Re-Storying Justice JAM 2019
November 10-14, 2019
Quaker Center, Ben Lomond, CA
APPLY TODAY!
FINAL APPLICATION DEADLINE: September 30, 2019
10 spaces left!
What are we doing?
The ReStorying Justice Jam will bring together activists, advocates, academics, storytellers, practitioners, people impacted by the criminal legal system who feel called to transform it. By sharing our stories with each other, we hope to “restory” the narrative of conflict, wrongdoing, and justice in this country. We hope to create opportunities for self-awareness and self-reflection, community-building, and visioning towards systemic change. By doing so, we will strengthen ourselves and our individual and collective work for justice.
Come join us for an exploration of love, justice and healing at the inaugural ReStorying Justice Jam, a 4 day gathering in the redwoods of Northern California. We will come together, reflect, share our challenges and our breakthroughs, nurture ourselves, support and inspire each other, explore our identities as social justice activists, restorative justice practitioners, and people who want to learn and engage with questions related to injustice, incivility, conflict, crime and harm.
Throughout our time together, we’ll share where we are at in our lives and work, and reflect on whether that place still serves us, the people we work with and care about, and the world. We’ll also explore how to care for ourselves and each other in a profession infused by burnout, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
And we’ll engage, create, tangle & untangle, challenge & be challenged, support, connect, and dream in ways we can’t even predict.
Why have a Re-Storying Justice Jam?
“Hurt people hurt people,” as the old adage goes. This insight sheds light on our legal and political institutions, how we treat each other within these institutions, and the impact this is having on individuals, communities, and broader society. It also seems more relevant than ever in our fractured and polarized society.
We also believe that “healed–or healing–people heal people.” Communities are calling for the need for a shift from a punitive culture of justice to practices which are restorative and transformative. We invite you to engage in the soul-making and healing work of personal reflection, deep listening, and community-building as a way to strengthen our collective capacity for the work we are doing now and the road ahead.
As we work to transform our criminal legal system, we are faced with the challenge of how our own personal values, life experiences, and family histories affect our relationship with wrongdoing and conflict. We will all cause harm, break a rule, and be a “wrongdoer” at some point in our lives. When that happens, how will we deal with it? Can justice be about healing, not punishment? And if we ourselves have been hurt, how do we ensure we do not perpetuate harm in the ways we show up for the communities we serve? Where are we growing and where are we struggling in our work around restorative and/or transformative justice?
Living in the most incarcerated country in the world, U.S. Americans are now waking up to how wasteful, ineffective, and unjust their “justice system” is. Exciting ideas about restorative and transformative justice are spreading throughout the country. As practitioners of these approaches, many are feeling the call to come together to change our vengeful and short-sighted brand of justice to better reflect our common humanity, inherent interconnectedness, and fundamental goodness. How can we work together toward an alternative justice model that is more equitable, more humane, and more healing?
What is justice and what does it look like in practice? How do we engage and co-create restorative strategies and practices that will transform our relationship to each other and to our community? How can we value accountability while embracing reconciliation and redemption?
What are YOUR questions? Bring them to the Jam!
We believe the ReStorying Justice Jam is the perfect venue to engage in this deep work of reflection, exploration and community building.
Why “Re-Storying”?
Our ideas about what should happen to people who commit crimes flow directly from our own individual experiences with conflict and wrongdoing, which means that we cannot change our legal system without first exploring our own personal notions of justice and how it pervades our lives. Through the act of remembering and perhaps re-telling the stories that have shaped our notions of justice, we have the opportunity to bring healing to old wounds that, if left unhealed, will continue to shape our lives and limit our freedom. And from a place of more self-awareness, we can choose ways of acting that feel more whole and more true. This is ReStorying, the act of reconnecting with the stories that shaped us and allowing for healing and transformation to emerge. We believe this work is a critical step toward creating the kind of fundamental systemic changes we need to make our justice system worthy of the word “justice.”
What is a JAM?
YES! Jams have been happening since 1999. YES! collaborates with other like-hearted peers around the world to co-create Jams where diverse visionaries and social change-makers combine their inspirations and skills to create something greater than the sum of their parts.
We typically think of a “jam” as a creative, live gathering of musicians who gather to create a new sound, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. YES! takes this idea one step further by hosting themed gatherings, or Jams, in partnership with inspiring changemakers around the world to create the space for diverse leaders and visionaries to come together, co-create, and work towards internal, interpersonal, and systemic change.
Jams are not conferences, seminars or anything resembling what you might consider a typical meeting. (You’re welcome!) Instead, Jams are laboratories where participants, or Jammers, are able to connect, grow, and learn from each other to become the change they’d like to see in the world. To date, more than 175 different Jams have been held on six continents, bringing together intergenerational leaders from more than 85 nations.
