Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
Introduction:
Mari Fitzduff, Executive Director of INCORE, recommends
mainstreaming peacemaking efforts at every level possible: schools, military,
police, etc.
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Mainstreaming Peace
Mari Fitzduff
Professor and Director of the MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme at Brandeis
University
Don't be scared to mainstream the work. You lose it in
mainstreaming it, because we all like to think we're revolutionaries. The work
is really effective only when it's mainstreamed because that's much more
sustainable and secure. So for instance, a lot of people do educational
programs, bringing children together. They're compulsory in Northern Ireland
now. Every child has to go through a program of education about their own
culture, other people's culture, and conflict resolution. It's compulsory. You
can't get out of it, even if you're living in a Catholic school or a Protestant
school or whatever. So don't be afraid to mainstream. Some of us are afraid of
losing our revolutionary fervor, or in a way selling out by putting these
programs within the military and the police and the schools and everywhere else.
I feel that ours, just like the environment, has to be written into every writ
of every organization that there is. Therefore, learning to mainstream, I think,
has been an important lesson for us. I would like to see it through every
society where there is even a tendency toward division.
The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating. -- Cesar Chavez
The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors c/o Conflict Information Consortium(Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309 Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact
