Heidi: Hello! I'm Heidi Burgess. And I'm sitting next to Guy Burgess. We are from Beyond Intractability and it's April 14th, 2023. Today we're talking with D.G. Mawn, who is president of NAFCM, the National Association for Community Mediation.

First, thanks, DG, for taking the time to come talk to us. We'd like to start by getting you to tell us a little bit about what NAFCM is; a little bit about the history and vision; and how you're structured--that sort of thing.

D.G.: Absolutely. Thank you and good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to have this conversation. NAFCM was developed by members in 1984 and to appreciate the desire of a group of folks to have a grassroots national group. To give you a little appreciation of the history, the shoulders we stand on are the individuals that said yes to section ten of 1964 Civil Rights Act that any community that has a disruption, disagreement or disturbance, everyone in that community had the disruption, disagreement or disturbance, and the best people to address it are those involved in it and those impacted by it.

 And so, a really strong sense of why there may be great outside information that can help inform our processes, that the actual right way to do it must be community driven and community led. After that act was passed, funding arrived through the Nixon administration, which was in 1958 and went through the counties or city to establish and support community groups.

They did not call themselves community mediation centers. They were dispute centers, neighborhood centers, neighborhoods boards, dispute councils, a variety of different names and the names were connected to how those in the community would best name themselves. They were set up in a way to help communities in dispute that didn't need to go to civil or small claims court.

So instead of going through a court system, needing to get a judge, needing to get an attorney, if you were recognized by that county or city, and many counties and cities did have the appropriate body for deliberation, what you would do is file with that government [a statement saying] here's what happened, here’s the issue. Here’s what needs to be resolved. And, as long as the resolution wasn't illegal, the counties and cities were thrilled to accept it. They didn't have to pay for a county attorney. They didn't have to worry about court docket. No one was being arrested, Police weren't involved. There was no jail time for anybody and, best of all for these individuals, there was no permanent mark on them that a crime or conflict had occurred. They really resolved it in a way that they could live and co create together what they wanted it to be.

And this went along for more than a decade, spread throughout the country, mostly in northern and western states, not as much in southern states, and so when the court administration came along, they were trying to think through, how can we entice Southern states and southern communities to become involved with that -- and move that funding from county government to judicial government?

Having an appreciation of President Nixon's history, coming from California, he recognized the power of county governments. California counties are extraordinarily powerful. And, therefore, coming to them would be the best avenue. President Carter, coming from Georgia, recognized that many counties were minority led, that county government wasn't always responsive to all the residents in the county, but the judicial system was, and therefore, Carter felt that the judiciary was a better fit. You don't have to be an attorney to do that. Unless you go through training, of course, you're learning how to hold space. However, you could be someone who, because of your situation, ??? matriculated half the 8th grade, and they were amazing community mediators. Someone who'd never could get themselves a law license.

So that tension began to surface after that decision was made in the 80s. The funding was stopped. Mostly from the history we've been doing, because our centers were then, and still are, very different. They represent the culture and the community they serve. They represent the people who provide the service. So, part of American culture is wanting it to be the same thing every place we go. Pizza Hut is Pizza Hut and Pizza Hut.

In our world, that center needs to represent “am I serving the indigenous population and therefore what I'm going to offer may be really different than if I'm serving the urban population in Chicago. They shouldn't be the same. In fact, we would want them to be the same. Hallmark One is: you must be representative of the community you're serving. All those things went into play, that between the 80s and 1994 when NAFCM was created, many of the centers, to survive, were becoming programs of the courts, So, that they could get some resources.

The problem of becoming problems of the courts is we were started out with a significant purpose. There is no justice in the justice system for everybody. If you're a program of the court, it's really hard to point to the court thing and say, “you're being a little here!” When the court could say, you know, I'll just find someone else. to do this.

So, by 1994, those that still held on to the vision and mission of peer mediation, that is we are about community mobilizing all of us should be able to have the talent to lean into conflict and figure out what that means for all of us. And they founded NAFCM.  And they founded NAFCM to say, we need a national group to amplify our voices because we're busy doing the work in the community. We need a national group to aggregate our wisdom.  We have no idea what's going on in the next city or the next state or the next part of the country. We need nationalization that can help us make those connections, but something amazing may be happening that I can do in my own community. I just didn't know what was happening. So, amplifying that voice, aggregating the wisdom, and then advancing the work of community mediation.

All of our centers, well about 90% of our centers, do mediation as we know it in the United States and Canada. Almost 70% do restorative justice principles, and this is from 2018, but I'm sure it's grown. More than half do facilitated dialogs. Almost 90% do training on how to sit with conflict. And nearly half at that point did coaching, because it's so hard to get both groups in, so why not give hope and work with the group that can come in?

So, what we are about, is making sure that none of the centers are put into a box, and that has been the problem. Because in our culture, we like to be able to say, “this is what it is.” And nothing more. And we say, “what we are, are our values. We're curious, we're collaborative. We're about respect and hope. We are about integrity and quality.

We're about the vision, again, that all of us can be mobilized to sit with the conflict and move with the conflict and co-create with it. How that looks, maybe very different and the last thing just going quickly through the hallmark is we're all about systems change. So, not only is it why is the issue happening? Let's make sure those involved are able to figure it out, lean in, but now let’s take a step back and say, “what in our systems, in our culture, is facilitating that? What is making this occur over and over again? That unless we address that, it's not going to stop.

 And that leads me to something that recent writing you all did where you didn't use these words. I used them when I was reading your work, that if we're in a culture of deficits, if you win, I lose. Then we're always going to fight for me to win and you to lose. If we're in a culture of abundance, which is what community culture is, we all can win here. We can come out of here better than how we enter, then you're not sitting in that circle saying, I'm losing something, you're sitting in that circle saying, I'm willing to put the doll down because I've grown up and I really want this toy instead. And then move forward with that.

And that's a writing you put out just recently that really inspired me. It said that one of the systems issues, cultural issues, it is this win- lose culture, as opposed to a culture that says, we have abundance. You sharing your powers, what you talked about, with someone else, doesn't diminish your power. In fact, from our perspective, it increases your power. Because the only power we have is over ourselves and to influence others. It will actually increase it when you share it. Thank you for letting me go a little on. I hope it wasn't too fast. I just find many people don't know that history and how it fits in and wanted to be able to put that out there.

