The Little Book Of Transformative Community Conferencing

When conflicts become ingrained in communities, people lose hope. Dialogue is necessary but never sufficient, and often actions prove inadequate to produce substantial change. Even worse, chosen actions create more conflict because people have different lived experiences, priorities, and approaches to transformation. So what’s the story? In The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing, David Anderson Hooker offers a hopeful, accessible approach to dialogue that: Integrates several practice approaches including restorative justice, peacebuilding, and arts Creates welcoming, non-divisive spaces for dialogue Names and maps complex conflicts, such as racial tensions, religious divisions, environmental issues, and community development as it narrates simple stories Builds relationships and foundations for trust needed to support long-term community transformation projects And results in the crafting of hopeful, future-oriented visions of community that can transform relationships, resource allocation, and structures in service of communities’ preferred narratives. The Little Book Transformative Community Conferencing will prove valuable and timely to mediators, restorative justice practitioners, community organizers, as well as leaders of peacebuilding and change efforts. It presents an important, stand-alone process, an excellent addition to the study and practice of strategic peacebuilding, restorative justice, conflict transformation, trauma healing, and community organizing. This book recognizes the complexity of conflict, choosing long-term solutions over inadequate quick fixes. The Transformative Community Conferencing model emerges from the author’s thirty years of practice in contexts as diverse as South Sudan; Mississippi; Greensboro, North Carolina; Oakland, California; and Nassau, Bahamas.

Restorative justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is helping restore prisoners' sense of humanity while holding them accountable for their actions. Toews, with years of experience in prison work, shows how these practices can change prison culture and society. Written for an incarcerated audience, and for all those who work with people in prison, this book also clearly outlines the experiences and needs of this under-represented part of our society. A title in The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series.

In our era of mass incarceration, gun violence, and Black Lives Matters, a handbook showing how racial justice and restorative justice can transform the African-American experience in America. This timely work will inform scholars and practitioners on the subjects of pervasive racial inequity and the healing offered by restorative justice practices. Addressing the intersectionality of race and the US criminal justice system, social activist Fania E. Davis explores how restorative justice has the capacity to disrupt patterns of mass incarceration through effective, equitable, and transformative approaches. Eager to break the still-pervasive, centuries-long cycles of racial prejudice and trauma in America, Davis unites the racial justice and restorative justice movements, aspiring to increase awareness of deep-seated problems as well as positive action toward change. Davis highlights real restorative justice initiatives that function from a racial justice perspective; these programs are utilized in schools, justice systems, and communities, intentionally seeking to ameliorate racial disparities and systemic inequities. Chapters include: Chapter 1: The Journey to Racial Justice and Restorative Justice Chapter 2: Ubuntu: The Indigenous Ethos of Restorative Justice Chapter 3: Integrating Racial Justice and Restorative Justice Chapter 4: Race, Restorative Justice, and Schools Chapter 5: Restorative Justice and Transforming Mass Incarceration Chapter 6: Toward a Racial Reckoning: Imagining a Truth Process for Police Violence Chapter 7: A Way Forward She looks at initiatives that strive to address the historical harms against African Americans throughout the nation. This newest addition the Justice and Peacebuilding series is a much needed and long overdue examination of the issue of race in America as well as a beacon of hope as we learn to work together to repair damage, change perspectives, and strive to do better.

The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White. Rethinking globalization through music / Bob W. White 1: Structured encounters The musical heritage of slavery : from Creolization to "world music" / Denis-Constant Martin My life in the bush of ghosts : "world music" and the commodification of religious experience / Steven Feld A place in the world : globalization, music, and cultural identity in contemporary Vanuatu / Philip Hayward Musicality and environmentalism in the rediscovery of Eldorado : an anthropology of the Raoni-Sting encounter / Rafael Jose? de Menezes Bastos 2: Mediated encounters "Beautiful blue" : Rara?muri violin music in a cross-border space / Daniel Noveck World music producers and the cuban frontier / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant Trovador of the Black Atlantic : Laba Sosseh and the Africanization of Afro-Cuban music / Richard M. Shain 3: Imagined encounters Slave ship on the infosea : contaminating the system of circulation / Barbara Browning World music of today / Timothy D. Taylor The promise of world music : strategies for non-essentialist listening / Bob W. White.

This book examines a victim-offender dialogue program that offers victims of severe violence an opportunity to meet face-to-face with their incarcerated offenders. Using interview data, it follows the harrowing stories of crime and violence, ultimately moving beyond story-telling to provide both an accessible analysis of restorative justice and evidence that the program has significantly helped the victims. It also looks at how the program has impacted offenders, many of whom have also experienced positive changes in their lives in terms of creating greater accountability and greater victim empathy.

The New York Public Library staff answers questions remarkable and preposterous, with illustrations by Barry Blitt. Have you’ve ever wondered if you can keep an octopus in a private home? Do you spend your time thinking about how much Napoleon’s brain weighed? If so, Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers is the book for you. The New York Public Library has been fielding questions like these ever since it was founded in 1895. Of course, some of the questions have left the librarians scratching their heads... “In what occupations may one be barefooted?” “What time does a bluebird sing?” “What does it mean when you’re being chased by an elephant?” “What kind of apple did Eve eat?” “How many neurotic people are there in the U.S.?” In Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers, the staff of the NYPL has dug through the archives to find thoughtful and often witty answers to over one hundred of the oddest, funniest, and most whimsical questions the library has received since it began record-keeping over seventy-five years ago. One of The New Yorker’s best-known and beloved illustrators, Barry Blitt, has created watercolors that bring many of the questions hilariously to life in a book that answers, among others, the question “Does anyone have a copyright on the Bible?”

This book provides students and line managers in organizations with the means to create better scenarios and to use them to create winning business strategies. The book covers scenarios such as: economic outlooks; political environments; acquisitions; downsizing, and more.

A practical guide to listening well in restorative justice programs and any relationship. The Little Book of Listening is an introduction to and practical guide for listening as an emergent strategy for creating a transformed world. It presents radical listening as an essential macro-skill, one that is essential in forming “right relationships” with ourselves and others that are the necessary prerequisite to all lasting forms of social change. This is a collaborative book, constructed from the contributions of twenty-six listeners from a wide variety of backgrounds who have shared their strategies, experiences, inspiration, and hopes for a transformed world through listening justly and equitably. One of the primary goals of the book is to offer practical tools for readers to develop the skills to listen to themselves and others more effectively, drawing attention to the barriers and filters that so often distract us from listening. Another goal is to inspire readers through the personal stories of how just listening has impacted the authors and invite readers to adopt these approaches themselves. Finally, we aim for this text to be a resource for practitioners in the fields of justicebuilding and peacebuilding. Conversations are how humans explore new ideas and reach new understandings: paradigms shift and the world is changed by our communication with each other. Whatever processes are used, it is imperative that facilitators and participants listen deeply, humbly, and attentively, without ego or agenda, to themselves and to one another.