A new group aims to use food as a key to Restorative Justice in Oakland and to combating mass incarceration.
Restore Oakland plans to start a multipurpose hub that trains food industry workers, has a restaurant, and is a center for Restorative Justice organizing and justice reform.
“We are trying to raise the visibility of Restorative Justice and believe connecting it to a place people come to regularly will help. We know having difficult conversations about harm and accountability is hard, but easier over food. We want to utilize the concept of breaking bread and making amends,” said Executive Director Zachary Norris of Restore Oakland.
“We have a choice: continue to expand surveillance, prisons and poverty, or reinvest in people, health and prosperity,” said Emily Harris, state field director of the Ella Baker Center.
“As long as we continue to spend on failed approaches that lock people up, we won’t be able to afford the vital resources that actually set up youth and families for success—such as schools, job training programs and funds for business innovation at local and regional levels,” Harris commented.
The Restore Oakland Center also plans to offer a cooperative food-enterprise, healthcare and childcare programs.
“Community members will get to use the kitchen to create their own worker-owned and worker-run food enterprises,” said Harris.
“Through these integrated programs and services, Restore Oakland will create opportunities for Oakland residents, particularly formerly incarcerated people and their families, to achieve economic stability and self-empowerment through an industry that can offer security and long-term growth.
“Restore Oakland will be a space to help people get out of the system and stay out,” said Harris.
“It will be a space for people to get a job and move up the career ladder. It would help build the community’s capacity to solve problems and their capacity to build their own enterprises. As a result, East Oakland will be safer and more prosperous.
“Restore Oakland will also serve as a home for campaigns that redirect resources toward employment opportunities and away from the criminal justice system that burdens low-income families.”
Restore Oakland is the brainchild of Ella Baker Center Executive Director Zachary Norris and his spouse, Saru Jayaraman, who is the co-founder and co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC).
The Ella Baker Center is 20 years old and was founded by Van Jones and Diana Frappier, according to Harris.
“We (EBC) currently have a Jobs Not Jails campaign that is fighting to get 50 percent of public safety realignment funds moved away from the sheriff and probation and toward community-based programs and alternatives to incarceration,” said Harris.
Jayaraman and Fekkak Mamdouh, the co-founders of ROC-NY, organized the country’s first national restaurant workers’ convention in Chicago in August 2007, where ROC United was born, Harris said.
“Since its founding after 9/11, ROC-NY has successfully conducted restaurant workplace justice campaigns, provided job training and placement, opened its own cooperative restaurant, and conducted research and policy work. They consist of 13,000 restaurant workers, 100 high-road employers, thousands of engaged consumers united for raising restaurant industry standards,” said Harris.
“EBC and ROC are engaging a wide range of Oakland and East Bay partners in the Restore Oakland project,” said Harris. “With regard to restorative justice and peace promotion programming, EBC is working with Community Works West, Restorative Justice for Oakland’s Youth, Urban Peace Movement and United Roots.
“These partners are bringing their experience and relationships to bear on the project; for example, Community Works West’s Restorative Community Conferencing Program (RCCP) relies on referrals from police, the District Attorney’s Office and Juvenile Probation Departments.”
Harris thinks Restore Oakland will be open and running by the spring or summer of 2016.
