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What did you do when you hit a brick wall in your effort to bridge differences between the parties?
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Angel Alderete
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
At one point,
we used the old trick: "Alright, you don't want to come to an agreement? We'll see you guys."
So we walked out and closed the door. Then, as we were getting ready to go tell the warden that
we didn't get anywhere today, one of the sergeants come out and said, "Hey, they want to talk to
you."
Bob Ensley
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
What did you do when you came to an impasse -- when you couldn't
get the
parties to come to an agreement in North Carolina?
Answer:
Well, in North Carolina, I would say to the head of the Black Panthers, "I've fooled with you
long enough. If I leave you, some of these rednecks would need to get in there and start beating
heads. You can't win so you need to fall in line." I said, "We're all here for the same thing, but
you cannot get out of here and then start criticizing us as being a bunch of Uncle Toms and
white men and n****rs and all of these kinds of derogatory terms because we're all the protection
you have."
Edward Howden
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
Were there any other instances that you
can think of that you reached impasse?
Answer:
I remember one big and complex case that did not go to conclusion, but it didn't result in a
blowup. This case had to do with long standing fire department hassles. With much effort over
weeks and weeks and weeks, we had gotten the case into a mediation with all the parties, kind of
a multi-party thing. This one involved representatives of the fire commission, chief-officers
association, the middle and upper lever supervisors of the fire department, the black fire fighters
association and the fireman's union, which was predominately white. Many of the black
firefighters didn't want to belong to the firemen's union, although they were technically
members, because they had no confidence in the union. There had been heavy enmity and some
of them had dropped out of the union. They were one party; Hispanics and Asians did not have
an organization, but we had one representative from each of those groups.
The case went through some early and very difficult stages. We finally got it going and in two
or three fairly lengthy sessions got through the first and easiest of the agenda points. The second
one was the next easiest, or the next more difficult. We were obviously working toward those
which were going to be really rough. Somewhere along in that process the black firefighters
team said that they really didn't have any confidence in what the ultimate result would be and
they decided to break off.
My colleague and I asked for a caucus with them. We had worked with them at great length in
advance of the mediation to help them get their act together, and so we asked for a caucus with
them so we could try to get them back on board. But we couldn't succeed in persuading them to
continue, so the process ended.
There had been earlier court decrees, and there had been unhappiness with the outcomes, and
there was plenty of potential for court action that could happen--and which in succeeding years
did happen. This was a number of years ago, and the situation as of today is a much
happier one in terms of those issues than it was at that time. I don't think there was a lack of
trust in the mediators, but I think there was simply no confidence that the city establishment
would listen or would agree to do something that resulted from mediation.
Bob Hughes
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
A lot of times, I can have a sense of what mediation is going to take
place, what the answer is
going to be, but this was one I could not see how on earth we were going to come out of this. I
was trying to be positive and upbeat, but I was personally beside myself. By the end of these
evenings, I would feel so discouraged. "I don't know what we can do that would be agreeable to
both sides."
Finally, somebody hit on an idea. It may have been the superintendent. "Let's hold community
hearings in each of these feeder school communities. There were about four feeder schools.
Let's hold hearings with the parents of each of these and let the parents that are directly involved
have their input by voting on pieces of paper and by statements at the microphone reading the
pros and cons of the reinstatement of the school. All the participants in the mediation will be in
attendance at all four of these." Of course I said, "Who's going to convene these meetings? The
school administration for that school? The PTA president? Who?" They said, "You are." So I
had to arrange all this. All the publicity and promotion of these meetings. Anyway, we held
these. A lot of feeling was vented in these meetings, but we got the data.
Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
When there was an impasse,
it was usually a matter of clarifying the position or whatever,
or considering another option. Rather than spend the taxpayers
money sending the people from Washington everywhere, just do a
conference call. Plus they faxed all the information to each
other prior to the conference call. It was much more efficient
that way and you still get the job done. You gotta do what you
gotta do, and at the time it was the best thing to do.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer:
Another factor is the party’s or the individual's ability to look
beyond their current power position. If they can't perceive themselves in an honorable way,
beyond this entrenched position, then the issue's not negotiable. That's why I always ask, "What
is in your interest?" If I can't help them identify an interest that serves their needs beyond this
entrenched position, it won't work. I can explain to them, "You have the power to direct
authoritarian decision making on this plan, but what is it getting you? What might happen if
you're willing to move in a different direction? Is it worth that?" If they say it's not worth that,
then I'll tell these people what to do. If they don't do that, they're out of here, they're not going to
negotiate. Again, at that point, I'm not looking for them to understand the other party's interest.
I'm looking for something to catch their interest. So if they're so entrenched that they can't see
hope of personal interest served -- beyond this entrenched position -- they're not going to move
out of it. That's when I would say, "Call me."
