Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races [but as] a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land... Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less.
                                            — Martin Luther King, Jr., address at the conclusion of Selma to Montgomery march in 1965

In February 2021, Clyde Kerr III — a sheriff’s deputy in Louisiana, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and forty-three-year-old Black father — posted a series of videos delivering a searing critique of policing and our criminal justice system. He voiced deep sense of turmoil about his profession in the killings of Black people, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. “I’ve had enough of all of this nonsense, serving a system that does not give a damn about me or people like me.” The videos served as an extended suicide note, at one point stating that his decision to take his life was an act of protest. Kerr took his life sitting in his patrol car outside the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office. 

Much earlier, in an 1960 essay “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” James Baldwin describes this collision at the heart of policing. He looks at the projects of Harlem and points to a deep inequality reflected in the geography of Fifth Avenue, the same street conjoining the opulent shopping corridors of midtown and the destitution of the Harlem ghetto uptown where police move “like an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile country.” Baldwin draws particular attention to the damage this labor of occupation inflicts upon the police themselves who are tasked to manage the boundary dividing the different worlds along Fifth Avenue and throughout our country. The officer patrols the dividing line, and “he is not prepared for it [as] he is exposed as few white people are to the anguish of the black people around him.” How does he reconcile his purpose to serve and to protect with his daily work of ghetto containment? How does he manage the injustice of his occupation with the daily encounters of Black humanity that belie the underclass mythology of the inner-city poor as criminal, self-sabotaging, and unassimilable? How does the police officer live with himself? “He can retreat from his uneasiness in only one direction,” writes Baldwin, “into a callousness which very shortly becomes second nature. He becomes more callous, the population becomes more hostile, the situation grows more tense, and the police force is increased. One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.” And all the while, capitalist elites in midtown are less concerned with abolishing the conditions that policing has come to manage than with kneeling on the neck of protesters who threaten retail spaces, commercial real estate development, and capitalist interests of the market economy.

Policing and mass incarceration have always existed to serve and protect the dominant capitalist economy and class structures developed through slavery, and to control “surplus populations” of the unemployed and unemployable, those pressed to commit survival crimes to earn a living, those superfluous to capitalist accumulation and so racialized, exploited, and targeted for police control. For in the often-misleading race-class debate, the class character of policing remains largely overlooked by the power and expediency of the racial justice narrative. But racial oppression and economic exploitation have always been entwined in capitalism. We forget that George Floyd was unemployed and allegedly using counterfeit money; that Eric Garner was selling untaxed cigarettes to earn a living; that Walter Scott was under warrant for delinquent child support payments; that Breonna Taylor, though not directly engaged in survival crimes, lived in gentrifying zones where police sweeps regularly cleared the neighborhood for real estate valuation. Countless fatal police encounters result from minor infractions like broken taillights or unpaid tickets, more symptoms of economic hardship than real threat to public safety. The fact that so many resorted to criminalized forms of work to make a living remains critically important for understanding the common class predicament of Americans who are overpoliced. The problem of structural unemployment and poverty are not exceptions to capitalist economy but outcomes of the exploitation at the heart of profit-making. 

Racism alone cannot fully explain the expansive carceral power produced by capitalist class society, relentless in securing conditions for compounded growth. A singular focus on race only serves the interests of late capitalism by reducing the question of obscene inequality to skin color and identity politics while obviating discussions about healthcare, housing, childcare, and education. If all we have to do is expunge the racism in the hearts of police officers, or just reduce the number of racist patrol officers, we can forestall the question about poverty or at least pretend that class conflict and racialized police violence are two separate issues. But Stuart Hall famously described race as “the modality in which class is lived, the medium in which class relations are experienced.” What is needed is not the dismantling of police departments but the conditions that modern policing has come to manage. What is needed is not shoehorning our history of injustice into either race or class, but to see and engage more complexly, intersectionally, and courageously. 

Fourteen inmates of the Minnesota Correctional Facility–Shakopee, the only women’s prison in Minnesota, enter the group room for a Restorative Justice Healing Circle. This will be their routine for the next ten Thursdays. The women, though dressed alike in gray sweatpants and sweatshirts, represent different ages, backgrounds, races, crimes and sentences. Each takes a chair in the circle, uncertain what this experience, for which they signed up, will require of them. I take roll and send the attendance sheet to the control desk. 

We talk about Restorative Justice (RJ) and the Circle process; about providing a respectful place to center on accountability and healing. And how, in contrast to the punitive consequences assigned by our criminal justice system, RJ seeks to restore wholeness to all impacted by a crime: victims and perpetrators and the broader community. 

