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Jason Springs discusses restorative justice as a form of moral and spiritual practice with the capacity to transform injustice

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 22, 2024

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This video is a transcript from a discussion focused on restorative justice and its relationship with structural violence, particularly in the context of the United States. The speaker, Jason, explains that restorative justice is both a philosophy and a set of practices aimed at accountability, healing, and repairing harm caused by crime and conflict, as opposed to traditional punitive justice systems.

He highlights the importance of applying restorative justice in communities, especially addressing issues related to mass incarceration and systemic violence against marginalized groups. Jason argues that while restorative justice has seen implementation, particularly in places like Chicago, it often fails to confront deeper structural problems within the criminal justice system, such as racial bias and class discrimination.

Through his research, he investigates local implementations of restorative justice, emphasizing that successful adaptation hinges on community involvement and leadership rather than being co-opted by the legal system. He expresses concerns that without genuine community leadership, restorative justice initiatives risk becoming institutionalized and losing their transformative potential.

Jason's future research plans involve exploring the concept of transformative justice as an evolution of restorative justice, responding to criticisms and the changing dynamics of community needs. He hopes that his work will inspire similar initiatives in other cities and offer practical insights into effectively implementing restorative practices.

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Restorative justice is a term that refers both

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to a philosophy, an ethical account of justice,

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and also at the same time a range of community-based

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and victim and survivor-centered practices of justice.

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This is a conception of justice that differs

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a little bit from what we usually mean

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when we say the word justice.

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It's a justice that focuses on accountability

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for the purposes of healing and repairing

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and building peace,

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or really building a just peace in the wake of harm

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conflict that is destructive and violence or crime.

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Uh, restorative justice has been implemented widely in

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international contexts.

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It's often informed truth

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and rec reconciliation efforts in the wake

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of violent conflict in various places around the, the,

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the world, perhaps most famously the South African Truth

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and Reconciliation Commission, but numerous others as well.

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Now in the United States where my book is set,

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restorative justice has come to name a range

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of small scale measures

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that divert alleged wrongdoers from a standard path

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of arrest, trial

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and prison by funneling them into

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alternative justice programs.

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You might think of, victim offender mediation

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as one such example of an alternative program.

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Now, restorative justice, programs

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and practices conceived in this way aim

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to repair harms caused to the victims of har of crime

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and violent conflict,

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and the wi as well as the wider community,

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and even those who caused the harm.

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Now, the aim of my book is to highlight

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and address a difficulty at the heart of this account

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of restorative justice.

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So what I point out is that when it's deployed

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as a diversionary mechanism, as it tends

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to be in the United States within the US

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criminal legal system, these restorative justice initiatives

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often fail to address what I identify as structural

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and cultural violence

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that disperses itself throughout the criminal legal system.

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Such forms of violence include the criminalization

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of people in communities of color, racially biased

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and brutal policing, and the marginalization

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and arbitrary pre treatment of poor people of all colors.

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This violence creates shame and stigma

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and fragmentation in local communities,

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and as opposed to these diversionary measures,

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I ask can a more holistic approach to restorative justice,

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ethics, and practices actually address

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and transform these forms of structural violence.

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And in the book, I argue that they can, and I do that.

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Part of the way I do that is

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by going into local communities across the south

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and west sides of the city of Chicago

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To study how restorative justice is being implemented,

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practiced, naming

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and addressing these deeper, more pervasive forms of racial,

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racialized and classist biases and forms of violence.

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Restorative justice as,

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as a social movement in the United States has me emerged,

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over the past 50 years.

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Really, it's begun to kind of coalesce

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and take a definitive shape,

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and that's coincided with, the explosion of

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mass incarceration in the United States since about the late

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1960s as prisons began to explode in the number of prisons

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and jails began to expand exponentially from a population

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of about 200,000 to about 2.2 million

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by 2010.

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And if you include the population

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of people enmeshed in the system on probation

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and parole, the number goes up to over 7 million.

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Well, as that process began to happen,

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restorative justice began to merge as a set of alternatives

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and as a set of alternatives.

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It offers a very profound

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and pronounced criticism of, of mass incarceration in the US

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and pro and, and attempts to provide a set

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of alternative practices, some of the concerns

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that have arisen as we've studied the effectiveness

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of this movement and practices,

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and begun to try to understand it

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and work through it critically.

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Some of the criticisms are that it kind of addresses

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the deeper disease only at the level of the symptom.

