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This is the letter for week 58 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents to see topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
Our planet is almost broken and there’s a lot that needs repairing.
That’s why this week’s topic is RESTORATIVE JUSTICE.
There’s a Lot We Have to Fix. Restorative Justice Will Let Us Fix It.1
Restorative Justice (RJ) is a system derived from Native American/Aboriginal/First Nations, African, and Maori practices that’s been applied in schools, prisons, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions worldwide.2 It’s cheaper than the justice system we have, it reduces recidivism, it produces lasting results much faster, and it feels more effective to the vast majority of those who participate in it.3
This is possible because the aim of RJ is to regain balance.4 Because it focuses on wrongs done to the individual and community (versus the state), it is applicable to all injustices, including ecocide, and to all victims, including non-humans.5, 6 By focusing on the victim/s needs, and not on the perpetrator, RJ reduces the ability of the perpetrator to claim victimization and to feel vindicated or isolated.
Restorative Justice is not hard to put into practice and has immediate impacts. It’s based on a set of simple questions. For the person or group that caused the harm:
- What happened?
- What were you thinking at the time?
- What have you thought about since?
- Who do you think has been affected by what you did? In what way?
- What do you need to do to make things right?
- How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?
And for the person, group, ecosystem, or species that was/were harmed:
- What did you think when it happened?
- What have you thought about since?
- How have you been affected?
- Who else has been affected?
- What’s been the hardest part?
- What’s needed to make things right?
- How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?
And, if the group needs to go deeper:
- Was it the right or wrong thing to do?
- Was it fair or unfair?
- What exactly are you sorry for?
- If you had it to do over, what would you do differently?
This is not a schoolyard-only system; it was used after the Rwandan genocide, for example. This is a human system; it is imperfect.7 But it is magnitudes more just and more capable of restoring balance than any other tool humans currently have available to work with.
RJ works for crimes against humanity. It also works for crimes against the biosphere.8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Because individuals, the community, and biosphere are damaged in these crimes, it is the community and biosphere that need to decide what is sufficient to restore balance for the crime.
How Can We Do RJ in SF?
We implement RJ in the city by making it part and parcel of being in this city. For example:
- Make any organization unwilling to use RJ ineligible for city contracts; if they refuse to be part of the community, they cannot benefit from the community’s resources.
- Charge fees upfront for organizations unwilling to commit to RJ as they will cost the city more money because of their demonstrated lack of care for and buy-in to the community. Upfront fees will be required to make up for expected costs, and should be considered security deposits; these corporations moving into our home have a responsibility to behave appropriately here.
- Use RJ to finally provide voice and a timeline for justice to the communities in SF who have been most hurt and disenfranchised, such as the Ramaytush Ohlone and all Native Americans living in SF, the citizens of Hunters Point13 and Treasure Island, and the homeless. Doing so will produce enormous benefit to the biosphere.
- Use RJ to shift blame and responsibility for damaging actions from corporations to individuals and shareholders in corporations. This means that actual people will be held accountable. Any corporation unwilling to engage this way must provide massive security deposits with SF against potential damages.
Our community must be more important and more powerful than corporations seeking to plunder us and the planet. Community is how we live and the only way we will continue to live.
The Real Question Is “Can We Afford Not To Do RJ in SF?”
Whether it’s the Carbon countdown clock14, the Doomsday Clock15, the Extinction Countdown16, the Glacier Mass Balance graph17, the Keeling Curve18, or any of the many, many other measures of biosphere destruction, it’s clear that things are bad and rapidly becoming unlivable.
Rape, kill, pillage, and burn as an economic philosophy gives nothing back except death and destruction, damage that lasts for generations, and power to criminals and sociopaths. We must choose differently, and we must do it NOW.
We’ve Got To Act Fast.
You say it takes X amount of time to change things? According to whom? Not according to physics and ecosystem biology, and that’s the reality you’re up against. The laws of physics don’t care about your corporate donors, your friend the developer, or your campaign promises. Biological and physical systems change rapidly when they’re knocked out of balance. Such changes are breakneck and accelerating now.
And what’s the point of all this damage? Qui bono? The political system, as it currently exists, exists to support and enable looting and destruction of communities and ecosystems, much as the police force exists to protect white supremacy.
You say it takes X amount of time to do stuff in the usual way? The “usual way” is the route of biosphere rape and planet-wide extinction. We’re long past “the usual way” and you don’t have time.
