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What did you do to build and sustain trust with the parties?
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Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
You talked just a few minutes ago about how you were able to speak the language of
the authorities, and that tells me that you were able to establish some level of trust. How
important is trust in your role, and how were you able to develop it in this case?
Answer: Trust is everything. You know sometimes, as mediators, or even in some other roles, if we
don't assume that we know enough about the subject, and about the common interests, it is not
there. I always assume that one of the reasons I was hired was because I brought certain skills
and expertise to the table and then I was just sort of thrown into the lion's den rather quickly and
was able to perform really well.
Question: Now I'm sure that you have some special techniques that you were able to use. You said that
you were able to speak the language and so that made them feel comfortable with you. Give us
an example of what type of languages were you using, what things were said, and when?
Answer: Talking to the media officials' side, I was able to convince them that I did know the
community. I was able to tell my own story of how I went to school,
how I got to the university and why I got to the university, and eventually graduated, and
what I had done to become, you know at the time, the only Hispanic in a management
position. That I think was impressive to them and the fact that I showed a lot of honesty as to
what the positions of the minority community were and what the consequences would be if
something else came out -- a different outcome.
Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
What did you do to diminish tensions
between parties?
Answer: Well, first of all, gaining acceptance is one. The other is gaining
trust
and working with them so that we can determine their priorities. We must also continue
to ask them how we can best be of service to this dispute, and determine where the resolution
lies.
Question: What about getting trust not just between you and the parties, but
between the parties themselves? Like between the minority groups and the majority groups.
Presumably at the beginning of these conflicts there's a high level of distrust. What did you do?
Answer: The biggest obstacle for us is gaining the trust of the minority group, because there's distrust
among themselves, first of all. Despite the fact they have years of history, they don't come
together that often. So what we find is that they don't really know each other as well as they
think they do. And as I mentioned before, their share of time to give to the dispute or to give to
the community, is very small. So we work a lot within the group itself so that it can coalesce
and it can focus on the issues.
Bob Hughes
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
I'd like to go back and
talk about trust. How important is it that you generate trust between yourself and the parties.
How key is that to what you do?
Answer: Trust certainly makes for more effectiveness, it makes one more effective as a mediator, at
least in our culture. There'd have to be some confidence in a person's integrity or their ability, or
else they would probably not be successful in persuading people to make a commitment to
mediation.
Question: How could you detect when you were succeeding in building trust?
Answer: How would I know that I had trust?
Question: How could you tell that you were getting the parties to be more comfortable to trust you
more, to trust the process more? What signs were they giving you?
Answer: Well, they would reveal the level of interest in it by questions and comments about it.
Beyond that, I'm not sure that I could give you much of an answer.
Question: Was it something very overt and obvious, as them saying, "Hey, we trust you now," or was it
something a little more subtle than that?
Answer: Oh, no it would be more subtle than that, like a willingness to proceed to accept
recommendations or to participate in mediation. You could also tell by their level of frankness
when talking about their concerns.
Question: Were you able to operate if these levels were low or absent?
Answer: Probably not.
Question: Was your own race, ethnicity, age, or gender,
ever a problem with you gaining trust?
Answer: Oh yeah. I went into Monroe Prison, in the state of Washington, in response to a request
from some of the African American inmates. They had arranged for me to talk with some of
their members of the Black Prisoners Organization. Two or three of the members of this group,
when we sat down to talk, upon hearing my accent, they asked, "Where you from?" "Alabama."
It was immediate skepticism that anybody from Alabama could be of any help in this situation,
or would be willing to be of any help. Really, there were times like this.
Question: How were you able to get around that initial skepticism?
Answer: Well, the same way I would when making a presentation to any group. I'd first try to get
myself out of the way, by saying, "My name is Bob Hughes and as you notice, I am not from this
area. I was born and raised in Alabama." Try to be up front and honest and open, and hopefully,
get past that quickly in order to deal with more substantial issues. Deal with issues at hand. I
would usually try to or make a joke about it. "I'm Bob Hughes, and as you noticed, I'm from
South Mercer Island, or south Seattle."
Question: Can you recall any examples of when you were used as a scapegoat
by one of the parties?
Answer: No, I don't recall being used in that way.
Question: Did you have a special technique that you used to try to build trust
between the parties?
Answer: Getting them to work together, that is part of the mediation process. Maybe in joint
committees, or task groups, which seem to be a very productive area for developing
collaboration. I didn't have any particular exercises, for example, or training in that way that
would have the effect of building trust.
Ernest Jones
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Let's talk about trust, the significance of trust, not only in this case of Louisville, and
the police officers, but in general as a mediator, how important is it for you to gain the trust of
the parties?
Answer: Well, I think it's extremely important. Let's say I'm doing mediation and during the process,
my sense is that I didn't gain the trust of one of the parties, or both of the parties, and the
mediation is not successful, and maybe we go back to court or whatever else they were doing. In
that particular situation, I would then not view that I had made my goal. I would not have
accomplished the goal because that element, not having gained that trust which is part of the
mediation process, is unsuccessful. So the mediation wasn't successful and I accept the blame
for that. I also recognize that there are going to be individuals that are not going to trust me no
matter what I do, simply because I'm a Fed or simply because I am white.
Question: Before we took a little break you were talking about how race may affect your job. How
your
position with the Department of Justice may affect your job. Could you just continue talking
about that?
Answer: What was the context?
Question: I think you were talking about it in terms of the trust issues with the parties who were
involved in this particular case, the Louisville police department and black police officers.
Answer: The trust issues there were ok. They got better as time went along which will happen in all
situations unless you've had a history or experience with somebody in other circumstances of the
case activity or something. At the initial point of contact I think the trust level is generally low
because the other people just don't know who you are or where you're coming from. Often just
the term the Department of Justice pops these pictures into people's minds of all kinds of things
and most of them (but not all of them) are kind of pointed away from the trust as opposed to
toward trust. But you work around that and you build it. You can build it over a short period of
time if you put some effort into it. My experience has been just shoot straight with people and
generally speaking that is enough.
Question: I think that also before we broke you were talking about the building trust or sustaining trust
in a group and that's when you were explaining that some people are simply not going to trust
you because of maybe some exterior factors or whatever. Was that the case with the Louisville
police officers?
Answer: No, first of all we went in with a biracial team.
Question: Why was that important?
Answer: Again it creates pictures in people's minds. A lot of that takes place on a subconscious level.
I'm speculating here but I guess that most people don't say "Oh good a biracial team. We trust
both of them now." But I think on a subconscious level they could sense a message that there's
some equity here because the picture is kind of even.
Question: How would it have been different for instance if only you went into that situation or only
your
partner had gone into that situation?
Answer: Well, if only I had gone into it, I would have had to work harder with the black police
officers organization because all of the FOP people are white. Actually the city team was
diverse, and just by the very nature of how we are in this county, how we've been categorized,
and the same holds true the other way. In fact it's probably more devastating the other way. I
think a lot of times the people representing the Community Relations Services of the Department
of Justice, if they are a minority, are perceived to be advocates more so than I am.
Question: And what are you seen as?
Answer: I'm the typical federal employee. That's what I'd expect from the Department of Justice kind
of thing.
Question: Is there a certain amount of validity, credibility that goes along with that?
Answer: I'm sure there's some but I wouldn't attach any weight to it but I'm sure it's happened. And I
don't know that it makes that big of a difference to be honest with you.
Question: You don't feel that race or ethnicity affects...?
Answer: Oh no, I'm sure it does I just like to think it's not that big of a factor.
Question: Well, yeah we'd like to but by the nature of the work into which this organization was born,
we know that that's not exactly true, so that's why I think we asked the question about how does
your race and ethnicity affect the job that you have to do.
Answer: It just makes it tougher to go in a minority situation particularly a black community, and find
acceptance.
Question: Were you ever able to work effectively when you felt the trust levels were low between
either
yourself and the parties, or between both parties or all of the parties?
Answer: Yeah, I mean I go in and I know who I am and I realize that the people that I'm meeting for
the first time don't know who I am but because I feel comfortable with who I am I don't worry
about that thing. I know it comes up. When it comes up I'll deal with it. I don't go in thinking I
have to deal with this.
Question: So no one ever comes to you and says, maybe not in the Louisville case, but other cases that
you were involved with. When you went into minority communities, did people approach you
and say what are you doing here and I don't trust you because you are white, because you are
male, because you are a certain age.
Answer: I don't think I've ever had anybody say that to me. I'm sure that people have thought it but I
don't think anybody has ever said that. I don't recall anybody ever having said that.
Question: Tell me what was good about the process that you utilized in building trust between the
parties?
Answer: Specifically from the Memphis case?
Question: The Louisville case, sure.
Answer: What was there we didn't have to build on and I don't think we ever looked past that point. I
think there were already established levels of trust with the exception of the outsiders who were
CRS and the Legal Defense Fund. The rest of them were already where they would ever get in
terms of trust. The city was probably in better shape in terms of trust with the black police
officers organization. Let me just restate. There were already existing levels of trust excluding
the Legal Defense Fund and CRS. I think that one, because we were referred by the judge, two,
because we were able to present ourselves in an acceptable manner. Our trust levels rose or the
level of trust toward us rose to an adequate level, I don't know if it's the best level, but to an
adequate level. The Legal Defense Fund was never trusted by the city who viewed them as only
there for attorneys fees, and was never trusted by the FOP because they were just these
fast-talking guys
from New York. I'm not convinced that the trust level between the black police officers
organization and the Legal Defense Fund was where it could be simply because I think that in
reality they were thinking the same thing that the city was thinking, that they were just there to
collect attorneys fees. But they thought that was okay because they were helping them in the
process.
Question: And with you being able to witness the levels of mistrust going on did that impair your job at
all or did you try to build the levels up at any time?
Answer: On a very soft plane I think we probably worked in an ongoing fashion to improve trust
level.
Question: Like what? What's soft?
Answer: Oh you know just when we would caucus with individual groups we would just kind of talk
about where we saw points that would make that particular party that we were caucusing with
have a positive kind of feel toward the trust of the other groups. But that wasn't a big priority
because it wasn't getting in the way.
Question: Can you think of any other cases where it may have gotten in the way? That you actually
needed to take more of an initiative to increase the levels of trust?
Answer: No I can't think of it.
Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
What
about trust between the parties?
Answer: I guess it's pretty much the same. They test each other out.
If they establish a working relationship based on whatever
they're going to do together, then the process itself begins
creating this trust among them. You can't just say, "Hey trust
me." They never have total trust, especially if there's been a
history of mistrust, but a lot of times that mistrust is based on
misunderstanding, or lack of understanding. So through a process
it creates an opportunity for trust.
