“What Do You Need for Repair?” A Conversation with Jonathan Bradley

On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we continue our exploration of restorative justice with Jonathan Bradley, co-executive director of SEEDS Community Resolution Center. Drawing from years of experience in schools and communities, Bradley reflects on restorative justice not simply as a set of techniques, but as a practice that challenges the assumptions of punitive culture and invites people into accountability, repair, and human connection.

The conversation explores what it means to move beyond retribution, why restorative practices require participation and practice rather than rigid formulas, and how communities can rediscover their own capacity to address harm. We also reflect on the broader cultural roots of punishment, the importance of restoring our confidence in human beings, and the role of nonviolence in transforming conflict.

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Transcript with gratitude to Elizabeth High. . .

Stephanie Van Hook: Well, greetings and good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I'm here in the studio with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we're from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California. Well, on this show today, we're going to continue along the path of restorative justice that we started last episode. Our last episode was with Dominic Barter, who's one of the really key influential thought leaders in the field of restorative justice, spending 30 years in the favelas and Rio de Janeiro and moving on from there with really a pathway of trying to remember our innate wisdom that leads to restorative processes; that justice is a part of us and we can do it ourselves. And then restorative justice as a field has just exploded in the best way possible all over, drawing from indigenous wisdom and also some forms of orienting toward a standardization of the processes too. And sometimes it's working with courts, sometimes it's taking a training where you're doing level one, two, three, and sometimes you're just trying to rediscover your innate wisdom and coming in with it with "I don't know."

So on this show today, we're going to be hearing from somebody who has more of a standardization approach to the field and a lot of wisdom to share and a lot of experience to share on that. I think a lot of the work of restorative justice is deeply embedded into the work of nonviolence, Michael I'll bring you in on this, restorative justice to me is really where the rubber hits the road, I keep saying where the rubber hits the road for nonviolence, that you can study nonviolence and think about it and practice it. But when you start going beyond retributive thinking in your mind, so then you have to heal from that. And then you start noticing all of the retribution and all of the vengeance that's part of our culture. You start to realize that all of this is feeding into the violent structures that we have. And so one of the most radical things that we can do is then to reject that kind of media, to reject that kind of thinking, whether you want to use the word reject or transform or whatever, but distance yourself from it and start to find other ways, get curious about other ways of solving our problem because if we want to end the structures of violence that are part of our world, they thrive, or, they don't thrive, they run on retribution; everything from the prison system to punishing children to immigration reform in this country to war. Yeah. Michael. 

Michael Nagler: That was very well said, Stephanie. I'll only add one thing, and that is that restorative justice could be looked upon as a transition, a pivot from a retributive world to a world where conflicts hardly ever arise. Everybody has what they need. You know, distant future, ideal, conflicts will always be there, but they can be adjusted almost as soon as they arise. And restorative justice is based on a principle of unity and it enables us to shift out of that culture of alienation and culture of separateness. That's the real point here. 

Stephanie: Yeah, I think that deep down what we know about restorative justice is that it's a paradigm shift where we feel that we have the wisdom to resolve our conflicts. I don't want to say differences even, but we want to resolve our conflicts in peaceful ways, in ways that take care of everybody's needs, in ways that do not depend on punishment. 

Michael: And they do not depend on an external agency with unimpeachable power over us. You've stressed this and I think very wisely that it restores our confidence and our focus onto our own resources. And we grow instead of being helpless pawns. 

Stephanie: Yeah. And in the conversation that I'm about to share with Jonathan Bradley, I'll do a quick intro for him in a minute, he really emphasizes that while we have processes that we can draw from and those are available, that we can't also be too rigid with those processes either because rigidity and this idea of outcomes and work, as we say at Metta, "work" versus work, right? That sometimes violence, sometimes our actions "work" in the short term but they never work in the long term when we're using violence.

And so we want to be mindful of language that we use about how we talk about restorative justice, that "it's better to use because the outcomes are better." Well, that's not the point of it either, right? The point is sort of rediscovering who we are, rediscovering what we're capable of. And when we have a goal at the end that, you know, "I'm going to get what I want and it's going to work for me," we put a limitation on the process. We trust that it's going to work. We know that in the long term that this is going to do good work. Yeah. I'm getting kind of stumbling around work here, and you're looking at me with confusion and fear. 

Michael: No, I'm fine. I just wanted to mention something that occurred to me. We have these billboards all over the area here where the slogan is "Law Tigers," and a big picture of a snarling tiger. And I was thinking, what would be the restorative equivalent? It would be "Law Elephants," gentle powerful animals.

Stephanie: Law Kittens

Michael: Law Kittens, well they're a little too fragile, though I dearly love them.

Stephanie: And they have claws, you know. 

Michael: Yeah, claws and teeth. Yeah. I got swiped by one of our cats yesterday.

Stephanie: All right. Back to the show. Back to the show. So I want to introduce Jonathan Bradley. He's a practicing mediator and restorative justice specialist, and he's the co-executive director of SEEDS Community Resolution Center. Their website is seedscrc.org. And they're a wonderful organization. Jonathan just came on brand new as they're redesigning, reorienting the organization in their work. And so they're sort of fresh start, fresh new co-executive director. And he's pretty amazing. So here's our conversation with Jonathan Bradley. 

Jonathan Bradley: I got a job working for the Oakland Unified School District as a contractor. And at that time, we were training middle school students to be peer mediators in the Oakland public schools. And so there was a peer mediation program that we had there at that time. While we were doing that and being in these middle schools, what I found was that while mediation is really a wonderful process to utilize, there were some limitations with regards to it, mainly the size, the number of the students who were getting involved in things. Large groups of students were involved in lots of different stuff. And so it basically needs something a little bit more dynamic than just a mediation model. 

And I was invited to, at that time, R-JOY, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, for training teachers, administrators, also staff in the Oakland Public School District. And so there was a couple of people at my school site who were trained in restorative practices, restorative justice at the time. And I was invited to a couple of their processes that they were holding. And these processes were very dynamic and involved lots of different kids. And I was kind of like, this is something else that I need to actually add to the list of services that I'm providing. So not just mediation, but something a little bit more dynamic, which can involve large groups of kids, like circles and things like that. So I got invited to some of those. And it was really interesting to see how the facilitators held the space for the students to talk about all kinds of issues and things that they were having and then to also, you know how you learn something at a training, then you bring it back to your work site? And it's not that you're applying exactly what you learned at the training, but some of the things that they do at those trainings, you can definitely apply immediately back on the work site. And with these trainings in specific, because they're dealing with large groups of kids. I'm talking like 10, 15 students. And so I heard that R-JOY were holding trainings. And I also knew that there were at least two people at my school site who had had those trainings, were utilizing that resource sort of on site right there. And I got a chance to be involved in it. 

And then I heard about another training that they were having. And I knew that the person who was scheduled to go to that training wasn't going to go to that training. And so I just inserted myself and I just showed up at the training. Because I'm kind of a little bit like that. Not a lot like that, but it's sort of like, you know, this is super interesting, I want to know more about it. So I'm going to let them tell me, "no, you can't come to this one. You have to come to the next one. You have to pay you to do something like that." But none of that happened. They're like, "yeah, come on in." And so I got to sit with Fania Davis, who actually was the executive director of R-JOY, who brought restorative practices to Oakland Unified School District. And another woman named Rita Alfred. These are just powerful people in this work. who I got to train with, who trained me. 

And I will tell you this, like going to that training for those, that was a Saturday and a Sunday, I believe, and then coming right back to school on that Monday and applying everything that I had learned from that training immediately in the setting, meaning that I couldn't have given you a definition of restorative practices at that time, didn't know what that was. I'm sure they ran over it at the training, but all I remember is the things that they did at the training. And so I just immediately came back into the school using circle practice and exposing the students to a whole new way of thinking about conflict, harm, you know, and even punishment or the lack thereof and why that's important to think about those things. 

And Oakland at that time, I'm not sure about now, I haven't been in Oakland schools in quite a while, but at that time it was really just raw, brand new and really dynamic. And Oakland was just kind of picking it up and using it where they felt like they could get some traction for the work. And at West Oakland Middle School, which is where I was at at the time, the principal there is, because you need principals and administrators on site to actually be able to, who are not only interested, but supportive in utilizing those practices. And so if you don't have that in place, then there's nothing you can really do too much. And so at that time, the principals, vice principals, and even the teachers were really instrumental at supporting restorative practices at their school site, especially at West Oakland Middle School, where I was at. And then a couple of other schools where some colleagues worked at too at that time. 

Stephanie: What were some of the ways that the administrators were brought along in this process? Because when we proposed restorative practices here in Petaluma, we were invited to a meeting with teachers and administrators to present, and they just really felt firmly that punishment is what works. And we don't agree. We don't agree at all. We felt like it definitely fell flat because of the worldview of the administrators and teachers. And so how did you convince them? There's good evidence, right? There's excellent evidence. 

Jonathan: Yeah, evidence shmevidence. I think what continues to work for me is to just sort of bring who you are to the work. And so what you're saying is true, too. It was just the schools that Oakland targeted to have this work at those certain sites. So administrators at those sites that we were at wanted this work there. And so that's why it was there at those sites. Other school sites, it wasn't there because administrators didn't want it there. One of the first things to do is to have the administrators and the administration team to go through a training of the restorative practices and also an understanding of, the trainers have to understand what they're actually training people to do in these situations. 