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It doesn't really get to the root problem that creates

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mass incarceration, that expands the population

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of the prisons and the prisons and jails.

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It offers a helpful, alternative

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and can be very, very powerful as such.

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But does it address the root problem?

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So, so my motivation is to say, just to study this question

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and to study it as it's lived

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and practiced, as well as at the level of the philosophical

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and the ethical in the book,

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and, to construct an argument,

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which I think has a very sound basis.

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And, you know, I think I managed to demonstrate

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that it can address these deeper structural

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and cultural issues.

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So that's my motivation to try to offer in some ways,

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you know, a defense, a justification of the power

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and effectiveness of restorative justice to really be,

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and here's the pivotal word, transformative started,

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teaching about restorative justice when I joined a,

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institute that addresses matters of peace and justice.

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And I saw restorative justice as one form of justice

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that we really need to study if we're gonna talk about peace

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and peace building and integrating justice and peace.

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And as I began to study, and,

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and teach about restorative justice, those at

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that time coincided with the publication of a book very,

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influential and

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Powerful book written by a legal scholar

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named Michelle Alexander.

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And the book is entitled The New Jim Crow.

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And the analysis that Alexander conducts really brings

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to light the racialized

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and systemic forms of violence that are inherent in US mass

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incarcerations, specifically the war on drugs.

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And so the question presented itself,

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can restorative justice as I've been studying it

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and teaching it and working through it with my students,

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can this really address, mass incarceration and harm

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and destructive conflict at this level?

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Um, and so I began to research and write and study cases,

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and I realized that if I was really going

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to answer this question in a meaningful way,

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I was gonna have to get beyond the classroom

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and move beyond my office.

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And the study of cases

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and philosophical argumentation out into communities

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where this is being practiced, it's not just a philosophy

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and in ethics, it's also a set of practices.

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And so that really kind of forced me outta my office

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and into, I, teach

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and live in a community of just a little outside the city

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of Chicago where there are remarkable forms

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of restorative justice being practiced and implemented.

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And, so I took this as an opportunity to go in

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and begin to make connections

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and cultivate relationships

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with restorative justice practitioners there on the south

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and west sides of Chicago.

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Now, communities on the south

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and west sides of Chicago are some of the most policed

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and violence ridden communities in the country.

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Um, and you know, there are numerous reasons for this.

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A lot of this is a very, overbearing police presence.

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Some of this has to do with, the presence of,

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of gangs and gang violence.

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That, and the presence that, that that didn't just happen.

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It's rooted in deep histories of disenfranchisement

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and, various forms of oppression

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and exploitation of those communities.

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Those are predominantly African American, black American

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and Mexican American communities,

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and poor white communities as well.

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Uh, so I initiated the research project

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by undertaking, community organizer training

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with an organization that was training people to work

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to transform communities,

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for purposes of restorative justice.

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And through that, I began to meet

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and cultivate relationships

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with restorative justice practitioners there in community

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centers on the south and west sides of Chicago.

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And I then enrolled in a number

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of restorative justice trainings myself.

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So I undertook the trainings

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and began to mainly cultivate relationships with people

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who are deeply committed, who live in these communities,

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who are committed to working to transform the forms

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of structural and cultural violence that manifest

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through mass incarceration

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and policing in these communities. Um,

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And, conducted interviews, site visits,

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participant observations,

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and really cultivated relationships where we began to,

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I began to invite these practitioners out to my university,

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into my classroom to come and teach my students.

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This is one of the key challenges

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of implementing restorative justice in these contexts.

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And,

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and it's emblematic of the, what I'm,

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what I call in the book, the structural

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and cultural form of the violence

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that restorative justice needs to address.

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In recent 15, 20 years, a number of judges

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and actors in the juvenile justice system,

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especially across Chicago,

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but even into the adult, criminal legal system there

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have come to recognize, been forced

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to recognize the unsustainability of the situation,

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that the jails are overflow overflowing,

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that there's too many people enmeshed in the system,

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and the destruction that that enmeshment causes,

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not just on those individual people, but on the communities

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and the families they come from.

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And so, in searching for an alternative, many

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of these judges especially have come

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to recognize restorative justice as an alternative

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to the standard path through the criminal justice system.

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They have, many of them have come

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to embrace restorative justice

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and seek to, use it,

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because, it, of its ability to reduce harm

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to the people who are en meshed in the system.

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So the challenge for people, local community organizers

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and local community residents and people,

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and ordinary folk from the neighborhood

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who are participating in restorative justice to try

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to transform the effects of violence

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and the system is that partnering

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with the system has the risk

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or the temptation of kind of capturing the movement,

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capturing the independence of those initiatives,

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and in effect, kind of resulting in a kind

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of top down administration, the terms of which are set

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by the system and the criminal legal system

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and actors in this, that system itself.

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So the challenge of implementation is, is,

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and this is a central question of the book, is both

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to understand and track

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how the practitioners in these local communities are not

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rejective of overtures from actors of the system,

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but are willing to work

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and collaborate at the same time that they insist on

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maintaining their independence, maintaining their autonomy,

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so that they can maintain thereby this transformative

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approach and impact to the work

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that they're doing in their

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implementation of restorative justice.

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The criminal legal system actors in the criminal legal

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system, many of them want,

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I think there that maybe in many cases their intention

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is, is legitimate.

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Like they really do want to reduce harm.

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It's just that they want to do it in a way that is dictated

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and conforms to the rule.

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The dictated by and conforms

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to the rules set forth by the system.

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And the folks in the local community practitioners see

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that system and those rules as really at the heart

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of the problem that that's what needs to be transformed.

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So on one hand, they're eager to work with collaborators

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who really are willing to be in a deep relationship

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and reorient their, their concerns

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and their approach by restorative justice norms

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and purposes and values.

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But they also are very, very cautious

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to maintain a community based and community led orientation.

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That's the only way it's gonna transform the violence,

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which is at the heart of the,

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criminal legal system in the United States and in Chicago.

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So there's a, there's a, correlation.

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It's not an alignment of, of the concerns

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because from the criminal legal system side, there tends not

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to be this, this recognition of the need for transformation.

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And on the community level side, they say things need

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to change from the bottom up.

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It needs to be led by the community, it needs to be centered

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around the experiences and, the purposes

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and the needs and the aspirations of the local communities.

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And, they're the ones who need to kind of set the,

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set the pace and determine the path.

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I think it has to be community based

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and community led to,

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to achieve the transformational impact.

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That's what I argue in the book, that's

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what I found in my research on the ground.

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And it, it's also then the basis for what I argue,

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because what I do in the book is, is,

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I study these communities

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and engage with these practitioners

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and things to understand what they're doing to kind of spell

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that out in terms of the ethics and in the philosophy.

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'cause it's practical, but it's also philosophical.

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And, and,

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and I try to do so in a way where people from other cities,

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from other communities can read this

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and say, I see this, I see what they're doing.

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I think it gives me an idea of how I might be able

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to implement it or how we might be able to launch

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or initiate something in a,

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in my community or in a different place.

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Interestingly, you do see restorative justice networks

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and initiatives already existing

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and have, having been emerging for, well,

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more than a decade in places like Oakland,

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in Washington DC in New York City.

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And so to, but in Chicago, what I discovered was something

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that was, was particularly innovative

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and it was the development of a, of a network

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or a web, a citywide web of

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local community-based restorative justice

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initiatives that worked.

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They stood individually

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and worked individually in their neighborhood,

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but they also worked intentionally, collaboratively

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across the city,

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Providing resources to one another,

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supporting one another, collaborating

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and integrating their efforts

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and their resources to, to create a kind of network

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or web across the city.

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It really is quite remarkable.

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So there's an independence

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and then there's, there's an neighborhood specific presence

15:08.665 --> 15:12.805
for each of them, but there's also this citywide effect.

15:13.465 --> 15:17.645
And, that's something that I, that I hope would,

15:17.775 --> 15:20.445
could be discovered through the book, through the reading

15:20.445 --> 15:24.085
of the book and maybe, implemented in other locations

15:24.085 --> 15:26.645
that would be ideal in terms of the reception.

15:26.865 --> 15:30.445
As with so many of these social movements that are emerging

15:30.505 --> 15:31.605
and living and breathing

15:31.605 --> 15:33.925
and dynamic as restorative justice is

15:33.945 --> 15:37.925
as a transformational social movement, it's responding

15:37.985 --> 15:40.685
to changes immediately and in real time.

15:40.785 --> 15:43.885
And the moment you begin to kind of work out

15:44.025 --> 15:47.525
and spell out a philosophical exposition of the ideas

15:48.265 --> 15:49.605
and maybe a blueprint

15:49.625 --> 15:53.125
or an account of the practices, the encounter

15:53.125 --> 15:56.765
with new experience raises ever more important questions

15:56.825 --> 15:59.645
and criticisms that have to be addressed and responded to.

15:59.945 --> 16:03.245
And so, a number of people who are maybe sympathetic

16:03.245 --> 16:04.245
to restorative justice

16:04.345 --> 16:08.365
and what it tries to do have already begun to say that,

16:09.235 --> 16:12.165
well, that it is too liable to be

16:12.185 --> 16:14.525
and too easily co-opted by

16:14.545 --> 16:17.365
or appropriated by the criminal legal system

16:17.505 --> 16:20.805
and have already begun to say it's the, the, the very notion

16:20.805 --> 16:22.605
of restorative justice is out,

16:22.605 --> 16:24.205
has outrun its usefulness,

16:24.385 --> 16:27.085
and we need a new concept of justice already.

16:27.825 --> 16:31.325
And, there's begin to be a kind of emerging consensus

16:31.325 --> 16:33.925
around the term of transformative justice.

16:34.825 --> 16:36.485
And so we we're already beginning

16:36.505 --> 16:38.845
to see healthy argumentation

16:38.905 --> 16:42.565
and opposition between those who are advocating

16:42.565 --> 16:45.925
for transformative justice over against restorative justice

16:46.625 --> 16:50.845
or trying to work out some complex relationship

16:50.875 --> 16:52.805
between these two conceptions of justice.

16:52.985 --> 16:56.445
And so, in my future research, I, I aim

16:56.445 --> 16:59.045
to explore this debate as it's unfolding

16:59.045 --> 17:01.925
among practitioners on the ground in local communities.

17:02.625 --> 17:04.565
So much of this is unfolding in real time,

17:04.585 --> 17:06.325
in the cutting edges, in the neighborhoods

17:06.345 --> 17:08.645
and in the communities that are dealing with these forms

17:08.665 --> 17:13.565
of violence and looking for ways to transform what,

17:14.315 --> 17:17.925
what they struggle with and the various forms of,

17:17.925 --> 17:19.125
exploitation and,

17:19.345 --> 17:21.845
and even oppression that they, that,

17:22.345 --> 17:24.045
is a reality for them.

17:24.385 --> 17:25.765
So that's my future research.

17:25.765 --> 17:28.805
This is the next step in my, in my research in this project.

"Exploring Restorative Justice: Philosophy, Practice, and Addressing Structural Violence"

00:00:00 - Restorative justice is a term that refers both to a philosophy, an ethical account of justice, and also at the same time a range of community-based and victim and survivor-centered practices of justice. This is a conception of justice that differs a little bit from what we usually mean when we say the word justice. It's a justice that focuses on accountability for the purposes of healing and repairing and building peace, or really building a just peace in the wake of harm conflict that is destructive and violence or crime. restorative justice has been implemented widely in
00:00:46 - It's often informed truth and rec reconciliation efforts in the wake of violent conflict in various places around the, the, the world, perhaps most famously the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but numerous others as well. Now in the United States where my book is set, restorative justice has come to name a range of small scale measures that divert alleged wrongdoers from a standard path of arrest, trial and prison by funneling them into alternative justice programs. You might think of, victim offender mediation as one such example of an alternative program.
00:01:28 - and practices conceived in this way aim to repair harms caused to the victims of har of crime and violent conflict, and the wi as well as the wider community, and even those who caused the harm. Now, the aim of my book is to highlight and address a difficulty at the heart of this account of restorative justice. So what I point out is that when it's deployed as a diversionary mechanism, as it tends to be in the United States within the US criminal legal system, these restorative justice initiatives often fail to address what I identify as structural
00:02:09 - that disperses itself throughout the criminal legal system. Such forms of violence include the criminalization of people in communities of color, racially biased and brutal policing, and the marginalization and arbitrary pre treatment of poor people of all colors. This violence creates shame and stigma and fragmentation in local communities, and as opposed to these diversionary measures, I ask can a more holistic approach to restorative justice, ethics, and practices actually address and transform these forms of structural violence.
00:02:51 - Part of the way I do that is by going into local communities across the south and west sides of the city of Chicago To study how restorative justice is being implemented, practiced, naming and addressing these deeper, more pervasive forms of racial, racialized and classist biases and forms of violence. Restorative justice as, as a social movement in the United States has me emerged, over the past 50 years. Really, it's begun to kind of coalesce and take a definitive shape, and that's coincided with, the explosion of
00:03:33 - 1960s as prisons began to explode in the number of prisons and jails began to expand exponentially from a population of about 200,000 to about 2.2 million by 2010. And if you include the population of people enmeshed in the system on probation and parole, the number goes up to over 7 million. Well, as that process began to happen, restorative justice began to merge as a set of alternatives and as a set of alternatives. It offers a very profound and pronounced criticism of, of mass incarceration in the US and pro and, and attempts to provide a set

"Exploring the Efficacy and Challenges of Restorative Justice in Addressing Mass Incarceration"

00:04:14 - that have arisen as we've studied the effectiveness of this movement and practices, and begun to try to understand it and work through it critically. Some of the criticisms are that it kind of addresses the deeper disease only at the level of the symptom. It doesn't really get to the root problem that creates mass incarceration, that expands the population of the prisons and the prisons and jails. It offers a helpful, alternative and can be very, very powerful as such. But does it address the root problem? So, so my motivation is to say, just to study this question
00:04:56 - and practiced, as well as at the level of the philosophical and the ethical in the book, and, to construct an argument, which I think has a very sound basis. And, you know, I think I managed to demonstrate that it can address these deeper structural and cultural issues. So that's my motivation to try to offer in some ways, you know, a defense, a justification of the power and effectiveness of restorative justice to really be, and here's the pivotal word, transformative started, teaching about restorative justice when I joined a, institute that addresses matters of peace and justice.
00:05:40 - that we really need to study if we're gonna talk about peace and peace building and integrating justice and peace. And as I began to study, and, and teach about restorative justice, those at that time coincided with the publication of a book very, influential and Powerful book written by a legal scholar named Michelle Alexander. And the book is entitled The New Jim Crow. And the analysis that Alexander conducts really brings to light the racialized and systemic forms of violence that are inherent in US mass incarcerations, specifically the war on drugs.
00:06:19 - can restorative justice as I've been studying it and teaching it and working through it with my students, can this really address, mass incarceration and harm and destructive conflict at this level? and so I began to research and write and study cases, and I realized that if I was really going to answer this question in a meaningful way, I was gonna have to get beyond the classroom and move beyond my office. And the study of cases and philosophical argumentation out into communities where this is being practiced, it's not just a philosophy and in ethics, it's also a set of practices. And so that really kind of forced me outta my office
00:07:01 - and live in a community of just a little outside the city of Chicago where there are remarkable forms of restorative justice being practiced and implemented. And, so I took this as an opportunity to go in and begin to make connections and cultivate relationships with restorative justice practitioners there on the south and west sides of Chicago. Now, communities on the south and west sides of Chicago are some of the most policed and violence ridden communities in the country. and you know, there are numerous reasons for this. A lot of this is a very, overbearing police presence. Some of this has to do with, the presence of,
00:07:43 - That, and the presence that, that that didn't just happen. It's rooted in deep histories of disenfranchisement and, various forms of oppression and exploitation of those communities. Those are predominantly African American, black American and Mexican American communities, and poor white communities as well. so I initiated the research project by undertaking, community organizer training with an organization that was training people to work to transform communities, for purposes of restorative justice. And through that, I began to meet

"Navigating the Tensions: Implementing Restorative Justice in Chicago's Communities"

00:08:23 - with restorative justice practitioners there in community centers on the south and west sides of Chicago. And I then enrolled in a number of restorative justice trainings myself. So I undertook the trainings and began to mainly cultivate relationships with people who are deeply committed, who live in these communities, who are committed to working to transform the forms of structural and cultural violence that manifest through mass incarceration and policing in these communities. And, conducted interviews, site visits, participant observations, and really cultivated relationships where we began to,
00:09:07 - into my classroom to come and teach my students. This is one of the key challenges of implementing restorative justice in these contexts. And, and it's emblematic of the, what I'm, what I call in the book, the structural and cultural form of the violence that restorative justice needs to address. In recent 15, 20 years, a number of judges and actors in the juvenile justice system, especially across Chicago, but even into the adult, criminal legal system there have come to recognize, been forced
00:09:51 - that the jails are overflow overflowing, that there's too many people enmeshed in the system, and the destruction that that enmeshment causes, not just on those individual people, but on the communities and the families they come from. And so, in searching for an alternative, many of these judges especially have come to recognize restorative justice as an alternative to the standard path through the criminal justice system. They have, many of them have come to embrace restorative justice and seek to, use it, because, it, of its ability to reduce harm to the people who are en meshed in the system.
00:10:32 - and local community residents and people, and ordinary folk from the neighborhood who are participating in restorative justice to try to transform the effects of violence and the system is that partnering with the system has the risk or the temptation of kind of capturing the movement, capturing the independence of those initiatives, and in effect, kind of resulting in a kind of top down administration, the terms of which are set by the system and the criminal legal system
00:11:11 - So the challenge of implementation is, is, and this is a central question of the book, is both to understand and track how the practitioners in these local communities are not rejective of overtures from actors of the system, but are willing to work and collaborate at the same time that they insist on maintaining their independence, maintaining their autonomy, so that they can maintain thereby this transformative approach and impact to the work that they're doing in their implementation of restorative justice. The criminal legal system actors in the criminal legal
00:11:53 - I think there that maybe in many cases their intention is, is legitimate. Like they really do want to reduce harm. It's just that they want to do it in a way that is dictated and conforms to the rule. The dictated by and conforms to the rules set forth by the system. And the folks in the local community practitioners see that system and those rules as really at the heart of the problem that that's what needs to be transformed. So on one hand, they're eager to work with collaborators who really are willing to be in a deep relationship and reorient their, their concerns and their approach by restorative justice norms