Heidi: That's great. I've got several questions. Going back way at the beginning, back to the Nixon era, the thing that I heard, and I'm wondering if this is true, is that the only way you got funding is if you had a crisis. And if you were going along with a pretty healthy, stable community, you couldn't get funding. Is that true?

D.G.: Not necessarily. What you had to have was the county board or a city government willing to share its power. You had to have a judicial system that was willing to share its power. Imagine a judge saying, okay, Gary, you can handle these guys, you know. You're not an attorney. You're never gone through judicial ethics. So you had to be in communities where either the county or the city government and the judicial system was willing to say, I'm going to share this role and responsibility with Guy and Heidi, who have no training. No background, but the community seems to like them. So that's what really drove that decision making.

Heidi:  And what kind of issues would they deal with?

D.G.: Based on the research, it was all over the board, from very small issues, people not mowing their grass, people not painting their buildings, to much larger issues of why can't I go shopping here? Why am I only told I can be on this side of town and not go to that side of town? When I go to that side of town I'm harassed. And so how do you bring those groups together to talk about why does it make you uncomfortable when DG shows up in Guy and Heidi's side of town? Let's sit and talk about it. What do Guy and Heidi think they're losing through DG showing up? Why can't Heidi and Guy gain if DG shows up? So, they were all over the board. And I think the reason why, is what with each community ready to actually say, it doesn't have to go through a court to be resolved. And so, it was really reliant on that. So, in most of the county and city, there was civil, and it was small claim that they were willing to cede. No criminal, we still don't do a criminal. That is the purview of the alternative dispute resolution, otherwise known as the court system. They definitely do the criminal, sort of, because many of our people do restorative circles, which, in fact, are working with people who have done crime. So again, I think it relies on the foresight of those community leaders to recognize all we're doing is building more jails and all we're doing is complaining about more of a caseload. And if we could actually empower the community to sit with its own issues, maybe we don't need to build any more jails. And maybe we don't need to worry about caseload. Then it really takes that level of vision for the centers to really grow and survive and thrive.

Heidi: When you started, you said in 1984, did I get that right?

D.G. 94. But you're good, Heidi, there was one in 1986 and it didn't stick. And then they started again in 1994, so that maybe you were channeling that first one.

Heidi:    Well, I remember that there was something called FAFCM, which I think used to stand for National Association for Family and Community Mediation. And then that got rolled into SPIDR, which changed into ACR. And then from what I heard, you broke off from ACR. Is that correct? Or is that is not correct.

D.G. No, that’s not correct. So, I'm glad we're here to clear what I know of the history. Now, this part of the history comes from our elders. We did interview folks about 7 years ago who were around at the beginning of NAFCM and also lived through the merger that created ACR. And let me begin by saying, ACR is an amazing partner with NAFCM. They're actually helping support our first assembly ever. It's going to be a day and a half of assembly in Arlington, Virginia, to try to bring us all together.

Do not think that our not joining ACR as any diminishing of the power of that organization and our value of that partnership. However, when I talked to the elders, the reason why we didn't [join ACR], again, going back to the whether it's European U.S., North American culture of wanting things in a nice, clean box, is the attitude they were experiencing, that community mediation is a field like tort law is a field, like family law is the field.

 And our elders said “no, community mediation is how you hold that space.”  Do you see the power as held by the attorneys and the judge, or is the powers held by those in conflict? If it's B, you're a community mediator. It's how you approach people. It's how you help them feel brave, to be able to be in their truth and say what they need to say without going, “oh, better not say that, because if that gets into court, then this bad thing is going to happen.

Well, unless we say that, unless we talk about that, this problem is going to keep going an coming. In a variety of different ways. So, what they decided was. if they joined a ACR, they would be acquiescing to the notion that we are a type of law you may practice. And back to our hallmarks, anyone can be a community mediator and everyone at any time would benefit from having community mediator facilitate the conflict they're in.

  Going back to the Civil Rights Act, it says that anywhere there's a dispute, disagreement, or disturbance, you need to do something. You don't need to wait for it to write for a court case. You don't need to wait for, oh, I see you violated some law and now we can actually do something. you're to do it at that moment. So, it was their decision and, as II understand, it was very difficult decision. It was a very intense conversation and NAFCM operates by consensus, so it took quite a few meetings to get there. But they decided that if we were going to hold on to why our forebearers did what they did, believe what they did in the late 60s to start us, we shouldn’t join ACR.

Heidi:  Okay, that sounds like a better story than the one I had.

D.G. Well, it’s one the elders told us, I wasn't there, can't get validate the facts of it. But I want to believe that. Because we talked to a variety of them and they all came out with different perceptions of what caused some of that angst in the conversation, but the underlying truth in all their stories was we need to stay true to who we are and we're not a discipline of the law. We're not for attorneys only. We've got to be able to look at ourselves in that broader scope.

Heidi: Makes sense. So how many community centers do you think there are – I am using that term very loosely—how many members of NAFCM are there?

D.G.: Well, there's probably twice as many centers as there are NAFCM members. We hover around 350. We believe, we estimate, it's twice that number. And that's okay because NAFCM is an association that you belong to if you wish to. There's no requirement to belong to NAFCM and still say you're a community mediation center. We have our hallmarks, any member of ours needs to be able to follow them and live them out. So that's roughly the number that's out there as best as we know. We'll never know the exact number because it's not something that states necessarily certify. So, we really don't know who are in there.              Some states do Washington, Oregon, New York, all have a process that does that. Michigan does as well and Nebraska. Others do not. So, it really depends on where you are.

Heidi: So those states have a process to certify…

D.G. When the federal government in the 80s decided that they didn't want funding to go this way, they wanted to go a different way. Those are the states that stood up and said, this is so important to our state. And California does the same thing. It’s really up to the judicial circuit to decide what is and is not. And that California culture, and the other states I mentioned, all said this is too important to lose. And we're going to fund it.

Heidi: Well, that was another one of my questions for the states that don't have that kind of state support, where do those organizations get funding?

