Roundtable Breakfast - THE TRANSFORMING CONFLICT LAB

When
Thursday, December 06, 2012
8:00 AM - 9:59 AM
Location
John Jay College of Criminal Justice: 899 Tenth Avenue (at West 59th Street), Room 630, NYC
Registered
46 registrants

Registration

Public
The event is free and open to anyone interested in the topic. Please register in order to attend.

Registration is closed

The Association for Conflict Resolution
of Greater New York

and

The CUNY Dispute Resolution Consortium
at John Jay College

present

Monthly NYC-DR Roundtable Breakfast

THE TRANSFORMING CONFLICT LAB

Rusa Fischer and Bill Brennan

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2012

The Transforming Conflict Lab (TCL) is a collective that grew out of an need within Occupy Wall Street in New York City to work with grievances in a way that draws upon the resources within the community. In Circle, participants engage with each other in a way that strives to restore common humanity and to help build stronger communities. The objective is social change where the foundation for a new culture of compassion, understanding and solidarity is encouraged.

Rusa Fisher and Bill Brennan have played a key role in helping to start the Transforming Conflict Lab in NYC along with others who were involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

History of the TCL

As a result of Occupy Wall Street, Kay Pranis, a pioneer in the restorative justice movement, was invited to NYC to present a three-day Peacemaking Circles training for members of the TCL and others. Some of those trained by Kay continued to develop the collective.

Restorative justice is an emerging social movement that offers a new vision for the world, where justice can heal instead of punish, where all individuals involved and affected by an incident are included in its resolution.

TCL's Vision

Any group in the city may invite TCL to offer a Circle. TCL will hold a structured, safe process for any of the following: exploring ideas, community building, decision-making, healing, grieving, resolving conflict, and celebrating. It also offers regular Circles to the wider community for exploring ideas and community building. Finally, the collective holds Circles to foster the art of Circle Keeping by studying together and debriefing its work among themselves and with other groups. Its hope is to train others to be Circle Keepers so that they may carry Circles to an ever broader community.

What all these Circles have in common is opening a sacred space, where all voices are heard in a highly democratic way through the use of a talking piece. Participants agree on shared values and guidelines. A wisdom emerges that is greater than that which lives in each individual. With patience, the circle has the potential to create strong consensus with each person feeling truly heard. It encourages active listening, trust, and mutual respect.

“Circles offer a social technology that extends the intelligent and compassionate power of the human heart. Within the Circle, people practice seeing with the heart, speaking from the heart, and listening with the heart. Circles create a space in which all voices can be heard and participants can recognize shared values despite social differences. In this way, Circles open opportunities for a sense of ‘we’ to emerge – a ‘we’ that draws on the creativity of all people, not just those who sit at the top of a social hierarchy. Circles help us connect with what is most universal within ourselves and therefore with what we have in common with others. The result is a sense of unity that represents a profound shift in our mental and emotional framework.” – Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Ph.D., from Peacemaking Circles & Urban Youth: Bringing Justice Home.

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