One of the key takeaways for the work is that, again, it's couched in the actual length of the work. So you say restorative practices. Well, that's just like saying basketball or football or better yet, for me, it's like saying like this pen here that I'm holding. There it is. I'm sure that this is a powerful instrument, but if I drop it down there and it's not going to do anything for me, it's not going to work for me. I have to first know that it probably possesses some power to it and then I have to have somebody teach me how to actually hold it and then I have to practice with it and I have to use it, and over time I become good at it and it works for me and it works for everybody. So practice is something you have to first understand and want to, you know, grasp onto the idea or the ideology that this is interesting. And then somebody has to teach you how to utilize it. And then you have to pick it up and you have to do it. 

You have to practice. I'm practicing all the time every day. It's just like practicing anything else like language or walking. Everybody always says, you got to crawl before you can walk. And that's true. You got to– most, I think most, if not all, babies learn how to crawl before they can walk and still have to get up and do that little rocking thing before they can step off and so it's just taking baby steps like that and really going all the way back. One thing that you have to understand as a practitioner; we don't utilize the language of punitive justice. The language of punitive justice is "it worked" and "it didn't work," that's always within punitive justice. And so when someone tells me that it works, or let's say someone tells me RJ doesn't work, my reply, rebuttal to that is "are you working it, do you understand how this works and have you been using it, have you been practicing it?"  It's a practice: you have to not only think, it's got to start here in your head then it has to flow through your body and you have to walk it, talk it, breathe it ,and all those other things that you do with things like that.

And so I think that's for me what keeps me in this work is never utilizing or being subjected to, even when the students that I work with and adults around me, "so well that didn't work" or "that worked," but sort of as a practitioner steering away from the measuring tools that sometimes people try to superimpose on the work. And I understand why because it is a new and emerging field of study and practice and so it's just going to go through those growing pains until everything is kind of, you know sometimes people talk about "Oh, you don't need anything written down. You don't need anything like this." And so even amongst practitioners, there's a hesitancy to standardize the practices. I'm not one of those people. I believe the practices should be standardized, must be standardized in order to be sustainable. They have to be standardized in our own restorative standardization, not in a punitive standardization way. 

Stephanie: So when people hear restorative justice, they might have a lot of different ideas of what that means. What does it mean to you besides the practice? Like if just kind of restorative justice 101, where do we get started? How do we shift our thinking into a restorative framework? 

Jonathan: So that takes, again, it takes practice too. It's about, again, like you said, shifting your thoughts as opposed, to an incident happens, what should you do? "Well, I could cut their head off." That's one thing you could do. What else could you do? Well, what else could we do? "Maybe, you know, we could talk about it here." I think that's something else you could do, too. So I think it's really thinking about things differently, sort of in the Einstein sort of Theory of Relativity sort of ideology where, you know, if you keep trying to solve something the same way, again, that's just not the way to solve something is by thinking about it and doing it the same way. Because we all know that punitive justice works really well. That's why people keep killing people. Even in states where there's capital punishment, where people could go to jail and get the death penalty for killing somebody, people are still killing people. People are still breaking the law out there because that works so well. Traffic signals and signposts and all that works so well, but it just keeps our jails full is what it does, whether it's working or not. It keeps money in that pocket. 

Okay, great. So, yeah, you can get into some deeper arguments around those types of things. I sort of try to stick to mine, which is where, and not to be facetious or anything, which is, yeah, thinking about restorative justice is thinking about doing something differently, depending on what the situation is. And then sometimes it really doesn't depend on what the situation is. I can tell you some of the most egregious stories that were dealt with in this way, because, ultimately, I've talked to people who are harmed in a lot of different ways, and ultimately people want to know what people were thinking. They want to talk to people. Why aren't we giving people who are victims of crime that opportunity to talk to the person who committed the crime against them. 

"What kind of senseless messes are we in here where you think that you know best? I'm telling you I want to talk to him and you're telling me you're keeping me from him and it's against the law to me to talk to him and you have no process set up for me to do that. What kind of madness is this? I'm the victim. I want to talk to him."

" Oh, you can't do it. Well, we can't have... "

"What? It happened to me. It didn't happen to you. I want to talk to him."

