Restorative Justice is a Community & Community Building Practice

We Work in Community

A group of diverse people sitting in a semi-circle, participating in a discussion or workshop, with one person speaking.

Support ⁕ accountability ⁕ healing ⁕

Support ⁕ accountability ⁕ healing ⁕

From peacemaking circles to the auntie brigade, our communities have formal and informal pathways to address intimate partner violence (IPV).

We want survivors to have support, people who cause harm to be accountable, and everyone to heal. We further anti-violence interventions that build community and collective capacity to repair relationships, enable accountability, and foster wellness – without augmenting state violence — in these ways:

  • ✴️ Through circle and other restorative practices, community members listen, express, connect, learn from one another’s stories, and work collectively toward liberation. Collaborative member How Our Lives Link Altogether! (H.O.L.L.A!) brings expertise in community circles and a non-traditional approach to healing justice. H.O.L.L.A!’s work, rooted in Black liberation and Afrikan Indigenous Sacred Healing Circle Process and Cosmology, emphasizes community-centered healing justice and wisely warns of cooptation of restorative justice methods by criminal legal systems.

  • ✴️ Restorative approaches are often misunderstood as a shortcut or bypass. Yet focusing on accountability and what people need to be whole is far more difficult than punishment.

    ‍The RISE Project addresses the intersections of gender-based violence and gun violence through direct community member engagement. Participants in the Respect and Responsibility (R&R) program reflect on root causes of their harmful behaviors and gain access to services like mental health treatment, housing support, and food assistance. Participants share R&R helped them identify behaviors they need to change while strengthening their own sense of self, support networks, and understanding of abuse. One participant later served as a RISE outreach worker, using their experience to nurture others’ transformation. Through Respect First, RISE also supports youth aged 13-21 with interventions that proactively mitigate harmful behaviors and beliefs as they navigate early relationships.

    Restorative and healing justice practices grow through community. A long-time advocate for community responses to violence, Collaborative member CONNECT holds men’s dialogue circles, faith roundtables, and community dialogue circles. In addition to programs that prevent and intervene in abuse, CONNECT furthers field advocacy & mentorship with its far-ranging Training Institute. CONNECT is developing a training module on using restorative practices that aims to define restorative practices, describe community building circles and community accountability processes, and offer practice guidelines.

  • ✴️ Since the Collaborative began, Black Women’s Blueprint, under its visionary new incarnation Restore Forward, became a physical site for intergenerational healing rooted in ancestral and traditional healing methods. Restore Forward brings us all a cultural framework for reconciliation – for harms to be repaired and to collaboratively find ways to make things right without relying on punishment and incarceration. In the Collaborative, we witnessed how founding Restore Forward in upstate New York required partnering with local indigenous communities as well as opening pathways for resistant town members to practice reconciliation.

  • ✴️ The Collaborative has coordinated work, learned from, and/or has been in connection with groups including: