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Introduction:
Former Community Relations Service Mediator Wallace Warfield discusses how he balances his mediation activities with justice concerns.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Preventing Violence
Wallace Warfield
Former CRS Mediator, New York and Washington Offices
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[Full Interview]
Question:
How did you decide when it was appropriate for the parties to
get together and when not?
Answer:
I think it would depend upon the conflict. For example, in a particularly violent
conflict, where theres a riot first things first. And again, even this is somewhat controversial
from a social theory standpoint -- theres the notion that conflict intervention is designed to
simply maintain the status quo and cool people out. So riot prevention cools people out, and
removes the justification of anger that can really give grit to the complaints that people have. On
the other hand, people are dying. So, the people who are espousing that belief are not the
mothers, locked cell-like in their apartments, who cant go out at night to get milk for their
babies because people will be shooting machine guns in the area. Youre not responsible for
that, but somebody has to be. Youre not always pulling people together; youre simply doing
a very hands-on conciliation approach to violence prevention. Then, before it gets to the point
where people can fairly quickly become reconciled to the fact that weve stopped the violence,
and then its back to business as usual, we say, "Now that weve got your attention, and we
have some moments of respite here, are you willing to sit down and talk? And then thats the
time to begin the process of pulling people together.
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