About Shifts

Shifts is a pilot project that supports men who have committed violence and harm in the work of shifting towards and through healing and accountability outside of the criminal legal system.


Healing and accountability rarely happen alone. Instead, people grow, heal, and become more accountable through relationships to friends, family, opportunities, experiences, and through intentional spaces to work with our feelings, beliefs, behaviors and more. We believe that healing and accountability are an ongoing (and for some never ending) series of shifts in how one feels, thinks and behaves, rather than a single static event. Shifts approaches healing and accountability through this lens, that these needed experiences come through building trusting and caring relationships over time. Coming to terms with the harm and violence, and transforming how we show up in the world requires the opposite of punishment and shame, it calls for interconnection, deep reflection, and time to unlearn and practice healthier ways of being with ourselves and others. It means facing our own histories with care and courage;; working with our most difficult experiences and feelings, like shame, inadequacy, and remorse; and turning towards ourselves and each other as we rebuild how we relate to one another. Shifts is one offering towards this larger project of supporting men in being in right relationship with ourselves and the world around us.

The lineages We Draw from

Shifts is a project that supports men who have committed violence and harm in the work of shifting towards and through healing and accountability outside of the criminal legal system. We are rooted in the lineages of restorative and transformative justice, somatics, prison abolition, and take inspiration from indigenous traditions in turtle island and the Pacific. We believe healing and accountability come through deep relationships, care, support, culture, embodied practice, and time, and for some through spirituality. Our work is community-based and community-specific as we aim to support people as they are and where they are, as best we know how.

Who we are

Shifts is a small grassroots efforts and we are slowly building a team of a facilitators.

Team

  • Cameron W. Rasmussen (Coordinator and Facilitator)

  • Kenton Kirby (Facilitator)

  • Julman Tolentino (Facilitator)

  • Luis Alejandro Tapia (Facilitator)

  • Julian Ward (Facilitator)

Project Advisory Group

  • Sethu Nair

  • RJ Maccani