{"id":549,"date":"2010-12-30T12:18:24","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T16:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/blog\/peacebuilder\/?p=549"},"modified":"2011-03-10T17:51:59","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T21:51:59","slug":"self-community-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/peacebuilder\/2010\/12\/self-community-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"From Self And Community To Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mental health worker \u2013 Professor \u2013 Schoolteacher – Full-time parent \u2013 Mediator \u2013 Lawyer – PhD student Administrator \u2013 Writer \u2013 Consultant – Newspaper editor – Hospital staffer – UN official – Computer engineer \u2013 Grandmother – Priest<\/h4>\n

The post-EMU paths followed by CJP\u2019s 36 earliest graduates are as diverse as the 10 countries in which they are currently living.\u00a0 Yet several themes tended to recur in the interviews, regardless of the nationality, gender, or vocation of the speaker.<\/p>\n

Theme No. 1: Peacebuilding begins with oneself and one\u2019s close personal relationships.<\/h4>\n

Twenty-one of the 36 graduates (58%) specifically mentioned personal sacrifices or career changes they had made to enable their children to be raised in a healthy home environment with attentive caregiving. Four of the alumni are in couples where the husband is devoting, or did devote, years to being the full-time parent. Three of the female alumni are full-time parents now, and two couples are job-sharing or otherwise evenly splitting child-rearing responsibilities. One at-home parent explained, \u201cI want my children to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, when they grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theme No. 2: Peacebuilding needs to be extended beyond self, home and immediate community into the transformation of entire systems that perpetuate widespread injustices and thus foment violent conflict.<\/h4>\n

\u201cIn becoming a parent I have become increasingly aware of the world that we are leaving to future generations,\u201d wrote Jeff Heie in an e-mail to the editor of Peacebuilder. \u201cOur current economic system assigns very little value to prevention and the \u2018common good\u2019\u2026 I have come to view many forms of conflict as rooted in issues of lifestyle. When Western cultures demand a certain level of comfort and wealth, they sow the seeds of conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alfiado and Clara Zunguza with daughters, (from left) Letice Laurina, Lara Melissa, Enea Mirela and Gene Carla, at their home in 2010.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Theme No. 3: Wrestling with transforming systems and structures in the absence of clarity on what would be better and how to get there.<\/h4>\n

In February 2009, at the Global Baptist Peace Conference in Rome, Ak\u00fcm Longchari of Nagaland (in northeast India) asked those present, representing 59 countries, to consider how they use nonviolent campaigns around the world: Are they merely addressing the outcomes of a violent society, but not addressing the structures that create it?<\/p>\n

In a 1999 paper written with fellow alumnus Babu Ayindo of Kenya, Longchari elaborated:<\/p>\n

In almost every part of the world, greed and insecurity have led to astronomic consumerism and domination. What we have now is a culture of lies and death primarily guided by fear and profit. Humanity has turned anti-life. We are now evolving a culture that does not have humans and life at its center\u2026 Things will get better when more third and fourth world and indigenous people overcome the [Western] definitions of culture that suffocate their capacity to transform their world according to their needs, as their ancestors did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Build Relationships, But Then?<\/h4>\n

Upon graduating from CJP (called \u201cCTP\u201d in their era), most of the 36 alumni felt they had been well prepared to develop the interpersonal relationships necessary for reaching out to parties in conflict and bringing them into dialogue with each other. They felt they had learned to listen respectfully, regardless of the nature of the speaker, and to converse in a diplomatic, culturally sensitive manner. They also had learned to be aware of the array of factors that play into a conflict, including who are the stakeholders and what might be their motivations.<\/p>\n

In other words, these alumni often spoke of emerging from CTP with a new lens through which to view themselves and the world, of being sensitized to how others view life. They also emerged with analytical tools to help them know \u201cwhere to start\u201d in their efforts to sow seeds of peace.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/em><\/h6>\n
\"\"<\/a>
NIne of the earliest CTP graduates, pictured in a 1998 recognition ceremony: (from left) Hadley Jenner, Moe Kyaw Tun, Pat Hostetter Martin, Sam Gbaydee Doe, Janet Evergreeen, Jim Hershberger, David Schwinghamer, Hannah Mack Lapp, and Tim Ruebke.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nobody interviewed expressed regret at gaining these insights and skills. Almost all spoke of the ways they had benefited from learning them.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, about a third of the interviewees expressed a desire, as Ayindo and Longchari voiced in their paper, \u201cto search for new paradigms of governance and systems\u2026 with the inherent capacity to meet the aspirations of peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

CTP did not contribute to this search, at least not in their era of study. \u201cThe one area that I wish would have been stronger at CTP was a critical analysis of how economic systems and relationships perpetuate conflict,\u201d said Jeff Heie. \u201cThe military-industrial complex is an example that we all know about. An economy that relies so heavily on the economic activity generated by arms sales and military spending has a vested interest in keeping violent conflict alive.\u201d Heie and other alumni expressed frustration at addressing the effects or symptoms of cycles of destruction, rather than breaking the cycles.<\/p>\n

On the local level, for instance, Jim Bernat has worked for a community services board in a semi-rural area of Virginia long enough to notice that some of the clients coming into his treatment system are the sons and daughters of clients treated for mental health or substance abuse problems many years ago. \u201cOur system is clearly broken, when the kids arrive at our doors as harmed as their parents were,\u201d said Bernat.<\/p>\n

