“We sought to bring together a cross-section of restorative justice practitioners, theorists and innovators,” said , co-director of the Zehr Institute and the project’s leader. “Some of the invitees were world-recognized in the restorative justice field, but others were invited to ensure that diverse and often-unheard voices would be represented.”

One-third of the 36 participants were from populations that are under threat socially and economically in their regions of the world. The genders were equally represented. One person was under age 21, though two other young adults had been expected to attend.

Conversing about RJ’s ‘revolutionary intent’

The idea behind the unusual mixture of invitees was to foster provocative conversation about the possibilities for restorative justice (RJ), particularly for addressing structural injustices, said Stauffer.

In the prospectus for the three-year project submitted to the funder, , the organizers wrote: “On the social margins, there is growing research and experimentation with RJ as a tool for addressing structural harms and injustices. This project will explore and document these emerging practices in order to recapture the revolutionary intent of RJ.”

The organizers called attention in their prospectus to what they viewed as the danger of RJ settling into a “social service practice” centering on “repair at the micro-interpersonal level.” Instead, they wished to highlight the ways that RJ can “provide a coherent framework for transforming macro-social structures that cause harm.”

Aware that many of the 36 attendees at the first consultation would not have prior relationships with each other, the organizers devoted about half of the five days to exercises and facilitated conversations designed to establish trust and a common basis for exploring future possibilities. Senior graduate students at 91����Ƶ’s served as facilitators for the process.

Tough questions

First, the attendees prepared a history line of RJ, then they explored identity, power and privilege in the field. On the third day, they embarked on a discussion of best practices.

“We accepted the challenge of bringing together a highly diverse group, especially given that many of the participants are international leaders in the field, [being] accomplished researchers, authors, practitioners and facilitators in their own right,” Stauffer said.

“The challenge was heightened because the group grew beyond the original envisioned size of 20 to 25,” he added. “We needed to go well beyond 25 to have a true cross-section of voices, but it was difficult to develop coherence among three dozen people with strong opinions, especially in only five days.”

Yet the participants were largely positive in their final evaluations, he said, indicating that they had not regretted investing a workweek in wrestling with each other over tough questions, such as the extent to which RJ should be viewed as a social movement, as opposed to simply a set of restorative practices.

Stauffer did not pretend to be neutral on this last point. In his opening remarks to the group, he referred to the U.S. penal reform movement having been “co-opted.” In contrast, he said he hopes RJ continues to grow into a social movement in North America, with the aim of “transforming deep structural conflicts and injustices.” Toward this end, North Americans have much to learn from their international brothers and sisters about “large-scale applications” of RJ, he said.

Agreement on RJ’s core values

For a social movement to be successful, Stauffer told the group, it requires political opportunity, resource mobilization, a framing message, and critical mass (or a “tipping point”).

On the last day, in a final small-group presentation, a participant observed that the 36 attendees had largely agreed during the week on RJ’s core values, but not necessarily on how to practice restorative justice.

This first consultation will be followed next year by a public conference attended by up to 120 people. Next time, Stauffer said, his organizing team will work to create a conference format that moves participants more quickly into discussions on the future of the field, with a view of moving into a research and writing phase in the final year of the project.

Participants in the consultation

The 36 participants were:

1. Aaron Lyons, Fraser Region Community, Justice Initiatives, Canada
2. Ali Gohar, Just Peace Initiatives, Pakistan
3. Barb Toews, University of Washington Tacoma / Designing Justice+Designing Spaces, USA
4. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 91����Ƶ
5. Brenda E. Morrison, Centre for Restorative Justice, Simon Fraser University, USA
6. Carl Stauffer, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 91����Ƶ
7. Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Center for Restorative Justice, Suffolk University, USA
8. Catherine Bargen, Restorative Justice Coordinator Crime Prevention and Victim Services Division, Government of British Columbia, Canada
9. Dan Van Ness, Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Prison Fellowship International, USA

10. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 91����Ƶ and Atlanta (Ga.) consultant, USA
11. Fania Davis, executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
12. Cameron Simmons, youth worker with Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
13. Gerry Johnstone, University of Hull, UK
14. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 91����Ƶ
15. Jeanette Martinez, Circle of Justice LLC, New Mexico, USA
16. Jennifer Graville , Community Conferencing Program, KBF Center for Conflict Resolution (Md.), USA
17. Jodie-Ann (Jodie) Geddes, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 91����Ƶ
18. Josh Bacon, James Madison University (Va.), USA
19. , 91����Ƶ
20. Katia Ornelas, Independent Consultant, Mexico
21. , (STAR), 91����Ƶ
22. Kay Pranis, Circle Trainer, USA
23. Kim Workman, Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria, University of Wellington, New Zealand
24. Linda Kligman, Vice President for Advancement, International Institute for Restorative Practices, USA
25. Lorenn Walker, Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, USA
26. Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Mennonite Central Committee, USA
27. Mark Umbreit, Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of Minnesota, School of Social Work, USA
28. Matthew Hartman, Clackamas County Juvenile Department, Restorative Justice Coalition of Oregon, NW Justice Forum, USA
29. Mulanda Jimmy Juma, Africa Peacebuilding Institute, St. Augustine College of South Africa
30. Najla El Mangoush, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, 91����Ƶ
31. Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation, USA
32. Seth Lennon Weiner, Porticus, New York, USA
33. sujatha baliga, Impact Justice, USA
34. Susan Sharpe, Advisor on Restorative Justice, Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame, USA
35. Theo Gavrielides, The IARS International Institute and the Restorative Justice for All Institute, UK
36. , Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), 91����Ƶ

The facilitators were led by project manager , and included CJP graduate students Janine Aberg, South Africa; Michael McAndrew, USA; Jordan Michelson, USA; Mikhala Lantz-Simmons, USA; and Ahmed Tarik, Iraq.

A former Virginia prisoner studied with peacebuilders from around the world in a May course, “Restorative Justice: The Promise, the Challenge.” In a June course, “Looking Through Both Lenses: Restorative Justice Through the Eyes of Victims and Offenders,” that student told his experiences to learners who also heard a rape survivor

I am with a group of men in prison. We are in a seminar I have been leading for some weeks. Most are many years into serving life sentences.

One young man, however, expects to be released soon.

We get to talking about justice.

The Crusaders Quartet remembered how to get the most out of singing around one microphone during a “reliving radio” segment at a celebration of 85 years of Young Peoples Christian Association at 91����Ƶ (l. to r.): Aaron King, Eugene Souder, Paul Swarr, Roy Kreider. Photo by Matt Styer

The gathering – part of homecoming and family weekend – was emceed by John R. Martin, YPCA president in 1953 and ’54. Among many other facts, he noted that the “Y,” as it is affectionately known, is the longest running student-led group in the school’s history.

“Perhaps at this anniversary celebration it behooves us to ask ‘Why?’ of the Y,” noted Carmen Schrock-Hurst, YPCA co-president 1980-81. “Why,” she wondered, “when there is pressure to study and work to pay the tuition bills, and infinite opportunities to socialize and participate in extra- curricular activities – why do students consistently continue to chose to give of their time and money to keep alive the Y?”

Belief in God’s Word

The answer, she said, is at the heart of what makes 91����Ƶ unique: a belief in God’s word and the call to find one’s life by losing it. Y participants have exemplified and continue to model the “desire to have education be rooted in the real world and not tucked away in an ivory tower of isolationism,” she said.

Special among the invited guests were representatives at each table from area congregations known as “Y churches,” that is, churches started and/or sustained by participation of YPCA students over the years.

Noted author and speaker David Augsburger, shared how participation in YPCA in the late 1950s helped to form and shape him, and others, for later ministry. Currently a professor of pastoral care at Fuller Theological Seminary, he recalled a formative lesson in pastoral care that he learned through a YPCA contact.

He recalled a walk around a country block in the cold rain with a man from his Y church whose wife had recently died. “I felt ashamed,” Augsburger recalled, “because I could find no words to offer the grieving man. But I came to realize it was enough to simply walk with him, soaked to the bones, in silence.”