Ozell
Sutton
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Would you talk specifically about how you gain the trust of the parties?
Answer: Well, part of it's trust, and the other part of it is that when they start to make choices, the
choice that you are from is the most applicable to the situation. You come as all wisdom, if I
might say that. Knowing everything that's to be known about it. Know about where this kind
of situation in the country has occurred before. You are intimately knowledgeable about it.
When you start going down the list of situations where you've seen it before, I think, "Been
there, done that." So your trust comes from relating knowledge that nobody else has.
Ozell Sutton
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer: A mediator must gain trust. Now, sometimes, to do that he has to do
many things. Number one: he has to let the protesters vent. You see the difference between
mediating a racial conflict and mediating a labor conflict, is that both sides come to the table in
labor conflicts. It's not so in racial conflicts. With labor, both people know how to mediate.
When you get a racial conflict, that's not
necessarily so. It may be or it may not be. Now how do you bring this group of protestors to
the table with city manager, chief of police and people at that level, when they are totally
unequal? That's not so on labor, totally unequal. How do you protect their rights and their
interests without showing a preference for them? I do it from the very beginning, I said, "I am
not neutral. If I am neutral I can umpire this, like a game. I am not preferring sides, but I am
forced to officiate evenly, even if the other side does not know what the rule is."
Question: So you see trust and fairness being linked.
Answer: Oh yeah, they are linked. And then much of the trust comes from how you demonstrate and
conduct yourself. It's the perception of you, really. One way is to know, and know you know
what you're talking about. Then the other part is, you have to convince
both sides that at the rate they're going, they're going to do greater damage to each other. I
convinced the city that, "You may have some powers, but when you have a segment of your
city who perceive you as something less than fair and honest, you've got a problem. You may
be able to enforce your will for a time, but," and I use this point often, "power is like a can of
coffee; every time you dip into it, you've got less. Every time I take a sip out of that cup I've
got less, right? Every time you have to use power to enforce, you've got less power left. If
you keep dipping into it, it becomes powerless. When it comes to people you're enforcing
against, you have to understand," and I say this quite frequently, "that in a democracy, you
manage people with their own will. Without that will, you cannot. 10,000 police could not
enforce the law in this city unless the will of the people is that they do. You can have all of the
guns that you want, but you can't shoot a million folk. If a million folks rebel, even if 10,000
of those folk rebel, you are in big, big trouble. So you manage and you rule by that concept,"
and I keep emphasizing that all of the time. I use this with police officers. You couldn't take
10,000 Einsteins and rule this diverse city. So white folk alone can't rule this city. You
couldn't take 10,000 W.B. DuBois and rule this city because black folk alone can't rule this
city. There must be balance between the various groups, some sense of community that's
inclusive enough to get the rule of the people to rule this city.
Question: Is a sense of community also related to trust?
Answer: It is.
Question: How so?
Answer: Well. Trust is in you, you convey the sense of community.
Wallace Warfield
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Tell me a little bit about how you
go about building trust, especially with the white community.
Answer: Well, one way that it happens is that many of the cities in which CRS intervenes – or has
interventions – are repeats. So, you know, Silke has probably been into wherever – Aurora, let’s
say – thousands of times over the last 15 years that she’s been in Denver. After a while, people
get to know you, and so trust gets built up over what you did in the past. People trust you from
that standpoint, and that’s one way that it happens. Another way it happens is to go in and
suggest to the establishment, "Gee, Police Chief Jones, why don’t you call Chief Johnson in
so-and-so city. You’re all members of the Association of Chiefs of Police. Give him a call and
talk to him about what we did.” Often times, that would even happen without your having to
suggest that. So you make your phone calls, that you’re going to intervene, so there’s usually a
lapse time of a day or two. By the time you get there, that police chief may have already checked
you out.....
Question: Have you ever had a problem where you weren’t trusted
because of your race?
Answer: Sure. I did an intervention in one of the bigger midwestern cities. Again, it was a situation of
police using excessive force. It was a mediation, and I don’t think the police chief trusted me; I
think he felt that I was not neutral. So I think there was a situation where the mediation broke
down. I don’t know that it broke down completely because the police chief didn’t trust me; I
think there were other factors involved....
Question: Were you able to get around that?
Answer: Again, without fully knowing the real reason the mediation broke down, it’s hard to say. I
was there on two occasions for relatively short intervals, for maybe two days. It’s hard to say,
without a lot of discourse in between the actual sessions, what aspect of this had to do with the
fact that he didn’t trust me. I don’t think he would have ever said that, and I would have had to
attempt to ferret that out in some form or fashion, which would have been difficult to do without
more exposure to him and more feedback.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Were those meetings, or interviews
private, or did you have all the groups at the same time hearing their grievances? How did you
do that?
Answer: I did both. I interviewed individuals, and I also went to group meetings. I would go to a
faculty meeting and then I would interview individuals by their choice, or by being selected by
the group to come. I did the same thing with the student organizations. I met with them at their regular meeting and then I would have a schedule when I met
with people individually. The group meetings were more to create trust with
me. They would know me, they knew that I was really interested in what was going on.