And so in situations like that where I've had situations where people have contacted SEEDS, wonderful story where the young man broke into this woman's house with his buddy, tell the story all the time. He went to juvenile hall he got arrested and went to juvenile hall did everything he was supposed to do, came back and he sat on the porch right across from the house that he had broken into and the woman would come out every day and she's like "I got to talk to him, SEEDS can you help me talk to this young man." So we set up a situation where they could get together, this is of course after the punitive stuff had already taken place and so after that we set up a situation to where they could talk to each other and the interesting thing to land the plane about the story was when he heard the impact of what he had done on a little girl who lived in the house that he broke into, he felt so bad because he has a little sister too and he would never want his sister to have felt like that. But you can't tell those stories when those things are taken away. And people can't really sit down and kind of, with a guided, held space, listen to each other, whatever the story is, whatever happened. And this is not rocket science. I mean, we're going into this —, You know, when you think about New Zealand and what goes on there and Australia and how they take these wonderful, beautiful practices, restorative justice, and they give people the option. They give you the options. "Do you get to decide what option? You want to go to jail? Okay, we can do that too. That's where you want to go. We'll just go to jail. No problem. You're choosing that though because you could have this other option where this person wants to sit and talk to you about what happened. You want to do that? That's much tougher than going to jail. I'm telling you that right now. You just ran over somebody's kid and killed him. It's much tougher than going to jail." 

Stephanie: That's really powerful. And I think that's part of the beauty of restorative practices and the restorative framework is how it changes us to see the humanity of one another in a way that retributive systems don't allow, is what you're reinforcing. And yet one of the big arguments that people would have or question marks or their hearts are nervous and closed off to restorative practices because they say, "how do you get accountability for harm?" So I'd love to hear how you answer that. Like, "I don't know if I want to get involved in restorative justice because I want this person to be held accountable for what they did." 

Jonathan: Oh, so the option would be on the person who was harmed, you're saying. And so, yeah, I think that if the person who's harmed does not want to be involved in something, then that's what they want. They get to choose because right now they actually don't get to choose. And even when they choose and say that, I've talked to people who have said that and they still want to know, "Well, what did he say? Why did he say he did it? You talked to him. Didn't you talk to him?" "Yeah, I talked to him." "Well, what did he say?" They still want to know. 

Stephanie: Do you feel that a restorative framework and restorative practices can help hold people accountable? Do you see that in your work? 

Jonathan: Yes, and parts of it definitely. We have something called a conference, which you may or may not be aware of. It's a little bit more of a dynamic meeting where there are people placed at this process who are the direct person who is impacted by it, their support, maybe professional people, maybe people like clergy, maybe business owners, community organizers, community people, so it's a really robust meeting and at that meeting the person who did the harm is given the opportunity to repair the harm in at least three or four or even more areas; the areas that the person directly asked to repair harm is with the person that they harmed, with their families, with the community, and also with themselves. Because whenever you commit harm, while you are harming someone else, you're also harming yourself. 

And so within that process, the accountability is not only on the person who harmed, but the people or the persons who were harmed. "What would you like this person to do to repair this with you?" And so a lot of times when we talk about things, a lot of times people don't think about that because nobody's ever asked them, "What does she need to do to repair this with you? What do you want them to do? What would you like them to do in a perfect world or in an imperfect world?" And so you get all kinds of ideas that come to people's head because people start to think. And so you have to think of repair. "Do you want them to go to jail for 10 years? Okay, that's what you want. And that's not really what you want, but maybe that is what you want. What else? What do you want for repair?" 

And those questions sometimes get left out because of those who think of restorative practices as a slap on the wrist. First of all, it's really hard for somebody to sit down across from somebody who you harmed. It's really hard. Second of all, it's almost even harder for that person who was harmed to think of what they need for repair because that's just something that just doesn't get talked about a lot. And so everybody has to think about repair and what that looks like. And it's not on me, the onus of repair as a facilitator. It's on the people who are directly impacted by what's going on. 

"What do you want for repair?" I'm not going to superimpose something into this, "I think that he should come over and cut your grass and wash your car for 10 days and that will repair it for you, I think." You get to say what you need for that person to repair it with you. And then you got to, person got to do that. "Can you do that?" " I can do that." "Who's going to monitor that?" And then people step up to monitor that. "Who's going to check in on that? Who's going to make sure that those things are happening?" So nothing gets left. And then who's going to reconvene and meet with the person who was harmed and says, "Did they do it? How you feel now? Do they need to do some more? Are you okay?" That sort of thing. So, where if you get arrested, go to jail, you get out, you go on.

Stephanie: What I'm learning from you is that there's so much choice involved in restorative practices and that seems to really excite you too. I see that becoming a common theme in what we're discussing is you have the choice. You have the choice. Whereas in another system, there's no choice involved, right? The law decides what's your choice.

Jonathan: Law says you got caught smoking in the boys' room and you get to get suspended for five days. That's the law. That's the rule. 

Stephanie: So there's something very human about restorative justice. It seems like that choice is really alive inside of you, and I wonder if you could say more about it. 

Jonathan: Well, I think for me it's just because of the work that I do and how I have to and love to sort of really hold to those principles in lots of different settings. I wouldn't say I'm the most restorative person in the world initially off hands or anything like that. I mean, things happen all the time. You know, I get cut off on the freeway just like everyone else.  I try not to honk my horn at people or anything like that, but I think about doing other things, but I don't engage in that kind of stuff.  For me, it's just really practicing this work and really bringing it in every day. 

To put it lightly, in certain environments, you have to spray yourself with sucker repellent before you get there because the suckers are just going to be on you all day about pulling and prodding and poking and nodding and all kinds of stuff like that and it's just kind of like, "Ok, well if that's what y'all want to do then y'all can go ahead and do it but I'm not going to change the way that I do things. This is what I do, and I believe in what I do, and I believe wholeheartedly in what I do, and just because you don't that's okay with me. You don't have to. I'm not even worried about you, I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I'm not trying to proselytize. I'm not a preacher or a teacher or any of those things. I'm a restorative practices practitioner. That's what I do. And I'm going to do that."

And it's been tested. It gets tested on a daily basis, almost like an hourly basis. I remember an old principal when I was here. Eventually, he had to leave it alone because he said to me, he said, "Well, you know, we had a circle. That didn't work. So Mr. Bradley, what did we do? Should we kick him out?" I was like, "hey, bro, that's your world. That's what you do over there so if you want restorative I got you all day we got all this all day; you want to do that you go ahead and do that man, that's your call that's what you got to do, but I don't want nothing to do with that. Don't come to me asking me if you're going to send somebody home for five days or ten days or whatever you're going to do. Do what you do. Do you want to circle? I got you restorative conversations all day." You know what I'm saying?  But yeah, and it's wonderful to not have to. 

And I do understand where, I mean, it's not that I don't understand where administrators and teachers, I completely understand their roles and stuff like that. You know, I would never want to put myself in a role like that, where I had to wear all these different kind of hats and stuff like that. And I know what the pressure is, especially on administrators, to use these practices. I mean, somebody gets hurt. Somebody gets cussed out or something. Something's got to happen, right? I mean, because that's what we send them to the office and they didn't do anything. Got to do something, right? He's got to do something. It's just, yeah, what is the something that you do? And so it's really nice to work in a district that I work at, a school here and the district has crafted, voted on unanimously in the past a resolution for utilizing restorative practices within this district. And that's new for a lot of school districts. Whether that means that we got work on the ground to do, yeah, of course we got work. There's always going to be work to do, but at least at the district level, they're saying that, hey, we support these practices here in our district. And it's really nice to say that, even though, you know, it's still a tough sell out here, you know. 

Stephanie: I think about how countercultural restorative practices are, too. I think that in media, politics, news media, entertainment media, retribution is all over the place. It's very rare to find restorative stories in those spaces. And then it starts to get to seed itself into people's minds that this is the way that we should be together, and even recently there was a decision about firing squads, like the escalation of, you know, retributive justice and the death penalty, like we're just gonna fire on people. Like this is, I mean, it's madness. How do you cope with the retributive model and everything that's around us with your light of knowledge that you're, you know, and spark that you're carrying knowing that restorative justice is so beautiful?

Jonathan: Yeah, I think these are, so without that, my job is boring. Without them, it's boring. I need them to be like that. I need to have that as part of my daily, you know, it would be boring any otherwise. If this was all like, can you imagine like this whole space that we're in this whole restorative, everything is cool you know, nobody does, everybody gets from a conference, everybody gets the circles, community building like that– I wouldn't have nothing to do and I'd have to find something else to do because everybody's already doing it you know, and I think the pleasure in it is that also this is working with people who you're bringing them along slowly, spoon feeding people the information and the ideology and just seeing where they're going to go with it and hope for the best. 

So for me, it's been wonderful to kind of see, working with some of the young people that I'm working with, and then have them come back around, bounce back, and want to be involved in this work at different levels and being able to support that at different times. That's been interesting. So I think, yeah, getting young people and older people this information, keeping it in their ear, keeping it relevant and just letting them know that there are alternatives out there and they have to make the choices when they go forward you know and everybody's got to decide what they're going to do and how they're going to deal with things in the world. 

Yeah, could it be a little bit less? I mean it probably could be a little bit less, but then it still would be boring if I didn't have people talking about me, wondering what I'm doing, whether it works or not, you know I love that too. I love that "it didn't work," the students are always going "it didn't work," you know and then I get to impart a little bit of information and bring it back down to the pencil or the computer and these other things that don't really work if you don't know how to work them and you don't practice them and change what you're thinking about doing. So either people are going to do that or they're not, but at least they listen to you for a little while and maybe something will click, who knows, because I think that sometimes there's a facade that goes up and I kind of understand that too. You know, teachers who utilize the practices in their classrooms but don't support the practice outwardly because the teachers union is against restorative practices and those sorts of things. So having those little bright spots is always just, sort of looking for those and how to highlight those and advance those a little bit more. So that's kind of me, you know.

Stephanie: It sounds like you're having a lot of fun because there's so much going on. You have a lot of work to do. We all do. Do you have any recommendations for any really great media about RJ or even not directly related, but you're like, "there it is. I see it." Maybe there's a film or a book or something that you've read that is like, "this shows it really well." I don't know.

Jonathan: It would be more of a conglomerate, sort of a hodgepodge of things from online and I always look at YouTube. And it's amazing that 10, even 15 years ago on YouTube, there was maybe one video on restorative practices. Now there are 100 videos. Not only that, the TED talks.  And that's just locally.  I always look outside the United States and to see what New Zealand's always doing.  I always try to stay abreast of what they're doing there and in Australia, how their really utilizing these practices and have actually tied them to their legal system. And I know our legal system is looking at that and they kind of mess around with a little bit. They have their options now in a lot of the youth courts and youth facilities. They have restorative practices or restorative justice options that they offer youth as opposed to other things that they have. So they have these programs. And so I've been around long enough to kind of see that happening and kind of continue to kind of look for What's on the cutting edge? What are people doing now? Oh, what is that? Transformative justice? Oh, that's so interesting. You can look at that and see what that's all about. Oh, that's great too, you know, and I don't think there's anything between me and the transformative justice folks of the ideology. I embrace transformative justice. I think it's very important to think about systems that people are involved in and how to address those systems in a restorative way at the system level. 

Stephanie: So there's lots out there. 

Jonathan: There's a lot of stuff going on out there.

Stephanie: Are there cases that you wouldn't take up at SEEDS? Like how do you triage what you'd be willing to do? 

Jonathan: Yeah, you know, I'm watching this show called Monarch right now. So if Godzilla and King Kong had a problem, I think we'd probably have to push that down the line a little ways to somebody else. But other than that, we're ready to do just about anything restorative people want to do. And we have a lot of different options. Some of them were mentioned as opposed to modalities, the processes, restorative practices that we have in place to pretty much address just about anything people want to talk about. People want to get together and sit and deal with it. The people that I, not only myself, I work around a wonderful, wonderful group of individuals who are highly trained, very skilled at this work. I'm, of course, speaking to you as the Co-ED of an organization, but the people who are forming that, our board right now, are all just absolutely wonderful practitioners of this work as well. And not only that, I have other colleagues who I'm in touch with. And so we can find somebody somewhere to help you out if that's what you need, you know, whether workshop, trainings or restorative services, yeah. 

Stephanie: Jonathan, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you. I appreciate what you're doing and I appreciate your sharing with us. 

Jonathan: Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks for reaching out. Love it. 

Stephanie: That was Jonathan Bradley. He's the co-executive director of SEEDS and their website is seedscrc.org and you can go to the website, learn more about restorative justice and also take a training. They have a number of trainings coming up and they also tailor trainings to your organization or community or whatever you need. They're there to, as he said, talk to you all day about restorative justice, that's what they're there for, so it's wonderful to know that this resource exists in this community and also they work with anybody all over so that's the power of being online too, so a big thank you to Jonathan Bradley.

For those of you just tuning in, you're here at Nonviolence Radio. And let's turn now to our Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler. Michael, welcome back. 

Michael Nagler: Thanks a lot, Stephanie. And as always, I'm very enthusiastic about the variety and intensity and spread of the nonviolent actions that are going on in our world today. And I want to just reemphasize how critical it is to uplift these events because it will help to break through that miasma that you were referring to in the conversation we just had with Jonathan Bradley, that people do not see an alternative and they just passively get pulled into retributive and then violent stances toward life. So lifting up alternatives I think is an absolutely critical thing we can do to enliven our culture and open the path to a better future. 

Now, tomorrow, in fact, there's a big protest march that's being planned. It's called All Roads Lead to the South. And the issue there is gerrymandering. The protesters are against gerrymandering and other forms of election fraud. A very, very central thing to do. And I want to point out that this very issue, election fraud, precipitated the people power revolutions across Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world. So it is the right issue or a right issue to focus on. 

And similarly, in Israel, there have been protests against attacks on democracy by the Netanyahu regime, which shows once again that anti-democracy and violence go together and that this affects both our domestic life and our foreign policy. So there really is no such thing as being a democratic society with fairness and justice for all within our own country or whatever boundaries we're looking at and then exporting violence elsewhere. To do violence towards others is to do violence towards oneself. So that's, again, another good example of that basic principle, which would be so helpful if people were aware of it.

I've been thinking recently as a matter of fact of what would an ideal educational system look like if we had one. Because, you know, that was my background, I was an educator. And one thing I think I would do if I were the president of something would be to instill people with a much better, much higher image of what a human being is and what our potentials are and then to completely rewrite history with tremendous examples of nonviolent action that have gone on all over the world and that we tend not to hear about. 

So recently on another front, going abroad now, another flotilla has been blocked and this time it was blocked 1,000 kilometers from Gaza, which is strictly illegal, but that doesn't seem to bother Israel at all and they get away with it every time and this time a couple of activists were arrested and mistreated. And I want to point out the principle again that the flotillas are putting Israel in what's called a dilemma. So this is a dilemma action. If they let the flotilla in, it breaks up their blockade. If they don't let them in, they look bad. Though, of course, they don't seem to worry very much about that. But the thing that's new now is that the Israelis are escalating. Blocking a flotilla and arresting people and mistreating them at such a distance from their goal is an escalation on their part. And normally what we try to do in nonviolence is escalate our nonviolence. In a way, that's happening in the sheer outpouring of support. There was something like 200 activists on board this flotilla, if I'm not mistaken. If you want to know more about it, you can always follow Greta Thunberg. Very good reportage and just the right kind of passion.

So let me cycle now back to more local events, in this case, Wisconsin. There was a very dramatic, I just love this, there was a very dramatic nonviolent raid carried out by a thousand people, the raid of a beagle breeding and research facility there in Wisconsin. They rescued 1,500 beagles. That's an average of 1.5 beagles per protester. And two of the animal welfare organizations that were involved stepped up to pay for and rehome the dogs with willing families. So it is a powerful success story. and I always want to remind people of what the Roman philosopher, actually Greek philosopher, functioning in Rome, first century of our era, Porphyry, said that if we mistreat animals, we will mistreat one another because it is the same disregard for life in them and in us. Stephanie?

Stephanie: Oh, I love this story about the beagles because it demonstrates so well the power of nonviolent direct action as what Gandhi would call an optical experiment. He called it an ocular demonstration so that either you're participating in it or you're watching it. And it's really part of their technique and strategy to do these actions and then get a lot of media coverage for it because then that starts to change the public's opinion of the people who aren't involved. And this one just went viral. 

But it had been in the works for years, not only started with one guy going in to rescue a beagle a few years ago to turning into court cases, pressure every single day on that place until years later, like 3 years later I think, that they were able to have this rescue and it also shows, look not everybody has to be doing the same things, those people who are ready to foster the dogs had to be open hearted and willing to do that in the same way that the people who are doing the direct action had to do that, and then everyone in between, right? This action was successful because the diversity of people's availability and what they can do and so, OK, see, obviously I'm excited about this because I just think it demonstrates nonviolence so well. And I'm happy to share that in our next interview, it'll be with Zoe Rosenberg, who was part of this action, who was put in solitary confinement for chicken rescue in Petaluma. I mean, so I'm super excited to get to just honor and raise up this campaign. So I'll stop talking now, Michael, because I could just keep going on and on about how wonderfully perfect this action was in terms of showing how you use strategy and principle and patience and impatient patience and how it benefits our connection with other living beings. See, I can't stop. All right, stop me. Turn off my mic. Here it goes. Before I talk about more beagles.

Michael: No, that was wonderful, Stephanie. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Stephanie: All right, I'll say one more thing, Michael. 

Michael: Okay. Why am I not surprised? 

Stephanie: This action makes me think of that study that we talk about, about loneliness, too, that "begonias are good, budgies are better, beagles are best." All of these living beings support our own awakening to the interconnection of life. And there's this study that shows that people who take care of a begonia come alive, do better in their healing. Those who take care of a budgie, it takes a little bit more work. But those who take care of beagles do their best in terms of healing. And so there's just so much there. Long live the beagles. 

Michael: Long live them. I forgot about that connection. That's wonderful. Those were people in a rehab facility which enabled us to do a scientific, quantitative study of how well people recovered from illness when they had some responsibility. And that's wonderfully counterintuitive in our culture because we think, you know, if you pass billboards illustrating the good life, it's mostly people reclining in a hammock with palm trees in the background.

Stephanie: It's all capitalist propaganda. 

Michael: Yeah. That's just such a travesty of what we are and what we could do and what we need to do in order to become fulfilled. So, yeah, this is a powerful success story. It illustrates – I'm paraphrasing Rivera Sun's report here – illustrates the dynamic power of direct action. And here's what it could do. It could bring an issue to a boiling point. which we call the nonviolent moment. It focuses public attention and inserts necessary tension into the situation that galvanizes problem solving. So obviously this can be dangerous, but doing nothing is also completely not an option. And it leads to problem solving, negotiations, and conflict resolution, hopefully through restorative action. So this particular action put pressure on multiple parties. And I like this aspect, both intentionally and unintentionally, that when you do the right thing, it has a multiplier effect, and you end up influencing more than you thought. In this case, it was the dog breeding company, the state officials, animal welfare organizations, and the public. 

