat, restorativejustice is already work.
That's also the moment yourealize that you have not been
doing restorative justice.
You've been doing somethingelse.
The moment you don't haveanything else to do, you're not
doing restorative justice oryou're not living restorative.
(57:47):
You're not living a restorativelife because you just had a
goal and that was it.
So ending suspensions wasn't mypersonal goal.
I didn't really care.
I didn't care if the schoolsystem got sued by the Office of
Civil Rights.
I didn't care.
I started caring about it whenI noticed that we were able to
(58:09):
impact not only that one studentbut also the families that have
been harmed by this system.
We were able to have theparents be partners with the
teachers in their child'seducation because they were in a
relationship and parents areable to tell teachers the reason
(58:32):
why I never answer your phonecall because your phone call
tells me that I'm a bad parentand teach teachers to not only
call when the kid does somethingbad, but when the kid is doing
something good, which is most ofthe time.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
As a parent yourself, right?
I'm just thinking back to yougetting calls when Trey, your
son, was getting in trouble atschool, right?
How would that have changedyour relationship with Trey and
that school if you had gottenthose positive calls as well?
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Well, that wouldn't have been the important change.
The important change would havebeen the relationship that Trey
had with the school.
So, if Trey's relationship withthe school is different, trey
and I's relationship isdifferent, because I'm getting
something that I want from himand he's getting something that
he wants, and instead of want, Iwant to say need, he needs from
(59:27):
the school, and we're allacting as partners in this
relationship.
It was a dysfunctionalrelationship, though, for sure,
and even if it's a three-wayrelationship, like you said, if
you don't have a goodrelationship with yourself, it's
hard to have a goodrelationship with anybody else.
(59:47):
So we internalize thesedysfunctional relationships and
we also have dysfunctionalrelationships with ourselves,
and I treat them like and how doyou do that?
Like, because you got to bewith yourself.
You can't like, you can'tdivorce yourself, so you just
have to, you have to re-get toknow yourself.
Like, you have to recommit toyourself, like this is who I am
(01:00:11):
now.
These are the things that Idon't like about myself.
These are the things that Iwant to keep, and you have to
keep on doing that, and that'sthe reason why long term
marriages work that are longterm.
Most of them don't work, butthe reason why they don't work
is because we don't reconnect,we don't renew our vows, and if
(01:00:35):
we do renew our vows, it's justa pageantry.
If I'm renewing my vows withmyself, it's internal and y'all
don't even see it.
It happens when I say I am notgoing to stop myself from crying
.
I'm going to feel this thingand think about what it is that
made me feel that way and alsohow can we fix it so other folks
(01:00:56):
won't feel that way.
I think about values and thisidea of empathy so like.
Empathy is always a value, butfolks seldom want to practice it
, and the way I prove it is likewho's the person that you find
it most difficult to haveempathy for?
So for me, it's Donald Trump.
(01:01:19):
Now, how can I not empathizewith somebody with whom I have
no idea who this man is?
All I know is his acts, andacts should be way easier to
empathize with than your person,be way easier to empathize with
than your person.
I can empathize with somebodythat I like, no matter how bad
(01:01:45):
or egregious the thing they did,but an act so like.
I have to try to find a way torehumanize myself and become a
better person.
That means I'm going to have toempathize with the hardest
people.
I'm going to have to try tobuild a relationship with people
that have opposing ideas.
That's the work.
The work isn't going into aschool and everybody's saying,
yeah, we're on board withrestorative justice.
The work is finding out who'snot.
Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
If there's one person that's not on board, our job is
to manipulate that relationshipfind the ways to invite folks
in to this work, find theconnections, find the points
right, all all the differentwords to to get that and I think
like to something that you saidearlier right, if you don't,
(01:02:30):
you will be evaluated out ofyour job.
Right, right and like that'slike a manipulation point,
beautiful, you get to sit incircle with four people, living
or dead.
Who are they and what questiondo you ask?
The circle, oh man.
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
So I watch a lot of TV.
So, like when you just saidthat, the first thing I thought
about is JonBenet Ramsey and herparents, because I just watched
a documentary about themyesterday.
Martin Luther King, malcolm X,tupac All these people don't
have to be dead.
All right, ok, and I will.
(01:03:08):
I think I probably should go.
White guy Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
What is the question?
You ask that circle.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
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 (01:03:36):
I love this.
I love that question Becauseyou don't know.
But what I do is now ask youthat question, eric.
So we are now in the year 2050.
All of our dreams have cometrue.
How did we get there?
Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Intentional relationship building.
We had a lot of difficultconversations.
We told the truth, and I don'tlike truth.
And the reason why I don't liketruth is because whenever truth
shows itself, truth is becausewhenever truth shows itself, the
audience does not give a softlanding for truth.
(01:04:20):
So what I'm imagining is thatnow there's a soft landing place
for truth.
In America, we lie to ourselvesso we can feel comfortable with
the truth that we imagine.
So we'll tell ourselves, lieafter lie after lie, just so we
(01:04:43):
can be comfortable.
And the example I can give isslavery.
Slavery Like we'll.
As Americans, we'll lie aboutthe tragic situation and as
Black people.
Of course, white people do,because they don't want to be
(01:05:04):
connected to the wrong side ofhistory, but Black people either
, some of our own people sold usto slavery, and you could call
it indented servitude orwhatever it is.
It's still like one of thebiggest sins ever committed.
(01:05:25):
Um, I think that there wouldhave to be some changes in our
faith community, where we're not.
So I think that people needthat faith and that hope.
Hope and faith is kind of thesame thing to me.
I think people need that hopeso much so that they'll pay for
(01:05:47):
it, and I think that we need tobe more inclusive in our faith
communities.
We say certain people areallowed.
In fact, certain people are anabomination.
So I think when we fix the faithcommunity, we have more
(01:06:09):
intentional conversations abouthard things.
We allow what we've neverallowed before, and what I mean
(01:06:30):
by that is we allow women, andparticularly Black and brown
women, to do their thing,because they're so much better
than us in so many ways, and wejust block them all the time,
and I think that there'sbecoming a revelation of more
and more black women doingthings and leading the way and
teaching us how to be betterpeople.
I think that instead of havinga football draft, we have a
(01:06:54):
football draft.
We have a teacher draft wherethe teachers make the most money
.
Like, you get first round draftpick for being an algebra
teacher based on yourperformance as a human being,
and you pay them the most money,and then football players make
$30 an hour.
That'll make more footballplayers want to be teachers.
Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Instead of the other way around.
Those are some beautiful steps.
Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah.
Sorry say that again.
I'm just thinking out loud ofthis teacher draft.
I can see these teacherswaiting at home for their names
to be called.
Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Man, what a world.
What a world.
What is one thing, a mantra oraffirmation?
Do you want everyone listeningto know?
Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Find something truly worth dying for, then live for
it.
Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Who's one person I should have on this podcast and
you have to help me get them onall right, oosh cc.
Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Jordan, um cecilia.
Jordan moved from austin tooakland with me and she has also
moved back to austin fromoakland with me.
She's working on her um phsomething.
She is the restorative justicemind.
She actually studies this workin a real way.
(01:08:22):
She's very collegiate.
I don't understand half theshit she be saying, but she's
really really smart and reallyreally dope and she's a queer
black woman and she's got a lotto say.
In fact, she's writing herwhat's the name of that thing?
Dissertation on restorativejustice and a lot about how it's
(01:08:45):
been interwoven into the samesystem that our school system is
, which is a white supremacistsystem, and it's some really
complex work and it's realBeautiful.
The same system that our schoolsystem is, which is a white
supremacist system.
Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
And it's some really complex work and it's real
Beautiful, so I'll be lookingforward to that introduction.
And finally, we mentioned atalking piece already, but how
can people support you and yourwork in the ways that you want
to be supported yeah, um, justthrough.
Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Um.
I think that our talent istrainings.
Um, have a training with us andum don't don't lean on the fact
that you've already beentrained, because once you have a
training with us, you're goingto feel like you've never been
trained before.
So one way to support us is tosupport your school by getting
(01:09:36):
more tools for your tool belt todo this work and, of course,
have a budget when you do it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Absolutely, Absolutely, David back in 2024
here.
Thank you so much for listening.
We'll be back with anotherepisode remembering another
member of the restorativejustice community, ted Lewis,
tomorrow, and just anotherreminder that the link to the
GoFundMe for Eric's family is inthe description and if you have
(01:10:07):
the means, please get what youcan.
Thanks so much.
Take care, stay safe.
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