Communities for Restorative Justice. (Contact: stephen.simmer@gmail.com). Are you interested in developing your facilitation skills around accountability? Are you interested in contributing your warrior skills to the community? Are you interested in working for true justice that doesn’t involve wasting lives by incarceration? Are you interested in working with a community of volunteers that include women, lawyers, teachers, formerly incarcerated individuals, people of color, graduate students, and others? Stephen Simmer has been involved for about a year in a Massachusetts organization called C4RJ, Communities for Restorative Justice. He has been working individually with people accused of a crime in a layered accountability process, very compatible with what we do in our MKP circles. The responsible party sits in circle with the injured party, the arresting officer, and various community members and together they negotiate a way of getting back into integrity with the community. Stephen’s role has been working weekly with the responsible party in doing their restorative work. It’s been a very rich experience for him, and he wants my warrior brothers from MKP to join me in doing this. He believes that we have important gifts to offer, and he wants C4RJ to meet MKP and recognize the gold we can offer. If you are interested, step up. C4RJ is growing quickly and expanding into more work with adult offenders. Explore the website at www.c4rj.org. There is a training for new volunteers that begins in November, and there is a screening interview that needs to be done before then. If you want to sign up for an interview, here’s the link: https://airtable.com/embed/shrkmp55kKQHdiq5K.
