Hello!
Hi there. I’m Lars. I’m a writer, educator, and organizer based in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
My work is oriented towards transformative justice. Transformative justice is an inherently interdisciplinary framework of practice. It grounds the aims of restorative justice—accountability and non-retributive reparation for harm—in ecological, structural context. This approach is not foreign or novel to restorative justice; rather, it’s a reclamation of the tradition’s roots among Indigenous, Black, and dispossessed communities. Together, it wagers, we can build broader solidarity and the conditions for collective wellbeing to allow us all to be free of the repressive, carceral, and extractive systems that have come to structure so much of our lives. This gamble against violence and for mutuality is at once the ongoing labor of reconstruction, a vision of a common life beyond supremacy, and the true promise of deliberative politics.
My background is diverse. In university, I studied mathematics, but my interests always bloomed beyond STEM, so while I was there I made myself a second degree in the liberal arts to account for the breadth of my studies across the humanities and social sciences. I’m always fascinated by food cultures and by what’s possible when we gather. I like maps and tend to prefer active and public transportation. I’ve lived in Latin America, have been formed by study in the new Black school of theology, and carry a happy debt to liberation theological traditions in both axiom and method.
As I approach my work, I also want to be clear that I see little enduring use for perfection or shame. At the same time, I think we have neglected our grief and pain to our own detriment. I want to begin again with the assumption that I (and you, whoever you are) have been shaped by the racist, heteropatriarchal, ableist, transphobic, xenophobic, militaristic, colonial, anthropocentric world in which we live—but that that’s not the end of the story. Let’s take that as a fact, and see what comes next.
My aim is to cultivate livable economies, nurture theologies of care, and build abolition democracy. This is collaborative work, and I’ve worked with all sorts of folks over the years. I’m especially proud of this project to co-design a trauma-informed arts initiative with long-term residents of state prisons, my partnerships with Indigenous organizations to transform land conflicts in multi-faith contexts, a public process I co-facilitated to build more equitable infrastructure in my hometown, and the years I’ve spent building everyday sanctuary with people facing displacement and dispossession.
These days, I’m thinking about life lived in translation, the borders of our worlds, and social ecology. I’m trying to give life my attention. This Substack is a place to share observations and reflections along the way. Thanks for stopping by.
