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What does it take to Make Peace in a Violent World? Wisdom and Lessons from Inside Prison Walls - Kim Moore

The following talk was given by Kim Moore at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 17, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

What does it take to Make Peace in a Violent World? Wisdom and Lessons from Inside Prison Walls

Kim Moore: Thank you so much. It is such a joy to be here. I have seen Gil put this on hundreds and hundreds of times, but it's my first time wearing it. So, thank you for bearing with me. I am Kim Gross Moore, a member here at IMC, and I am very happy to be back here with you. My colleagues from GRIP¹ will introduce themselves in a minute, but I want to first say how grateful we are to IMC. There are so many people here that have played an important part in the evolution and growth of GRIP. Gil has been an incredible supporter from almost the very beginning. There are so many people here that have been caring and generous supporters of our work. I see Lydia, Francine, Jeanie, Ram, Sally, Hillary, Cliff, Chris Clifford, and others. There are just so many folks here that have helped GRIP become what it is today. So I really want to appreciate you and thank you for having us back.

I am going to share a little bit of new impact data that I'm very excited about, and then my colleagues will each introduce themselves, tell who they are, and why they are involved with GRIP. The theme of the presentation today really is: What does it mean to be a peacemaker? What does it take to make peace in a violent world? Then we will have some Q&A so that folks can ask their questions.

I was thrilled that we had a national organization called the Prison Policy Initiative crunch our numbers last year with California state numbers. Obviously, we are really proud of our recidivism rate number. Recidivism is kind of a low bar for us because it just means you got out and didn't commit another crime, didn't have a parole violation, or didn't end up back in prison. We have a much higher standard for our graduates to really be safe, contributing members of their communities. We are also looking at how to change the prison system so that people can be rehabilitated more quickly and get the support they need to come home sooner.

The Prison Policy Initiative found that, on average, a GRIP graduate avoids five and a half years of incarceration compared to a typical state lifer. That means the 869 graduates who have come home have avoided 4,517 years of incarceration.

[Applause]

If you're interested in numbers and taxpayer dollars, that adds up to something like $700 million—or a gazillion dollars. Basically, it's being saved. [Laughter]

We are working on multiple levels to support individuals, change the culture on the yard of prisons, and have people come home as contributing peacemakers in their communities. We are a restorative justice program. Part of what we are doing is supporting people who have committed serious harm to be able to really understand what happened to them, how they got on the path to prison, and how to take full and complete responsibility and accountability for the harm they've caused. This allows them to re-engage with their family members, perhaps with the survivors of the harm they caused, or if that's not possible, to be of service to others who have suffered violence and crime. We support a network of about 30 survivors of crime who are part of GRIP and who go into the prisons to have intensive healing dialogues with our students inside. You will hear a little bit about that today as well.

With that, I'm going to invite my colleague, Fatine.

Fatine Jackson Sr.: Good morning everybody. My name is Fatine Jackson Senior, and I am the training manager as well as the lead senior facilitator for the GRIP Training Institute. I have been with this program for quite a while. I currently go inside and facilitate the GRIP program in various institutions as well as provide trainings for everyone looking to become a facilitator in the program.

I have been a student, and I am formerly incarcerated. When I went through GRIP well over 12 years ago, it was a remarkable experience for me. Coming from my background in the inner city of Long Beach, California, I had a really rough upbringing. I made a lot of bad decisions that led me to prison. I was really seeking to understand what happened to me, how this happened, and what I could do to change, if anything.

I ran into GRIP some years later through Jacques Verduin², who was my facilitator at the time. He really helped me understand my history and how I ended up making these bad choices. From that, it really changed my life, and I wanted to be part of it even further. So I became a facilitator. I was trained by this young man sitting to my right, Mr. Robert Gon; he was one of my original trainers as well as mentors. I have been with GRIP ever since.

I was blessed to be released early by former Governor Jerry Brown, who granted me a commutation due to all the work I had done. I was released quite early, and as soon as I came home, I joined GRIP and immediately started going right back in months later. [Laughter] Literally inside out, right? Which was really a blessing, an honor, and a privilege to be able to give back in that fashion and to help promote public safety.

This work is really about the fact that we all want to feel safe in our environments, in our communities, and in society in general. We help folks understand what violence is, how it happens, and our own histories that perpetuate it. We then help them become peacemakers where violence is totally off the table and communication is our weapon of choice.

We recently had a graduation at the institution that I facilitate, CMF (California Medical Facility) in Vacaville. It was a remarkable event. All of our students were in cap and gown. Their family members were there to witness this achievement. They got an opportunity to get up and speak about their achievement, and their family members got a chance to speak about the changes they noticed since they completed the program. It was just such a wonderful event; there were a lot of tears in the room.

