Apr 7

Apr 7 Lessons from the Garden: Circle Keeping and Restorative Justice feat. Jennifer Viets

In this episode I sat down with the amazing Jennifer Viets for a conversation about her work as a restorative justice practitioner in Chicago. We begin by talking about Jennifer’s experience with being a grandmother including pushing back against societal expectations, how her work shifted from being individually focused to more community oriented, and we explore some of the lessons she’s learned from being a circle keeper about being in right-relationship with others.

Jennifer Viets(she/her/hers) has worked as a Restorative Justice Practitioner for the past 15 years. She is currently the Alternative Resolution Pathways Specialist in the Office of Student Protections for Chicago Public Schools and for the previous four years worked as a Restorative Practices Coach in the Office of Social Emotional Learning. Her work in the community involves training community Circle Keepers and supporting restorative processes. She has also worked as a multi-disciplinary teaching artist and arts administrator with children and families for the past 30 years using the arts to reach, teach and heal. This work has included designing programming for children and adults in hospitals as well as other institutional settings. She is also a proud mother and grandmother..

AVAILABLE NOW! We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson

Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, “What if abolition is something that grows?” As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations.

In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice.