In this context, “healing justice” is understood as a broader framework that aims to describe the relationship between social justice work and spirit by focusing both on the consequences of systemic oppression on the hope and agency of community members as well as how communities
In this context, “healing justice” is understood as a broader framework that aims to describe the relationship between social justice work and spirit by focusing both on the consequences of systemic oppression on the hope and agency of community members as well as how communities can heal and be restored to vibrant ways of living (Ginwright 2015). In this way, “healing justice organizers” are acutely aware of the ways in which stress, lack of resources, failing educational systems, violence, and prolonged exposure to trauma all diminish the capacity to foster optimism, empowerment, and social change. In addition, healing justice organizers are critical of public policies that create more violence, stress, hopelessness and lack of opportunities in schools and communities and treat these policies as harmful to the individual and collective, social, spiritual and emotional well-being of community members. Rather than viewing healing as simply an individual act of self-care, healing justice organizers view the act of healing as a political act that makes communities more whole while empowering people to bring about changes in the system. (Ginwright 2015). Healing Justice: A Conceptual Mapping of Healing Centered Youth Organizing
Editor: I have discovered a new trend in social justice organizing called “healing justice.” Only it’s not new: Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island (North America) have always done social justice this way. The Black Civil Rights Movement in the US has done this for hundreds of years. Black organizers in Oakland California have been doing ‘healing justice’ for many years as part of their Urban Peace Movement, organizing to end violent racism, police brutality and racist policies in education, prisons and urban communities. The following are selections from a paper by the Urban Peace Movement in Oakland on ‘healing justice’. Authors are M. Chavez-Diaz and N. Lee (Shawn Ginwright, Ph.D., Advisor). The full paper can be accessed here: http://www.urbanpeacemovement.org/HealingMapping_FINALVERSION.pdf
The ‘healing justice’ approach combines social justice organizing with healing circles, spirituality, and the arts for individual and community healing, expression and empowerment. The reason why this approach appeals to me is because this is what queer communities have done for a hundred years in the creation of queer culture. It also speaks to me very much as an artist and as a Buddhist who is interested in healing and cultural transformation. For years, these two parts of myself—the artist-spiritualist and the social justice organizer—have seemed so separate and antithetical to each other. This model brings both together into an integrated approach to social justice and well-being.
I have wholeheartedly adopted the ‘healing justice’ approach going forward in all my writing and organizing efforts. Engage! is about Buddhism as a humanist spirituality that promotes healing justice.
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WHY THE NEED FOR HEALING CENTERED ORGANIZING?
A Conceptual Mapping of Healing Centered Youth Organizing Authors: M. Chavez-Diaz, N. Lee (Shawn Ginwright, Ph.D., Advisor) For Urban Peace Movement (2015)
Over the past three decades, low-income communities of color have been negatively impacted by a series of social and economic policies that have resulted in disparate outcomes for people of color. During the 1980s and 1990s California experienced the rise of mass inca