Peace Innovations
Richmond's Hidden History
The first stop on the Richmond, Virginia, Unity Walk is St. John's Church, which is located on a former Native American graveyard and later became the 1775 site of Patrick Henry's “Give me liberty, or give me death” speech. Today the church provides a setting where volunteers re-enact a slave rebellion and subsequent lynching.
The Unity Walk, a tour of Richmond's historic monuments and locations, brings participants into direct contact with parts of the city's history that have been buried by centuries of guilt and grief.
The walk, which had been an occasional ad hoc event organized by a local group called Hope in the Cities, has just recently been given the official blessing of the Richmond City Council. A city-appointed commission will name historical sites and make the Unity Walk an annual event.
One of the sites the city council intends to officially recognize is the Manchester Docks, one of the busiest American slave-trading ports between 1680 and 1780. Participants in the walk visit the docks and buildings that once housed jails where the Africans who were brought into the country were taken to await auction.
Before the research done by Unity Walk organizers, the history of the docks was folklore that only the community's Black members talked about.
“The Unity Walk gives people a sense of the horrible hypocrisy of people who so forcefully proclaimed their own liberty while denying other people theirs,” says Reverend Ben Campbell, who organized the first
Unity Walk in 1993.
The Unity Walk and the naming of sites like Manchester Docks is part of the process of reclaiming and coming to terms with Richmond's history, says Campbell, whose family has lived there since 1767.
“The story that school children learn about Virginia is that 14 or 15 nice English gentlemen got together and said that they believed in freedom and didn't want a king.
“That vision of Virginians and America bears little relationship to reality. This was a mean place; 900 of the first 1,000 White settlers died in the first three years,” says Campbell.
The Unity Walk is breaking through silence, shame, and misinformation over Richmond's history in both Black and White communities, according to Campbell.
“There's a lot of mutual discovery going on; now at least we can see where our racism comes from.”
KARI THORENE
Toy Gun Trade-In
In 1997, elementary school princi- pal Jim Nodeland was shot in front of his Dallas, Texas, students during a robbery. Several months later, he showed his students that even kids can do something about the violence that is so central in their lives.
Nodeland arranged for a
violent toy trade-in. About 200 children exchanged their violent toys –
including toy tanks, GI Joe dolls, toy guns, and army soldiers – for
certificates of appreciation and Dallas Peace Center coloring books and
crayons.
Nodeland and the Dallas Peace Center's efforts are part of the growing number of violent toy trade-ins across the country.
Schools,
community groups, and churches organize events as both a statement
against violent play and an opportunity for some fun alternatives. The
toys collected at the trade-in are made into a peace sculpture or
placed around a peace pole. Nonviolent games are a centerpiece of the
events. Best of all, the kids learn that their actions can have an
effect on the atmosphere of violence that surrounds them.
KARI THORENE
For more information, contact the Lion and Lamb Project, 4300 Montgomery Ave. Suite 104 Bethesda, MD 20814; 301/654-3091; Web: www.lionlamb.org. Also check out the Dallas Peace Center home page, www.dallaspeacecenter.org
South African Scenarios: Is there a future for apartheid?
In
the early '90s, South Africa was at a turning point. Nelson Mandela had
been released from prison and key anti-apartheid groups had been
legalized, but it was still unclear whether a peaceful transition to a
multiracial democracy could be negotiated.
The scenario process,
described below, helped a group of key leaders work together to
understand some of the difficult political choices that would be
required to build a positive future for the country.
The “Mont
Fleur” scenario exercise, undertaken in South Africa (1991-92) brought
together a diverse group of 22 prominent South Africans – politicians,
activists, academics, and business people, drawn from the Conservative
Party and National Party on the right through to the African National
Congress and Pan Africanist Congress on the left. Their purpose was to
develop and disseminate a set of stories about what might happen in
their country over the decade of 1992-2002.
The scenario team
met in a series of three-day workshops at the Mont Fleur conference
center outside Cape Town. After considering many possible stories, the
participants agreed on four scenarios that they believed to be
plausible and relevant to South Africa's future:
• “Ostrich,” in
which a negotiated settlement to the crisis in South Africa is not
achieved, and the country's government continues to be
nonrepresentative
• “Lame Duck,” in which a settlement is achieved but the transition to a new dispensation is slow and indecisive
• “Icarus,” in which transition is rapid but the new government unwisely pursues unsustainable, populist economic policies, and
•
“Flight of the Flamingos,” in which the government's policies are
sustainable and the country takes a path of inclusive growth and
democracy.