Jams work on three levels of change & transformation:
1) The Internal. A place for each one of us to explore our own journeys and histories, to heal our individual wounds and to come into our most authentic selves so that we can better fulfill our unique purpose.
2) The Interpersonal. We are harmed in relationships, so we must heal in relationships. We come together to share our collective journeys, our cultures, our ways of grieving and our ways of healing, our histories of struggle and our stories of resilience.
3) The Systemic. Our individual identities and our collective stories are molded in a larger context. By becoming clearer about how these systems influence our lives, we can have a larger impact in the broader world around us.
Who is invited?
We invite those who have borne witness to the cruelty of our criminal legal system and feel called to do something about it. We invite those who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, directly or indirectly, and who believe that what is happening is unjust, immoral, and in opposition to our fundamental need for human connection. We invite those on either side of the Line, law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, service providers, government workers, who feel hamstrung by an impersonal and bureaucratic system that causes much more harm than good. We invite those who have gone Inside as prisoners, staff, or volunteers, and have come back changed by what they experienced. We invite folks from black, indigenous, Latinx, immigrant, API, LGBTQI, and other marginalized communities who have historically suffered the brunt of the injustice and oppression that our criminal legal system has perpetrated. Finally, we invite wrongdoers, victims, and any combination of the two to join us in the profound work of ReStorying. We commit to creating a safe and brave space for our individual and collective work.
Dates, Costs, Travel
The Jam will be held from the afternoon of Sunday, November 10th, until the morning of Thursday, November 14th, at the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, Santa Cruz Mountains (90 minutes south of San Francisco). It is a naturally beautiful place, away from the hustle and bustle of modern life, both inspiring and rejuvenating.
It requires resources to organize this event, but do not let cost be a barrier; we will work out a solution together. The total cost of the jam is $700 per participant ($375 for food, lodging, and local transport; $325 for program costs, including organizing support, childcare, materials, and facilitator honorarium).
If you can pay the entire cost of $700, great! And, we ask that all participants consider contributing a minimum of $375 to cover their food and accommodation.
This may be still a significant expense for many people, and we do not want money to be an impediment to your participation. We can offer a monthly payment plan, as well as combination of scholarship and work-trade to make it work for you. We also encourage applicants to seek support from their organizations, as many people find a lot of leadership skills development and other professional development happens through their learnings and experiences at the Jam.
And, if you are able to contribute more, wonderful! The extra amount will go towards our scholarship pool.
Also, we welcome children to the Jam; we love having whole families sharing the Jam experience. We will work out childcare (provided) and other expenses with you.
I’m in! What’s Next?
APPLY TODAY!
FINAL DEADLINE: September 30, 2019
10 spots left!
Who Is Putting This Jam On?
Peter Borenstein is an attorney based in Los Angeles and the founder of Restorative Justice Fund (RJFund), a nonprofit justice reform incubator. Peter joined the Jamily in 2015 when he gathered together with a group of wonderful legal change-makers at the Law and Social Change Jam. Since then, he’s been interested in bringing restorative principles to his litigation practice, particularly with regard to deeply held family trauma and its interaction with a seemingly incompatible civil legal system. Peter’s litigation practice is centered around providing full service legal representation to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in civil court to recover property that was stolen from them as a result of their long-term incarceration. When he’s not doing his lawyer thing, Peter is playing capoeira (he’s an orange cord!), reading Ursula K. Leguin, or thinking about getting the Nintendo Switch.
Mika Dashman is a zealous advocate for restorative justice, based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2015 she founded Restorative Justice Initiative, which is building a citywide, multi-sector network of support for restorative principles and practices in New York City’s neighborhoods, courts and schools. Mika has been awarded the David Lerman Memorial Fund Fellowship in Restorative Justice by the Project for Integrating Law, Spirituality and Politics in both 2015 and 2017. Mika is a New York State-certified mediator and she has mediated criminal court cases and facilitated community conferences through the New York Peace Institute. Mika also facilitates peacemaking/community-building circles for organizations, student and professional groups. Her restorative justice teachers include: Lauren Abramson, Kay Pranis, Dominic Barter, Eric Butler, Ray Deal and Sara Whitehorse. Prior to falling in love with restorative justice, Mika spent more than six years providing direct legal services to indigent clients at several New York City non-profits. She’s a proud graduate of the nation’s only dedicated public interest law school, CUNY School of Law. Mika is an alumnus of the 2015 Law and Social Change Jam. Mika identifies as a member of Generation X, and a product of the American counterculture. She is the daughter of a Zen Buddhist and an atheist Jew who met as Peace Corps volunteers in Nigeria; a red-diaper grandbaby; great-granddaughter of a coal miner and a political prisoner of Czarist Russia. She can trace her family’s roots in Brooklyn back to 1905.
