Culture and Community: Restorative Practices in the Age of Social Media

Restorative and Transformative Justice are concepts we have heard more about recently in justice and criminal work, institutions, and inside of schools. Oakland, Denver, Portland, Chicago and many other cities have implemented Restorative Justice practices in their schools to deal with issues of violence, trauma, and in the building of community. Trained facilitators in restorative work have become increasingly common, and the need for such skills have become more apparent.

Yet we live in a culture that often supports response instead of contemplation, and the popularity of social media has compounded this culture of reactivity. The nature of social media and tools of expression at our fingertips promote instant responses any time of the day.

We see the harmful side effects of such things happening daily; flame wars, Facebook threads of miscommunication, and what develops into mob mentality all over the internet. What we don’t see as much is people taking the opportunity to dialog, to restore harmed relationships, and to extend the benefit of the doubt to those with whom we share social media space.

Restorative Justice (RJ) philosophies and practices are based largely on various indigenous practices of community, communication and conflict. A recent RJ report, published by the University of California – Berkeley’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, states:

The philosophy of restorative justice is partially derived from the ways some indigenous cultures, such as the Maori, respond to conflict and harm. Rather than requiring retribution for wrongdoing, restorative justice seeks to encourage accountability, repair harm, and restore relationships. As a set of practices, it is best known for its use of a circle. The circle brings together the harmed, those who caused harm, and the community in which the harm occurred to respectfully share their perspectives, feelings, and concerns.

Developed from this foundational place, RJ extends a belief that all people are important and valuable within a community. RJ practices are often recognized for the ability to equalize voices within the circle, giving everyone the chance to be heard with the same about of capital. The philosophy of the RJ process is further defined in UC – Berkeley’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice report on school-based RJ intervention in West Oakland.

The philosophy of restorative justice is partially derived from the ways some indigenous cultures, such as the Maori, respond to conflict and harm. Rather than requiring retribution for wrongdoing, restorative justice seeks to encourage accountability, repair harm, and restore relationships. As a set of practices, it is best known for its use of a circle. The circle brings together the harmed, those who caused harm, and the community in which the harm occurred to respectfully share their perspectives, feelings, and concerns.

Catherine Bargen adapted the Restorative Justice Principles originally created by Susan Sharpe’s in Restorative Justice: A Vision for Healing and Change. These principles state that RJ is to invite full participation and consensus, heal what has been broken, seek full and direct accountability, reunite what has been divided, strengthen the community to prevent future harms. All of these elements are key to the purpose of restorative justice and restorative approaches to community.

As a trained Restorative Justice facilitator, I often look at approaches to community within the interconnected modern Pagan, Heathen and Polytheist communities and wonder how changing our culture of engagement could change the landscape of our conflicts and collective relationships. Communities that have consistent methods and practices to engage relationships, differences and conflict often change the culture around responding to challenges.

In exploring the need for more tools within the interconnected dynamics of our communities, I reached out to others who have varying levels of experience with restorative practices, and asked for their take on what impact RJ could have.

I have been reading about restorative justice from different religious perspectives, so I was interested in seeing it in action at a session at the Parliament of World Religions. The session was led by Crystal Blanton and Thorn Coyle. We sat in a huge circle and we—one by one—spoke. There was only listening, not comments, not even signs of support for each other.

I did not expect to feel the way I did afterwards: as if my perspective had stretched, grown. We did not talk, we did not process. It was weirdly powerful. I still do not know what to make of it.
Restorative justice works. I do not understand how it works; but, I see it. The Pagan community has its share of conflict and I would have been grateful to sit in a restorative justice circle with other Pagans this past week and a half, as questions we thought were answered blew up around us. Being there would help. Hearing would help. Keeping our reactions to ourselves would help.

There is a power in a safe place to hear, share and – sorry, but –sit quietly until our own perspective stretches and grows. There were many voices that I did not hear over the last week, and I wanted to hear them.  Trying to keep my own knee-jerk reactions to a minimum, trying to be fair and make space for others on Facebook is dicey at best. I failed. I would have been truly and deeply grateful to be in that restorative justice circle with other Pagans last week. – Sandy Foo

I really want to say that restorative justice practices can have a positive impact in our community. I’ve seen it work very well, situations where the process helped mature and deepen the character of the wrongdoer/individual(s) of concern. I’ve also experienced situations in which the resolution left no one happy.

So much depends on context, in particular the structure of the community. It seems to me that RJ works best when there are community bonds that create a structure and help hold people accountable. There need to be tangible incentives for remaining within the community, and respect for the worth of everyone involved (at least an openness to developing respect), if not their actions or opinions about what has transpired.

This is where it gets difficult for me to say more about whether or not I think the tools and practices of RJ can shift the culture of conflict within the Pagan community. In our online and geographically dispersed world, it is too easy to enter and exit various aspects of the community without accountability for harm/wrongdoing. If I can walk away from conversations that make me uncomfortable, change my screen names, and find different groups to attend, what’s to stop me from doing so and repeating the pattern again?

Elders and other community leaders certainly can and do help guard against this, but I think we need more folks with both the gravitas and resources to do this well – people embedded within our physical and online spaces in ways the “big name Pagans” aren’t always. This is small part of why I think professional Pagan clergy could be a big boon for our community as a whole. – David Christy

Yes. I do believe that RJ can offer a positive impact in our communities. I think this works on several important levels.  It emphasizes the importance of understanding the impact we have on each other and on our communities.  It asks us to look at our selves and notice where we have impact, both positive and negative.  Encouraging this deeper self awareness we can open a door to self discovery, growth and to the potential to make choices that bring more positive impacts to our community.  Understanding ourselves and our is the initial challenge and step.

RJ also introduces a time and space for deep listening. A practice and opportunity that we need more of in every community. Why is listening so important? Especially listening in a psychologically safe place?  To help us get along better, to heal wounds from conflict, we really need to develop the capacity to imagine ourselves in the others shoes and skin, to see through their eyes and feel with their hearts.  Placing value on deep listening and safety in an RJ circle can promote more intense and effective listening which can greatly increase our ability to understand the perspective of others.  This is of vital importance.  Our journey to restore trust and health in our communities requires understanding our own impact and listing offers information that is uniquely personal and important in this process.  

RJ also offers a time and a space for voices.  Voices speaking in pain or anger but being profoundly witnessed can offer healing in ways that other exchanges cannot.  Being heard and witnessing another’s deep sharing of hurts, pains or joys can be transformational experiences.  RJ brings this to communities which may not have any models for such authentic and personal sharing and witnessing.  Further, we learn more about each other in this process and discover more and more common ground. That is a way toward healing for all. – River Higginbotham

Our communities experience with RJ was after a significant loss of trust with community leadership. It wasn’t tangible physical harm needing to be stitched up. RJ did not make some of the major sources of conflict; differences in class, income, education, gender, race, and even levels of self centered-ness disappear. What the process did do was help us to realize how undefined our sense of group values were, and motivated us to do the work to define them. With this work now behind us, when conflict arises we can rely on our shared values to see us through to resolution without being destructive to ourselves in the process.

In the RJ process we learned to recognize and acknowledge our own emotions, and the sense of having been harmed.

We learned to empathize with and support the feelings of others without judgement. Most people came into the process thinking we would all speak, sort it all out objectively and someone would then render “justice” to affirm our feelings. The “justice” we discovered was that each of us had emerged from the conflict with different “scars”, and when we validated them together for each other, we could begin to heal together as a community. – Nels Linde

As our community diversifies in numbers, ideals, values and practices, it is important to look at ways that other communities are utilizing tools of engagement to create healthy dynamics despite differences, challenges and social media. Success within communities in Oakland has had success with RJ practices within places where rival gangs share space, creating a feeling of togetherness among those who would otherwise resort to violent interactions that lead to death and trauma. Surely, if schools are using restorative practices in the most violent, challenging and dangerous subsets of society to help decrease problematic conflicts and build community, then modern Pagans, Heathens and Polytheists might be able to pick up some useful tools and practices as well.

