Intergenerational Healing-Centered Organizing, Participatory Action Research, and a Pedagogy of Love

• In Event: Reimagine to Reclaim: Shifting Teaching and Organizing to Center Healing Justice for Communities of Color

Abstract

Healing justice is a framework that describes the weaving together of healing-centered practices and community organizing efforts to build social justice movements for systems change that are rooted in healing and hope (Ginwright, 2016). There is a growing movement led by organizers, educators, and young people who have been deeply impacted by structural violence and incarceration, who are organizing to create systems change and opportunities for community healing. When young people are failed by institutions and pushed out of schools and neighborhoods through exclusionary discipline and arrests, these “high opportunity” youth (Lee, 2014) develop skills and sensibilities by learning to survive, that can be applied in healing-centered organizing and other contexts.

This case study examines the ways a grassroots organization, led by formerly incarcerated community-based organizers, educators, and young people, centers healing, organizing, and participatory action research (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Ginwright, 2008; Torre, et al. 2008; Tuck, et al., 2008) and engages in a pedagogy of love (Darder, 2002), in efforts to decriminalize communities of color, redefine public safety, provide culturally-rooted trauma-informed care, and humanize issues of incarceration. This case study utilizes participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis (Patton, 2002), to describe community-based organizers and educators’ approaches to healing justice in relation to four core principles: healing responds to the needs of the community; healing is political; healing and organizing intersect; and healing is found in culture and spirituality (Ginwright, 2016; Chavez-Diaz & Lee, 2015; Nunez, et al., 2016). Formerly incarcerated community-based educators and organizers are redefining approaches to public safety that include increasing opportunities for education, employment, trauma-informed care, healing-centered strategies, and strengthening support systems for “high-opportunity” youth (Lee, 2014). This theory of change centers culturally-rooted healing and organizing with youth and adults most impacted by systems of incarceration and structural oppression, in efforts to create community-driven solutions to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and redefine public safety in the Central Valley and throughout California.

Author

• Emily Borg, University of California - Santa Cruz