The group developed each of these stories into a
brief logical narrative that formed the basis of a 14-page report,
which was distributed as a 30-minute video and an insert in a national
newspaper. The team then presented and discussed the scenarios with
more than 50 groups, including political parties, companies, academics,
trade unions, and civic organizations.
The approach was
indirect and the results subtle: The participants did not agree upon a
concrete solution to the country's problems. They reached a consensus
on some aspects of how South Africa “worked,” on the complex nature of
the crisis, and on some of the possible outcomes of the current
conditions.
More specifically, they agreed that, given the
prevailing circumstances, certain strongly advocated solutions could
not work, including armed revolution, continued minority rule
(Ostrich), tightly circumscribed majority rule (Lame Duck), and
socialism (Icarus). As a result of this process of elimination, the
broad outline of a feasible and desirable outcome emerged (Flamingos).
The
simple message of Flight of the Flamingos was that the team believed in
the potential for a positive outcome. In a country in the midst of
turbulence and uncertainty, a credible and optimistic story makes a
strong impact. The Mont Fleur team gave vivid, concise names to
important phenomena that were not widely known, and previously could be
neither discussed nor addressed.
The process was not a formal,
mandated negotiation. Rather, it was an informal, open conversation.
Building scenarios can be creative because the process is “only” about
telling stories, not about making commitments. This allows people to
discuss almost anything, even taboo subjects.
Negotiation tends
to focus on finding ways to narrow or reconcile differences among
participants. The Mont Fleur process, in contrast, only discussed the
domain that all of the participants had in common: the future of South
Africa. The team then summarized this shared understanding in the
scenarios. The aim of such non-negotiating processes is, as Marvin
Weisbord, an organizational consultant, has stated, to “find and
enlarge the common ground.”
The scenario process is inclusive
and holistic. A story about the future has to be able to encompass all
aspects of the world: social, political, economic, cultural,
ecological, etc. Moreover, the process of telling several stories
encourages people to surface and listen to multiple perspectives. In
discussing a fundamentally unpredictable future, there is no one truth;
this accords respect for the points of view of all of the participants
(in a conflict, one or more parties is usually not being heard) and it
allows everyone to see more of the world.
One of the premises
of scenario thinking is that the future is not predetermined, which
means that the choices we make can influence what happens. In a
situation where people feel swept along by overwhelming, inevitable
currents, this is an empowering world view. During its transition,
South Africa was haunted by apocalyptic visions; the scenario stories
helped people rationally think through their options.
A scenario
process can facilitate shifts in language, thinking, and action. Each
of these reframings provides a more constructive basis for working on
difficult issues.
ADAM KAHANE
Adam Kahane is a founding partner of the Centre for Generative Leadership. Adam served as the facilitator for the Mont Fleur scenario project and has since led similar processes in Canada, Cyprus, and Colombia. Centre for Generative Leadership L.L.C., 205 Willow Street, Hamilton, MA 01982 USA Email: kahane@cgl-leadership.com
Campus Dialogues
Nobody
knew what the journey was going to be like or how it would end,” a
University of Michigan student says about one of the school's classes.
“Eight White students, five African- American students, and two Asian-
American students showed up to class at the beginning of September to
discuss racism.”
They are called intergroup dialogue classes,
and those who sign up for them can find themselves discussing social
identity and socialization, exploring stereotypes, examining
institutional structures of privilege and oppression, and addressing
specific issues of social justice.
“Students find dialogues
are safe places to question and explore differences and similarities
among and between various groups,” says co-director Teresa Graham
Brett. Besides people of color/White dialogues, students can
participate in dialogues between women and men; Blacks and Latinos;
lesbians, gays, bisexuals and heterosexuals; Christians and Jews; and
other groups.
The dialogue groups meet once a week for two hours
throughout the term and are facilitated by students who have been
trained by faculty and program staff. The last two weeks are spent
learning about how to build alliances across racial boundaries.
As
one student says, “I've made a commitment to the members of my dialogue
group to continue my growth and development. I've agreed to educate
other people I come in contact with about the importance of
communicating our feelings concerning racial issues in the US. It's not
only about skin color; it's about money, religion, sexual orientation,
gender. ...We have a lot of work to do, but we have to start
somewhere.”
MONITA T. DANDRIDGE
Monita Thompson Dandridge is the program associate for the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor's Program on Intergroup Relations, Conflict, and Community. Web: www.umich.edu/~igrc
Teaching Peace
MARK CHARETTE
Contact PeaceJam Foundation, 2427 West Argyle Place, Denver, CO 80211; 303/455-2099; Email: peacejam@aol.com; Web: