We rose to the challenge. At last year’s conference with Michelle Alexander on “Ending Mass Incarceration and the New Jim Crow,” participants called for re-visioning a future without mass incarceration and without state racialized control over people of color. As we continue our efforts to dismantle the structures and ideology around mass incarceration, how do we establish and nurture healing alternatives to the “judge and punish” paradigm, which has been so destructive of black and brown people’s lives?
From March 10-13, 2016, Pendle Hill will host a restorative/transformative justice conference, “Beyond Crime and Punishment: Fostering Transformative Justice in Our Communities.” Our goal is to increase experience in – and appreciation for – restorative practices so that we can better advocate using them in our schools, communities, workplaces, and as alternatives to our punitive system. Similarly, we will look at how such restorative models as truth and reconciliation processes have fared in helping communities heal long-festering racial wounds through truth-telling, acknowledgment, and repair.
Through speakers, panels, workshops, and experiential circles, we hope to inspire, educate, create opportunities for networking, and galvanize for ongoing community action. Kay Pranis, Dr. Joy DeGruy, Rev. Nelson, Joyce Hobson Johnson, and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz are only some of the many teachers and practitioners of restorative justice to help us achieve those goals.
For more information, click on the link above or contact John Meyer at 610-566-4507, ext. 129.
