The Spiritual Life! with Brooke Obie

sonofbaldwin:

“Fania: A lot of people think that restorative justice can only
address interpersonal harm—and it’s very successful in that. But the
truth and reconciliation model is one that’s supposed to address mass
harm—to heal the wounds of structural violence. We’ve seen that at work
in about 40 different nations; the most well-known is, of course, the
South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In South Africa, the commission invited victims of apartheid to testify, and, for the
first time ever, they told their stories publicly. It was on all the
radio stations, in all the newspapers, it was all over the television,
so people would come home and tune in and learn things about apartheid
that they had never known before. There was an intense national
discussion going on, and people who were harmed felt vindicated in some
way.

That kind of thing can
happen here, also, through a truth and reconciliation process. In
addition to that sort of hearing commission structure, there could be
circles happening on the local levels—circles between, say, persons who
were victims of violence and the persons who caused them harm.

Angela: How does one imagine accountability for someone representing the
state who has committed unspeakable acts of violence? If we simply rely
on the old form of sending them to prison or the death penalty, I think
we end up reproducing the very process that we’re trying to challenge.

So maybe can we talk about restorative justice more broadly? Many of
the campaigns initially called for the prosecution of the police
officer, and it seems to me that we can learn from restorative justice
and think about alternatives.

Sarah: Fania, you told me when we
talked last year that your work on restorative justice actually came
about after you went through a personal transition period in the
mid-1990s, when you decided to shift gears.

Fania: I reached a
point where I felt out of balance from all of the anger, the fighting,
from a kind of hypermasculine way of being that I had to adopt to be a
successful trial lawyer. And also from around 30 years of the
hyperaggressive stance that I was compelled to take as an activist—from
being against this and against that, and fighting this and fighting
that.

Intuitively, I realized that I needed an infusion of more
feminine and spiritual and creative and healing energies to come back
into balance.”

(H/T Sherise Bright)

Fania Davis on #SelfCare “I reached a point where I felt out of balance from all of the anger, the fighting, from a kind of hypermasculine way of being that I had to adopt to be a successful trial lawyer. And also from around 30 years of the hyperaggressive stance that I was compelled to take as an activist—from being against this and against that, and fighting this and fighting that.Intuitively, I realized that I needed an infusion of more feminine and spiritual and creative and healing energies to come back into balance.”