You need to:
- Implement countywide blackwater recycling;
- Plant an SF native urban forest, and create green pathways for plants and animals throughout the city;
- Move immediately to all electric and clean energy transportation, and that means shutting down some roads to car traffic permanently now;
- Eliminate all single-use plastics in SF and move toward eliminating all plastics that are not reusable, locally recyclable, and biologically safe;
- Immediately require all local, carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy — eliminating all methane heating and cooking and assisting fireplace-to-electric heating is a no-brainer; and
- Focus everything on making SF resilient and self-sufficient.
And the quickest way to get to these things is through massive implementation of RJ in the city. The planetary equilibrium is already shifting away from humans. Have you taken a look at the temperature on Venus lately?19 That’s the equilibrium you get when there’s a runaway greenhouse effect.
We only have 30 weeks left.20, 21
FOOTNOTES
1. “Evidence supporting the use of restorative justice”. Restorative Justice Council. 2016. https://restorativejustice.org.uk/resources/evidence-supporting-use-restorative-justice.
2. Megan Specia. “How a Nation Reconciles After Genocide Killed Nearly a Million People”. The New York Times. 25 April 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/world/africa/rwandans-carry-on-side-by-side-two-decades-after-genocide.html.
3. “Evidence supporting the use of restorative justice”. Restorative Justice Council. 2016. https://restorativejustice.org.uk/resources/evidence-supporting-use-restorative-justice.
4. Lawrence W Sherman and Heather Strang. “restorative justice: the evidence”. The Smith Institute. 2007. https://www.iirp.edu/pdf/RJ_full_report.pdf.
5. “Earth Restorative Justice”. Accessed 2 June 2020. https://earthrestorativejustice.org.
6. Center for Restorative Process. 145 Mountain Meadow Road, Santa Rosa, CA, 95404. 707-278-8742. http://www.centerforrestorativeprocess.com.
7. Jill Filipovic. “Restorative justice in domestic violence cases is justice denied”. The Guardian. 12 January 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/12/restorative-justice-domestic-violence.
8. Hon. Justice Brian J Preston. “The Use of Restorative Justice for Environmental Crime”. EPA Victoria. 22 March 2011. http://www.lec.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/preston_use%20of%20restorative%20justice%20for%20environmental%20crime.pdf.
9. Jason Proctor. “Punishing polluters: Can restorative justice work?” CBC News. 3 March 2016. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/climate-talks-pollution-restorative-justice-1.3473076.
10. Joshua Wachtel. “Sunday video: Restorative justice for industrial pollution!” IIRP News. 17 February 2013. https://www.iirp.edu/news/sunday-video-restorative-justice-for-industrial-pollution.
11. Justice Nicola Pain, Justice Rachel Pepper, Millicent McCreath, and John Zorzetto. “Restorative Justice for Environmental Crime: an Antipodean Experience”. International Union for Conservation of Nature Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium 2016. 22 June 2016. http://www.lec.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/Speeches%20and%20Papers/PepperJ/PepperJ%20Restorative%20Justice.pdf.
12. Ed. Emanuela Biffi and Brunilda Pali. “Environmental Justice: Restoring the future”. European Forum for Restorative Justice. 2019. The booklet can be downloaded as a pdf from this site: https://earthrestorativejustice.org/article/36455/booklet-environmental-justice-restoring-the-future.
13. Leif Dautch and Theo Ellington. “Hunters Point is a textbook case of environmental injustice”. San Francisco Chronicle. 15 May 2018. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Hunters-Point-is-a-textbook-case-of-environmental-12917354.php.
14. Nick Evershed. “Carbon countdown clock: how much of the world’s carbon budget have we spent?” The Guardian. 19 January 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2017/jan/19/carbon-countdown-clock-how-much-of-the-worlds-carbon-budget-have-we-spent.
15. “Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight”. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 23 January 2020. https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/.
16. “Extinction Countdown”. Scientific American. 2020. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/.
17. Rebecca Lindsey. “climate Change: Glacier Mass Balance”. NOAA. 14 February 2020. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-glacier-mass-balance.
18. “The Keeling Curve”. Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Updated daily. https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/.
19. Mean surface temperature on Venus is 477°C or 890°F, according to Universe Today (https://www.universetoday.com/14306/temperature-of-venus/). That’s hot enough to melt zinc and lead. And there’s sulfuric acid rain.
20. See the Action Timeline in the report in “Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting”. United Nations. 28 march 2019. https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm.
21. Paula Murray. “We’ve 10 years to save the seas or life on earth will become impossible”. Express. 23 December 2018. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1062990/environment-plastic-pollution-Sir-David-Attenborough-seas-earth.