‘Sincere desire to serve the church’

“The shape and focus of YPCA has been remolded from time to time, but the sincere desire to serve the church and others in the name of Jesus remains firm,” reflected campus pastor Brian Martin Burkholder after the event. “Students involved in the current YPCA commissions are expressing their faith in passionate ministry, service and outreach.”

Current Y commissions, or programs, include: Saturday adoption, grandparent adoption, prison ministries team, Y-church teams, and spring break Y-trips. More information about them is available on the campus ministries section of 91����Ƶ’s website, www.emu.edu.

Copies of an eight-page, full-color booklet about YPCA’s 50 years is available on request while supplies last from alumni@emu.edu.

As religious pacifists, we have grieved deeply – with the rest of the world – over the images of dehumanization that have emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison. We want to avert our eyes from those images and tell ourselves that these horrendous abuses did not really happen.

But they did happen. And, anguished as we are, we must face those realities. And what shall be our response?

The powers that be are preparing to investigate and mete out punishments to individuals deemed to have been involved. And indeed, individuals must be called upon to take responsibility for their own actions – even in war. The Nuremberg Principles and others have established that. At the same time, many signs suggest that a whole system up the chain of command not only permitted, but encouraged harsh treatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners.

Take, for example, Pfc. Lynndie England, the young woman whose face has appeared on some of these photos of abuse. She will be prosecuted and most likely punished for her offensive behavior.

But does this behavior make Private England an evil person? From all reports, she was a fun loving, adventuresome young person not much different from all of our daughters and sisters. As people of faith, we choose to believe that within Lynndie England, as within all persons, resides the spark of the divine.

The same goes for each of the Iraqi prisoners in those photos. Regardless of their histories – and reports suggest at least some were just innocents scooped up during military sweeps – we choose to believe that the divine presence lives within each of them, too. Have some of them done evil things? Perhaps so. Given the absence of fair trials, we don’t really know. But even if they have, we cannot think of them as evil persons any more than we can think of Lynndie England as an evil person.

And that’s where the logic of war becomes so grievous.

We label each other as “terrorist” or “infidel,” or “good guy” and “bad guy,” with the assumption that it is appropriate to kill the “bad guy.” If we arrogate the right to kill, it is inevitable that many other dehumanizing abuses will ensue.

Before the United States launched “the optional war” in Iraq, practitioners of nonviolence were advocating concrete alternatives that would have sought to depose Saddam Hussein without war. One plan called for a massive humanitarian assistance program to the Iraqi people while launching a campaign to declare Hussein a war criminal and to carry out even more rigorous arms inspections throughout the country. Of course, many of us nonviolent activists were dismissed as being hopelessly naive.

But is the logic of warfare and occupation really wise? Does it really make sense that we can bomb neighborhoods, storm into people’s homes at night, imprison thousands in degrading conditions without charge, and then assume that these people will love us? Where does the greater naivete lie? Do we really believe that we have created a safer and more stable world because we launched a war in Iraq?

We worked with a relief agency among farmer refugees in Vietnam for five years during the war there. Our home was just five miles from the village of My Lai, where more than 400 villagers were slaughtered on a March morning in 1968. My Lai was that war’s Abu Ghraib. Unhappily, we learned that the massacre in My Lai, while possibly the largest of its kind in that war, was far from an isolated case.

Do we blame the individual soldiers who participated in those war crimes? Again, there must be personal accountability and responsibility. But those soldiers were forced to serve among a people whose language and customs they barely knew. Without intimate knowledge of the society, they could not know who was friend and who was enemy. So many became fearful, if not contemptuous, of all Vietnamese people. Little wonder that atrocities took place. It is the logic of war. It is naive to think it will be otherwise.

Today, most US officials and commentators, while condemning the abuses revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison, speak in terms of finding ways to fix the system so these abuses will not happen again.

The need is deeper. We need to understand that if we choose the option of war, abuses will inevitably follow. It is the very nature of war. Indeed, war itself is abuse.

Earl Martin and Pat Hostetter Martin worked with the Mennonite Central Committee in peace and development programs for 25 years. Ms. Martin is now codirector the Summer Peacebuilding Institute of the 91����Ƶ in Harrisonburg, Va.