SpiritLawPolitics Blog Kicks Off with Nanette Schorr

Editor's Note:

Nanette Schorr, Peter Gabel, and Doug Ammar will be sharing duties of blogging for the Project for Law, Politics and Spirituality. This is her first entry of many.

I’ve been asked to be the first writer to kick off the new spiritlawpolitics blog. I’m really happy to be contributing on a website dedicated to our new legal culture; a culture characterized by social justice, individual and social healing and community participation. The spiritlawpolitics initiative was founded back in 1996, as part of a larger “politics of meaning” movement whose aim was to create a “new bottom line” in American society which reflected these values. The Project’s focus is still on the importance of supporting such initiatives as they emerge in the society. Exciting changes are happening in the law, but they can only fully take root if they are grounded in changes in consciousness and social practice which embody these values on a larger social level.

One of the initiatives we’ve long admired and supported is the movement broadly called “restorative justice.” Restorative justice practices encompass many different experiences,, from individual victim offender mediations to community circles to truth and reconciliation commissions. And all embody that ingredient we’ve been exploring recently in the national conversation, the role of empathy and social context in the law. In my own work in a legal services office representing low income people in New York City, we’ve been trying to foster the use of these kinds of practices in the school system, so that students who offend disciplinary codes are kept connected to their school community in ways that don’t alienate them from the education system, and contribute to what has come to be called the “school to prison pipeline.”

Over a one year period the spiritlawpolitics initiative (which we call the Project for Integrating Spirituality Law & Politicxs or “PISLAP”) hosted a series of national conference calls with speakers / presenters who were making creative contributions in the movement to renew legal culture. One of those presenters was Sunny Schwartz, whose new book “Dreams from a Monster Factory” on her experiences with the criminal justice system and restorative justice practices has achieved national recognition.

Sunny met Peter Gabel, leader in the spiritlawpolitics movement, as a law student in 1980. Sunny was from the south side of Chicago, and her roots lay in criminal defense work and Prisoner Legal Services. Although Sunny valued her work, she became uncomfortable with what she experienced as a polarized situation between prisoners and jailers. She began to work inside the jail to create community, starting a literacy program. In the process she met Kay Pranis, a leader of the restorative justice movement, and learned about its principles. She also took notice of the longing of the sheriffs she worked with to create an environment characterized by hope, rather than despair. Her commitment became to taking on violence itself, and she began working with a dorm of violent offenders in the jail. In that open dorm setting, there were few external resources to contain the violence of both the criminal offenders and the guards. Over a 15 to 18 month period, Sunny pulled together about 40 people, including parents and friends of murder victims, former gang members, police, and representatives of faith based communities. She called it an offender restorative program, and her goal was to deconstruct the belief system that promoted violence. Of the 62 men in the dorm, half were in jail for domestic violence, and the others for stranger violence. But she didn’t focus on the offenders alone (many of whom were also survivors of crime). Her program also included a survivor restoration component. Each week surrogate victims came in to tell their story, to build empathy in those who heard it, and to empower themselves as well. The message was to feel what happened to me so you can feel yourself. But the program had a third component, which was equally important – community restoration. Sunny’s goal was to create the opportunity for all concerned to give back to the community. In that regard, the project tried to take on the culture of violence. Through theater, spiritual practices such as meditation, and anti violence messages at football games, the message was to teach men and boys to respect women and girls. In addition, there was an effort to give genuine hope to these men, through job placement assistance and ongoing support groups after they leave prison.

Sunny’s model had as its major building blocks many of the elements that I see as essential to social change – working with the individual as well as the community, not treating any one as the other, but being equally committed to the development and dignity of all, taking a strong stand against violence and oppression, and attending to the spiritual needs of all concerned.