On advocacy

Advocacy: Despite the infancy of our organization, Collective Climb has already assumed a punditorial role within the current national and local conversation on public safety. At the level of our state legislature, Hyungtae Kim represented our team at a panel hosted by the Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Task Force co-chaired by Sen. Lisa Baker, Sen. Jay Costa, Rep. Tarah Toohil, and Rep. Mike Zabel. The product of this lively discussion with restorative justice advocates across the state was a series of budgetary and procedural recommendations submitted for consideration and ratification by the Task Force. In short, Collective Climb is shaping state policies. Similarly, Mckayla Warwick was invited by the Presidential Public Safety Review and Outreach Initiative marshalled by renowned legal scholar Dorothy Roberts and spiritual leader Chaz Howard to speak as a panelist at the Quattrone Center’s virtual hearings. Herein, Warwick advocated for a series of policy prescriptions in three parts: Responsibility, Accountability, and Transparency. For as political philosopher, Jane Bennet writes, “demystification” is grossly insufficient to advance the cause of change. It's not enough to discover, index, and name harmful behaviors, “we need both critique and positive formulations of alternatives, alternatives that will themselves become the objects of later critique and reform.” Through a sweeping set of policy recommendations, Warwick provided the University a set of fully actionable amendments that would indeed posit these “positive formulations.” For the full transcript of her stirring delivery, please view this link. We look forward to how these testimonies and engagements will materialize in operating our Pilot Program through the division of public safety.