Question:
You mean if they change their mind?
Answer:
Yes. I think one of my propensities was to keep moving beyond
their real interest. They would have to be really overt to me and say, "Go away." As long as they
just danced around it and kept the door open, I just kept moving forward. Generally that worked
out, although sometimes they slammed the door. I think that's one of the skills of the mediator,
to understand whether or not it's mediatable. If you can’t help that party see beyond the
entrenched position, then it's not going to be mediated. I use it in the 40 hour mediation class.
For example, one of the barriers may be authority. It's a big rock. Here's the mediator, they're
the fulcrum underneath this lever. As the mediator, I'm trying to get this party off of its
entrenched position in order to see the benefits of the mediation. If I can't come up with
something to put on the other side, then it won't level out and it's not going to work.
Answer:
So the mediator is looking for a leverage point to move people out of their entrenched
position, to get them to consider a negotiation. In family situations, children are often the point.
Sometimes it's money. "How many resources are you going to use supporting that intrenched
position? Are you willing to consider another option?" So you've got to find that leverage point.
If you can't find it, and I don't say many things absolutely, but that's where you would have an
intractable conflict. If they had found that point already, they wouldn't be there. So, all your
incredible skills have to involve helping find that leverage point. It's either going to be a
common interest or a personal interest. A common interest gives you the possibility of a richer
mediation. A personal interest can at least get you to the table and create some sort of
contractual relationship to the conflict. If you can get them toward a common interest, that's
where the payoff is. That's when I try and transform those relationships by the process. But
sometimes the best you can do, because of personal interest, is to get to some contractual
relationship. It's better than nothing.
Abortion is another example I use. With the abortion issue, there is no common leverage
for either side to move off that intrenched position. You're wasting your time. The best you can
do is work with the majority of people who are in the middle and try to bring reason to the
extremes. That's what has happened in these big international affairs, like Kosovo. They don't
have a middle. In Ireland, there's become this middle group who says these intrenched positions
are killing us. That's where you need to start focusing your energy, is in that middle group, in
helping and nurturing and supporting. Then the light's on, and these two intrenched positions are
no longer acceptable and the community often has to move on beyond them. They'll still be
agitating back here, but the group as a whole has been able to create some life to move forward.
Silke Hansen
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
What do you do when you get the parties to the table and they reach an impasse, and just
can't go forward?
Answer:
I can think of only one case where we actually got to mediation and that happened. It was a
court-requested or court-ordered mediation. And it was after days of work. I did what I usually
do: I usually start with what I would call shuttle diplomacy I hedge my bets. I like to know
what the parties are going to say when they come to the table before they come to the table. So I
do a lot of work with the parties individually before I actually bring them to the table. In this
case, they were in the same building, but in separate rooms. It became very, very clear that we
were not going to get anywhere.
So I ended up just telling the court, "Your honor, I'm sorry, I tried, but it's not going to happen
here," without saying whose fault it was. You know, I had my own perception, and I thought,
quite frankly, that one of the parties was probably foolish, because they could have gotten some
gains and they ultimately lost. I think they could have negotiated some gains out of this. So in
that case, I didn't have a clue of how to get past the impasse. But that's the only one I can think
of where parties agreed to mediate, but where they didn't reach at least some agreement.
There was another one that wasn't court-ordered, but which had been in court, and it included
some hiring and affirmative action-type provisions. The parties reached agreement on most of the
pieces, but not all of them. In this case, I think that part of the reason they couldn't agree on all of
it was that one of the parties was given false expectations by their attorney. The way we left it in
the agreement was that we stated the areas in which they agreed, and the rest went back to the
court and the judge would issue a ruling. In each case, what the judge ruled was what the other
party had offered in the first place. So, unfortunately for the other party the minority party in
this case they really didn't get anything more than they might have gotten if they had continued
to mediate and reach a settlement that way.
One of the things that I always do at the beginning of a mediation session, is get the parties to
agree on what to do if there is partial but not full agreement. If there are ten issues, for
example, and they can only reach agreement on seven, does that mean they go ahead and sign an
agreement on those seven, and leave the other three hanging? Or, if we don't reach agreement on
everything, then do we throw it all out and say that there's no agreement, period? I think you
want to get that understanding before they start. It's much better than getting half-way through the
mediation, only to have one party suddenly say, "I'm sorry, if we don't get such-and-such, then
all bets are off." So getting an assurance from both parties that partial agreements are acceptable
is one of the ways of avoiding a major disaster. Sometimes, just pointing out how much
agreement they've already reached then becomes an incentive for continuing the discussions.
