Youth - "March for Our Lives"
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- In the News
New York Times photo by E. Schaff (3/24/2018)
On Saturday (March 24, 2018) the "March for Our Lives" event was led by surviving students from the school shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School a month before. Eight hundred simultaneous marches took place all over the country and worldwide. Several hundred thousand young people and their supporters gathered in front of the Capital Building in Washington, DC. In clear, articulate, consistent and loud expressions, demonstrators demanded change in American politics which has placed easy access to high-capacity, military-style weapons ahead of the safety of kids. The youth who have been the targets of school shooters or have been victims of gun violence in our communities have found their voice and are no longer willing to tolerate political inaction on gun safety issues. They are speaking for themselves, telling their truth, and demanding change.
The speeches by Edna Lisbet Chavez and Emma Gonzalez provide two powerful examples. Many other speeches can be viewed on YouTube.
We need to hear their voices, feel their emotion and pain, understand their views, and join them in realizing their desire for a safe, just, and equitable society.
These youth should inspire us all. They are providing a hopeful message and pointing out a constructive path forward. Their message is rooted in a demand for respect and dignity for all people despite gender, racial, ethnic, sexual-orientation, social, economic and political differences. It is rooted in our shared humanity to place the lives of people ahead of things. It is rooted in an understanding that "justice", "peace" and "safety" are at their core relational in nature - it is how we live with and respond to one another. But that calls for honest, open, non-defensive, non-coercive dialogue in which we hear one another's stories and views. It calls for seeing the "other" as not so different from ourselves. This is what restorative justice values, principles and practices are about.
The NACRJ leadership applauds and supports these youth and their activism. We share their vision of a better society. We share their understanding that creating a better society and finding justice require a respect for our shared humanity and a willingness to listen to one another despite our differences. We share their call to address harms and injustices in meaningful ways that get at the heart of problems rather than focus on symptoms through symbolic actions such as zero-tolerance and "target hardening" schools with added security systems. We have done these things for nearly 25 years. Now we hear a call for arming teachers - a new symbolic act.
We should all be very proud of the youths in the March for Our Lives movement as they provide a very hopeful vision for the future.
Michael J. Gilbert, Executive Director
Minnesota’s restorative justice community lost a pioneer in January. Alice O. Lynch was a circle keeper, trainer, mentor, collaborator, kind councilor, founder and executive director of BIHA: Black Asian Hispanic and Indian Women in Action and friend to the restorative justice community. She worked on all levels of RJ: re-entry, juvenile diversion, school implementation, parenting support circles, crimes of severe violence conferencing, Circle keeping and training. She and her partner Gwen Jones provided 4 day circle trainings at least two times a year for a decade or more; always the training included supper: “Alice will cook,” the announcements read. Her home was open to ex-offenders and judges. She helped to develop the circles as part of the Minnesota Science Museum’s Race Exhibit, a model for discussion that was taken up by all museums that presented the exhibit. Alice traveled to each location across the nation to train the exhibit’s local circle keepers. Words fail to embody her spirit, mind and heart. 
In order to create a greater mood of civility, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told CNN reporters that she had to use a "talking stick" to help her colleagues learn the value of waiting until it is their turn to speak during recent negotiations over immigration and funding the federal government. The beautifully beaded talking stick was given to Collins by her friend, Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. It is originally from Africa and it is used to help control a debate in a meeting with lots of people and lots of emotional energy. 
In an effort to understand our collective power as peacemakers the United States, 
