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Introduction:
Sometimes the mediator's role is simply
to help people find ways of being good to each other. George Mason University Professor Wallace Warfield, who was also with the U.S. Community Relations
Service for close to twenty years, explains how using this knowledge has
enabled him to help parties move beyond the stereotypes and fears they have
held about each other. To illustrate his point (and to make
another about the unpredictability of the secondary, often unintended effects of
3rd party processes) he uses an example from a police-brutality case in Des
Moines, Iowa.
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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 ???).
Mediator's Guidance
Wallace Warfield
Associate Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution, George Mason University
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A: There's a basic humanity in
people, regardless of their labels, their ethic labels; if their black militants
or white racists; and Republicans or Democrats.
There is a certain core humanity
in people. If you can touch that core, you can turn people around. It's
interesting that people want to be more Lockeian than Hobbesian in that sense.
People really want to be good, that's my sense. People find a way. I found that
oftentimes if you can help people find that way that's all they really needed.
They didn't really need a lot else from you, but it took a lot of courage for
them to be able to do that. And it took courage for people to say, "We know
that discrimination is wrong," or "We know that the activities of such
and such group in this community is not right, but we have no choice, because we
have to stand behind them because if we don't, the political leadership will get
on our backs."
They're confessing to you in effect, this is kind of a
confidential revelation that they're engaging in, and to recognize that what
keeps you going is this awareness that this is core of humanity in people; I
think that's there for you to be able to reach out too. I think the same would be
true here at ICAR, being able to sort of lay hands on people in situations, and
see people actually change and come together, just Frank Blackman and I did an
intervention in Des Moines, Iowa regarding issues of police use of excessive
force. We did a large one-day problem solving workshop that had some problems
with it, but the thing that struck me was the unintended results of your
interventions are more important or more salient to you than the actual purpose
that you went in for.
We had these breakout groups, and one group was a very
influential white male business leader in Des Moines, and a Latina community
worker. In their breakout group they got to talking, she said, "I'm
frustrated, and I'm really concerned, because we just lost the storefront that we
were using to run our program. They raised the rent, and we couldn't afford the
rent." The business leader said, "I have some extra property,
why don't you use my property gratis." That made my day. You walk away
and you say to yourself, "That's what makes this work worthwhile. That's why I do
this crazy stuff that we do."
Q: I have heard Frank say several times, "We know what works but we
don't know why." That sounds like what you were saying.
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