D. G. Through a variety of avenues. We asked them that question in 2018 and 19. So it easily could have changed as that was pre-pandemic. But then, a lot of the funding came from the United Way agency in the community. It would come from their bar association; attorneys would recognize that this is a great thing to have. In fact, we have several bars associations who are now members because they want to know what's going on and what's happening. We have several civil rights organizations that are NAFCM members. So, every community went to, and goes to, those foundations, those funders, that believe and support the idea that our communities need this mechanism. They need the ability to address conflict without leaving a stain on someone's life forever. And that can direct conflict in a way that can create a path forward that is sustainable. Even with that being said, there isn't one center that doesn't do major fundraisers. Dance-a-thons and run-a-thon. All these things to keep funding at a level that they can keep team member.

It's another advantage, I suppose, that one of our hallmarks is that you must bank in the community. That means volunteers. And we have many centers that have over a hundred volunteers each that are doing this work in their community because we don't want to become so professionalized that we lose our anchor to the very community we're supporting. And that's a real drive for efficient centers. You can't be coming down from the hill to help the folks in the valley. You need to be supporting the folks in the valley to run their own center and do what they need to do.

Guy: One of the questions that I suspect a lot of people, and especially people who are a little bit skeptical about this sort of thing, are likely to be asking, is if you have a system that pretty much is open to anybody to serve a mediation role of some type. What are the quality control mechanisms that you have in place—standards of practice? What measures, in this very loose and changing and community-focused and adaptive process are there in place to assure that what comes out of it is a good, solid process?

D.G.  Right. Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons we encourage states and community centers to become part of NAFCM, because we have these hallmarks, which set out, really, what we expect from our centers. We do check ins.  We do check ins every year just to see how things are going, what's going well, what isn't, with anyone who's a NAFCM member.

And just briefly, I’ll talk about them [our hallmarks] a bit. The first 5 are really looking at how anchored are you in the community, how ease of access do people have to your services, what services are you providing and why? What community members need them? So, you're not just providing what you're good at, you're providing what the members are comfortable in setting that stage, how open you are to a diversity of folks, including perspective.

I read another piece of yours that talked a bit about that political divide. And if you look at our history, our history actually comes out of a Republican president because the belief was that was the best was to resolve issues—by those closest to it.  So, when you look at NAFCM membership, we're all over what I would consider the partisan perspective. Politically, we are fairly similar. We believe in the value of each person.    We recognize the value of each person. We recognize that what they say is their truth. And that our coming together isn’t to argue about that. Our coming together is to decide so what do we do with that truth? How can we co-live? How can we co create if that is your truth? So those are the first five [hallmarks].

The middle two are really looking at how well do you work with others in the community?  How well are you a place-based organization that is connected to all the other folks doing social justice work, doing community-engagement work, doing peace creation work? How well are you connected to those? And working with them? So that those who are doing it well, lift them up. You don't need a program to do it. There's a group doing it already. Let's make sure the folks who come to your center know about this other group and can go there.

If there's a gap in that support network, what can the center do to facilitate a growth of a service that meets that gap? So, it's how well do you work with others in the field? And of course, how well do you work with the judicial system? How well are you connected with it? So, they know, as I said, we have many bars associations who are members. They clearly know the value of community mediation and the value of having that center in their community.   And they want to stay on top of what the growth in the field, what's happening, what’s the cutting edge?

 And the last two of our hallmarks, which we look for in our centers, do you take the time to initiate, educate, and facilitate conversation about making sure your systems are positive in how people encounter them and leave them, and if not, what needs to be changed? And we've worked on reimagining safety issues that need to be changed. We worked on the social dynamics of health and health discrimination in this country, access to health services. We've worked on immigrant issues and what does it mean to be an immigrant in our community? We've worked on discrimination with older adults with our centers. We've worked on a variety of issues—foster care as well, where the system needs some tinkering, needs some strengthening, needs some assessment.

And then, of course, that last hallmark is making sure you're letting the world know of the value you're providing.  So other people know they can access it. And quite frankly, that last hallmark, I think, is their connection to NAFCM. Okay, how well does NAFCM and the world know how well we're doing, which is formerly recorded. This is why II am thrilled, blessed, that you're giving this opportunity for folks that you know that listen to you might go,” my gosh, I had no idea that this was already going on. I don't need to create a new hub. I need to connect with what there and let's see how that can strengthen what I want to do.”

Because we don't advocate for particular issues. While we advocate for is that everyone can be heard. And there's a difference in that advocacy. So, lots of groups need to keep doing what they're doing because we're not going to go there.

Heidi: Do you provide training for new centers so that they can get up to speed on some of the primary strategies that the old timers have been using for a long time?

D.G. Yes. In two ways. One is a bit passive. We hold monthly webinars and they're on the back ends. People can listen to them at any time. And many of our centers use that for volunteer training. So they can download the webinar and have their volunteers sit through it. We also meet monthly with whatever centers want to on particular topics. We've done a lot around houselessness and dealing with those issues. I've had a lot of what the cutting edge, where should we be going?

We also, thanks to funding through the TRUST network, which I know we're going to talk about on a different video, that funding has ended. But they funded us to develop emerging centers. And that was to help centers that used to exist, but don’t now, to start new programs. They want to go back and re-embrace what does it mean to be anchored in the community? And for communities that their program went away decades ago and realized they really want to start something new. We call that the emerging community process. And it's a 6-month process where those going through it receive expert technical assistance from two leaders in the field that know what they're doing. Using an outline and manual that the JAMS Foundation funded for NAFCM develop more than a decade ago. And then they get a bonus at the end of $500 and then $500 6 months later if they're still percolating to help them cover some of those initial costs of becoming a (5)(01)C3 [non-profit] or doing some marketing or whatever. However, they choose to use those funds.

We were very blessed to have the Packard Foundation give us feed money for that. And now the JAMS Foundation has picked that up as part of their funding. So, we can do that if people are inspired to move forward, they need a place to figure out what does that mean? How does that look?

What does it mean that we are the most structured, unstructured system? We have the hallmark. We need to follow them. That's our structure, but we're unstructured insofar as what is your community really need?  And so, part of that emerging community process is we teach them how to do reflective sessions, so they are listening to the community and the community is guiding them from the very beginning. Here's where the needs are. Here's where the gaps are. Here's where we really need someone to lean in and help us figure this out.

And we've had our emerging centers grow exponentially.  Whether it be Cincinnati, whether it be Montgomery, Alabama, whether it be Sarasota, Florida, whether it be Macon, Georgia, Atlanta, I know I'm missing people -- We have many emerging centers that are doing great, great work.

Heidi: The thing that struck me as interesting is most of your examples that you just pulled out of the air were in the South. And you were saying that early on, you didn't have that many in the south, but the ones that are coming on board now, are in the South.

DG. Excellent point. Thank you. The ones in the south are there because when we received the funding from the Packard foundation, we wanted, with some guidance, we wanted to look at areas where voting and access to voting with an issue. And so, we initially targeted helping develop emerging communities in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. So that's why those are initially in the south. We've also worked with South Carolina. Let me not forget them.

We've had an emerging center in Los Angeles come up that's doing amazing work right now with the mayor there and the whole issue around homelessness. That was the emerging center that went through our process.

So, we have begun to go back out to the rest of Canada and the United States. But the initial funding was to try to focus on particular states that were very much in the news of having some type of barriers to people accessing the franchise of voting.

Guy: That's raises a larger question of to what degree has your work been disrupted by this larger hyperpolarized politics that's taken over the United States. And most of the examples that you've offered thus far, are  mostly small-scale disputes. Are you getting in the middle of or doing anything to try to diffuse this larger polarized politics that's making so many other things so difficult?

DG: I hear that question about polarization, and I'll get to that. But first, I want to go back to my examples. My apologies if you found it small. I think helping to make sure during the George Floyd trial that that stayed the issue and not the anger of the community members being the issue, wasn’t small. I would say that so we were right in the middle of it. Our centers were right in the middle of it, helping the mayors of large cities, whether it be Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York City, really look at houselessness or relation to law enforcement. So my apologies that my examples seemed small--II didn't want to leave that impression!

So, I can certainly sit with the larger systems example that our communities have done. If we look at Dayton and the whole reimagining of what sit mean to be a part of policing, and there, they've started a whole program that if the call comes in to 9-1-1 and it isn't emergency criminal life and death, the call goes to the community mediation center.   And they send folks out. They have amazing stories of the difference that has been made in the city of Dayton. When the community goes out, they're not having to arrest someone. They are not immediately thinking “you're the criminal.” They are sitting down with you. I remember one example, and again, this may sound small, where someone had been sexually violated, and the police said, if we had been called out, immediate thing, because the person was being very angry, would have been to arrest the person. To arrest the woman. Instead, the community mediation center came out and did coaching. What's going on? Can we talk? What's happening? And really peeled back so much for that individual and why did individual could not go home. And then they were able to have the individual choose, “I would like to go to the hospital.”

So, here's a situation where law enforcement said, our only option would have been to arrest the person because they were not leaving the bench, the center was able to come out and get the person to choose to have hospital care, no arrest record, no sitting in a jail cell, no compounding the trauma. So I just wanted to make sure you took some of those bigger things.

Back to polarization, and you live in Colorado, it may be a very different state than here in Kentucky. But I look at polarization as something that’s always been. There's always been significant division in my state. And so, part of what I've worked with is, how do we help still hear each other over the noise. In my experience, [the noise] has been mostly facilitated by people not in the community. And that is part of what community mediation is about, we're going to deal with the folks who live in the communities.

So, if you're really angry, and we are dealing with lots of school board, community issues, if you are really angry with the books in the library and you live in this community, come on over and let’s talk? If you're really angry at the books in the library and you come from two states over, you're not in our community. It doesn't matter what you think about our library. Go to your school, go back to your community. So, really, we dive into these bigger issues, as I said, in two ways. One let deal with the conflict in front of us. And then let's help them deal with the system.

And we have with partnership with Living Room Conversations and through the Carter School and funding now, through the AAA and we are beta testing a toolkit that our centers helped us create. I'm calling it a toolbox, a variety of tools in there that may help a school board, may help a community, an advocacy group, those concerned about education, figure out how do we hear each other, and how do we develop a type of going forward that isn't to lose-win? But is one that people are okay with. It may not have been what they would have designed on their own, but they can live with it. And that's the standard we use. Can you live with it? Are you okay with that? If the answer is yes, let's keep moving forward. Because tomorrow there's a chance to make it better. It doesn't seem to matter what position you're taking, how polarized it may be. At the end of the day, people want their kids to get an education, and they truly do want their children to be safe. And so, if you stay focused on those values, and then develop what we call a “disruption process,” we're really focusing on what we care about. We care about students. Okay, let’s talk about it.  

We're not going to talk about whether every teacher should be armed. Should there be red flag laws?  We're talking about what do we want for our children? Well, we find by that disruption, that change, allowing that to happen, it allows people to get close to each other, allows people to see each other having that same care and concern. And then once they see that, now they can actually hear each other. They may adamantly disagree with your response. However, they can hear it, and so they're not arguing with you and your response, but they're asking you to tell me how that's going to make a difference. Tell me how, doing nothing has made a difference in the last 30 years. So, tell me what we can do that makes a difference.

So, when you approach a problem with a community perspective as opposed to the judicial perspective, where there are two sides, and one side is being told “don't pay these things. You're giving things away.” Instead, we find our communities are able to resolve the issue.  And back to that toolbox, in the two communities that we tested it with, the feedback we got from all sides, regardless, if you are Moms Demand Liberty or you're the PTA, from all sides, was “we want more.

This is extremely helpful. And now we're having this opportunity to actually test it more broadly in 5 communities as well. So again, we do the small and we do the big at the same time. And that's what we're asked to do as community mediators.

Did that answer the question about polarization?

Guy: It does very much. One of the things that we've been arguing for quite some time is that the way that you deal with these problems is on a local scale. And part of our national problem is, for a variety of reasons, political reporting has been nationalized and syndicated. So, it's all just a few big stories and local news is in big trouble. And a lot of the local reporting that we used to see is now gone.

 One of the things that we've been trying to do is collect a series of “if it exists, it must be possible stories.” And that a lot of the things that you're describing are the kinds of things that an awful lot of people would say, gosh, would never happen!  And I'm wondering whether you've had a chance to put together some, maybe reporters have done this for you, some short readable stories of how some of these things really work, and enabled communities to deal with very dangerous conflicts in constructive ways. If those stories can be shared more widely, and they're all the kinds of things that, if it could be done there, it could be done here, is the kind of thing that I think can give people hope. A big part of our problem is people have sort of lost hope-- too many people have given up and decided that the system is irretrievably busted.

D.G. There are several amazing points in that question, sir, The first one that we do, we don't ask people what party are you affiliated with. We don't ask people what religion you're from. We don't ask people what school you go to. Let them reveal themselves to us. And therefore, we're not putting our definition of those labels on folk. So, one of the things that I have a concern about, is when we want to bring different sides together and so we label what that side is. And every time I've tried to take their surveys, they end up not completing it because they don't fit into a box. And most people don't. And I think it's back to our culture where we want to. And this is something you recently published about us- them framing, the them and us, right? We want to be able to define them, so that must be who they are, because the moment we see that some of them are similar to us, oh my! Now what do we do with that?

When it comes to the stories, we do that with JAMS Foundation funding. When we take on significant issues, like when we do the immigration issues, our members who do that, then do tell their stories through webinars and through what we call national product. That goes out there to help our members able to advance their work with those topics.

When we've tried to--maybe you all can help with this or someone who listens to this can help, but when we try to put it out on a broader scale, it gets picked up only in very small weeklies.  I just think we are counter narrative in the work we're doing. What's are you saying, sir? Oh, people aren't going to believe it if they don't want to. And, if it got picked up on a bigger scale, they would need to.

I can tell you that we have tried, over and over again, and if you know a pathway, because the part of our job is to amplify their voice, if you know a pathway, please, we're open to it. We're very blessed and honored with lots of national groups that are trying to help us do that. Give us those platforms so our centers are recognized for what we do.

And again, this is our culture. Well, that's true for that center, but not for the one 30 miles away. I'm like, you're right. It's not. Because back to the original conversation, how open is the judicial system? How open are there leaders to this? How much base resources do they get so they can spend the time doing this type of work? If you don't have enough base resources, then you have to do the work that brings in those resources. So what I get is, okay, that kind of did it, but the one I went through didn't. Yeah, you're right.

So my answer is how are you going to help that one that didn't get there? How are you going to work with them in a way that elevates them, hears them, and moves them to deal with the issue? Or, second question, maybe where you want them to be, isn't where the community needs to be. So how about you let them be where they are? And go find a community that wants to be where you would like to fund or you would like to have them be.

It's recognizing that each community is different, their needs are different and how they're going to approach it is different. And back to our history in the 60s. It was then decided that you can come to any agreement you want. It just can't be illegal. That was it. So, they didn't say you must come to this type of agreement or that. You must make sure this happens or that. It just couldn't be illegal.

And that level of breath allowed those in the conflict to really lean into it, sit with it, and if we look at the early information --and Kennesaw State University is doing evaluation of the work-- if we look at that early information, the people ended up doing more together than the court would have asked either side to do. And they kept going forward with what they agreed to because you didn't tell them to do it. They said, this is how we're going to do it.

It is amazing when you have people create their own pathway forward, how much they will follow that. And a lot of the polarization in my mind goes back to the founding of our country, coming here from Kentucky, where, if you were left to the Appalachians, you really had no merit, you weren't going to be listened to. You weren't well educated enough. You weren't connected enough. So, this polarization is embedded in the very creation of, at least, this country. I can't speak to Canada. Of this country. So, to me, how did we continue to grow and evolve? We did by taking the time to see each other, listen to each other, and allow those communities to make the choices that are right for those communities.

And I think that that natural tension has always been there, so when people say, oh, it's never been so polarized, I'm like, then you must not have studied history. That tension has always been there. What I think has happened is that polarization is now come to the doorstep of people that have access to communication protocols, that have access to political power, and therefore they're able to say, wow, there's this polarization. As long as it remained in those communities that didn't have that type of access, it was very easy to say it wasn't there.

And so, my challenge to people is when they say the world's polarized, I say “welcome to our world. Let's sit with it and figure out how we want to work with it. It is what it is.” And here's the plot of being polarized. The plot, we have passionate people that care passionately about this issue. I'm doing one of your readings again. Moving them to their interests, where they move to their interest, then that frees them up to say maybe we're not as polarized as we thought we were. Now that we're sitting together talking about this, I can see that.  Keeping them in their positions allows the polarization to continue. So, the question I posed to you and those who may listen to this, who benefits from allowing and encouraging people to stay in those positions? Because those are the systems that need to be changed.

And those are the systems most threatened by what you wrote that said, we need to move to interest. and away from position.

Heidi: Well, I think you're right. We certainly have been polarized for a long time. I think what's different now in my mind is social media that makes things look so much worse than they actually probably are. And it accelerates all sorts of feedback loops. So, in the old days, before we had social media, rumors would travel, but much more slowly, hate speech was always there, but it wasn't broadcast the way it is now. Everything with social media, everything just moves so much faster…

D.G.  and it's hard to verify it. I'm sorry, Heidi…go ahead.

Heidi: Well, it is faster and, going along with your notion, it is hard to verify. I've read studies that show that, oh, I don't remember the numbers, but 50 to 80% of the divisive speech on the web is either bots or actual people from North Korea and Russia who are being very successful in tearing us apart. So that's what I think is new is that we have these new technologies that are making these problems much more difficult to get a handle on than they used to be.

D.G. And I think if I can say three things. One, it's an algorithm to make you find friends. So it's going to find people who say something similar to you. And next thing you know, you're in a circle of friends that all think the same way. So, you think the whole world thinks that way because they're the only people coming in and you don't realize that there was an algorithm was out there searching for people who thought like you. So, they weren't even people.

 And a personal example with the bank failure in California, my, I don't know why, but my social media blew up, you better get your money at the bank, you better run, you better do it. I was getting it nonstop!  I ended up blocking all these things it was sending to me. Clearly the algorithm wanted someone like me and others who may fit my profile to believe there's going to be a huge bank failure… At the end of the day, I went and did my own search of reliable sources, read about what the federal government was trying to do, who may be facilitating the yelling that there is a huge bank crash happening, and decided I'm going to wait this out.

If I hadn't done that, if I just lined up my social media, I really would have thought that when Monday opened, we were back in 1929. And had this bank crash.

And so everything you're saying is so on point! About this reliance on social media. That really got exacerbated during the COVID period of the pandemic because we're locked inside. And again, while has been great, another gift that we received from the JAMS Foundation was a ZOOM account so our centers could all quickly move online, keeping us all interactive, keeping things going. Now Zoom has served such an amazing purpose of decreasing cost for people, especially in rural parts of our country who can’t  ake the whole day off [but they can go to meetings on Zoom].

