Click to return to AbbeNormalOb Blog

I read the article, "Microjustice: Helping those who are excluded from the legal system" that JerryMichalski? pointed to in this tweet, and i don't get what it has to do with microfinance (please let me know if i'm missing something).

I appreciate the work they're doing, but how, if at all, does it differ from legal aid work which has been going on for a long time? In what way if any is it analogous to microfinance? A key quote is: "Microjustice’s clients pay only a small fee, around $57, which mostly goes to cover court fees with a little left over for the organization’s overhead. The attorneys, all young recent graduates, are paid from grants and foundation funding, though Van Nispen tot Sevenaer hopes the organization can eventually become self-sustaining."

In other words, there's no vision for how to make it self-sustaining yet.

Microfinance's well-established sustainability comes in part from the people being served holding roles of power in the process, so i think the term microjustice raises a great question: what do institutions that provide justice for people of little material means by empowering them look like?

I expect there are many answers to this question, some about things already being done, and others waiting to be called in to existence by the question. One answer that leaps to my mind is Restorative Circles (the correct name).

Thu Apr 16 21:50:20 2009

A friend asked if i had anything written about something i've spoken of many times, which prompted me to finally put something down on "paper":

(Background if you're not familiar with NonviolentCommunication - a core practice of empathy as we teach it is tapping into what's important to someone, what matters to them, by inquiring into what the "need" is behind what thay are saying/doing/experiencing.)

Here's something that comes out of the experience of not stopping empathy after getting to a need, and finding that we can always go deeper and deeper — "Why do i want meaning?" "Because i want to contribute." "And why do i want to contribute?" "Because i care." "And why do i care?" ... I have had this happen many times in self-empathy, one-on-one, and in groups, and have no doubt we could continue with the words forever; but when we are truly present with each need as we come to it, and following the energy, at some point the words stop and we are simply present with...?

The way that i understand this is that "under" all of the needs on any official list, or anyone's short list of needs, there is something else. For myself, i prefer not to give this thing a label. To help in describing what i am talking about, i sometimes list the many labels that i understand other people to be using for this oneness — the universe, love, life, spirit, consciousness, god, wholeness.

(Internally, no label captures it to my satisfaction. Externally, any label i might use for it will 'put off' a significant fraction of the people i might be talking about it with. In the religious context, this resonates with patterns of having many gods who are in some way understood to be all one; or in the case of having one god, having many names for god, and/or a tradition of not saying the name of god. More recently i have come up with five words that i put in large text on a wall in my room at home, that say something to me about what it's like to be present in this way - grace, awe, wonder, mystery, curiousity.)

Sun Apr 12 07:38:16 2009

Archives:

Current log
Mar 2009
Feb 2009
Dec 2008
Oct 2008
May 2008
Oct 2007
Sep 2007
Aug 2007
Jul 2007
May 2007
Feb 2007
Jan 2007
Dec 2006
Oct 2006
Sep 2006
May 2006
Apr 2006
Jan 2006
Dec 2005
Nov 2005
Oct 2005
Sep 2005
Aug 2005
Jul 2005
Jun 2005
May 2005
Apr 2005
Mar 2005
Feb 2005
Jan 2005
Dec 2004
May 2004
Apr 2004
Mar 2004
Feb 2004
Jan 2004
Dec 2003
Nov 2003
Oct 2003

...and before ObBlog there was AbbeNormal

Technorati Profile

[CategoryOb]

johnabbe on Twitter

Welcome to AbbeNormal. My comments elsewhere.

