Interview Segments by Topic

• When did you begin at CRS? When did you leave?
  
  • What did you do before coming to CRS?
    
  • What civil rights or conflict management work did you do before your CRS work?
    
  • Why did you decide to work at CRS?
    
  • What did you do at CRS (what was your role)?
    
• Background information on a case
  
• When the case first came to your attention, what did you do?
  
  • When making an initial assessment of a case, with whom did you talk first? Next?
    
  • Did everyone want you involved? If not, what did you do about that?
    
  • Did you give advance notice of your arrival? To whom? Was there anyone who you did not inform? Why?
    
  • How did you prepare for your intervention?
    
  • Did you phone all parties before your arrived?
    
  • Did you assist them by phone only? What types of assistance did you provide? Can you provide an example?
    
  • What did you do when you couldn't locate anyone with whom to talk?
    
• How did you do your onsite assessment?
  
  • Who did you talk to first on site?
    
  • Were your initial meetings during your intervention private and confidential?
    
  • Did the parties ever ask you to do things you were unable to do? How did you handle such requests?
    
  • How did you respond if you thought that CRS intervention might harm a legitimate protest activity?
    
  • How did you identify the proper people to talk to or get involved?
    
  • How did you identify leaders?
    
  • Did CRS feel pressure from outside sources?
    
• How did you design a response plan?
  
  • Did you set goals for your intervention? At what point in the process?
    
  • Did the parties assist in the goal-setting process or influence your choice of goals? How?
    
  • How did you determine your own role (e.g., to act as an advisor, conciliator or a mediator)?
    
• What did you do to build and sustain trust with the parties?
  
  • Was your gender a factor in your ability to build trust with the disputants?
    
  • How did you prove your credibility?
    
  • How important was it for you to gain the trust of the parties?
    
  • How did you build trust with the disputants?
    
  • How did you detect whether your trust-building efforts were successful?
    
  • Were you able to work effectively when trust levels were low between you and one of the parties? How?
    
  • Was your race or ethnicity a factor in your ability to build trust with the disputants?
    
  • Can you recall any examples of when you served as a scapegoat or in some other way helped a party save face?
    
  • What factors contributed to your ability to build trust?
    
  • Were parties ever reluctant to participate because of a lack of trust in you or the process?
    
• How did you identify underlying issues?
  
  • Were the issues that appeared to be most critical to you always the ones that brought you into the case?
    
  • Did the conflict become defined differently over time? How?
    
  • Did you find it necessary at times to help the parties define or prioritize their issues? How did you do this?
    
  • Did you find yourself assisting one party to understand the other party's perspective?
    
  • Did you have effective techniques for persuading a party to reframe the problem to make it negotiable?
    
  • How did you deal with seemingly intractable demands on a party's agenda for negotiations?
    
  • How would you deal with a demand on one party's agenda that the other party said was non-negotiable?
    
  • Did you ever deal with a conflict that seemed to be truly intractable?
    
  • Did key issues ever involve factual disagreements? How did you deal with such problems?
    
• Tell me about your meetings with the parties when you were helping them to resolve their differences.
  
  • How did you decide who would be at the negotiation table?
    
  • Did representation questions ever become a problem? How did you decide who would be allowed to speak for a group?
    
  • How did you decide when to meet separately with the parties and when to bring them together?
    
  • Were there cases where you never brought the parties together or never met with them separately?
    
  • Did the parties ever refuse to meet together? How did you handle it?
    
  • Was timing of the discussions critical? Did you ever need to wait or hurry up in order to get people to come together?
    
  • When you brought the parties together, how did you decide where to convene the meeting?
    
  • Who set the agenda? Who defined the ground rules and meeting structure?
    
  • How did you assist in opening communications between the parties, to get them talking and listening to one another?
    
  • Who facilitated the discussions?
    
  • Were there situations when a party came to the table but gave only lip service, or refused to negotiate in good faith?
    
  • Were you able to increase trust levels between parties? How did you do this?
    
  • Would the parties look to you for guidance in constructing solutions or would they come up with their own solutions?
    
  • How would you respond when you were called upon to carry messages between the parties?
    
  • How is mediation different from facilitation?
    
• What did you do to diminish tension between the parties?
  
  • What did you do when someone verbally attacked another person directly during mediation?
    
  • Did the situation ever become violent or potentially violent? What did you do to diminish that?
    
  • Were you ever in personal danger? How did you respond?
    
  • Did a party ever threaten to walk out of a mediation? What did you do then?
    
  • Did a conflict ever escalate after CRS became involved? How?
    
  • How did you initiate de-escalation?
    
  • Did you ever separate people into small groups and work with them that way?
    
• Did you find yourself helping the parties strengthen their own capacity to deal with conflict?
  
  • What techniques, if any, did you employ?
    
  • Did you provide technical assistance to the parties? Can you give some examples?
    
  • Did you provide training for the parties? What types of training? Who did it?
    
  • Were their other types of technical assistance, e.g. consultants, referrals to other communities, written materials?
    
  • When you gave technical assistance to one side, did you inform the other side about it? Did you offer it to the second side, too?
    
  • Did you help the parties prepare for mediation or any joint meetings?
    
  • Did you assist groups with community organizing?
    
  • Did you try to influence coalition formation?
    