"Community-Centered Approaches to Justice: Navigating Challenges and Innovations in Restorative Justice"

00:12:34 - But they also are very, very cautious to maintain a community based and community led orientation. That's the only way it's gonna transform the violence, which is at the heart of the, criminal legal system in the United States and in Chicago. So there's a, there's a, correlation. It's not an alignment of, of the concerns because from the criminal legal system side, there tends not to be this, this recognition of the need for transformation. And on the community level side, they say things need to change from the bottom up. It needs to be led by the community, it needs to be centered around the experiences and, the purposes
00:13:20 - And, they're the ones who need to kind of set the, set the pace and determine the path. I think it has to be community based and community led to, to achieve the transformational impact. That's what I argue in the book, that's what I found in my research on the ground. And it, it's also then the basis for what I argue, because what I do in the book is, is, I study these communities and engage with these practitioners and things to understand what they're doing to kind of spell that out in terms of the ethics and in the philosophy. 'cause it's practical, but it's also philosophical. And, and, and I try to do so in a way where people from other cities,
00:13:59 - and say, I see this, I see what they're doing. I think it gives me an idea of how I might be able to implement it or how we might be able to launch or initiate something in a, in my community or in a different place. Interestingly, you do see restorative justice networks and initiatives already existing and have, having been emerging for, well, more than a decade in places like Oakland, in Washington DC in New York City. And so to, but in Chicago, what I discovered was something that was, was particularly innovative and it was the development of a, of a network or a web, a citywide web of
00:14:40 - initiatives that worked. They stood individually and worked individually in their neighborhood, but they also worked intentionally, collaboratively across the city, Providing resources to one another, supporting one another, collaborating and integrating their efforts and their resources to, to create a kind of network or web across the city. It really is quite remarkable. So there's an independence and then there's, there's an neighborhood specific presence for each of them, but there's also this citywide effect. And, that's something that I, that I hope would,
00:15:20 - of the book and maybe, implemented in other locations that would be ideal in terms of the reception. As with so many of these social movements that are emerging and living and breathing and dynamic as restorative justice is as a transformational social movement, it's responding to changes immediately and in real time. And the moment you begin to kind of work out and spell out a philosophical exposition of the ideas and maybe a blueprint or an account of the practices, the encounter with new experience raises ever more important questions and criticisms that have to be addressed and responded to.
00:16:03 - to restorative justice and what it tries to do have already begun to say that, well, that it is too liable to be and too easily co-opted by or appropriated by the criminal legal system and have already begun to say it's the, the, the very notion of restorative justice is out, has outrun its usefulness, and we need a new concept of justice already. And, there's begin to be a kind of emerging consensus around the term of transformative justice. And so we we're already beginning to see healthy argumentation and opposition between those who are advocating

"Exploring the Evolving Frameworks of Justice: A Future Research Agenda"

00:16:46 - or trying to work out some complex relationship between these two conceptions of justice. And so, in my future research, I, I aim to explore this debate as it's unfolding among practitioners on the ground in local communities. So much of this is unfolding in real time, in the cutting edges, in the neighborhoods and in the communities that are dealing with these forms of violence and looking for ways to transform what, what they struggle with and the various forms of, exploitation and, and even oppression that they, that, is a reality for them.
00:17:25 - This is the next step in my, in my research in this project.

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