“JUSTICE IS WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE IN PUBLIC.” – DR. CORNEL WEST
OUR INVITATION
Join 25 advocates for an exploration of love, justice, healing, and the law at the…
6th annual
— and 1st-ever Virtual —
LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE JAM
to be held
August 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10
9-11 am PST / 12-2 pm EST
online
If you’re ready to Jam, the application awaits you!
And for Law and Social Change Jam alumni who want to come back, please apply here.
Applications due by July 20, 2020
“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 these systems are having on individuals, communities, and broader society. It also seems more relevant than ever as the pandemic, leadership failures, and police violence further reveal and exacerbate systemic inequities on top of what already existed in our fractured, hostile, and climate-impacted world. We believe that “healed — and healing — people heal people,” and that collectively, humans have the capacity to heal our world.
As lawyers, legal professionals, and people connected to the law, regardless of our fields, we are called into the service of social transformation. We invite you to engage in the soul-nourishing and healing work of personal reflection, deep listening, and community-building as a way to strengthen ourselves and our collective capacity for the work we are doing now and that we envision on the road ahead. We are excited to gather with a committed group of people to dive deep into this moment, our roles in it, and the opportunities for collective liberation this moment brings.
During our time together, we will share where we are 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 will also explore how to care for ourselves and each other in a profession plagued by burnout, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide, and in setting forth a vision of how we can each and collectively contribute to a more beautiful, interconnected world as we pick up during and after Coronavirus. At the Jam, we will engage, create, tangle & untangle, challenge & be challenged, struggle & liberate, and love & dream, in ways we cannot even predict.
We invite you to come seeking common ground while acknowledging the importance of difference; to arrive with openness and curiosity while acknowledging that this can be hard; and to be ready to tune in to the wisdom of the heart, body, and soul, along with the familiar analytical mind. We invite you to bring all of who you are, to see the whole in everyone else, and as a collective, to explore how we are walking similar, parallel, and diverging paths toward a better future. Come join a growing community of law jammers who are building a more just, loving, inclusive, mindful, and healing legal system and world, at the 6th annual Law and Social Change Jam. This is our first time doing the Jam over Zoom, and we are excited to co-create the experience with you!
JAM? WHAT FLAVOR OF JAM?
A music jam is a creative, live gathering of talented musicians who spontaneously create new sound. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This Jam will be a place where we collectively make music with our passion, vision, openness, and courage. We’ll gather over seven days for reflecting, connecting, growing, and learning together, across a wide variety of connections to law, social change, and social justice. To date, more than 150 jams have been held on six continents, bringing together intergenerational leaders from more than 85 nations – and, nearly 90 beautiful human beings working in law and social justice have jammed together since 2015. This will be YES!’s third experience with a full-length Zoomy Jam. You are invited to join us!
SO… WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?
The Jam is a chance to practice the world we want to see. This is not a conference, seminar, retreat, or typical meeting.
Instead, we draw from all of the applications and the inquiries alive in each of us on the leadership team, put them in a big pot, stir them around, and come up with a flow of facilitated activities that will take place each Zoom session — and also have down time between sessions for rest, reflection, and spontaneity. We will spend time together, sharing stories, making art, playing games, moving, engaging in challenging and generative conversations, connecting in a variety of ways.
This means that our facilitation team doesn’t plan any specific content to transmit to you. Our facilitators are participants as well; they don’t have all the answers (or maybe any of them!). What they do offer is a variety of ways for each of us to arrive at our own answers — and new questions. We’ll use a number of processes and tools and experiment with different ways of being together, all aimed at strengthening our self-awareness, our ability to communicate and work through conflicts, and our ability to vision and put these pieces together. We see the Jam as a co-learning journey of the collective experiences, questions, powers, and differences of everyone who attends.
Throughout our work and play, we’ll be addressing three interconnected dimensions of transformation: the personal, the interpersonal, and the systemic. Paraphrasing what adrienne maree brown writes in her book Emergent Strategy, we believe that what we give our attention to grows and the patterns we set on a small scale set the patterns for the whole system. The global pandemic and the uprooting of systemic racism has only elevated this experience and understanding.
At the Jam, we will get a chance to take stock of what’s important in our lives and work, see things from new perspectives, align our vision and values, face our fears, and overcome our blocks. We’ll work towards healing ourselves so we can help to heal the relationships and systems around us. And we’ll find new friends and partners in our journey.
M
E?
