After the summer I attended ISE my friends and I started a food project called EarthShare Gardens, which is still in existence. A couple years later I moved to New Orleans to work with Turning Point Partners and the Louisiana Violence Prevention Alliance. Turning Point Partners introduced me to Restorative Practices. It was a relief to find a model that embodies my values, i.e. means ends. Katrina hit, and I stayed with family in Lafayette continuing to work for the two above organizations and also organized the Lafayette Hurricane Survivors – visiting shelters and FEMA trailers. We organized several mass meetings and coalition between local activist groups and non-profits and the survivors. The primary accomplishment of that group was expanding the city bus route to include isolated FEMA trailers. I did some traveling and worked on a farm at an interfaith intentional community.
Then I went to Rochester and worked at a Catholic Worker house and volunteered as a Community Conferencing (restorative Justice) facilitator with JAC and PiRI organizations at a couple schools, mostly Monroe High. I liked the Catholic Worker model, but thought we were missing some pieces and wanted to learn more about incorporating Restorative Practices into institutions, so I got a Master’s degree at the International Institute for Restorative Practices. I moved back to NOLA, and got a position at the Center for Restorative Approaches at Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans. I am the Coordinator of the program.
I was hired the first year of the program. Our first year, we partnered the Community Conferencing Cneter in Baltimore, MD and trained about 40 community members in Community Conferencing (a process wherein all people impacted or involved in a conflict or crime have an opportunity to come together and talk about what has happened, how people have been impacted, and what needs to be done to repair harms and move forward ). CCC also helped us train Cohen High staff in community building circles. The first year, we worked intensively with Cohen High School. We went into the school and helped teachers integrate teambuilding and community building circles into their classroom cultures. We also helped teachers establish alternative forms of classroom management and accountability systems in their classrooms. We worked intensively with the school disciplinarian to introduce opportunities for students to take responsibility and repair harms and to change the discipline process from a punitive to a more restorative process. That first year my co-worker and I facilitated many many many conflict resolution circles between students at the school and students began requesting circles. Cohen has been stigmatized as one of the most violent schools in the U.S. and the majority of the students I worked with their have experienced and lost loved ones to violence. We also conducted Community Conferences as a an alternative to suspension, expulsion and arrest. We did trainings throughout the school year for school staff and we also took several neighborhood cases.
Since that first year, we have expanded to include a k-8 school Langston Hughes Academy and have done district wide trainings and take referrals from a number of schools throughout new Orleans.
You’ll see more information about our services in the brochure.
I really think Restorative Justice would be a great resource for the ISE to include in courses. It’s becoming a world-wide movement with institutions handing back community problems to the community – Family Group decision Making in revolutionizing Child Protective Services in a process in which the professionals leave the room so that families actually make the decisions about how best to keep family members safe and healthy in the context of abuse……. http://www.americanhumane.org/assets/pdfs/children/fgdm/purpose.pdf
