Continuing Revolution: Restorative Justice as Spiritual Practice
A hybrid conference for young adults (ages 18-35) interested in exploring connections between their spiritual, political, and interpersonal lives.
Participants will gain foundational knowledge about historical and contemporary restorative justice (RJ) practices, learning from groups currently organizing for systemic change around RJ in national, local, and interpersonal communities. Through collaborative workshops and spiritual grounding exercises, participants will leave the conference with tools and strategies for practicing RJ in their own communities in ways that reflect their values and hopes for building abolitionist futures.
Participants at all locations will come together to collaborate in hybrid workshops broadcast from each of the three sites throughout the conference. Each day, there will be site-specific sessions and exercises for both in-person and online participants.
This year, the conference will be hosted online and at three separate locations – at Pendle Hill outside of Philadelphia, at Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston, and at Friends Place on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC.
View a tentative schedule of the events
Leaders
Felix Rosado escaped a death by incarceration sentence after 27 years via governor clemency in 2022. He is cofounder of Let’s Circle Up, a restorative justice (RJ) education project. He currently serves as Program Coordinator of Healing Futures, an RJ youth diversion program with the Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project (YASP) and adjunct professor of RJ at Chestnut Hill College. He also is a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CABDI) and committed to ending human caging in all its forms. If you’d like to learn more about Felix’s background and work on RJ, you can listen to his episode on Pendle Hill’s podcast The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope titled “Imagining Justice Beyond Cages.”
Naïké Savain is a lawyer and advocate who connects directly impacted people with the tools and information they need to transform the District’s approach to public safety. During her time as Director of Policy for DC Justice Lab, Naïké forged strong relationships with community stakeholders to ensure all of their work was community-rooted, evidence-based, and racially just. Prior to joining the DC Justice Lab in June 2021, Naïké spent seven years as a best interest lawyer for children in foster care in the District and served as a commissioner for the DC Police Reform Commission. She is committed to removing barriers so directly impacted people can effectively advocate for themselves.
Dwight Dunston, is a West Philly-based facilitator, hip-hop artist, educator, and activist who has brought his creativity, care, and compassion to schools, community centers, retirement homes, festivals, and stadiums all over the country and internationally.
Lauren Brownlee, a member of Bethesda Friends Meeting (BYM), is Deputy General Secretary at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. She leads FCNL’s Governance, Community and Culture department and helps to steward FCNL’s shared anti-racism, anti-bias, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments. Lauren previously served on FCNL’s General Committee and Friends General Conference’s Central Committee, and currently serves as a co-clerk of the Quaker Coalition for Uprooting Racism Steering Committee and a co-clerk of the on the American Friends Service Committee’s Community, Equity, and Justice Board Committee. Before coming to FCNL, Lauren was the upper school head at Carolina Friends School and, before that, the director of social action at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.
Hamel (any pronouns) is a nonbinary transmasc butch who has been organizing with the Boston Dyke March for 7 or 8 years. The Boston Dyke March was founded in 1995 as a protest against traditional pride celebrations and believes in anti-capitalist, intersectional gender liberation for all. In 2021, along with co-organizer Anna Phylaxis, Hamel founded the Boston Dyke March’s community safety group: the Dyke Patrol, which provides community-based and community-trained safety volunteers at various queer events across Massachusetts. They are the primary trainer for Dyke Patrol and have also provided training for protest marshals, the WPI Pride Alliance’s Drag Defenders, and other small community Pride Events and organizers in multiple states.
Cassie Hurd (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Material Aid and Advocacy Program (MAAP) where she offers direct support to, learns from, and organizes alongside unhoused community members and people who use drugs. She has been with MAAP since 2006, was integral in establishing MAAP as an independent organization that is responsive, accountable, and shares power with our community members. She continuously works to uphold MAAP’s organizational values in our work and organizational planning, and dismantle the false binary between direct service and community organizing. Cassie runs our community drop-in space, conducts outreach, engages in sweep response alongside Rachel. She also leads MAAP’s advocacy and organizing work, and engages in participatory action research.
Prior to working with unhoused community members she worked as a sexual health, substance use prevention and harm reduction community educator and crisis responder at a community health center. She is a founding member of the Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee and SIFMA Now!, and organized with No Boston 2024 whose efforts defeated the proposed Boston 2024 Olympic bid. She is a lifelong resident of Great Boston and holds a B.A. in American Studies and Sociology from UMASS Boston.
Rachel Botlon (she/her) is MAAP’s Program and Outreach Coordinator. Rachel runs our community drop-in space, conducts outreach, and engages in sweep response alongside Cassie. She also develops and leads our training program, and engages in participatory action research and community organizing. Rachel first worked with MAAP as a volunteer in 2021, partnering up with Cassie and Sarah on outreach at Mass & Cass, where they shared safer use supplies, food, and survival supplies with community members surviving outside during the first winter of COVID. When an opportunity to join MAAP’s staff popped up it was really exciting!
Rachel comes to MAAP with a background in harm reduction and crisis response. Rachel has worked alongside unhoused community members and people who use drugs in Greater Boston since 2018. Rachel was the Outreach Coordinator at ACCESS: Drug User Health Program, the local needle exchange and naloxone distribution spot. Prior to that she worked on the drop-in floor at Women’s Lunch Place, a space that served about 150-200 unhoused women daily. She worked on Massachusetts’s suicide hotline, and on a warm line that supported survivors of sexual violence after assault, offering support and information to help people navigate complex process of reporting. She also did wilderness search and rescue, which involved extensive first responder training and triaging medical emergencies.