You can go to a mediation, but now they can go to their library and get in a room and get on a Zoom account and participate fully. We've had people in different parts of the country, especially around children’s issues, where parents and guardians move, able to use the Zoom account.

So again, the benefit of the JAMS grant has been in allowing our members to get these accounts and that  works against social media thing you brought up. Now you have this whole new account where you can interface meet other people, meet your volunteers, keep your energy up, and realize that there are a whole variety of opinions out there.

Heidi: Yes, it was one of the few benefits of the pandemic that we've been very appreciative of if it weren't for Zoom, we wouldn't be doing this right now. So that's great.

Two answers and then maybe a question. To your question about how to help get the word out about some of the things that are happening.           This is one of the things, really, that we at BI are trying to do now. We have this sense that there's a tremendous amount happening in this country to strengthen democracy. So many people are wringing their hands and saying, “we're doomed. There's going to be a civil war, everything's awful.” And we have become aware over the last year or two of just so many positive things that are happening in the other direction. But they're by and large invisible. And what we have always been about with Beyond Intractability and CRInfo before that was to make conflict resolution, and peacebuilding efforts, visible and understandable so that people can have hope. We think that hope is really central. So, we want to get these stories out-- we would love to get some of your stories out.

And we could talk about this off video, but I think we would be very interested in being helpful in that regard. The other thing that comes to mind is the Solutions Journalism Network. Are you familiar with them?

D.G. Yes.

Heidi: They really are trying to get stories of this kind out. So I would suspect that there would be a good opportunity to collaborate with them. We've been really impressed with their work.

D. G. We've had some very good initial conversations. And certainly, hoping that that will, that will grow.

Heidi: I think that that's a good partner for both of us to try to get the positive stories out.

My question would be, do you want to take a few minutes and maybe tell a couple of the stories now-- a couple of stories about particular community mediation centers who have grappled with some of these big issues we’ve been talking about? So just choose one or two where you think community mediation centers have grabbed on to something that most people would look at and say, oh, that's impossible. And they did the impossible.

D.G.  I thank you for the invitation. My desire would be that perhaps you can get a few of the centers together and you can talk with them yourself and really hear their amazing stories. Because they are amazing. I end many of my calls with them that I'm both honored and blessed to serve as their president because I get to hear these stories. And I know I can't do anything in the town, I live here local Kentucky. But I get to support the amazing centers from Alaska to Puerto Rico to Nebraska and every place in between doing absolutely amazing work, whether it be with the indigenous nation to immigrants, whether it be with policing, older adults, young adults, marginalized adults, they do the work that the community presents to them as the need. And saying, “this is what is a significant need. Do you have the capacity to help us address it? And help us create the vision we have for our community?”

So mind you, It’s not that I don't have the stories. I do. I'd rather set up part two and let you hear it directly from them. So, you can ask them how did that happen? Who did you go to? What facilitated that? Because what I know is what I remember they told me, and that means I've lost some of the stuff they've already told me.

Heidi: Oh, that makes sense.

D.G. So, definitely, if we can, in any way help, we’d like to get the word out. We want people to know is that these centers aren't doing the impossible, they're helping people do what is possible. That they themselves have disempowered themselves in, that they themselves have felt I can't do, you can. The only reason why you can't is because you're telling yourself, whether it's voice in your head, or someone else told you, you can't. Many times, we talk about that voice in the head, that experience, that trauma that tells you, I can't do that. And we're saying, yeah, you can.

And again, our job is to help people enhance those skills back to our vision that community mediation is community mobilization. The reason why we exist is so that you won't need us. You will learn these skills. They have to fit with your own family. And again, when that conflict bubbles up, you go, “hey, remember when we had that mediation? Remember when we were in that circle? Remember when we were being coached by, let's try that one again and see if it works.”

And it does work!  So actually, what our centers do, is help people embrace the possibility and not be afraid of it. Because sometimes it is easy to say “it's impossible, so I don't have to own my accountability for why it's still impossible.”  I get that from other groups. They say DG, I can't keep trying to figure out where your members are, that's impossible. They should just contact me.

And I say, no, they're busy doing the work of the community. And if you want entree into that community, then knock on their door! Because so many times the door they knock on is what we call the grass tops. And our centers are working and sitting in the grassroots. And if you want sustainable change, you've got to make sure the roots are healthy. So, have I planted the seed? Can we have a session in the future with some of the centers so you can meet them? I would love that. I think you would enjoy them. They would have enjoyed meeting the two of you. And you could then get those stories almost firsthand yourself.

Heidi: That sounds great. That would be great. 1:00:40

You also, I think, said earlier that you had some webinars that you share with members and I'm wondering if those would be something that would be valuable to share more broadly?

D.G. Some are shared more broadly. What we share broadly is our podcast and we share broadly what we call Community Mediation Moments where the center will talk about something special they're doing. Something special they’re about. And then you can follow up with them. Say, hey, I want to know more about how you did that. We leave all the others to our members only, partly because at the end of the day, being a membership organization, there needs to be a benefit to membership.

We have very few foundations that fund us, we are funded mostly through our members, and so that benefit of membership still needs to be present for folks. So, I know that sounds horribly selfish. What I share with people is if we did that, and then NAFCM would disappear, there would be no national group hosting those webinars. There would be no national group bringing these things together that helps us advance all of us. So if you want this national depository to help advance the work, we need you to chip in some resources, however you feel you can do that. So, I hope that doesn't sound horribly selfish.

Heidi: No, it doesn't. We completely understand that.

Guy: What does it take to join to be a member to have access to that? Do you have to be an organization, or you can just be somebody who's interested in it?

