Rad Camp Day Four: The Trouble With Harry

Hello Daddy, hello Mommy

Here I am in

Camp Mad Commie

–Allan Sherman, Camp Granada (lyrics slightly altered)

One more from the 2020 Budding Roses anarchist camp for kids curriculum.

In today’s class kids will learn about “Transformative Justice” which, among other things, prepares them to accept their inevitable beatings from black bullies without involving the authorities, using an “Interactive Zine on Transformative Justice, Conflict Resoultion and Bullying.”

At first I read “transformative justice” as “restorative justice”, but they’re not quite the same thing. Restorative justice is a disingenuous reforming legal philosophy offered as a punishment-free alternative to the punitive justice system, which it deems to be state-perpetuated violence originating in “white supremacy”. Restorative justice offers in place of punishment (perhaps deliberately vague) ideas about mutual aid and “community based” solutions. The “we protect us” refrain commonly heard at antifa marches and riots invokes this sentiment (and after hearing it in person I flashed back to the “you’re one of us” scene in Todd Browning’s Freaks). I guess you’re out of luck if you don’t wish to be in the same close “community” with antifa and BLM.

Restorative justice has one goal, all else is rationalization: the reduction of the black (sorry: Black!) prison population and eventual abolition of police and prisons in defense of Blacks! Restorative justice offers itself as an alternative to punitive justice which it calls “state violence” in a cycle of violence with roots in colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ad naseam ad infinitum. Naturally law enforcement is where they propose to “break” the “cycle” of violence.

One common restorative justice alternative to prison is submitting criminals and their victims to what sound like intervention-style face-to-face meetings, where victims explain to slack-jawed Jamals the hurt they’ve caused, and get Jamal’s apology as restitution, in lieu of seeing Jamal jailed. Cynically restorative justice proponents argue this puts victims back “in the equation” (as “stakeholders”, along with criminals)–when the notion of “victim’s rights” is anathema to restorative justice, and is the reason George Gascon recently cut victims out of probationary hearings.

Victims are a big problem for restorative justice and it’s better if they’re out of public sight–and if criminals are out of their sight. Gascon’s action would seem to violate at least one of the Crime Control Act of 1990‘s “victim’s bill of rights” provisions: “the right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of the release or escape of the accused”. Through its adherent prosecutors restorative justice has made gains in ending cash bail, infamously.

Restorative justice turns on its head the criminal justice system’s traditional bias, placing criminal welfare above that of the victim.

Restorative justice is practiced here in Portland by District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who said he would have liked to “bak[e] in some more restorative justice” into prosecutions of violent BLM/antifa rioters–if he was inclined to prosecute their crimes in the first place:

“I’d be baking in some more restorative justice,” Schmidt said. “And maybe even more community involvement in the resolution of these cases … to kind of honor the fact that they were there protesting and wanting to be heard. And then creating a venue where they could do that as part of some sort of negotiated dismissal.”

Restorative justice is the banner of the host of Soros-supported district attorneys presiding over the rollback of law and order in places like L.A., Chicago, New York and until recently Chesa Boudin’s San Francisco. Most or all of these prosecutors have hired outside attorneys to run “justice integrity” units to undo the past convictions of a more severe justice system. Here Mike Schmidt spoke for rolling back Oregon’s Measure 11, a Clinton-era crime bill mandating minimum sentences for violent crimes. The law stands for now.

Which is great for Schmidt because just a few months after speaking against the measure he was able to throw the book at a right wing political demonstrator, landing him in prison for ten years for paint-balling and bear-spraying antifa aggressors in downtown Portland–using Measure 11 to trigger mandatory minimums. Two more right-wingers are presently charged and facing the same strategy. No talk of “healing” or “restitution” here–and no bail leniency either, as Schmidt’s deputies, suddenly sounding like law-and-order prosecutors, invoke the concepts conspicuously absent from restorative justice: public safety and, with their excessive sentences, deterrence.

Anyway that’s restorative justice. Transformative justice is restorative justice applied beyond the criminal justice system. Some using the phrase see the “restorative” model as having been co-opted by “the state”–as woke prosecutors adopt it and cringing governors release Black! inmates en masse.

This 2007 paper argues–very indirectly–for including child sexual abuse and domestic violence in the restorative justice model. Domestic violence and exploitation of children puts not only a lot of Black! men away, the abuse of children often implicates mothers. From the restorative point of view this exacerbates the criminal justice system’s “breaking up” of Black! families, perpetuating the cycle of violence and incarceration in which Black! autonomy–and law enforcement–must not be allowed to play a part:

Section One explains Transformative Justice and argues the need for liberatory approaches to violence, in particular child sexual abuse. This section speaks to the urgency of addressing child sexual abuse as part of our liberation struggles, both as a specific form of violence that reflects and perpetuates multiple forms of oppression and as one that is exploited by the Right. A liberatory approach to child sexual abuse uniquely positions us to resist this exploitation…

Section Three proposes a set of practices to address child sexual abuse in a transformative way. Practices of Transformative Justice include: building a Collective, preparation and capacity building, naming and defining child sexual abuse, conducting assessment, developing a safety strategy, supporting healing and resilience, holding accountability, working for community transformation as well as strengthening collective resistance.

The Conclusion offers next steps toward integrating Transformative Justice into intimate, activist and community networks, as well as massbase and community organizations and the sexual and domestic violence sectors.

But again and always the real bottom-line goal is to lower the number of Blacks! in prison, damn the consequences. That includes contriving ways to keep child sexual predators out of jail and in the home. Which of his dozen baby momma’s homes Jamal wants to remain in on a given day is his business.

It all makes the Transformative Justice zine for kids that much creepier.

I found profoundly sad this mock advice column educating the bullied white kid that the black bullies towering over and literally punching down at him, are actually punching up! In “transformative” America for whites the beatings begin in the nursery and continue until the day you die (after you die if you’re anyone of stature):

“Thank you for writing, Jimmy! Good luck with the physical rehab!”

Just as the common man on the street has to take a little violence now and then to Break the Cycle of Violence, so do the kiddies. Sorry Jimmy, but you and your inability to fight are the very fount of the “school to prison pipeline”.

Time is short so I won’t investigate my theory Harry Styles has committed a cardinal sin by posing for pictures eating watermelon (upper center above). It appears he did this to promote a song, but including the triggering (no?) image of a white male smiling over a slice of watermelon here can be no accident. Anyway, he gets to be the foil to Billie Eilish’s anti-heroine in this bizarre vignette/exercise demonstrating the wisdom of not calling the cops for violent assaults.

The result of questionnaire divides the kids into “A’s” and “B’s”, with the latter proponents of “punative” justice–the misspelling is consistent throughout. Now imagine being in the “B, punative justice” category at Rad Camp.

No anarchist work is complete without some ugly art invoking the Indigenous.

Alternatives to calling a cop:

Black-on-black violence in schools is a main source of the “school to prison pipeline”, and so it too must be endured. So appears to be the gist of the zine’s “gossip column”.

The wisdom of children.