Healing Justice is a political strategy conceived in 2005, and formally launched in 2006 by the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective to intervene and respond on generational trauma and systemic oppression, and build community/survivor led responses rooted in southern traditions of resiliency to sustain our emotional/physical/spiritual/psychic and environmental well being.
Kindred Collective is a movement building organization. We conceptualize healing justice not as a movement in and of itself, but rather as a framework for movements to address collective harm and trauma. As such, we have held spaces for healing, building accountable and authentic relationships, facing conflict and resolution, and transforming ways we work together. The healing justice framework that we have worked to develop and advance over the past decade has served to support organizations and movements in considering trauma and healing, and in building sustainable infrastructure models. We also have organized and run a number of healing justice practice spaces in collaboration with practitioners, primarily in the Southeast, both at movement building events and in times of collective trauma and crisis. To do this, we have mapped healers, health practitioners, cultural workers, and organizers working within a healing justice framework throughout the Southeast, to build a network of responders. Along with these spaces, we have worked with organizers to hold trauma and memory through altar-building, collective art, and ritual in the aftermath of difficult organizing moments. Additionally, we have offered midnight schools and trainings on healing justice for communities and organizations. Kindred Collective has also supported organizations through conflict mediation, strategic planning, and facilitation. At the center of these offerings is trust as a political process and essential component for collaboration and rapid response.