D.G. We have what we call “associates” and those are people who believe in mediation principles. And so they become a member, It's very reasonable--its $110 a year, and you get access to all the webinars we do, all the libraries, all the current research that's being stored in there, including some of your articles that we found in our virtual library. And so you can figure out what's best for you to get that information. We do have organizations that come in as institutional members. We are very honored to have universities across the country that have chosen to become institutional members of NAFCM so their students have access to that information. So, when they're doing research papers, when they're trying to figure things out, they can go right to what we call a virtual library, and to our webinars to figure out what's going on. And then they are able to then make phone calls to those presenters if they want to follow up. They can say “you did this webinar and I’m interested in learning more. Can you tell me more about that? ‘

We just had Michael Lang. I'm sure you know him, he gave an amazing webinar yesterday, absolutely amazing. Our members were thrilled to have it. And therefore, his words are now part of our aggregated wisdom. And you can learn more of what he has to say and then perhaps contact him. The cost to be an institutional member we don’t think is unreasonable-- I think at $375 and that allows you to have broad access. All your students have access. Associate membership would allow one person to have access in your team, to what's in there. So we try to keep it really small and not a barrier, but it needs to be something, so that we can still stay in business.

Guy: Well, the thing that I find most inspirational about this whole conversation is that you paint a picture of a society that benefits from and knows how to handle conflict constructively. Right now, I think in too much of the United States, and probably a lot of other places, people are so repelled at the notion that somebody disagrees with them, they just wanted to defeat them. And this is a story of how we can learn from all of our differences at a local scale, work through problems, solve problems, and this is one of the key features of democracy is it is a system for constructively handling conflict.

And one of the advantages of our system with so many levels of jurisdiction from the local to the state to the federal is that problems can be handled locally. We don't really need to have a one size fits all national solution. And this is a model for doing that.

D.G. So I want to go to another direction here.  Sorry, I did a deep dive and you're right. Before we met, I read your article about Stanford and what happened there. And while it may be nice, that they're making people take a course, sort of like indoctrination, it would have been even sustainably  more effective, to have broad community meetings to meet with all the individuals and talk through the genesis of that anger, where that anger is coming from, the ability to hear each other, that at the end of the day, you can have people with differing, extremely different point of views, and they have to sit and listen to them. Or choose not to. But you don't need to be protesting them in a way that shuts them down. We view protests as positive. It's people going out there testifying that I'm for something and the word pro, I'm for, testimony.

So, we feel it is very positive. But protesting doesn't mean shutting someone down, protesting  means I want you to hear what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking And that resolution [Stanford’s approach of a mandatory course] doesn't seem to set that up in a way that if they would also enhance that reaction, if the university did bring in these commission principles, I think they would set a culture on the campus that would be much more sustainable in how do we behave appropriately when someone saying something we find very offensive. And someone who is still grieving what occurred Monday in my city, I still hear people say things that hit me really wrong what we're going through, but I don't yell at them. I don't try to diminish them. The worst I've done is say, “please know your facts.” That's all I've asked them to do. Because they have the right to hold that truth, as upsetting as I find that.  I have the right to say, please know your facts. And in that conversation, that interaction, I'm not calling anyone out. I'm not shaming anybody. I'm not sending anyone down. That, I would add on to that layer of what the university plans on doing. Have you thought about, is really a system in your law school? So maybe they need to be cultural change beyond offering a course. And that's something that you had written most recently about that that was what they were doing. So again, I hope that's okay to creep you out that I did a deep dive into your writing.

Heidi: That's fine. And I was thinking as I was listening to that, that I want to take out that part of this transcript and put it as a PostScript to that article, because one of our goals, that has been partially met, but we’d certainly like to do it a lot more. We started this thing that we called a discussion and it's a blog at the same time, and it ended up also being our Substack newsletter. So, there's three entities that are all pretty much the same thing. But we really want it to be a discussion where it's not just us putting forth, but getting a back-and-forth. And we've had some back-and-forth, but we haven't had nearly as much as we were hoping for. So anytime somebody does make a comment on one of the posts, I'm really eager to get it up and out there so that we can encourage more conversation.

We have gotten several private emails about that Stanford post because First Amendment issues are particularly difficult and sticky and very much on people's minds right now. And there isn't agreement at all, about how to deal with it. But I think having a back-and-forth on that is really valuable.

D.G. I think if they were able to actually go through a really good process that could be really helpful. Because something else you wrote in there, that is really a truism for me, today you may have the power to decide who said the good thing and said, the bad thing, but a few years from now, maybe the other person has the power and you're now labeled as saying the bad thing. So we need to be able to –I used to say—“put our big boy pants on” and sit with stuff and listen to it and not take it personally as an attack on us, but really debate the idea and debate the solution and the resolution that's going forward. People aren't going to see and recognize you if you're slamming and harming them. All they are going to feel and recognize is that you're harming me. If what you want is for people to see and recognize you, then let them see and recognize you in a way, that challenges them to say, maybe I need to think about you all a little differently.

Heidi: I don't know whether you went from that article to read Judge Duncan's telling of what happened. It was just textbook escalation. The students started doing what they were doing, and he started calling them names. And so they got worse. Oh my gosh, it was just textbook. So ugly all around. It was amazing.

D. G. And to me, that's where it showed that it would benefit judges if they had mediation training. Training itself would have said that probably wasn't the best way to respond to that. And again, that is what I would answer.

And I do want to say, I'm glad we got to meet because I've never responded. I read your stuff. I never respond. Based on your background, the things you two have done, the decades of different contributions you've made. I've never felt like anything I could say that would really add to it. I've got to meet because I'm like, okay, maybe next to my reading. So yeah, I'm really glad.

Heidi: Please add your thoughts!  Because really, we want to be a facilitator. We want to be a vessel where a conversation can take place. Because we are blessed by having a pretty wide readership, we reach a lot of people, but we really don’t get all the credit. Beyond Intractability wasn't written by us. It was written by 500 people, half scholars, half practitioners, probably the 500 numbers outdated now. We're probably up to closer to 600. There's a lot of people who've gotten into that. And we want to keep it going.  It is sort of like a community mediation center writ large. It's a place where our whole field and allied fields can have a conversation about how to do this better. And we don't have the answers.

D.G. Anyway, if I can help in that, please let me know how we can amplify your voice. I'm thinking of possibly having you attend Momentum May. We meet once a year virtually to talk about hot topics as a group and have some fun together. It's a lot of games. And you may even participate or come to the assembly and get to sit with some of these folks. I think sitting with you have made me go, I think I can respond to what you're writing. And when I read your work and read your bio, I think, I'm nowhere near that. There's no point waiting into those waters. So anyway, we can lift you up and get people to know you, so because we have so many members way beyond the centers, we have thousands and thousands of people that follow the stuff that we do. If we can open the door to your voice and what you're doing, I’d be more than honored to do that on your behalf.

