Watch NJ is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) collaboration between volunteers monitoring domestic violence (restraining / protective order) hearings in Middlesex County, New Jersey, and other concerned advocates and citizens who have been working against significant odds to end domestic violence in New Jersey and elsewhere.
Launched in 2005, Watch NJ project was created and advanced by the Alliance for Racial and Social Justice as part of its mission to increase public engagement to collaboratively transform systems of oppression and injustice, and to do so in a responsible and sustainable way (through collective reflection and action) across difference.
Watch NJ's intentions for dissemination of Court Watch learnings are:
To duplicate the critical consciousness of the Watch NJ process in other communities - making the public aware of their rights and providing a forum for learning about the limitations of the justice system.
To create a process of accountability with the public who can then hold the judicial system to a higher standard of legal and statutory compliance - using a public health (environmental) model in which information and morality is reshaped at the individual, family, community, policy and global levels.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." - Desmond Tutu