• What did you do when you hit a brick wall in your effort to bridge differences between the parties?
  
• Did you try to analyze or address power disparities between the parties? How did power differentials effect the process?
  
  • When you perceived a significant power imbalance did you try to level the playing field? How did you do this?
    
  • Did you ever provide assistance to one party without the knowledge of the other?
    
  • Did anyone ever ask you to become an advocate or to tilt the table in their favor? How did you respond?
    
  • Did you ever try to use the power of the Justice Department to influence the situation or level the playing field?
    
  • How did you identify differing levels of power at the table?
    
  • What is your attitude toward ending community protest?
    
  • Did power differences ever block the process or interfere with it.
    
• How would you describe your work in terms of your neutrality, impartiality, and objectivity in a case?
  
  • Did you ever have a need to strike a balance between helping the parties reach a settlement and achieving equity?
    
  • Did you address the issue of the fairness of the settlement?
    
  • Did you have a problem retaining your impartiality while trying to level the playing field prior to negotiations?
    
  • Did you work on cases involving hate groups such as the KKK or neo-Nazi groups?
    
  • Were there techniques you used to help you maintain your impartiality?
    
  • Did you have techniques for managing your emotions during case work?
    
  • Did you ever have your impartiality challenged? If so, how did you respond?
    
  • Did you ever intentionally act as an advocate for one side? Did you ever do this unintentionally?
    
• Are there other aspects of the process that you used that are worth noting?
  
  • Did you do any organizational assessment or evaluations?
    
  • What role does listening play in your work?
    
  • How much direction did you give the parties in mediation?
    
  • Did you ever try to pressure the parties to change their approach?
    
  • Can you explain the difference between conciliation and mediation?
    
  • Tell us how conciliation works.
    
  • How did you control rumors?
    
• What cultural or racial factors influenced the process?
  
• Were you able to detect when an internal conflict existed within a party that was inhibiting progress?
  
  • How did you deal with it?
    
• Did you often enounter road blocks that might have prevented you from doing your job?
  
• What brought the parties to the table?
  
• How did you provide a "safe space" for discussions?
  
• How did you identify community resources to help resolve the conflict? How did you use them?
  
  • What types of resources from within the community would you use? How did you get them involved?
    
  • Did you ever draw upon resources or refer parties to resources from outside the community?
    
  • Did other organizations or people within the community help limit the intensity of the conflict or help resolve it? Who? How?
    
  • Did you provide information about outside resources that could help the parties in conflict?
    
  • Did you ever bring in a neutral expert or other resource person to help with fact-finding problems?
    
• How did you deal with issues of confidentiality during your casework?
  
  • Can you recall any times when assuring confidentiality created a problem for you?
    
• How did you deal with the media? Were they an asset or a liability to your work?
  
  • When the needs of newspaper, radio, or television reporters interfered with your work, how did you deal with the problem?
    
  • Did you ever try to use the media as an ally to mediation?
    
  • Did you ever issue statements to the press on behalf of the parties? Under what circumstances?
    
  • Did the parties ever agree to a policy regarding statements to the press as a condition of negotiation or mediation?
    
  • Tell us about your media program.
    
  • Did you issue press releases, have news conferences, or otherwise inform the media about your activities?
    
• How did you determine when to end your involvement in a conflict?
  
  • Did this sometimes become difficult because of the relationships you formed?
    
  • How long did you generally work on one case?
    
  • Before terminating a case, did you help the parties develop a contingency plan to help prevent a recurrence of the conflict?
    
  • What might a contingency plan include?
    
  • Did you assist the parties design other structures to prevent a recurrence of the conflict?
    
  • Did you take continuing responsibility for its implementation?
    
  • Did you plan any follow up after the case was closed?
    
  • Did you have any continuing professional relationships between CRS and community people after a case was "closed?"
    
  • What would you say were the positive outcomes of the contingency planning process?
    
  • Did you have any continuing personal relationships with community people after a case was "closed?"
    
  • Were other enforcement mechanisms put in place?
    
• What were the overall outcomes of the intervention?
  
• Were you able to bring about organizational or structural change?
  
• What were your measures of the success of your intervention?
  
  • How did CRS measure the success of your work?
    
  • How did you measure long term impacts?
    
  • Examples of success
    
• How did the changing nature of the civil rights movement and protest activity affect your work?
  
• Have there been changes in CRS over the years?
  
• What changes have occurred in the prison system that has affected what you can and cannot do in those situations?
  
• What do you think are the most important skills and attributes of an effective civil rights mediator?
  
  • What do you think has been your greatest strength as a civil rights mediator?
    
• Are there other important lessons that come out of your work?
  
• Interesting anecdotes.
  
• Agency-related information
  
  • Praise of CRS workers
    
  • Trust between CRS workers
    
  • CRS reputation
    
  • Collaboration between CRS workers
    
  • CRS structure
    
  • CRS cooperation with other agencies
    
• Difference between civil rights and other mediation
  
• Mediation of identity conflicts
  
• Mediation theory
  
• LA riot history
  
• De-segregation History
  
• Wounded Knee
  
• Descriptions of CRS institutional programs
  
• Did CRS ever co-mediate with mediators who were not with the agency?
  
• Did your affiliation with the Justice Department help or hurt you?
  
• How do you set priorities regarding which cases to take and which not?