Heidi:  Well, that's great. We would really appreciate it. And I am sort of dismayed to hear that you were intimidated. I hope other people aren't. We might have to do some sort of a post that says, please don't be intimidated.

D.G. You both have made quite a difference.

Heidi: It never occurred to me that that would have been an issue. We've always had a really strange place in the field. Because we've only practiced a little bit. So we're not considered practitioners. We haven't done what is considered serious research, haven't had a tenured position ever at a university. We've been adjuncts. So we're not considered scholars. We're not considered practitioners. Nobody knows what to do with us. And we go to conferences and we don't have a group where we're one of them. We're always kind of these weirdo people.

D.G. Community mediation may have been your home.  I think we have found a place where your way of sitting with things fits very well with what we really are encouraging and supporting our folks to do in both Canada and the U.S. So maybe you’ve got a home—I’m just saying!

Heidi: . Yeah, well, we have practiced it a little bit just because we fell into it and certainly our hearts have been in the right place and I got a little bit of training, oh my gosh, well, in the 80s, I guess. When I was just out of grad school, I worked with a forerunner of a community mediation center here in Boulder. And \, we weren't doing the kinds of mediation that you're describing. I don't think, although you may have some centers who are doing what we were doing. We were doing fairly large scale environmental conflicts over whether dams were going to be built and water treatment plants were going to be built and that kind of thing.  I don't remember if you were in the local intersections meeting on Tuesday where Susan Carpenter was what we were talking about her work. Because she was head of the organization that I worked with where I got some training from them. But never really did a whole lot with it and all of that was irrelevant and I shouldn't go there, but anyway…

Guy: the thing that we've been lucky is that in this sort of weird position that we have, we get a bit of a sense of what we collectively know. And we live in a world that's hyper specialized, even in the dispute resolution, conflict resolution, and peace building field. That it's so much effort to do one small handle one small dispute. And I and by small, I don't necessarily mean that it isn’t important. Disputes that involve a relatively few people can have great impact and great importance. It's hard to see the big picture. And one of the things that we've been doing, and part out of Walt Roberts intersections project, is to start to put together more of a map of all of the things that are happening. And it's really very encouraging, and it's not something that's widely visible.

Heidi: And it cuts two ways. So that some people think that if I do my little thing here and I bring ten Democrats to dinner with ten Republicans, I can solve the polarization problem in the United States. And there's other people who will say, I'm going to bring ten Democrats together with ten Republicans. And have them have dinner. And it won't have any impact. And so, there’s no point in doing it at all. And obviously, both of those assumptions are wrong. That's what we're trying to do is to give the notion that we're each a piece of this big puzzle. And if each of us fills in a small piece and we become aware of the fact that we're one piece of a great big puzzle, then we could make that puzzle come together. It’s the lack of awareness of what else that is going on that I think is leaving people astray in both directions.

D.G. Absolutely. And part of that's something we're trying to embrace back to, our original work, founding in the 70s was to be that infrastructure. So people could come and find what are you doing? What are you doing around this issue or that issue? I'm not sure they always talked about social justice or social cohesion, but they were talking about it and figuring it out. And that's why NAFCM was created. But as it evolved, and people were moving our work into a program, so it's nice and neat and fit, it then lost the ability to be that systemic structure where everyone could come together and lift each other up. The point of the center isn't to shade anyone's work, it's to lift up everyone's work and then figure out where the gaps are.  And then we at the community, we want to fill those gaps. Are we able to do? We're not right now. We can. But never assume that there's a gap where no one else is filling it. When you have a gap, the first thing is to talk to people. Let's do it a spider web and find out is anyone doing that? Because maybe they're doing it really well. And maybe they are so busy doing it, they don't have time [to share it] with the world now. But then our job would be to lift them up because now we have a new resource.

Remember, our thing is to help people lean into their conflict. Well, if we get a new resource out there doing something and a conflict comes to the center, that resource may be the best place for them to actually sit with their conflict. Well, then why not refer them to them? It is something we've been trying to get back to since 1994. And it's been a low progress back to why we were created in the first place.

And so to end with polarization, I don't think people in the 60s thought the world was being more polarized than it was then. When you had the riots going on, the murders going on, the civil rights movement, the war movement, and that's when we were born. That's when we were growing. And so, our DNA as centers fits well in the type of atmosphere where conflict is very visible.

And in fact, part of our job is to make it more visible. Because when there is appearance of no conflict, it could be because you have what is that negative peace, there's no conflict because people are afraid to speak up. They're afraid to say anything. They're afraid to go wow, it looks so wonderfully peaceful here [but maybe underneath it isn’t.] And part of our job is to say “is it really [peaceful]? let's lift this up and let's figure this out because at the end of the day, conflict is needed to help us evolve and grow and continue to change to become better.

That is our progress as individuals. That's our progress as community. It's a way to evolve to become better to become that vision of yourself you have. And so with that in mind, that infrastructure needs to embrace that and that doesn't mean becoming a program. And so that is really that challenge for the members I represent is that they only funding you can receive is to be a program. Then how much time do you have being that systems infrastructure you were supposed to be?

And again, that is where they believe NAFCM is needed. Let's get them resources so they can be that infrastructure they're supposed to be. And offer programs or connect them to people that are offering these great programs. They don't have to offer them and do that themselves.

So I realized that hour and a half flew, I want to thank you for it.

Heidi: I, too, want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. You've shared a lot of amazing information and given us a lot of avenues to follow up on. So, we will be doing that. And thank you very much.

Guy: One last thought is that this history that we've been talking about for the last hour and a half came out of the period of even more intense conflict in the 60s and 70s.So part of what happens when conflicts get bad is people figure out how to deal with it. And now there's a new generation to write another chapter of the story.

D.G. That's right. Absolutely. And you're giving the platform for people to know that it's a continuation. And to me, there's some comfort knowing it isn't that this hasn't happened before. It has. So let's re-embrace how we got through it the last time and make it even better this time. Hopefully the better it is, the more we make it sustainable. And don't try to turn it into a program. Don't say it's over. It's never over. It's in our DNA. So let's make it tangible and make it better. So, thank you. Thank you both for this opportunity.

Heidi: Thank you too.