council
Celebrating 2025
Our 2025 year-end series of newsletters highlighted a variety of our program partners’ reflections on the profound need for structures of belonging: the spaces rooted in empathy, accountability, and connection that…
Read MoreA Letter from Executive Director Jared Seide
We place an empty chair in every council circle we offer, whether in a prison, a police precinct, a classroom, or a board room. Groups practicing council imagine that seat…
Read More“Listening from the Heart” – A Conversation with Jared Seide
In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, hosts Jim Hōden Fricker and Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe sit down with Jared Seide to explore the simple, radical practice of sitting in a…
Read More“Her Path Forward” event aims to uplift the women returning home post-incarceration
Beyond Us & Them’s latest Los Angeles Reentry Collaborative convening, entitled “Her Path Forward,” provided a space to uplift the voices, needs and strengths of women returning home. Council provided…
Read MoreFrom Experience to Impact: Grantmaking & Identity in Reentry
On June 20, the Los Angeles Reentry Collaborative gathered for an inspiring afternoon of connection, learning, and storytelling at an event centered on Experience and Impact. With a focus on…
Read MoreTricycle Magazine: “The Practice of Council”
Tricycle Magazine’s executive editor, Phil Ryan, spoke with Beyond Us & Them founder and Executive Director, Jared Seide, about the organization’s mission and the manifold benefits of council (you can…
Read MoreNotable decline in recidivism attributed to in-prison programs, according to CDCR
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) published its latest recidivism report, finding the recidivism rate for individuals released in 2019-20 declined by 2.8% over the previous year, to 39.1% –…
Read MoreFortune School staff and students speak about the impact of council practice: “We’ve really seen breakthroughs.”
The video above captures the enthusiasm and commitment of the Fortune School community to their new “Community Circles” program, which is the result of a multi-year partnership with Beyond Us…
Read MoreHonoring Zen Master Bernie Glassman
We offer a deep bow of gratitude to Roshi Bernie Glassman, Zen pioneer and co-founder of the Zen Peacemakers, on this, the six-year anniversary of his passing. Bernie has left…
Read MorePsychology Today: “Using the Empty Chair to Move Beyond Us-and-Them Thinking”
Psychology Today explored Beyond Us & Them’s methodology in an article that took a look at the organization’s use of the practice of council and focused on utilizing an empty…
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