Claire de Mézerville López welcomes Carlus "Ray" Evans to the Restorative Works! Podcast. Ray speaks with us about his experience as a Transformative Justice Circle Keeper, situating community building as paramount to making strides in fostering safety and trust in communities.

He describes how a transformative circle looks and feels and provides the steps needed to sustain, internalize, and duplicate this process across various community spaces. Ray reminds us that harm occurs when a need is not being met,and that we can hold each other accountable while being supportive ofeach other's needs.

He asserts that opening ourselves to exploring different perspectives, we will discover new ways of thinking and problem solving,and be able to create new and more agreeable forms of justice.

A business owner and a Restorative/Transformative Justice Circle Keeper at Restore Oakland,in Oakland, CA, Ray holds weekly Community Building Circles with formerly incarcerated and never incarcerated individuals.He has facilitated community-building circles and given a speech on prison abolition for a Cops off Campus rally at Stanford University. He seeks to counter act challenges with the US prison system with a humane approach to crime and conflict throught his work. He is a formerly incarcerated individual who spent 27 years as a resident of the California Department of Corrections.Tune in to hear more about Ray's work and methods to building community with https://restoreoakland.org/