Webinar: Love and Living Soil – Restoring Justice for Land and Community

Restorative justice is a social movement, but it must also be an ecological one in order to answer its guiding questions: What are the needs of those harmed and those who harmed? What’s the process we can participate in to hold ourselves accountable and heal? What are the root causes of the harmful behavior in the community, and culture? What are the structures and relationships we desire? The truth is we cannot have restorative justice without restoring our relationship to land and water. However, this integration can’t be a messy mashup of mainstream environmentalism and social justice. Instead, we’re talking about power and sustenance, the ways we order our lives with nurturance or with exploitation. This is about what makes for healthy community: the ability to love, be loved, and be free from violence and waste – from hunger and landlessness to colonization and white supremacy – so we can meet our needs with a sustaining and nurturing power in which all creatures have enough.

Guest Bio

Jonathan McRay is a farmer, facilitator, and writer living in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He is cofounder and caretaker of Blacks Run Forest Farm, a riparian nursery and folk school rooted in love and living soil. These roots grow out as agroforestry, watershed health, and restorative justice, guided by a desire to farm in the image of the forest and remediate the toxins that pollute our souls, society, and soil, from chemical leaching to white supremacy, through the healing work of our hands, heads, and hearts. Along with farming, he teaches and facilitates processes for conflict transformation, anti-oppression, decision-making, empathy and emotional health, strategic planning, and ceremony, as well as classes and workshops on cultural ecology, land care, and ecological design. He is a member of the Speakers Collective of Soul Fire Farm, where he’s co-facilitated Uprooting Racism in the Food System trainings. Jonathan received his MA in Conflict Transformation and Restorative Justice from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Va..