Interested enough to know what their group was about and spend time with
them. I guess the one thing that I came to believe,
was that trust is really the only commodity that we have. If you don't establish trust with the
parties, and that's all the parties, if you can't establish trust with them, you don't have anything to
offer them. Part of that was establishing that connection and that sense that I really do
care about what is going on and I'm going to listen and I haven't come here to fix you. The trust
issue, I think, is a critical element that is hard to teach. Somebody could be very trustworthy and
yet if they don't project trustworthiness there are some people who will look at them and go "I
wouldn't trust them." It's hard to do mediation because it is the only commodity that you
have.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Initially there are 20 people who are
sitting at the table, developing these trusting relationships, developing a mutual understanding.
But the goal is to eventually get the whole community to develop a more trusting relationship.
How do you transfer what's learned at the table to the rest of the community?
Answer: I think the critical element is who you have at the table. Most people follow values of
particular leaders. One of my techniques is to try to identify not only position leaders, but also
personal leaders in groups. There were always people who had personal power over and above
position power. If some of them won't sit at the table, you can still keep them in the loop if you
know who they are. As long as you can keep them involved in the process, it will spread because
most people are looking for someone to give them direction. In one instance, I went to a housing
authority meeting every month for four months before one woman finally stood up and said,
"You're not going to go away, are you?" I said, "No, not as long as I think I can be helpful." And
that's when they started working with me. So if I earn the trust for myself, then they can easily
transfer it into the community. We saw it over and over again. In Tulsa, we began to establish
trust groups. The police department had so much trouble and once the community began to
relate to the police department, the housing people began helping police rather than avoiding
them and/or not being helpful. It became safer for the police and it became safer for the
community. Once somebody who is a personal leader says, "We can trust the police," then the
group begins to cooperate. But when that person says, "They're not trustworthy," there's nothing
the police department, or me, or anybody else can do to convince that group. So the key is
finding those people. Who are the personal leaders? Position leaders are essential for
institutional change, but to get change in community, you've got to find the personal leaders, the
people who are really respected and honored.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: How do you find somebody to call?
Answer: I don't know, it's kind of like being a detective I guess. You check the paper and you call
groups that you're aware of. Sometimes you call the newspaper and find out if they have any
names. A lot of times, in the minority community, the church leadership will know somebody
that's involved. So you just have to ask around the first six months or a year and after that, I've
created this file of people in every community. So I may even call one community and say, "Do
you know anyone in this community?" Usually they do. But you begin to have a network. Once
you've established those trust relationships and those networks within a territory you can do
something with a phone call because you've already established the trust, you've already coached
them through some conflicts before. You really do multiply your efforts when you create those
networks and alliances with trusting people. I began to have people from the establishment call
me, and that was a real benchmark. The establishment people were saying, "I think we've really
done some things here which might be a problem. We're not sure where to go with it, could you
help us out?" You just create a network like you would with anything else.
Silke Hansen
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Do they recognize that ahead of time?
Answer: Yes. It takes some persuasion, but most people want to do the right thing. Sometimes it is
hard to convince the community people of that, but I have frequently found that the
administrators or chiefs feel sorry for themselves. They feel totally misunderstood. You know,
"Poor me, nobody understands me. Those people clobber me in the media and so does everybody
else. I'm not really getting a fair deal here."
So I have found that just spending time listening and understanding what some of their problems
are goes a long way towards developing some credibility with the institutional representative.
Eventually, they begin to think, "You know, maybe this woman really can help me." So then they
are willing to give it that chance.
I am thinking of one case that involved a small, rural community. I spent a long time there
talking with and mostly listening to the sheriff. I think that he was really surprised that a
government official wasn't there to clobber him. He was really surprised that I understood him.
I said, "You know, one of the things that I have learned in this work is that law enforcement
personnel in some of these small rural communities face challenges that New York and Los
Angeles and Denver never even think about. It's hard doing law enforcement here." He was
astounded that I understood that. "Hey, here is somebody who understands what I'm up against!"
One of their biggest frustrations is that they are not New York or Denver or Los Angeles, so what
works in the big cities might not work for them, but most people don't understand that. I don't
need to agree with him or what he is doing, but if I just have a sympathetic ear and recognize that
I need to understand his perspective as well as the minority community's perspective then
that's a big step in the right direction.
The importance of really listening is sometimes underrated. Maybe I mentioned this before, but
in one really major conflict I was involved in, I really wasn't sure how much of a difference I had
made in the overall scheme of things. But one of the things I was told near the end of that case
was, " Silke, you at least listened." Generally, people don't do that. I have heard that many times
since. Even in cases where there really wasn't a whole lot I could do and it was hard to say where
mediation might be useful, if a community actually felt listened-to and not just ignored, swept
aside or totally disregarded, that has made a huge difference!
That is part of what I try to get across to each of the parties. If, in fact, it might go toward
mediation or some similar method of resolving some of those local tensions, I ask both sides to
just listen to what the other is saying. "I am not asking you to agree, or cave in, but just hear what
they are saying and what their concerns are. You might even have some solution for them that
they didn't even think of. But first, just listen."
It's amazing how important that is to people in conflict. Part of what intensifies the conflict and
violence potential in many cases is that people think that they are not being heard. The reason
they are shouting is because they think if they shout, someone will finally hear them. Of course, it
doesn't work that way. But I think part of the reason for the volume is that they haven't felt
listened-to, so they think, "Maybe if I get louder, they will actually hear me."
