Our work is rooted in an emerging social justice paradigm called healing justice. Healing justice, according to Cara Page co-founder of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, is “a framework that identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence and bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.” Through this framework, Sage Community Health Collective is dedicated to creating dialogue within the social justice community and with our patients about the face of burn-out amongst organizers in Chicago and the role of wellness in our movements.
To begin this dialogue, we conducted focus groups with several community based organizations in the neighborhood to find out what there collective definition of “health” is and how a center like ours can respond to and provide community centered space and healing for those folks on the front lines. We intentionally invited staff and leaders from community based organizations and strong allies of the healing justice movement to be full participants in the shaping of Sage as a community centered liberatory space.