Know Justice, Know Peace: Reflections from a community-based, action research collective

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the community-based, action research project called Know Justice, Know Peace: A Transformation & Justice Community Collective, which took place with six local grassroots justice-oriented organizations in Southern California’s Inland Empire region. Together we explored if, how, and where, wellness, healing and trauma-informed practices and transformative organizing exist in the daily operations and strategic vision of these organizations. Through interviews, focus groups, and healing circles, as well as an 8-month, bi-weekly training program, we identified individual and organizational needs, barriers, and facilitators of actualizing healing, wellbeing, and justice values in daily operation and organizational culture. Overall, the findings of this collective echoed what our review of literature in the field found from a diverse range of interdisciplinary scholars and activists; that to thrive individually and organizationally we must transform the relationships and structures we operate in to actualize values to stay grounded and connected while advancing effective strategies that resist toxic and violent structures and replace them with transformative and sustaining ones. This article summarizes community participants’ internal and organizational struggles as well as the assets they build upon. It explores theoretical frameworks deriving from healing justice, transformative movement organizing, trauma-informed and healing-centered methodologies, and emergent strategy that propose critical analysis and applied tools to advance individual and community wellness and healing as well as restorative organizing models and alternative organizational structures for values alignment in the daily operations of social justice-oriented community organizations. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2023 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]