At this week's Round Table, guest podcaster Sophia, Madeline, and Kenisha spoke withAnooj Bhandari, Network Coordinator for Restorative Justice Initiative and an overall warrior for all things restorative. Anooj is a Community Organizer with passions for the relationship between community education and the transformation of harm. He focuses on exploring alternatives to, diversions from, and the elimination of, the carceral state. He is first and foremost an artist, creative storyteller, and a visionary who believes deeply in art as a process to ask quiet questions publicly. Anooj asks, what does it mean to dream of a world that can address harm AND healing--and how do we bring it into existence? He asks, in a landscape in which people are getting further and further from one another, how do we humanize one another and do so in anti racist ways? He asks, how might we shift resources in society differently if we recognize that harm is often about needs not being met? He asks, what if we meet people who have committed crimes with belonging rather than isolation and help them know they don’t need to do this alone? Anooj helped us understand that storytelling can help people burst through the binary of bad and good within criminal justice to believe in something else--and to get beyond ‘who did what’ to instead ask ‘what do you need?’ He helped us understand that being an artist is a way you move through the world and infuse curiosity and wonder into everything you do. It comes with responsibility to bring that more into the world. Thank you for listening!