Silke Hansen
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Going in a very different direction now, let's talk a little bit about how you build trust with
the people you are working with. One of the things that I am especially interested in is that you
are a white woman.
Answer: You noticed.
Question: I did. But the people reading your interview won't know.
Answer: Quick story: I belong to a church out in Montebello which is predominately African
American; I am not the only white, but I am the exception rather than the rule. Anyway, our
minister out there is African American as well, and he was preaching about race relations one
Sunday the idea that color really doesn't matter, and how we ought to get along with everyone,
and how inclusiveness is part of what we pride ourselves on in that church. And that's true. And
he said, "You know, sometimes I forget that Silke is white," and I said, "Well, don't worry about
it. Sometimes I forget, too."
So it depends on the setting, it depends on who I'm talking to. Early on in some cases, I'll say,
"Look, I understand that I am a white woman who used to live in New York. What do I know?
So help me understand. What do I need to know to be able to work here? I don't try to pretend
that I know what you are going through because I don't. Even if I do, I am not going to say that I
know, because I recognize that I need to learn from you." And, most people appreciate talking to
someone who doesn't think they have all of the answers. And again, I do a lot of listening. Time
is no object. Those first few trips I schedule very few meetings, because I want people to have as
much time as they need to tell me everything that they think I need to know. If they get angry,
that is fine. If it takes a long time, that's fine. And if you want to beat up on the government, that
is fine too. You know, I have broad shoulders I can take it.
I also try to be very clear about what I can and can't do so that people don't have false
expectations, and I think for the most part they appreciate that. "Now, here is what I can do and
here is what I can't do." The other thing that I have found is that in many cases and particularly
in some of these grassroots communities people just appreciate you returning their calls, not
dismissing them, just acknowledging and validating their concerns. Even if I can't change the
racism that prevails in a particular area, it doesn't take terribly long to have that common human
denominator and get past the "Well you are white and I am not" or "You're Indian or you're black
or your Hispanic or whatever, and I am not" phase.
| Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
And
there's tricks. Suppose you met with Heidi yesterday and I
asked, "Hey, have you met with Heidi? How's she doing?" And
then you'd say, "You know I haven't seen her for a couple of
weeks," I wouldn't tell you that I know you're lying. I'd ask
myself, why is she lying to me? Also, I would check to make sure
you were with her. I may have already talked to her and I'm just
innocently asking all these questions I already know the answers to.
Werner Petterson
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: And actually that's my next question, how important
was it for you to gain the trust of the parties?
Answer: Oh well, you know probably in almost all cases there's an outsider and you're always faced
with that because in most cases people don't know you. At this particular time, and at any time
over the history of CRS being a representative of the Justice Department, you were always
suspect by somebody and it would depend on the community, depend on the times that would
shift, who was particularly suspicious about who you were. The way that you overcome that is
just by sitting down and talking with people and demonstrating to them you're committed, you're
involved in helping them find a solution. You can be answering questions people have concerns
about, if they have any, what they see as leniency on one side or the other. If you try to clear that
up they will come to trust you, but it takes some work and preparation. I think over time as they
see that you're there to be of help, there are no suspicions about where your commitments are.
It's only over a period of time that as people get to know you, those sorts of suspicions get to be
set aside.
Question: What were some specific trust-
building strategies or activities that you used when either race, ethnicity, gender, or CRS
affiliation was an issue?
Answer: I would find someone from whatever the community it might be and in this particular
situation it was in the black and the white community. I knew that if I would involve the
community in this process it would be helpful to have people within the community who knew
me, to introduce me to people and become a bridge and to be a patron of what was happening.
And in that particular case there was a prominent State Legislator that I had known for many
years and he was well loved in the community and became my bridge into that community.
There were parts of the community that I needed to have some access to. It was also true on the
other side that we were going to want the business community leaders in particular cities to be
committed because in this particular city nothing happened unless a "blue book business" leader
was being alarmed. So again, it was through someone I had met in the city, in another case, that
became the bridge into that organization where I could go over there and speak and talk about
what I was trying to do. I could win their support that if we could reach an agreement it was
going to be something the business community was going to support.
Question: In this particular case, this wasn't a community that you lived in. How did you cultivate
those
networks of people that you could call?
Answer: I had other cases in this community before so I knew individuals here and there, and that's
one of the real things. In that case it was a blessing because so many times you may go into a
city and you have no context at all. That really makes it even more difficult.
Question: In those instances where you don't have any networks or any people to intervene for you how
do you build networks, or find them? How do you identify the resources?
Answer: Well, I think mediation is a lot of work. I think you have to be willing to just talk to a lot of
people and as you do, you're not only introducing yourself to people in the community, but
you're receiving information that might help find a solution. And so it's just a lot of work and
talking to people. I think by helping parts of the community become involved in finding
solutions, sometimes what CRS has done is understanding the problem. For some reason the
parties never seem to come together, or when they do come together it never goes anywhere and
CRS, when it works well, helps things come together and if you can do that, then that in itself
gives you a new standing and gives you a credibility that you are able to do something. You
were able to bring talks together and just by being able to do that, it adds something to your
name. Then you have to continue and show the parties that you're committed to helping them
find a solution.
Manuel Salinas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Can we explore this trust issue a bit more? How significant
would
you say that trust was in this case--how did that affect your work?