This brings the discussion back to contemplating the skills and tools that leaders and clergy members can be trained with in order to better navigate the shifting dynamics of our ever growing communities. In light of what appears to be ongoing conflict and infighting, it seems obvious that the tools we currently have are no longer effective for what we need.

Are restorative practices the answer? Are there other tools that can open up the ideals of dialog and help to define boundaries of healthy community for those who fall under the Pagan umbrella? There are plenty of traditional conflict mediation methodologies that are being phased out for more community-based models of practice, yet not all of them have the same commitments to relationships, self reflection and accountability. The more that our greater society grapples with ways to build healthy cultures around relationships, conflicts, and differences, the more important this will become to our small microcosm. The impact of harm felt within our relatively small subset of society is magnified by the imbalance of mismanaged attempts to cope with the process of community.

In addition, the unique time and physical space constraints of our geographically diverse spaces require more than impulsive and reactionary methods of navigating challenges that come up. We may not be able to physically sit in Restorative Justice circles all the time, but we can engage in community building practices, participate in circles in our local and larger communities, and engage in restorative practices as a part of our normal operations.

Howard Zehr, a leading expert and trainer of RJ, wrote an article titled 10 Ways to Live Restoratively. In this piece he frames easy ways that we can engage in restorative practices, ones that will support healthy space despite distance. These tips are important ideas to cultivate self reflection, creating normative values, expressing empathy, and what I call “holding one another lovingly accountable”.

1. Take relationships seriously, envisioning yourself in an interconnected web of people, institutions and the environment.
2. Try to be aware of the impact – potential as well as actual – of your actions on others and the environment.
3. When your actions negatively impact others, take responsibility by acknowledging and seeking to repair the harm – even when you could probably get away with avoiding or denying it.
4. Treat everyone respectfully, even those you don’t expect to encounter again, even those you feel don’t deserve it, even those who have harmed or offended you or others.
5. Involve those affected by a decision, as much as possible, in the decision-making process.
6. View the conflicts and harms in your life as opportunities.
7. Listen, deeply and compassionately, to others, seeking to understand even if you don’t agree with them. (Think about who you want to be in the latter situation rather than just being right.)
8. Engage in dialogue with others, even when what is being said is difficult, remaining open to learning from them and the encounter.
9. Be cautious about imposing your “truths” and views on other people and situations.
10. Sensitively confront everyday injustices including sexism, racism and classism.

Whether on cyberspace, or in our local religious communities, we are all responsible for finding ways to support healthy options for sustainability. Creating cultural norms and values based on lifting up social capital, equalizing privilege and power, and giving everyone a voice in our interconnected relationships might just be worth evaluating.

There are many complex and justified questions about the conflict culture of our community. What are we willing to do collectively to change that?

Resources:

• International Institute for Restorative Practices. What is Restorative Practices? (2012)
• University of Berkeley Law Center. School-Based Restorative Justice As an Alternative to Zero-Tolerance Policies: Lesson from West Oakland (2010)
• Miner, Kris. Circle Spaces Services. Promote Self Control, Use “Me” Statements In Circle Process. (2015)
• Miner, Kris. Circle Space Services. Restorative Justice Listening to Bare Witness. (2013)
• National Association of Community and Restorative Justice. An Overview of Restorative Justice (2014)
• Zehr, Howard. Little Book of Restorative Justice. (2002)
• Zehr, Howard. Eastern Mennonite University, 10 Ways to Live Restoratively (2009)
• Kay Pranis.  Peacemakinging Circles; From Crime to Community. (2011)

 

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