A Guide to Organizing A Healers Network To Sustain Our Movement

What is Healing Justice?

Cara Page & Kindred definition: 

“Healing justice (framework)...identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence, and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.”

JTN’s adaptation and application

Healing justice is one framework within which we organize to end all forms of state violence while nurturing our communities’ leadership capacities and healing generations of trauma by utilizing healing modalities indigenous to our communities.  

HJ is a response—and an interruption—to state sanctioned violence that impacts our communities—including but not limited to the Medical Industrial Complex, Prison Industrial Complexes, militarized policing, institutional racism, forced impoverishment, housing apartheid and so much more. HJ guides all of our work; mental health response, our work with our member organizations, impacted families and allies. HJ invites us to create alternatives to the world we inherited that are not dependent on the state. This is central to how we organize and advocate for our loved ones who too often are targets of racism, ableism, intimate partner violence, and homophobia/transphobia. We do not wait for the state to take care of us, we take care of us. 

JTN’s Healing Justice Framework

~ Interdependence & Community Care: We know that our survival depends on our ability to be in connection with each other and the earth. We take the time to build a care network amongst our people and the planet.

~ Sustainability: We believe that our visions deserve movements that nurture the healing and leadership of both front line workers/organizers and impacted communities (often these are the same people) . Our lives are worth fighting for and it is our birthright to live them in sustainable ways that invite our imaginations to envision - and manifest -  a life without violence against our communities or our bodies. Healing Justice is the pathway to sustainability in our work and in our lives

~ Imagination and Action: We come to this work with a spirit of imagination and action in that what we create will come from our spirit, heart, and minds and lead us toward action. For instance, Healing Justice is central to reimagining public safety: As organizers and healers leading intersectional movements we know that from our imaginations are born the alternatives to the current police state we live in. We create alternatives rather than wait for the state to provide them for us. The oppressor cannot, and will not, liberate us. He has no vested interest in our freedom while for us the cost is literally our lives.

~ Presence: We meet people and honor them where they are in their healing path; regardless of the ways it may challenge or beliefs or intellectual sensibilities We do not assume we know more about a person's ability to heal than they know for themselves, nor the best modalty(ies) for their journey We show up with compassion and ready to support. 

~HJ by and for our peoples: HJ is created by people in the community who see a need and seek to address those needs by offering alternative solutions. Healing modalities used to heal and organize must be inclusive of the Indigenous practices and traditions of the community who is organizing for their own liberation. We do not shy away from our own Indigenous practices because we know that is how our people have survived and it is how we will also thrive. 

~ Self determination: Our movements must allow people to define healing and success at their own pace, in their own language and toward their own end. 

~ Healing is a central part of our political work: HJ is not separate from our political work, but rather the foundation. It should inform organizing protocols, patterns and practices. We encourage ourselves and each other to be in a process of healing our body, hearts, minds, and spirits as we work. We invite all of ourselves into our organizing, advocacy, and campaign spaces. Often this also means that our work is cultural and spiritual. 

JTN’s founding HJ principles as highlighted in the HJ toolkit:

• Without healing there is no justice. We understand that healing is a lifelong process and that often we never fully heal, especially when our loved ones are stolen by the state. We  understand that if we do not participate in a process of healing, the pain caused by state violence can overwhelm us as well as our communities. Holding these two truths, we honor the need to be in healing processes, including the process of demanding justice for our loved ones. 

• Justice should address the whole person. We acknowledge that systems of power and oppression impact our minds, bodies and spirit, therefore we have to address this impact on all three levels.

• All minds and all bodies deserve justice. In a system that targets people with disabilities and produces disabilities through violence, confinement, medical negligence and abuse, we must build a movement that achieves justice for all people; including those with physical and mental health disabilities.

• Our work must be trauma-informed and resilience-centered. Trauma functions to create long lasting impacts on our lives. We must build practices and containers of resilience that not only support impacted communities in healing from harm but invite us to imagine and practice being in community without systems of harm.

• Resilience is strategic. We support the healing of our communities not only because we deserve wellbeing, but also because the power required to win our people’s wellbeing is the power required to win all other visionary demands for justice.
  
  

Our Healing Justice Vision & How Our Abolitionist Healers Network is a Healing Justice Strategy

In honor of the long legacies in BIPOC communities of utilizing our traditions and healing modalities to transform ourselves, our circumstances, and the world- JTN’s vision is to expand Healing Justice across the state of California. We will do this by sharing HJ tools, skills, and curriculum to our member organizations and equipping them with the support they need to strategically incorporate HJ into their organizing efforts. We uplift HJ as a part of our political strategy that transforms trauma while building the power our communities need. HJ is not a side note nor is it a fad. We understand that HJ is not self care or individual wellness. Through our work with the CA healers network, we are building statewide infrastructure to support directly impacted communities. State violence impacts our hearts, bodies, minds, and spirits; it attempts to rob BIPOC communities of our right to life, our dignity, and our sense of connection. Via our healers network, we honor the essence of HJ to be rooted in place and build collective models of care and safety in relationship to liberation movements in California and beyond. 

Three Reasons why healers should self organize a Healers Network in their community:

1. A Healers Network helps to sustain all other movement work by providing healing services and support to organizers, families, and children who are leading advocacy, organizing, and policy change in your community and state. 

2. A Healers Network activates more communities into organizing for social change. Community organizing has many strategies and one can/should be utilizing Healers Networks to organize healing portals as part of all of your actions and events; including direct actions, protests and press conferences.  

3. A Healers Network helps to “cut the red tape” between folks asking for support and getting the support they need! State sponsored services and non-profit clinics often have waitlists. A Healers Network helps people get help more quickly and lowers the risk of folks dealing with mental health crisis from escalating due to a lack of immediately available services or support.

What is a Healing Portal?

1. An intentional interruption to state imposed violence such as the addiction to the incarceration of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities. 

2. Intentional interruptions can look like:

   ~ Wellness clinics outside of jails, detention centers, or other cages with a variety of healing modalities being offered during visiting hours for families to partake in before or after their visits;

   ~ Engaging directly impacted communities in music and art making as resilience practices;

   ~ Community altars for remembrance and healing;

   ~ Skill sharing with communities pushed out of formal education due to high expense tuition rates and testing that does not take into account life skills and life experience as expertise;

   ~ Supporting BIPOC communities to reclaim their indigenous healing practices

3. Intentional interruptions can feel like: 

~ A moment of pause from our grief;

~ Sadness being held and witnessed by others in a way that feels cleansing and grounding for us;

~ Organizing for justice when apathy or hopelessness has taken over our bodies because of all the injustices BIPOC communities have already endured.

Six steps towards organizing a Healers Network:

1. Gather a small team to lead the Healers Network effort in your community. 

   1. It is recommended you have at least 2-3 core members to lead this effort. 

   2. Discuss internally your reasons for coming together to create an Abolitionist Healers Network to uplift your movement work and state impacted families.  

   3. Draft principles and values that are important to your team and the work you do together. Click here to read JTN’s HJ values and principles. 

2. Conduct a community assessment. Ask your community, staff, collective members:

   1. What trauma is in need of being witnessed, held, and healed?

   2. What are healing practices and modalities indigenous to the communities you organize with?

   3. What are the healing modalities your community is in need of, will be the most responsive to? (i.e. art therapy, reiki energy medicine, plant medicine/herbalism, talk therapy, acupuncture/acupressure, body work, sobadas, etc.)

3. Create a political education plan for your team

   1. Schedule monthly conversations about topics that need to inform your groups politics, i.e. abolition, transformative justice, disability justice. 

   2. Read about the history of the intersection between health justice and social movements, i.e. Black Panther Party’s health activism and community programs, local healers groups in your community that fight for justice as well as support the healing and wellness of communities

   3. Begin to practice your values by offering your services to groups connected to social movements

   4. Set time to reflect on what it means to be a politicized healer  

   5. Plan to meet regularly to keep the Network going, respond to community tragedies and adjust the actions of the Network to community feedback and need

4. Decide (if you haven’t already) what political groups you will support as a Healers Network and make those connections!

   1. Decide as a team your protocols for responding to requests, i.e. will you be available for rapid response work or only by appointments? How quickly will you respond to a request for a session with one of your healers?

5. Make a list of healers you want to invite into your network! 

6. Seek out resources (financial and others) to sustain your healers.  Black, Brown and Indigenous communities - particularly women - often are tapped for their labor and talents with no compensation or other “thank yous” for their efforts.

What are some Best Practices for Healers when working with state impacted communities?

1. Consent—Make sure to ask folks for consent before hugging them or touching their bodies. Many times people can be in a state of shock and touch can be more of a trigger than helpful! For others, touch is very much needed and welcomed. Ask so that you can know how to show acts of kindness via touch. 

2. Make eye contact and greet people.

3. Ask how you can help, don’t assume!

4. Meet people where they are spiritually, politically and emotionally even if it challenges your own belief systems and practices.  Now is not the time to “educate”. 

5. Check your biases and privilege at the door

6. Stay hydrated and make sure to take breaks before exhaustion or burn out.

7. Ask for people’s preferred pronouns; don’t assume a person’s gender. 

8. Stay in communication with the people you’re working with; help take care of each other.

9. If you feel triggered, take a moment to connect to your breath and your heart beat. 

10. Nourish your body while supporting others. Drink water, make sure to eat your greens, and increase your vitamin C intake too!

11. When called to be vulnerable, accept the invitation if it feels good to you. Supporting folks who are living with deep grief, sadness, fear, or rightful rage can also bring up those and other feelings in us. It is okay to “be yourself” and share from your heart if invited to by whomever you are supporting. 

12. Assume that people know the most about their own healing; uphold and support the healing knowledge and practices that people already have in their lives.

13. Bring an item that helps you stay grounded during rapid response work: a photo, crystal or a plant bundle to help keep you centered and present.

14. Bring yourself to the work of showing up for others. If you like to sing, SING! Drum, DRUM! Everyone has medicine to share, HJ invites you to bring it to your organizing and movement work. It is both healing for you and for your community. 

15. Have an aftercare ritual for yourself: Rest, shower, reflect, write, process with a friend, do anything that feels grounding and regenerating to your Spirit, Heart, Body, and Mind!