Answer: It must have been good, I'll tell you, since the chief accepted the assessment quickly, and he
did then implement the assessment. I think there was only one item, and I don't remember what
it was, but there was only one item he didn't quite go along with. All the rest he did. The
community then, because of this trust and everything, got beyond it too. Not only did el Comite
go beyond the incident, but they even went into political arena. One of their members ran for
city council and won. So they got a city councilman in there and he was a very astute
individual. Whether they still have a city councilman or more than one, I don't know. Then the
group remained as el Comite and to my knowledge, it may still be in existence, but it remained
for a long time, anyway, and they got into employment issues and education issues and well as
keeping their eye on police issues. I guess I could say the trust must have been there because
they developed into a good committee that was very helpful to the community.
Ozell Sutton
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer: Not only that. I had another way, too. I was from the Department
of Justice. Quite often you got two things. Blacks trusted the Community Relations Service
more than they do the Department of Justice. But the weighted thing with whites is the
Department of Justice. I think you can understand that. Even with the mayor and the chief of
police, the Department of Justice carried much more weight. The Native Americans used to
say, "The white man speaks with forked tongue." Well, I spoke with forked tongue. If I was
in one place where it was more important that I be a field rep with Community Relations, that's
all I say: "I'm with Community Relations." But when I was down at city hall, "I'm with
Justice". That's the way I carried myself. Then you'd go between people. "I'm CRS." I was
sort of responsible for initiating the whole idea of demonstrations. Marshaling themselves and
controlling their people. At first it was just a group of people out there, but they got very
sophisticated with that.
Will Reed
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: No you don't reiterate anything verbally. What you do is show
what you do. You don't get up there and talk to people about what you're about. They'll find out
what
you're about. You see what I mean? They're not interested in hearing you talk about yourself;
they want to
see what you do. So when she found out what I could do and would do
and
how I did it, I was her boyfriend. I don't mean literally so, but it was a situation where I wasn't
going to let
her down.
Nor was I working for her and she knew that. She knew that I wasn't working for her, but she
also
knew that I wasn't going to lie to them about whatever occurred in a situation. That's how you
build trust.
No matter what you do in some instances, some situations, you're not going to be trusted. There's
always
an element of that when you're coming from the Justice Department. People are leery of
government
officials and Justice Department people. They've had enough experience of getting busted over
the head
by somebody from the established order.
Answer: What did you do when you weren't trusted by the communities that
you were
involved in?
Question: You did your job, you just went about doing your job. You didn't get crippled
because somebody didn't trust you. You didn't become paralyzed because you weren't trusted.
You just
had to go along and do what you had to do. If they didn't trust you, then you had to resolve to let
the chips
fall where they may. You try not to have that happen. See, because if you are trying too hard to
prove that
you are trustworthy, then you're not trustworthy. People have to take you at face value and trust
you, or
you have to show that you're not intimidated by them not trusting you. They have a right to not
trust you, if you think of all the experiences they've had in the past.
So in working through this case, I began to develop a relationship with the
police chief, so I could bring the Indian leaders and the police chief together. We sat down to
have this
key discussion. In this case one of the two powerful men in town was the police chief. The
other was the city manager. The police chief was a "lifer", known by everybody in
town. So you identified quickly that he served two purposes. He was part of the legitimate
power
structure, and he was a power broker. So you knew that because of his lifetime there and the fact
that he
was police chief, he could get people to do many, many things.
It took weeks, months, to establish a relationship,
because I was going in and out of the city, as well as handling other assignments. The timing
was
everything as to when you went to a particular town, a particular community. Key things would
come up, sometimes a meeting with the governor or a meeting of all the Indians or a meeting
with AIM
representatives. The key is constantly working on developing a
relationship --
developing trust levels. Some people are not interested in trust levels because they go by
authority. If you
go in and say you're in the Justice Department and that you're an authority figure, you're not
going to get
anywhere. Most people resist that, especially so-called militant minorities. They've been
stepped-on so
much it's incredible; they don't want to hear that, so you have to work on it.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
We found that the prison
residents wanted more then anything else, to get out of the box, and this election would give
them the chance to get out of their cells. Also, they want to confront "the man." They
were going to sit across the table. They were going to elect their representatives, they were going
to caucus, set up agendas. They all finally came together when we had everything set. They had
the elections, paper ballots, the whole bit. It worked. The place was just running like a top at
this point. There was a high level of anticipation and then the group started working on their
agendas.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The other thing that’s perhaps more relevant is how you gain
trust. People often don’t know who you are when you’re with CRS, so there’s always a
question of credibility. I told you that as the American Indian Movement approached Wounded
Knee, the BIA building had armed guards with machine guns and heavy equipment sitting around
on top of the roof of the BIA building to prevent another takeover. Well, Terronez had been with
the AIM group coming toward Pine Ridge. He went ahead and he talked to a U. S. Marshall. He
said, "This is overkill. You guys have all this equipment here. You’ve got a few people down
there. You’ve got 150 people maybe, they’re carrying sticks and bats, a few firearms maybe,
but there’s no weaponry out there.” And that was his plea to ease tensions and prevent a
catastrophe from occurring. It’s an appropriate role. The way that I found out about that was
when the entire Marshals’ logs were entered into the Wounded Knee trials. One marshal wrote,
saying that "agent” Terronez of the Community Relations Service informed us that there are
approximately 150 to 200 marchers armed with sticks and bats and a few might have firearms. It
was out of context so that anybody reading it might assume that Terronez was an informer. I’m
sure it wasn’t intended to capsize us or anything, but that’s the risk you take in this work.
Nancy
Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The media always wants us to investigate, and no matter how often you tell them, "We
aren't investigating,” it shows up in the headlines that Justice is there to investigate.
You have to respond immediately back to the institution or the minorities, or whoever is involved
and say, "I know that's happened and I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do about it, but this is
what I told them and this is still the reality." I guess the other part of that is learning not ever to
become defensive. If someone challenged me on something, then I try to respond to that in terms
of if they believed that was the way I was acting, then I would respond to that and make
changes. That was part of
the dance, or knowing where the parties were, and were they ready to move on to the next step?
Were they ready to sit down at the table and begin to negotiate, or did they still need to vent
more? Did they still need to say that the administration was useless, or that the students just
wanted their way, or were they prepared now to sit down and talk?
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Is that how you gauged how much trust
they had in you and the process, by when they were ready to sit down and move forward?
Answer: Yeah, because there was no reason for them to come to the table if they didn't trust me.
Coming to the table could be dangerous for them. You've got students sitting there with the
faculty and the administration, who have complete power over them. You've got administrators
sitting over there with somebody from the Justice Department. They always felt like there was
this potential for investigation, no matter how many times we told them, it still had its own
power. If they agreed to come to the table, it generally meant they trusted that I was going to be
able to protect their interest within that context. For example, not let the students just chew up
and spit out the administration without any real benefit to that. Or allow the administration to
just dump on the students. But that there was going to be some mutual respect and dialogue
going on, and certainly there would be some venting going on, but it would be within the context
of, "How do you feel about that?" "What was your response to that?" ...and not assassinating
people or ticking individuals off. If they trusted me with that, then they would come to the table.
Question: How were you able to get them to trust each other?
Answer: They had to trust through me. That's why I say trust is the only commodity you have. And
you were the one that would have to build that trust between the parties. My experience and the
experience of others at the table, was that it took the President of the fraternity about four months
of meeting, before he really understood what he had done, and he was horrified. And if we had
never done that he would have never known and he'd have never been horrified. And that to me
is the beauty of what we did. Ninety percent of the people in this country are good people, a
bunch of them don't understand what kinds of horrible things are happening. And they never
have the kinds of experiences with different ethnic groups to really engage with that, and feel
that, and know what that means and the pain that's involved in it. He became the champion of
change in the whole fraternal system. In terms of their policies and their approaches and what
was going to happen in the future. So we had to hold out to get the group to agree to let him be
on the team, and they eventually did. But the only reason they allowed us to go ahead with it,
was they trusted me at that point. It was the right thing to have that guy there. They saw the
healing occur, in front of their eyes, and it also helped the minority groups have a different sense
of what was going on in the fraternity's mind. So as much as a document that came out of it, it
was what happened around that table where they began to trust each other.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Did you always know all of the parties before you went down?
Answer: Yes, if at all possible. You might not be able to get in touch with everybody, but the goal
would be to get in touch with all of them before you got there. Whoever I talked to first, I would
tell them that I'm going to be talking to the other party today. "Before I leave, I'll be talking to
these people. Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?" That did two things. First, it
broadened the network for talking to people, it began to identify some of those leaders. Second,
it began to establish the trust that I was in fact going to talk to the mayor, the police chief,
LULAC, or this person who's in charge of the demonstration. Everybody knew I wasn't trying to
hide anything. Usually the next person is the chief of police who will say, "Why did you talk to
them before you came to talk to me?" I would tell him I made the appointment with them first
and I didn't try to go into that anymore. I knew there was always that feeling of, "Who did you
talk to first?" One would always say, "They're just trying to con you." So I just say, "Everyone's
trying to con me. It's part of the deal. Everybody tells the story from their perspective." I
understand that it's part of the dance. "I understand that's a concern of yours." I'm trying to
minimize any impact it has in a negative way. "I think we can be helpful."
| Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Did you ever keep on working on a case when a key party was not
willing to work with you?
Answer: No. I may continue in a different direction. One whole group may decide they may not want
to participate, and you can't really address the problem systemically without them. But you can
still coach or guide the other group through either helping them move toward a referral, or
helping them develop a strategy to respond. For integrity's sake, I would tell the other group, "I
understand that you don't want to participate, but I am going to continue doing this." I wouldn't
do it behind their backs.
Question: Does that bring people around sometimes?
Answer: Sometimes. Sometimes they'd see what the wanted outcome was, that it wasn't an attempt to
undermine the whole structure of the institution or destroy the city. Everybody had these huge
fears about what was going to happen. When they realize that something good can come out of
it, or at least nothing bad is going to happen and they're not going to end up on the front page of
the newspaper, they'll sometimes change their mind.
| Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Once you started talking with the parties
who were involved, did you find anyone within the community group who was sort of skeptical
of your role? You mentioned that you expected the print media, or part of the media to be a little
tentative of your intervention, but did you find anyone in the community group also?
Answer: Oh yes. Initially it was at best lukewarm. They didn't know who I was. Actually I was
hanging,
if you will, on the reputation of the two conciliators who had
been here for some time. They gave me some credibility as a so-called "expert."
Edward Howden
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: Tell me about the role of trust in this
case. How important was it? And how did you try to build trust with the reluctant party?
Answer: I suspect that with this one initially reluctant individual, there was never one hundred
percent trust. I would like to think maybe there was seventy-five percent. I would guess that he
decided there was some value in spending his time this way; it was almost more a matter of
confidence than of trusting. He began to feel maybe it was worth doing, and I think others in the
community felt -- more than he did -- that it was worth doing. I don't think he ever got
enthusiastic
about the process.
Bob Hughes
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Were there any parties for which you had to work extra hard to gain
their
trust? Parties that didn't want you to be there, and you had to really show them something above
and beyond?
Answer: I don't recall specifically, but the property owners would probably be the more tenuous
relationship. They would have been more suspicious than the others, but I don't know. Again, I
think that consistency is key and I try to let everybody know what I'm doing.
Bob Hughes
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Did any of the parties ask you to do
something
that you were not able to do?
Answer: I don't recall offhand. If they wanted me to meet with them, I made sure the other side knew
I
was meeting with them. I offered to meet with them if they wanted to, that sort of thing. I don't
recall anything that I couldn't do, I tried to accommodate their needs as much as possible. It's a
part of building trust over a number of meetings, when they would realize that I was
communicating what I was doing with the other side. That's part of the trust building
process.
Ernest Jones
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: What was the role of trust in this particular
case? Was that important?
Answer: Yeah the fact that it was taking place here in Atlanta and the fact that CRS in this office has
a
good working relationship with the city, county, county sheriffs throughout the state, county
police, and state patrol. That history had a lot to do with allowing us to enter. Because the key
actors in terms of law enforcement were the City of Atlanta and Georgia Bureau or
Investigations (GBI) and Atlanta State Patrol. Those were probably the three local power
makers.
Question: Ok.
Answer: So we already had working relationships because of other casework with them and that trust
level was already there on both sides. Generally speaking, if you have a respected law
enforcement person who speaks up for you that takes care of about 80% of that trust with all the
others because if he buys then everyone else agrees it's okay. We had very good rapport with all
the law enforcement agencies, even at the federal level.
Question: So you didn't have to do anything to build or sustain any type of trust because it already
existed on a high level?
Answer: Yeah.
Julian Klugman
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer: Just talking, telling her what I was going to do, and who I was,
where I was coming from and
she just decided to take a chance.
Question: Did it happen in one sitting?
Answer: Yeah, we spent about two hours together and we talked and I didn't violate her trust, and I
briefed her. She got briefed on everything.
Julian Klugman
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer: Oh, of course. First the Indians had to trust me, and I had to trust them.
Question: So what did you do to try to get them to trust you?
Answer: You start by asking questions. "You can't bring up everything. In what order do you want to
bring this up? What are you willing to settle for? What is the bottom line position? How do
you want to present this stuff? Who will be your spokesman?" That wasn't easy because it
turned out to be the woman and her son. There wasn't a lot of leadership in the Indian
community. "You don't want five people talking, so who is going to be the spokesperson?" The
woman chose to be the spokesperson. You've got to defer to her. Let's go through the ground
rules on mediation.
Then I had further complications. I had people there from the
outside. The U.S. Attorney, a
very liberal guy, had hired a young Indian woman who was the first female Indian person to get
a law degree in Oregon. She was there. I had an Indian guy from the state who was part of the
Alcohol Control Commission of the state. He was an Indian official with the state. He wanted a
piece of the action.
Question: And you decided that, you didn't leave that up to them?
Answer: Well, it was both. Remember I was supposed to know everything there was to know about
mediation. No, there has to be only one spokesman. If you want to
advise, you can't do it openly. I said, " I'll call a recess if you want, then you can caucus with
the Indian group. If they want you in their caucus you can advise them, but you can't interfere
with the mediation process.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question: You have referred a couple of times now
to "the dance”. You've had a really nice description of mediation as a dance that you're now
referring to but haven't put on tape. Do you remember how you put it before, can you tell us
again?
Answer: I came up with the imagery in the middle of a mediation one time, sitting around a table.
Because of the dynamics of what was going on, I realized that I was kind of having to move back
and forth with the parties with where they were with their anger and frustration, with the
establishment's sense of indignation, and trying to move with them and keep them moving
toward the goal that I had. That goal was for them to begin to talk to each other. I realized that
when mediation and conflict resolution is really working well, the mediator can go in with the
skills he or she has, but listen to the parties and move with them on their level of info, frustration,
indignation, whatever that is, empathizing with and understanding them, whatever their mood or
tune, or dance is at that time. If you're not willing to dance with them, they're not going to trust
you. They'll play my tune later if I've danced with them. But if I haven't been willing to dance
with them they're not willing to play my tune, they're not going to go with me, when I want to
take them somewhere. I think that kind of movement is what captures me when I'm thinking
about mediation. It's exciting. You go in, and some people are just doing the tango and you've
gotta go with that. You're trying to get them to some harmony, maybe a waltz. I don't know
music that well, which is kind of interesting that I use that imagery, but it just fits so well for me.
When I teach mediation, I use that imagery with new students, you have to be willing to
understand where the parties are. Think about it in terms of being willing to dance with them.
You may not enjoy the rumba, but if that's where they are, you're going to have to start there and
then move with them and get them to where they trust you enough to take the rhythm that you've
got going for the mediation.
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