Commenting here: ContactMe and i'll show you the secret.



by Bloglet

Meaning

Dialogue & Deliberation

Evolving Collective Intelligence

Full Circle Blog

Ming the Mechanic

World Changing

Chandler (& Cosmo/Scooby)

Identity Woman ( Kaliya's Blogs)

WebSeitz:

Seb's Open Research

del.icio.us

RecentChanges blog

Daily wonder

Potshot of the Day

Astronomy PotD

Motivational QotD

Music

Funky 16 Corners

The Bootie Blog

More people, sites, lists, comics, etc.

lucy heart star ( her music) | Jerry Michalski | Lion Kimbro | Jennifer | The Implicit & Experiential Rantings of a Person | Learn Fly | all my friends are crazy. | Cecilia Tan | rio grand-i-o | r_ness | Population: One | tonari no shibafu | Mind matters | Moju | Why I don't have children | Water Owl | Marduk | Sanjiva Weerawarana | My Little Part | Future Salon | Life With Alacrity | Book Blog | News for a Synergic Earth | Difference Engine | Ukebox | Indigo Ocean | K Chronicles ( comics) | No Exit | Evelyn Rodriguez | Leslie's Latest | Cronaca | Risks | Kuro5hin | Mark Dilley | sunir | freeform goodness | 0xDecafbad | Decafbad: | Blog of Collective Intelligence | Mathemagenic | Puzzlepieces | wikiSquared | Wiki Search | Dan Gillmor | JOHO the Blog | Many-to-Many: social software | Joi Ito's Web | Douglas Rushkoff | Deliberative Democracy | Good News India | Tamil Net | Lanka Page | Scripting News | Lazyweb | Microship (Technomad) | 'if'.. | fozbaca | KaminskiWiki: | Spack dot Org wiki | Ward Cunningham | Mitch Kapor | Plokta | Flutterby | Strange Maps | Boing Boing | GadgetBlogs | Blogdex | Google News | Meatball (random) | WardsWiki (random) | OtherWikis | RandomWeblogs

Suspended animation

Story Field Conversations | Story Field Creations | On Foot! | Life-connecting anarchy | John Burkhardt | Mikas thoughts | wayward mutterings | variations on a theme | wiremine | Maps & Territories | Ancient World Web | Daypop Top 40

by Rmail

Recent photos

www.flickr.com

del.icio.us/johnabbe

Fone Finder query form Look up someone's service provider from the first seven digits of their phone number
OpenStreetMap Maps like Google or MapQuest, but all of the content is free/open licensed.
Movie Narrative Charts [xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe] Who was with whom, where, and when, in Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Twelve Angry Men, and Primer
Erfworld.com Online Store :: T-shirts :: Wanda's Decrypted Skull Shirt She may be evil, but she loves the queen of FAQ.
Journal of Participatory Medicine Taking networked grassroots medicine seriously.
Star Charting Apps for iPhone/iPod Touch Nice review of several apps. The new free version of Distant Suns is totally worth it. I also got Star Walk for now, only three bucks. Killer feature is that you can 'flick' through time to set it flowing forwards or backwards. It links to Wikipedia articles for some items for more info, i just wish it showed distances to stars (Distant Suns does).
Category:Compatibility - OSx86 Non-Apple hardware that has been made to run OS X.
ServerSky - Server Sky "Traditional data centers consume almost 3% of US electrical power, and this fraction is growing rapidly." - Obviously, the answer is to put a ton of these in the sky: "First generation server-sats are 20 centimeters across ( about 8 inches ) and 0.1 millimeters (100 microns) thick, and weigh 7 grams. They can be mass produced with off-the-shelf semiconductor technologies."
FreakAngels Purple-eyed super-teen-run post-apocalyptic London, by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. Actually, the current chapter happens earlier, showing how the teens caused...
Eugene Critical Mass | MySpace Last Friday of every month
ErfWorld Large human board-and-dice war gamer gets summoned as a Warlord into a cute (eg dwagons instead of dragons, and they and many of the other monsters look like stuffed animals) yet bloody fantasy world. Engaging characterizations, relationships and plot twists. The world's 'physics' is gamelike, with character's having statistics relating to combat, how many hexes they can move in a turn (or if they can move at all), etc.
The Data Liberation Front (the Data Liberation Front) Coding to ease getting your data into and out of Google products.
RSS (for del.icio.us feed only)

translate this page