In El Salvador, Sandra Dunsmore said she ended up doing \u201cdamage control\u201d in her role as a facilitator of dialogue for the stakeholders involved in winding down the war in El Salvador in the mid-1990s, rather than hearing the stakeholders address the social and economic issues underlying the war \u2013 issues that fester to this day in El Salvador.<\/p>\n

Need to Understand Power<\/h4>\n

\u201cI used to think that if your arguments are good enough, people will listen to you,\u201d Dunsmore said. \u201cOften that isn\u2019t true, especially when there are very powerful interests at play.\u201d Back in her day at CTP, Dunsmore added, \u201cWe talked very little in class about power dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon returning to West Africa after graduating, Sam Gbaydee Doe kept seeing something that he did not know how to stop, even with his rapidly growing network of peace organizations: certain African power-players went about winning a place in the post-conflict power structure by intentionally doing horrific things. Doe observed: \u201cOne of the best ways to get recognition, to get a seat at the negotiation table, is to cut off the limbs of babies and children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually Doe developed a hunger to move beyond scenarios of dealing with sickly violent characters to figuring out \u201chow we can make the state work for ordinary people.\u201d In 2005, he entered a doctoral program in Britain to study the history and mechanisms of statebuilding, intending to apply his findings to Africa.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jean Ndayizigiye (rear) in '90s, with wife, daughters, and Hadley Jenner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No interviewee suggested that demonstrating in the streets, in the manner of the French Revolution or even of Mahatma Gandhi, was an effective way of transforming the \u201csystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t just protest,\u201d said Dunsmore. \u201cWe must come up with proposals for things that will work in the real world. We need to understand the deep, complex phenomenon underlying our global problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

From her professor\u2019s perch in Ohio, Laura Brenneman agreed: \u201cOppression is definitely structuralized, but [in the US] folks are mostly comfortable and don\u2019t want that pointed out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even those folks who aren\u2019t complacent, who are willing to acknowledge \u201cstructuralized oppression,\u201d are handicapped by their lack of a socio-economic \u201cparadigm\u201d to work towards. As
\nDunsmore puts it, \u201cWe\u2019re flying blind. We can\u2019t see around the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Impact of Money<\/h4>\n

A final consideration in this discussion is money. None of the 36 alumni featured in this Peacebuilder have deep wells of money at their disposal. Many depend on grant-based funding that provides for short-term interventions or other types of work focused on specific problems.<\/p>\n

Yet \u201csustainable peacebuilding takes years, decades, generations,\u201d says Jan Jenner, director of CJP\u2019s Practice and Training Institute.<\/p>\n

A major source of grant money for CJP in its formative years was the Hewlett Foundation, according to CJP’s leaders in the 1990s. After a decade, however, Hewlett shifted its priorities to environmental and development issues, withdrawing funding from CJP and other peace organizations it had been supporting. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
CJP professor Howard Zehr with Tammy Krause in spring of '98<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In hindsight, Hewlett does deserve recognition for hanging with CJP for 10 years \u2013 many foundations shift their funding priorities much more quickly than that. Ironically, however, Hewlett shifted its funding just as CJP had started to develop a track record, as exemplified by the work of our first 36 graduates.<\/p>\n

One can dream of the long-term impact Hewlett might have engendered if it had maintained its support, perhaps providing CJP with the resources to explore the structural issues troubling so many of our alumni today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Spring of '98: Tammy Krause, Hannah Mack Lapp, Christine Poulson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As matters now stand, many of our graduates spend considerable time writing grant applications for short-term funding. If successful, they subsequently must prepare detailed reports to meet the typically rigid requirements of their funders. Rather than being accountable to the people they are trying to serve, they must tailor their work to the funders\u2019 current interests, which may be \u201cnatural resource conflicts\u201d this year, HIV\/AIDS next year, and \u201chuman security\u201d the year after. Few of our alumni are willing to speak on the record on this matter, because of fear of losing all funding possibilities.<\/p>\n

An African dependent on grant money said: \u201cThe whole peacebuilding field is becoming monopolized by USAID, which exists to advance the foreign policy of the United States. I have seen funding of a particular project suddenly cut off, not because the work we were doing wasn\u2019t good and effective for the people at the grassroots, but because Washington DC saw no benefit for Americans in what we were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
WANEP founders Sam G. Doe and Emmanuel Bombande at SPI 1997<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another spoke of a $5 million USAID grant supposedly earmarked for peacebuilding work in Africa that was siphoned off by US contractors and other \u201cexperts\u201d en route to Africa, resulting in only $175,000 actually being available for work by Africans for Africans.<\/p>\n

These views are the stuff of uncomfortable conversations. But they are exchanges that need to be held, according to Jenner, formerly a CJP student and now an administrator. She says more resources need to be put into \u201clonger term, harder work, [including] having hard, disagreeable conversations about problems, confronting power, and building peace that is sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to do this \u201clonger term, harder work\u201d may be CJP\u2019s biggest challenge over the next 10 to 15 years.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Bonnie Price Lofton<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Photos courtesy EMU\/CJP archives<\/p>\n

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