Circles Part II: An Interview With Cassidy Friedman

In CIRCLES Part I we looked at the following scenario from Sliding Into Home:

In Sliding Into Home Flip surprises himself when he takes weeks of pent up feelings and punches Steve who has been verbally and physically abusing him. Steve and Flip are sent to the camp administrators office where Flip realizes he doesn’t want the adults to solve the problems that exist between he and Steve.

But when the Coach does find out about the racist comments and physical abuse Steve is expelled from camp. Neither of the boys find resolution. Steve disappears and Flip is left without any sense of closure.

What if Flip’s camp practiced restorative justice? What if Flip and Steve, the administrators and parents and even some of the campers who witnessed the abuse sat together in circle and spoke about how each was impacted by the verbal and physical assaults? What if Steve had been allowed to speak about what it was like growing up in a home with a racist father? If Flip could have spoken about what it was like for him to be targeted because of his race - is this where the healing might have begun?

With me today Is Cassidy Friedman to discuss his film CIRCLES and how the restorative justice process may have served Flip in the above situation.

Cassidy Friedman is a Documentary Film Director. He produced the award winning documentary film Voices Beyond The Wall and has just finished CIRCLES his feature film directing debut which world premiered at Hot Docs 2018 – the top documentary film festival in North America. Cassidy and Eric Butler, the main character in the film, have screenings and trainings led by Eric Butler planned in every region of North America, including an invitation to screen CIRCLES in the U.S. Congress this winter.

Cassidy’s commitment to making films that tell stories that matter challenges him to look for the soul behind a story and pushes him to go to the hard places. Cassidy knows that when he hits an uncomfortable or challenging place in a story he needs to reorient himself and let go of the grasp he has on where he thinks the story needs to go in order to allow the story to evolve and find its deepest most honest telling.

NV: Thanks Cassidy for taking the time to meet with me. Congratulations on the amazing reception your film has had all over North America. The relevance of this film right now in our history is so important. I am grateful for yours and Eric’s commitment to bringing this story to as many places as you are able.

Tell us a bit about CIRCLES.

CF: CIRCLES is the first feature film to examine restorative justice in the schools. In CIRCLES, Eric Butler, a Hurricane Katrina survivor works to keep Black teenagers in school in Oakland, California and finds his personal and professional lives colliding when his 15-year-old-son Tre goes to jail for a crime he didn't commit.

Eric uses restorative justice to build relationships with students in a “high school of last resort.” Ralph Bunche High School is for kids who have been expelled from other schools. This is the last stop before administrators and teachers wash their hands of these kids. All of these kids have juvenile hall rap sheets, negative associations with adults, and are low income kids who at the time of the filming of CIRCLES were all kids of color.

What is so powerful about the work that Eric does with these kids is the fact that he is the first person in their lives that has really cared for them, and who takes the time to listen. The fact that this is so unusual tells us something about the world we and they live in. Eric is developing the playbook about how to do this. He follows his intuition by using his own life experience to guide him. He knows what was missing in his own life and he uses that as a navigation tool to show the kids he works with that he cares.

I grew up in a family with a mother who is a therapist and a father who is a mediator. We had silent hand holding at every meal, daily check ins, and more family meetings than I can count. For me this was just normal behavior, but as I moved out into the world I began to see that I was different than others – especially other men who didn’t share openly, did not become vulnerable or talk about their feelings. I saw how damaging and toxic it is to try and hold all that emotion in and have no outlet for it.

I was hired by Fania Davis to make a promotional video about restorative justice in the schools in Oakland. She introduced me to Eric and told me I needed to spend the day with him. When I saw what Eric was doing I knew exactly what he was up to. Despite our vastly different backgrounds we had a common language. Eric opened his world to me and he laid himself down as a bridge to kids who would never have shared their stories with me otherwise.

While CIRCLES takes place in Oakland with an all Black cast it’s not a film about Black kids in Oakland. The film uses Eric’s story and Ralph Bunche High School to expose what is missing for kids system wide. These things are magnified in places with the least resources and support. To me the film is an effort to show that none of us have been taught how to talk to one another. It is the story of how we could be building relationships and trust everywhere and this is what it would look like if we were.

NV: What is your most valuable take away from the six years you spent filming CIRCLES?

CF: One take away for me was that we only feel the impact of societal breakdown after a horrible tragedy happens and we use restorative justice as a crisis management tool. Really restorative justice is about changing the way we interact with one another, learning to flex muscles like listening, building relationships and being accountable to one another before the crisis happens so that we have a foundation of trust and people will be willing to have the hard conversations with each other. Using restorative justice as crisis management before trust has been established is like asking a truck driver to fly a plane.

I grew up in the progressive Bay Area thinking that racism existed in other parts of the country – in the rural backwaters where judges and sheriffs were openly racist but I didn’t think that explicit racism existed where I lived. Making this film and watching the systemic racism do its very best job to destroy Tre’s life and recognizing that for my son and family things would have gone very differently because we are white was confusing for me. Despite the fact that Eric knew people in high places who went to bat for him, he and his son were just two black men caught in a racist system. If you ask a black person living in areas that are known to be racist if the Bay Area is less racist they will tell you it’s not. It’s just less explicit.

What I took away from this is that we individuals don’t like to think of ourselves as racist – but all of us are perpetuating this systemic racism. I realized that I unwittingly could have been any one of the players in Eric and Tre’s story – the judge, the police officer, the man who thought Tre was going to harm him just because he was black and asked to use his cell phone.

