Conference explored possibilities
The Minnesota Justice Research Center (MNJRC) hosted its annual Re-Imagining Justice Conference November 19, an inspirational convening of a broad diversity of criminal legal system practitioners, scholars, advocates, impacted persons, and community members. Through keynotes, plenaries, and breakout sessions, the MNJRC creates space to share and learn from efforts to bring the criminal legal system closer to a true justice system.
The theme of the 2024 conference was “Pivoting from Problem to Possibility,” in which the MNJRC sought to reimagine a criminal legal system that doesn’t simply respond to problems but looks for approaches that are based on dreams of what can be. This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Shawn Ginwright, whose work in trauma, healing, and the empowerment of African American youth has established him as a thought leader in the field of education.
Ginwright is the Jerome T. Murphy professor of practice at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has written numerous highly acclaimed books, including most recently “The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves,” from which the MNJRC got its 2024 conference theme.
Ginwright and Yohuru R. Williams, director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, fielded questions from audience members at McNamara Alumni Center. Cyreta Oduniyi, a pastoral leader at Northside Community Center, was concerned about staff and volunteers being overworked when dealing with youth impacted by the criminal legal system.
“How do we begin to pivot our outlook just to be in community differently with these young people, and how do we restore ourselves who are burned out?” Oduniyi asked.
“What is your healing diet in your organization?” Ginwright said. “If you go ‘uh, what is a healing diet?’ that means you ain’t got one.
“A healing diet may look like before you start moving, before you go through the agenda, let’s do an emotional check-in,” Ginwright said. “What are you looking forward to the most? We are now entering a space where we have to call attention to the inner work that is necessary. Our work for justice is dancing between the external and internal.”
Darrian Radford contrasted his upbringing with the youth. He grew up with a sensibility that’s lost on a generation plagued by a pandemic and an uprising after the murder of George Floyd. “Now it’s everybody for themselves,” Radford said. “There’s a lack of care even for their own communities, for their own families.
“I don’t really know how to break through that gap because it branches beyond my capacity,” Radford said. “How do you get to that point where you give them motivation, I guess is the word — but an understanding of what it is to care during this time?”
Ginwright reasoned that it’s not laziness but a lack of self-awareness, an inability to understand their own emotions. “When I worked with these young men, I tried to get them to talk about their emotions,” he said. “I realized that I thought they just didn’t want to because it was too painful, but they actually couldn’t. Over time you began to build this emotional literacy. The first baseline of hope is to fix that piece.”
Erika Thorne is an organizer at George Floyd Square who is concerned with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. “The mayor, personally, I do not trust, although there are good people in [city government]. Where the possibility is, is with the people who are holding down the square and have been for four and a half years,” Thorne said.
“How do we amplify or what are your thoughts about amplifying this rich sense of possibility and vision that is fomenting every day at George Floyd Square, as opposed to the institutional problem that they want to get rid of?” she asked.
“We should think about memorials as particular spaces. But the square is much bigger,” Williams said. “That was a failure of housing, education, access to places of public accommodation.
“What the mayor did, which was problematic, [he] said, ‘Well, now that Derek Chauvin has been convicted, problem solved,’” Williams said. “No, the problem was just beginning. That’s the work we have to do, burrow into, and get accustomed to doing.”
Nelle Rivers is a community organizer for the New Justice Project. Rivers is concerned that the progressive movement anchoring changes within the criminal legal system is often too uptight in dealing with identity and class. There’s a discourse in Rivers’ work where politeness conflicts with offering services to clients at the project.
“I think we think we don’t have things in common with folks, especially like me being Black and queer,” Rivers said. “Oftentimes, when I go into certain neighborhoods, I do get misgendered. But I’m like, that’s just to be expected.
“How do we move out of this space of righteousness and perfection and get people to see we do have aligned values?” Rivers asked.
Ginwright described Rivers’ dilemma as a “dance between accountability and grace.”
“That’s the challenge,” he said, “that, I think, is before us: learning how to navigate and dance between accountability and not see grace as some sentimental weakness.”
Clint Combs welcomes reader responses to ccombs@spokesman-recorder.com.