Back in Colorado. Reconciliation as the everyday

I was curious about how my international experience in South Africa would affect my work with the restorative justice program at CU (CURJ). I facilitated my first conference this last Monday. I entered South Africa being more excited about the subject matter than the country. However, seeing an entirely new (and international) context made me grateful for visiting South Africa. Current efforts at promoting restorative justice at home and at abroad come with opposition. Community representatives at CURJ assess the level of responsibility a perpetrator has taken. Before South Africa, I feel like I was approaching CURJ with the idea of benefiting the perpetrator. Reducing recidivism rates was a strong selling point to the restorative justice approach. This past conference made me more aware of CURJ’s responsibility to the community. Although in the conferences that I facilitate we do not have formal victims, we still pay attention to the points of the community representatives and meeting their needs. It is not only about the perpetrator’s needs. CURJ had trained to paying attention to these different needs, but now I have a new understanding.

Even truth-telling and healing is a part of CURJ. Some students chose to have an educational component as part of their agreements. Educating themselves and others has a level of truth telling. By understanding the laws, a future ‘stable peace’ can be built. Agreement items also contain a level of personal or relationship healing. I cannot go into too much detail about the conferences. Recently, a student was empowered to make a complaint about her interaction with the police. This action was included in the agreement items because harm to ‘self’ must be addressed as harm to ‘community’ or ‘parents’ etc. are addressed. Generally, in Boulder, student-police relations seem to be a huge and important issue. A stack of apology letters addressed to police officers could lose meaning. However, spreading awareness and understanding on the student end is a form of reconciliation.

Similar to how I was curious about the position and expectations of Afrikaaner students in South Africa, I am still thinking about changing populations and individuals. While there will be a student body constantly influx and changing police officers, how do you address this consistent flux? When looking at tensions between groups, where does the individual come into play? I feel like this issue is where psychological changes become important. A psychological shift to inclusion, understanding and community would make the peace of the present be sustainable. This shift goes beyond reconciliation in the present.

Ideally, I had expected reconciliation to result in inclusion and community. I became pessimistic in South Africa because of the daunting and impossible nature of actually achieving this. However, I have been viewing reconciliation as a process with ideals that are constantly being worked towards. There will be future tensions and new individuals but structures that enable reconciliatory processes to continue to take place have a chance. I have constantly been rethinking my reconciliation-communism statement. Slowly, I am reaching an optimism about the potential of reconciliation AND restorative justice. This optimism is different than my optimism before South Africa. Shafiek ‘just living his life’ is part of my new understanding. My new understanding involves the everyday (people, education, restaurants, etc.) and less of the grand (political leaders, constitutions).