Demarris R. Evans teaches mindfulness through the lens of healing and human potential. She worked as a trial attorney at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office for 20 years, and in this capacity, Demarris represented clients in the Clean Slate Program, Collaborative Court Programs, including Drug Court and Community Justice Court, Juvenile Delinquency, and the Felony Trial Unit, including handling all aspects of litigation. In addition to other assignments, she worked as the Racial Justice and Equity Attorney for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office as well as the Chairperson of the Racial Justice Committee. Demarris was an instructor in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Phoenix for several years. She is also a member of the San Francisco Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Task Force where she chairs the Bias and Policing Subcommittee. She previously served on the San Francisco Bar Association’s Judiciary Committee. She has served on the Attorney Panel of California Bar Examination Graders for over a decade. She is a graduate of the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College and is a graduate of the Warrior One Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training Program of 2016. Demarris has been practicing mindfulness since the late 1990’s, and has sat numerous silent, multi-day retreats. Demarris successfully the Dedicated Practitioner Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Demarris has led numerous Mindfulness trainings, and sitting meditation sessions. She has been on a co-facilitator for the Law and Social Change Jam, offered by Yes! And she is on the Board of Directors for the Mindfulness in Law Society where she is the Head of the Equity and Inclusion Division.
Angela Sevin is a white, cis female, rural educated, middle class raised educational consultant, facilitator and visual artist. Passionate about racial equity and stewarding the world we inhabit, she works holistically in collaboration with cutting edge leaders, developing solutions with and for resilient communities. After earning a graduate degree in Experiential Education, she helped found several small democratic schools, co-designed the groundbreaking Pathways to Resilience re-entry project and directs the Green Life environmental literacy and self-sufficiency peer education program at San Quentin State Prison. She co-designs and leads white affinity workshops with her colleagues at Beyond Separation to address social and racial equity using systems and design thinking and experiential modalities. Angela is an alumnus of the North America Jam and the Law and Social Change Jam. She is excited to dive deeply with resilient change-makers who will powerfully address the social and environmental issues of our time and help to bring restorative practices to our communities.
Yoana Tchoukleva is a civil rights attorney and restorative justice advocate, committed to advancing a community-led vision for justice that is based on healing and transformation, not punishment and incarceration. As an immigrant from Bulgaria, she stands in solidarity with communities of color in Oakland (aka Huichin, occupied Ohlone territory) who gave her a place to call home. She dreams of a thriving, diverse and restorative Oakland where the principles of restorative justice, racial justice and equity are centered, where local wisdom is celebrated, and where no one is left behind. To that end, she uses her legal skills to challenge oppressive laws and policies, locally and statewide. As the Judge Constance Baker Motley Civil Rights Fellow at Equal Justice Society, she is engaged in litigation that disrupts the school-to-prison pipeline and in legislation that makes implicit bias training and testing mandatory for all police officers, judges and medical professionals in the state. Previously, she clerked for Judge Thelton Henderson, worked on civil rights cases at the ACLU, sought re-sentencing for individuals serving juvenile without parole, and held restorative justice circles in prison, schools, and juvenile camp. She is on the Board of New Leaders Council Oakland, a training institute for the next generation of progressive leaders, and the Embodiment Project, a revolutionary street dance company. Her life’s purpose is to serve our intersectional, multi-generational journey toward collective liberation.
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA, where she serves as the Executive Director of YES!. YES! works with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, and aims to co-create a thriving, just and balanced world for all. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. She has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings with hundreds of young leaders from over 50 countries. She is passionate about dance and music, organic and natural farming, upcycling and zero waste living, asking appreciative questions and being in community. A focus on healing, forgiveness, compassion, love and wholeness permeates all of her work and life.
Seth Weiner is an alum of the 2004 Leveraging Privilege for Social Change Jam and of the 2015 inaugural Law and Social Change Jam facilitation team. He is a 2004 graduate of the Community Studies program at UC Santa Cruz and of the 2010 JD program at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. From 2010 to 2013, Seth was the Co-Director of the Center for Restorative Justice at Loyola and from 2013-2018, he directed the North American grant-making on social justice for the Porticus Foundation. Since Spring of 2018, Seth has been a primary caretaker for his two young boys, Shem and Sol, and a coach/consultant for a variety of people working on restorative justice, transformative justice and indigenous peacemaking. Seth lives in New York City with his wife, mother-in-law and the boys. He is actively learning about the courage, surrender, and faith involved in personal, inter-personal, ancestral and community healing.
Come Jam!
Love,
Peter, Mika, Jonathan, Angela, Yoana, Shilpa, and Seth