I can think of another case in which there was huge mistrust and even hostility between the
parties. Some of the issues were complicated enough that it would require, or certainly benefit
from, some outside expertise. So in that case, what we did was have each of the parties
recommend a consultant who could provide expertise, and then we picked a third person within
that field of expertise. So we had those three consultants or experts meet, and come up with some
proposed approaches to dealing with the issues in contention. They did that successfully, and
then they were able to sell those ideas to the parties, because they had credibility. So that enabled
us to get them to agree to some approaches, and that would have been very difficult had we
brought in only one consultant. If we'd had only one "expert," both parties would have said, "Is
that consultant on their side, or is she on our side?" So having a panel of three worked very well
in that particular instance. It was expensive for CRS, because CRS doesn't have those kinds of
resources. But we did it in that particular case, and they did ultimately reach an agreement. So
that's another approach to get past an impasse.
Silke Hansen
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
What do you do when you get the parties to the table and they reach an impasse, and just
can't go forward?
Answer:
I can think of only one case where we actually got to mediation and that happened. It was a
court-requested or court-ordered mediation. And it was after days of work. I did what I usually
do: I usually start with what I would call shuttle diplomacy I hedge my bets. I like to know
what the parties are going to say when they come to the table before they come to the table. So I
do a lot of work with the parties individually before I actually bring them to the table. In this
case, they were in the same building, but in separate rooms. It became very, very clear that we
were not going to get anywhere.
So I ended up just telling the court, "Your honor, I'm sorry, I tried, but it's not going to happen
here," without saying whose fault it was. You know, I had my own perception, and I thought,
quite frankly, that one of the parties was probably foolish, because they could have gotten some
gains and they ultimately lost. I think they could have negotiated some gains out of this. So in
that case, I didn't have a clue of how to get past the impasse. But that's the only one I can think
of where parties agreed to mediate, but where they didn't reach at least some agreement.
There was another one that wasn't court-ordered, but which had been in court, and it included
some hiring and affirmative action-type provisions. The parties reached agreement on most of the
pieces, but not all of them. In this case, I think that part of the reason they couldn't agree on all of
it was that one of the parties was given false expectations by their attorney. The way we left it in
the agreement was that we stated the areas in which they agreed, and the rest went back to the
court and the judge would issue a ruling. In each case, what the judge ruled was what the other
party had offered in the first place. So, unfortunately for the other party the minority party in
this case they really didn't get anything more than they might have gotten if they had continued
to mediate and reach a settlement that way.
One of the things that I always do at the beginning of a mediation session, is get the parties to
agree on what to do if there is partial but not full agreement. If there are ten issues, for
example, and they can only reach agreement on seven, does that mean they go ahead and sign an
agreement on those seven, and leave the other three hanging? Or, if we don't reach agreement on
everything, then do we throw it all out and say that there's no agreement, period? I think you
want to get that understanding before they start. It's much better than getting half-way through the
mediation, only to have one party suddenly say, "I'm sorry, if we don't get such-and-such, then
all bets are off." So getting an assurance from both parties that partial agreements are acceptable
is one of the ways of avoiding a major disaster. Sometimes, just pointing out how much
agreement they've already reached then becomes an incentive for continuing the discussions.
I can think of another case in which there was huge mistrust and even hostility between the
parties. Some of the issues were complicated enough that it would require, or certainly benefit
from, some outside expertise. So in that case, what we did was have each of the parties
recommend a consultant who could provide expertise, and then we picked a third person within
that field of expertise. So we had those three consultants or experts meet, and come up with some
proposed approaches to dealing with the issues in contention. They did that successfully, and
then they were able to sell those ideas to the parties, because they had credibility. So that enabled
us to get them to agree to some approaches, and that would have been very difficult had we
brought in only one consultant. If we'd had only one "expert," both parties would have said, "Is
that consultant on their side, or is she on our side?" So having a panel of three worked very well
in that particular instance. It was expensive for CRS, because CRS doesn't have those kinds of
resources. But we did it in that particular case, and they did ultimately reach an agreement. So
that's another approach to get past an impasse.
Question:
And those three consultants met by themselves?
Answer:
Initially. And then they served as resources to the mediation process, until the overall plan
or outline was agreed to. And then when it came to finalizing you know, crossing the "t"s and
dotting the "i"s that we did ourselves, just myself and the parties.
Oh, I remember another case with an impasse. Here the parties had reached agreement on all the
important stuff. We were working on finalizing the wording, and we got to the point of saying,
"Each community and each ethnic group has a right to be represented and have its culture
represented in the curriculum and other processes at the school." But that didn't work, because
everyone wanted to have his or her own culture mentioned, but no one could decide what each
group would be called. For illustration, let's say the conflict involved and Asian group. So do we
say, "All Asians?" "No, no, it can't be Asians, it has to be Vietnamese specifically." But someone
else said, "No, not Vietnamese, but Southeast Asian." And others just wanted "Asians." So just
the wording almost blew the entire mediation.
