Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
Introduction:
Silke Hansen of Community Relations Service was part of the team
to respond to the aftermath of the Rodney King crisis. Here she talks about the
problem solving that was required in this very complex humanitarian emergency. She describes her work as more a matter of logistics than of traditional conflict resolution.
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
The Rodney King Crisis
Silke Hansen
Senior Conciliation Specialist, Community Relations Service
Ironically I ended up working
primarily in the Korean community in Los Angeles, so I personally hardly touched
the black-white piece. I mean, there was other staff that did that. That was partly because initially some of the things we did were just to visit the disaster action centers. Those were centers established where victims could come for different kinds of help. The Red Cross was there. The
small business administration was there. The FEMA (federal emergency management
administration) was there. The California emergency management agency was there.
There were hundreds, in some cases even thousands of people, who wanted access to this.
So one of the first things that we did was to look at the flow of people
coming into the center and tried to minimize the conflicts that could have been
created there. Where were the bottlenecks? It was a logistics thing, more than a
traditional conflict resolution thing. Then by doing that work we became more
familiar with what the specific issues were and of what some of the major concerns
were. As a result of that we ended up doing a fairly extensive mediation process
between representatives from the Korean community, and the major responders to this situation FEMA, HUDD, CEA.
The Korean community really felt as if the response was not what they needed.
The agencies had a solution but its not our problem. Even the
food provided didn't match the needs. Dried beans were not helpful in the Korean
community. What processes get used and how did the Koreans get access to these
were the issues. These issues resulted in an intense three-day mediation
process. This was perhaps one of the most intense mediations I have ever
conducted.
...
In some ways it was creative thinking and coming
up with ways of matching what was being offered to what was needed. Can we get
more fresh vegetables to replace the dried beans? And that kind of thing.
In many cases, like with the Small Business Administration, and not just with
them, a big issue was just finding the documents that were needed to get
some of the grants and loans because some of them had been destroyed in the fires that
had resulted or whatever had happened and so on. So what other kinds of
documentations would be acceptable? Another piece that came out of that was that SBA
subsequently provided workshops for potential applicants to help them for the process of
applying for small-business loans and things like that. So a lot of it was
really how to improve communication between the two.
Q: It sounds like a lot of the practical details.
A Yeah,
...
Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. -- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Other Resources from Beyond Intractability Preventive Diplomacy and International Violence Prevention "The concept and practice of violence prevention have evolved from being focused almost exclusively on the short-term interventions of preventive diplomacy, to a new, more comprehensive approach that can be defined as structural prevention and includes long-term initiatives targeting the root causes of conflict."
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