That's one of the reasons why I do this work—because I can see the healing in real time. Mindfulness is one of our important elements of GRIP. It helps folks learn how to be present, withstand the storm of unpleasant emotions, get to a place of clarity even though things seem unsure, and make skillful decisions that will help them resolve issues, conflicts, and confrontations in a peaceful way. I am so honored and grateful to be part of this program and this healing work. I'm happy to be here to see all your beautiful smiling faces. Thank you so much for having me, and I'm open to any questions when we get to that point.

[Applause]

Robin Peacemaker: Good morning everyone. My name is Robin Peacemaker, and I have been part of GRIP since the beginning. It is phenomenal to be a part of GRIP and to be able to witness the transformation of men that have come to prison confused, suffering from a lot of historical trauma, and to watch them blossom.

My journey started when I was 19 years old after serving in the United States Marine Corps. I went into the streets, and that's when I became angrier than I believed I could be, and I took a human life. From the age of 19 to the age of 65, I was incarcerated. I did a period of 45 years inside the institutions—Native Americans, we call it the "Iron House."

During that time, I was able to meet some really quality people that had integrity. I grew from that. Jacques Verduin² was one of those pillars. I listened, I paid attention, and I went through what I needed to go through—sitting in the fire and burning clean.

From that time, I've been a peacemaker. Wherever I travel, in my job, I am employed. I live a quality life today. I've been blessed in so many different ways to be a witness to the transformation of not only the men who were incarcerated but also the survivors of crime that I've met. To meet them personally, look in their eyes, and be able to feel as much as I could about their suffering and trauma reminds me that I can be of service.

One of the questions is: Where do I find my peace? My peace is how I walk. It is my integrity, not acting out of fear or greed, and being of service to others. That's my mantra. I say that because I am standing on the shoulders of so many giants. I look out here and I like to look into people's eyes to see that light, because that resonates. I can remember sitting in a cell, and the only thing I would be able to see was a tiny light. It reminds me of looking at one star, and that star grew inside of me. I can feel that light.

The GRIP program is a phenomenal program. You could go by evidence-based scientific information, and we have definitely not only set the bar but continue to strive to set that bar just a little bit higher on being able to free people before they get out of prison, so they come out here and be peacemakers. So with that, may I share it...

[Applause]

Ann Boff: My name is Ann Boff. I'm nearby in this area, new to IMC. I'm glad to be welcomed by this community and by the GRIP community. I'm definitely a novice at meditation, so I'm going to learn from all of you. My career has been in social work and public health, doing a lot of community engagement work with immigrant populations, but I'm new to restorative justice and to GRIP.

My exposure, learning, and engagement with both meditation and restorative justice connects with the death of my oldest daughter, Eliza. When she was 24, just a couple of years ago, she was happy, had found her path, and was pursuing it. She was living in Maryland and was on a study break walking home close to her apartment on a Saturday afternoon. She had just gotten off the phone with one of her younger sisters and crossed a crosswalk in front of an elementary school. She was on the sidewalk when a man about my age—with children of his own, one of whom was Eliza's age—ran up on the sidewalk and hit her from behind. He had a very long history of alcoholism, several DUIs, and an ignition lock breathalyzer on his own car, but had taken his employer's F-250 pickup truck to get more beer at 4:00 in the afternoon.

He stayed at the scene, but she died pretty immediately. Of course, it's devastating every day for all of us who loved her. We will never heal from the loss. But we continue to move forward and seek meaning.

I've always had compassion for the man who was responsible for her death. Something about losing Eliza... I don't know, I just wanted to understand his story. I understood him to be a human being. I understood that he must have had a terribly difficult life, and I couldn't imagine what it was like to wake up to what he had done.

My husband and I attended his sentencing hearing. I actually just got back from Maryland where I went to his parole hearing. I pursued dialogue with him. There's something called Victim-Offender Dialogue that I didn't know about. I pursued that, but it's not funded right now in Maryland, so I haven't been able to engage in that. But I wrote him a letter. I told him I wanted to know something about him. I told him I forgive him. He wrote back, saying he's been very remorseful and has taken full accountability.

Anyway, I learned about Victim-Offender Dialogue and restorative justice. I read a lot about it, and because I live here, I looked at what was being done in this community and came across GRIP. It was incredible to start learning about GRIP and men like Fatine and Robin, and to talk with Kim about her path and her work. I was lucky I got to insert myself into the process of producing the magazine that is out there on the table. It's full of testimonials and stories of students, graduates, and other survivors of trauma and crime. Working on that magazine really opened my eyes to this whole world.

I got to attend a GRIP event and meet many of the GRIP colleagues. At the end of October, I went with Kim to a GRIP "Tribe" that she is facilitating in Salinas at the Correctional Training Facility. I went into a circle of about 35 men who had collectively spent more than 800 years in prison. I told them about Eliza, about myself, and about what happened. I asked them for advice before going to the parole commission because I believe in the restorative justice principles, but it's also really difficult in the personal context to figure out how to apply them in a criminal justice system that feels so broken a lot of the time. Those men, who were just as brave, incredible, human, and full of spirit as the two men next to me, gave me incredible support and advice. They sat with me in silence, and some of them wrote to me afterwards. That really carried me through the last week.

So, there's a lot more that I could say, but I'll stop there for now and say thank you to all of you, to Robin, Fatine, and Kim.

[Applause]

Kim Moore: I just want to say thank you so much for your bravery—for showing up, sharing your story, and still expressing that compassion and love in your heart, even for the offender who took Eliza's life. Thank you for being here with us.

So, we're going to shift. I'm going to ask each of you to share a little bit about this theme: What does it mean to make peace?

One thing I also want to lift up is that we're serving women now. I just came back yesterday from the largest women's prison in the state, out in Chowchilla³, where we are doing our second cycle of a GRIP Tribe with about 35 women. It was a really sacred day and a good reminder to me that this work—to learn how to be non-violent, to learn how to heal, and to develop the inner capacities to engage in the world from a compassionate and accountable place—women need it, too. And not just in prison. We all need it, right?

In the book Leaving Prison Before You Get Out, which Jacques Verduin wrote and which is our curriculum, there is a lot of dharma that is going into the prisons. But what's so incredible is that there's a lot of dharma coming out from the prisons that we all can learn from. I want to appreciate that we get to do this together. We get to be part of a journey of healing, accountability, transformation, and ultimately some form of liberation. What is coming out from inside—from some of the darkest, most violent places in our society, from folks who have been thrown away, vilified, and ignored for generations—is this incredible, courageous, and transformative work. They are coming home able to be leaders and guides in their communities.

Fatine, let's start with you. What does it mean to make peace? And could you share a tool that we use as part of that work inside?

Fatine Jackson Sr.: Absolutely. What does it mean to make peace? Ultimately, our students go through the year-long process of the GRIP curriculum, and the goal is for them to become peacemakers at the end.

To be a peacemaker and make peace has to first start with self. Making peace with one's past, making peace with everything that has happened to an individual. I'll speak in "I" statements. I had to make peace with everything that happened in my life: abuse, neglect, abandonment, different forms of violence, addiction, bad decisions, hurting people, entertaining conflict. All those things were part of my past. I had to learn to forgive myself for all those transgressions and wrongs, which was a very hard thing to do. Forgiving oneself took years for me—to come to terms with and accept things I've done that were very shameful and hurtful.

Then, being able to transition that forgiveness from self to other people—to people that I believed harmed me—and to make peace with that so that resentment has subsided. There are no ill-will feelings. It's only peace, respect, and love that's left.

How did I get there? As a student and also as an active facilitator, I continue to work on myself. It's not just for our students; it's also beneficial to us facilitators that go in weekly and monthly because we're human beings, right? We go through stuff and we have to learn how to deal with it effectively so we can keep peace in our mind and our heart at all times as much as possible.

To make peace is to be the initiator of de-escalation, not taking things personally. This brings me to one of our tools called Q-Tip. We teach this as part of the "Developing Emotional Intelligence" element of the program, where folks get to learn more about themselves—what triggers them, what sets them off, what makes them mad.

It's easier said than done, to be honest. It sounds so simple. If you have the card, flip to the front where it says Q-Tip: Quit Taking It Personally.

It says: When somebody insults you, disrespects you, or breaks a promise, you get to choose how you will manage your initial upset and how you will respond so that you are not at the mercy of your unchecked emotions and you don't react blindly. You get to decide to Q-Tip the situation and quit taking it personally.

The thing I love about it is where it says "you are not at the mercy of unchecked emotions." As human beings, we weren't born with a manual, right? "Here is your manual to be a perfect human being." I never got mine. [Laughter] So we have to learn these things over time, through trial and error.

My main point is that we have the power of choice regardless of what's going on in our life. We have the power to choose to do or not to do. That power is where we hold our decisions to be effective and beneficial to ourselves and others.

As we turn the card around, some of the key measures of the Q-Tip card are learning how not to match the energy. That's easier said than done, especially when you're on the road and somebody cuts you off and flips you off, and you're not having the best day yourself. Learning how not to match the energy is very important.

Turning inward and making yourself safe—self-validation—is very important. Learning how to breathe. This is where mindfulness comes in for us. Especially since our students are not very experienced in mindfulness—most of us are novices—we teach them that the breath scientifically helps get oxygen into the body and brain, which helps bring clarity. Once you are triggered, if you can think clearly through the trigger—the anger, the frustration, the irritation—you can act skillfully. Ten deep breaths is enough to get you to clarity. We teach it in a simplistic form, and they grasp it.

The main thing is unplugging from the script that blames the other person. A lot of us find it easy to put something on someone else and justify why we are acting or feeling the way we are. We learn that I don't have to blame anyone for how I'm feeling. It's a feeling that's coming up, and I have to deal with it. Just because I think somebody's responsible for it, that doesn't make them responsible for it. I am responsible for my own feelings.

We also have our students carry a Q-Tip in their pocket—like a real Q-Tip—as a reminder. Maybe if your ear itches, you can get your ear, too. [Laughter]

Kim Moore: Ann, do you want to share?

Ann Boff: I don't want to take time away from Fatine and Robin because they're the real peacemakers. But I will just say that in my short time interacting with GRIP, I feel so aware of the lessons for all of us in our daily lives from their curriculum and from how Robin, Fatine, and all the graduates have internalized those lessons. You read about their stories and you can see the ways they're making peace, whether they're still inside or out in the community.

The skills that the program teaches are skills for all of us. I think they learn this seeing, being, listening, de-numbing, and embracing that they're able to do when they tell these radical truths and hold themselves and others accountable. It's just a beautiful thing, and I am learning already.

I'll just say really quickly regarding the parole hearing, because people might be curious: the man responsible for Eliza's death was not paroled in Maryland. He hasn't even been able in two years to enroll in AA; he's on a waiting list. I think he really wants to transform, but what you said, Fatine, about forgiving yourself—he's so far from being able to forgive himself. Thanks to my GRIP interaction and my learning from the facilitators, I was really able to say, "I want for you to be transformed and healed, and I want for you to be able to forgive yourself and move forward with your life and be back with your family and community." I hope he can get there. When he gets there, maybe even that seed that I planted—that I learned from you all—will help him to spread some kind of new goodness within his family and his community. I think that's what this is about. It goes so far beyond the prison walls.

Kim Moore: Thank you. Robin, would you like to share what it means to make peace? And you can share from the flute as well.

Robin Peacemaker: How many days do I have? [Laughter]

I've been on this path for a while, and being where I'm at today in life, I cannot explain to you the depth of the peace that I'm able to experience. I practice a lot of different ways. Mindfulness is big for me. Being able to sit where I live in Alameda, really close to the water—I go to the beach, burn sage medicine, play the flute, and take my drum. That's when I get my alignment and have that peace. I remember all of the faces, all of the people that I bring with me to sit in that space.

Had it not been for the teachings of Jacques Verduin and so many others, I would not be able to sit where I sit and do the work that I am able to do. I feel a major responsibility to go back inside the prison system. I work inside San Quentin on Fridays and teach GRIP. That brings me peace because I know the value and the quality of what I'm doing and how it is assisting other human beings—other men that are struggling.

That provides me peace. It allows me to hold space for somebody that's really suffering because I can remember how I used to suffer. I used to sit in cells for extended periods of time, and the only thing that I had was a little bit of light. But that little bit of light grew, and it manifested into this reality of being a certified GRIP facilitator, being able to go into San Quentin and Mule Creek, being invited to other places, sharing my experience, and being open and transparent about it.

I'm a work in progress. I stumble and fall, but I pick myself up quickly because I remember the teachers and what they told me: You can fall seven times, pick yourself up on the eighth.

With that, may I close?

This song is a lifegiver song. It honors women—all women. I had the opportunity to make this flute, I believe, in 1995, and it has been blessed by the Dalai Lama with the blessing cord. This is one of the gifts that I had while I was incarcerated. I've been able to travel up and down the coast and go to different native ceremonies, and I take this flute with me and go in the lodges and play. So for all women, lifegivers...

(Robin plays the flute)

Kim Moore: Thank you, Robin, Ann, and Fatine. We are at our time, but we will be here for the next half hour or so if there are any questions. We also have the Peacemaker magazine which you're welcome to take. We're just really grateful and appreciate all of the support, care, and generosity from this community. Thank you so much.