And here's the thing. Each of these parties made a shift in their stance on the issue, which is really opposite of the win-lose strategy, the win-lose framework. So this included enforcing a ruling that the company had to give up its breeding license, the state officials were involved there. But also, this part is really good, offering to compensate the company for releasing the dogs. And both organizations got involved in that and they compensated people also who adopted beagles. Now, this reminds me of an issue, it really goes back there, is when seal pups were being taken for their fur and organizations rose up to put a stop to this. But what they also did was research into how the companies doing that could have an alternative source of income. So again, it's that principle of disrupting the cycle of violence and disrupting the win-lose framework. 

On another front, shareholder activists last year were able to block anti-DEI policies in some 30 major corporations, corporations that were worth a combined $13 trillion. I mean, you're talking about real money. And what they also did was launched a parallel platform called POE that is a database that's publicly accessible and is already outperforming the old systems. It's a good example of an alternative or parallel institution, which is a type of nonviolent action where, and we call this a part of constructive program, where you build a replacement to the old system and you challenge it by building mass participation in a more just and fair alternative. I think it was, Buckminster Fuller, that's right, who said the way to disestablish an unfair system, an unjust system, is not necessarily to attack it directly, but to build a better one, which renders the unjust one obsolete. 

So another good example of things going on on different levels is a co-op that was started in Denver, a rideshare co-op, and that gave both drivers and riders, taxi drivers in particular, I guess, a way to challenge Uber. Another is radical booksellers and cooperative bookstores that are providing an alternative to corporate booksellers. It always seemed to me that that is one thing that should not be corporatized, is our reading habits. And it emphasized how readers can build democratic movements rather than being passive consumers. I think that's an awfully good example, because anything that breaks us out of our passivity, I mean, Gandhi felt that better than cowardice was violence. But of course, much better than violence is nonviolence. 

I also want to talk about a book, having just mentioned booksellers. This one is by Scot Nakagawa, and it's called The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook. And he, in this book, asks an important question that sometimes we overlook. Sometimes we think, how do we get in there and win and go home? But no, he asks the important question, what happens after we win? And he pointed out that many movements around the world, something that I've also been very interested in, have ousted a tyrant and then not filled it with an alternative, only to have another tyrant come in and fill the void. So his article, What Happens If We Win?, is urging us to think ahead strategically and avoid this pitfall. And he said that the pro-democracy movement is getting better at resistance, We're building coalitions, developing strategies. We're learning from one another, something that I always like to emphasize, and in particular here, learning from international movements. But we aren't as much as we should answering the question that will determine whether any of this matters over the long haul, and that is "what happens the day after we win?"

I think for me a tragic example was the revolution in Egypt, the Tahrir Square Rebellion, which was just about 100% nonviolent, which did dislodge Hosni Mubarak, but then not having something ready to take its place, it just rolled over to another dictatorship. So, and Martin Luther King said that it's critical not to take on the role of victors to reinforce that win-lose framework. And history is unforgiving on this point. Many movements have succeeded in resistance but lacked that alternative.

I just want to uplift a person whom I think very highly of. I've been watching his little YouTube shorts almost every day. He is a Catholic priest. His name is Father David Gierlach, or Father David, he calls himself. He always starts his reports with saying, "Father David here." And I love the way that he melds a hard-hitting reality with his compassion. Just in the tone of voice, he manages to talk about these awful things that are going on without being too polarizing about it. And one gem from him recently is he talked about the melding of reality with entertainment. That's something that has overtaken our country for the last many decades. It's never, never okay not to face the truth and confusing reality with entertainment has been a bad example of that. 

In Nonviolent Peaceforce, women leaders have been trained by them to stop violence in Sudan, and Nonviolent Peaceforce itself has refused to stop protecting their communities in the face of great pressure. So just to tell you that, you know, this is a serious business. It involves risks. It involves courage. But when you engage courage and you're willing to take those risks, it often leads directly to success. So this institution is called Women Protection Teams. It's in an area called Tawila. So these women are creating safer spaces, strengthening community resilience, and as always is the case, demonstrating the critical role that local women leaders can play.

And that's about all I have time for today, folks, but that's not at all to exhaust nonviolence that's going on in our world. 

Stephanie: Absolutely. Michael, thank you so much for doing the report and all of the work that you put into collecting this news and digesting it for us here on the show. It's much appreciated and I know there's a lot of work that goes into it, so thank you. And we want to thank our mother station, KWMR, for making this show possible. We've been doing Nonviolence Radio here out of KWMR for over 10 years. So it's just something that delights us to do and helps us reach a lot of people. We're really grateful about that. I want to thank Jonathan Bradley, co-executive director of SEEDS down in the Bay Area, for joining us and geeking out with us about restorative justice. And if you want to learn more about restorative justice, check out SEEDS among many other resources.