Exploring Restorative Justice with Sidney Morgan

In late fall 2017 after Tina and I decided to take a leap together by launching a consultancy dedicated to health equity learning and development (meet Health Equity Partners!), we were encouraged by a friend and restorative justice practitioner to sign up for a four-day training with International Institute for Restorative Practices. IIRP is one of the largest global organizations providing various levels of training, certification and resourcing for restorative practices work. Here's how they describe what restorative practices means.

Leaning into a learning opportunity that has seen a lot of awareness over the past decade, Tina and I were game. We signed up with enthusiasm and arrived in Bellevue, WA to attend, ready to soak up and build some relationships in understanding how this work can help people repair harm in the workplace.

We left after the second day. It sucked. The lone facilitator was definitely experienced, but completely overwhelmed with more than 30 people in the room who were in all sorts of different places, mostly white folks who were educators. The first day seemed off to a good start: energy in the room, meeting one another, sharing why we’re here, some ice breakers, then some agreements to keep us accountable to one another. After that, we opened up our workbooks and did a lot of listening with the occasional breakout to practice what we quickly learned.

It was clear IIRP was not centering race in its teachings. Several comments were made across the two days that were blatantly racist, and the facilitator, a multi-racial woman, seemed exhausted. Tina is Vietnamese and I am white, so it brought both trauma and anger for Tina, and for me, just pure WTF. We left before the second day ended.

Fast forward to 2021. I’m sharing the IIRP experience during a coffee walk with my good friend Sidney Morgan, founder of The Golden Repair RJ Institute. Sidney and I met through Center for Equity and Inclusion, a racial equity-focused DEI consultancy in Portland. After leaving CEI as a senior facilitator to start her own consulting practice, Sidney had also at that time received her MA in Transformational Leadership and Restorative Justice from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. Her belief and lived experiences that DEI and RJ are absolutely bound together made so much sense to me.

“I wasn’t surprised by the experience you had,” Sidney shared after a short pause. “Organizations like IIRP mean well. They have a reasonable and foundational definition of restorative justice. What I find challenging and something that feels very unfortunate about their reach and how many folks they are able to pull in, is that they have turned restorative justice into a program. When really it’s a paradigm shift, a philosophy of values, and a way of being.”

Paradigm shift. Philosophy of values. Way of being. NOT a program. And where is the word “justice” with IIRP? I felt the lightbulb turn on.

“When you step into a training like IIRP, what you find are great technical pieces to use, but it’s void of spirit. That’s the issue. It’s void of the spiritual aspect which restorative justice absolutely holds. I don’t want to speak ill of them that seems damaging, I just want to speak the truth that they have created a product and not a practice.”

The Practice of RJ

Sidney and I recently sat down to get into her story and why she created The Golden Repair Restorative Justice Institute. The Golden Repair has both a “train the trainer” track for those interested in becoming practitioners and those who want to bring RJ tools into workplaces. As I’ve come to learn, there aren’t many learning places like The Golden Repair. Learning more about what brought Sidney to where she is today illuminates why.

This interview with Sidney happened in December 2023. Words below have been edited for brevity. Enjoy.

“I’ve been a restorative justice practitioner for about 21 years, a good chunk of that time in the criminal justice system for juveniles. I then worked in education for a few years and then got into organizational RJ work. I've been really blessed to be in a lot of different contexts with this work.” 

“What got me to opening [The Golden Repair] Institute was my journey of learning about restorative justice practice. I’ve been really lucky and blessed to be in spaces where I’ve received some great teaching and training. There’s a lot of good teaching and training out there. What has been a concern for me over the last few years has been other groups doing restorative justice work in different capacities and not taking responsibility to hold this as a practice.”

“I wasn’t sure about if I could do this at first. Do I have enough knowledge to open an institute? Those narrative roadblocks I've allowed to just kind of stump me from really dreaming and visioning what it could be like. I love to teach and share what I know. [Restorative justice] is a beautiful philosophy that I've been gifted to experience and be a part of. What I have learned and what it's changed in me, I wanna share with people.” 

What is restorative justice? What is restorative practice?

“Call me picky, but I care about language and I care about the way we use words. Restorative justice [is a] philosophy of learning how to be in community and, what some would call beloved community. There are some big groups out there who say “restorative practices” and what bothers me a bit is it's called restorative justice for a reason. I’ve heard a narrative behind taking out the “justice” and putting in “practices” is that in the school context, or in the criminal justice context, schools didn't want to criminalize. So they took out justice and said “restorative practices.” 

“What I say to educators all the time is, school systems create injustices EVERY. DAY. We need justice! We need to restore justice for the kids who experience injustice every day. When we take away this frame, we’re doing the harm. There's no real container or model to it. 

“In systems [not just education or criminal justice], we’re conditioned to mold right into what is already broken and messy and cause more harm. So I say "restorative justice" because that is the philosophy and value system of a beloved community. And the practices are what we do in that circle of work.”

A Golden Vision of Repair

“What really came into view and why we call it the golden repair, is from the Japanese art of Kintsugi. It brings together two different words, meaning golden joinery. We take pottery that's broken, put it back together, and then line those cracks with gold. The philosophy as I understand it is: we're still beautiful, even in our brokenness.”

“We all have broken places in ourselves, in our relationships, and in those engagements where we have with each other. There is beauty when we're repairing, even though it hurts and it's painful. It's the opportunity and possibility. My vision for the institute is to really share ways folks can build beloved community. That we can have this in our organizations and in our community spaces.”

Holding Vision

“My ultimate vision is to just see more practitioners really deeply caring about this work and knowing that as facilitators of this process, we can't not cause harm, but we can mitigate it. We don't have the power to say, “this process will never cause harm”. I used to believe that I had the power to do that until I was questioned [laughs]. Do you really have the power to do that? Do you have the power to control everything that comes out of someone's mouth or this and that? Well, of course you don't!”

Rooted in Joy

“What brings me joy in this work is the everyday getting to talk and engage with people. To hear people share their story. I feel honored every time someone shares something with me that they chose to share…those interactions, even when they're hard and tough, people are working through stuff. To be in that space with them, you know? That's what ultimately brings me joy in this work. And then seeing other people come up in this work: young or our elder folks who tap back into it. It's just cool when people get back into this and remember that we actually have this practice that we can use to engage with. I feel like it brings me a lot of joy in different ways.”

“I do a vision board every year, and this year, joy was my word. One of the pieces on my vision board is “don't give away your joy because it's very hard to hold onto.” I sit with that now coming full circle with the year ending asking the question, “Did I hang on to my joy?” I feel like I can say yes, but I can also say that, even in creating the institute, even with all the excitement of getting it off the ground, fear was definitely [laughs] a large shadow. There's a lot that weighs in on practitioner work. It can take a lot out of you and put back into you. Joy is something that's different to me than happiness. Joy is like a deep-rooted thing that takes a lot to hold onto.” 🌟

To learn more about Restorative Justice, Sidney recommends the following:

• The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice; Black lives, Healing & US Social Transformation by Fania E. Davis
• The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr
• Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change by Sherri Mitchell
• We Will Not Cancel Us; And Other Dreams Of Transformative Justice by Adrienne Maree Brown
• Colorizing Restorative Justice; Voicing our realities by Edward C. Valandra/ Wanbli Waphaha Hoksila
• Re-Centering; Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice by Mary Adams Trujillo et. al
• The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice, edited by Michael L. Hadley

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