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(Story by Dr. Millicent Carvalho-Grevious)
Blessed are the peacemakers.
I have dedicated my career to implementing sustainable change and serving as an agent of change. I have been an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Director for seven years and a professional mediator for over 30 years. Typically, the EEO role entails mediating resolution and leading organizational change. I have been responsible for implementing sweeping reforms to civil rights compliance and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to align with congressional mandates. In doing so, I have had to apply a cross-cultural lens to assist organizational stakeholders in _moving the organization up the change commitment curve - from non-believer to believer.
Alternative dispute resolution is my preferred conflict-handling method, and I have achieved phenomenal success in obtaining collaborative resolutions before lawyers and the courts become involved. Sometimes, you must push away from the mediation table and meet your disputants where they are-including the shop floor in a union setting, break room, and conference room. Other times, mediators have to engage people where they are physically and employ nontraditional tactics; this often means leaving the comfort of the mediation table and formal rules of conducting a mediation to include facilitative and transformative approaches to resolving problems.
Ten years ago, I wrote an online newspaper article titled "Nelson Mandela Conflict Resolution Legacy at Pollsmoor Prison." With some updates, the following describes Mandela's perspective and guides mediators in disrupting discrimination and community violence. Mandela, the former South African President, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and disruptor of racism and apartheid, was imprisoned for 27 years due to the tyranny and racism of the South African Government against Blacks.
Nelson Mandela understood that real change did not occur through violence but through dialogue and conflict resolution. Although Mandela was held mainly on Rodden Island, from 1982 to 1988, he was at Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison in Cape Town for most of his sentence. Pollsmoor was a notorious prison for violent rapists, sociopaths, murderers, and otherwise ruthless prison gang members. For four years at Pollsmoor, Mandela had a rooftop cell separated from the general population.
In 2001, in the same rooftop quarters where Mandela was held, Joanna Flanders Thomas, a conflict resolution expert at the Cape Town Centre for Conflict Resolution, led a series of workshops titled "Change Begins with Me." The workshops taught Black prison gang members to resolve conflict through dialogue, not violence. The violence often reflected the brutal system of apartheid that dehumanized Black men-reducing them to non-citizens. Holding Joanna's workshops in the exact location of Mandela positively influenced the participants. It was also where Mandela began negotiating with the apartheid government to transition power in South Africa to the Black majority peacefully.
Joanna was an incredible messenger for adapting the mediator's skill set and adapting it for the setting. Going into the prison and speaking with the inmates in their prison cells, without guards and separators, Joanna demonstrated that mediation and conflict resolution practices are interactive processes. Skillful mediators save lives and affect social justice. The BBC chronicled Joanna's courageous work in providing a 10-day conflict resolution training for inmates in a documentary titled "Killers Don't Cry." (Little, A. 2001)
The documentary opens with Joanna recalling what she saw when she first entered the gates of the Pollsmoor prison. Joanna said, "I saw my brother, uncle, and friend." She conveyed that the prisoners she saw could have been members of her own family or a friend; as such, they were connected to her personally. I can't stress enough how important making connections facilitates conflict resolution.
As a successful mediator, I work to repair relationships damaged by conflict rather than focus on the problems the association has produced. In doing so, I facilitate change and advocate for the process without compromising neutrality. Neutrality isn't being distant or indifferent to the issues in dispute. Successful mediators are passionate about their work but place themselves as connectors between opposing parties, like mortar between bricks. They are highlighting connections between the parties at every opportunity. Most would agree that fair treatment is essential, and most know how bad it feels when mistreated.
Armed with conflict resolution and mediation expertise, faith in her fellow humans, and love, Joanna quickly joined with gang members on a profoundly personal level. It led to successful 10-day training for the 27 and 28 Number Gangs. These gangs were rivals and notorious for raping and murdering other prisoners and terrorizing correction officers. Violence or the threat of violence was how gangs controlled the Pollsmoor Prison. Gang members feared Joanna was an informant and a threat to the numbers gang system.
Mr. Barry Coetzee, a prison warder (correction officer), explained the intense violence experienced in an overcrowded prison when the prisoners wielded the most power. He explained, "a number" has been called on me. [Meaning] I will be stabbed or cut with a blade. My blood has to flow. There is no way to defend yourself. You never know when; you never know where. It's terrifying; it's a psychological war."
After meeting Joanna, the 27 and 28 Numbers Gangs were curious about her training. However, the 26 Gang refused to meet with Joanna and tasked one of its members, "Thomas," to kill her. Rather than show fear, Joanna skillfully engaged the men to reflect upon the pain and disappointment they had experienced in living in segregated South Africa. Joanna knew what to say despite meeting Thomas for the first time because she listened to the men; she listened to the content of their violent histories and the emotions expressed, for example, fear, disappointment, anger, hurt, unwantedness, etc.
Upholding the importance of building community and making connections, Joanna, sitting on the edge of a cot in a large prison cell surrounded by incarcerated men, demonstrated the same skill, faith and love that Mandela exhibited. Thomas, a 26 Numbers Gang member charged with stopping her, said, "This Joanna had to be stabbed in here. I did everything possible to kill her, but perhaps God was with her without her knowing." Thomas ignored the Gang's instructions to kill Joanna and agreed to participate in her training. Joanna turned to Thomas and said, "It's been hard for you, hasn't it."
A mediator's anthem: if I listen closely enough, I will learn what I need to say or do to affect change.
Thomas began to cry. This emotional, cathartic expression engrossed Thomas to withdraw defenses and discuss his feelings. Thomas disclosed how frightened he and his 26 Gang members were of Joanna-hence the contract to kill her. Joanna completely disarmed Thomas by acknowledging his pain, fear, and confusion. She closed the distance between herself and Thomas.
Attending Joanna's workshop could get participants killed, but Thomas participated despite the threat of retaliation. Joanna challenged members of rival gangs to change how they related to one another and play together peacefully, something most had never experienced before, even as children. Due to the numbers gang system's brainwashing in prison, many prisoners had forgotten what it meant to relate to one another as human beings-including saying please and thank you. As a result, most of Pollsmoor's prisoners had learned to suppress any feelings of compassion or empathy that might lead them to treat one another with civility and respect. Hence the title of the documentary, "Killers Don't Cry." Joanna offered Thomas a way out of prison violence and provided him with alternatives to violence through her training.
I had the pleasure of meeting Joanna in 2001 when she visited Philadelphia under the sponsorship of the Philadelphia Leadership Foundation. I saw an ad in the paper about her training and invited her to have lunch with me. I wondered how she engaged the violent prisoners and why she stayed after learning that the 26 Gang had called a number on her. Before meeting Joanna, I had never had an opportunity for a one-on-one conversation with anyone who risked their life to disrupt conflict the way Joanna had. Most of my experience and research involved mediation and conflict resolution practices within the workplace, office, community, or courthouse.
We ate lunch at a now-closed Japanese restaurant in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Transformed, the three most essential things that I learned from Joanna, which I have incorporated as critical tools of my conflict resolution training and mediation practice in the field of EEO and Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility (DEl&A), are:
| Date Taken: | 11.02.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 11.02.2023 12:45 |
| Story ID: | 457048 |
| Location: | FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, PENNSYLVANIA, US |
| Web Views: | 189 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
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