You've been doing the work, showing up for your community, navigating harm, holding conflict with care…and somewhere along the way, you found Transformative Justice. Maybe it was through a book, a training, or a conversation that cracked something open...but now you realize that theory can only take you so far.
This 3-month summer cohort is a space to connect with lineage, go deeper with practitioners who have been doing Transformative Justice (TJ) work in community for decades with case studies drawn from real world situations, and with a small group of peers who are on a parallel journey.
Through live webinars, interactive scenario work, a daylong retreat, and a private community forum, you'll build the skills, the frameworks, and the accountability relationships to bring TJ out of the abstract and into your actual practice.
This is for organizers, mediators, conflict workers, anti-violence advocates, and community builders who are ready to move from theory to practice.
Registration deadline: May 26th
What's Included?
- Registration for four (4) live webinars
- Access to five (5) interactive case studies including private spaces alongside the Liberatory Conflict Mediation cohort members to talk about how to apply TJ principles and practices directly in these realistic scenarios that we have held as community accountability practitioners, mediators, and TJ organizers
- Registration for one (1) daylong Transformative Justice retreat where we will really dig into lineage, practice, boundaries and go deep into a specific case study with peer practitioners
- Participation in two (2) live cohort sessions with a small community of practitioners going on this journey together
- Access to two (2) pre-recorded webinars on Community Accountability + Everyday TJ
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Access to a private community forum page to connect, problem solve, resource share, discussion, and building pods and relationships with people who are doing TJ work around the world
Important Dates & Times:
- May 22nd → Webinar: Ethics of Chisme
- May 29th → Kick-off Cohort Session
- June 26th → Webinar: What's Actually at Stake?
- July 17th → Webinar: Psychodynamics of Cancellation
- July 24th → Daylong virtual retreat: Transformative Justice
- July 31st → Webinar: Unpacking Anti-Blackness + Interrupting Deference as Under-Accountability
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August 14th → Closing Cohort Session
*All webinars will happen from 5-6:30pm ET/4-5:30pm CT/3-4:30pm MT/2-3:30pm PT and will be recorded with the recording shared with all participants on the bluelight academy platform the week after they occur along with access to the slides. The daylong virtual retreat will take place from 12pm-5:30pm ET/11am-4:30pm ET/10am-3:30pm MT/9am-2:30pm PT. Our retreats are *not recorded*, include a 1 hour break during the live session, and comes with a 1:1 or group coaching session to integrate your learning. The live cohort sessions will take place from 12-1:30pm ET/11am-12:30pm CT/10-11:30am MT/9-10:30am PT and can be recorded based on the needs of the participants.
Meet the Cohort Facilitators
In addition to these 3 facilitators you will have the opportunity to learn from all the Spring Up collective members across the webinars and daylong retreats, as well as learn alongside and from the participants in our yearlong mediation training program, joining us from across the world!
Mara Martinez-Hewitt (they/them)
Mara is a queer artist and community organizer focusing on healing justice for survivors, pleasure activism, land rematriation, DIY mental health and decolonizing facilitation. They were born and raised by the mangroves in Miami, now living for over a decade in East Los Angeles. A clinician and grassroots TJ practitioner, Mara has served community members in various programs around domestic violence prevention and response and restorative justice. They have studied curanderismo, relationship to plant(cetors) and circle keeping across borders, bringing a decolonial and Indigenous-centered praxis to mediation work. They believe that embodied and restorative practices guide people towards unlocking their own power, fueling collective dreaming, and pushing us towards freedom.
Deana Lewis (she/her)
Deana [dee-nuh] is a queer, Black mixed race, cisgender woman who is pro-abortion, pro-immigrant, pro-trans rights, pro-liberation, and pro-receiving gifts/applause. She is one of the founding members of Just Practice Collaborative (JPC), whose purpose is to build communities’ capacities to respond to intimate partner violence and sexual assault without relying on state-based systems. She also hosts Stories for Power the JPC x Creative Interventions podcast that launched in April 2025. She also participates in the work of Love & Protect and Survived & Punished, two prison abolition collectives dedicated to supporting transgender and cisgender women, trans men, and gender-expansive folks of color who are harmed and criminalized by interpersonal and state violence. Finally, Deana is a Senior Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago.
shaïna m. caceres-doliny (they/them)
shaïna [shy-nah] is a Black, Haitian, queer artist, liberatory educator, and one of the founding members of Spring Up. Rooted in a commitment to abolitionist futures and the transformative power of art and design, they support individuals and organizations in dreaming beyond existing constraints and turning those dreams into tangible, human-centered systems and practices. Holding a BA in Design from NABA Milano, shaïna brings a rigorous creative foundation to their work in coaching, facilitation, and community outreach. They believe the imaginative process is itself a tool for healing, resistance, and collective liberation; they seek to bring curiosity, care, and possibility-thinking into every space they hold.
This is for you if:
- You have been practicing TJ and want to connect directly with lineages of practitioners
- You have been doing conflict work and want to integrate TJ values and tools
- You have been reading the theory or connecting with learnings of TJ online and want to connect with peers talking about scenarios and mentors who have been practicing in community for decades
- You are an academic or consultant curious to find ways to be inspired by TJ frameworks and explore more of what it means that TJ is not something that can be done in a workplace.
- You are looking for a space that allows you to bring TJ out of theory into practice and be in an accountability relationship with peer practitioners + lineages around what should and shouldn’t be called TJ within the work that you’re doing
- You are someone doing community building and/or conflict + care roles within member-based organizations
- You are an organizer responsible for scaffolding member experience of growing organizations with volunteer membership that are navigating conflict, harm, and dual relationships in community and are looking for ways to bring TJ into that practice in a way that feels rightsized
- You work in anti- violence/sexual violence/domestic violence work and have been hearing more about restorative justice, transformative justice and non-punitive frameworks in response to violence that sound cool in the abstract but you are curious about what it looks like in practice in a way that’s survivor-centered and grounded in consent
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You have been hearing people advocate for transformative justice or non-punitive response to harm but it sounds scary and you wanna know about real world situations and case studies to build your confidence in talking about it with people in your community or recipients of your services or programs
Components of the Cohort
Participants of the cohort will have access to all of the following offerings in addition to cohort-specific sessions, case studies, and a private community forum page.
This cohort is brought to you by Spring Up
Spring Up is a Black and Queer-led a collective of seven care workers, transformative justice practitioners, liberatory educators, and coaches practicing and teaching the liberatory arts here at bluelight academy.
We operate as worker-cooperative rooted in the values of consent, accountability, and transformation. For over 10 years, Spring Up has used fiction, art, role play, and community education to popularize the skills and frameworks necessary to be free together.