My co-facilitator and I lay out expectations. This entire series will be conversation, we say. We then discuss as a group what values we wish to honor and uphold during our time together. Words like courage, honesty, respect, compassion are offered. 
There is coherence between the physical setup of the Circle, the quality of conversation that ensues, and building trust: 

• The talking piece designates the speaker and gets passed left from the speaker’s heart to the woman on her left. We ask people to speak from the heart in their sharing, and that emotional honesty evokes sympathy. 
• Echoing the shape of a circle, there is no hierarchy, no “boss” or intended outcomes so the conversation flows with emphasis on understanding. Everyone is equal in Circle. 
• What someone says in Circle does not get shared outside Circle. Confidentiality is the highest priority, especially in this place. 

I think of Circle as a non-white-centered way for people, both known and strangers, to engage in a slower, more attentive way to be together, in which we focus on who someone is rather than what they do. We remind the women that they are not their crimes, and then we ask them to tell their stories. All in the group feel respected and safe and, over time, the group becomes non-judgmental in their listening. 

When I think of my own experience of meetings, I am reminded of how dominant culture seems to be driven by productivity:

• Meetings are confined by time and agenda, focusing on moving the group’s business forward. 
• A few empowered individuals typically monopolize the conversation; all perspectives in the room are not usually solicited. 
• Data-supported objectivity often overrides personal insights; it is presumed that there is one right answer within an either/or approach to problem solving. 

Some have felt that the Circle process has at times been misappropriated when adapted to meet white cultural patterns. This happens when getting the work done supersedes relational values. See “White Supremacy Culture Characteristics” by Tema Okun for more on this.

I learned the Peacemaking Circle process from members of the Inland Tlingit Nation of Yukon Territory, Canada, who have been sharing “community-based justice” for years. Circle Keeper training confounded me at first. I had expected to be instructed on facilitation techniques, but training consisted of days of sitting in Circle, listening to people respond to questions about life experiences, personal challenges and aspirations, or just what was on their hearts. We were being trained to listen. 

Circles are used in a variety of situations from school to organizational settings, providing a respectful space to resolve conflict, determine appropriate amends, talk about wrongdoing, and to deepen relationships among people of differing backgrounds and experience. For example, I recently served as a Circle Keeper for Museums Advancing Racial Justice hosted at the Science Museum of Minnesota, with the Smithsonian. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) professionals from around the country attended, and I learned this can be lonely work. At the beginning and end of each of the three days, participants attended circles to deepen their experience and new relationships, that will support their important work. 

I used to think that ending racism requires us all to interact more with people that don’t look like us, in order to dispel the knee-jerk racist perception of those people as “other.” This still seems true, but it is how we interact with people, no matter their race, that is critical. Recognizing that there is something to learn from other cultures about how to be together can catalyze the shift we yearn for towards Beloved Community.

Our Healing Circles at MCF-Shakopee are consistently comprised of mostly white inmates, and is demographically more in line with the state population, unlike men’s prisons. Written evaluations at the end of the series include statements like:
I feel better about myself; like I am willing to move on, and let go of what landed me here in prison. I owned my part even though I didn’t want to.

I am compassionate with peers because I recognize that it isn’t what’s wrong with her but more what has happened to her to get such action.

We never know if there are happy endings for the women we get to know. Though they speak of change and creating better futures for their kids, some return to the same neighborhoods, relationships, and lifestyles where old expectations do not support fresh beginnings. But most are resilient and resourceful survivors, empowered by the unique bond of Circle. They have laughed and cried together. They have seen themselves in each other’s stories and have been there for each other. 

I hope that this experience will help each woman pursue the long process of healing and forgiving herself; that she will hold in her heart the group of exceptional women who listened to her story attentively and respectfully, and that she will continue to source in herself the strength to speak her truth bravely. ​

Ours is a living tradition. In keeping with this practice, we, as congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), review the bylaws that govern our movement every 15 years, to help us to respond to current and future societal realities. Currently, Article II of the UUA Bylaws and Rules covers Principles and Purposes, and is the source of the Seven Principles. This month, delegates to the 2024 UUA General Assembly will consider a proposed revision to Article II. 

Two key parts of the proposed revision concern Article II, C-2.2 Values and Covenant, and Article II, C-2.4 Inclusion. Here is an excerpt of the proposed Article II, C-2.2 bylaw: 

Values and Covenant
Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. Inseparable from one another, these shared values are: