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Dear List Subscriber,
I would like to invite you or anyone at your organization to join the CERJ
email distribution list. I'd also like to get the CERJ list known among
your own network of dedicated justice reform or peace and conflict
resolution activists, advocates and professionals.
There is no charge, fee, or obligation for this non-profit service.
Though it is of modest size at around 600 voluntary subscribers, the CERJ
email distribution list is the tool of a mature network of activists -- it
is one of the most influential email bulletin and distribution networks on
the Internet today -- the list of the Campaign for Equity-Restorative
Justice (CERJ).
One unusual feature of this manually-maintained international non-profit
email distribution list -- unique to our knowledge -- is that it is
segmented by jurisdiction for organizing purposes. That is, we can and do
'target' messages to our groups of voluntary email subscribers in any
state, province, or country -- or even globally! There are currently about
75 states, countries, or other jurisdictions represented on the list,
including about 45 of the United States and all Canadian provinces.
What about volume? The CERJ list currently carries about 20-25 plain-text
email posts per week (no attachments) -- every one of them manually edited
or approved (no viruses!), and about evenly divided between (1) publicity
and events about radical justice reform methods and strategies, and (2)
news and alerts about the terrible problems inherent in today's criminal
INjustice system. We also increasingly 'visit' the subject area of
international and inter-ethnic conflict resolution.
Please visit our web site at <http://www.cerj.org> for more information on
who we are and what we're 'up to'!
A major part of CERJ's mission is to elevate the scholarly, intellectual,
and moral levels of the Internet's various public crime and justice policy
colloquia -- we have been engaged for years in some very effective
Internet-based advocacy for Equity-Restorative Justice. In aid of this
purpose, we also post a periodic 'Justice List of Lists' that summarized
30-odd email discussions on justice
topics.
In our educational efforts, CERJ stresses the fact that vengeful
retribution is not justice at all, and is in fact deeply destructive of the
'fabric' of society, and that in order to achieve authentic justice, public
policies must instead manifest those noble, humane, and constructive
qualities traditionally associated with justice. Specifically, CERJ raises
the public's consciousness as to the true status of fairness and equity as
a cardinal component of justice, and demonstrates that some
community-driven types of justice processes are uniquely suited to the
conservation, restoration, and creation of equity and
community-interpersonal good will.
We believe that since most people are conditioned to look exclusively to
governments for justice, a new popular awareness as to the true
communitarian nature of justice needs to be fostered and developed. While
restraining some deeply-disturbed persons from the public continues to be
necessary for the prevention of violative behavior (and governments can
continue to play important roles in this respect), CERJ is committed to the
precepts that true justice is a function of community, and that for justice
processes to be restorative of equity, they must be community-driven --
that is, operated by local non-profit or public sector community groups or
authorities -- and must preserve offenders' roles as productive members of
their communities whenever this is possible and advisable.
Acting as catalysts for changes in public policies, many of CERJ's
individual and organizational affiliates advance proposals and resolutions
against public policies leading to over-incarceration. CERJ is also
working to derive and put forward a Justice Reform Resolution or
'Full-Stop' Proposal -- our advocacy agenda includes a call for a
moratorium on the building of new prisons (the first proposal in a
reasonable and 'do-able' four-point criminal justice reform plan proposed
in 1991 by the late Vermont Quaker justice reform activist Fay Honey
Knopp). In order to more consistently provide rehabilitation opportunities
for those currently
incarcerated, CERJ also advocates for the placement of incarcerated persons
in facilities close to their families and communities of origin.
CERJ also advocates for the careful substitution of Vermont-model
Reparative Probation for the currently-dominant but ineffective
'casework-oriented' probation methods. However, there are major pitfalls
to be avoided if government is to be involved on a limited basis as an
organizer or catalyst in the development of Equity-Restorative Justice
programming, and CERJ is able to assist agencies in understanding what
these kinds of problems are and how to avoid them.
At the local level, CERJ activists organize community justice initiatives,
engage in local and other public policy debates, and raise the general
public's awareness of, and active commitment to, practical
Equity-Restorative Justice methods. CERJ activists accomplish these goals
through their work in the CERJ initiative itself, and/or with any of CERJ's
component organizational coalition members. There is a long list of things
people can do to work for Equity-Restorative Justice; in fact, there is
something meaningful for almost everybody to do.
Through the work of its individual activists and its coalition member
organizations, CERJ promotes Equity-Restorative Justice (ERJ) methods of
all kinds, including peer mediation, sentencing circles and conferencing
models, VORPs (Victim-Offender Reconciliation Programs), Victim-Offender
Mediation (VOM), Court Diversion programs, the Alternatives to Violence
Project (AVP), Victim Impact and Empathy Panels, and Community Justice
Planning (a practice built around the Topsfield Foundation's Justice Study
Circles method). Since many of these organizations are almost exclusively
volunteer-driven, CERJ is also planning eventual federated annual giving
campaigns to solicit charitable support for those organizations which
actually propagate and promulgate the actual methods themselves.
If you give your permission for CERJ to communicate with you through this
medium, CERJ will consider sharing with you (upon request) all of our
gathered email addresses for your state or provincial jurisdiction, and
will carefully consider requests for access or postings to our entire
rapidly-growing international database of addresses, particularly for
public education and activism purposes. However, CERJ will never release
your email address to anyone outside the dedicated and principled circle of
activists that constitutes the CERJ organization, and will never sell your
address or knowingly permit it to be used for commercial purposes.
So 'CERJers' are helping to mend the fabric of human societies, and are
substantially re-defining the very concept of justice itself as we go.
By the way, if you decide to write and ask to be subscribed, please include
your state or province (or country) of residence in your message. You see,
our list is broken down into local jurisdictions to facilitate
correspondence with specific local groups of the Campaign.
"What you cannot do is accept injustice -- you must make the injustice
visible. The function of a civil resister is to provoke a response, and we
will continue to provoke until they respond or they change the laws. It
will not be over if they arrest me, or if they arrest a thousand people ...
it is not only generals who know how to run campaigns! They are not in
control -- we are. That is the strength of civil resistance." -- Mohandas
K. 'Mahatma' Gandhi (paraphrased)
An inCERJent for justice,
John Wilmerding
P.S.: In particular, you may be interested in the CERJ Justice List of
Lists -- compendium of some thirty or so email discussion and bulletin
lists that we have compiled to aid activists and advocates for radical
justice reform.
--
To subscribe to the CERJ E-Mail distribution list, simply send
an E-mail message to <[log in to unmask]>. Please include your name
and your state, province, or country of residence. Thank you!
--------------------------------------------------------------
John Wilmerding, Gen'l Secretary | E-Mail: <[log in to unmask]>
=================================| Web: http://www.cerj.org
*CERJ* International Secretariat | ICQ Number: 18723495
---------------------------------+============================
Campaign | 217 High Street | For | A
for | Brattleboro, VT | Justice | AR
Equity- | 05301-3018 USA | that | ART
Restorative | Telephone & FAX | Restores | EAR
Justice | [802] 254-2826 | Equity | HEAR
================================================= HEART
Work together to reinvent justice using methods | EARTH
that are fair; which conserve, restore and even | HEARTH
create harmony, equity and good will in society | >>>|CERJ|<<<
==============================================================
We are the prisoners of the prisoners we have taken - J. Clegg
You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world - Gandhi
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