Yeah! The Law and Social Change Jam will bring together passionate humans from diverse regions and backgrounds. It will include lawyers, legal workers, law professors, conflict resolution professionals, law students, community organizers, advocates, and restorative justice practitioners from a spectrum of identities and worldviews (class, ethnicity, race, religion, gender identity, sexuality, age, ability, and more). If you are looking to make justice more alive and accessible, if you feel called to learn from people different from you, if you are willing to push the edges of your comfort zone, then this gathering is for you.
SWEET! NOW WHAT? HOW ARE WE GATHERING TOGETHER?
And for Law and Social Change Jam alumni who want to come back, please apply here.
Applications due by July 20, 2020.
We are excited to try on this Zoomy Jam with you. To keep the Jam intimate and participatory, we have a limited number of places available (just 18). We will be gathering in five shared sessions over the course of the Jam — from 9-11 am PST / 12-2 pm EST, starting Tuesday, August 4th, then Wednesday August 5th, Friday, August 7th, Saturday, August 8th, and Monday, August 10th. We will NOT have sessions on August 6th and 9th. We are leaving space in between days, both to integrate and rest, as well as for spontaneous optional offerings to emerge among our community. We ask you commit to attending all five of the shared sessions, and aim to leave some space throughout the whole week to meet spontaneously and informally as much as you can.
Tuition to participate in the Jam is offered on a sliding scale of $50-$250. This covers our organizing time, honoraria for facilitators, and materials. We invite you to give what you can and to give generously, and any surplus supports partial scholarships for other participants. If you pay more than the at-cost $250 amount for tuition, that extra amount is tax-deductible.
Money should never be a barrier to applying. Partial scholarships are available on a limited and first-come, first-served basis. We also invite work trades and monthly payment plans. We aim to figure out with each applicant the right combination of tuition, work trade, and scholarship. The sooner you apply, the sooner we can figure out a plan that works for you and the better your chances are of receiving a partial scholarship if you need one.
“NO REAL SOCIAL CHANGE HAS EVER BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT WITHOUT A REVOLUTION… REVOLUTION IS BUT THOUGHT CARRIED INTO ACTION.” — EMMA GOLDMAN
WHO IS THE “WE” BEHIND THE INVITATION?
We are a diverse group of lawyers and legal professionals called to come together to organize and facilitate around the theme of law and social change. Each of us is engaged in our own projects outside this Jam, with particular interests in: mindful lawyering, restorative justice, solidarity economies law, racial justice and social equity, collaborative law, criminal defense, movement/community lawyering, and many more. The organizers and facilitators of the Law and Social Change Jam are:
Chris Tittle is a facilitator, organizer, and lawyer focused on land and housing justice, participatory governance, and co-creating post capitalist / post white supremacist futures. He is Director of Organizational Resilience at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a democratically-run nonprofit supporting communities to create and control their own sustainable sources of housing, food, energy, and livelihoods. Chris became a lawyer without going to law school through the California Law Office Study Program, passing the California Bar in 2018. Prior to training as a barefoot lawyer, Chris completed an MA in Economics for Transition at Schumacher College, where he did action research at Occupy London and explored community-determined responses to climate disruption in the Global South. Chris has also organized around fossil fuel divestment, anti-displacement, food justice, and indigenous sovereignty in the Bay Area; co-founded the Association of Legal Apprentices; and serves on the Boards of New Economy Coalition and Oakland Communities United for Equity and Justice. He previously taught English in Japan and explored Islam in Senegal; and in between those two experiences, he traversed 3/4 of the globe by way of rail, sail, foot, and thumb. He currently lives near the Ashley River in Charleston, South Carolina with his son, wife, and dog.
Demarris Evans works as a Restorative Justice Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco. She is also a lecturer at San Francisco State University in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies. Her focus is on racial equity and restorative justice. Demarris worked as a trial attorney in Public Defense for over 20 years. She lead the racial justice unit in the San Francisco Public Defenders Office and practiced in several different collaborative courts with a restorative justice lens. She has previously worked as an instructor in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Phoenix. Demarris was a member of the San Francisco Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Task Force where she chaired the Bias and Policing Subcommittee. Demarris also teaches mindfulness through the lens of equity, healing and human potential. She is a graduate of the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College, the Warrior One Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training Program and the Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a co-facilitator for the Law and Social Change Jam and the Re-Storying Justice Jam offered by YES! And she is on the Board of Directors for the Mindfulness in Law Society where she heads the Equity and Inclusion Division.
Judi Cohen is a lecturer at Berkeley Law, where she teaches Mindfulness for Lawyers, and runs Warrior One, which offers mindfulness training for the legal profession to help relieve some of the suffering in the law, and that the law knowingly and unknowingly creates and perpetuates in society. Her programs integrate traditional mindfulness, contemplative neuroscience, and the psychology of the legal mind. Judi is also a lead teacher in Warrior One’s Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training, a bi-annual program for legal professionals interested in deepening their own practice and gaining the tools and confidence to offer mindfulness in law firms, legal organizations, and law schools. She leads two ongoing sitting groups: The Wake Up Call, Warrior One’s weekly, 20-minute online gathering of legal professionals bringing mindfulness solutions into the law, and the Sonoma Insight Meditation Sangha. She also provides leadership in the national mindfulness-in-law movement as a founding director of the Mindfulness in Law Society and as the chair of its Teachers Division. These days Judi believes more and more in the possibility of healing for lawyers and other folks working in the law, and in the idea that the law really can be an instrument of wisdom and compassion in the world. Judi lives in rural Sonoma, California.
John Lopez is still learning. He currently works in Philadelphia with the Defender Association and teaches at Drexel Law. At the Defender, John’s main role is Development Attorney. In this position his task is to mentor new attorneys through their first year at the office. He also carries a trial docket and is on the Recruitment Committee to help bring new attorneys to the office. At Drexel, John’s teaches writing to third year law students. Recently, he co-taught a class with Susan Brooks focused on trauma, healing and restorative justice. John was first introduced to this transformative type of work when he started therapy in May 2018. Frustrated with the criminal justice system, he found tools in therapy that help him heal from the trauma of the courtroom. Outside of work John focuses on growth, healing and connectedness. He’s trying to figure out how to stay healthy and help people. John’s passions include boxing and physical fitness, therapy, healing circles, reading and quality time with friends and family. Books like Just Mercy, My Grandmother’s Hands, Trauma Stewardship, The Body Keeps Score, and Until We Reckon have been transformative for him. John is trying to internalize the principles in this work and then figure out how to give it to use it in his work.
Jeff Carolin is a criminal lawyer, facilitator, mindfulness and yoga practitioner, and father of two small children based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As a lawyer, Jeff has appeared at all levels of court in Ontario, and has successfully defended cases ranging from minor thefts to homicide. The vast majority of his clients are marginalized due to poverty, mental health differences, and racism. As a facilitator, Jeff organizes team-building and leadership development retreats, supports conflict transformation processes, and brings emotional intelligence and body-awareness into all of his work. Lately, he has been building a practice at the intersection of criminal law and conflict transformation under the rubric of restorative justice. He is inspired by the possibility that trials and jails need not be the only result of harm and wrong-doing, and that transformation, healing, and hope can emerge from the darkest of moments. Representing the survivor of a serious sex assault in one of the first restorative justice processes in Toronto has only strengthened his resolve in this regard. As a father, Jeff spends most of his time trying not to step on little pieces of plastic, and figuring out how he can do right by these amazing and tiny little creatures.
Susan Brooks lives and works in Philadelphia. She has over 25 years of experience as an educator, facilitator, presenter, and trainer in the areas of experiential learning, relational practices, professional development, civic engagement, and cross-cultural communication. Since 2007, she has been an Associate Dean and Professor at the Drexel University Kline School of Law, where she oversees the experiential and public service aspects of the curriculum, and focuses much of her time on efforts to create a culture of belonging and wellbeing. Susan has written extensively and has conducted workshops in the U.S. and across the globe to promote “Relational Lawyering,” an integrative humanistic approach to legal practice and education, which includes habits of mind and tools to strengthen emotional intelligence, cross-cultural lawyering, and resilience. She is also a leader in the field of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and is an inaugural member of the Global Advisory Council for the International Society of Therapeutic Jurisprudence (ISTJ). Her most recent articles are entitled “Mindful Engagement and Relational Lawyering,“ and “Fostering Wholehearted Lawyers: Practical Guidance for Supporting Law Students’ Professional Identity Formation.” Susan has a Master’s degree in social work in addition to her law degree, and is also a certified family mediator and has received training to be a peacebuilding circle keeper. Susan is currently working on a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training certification and is also enrolled in Judi Cohen’s Warrior One Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training for 2020.
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 researched and written numerous books and articles and 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. Shilpa has not trained as lawyer, though her grandfather was one and she has married into a family of lawyers. She has also received a copious amount of legal education through TV shows and movies.
WE ARE EXCITED TO SEE YOUR APPLICATION SOON!
If you have any questions about the Law and Social Change Jam, please reach us at <lawandsocialchangejam[at]gmail.com>. We look forward to jamming with you!
Demarris, Chris, Judi, Jeff, Susan, John, and Shilpa