NV: What was one of the most transformative moments in the life or lives of students sitting in restorative circle that you saw during your filming?

CF: One of the most powerful things Eric does at the start of each circle is to apologize to the kids for blaming them for the problems we adults created. And then rather than hiding behind the teacher–student mask he shows his love for the kids in an unfiltered, honest, and vulnerable way which gives them permission to trust another adult for the first time in their lives.

One moment in particular where I witnessed the magnitude and power of healing that happens when people sit in circle was when a girl who Eric had built a relationship with opened up about a sexual assault that happened to her. Eric shared his own story about being sexually assaulted. When that girl shared her story Eric, myself and another male student all gasped. Hearing her story we were disgusted and ashamed because this woman walks around feeling afraid of every man she sees. We had no way of knowing or seeing that. You got the sense in that exchange of the mountain of harm in our society that we don’t see. This was the first time in her life that she was sharing and she trusted that Eric could receive what she was sharing and he did. The sharing of their stories solidified their relationship so that they became allies to one another rather than teacher and student. Maybe the fact that she was able to share that story, and Eric was able to meet her by sharing his own, means there is the potential for her to heal from that trauma.

NV: In Sliding Into Home Flip has his first encounter with blatant racism when Steve, a fellow camper, goes out of his way to target Flip. As the story progresses we see that Steve’s father is a bigot and a bully and that Flip seeks to learn more about racism and about himself as a person of color through his conflict with Steve. But he doesn’t get the opportunity to do so because the administrators step in and kick Steve out of camp.

If you were given the chance to rewrite that scenario by offering the kids a restorative justice circle what would that look like? What do you imagine might be accomplished had a healing circle been provided?

CF: A restorative justice/conflict/harm circle would have provided a chance for Flip to share how the incidences with Steve impacted him. Allowing him to become empowered not only by the sharing, but by being able to figure out what he needs in order to feel there’s been some kind of justice – a justice that he gets to define. Had there been a circle every one else in the circle would have had the opportunity to hear from Flip how it impacted him, and share how they were impacted as well. When victim-offender dialogue happens the offender will be able to talk about why they did what they did as well. This might be the first opportunity Steve will have to be heard and to share about his own suffering.

It would have been up to Flip and Steve to come up with a plan to make what Steve did right and then the rest of the participants would have to commit to holding them accountable to the restoration decided upon. Everyone in the circle has to own their role. For example the kids that stood witness to Steve’s racist comments would get to speak about how it impacted them, and also what their role in the incident was. Once you start looking under the hood of this car no one individual is responsible for perpetrating wrong doing. The community is a part of the problem and the solution.

NV: CIRCLES is having a huge impact around the country both for its emotional content and its message. What change do you hope CIRCLES will bring forth in society?

CF: We live in a society that discourages relationships. I hope that the film will give people the sense that things don’t have to be like this.

Eric Butler is a powerful role model. He is showing you how we as a society can try to embody restorative values. There is no easy fix. It requires a constant commitment to building relationships. A problem is rarely fixed – we have to wake up every morning and ask ourselves, ‘Who in my community is being left behind? Who isn’t getting their needs met?’ It’s about showing up for other people. When you start to open to the people around you you don’t pretend that suffering isn’t there. You feel a responsibility to support them.

NV: Do you have any comments or thoughts about Sliding Into Home as a book and/or an educational tool?

CF: Restorative justice is story telling. It’s what you and I do as a film maker and an author. When I look at your book through a restorative justice lens to me the greatest gift of Sliding Into Home is that it cultivates deep empathy between the reader and Flip. The book IS restorative justice because he is given the opportunity to share his story so he can feel seen. The reader gets to see the world through Flip’s eyes. Without people opening up and sharing their story we don’t get to see it. When you hear it from the source you realize not everything going on for someone is as you expected. Everyone who reads this book can feel the impact of what Steve did to him. The reader is sitting in circle with him. The adults in the story see Flip in limited terms and they impose adult solutions that don’t work and don’t heal anything for Flip.

I think this book should be required reading for Middle School students especially in white majority areas. Reading it should be followed by real conversations. The gift of the book is that it can jump start conversations about things that aren’t being talked about. The subtleties of implicit racism and what its like to be on the receiving end of this. It’s so important that those of us who are white develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of what people of color go through. It forces us to own our privilege.

We are learning this as Flip learns it. His awakening process parallels our awakening process in terms of understanding what it’s like to grow up being trans-racially adopted, or as part of a minority. We get to see what implicit racism and bias feel like.

I think Sliding Into Home is really culturally relevant and kids can relate to it. There are so many lessons that can be unpacked in the book – adoption divorce being a person of color in a white majority space. It’s all so relevant right now. Simply showing up the wrong color in a white space may result in people calling the cops. As someone who grew up in Marin I think it’s really important for people to understand this.

NV: Cassidy, thank you for the work you are doing to bring awareness to restorative justice, and what so many young people are up against in our society. And thank you for taking the time to speak with me about Sliding Into Home.

CIRCLES packed two 350-seat theaters and received standing ovations at its world premiere at Hot Docs 2018 - the top documentary film festival in North America. Its U.S. Premiere at Nashville Film Festival went equally well! Since then, we have been struggling to keep up with the demand for the film and we have screenings and trainings led by Eric Butler planned in every region of North America, including an invitation to screen CIRCLES in the U.S. Congress in winter.

Our vision is that a successful, sustainable, and culturally relevant model of restorative justice becomes a permanent part of communities in the U.S. and beyond, to move us toward a more just, compassionate and inclusive society.