We finally got around that impasse with some wording that I came up with: "All children
whether they call themselves Vietnamese or Asian or Southeast Asian or whatever, have the right
to have their culture and history reflected." So that way, it wasn't the parties labeling the
children, it was the parties acknowledging that the children would label themselves in whatever
way they wanted to. We came to this idea at about 9:30 at night, and the attorneys were like,
"What is this?!" But the parties were absolutely adamant. They would not agree on anything else.
So it's amazing what can sometimes sort of throw that monkey-wrench in there.
| Bob Ensley
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
So to end an impasse, to bridge the differences,
you used persuasion and force?
Answer:
Persuasion, with some knowledge of the history of their movement, or history of their
organization, and some of the people they know from their respective home towns and previous
involvement with different groups and organizations. Also I tried to
determine what their personal objectives were, what they were in it for.
Question:
And once you know their personal objectives, how would that help you?
Answer:
It would help me to just go up and speak on
their behalf. Then I say, "Well Dick, I have a commitment from John and his group and they are
committed to do such-and-such, and without their assistance we cannot do it alone. Could you
give
them this?" It worked at times.
Question:
What other techniques would you recommend to newcomers?
Answer:
Whatever little success you have, don't take personal credit. Give it to someone else. Don't
take any credit, because every time you start taking all of the credit, you are darn sure going to
get all of the blame. So I would always try to get the message out that without Larry, this could
not have happened, or without the investors it could not have happened. Little things like that.
And just as soon as you get back to the hotel, pick up the phone and call him and say, "Larry,
thank you because it couldn't have happened without you." Just little positive things. Better yet,
if you can visit, don't ever use a phone if you can visit. Just drop in on somebody and say,
"Larry thank you, you made it so much easier for me, and I am going to be counting on you for
support from now on."
Julian Klugman
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
How did you deal with other impasses? When there was a
stalemate and no one would move?
Answer:
You have to know when to let it go. In mediation cases, though, I would say that you're
more than halfway to success once you get them to sit down. We had very few incidents where
mediation broke off once we started it. I would say five percent at the most, because parties are
committed.
The current situation in mediation is disturbing. Mediators are making money. They're selling
mediation, so they want to mediate and they want to come to a conclusion. Who are all these
facilitators? They're not people like me who have learned through experience. To get groups to
talk, you encourage the people who are quiet and you really move forward without telling people
what to do. Their facilitators are people who write real fast on paper and they reach a false
consensus. You even have techniques and games that force you to reach a consensus. As if
conflict is wrong. What's wrong with conflict? I don't mean you let people hit each other and
beat each other up and scream and yell, but conflict is how change takes place, particularly if
you don't happen to be the establishment.
Werner Petterson
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
So they felt that they were at an impasse?
Answer:
Oh, oh yeah.
Question:
Can you describe in this situation how the impasse looked? How did they know that they
were at impasse, and how did you know that they were at impasse?
Answer:
Well, when we got into talking about how you were going to change the student population
in
the school, both sides had their positions about that. I think a lot of it revolved around bussing,
and on the part of the plaintiffs that was their solution. The school district was responding
negatively to that idea. We just kept rehashing all these old solutions and it became clear that
their positions weren't going to get them out of the impasse. At this point there was this idea
that had floated around the community and had been proposed by a community organization so
one day in a meeting I said, "Well what about this idea?" They said they wanted to talk about it,
so both sides and myself just started looking into how this would work, and by the next time we
came together they had, on their own, come to see that this would probably be a possibility. So,
we set aside all these old positions and started looking and seeing how this would work.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The legal assistance attorneys were not participating in mediation
at this point, but when we opened the next session that afternoon, one the attorneys and a student
stormed into the room and announced that they were not going to represent the inmates any more
if they were going to be harassed by the staff. "This is an issue which I want resolved here and
now or we aren’t coming back to this institution” he said. You can image the response of the
inmates. They then caucused with the legal team behind a locked door for 45 minutes. They
hadn’t been there for three weeks and all of a sudden they came in and made this announcement
and caucused across the hall. Eventually they came back and the issue was resolved. I don’t
remember the details, but there were assurances given and then they disappeared again.
Question:
What were you doing while this was going on?
Answer:
I was cooling my heels. What can you do when the group caucuses and they don’t want
you there? Usually, you wait awhile and give them some time and stick your head in to see if
you can be a positive factor. But they wouldn’t let me in. Oh, they were furious. That ended
and we got through that.
| Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Did the negotiation ever reach an impasse?
Answer:
It did at the very end when the officials from McGraw Hill at the national level came to
Denver, and either did not realize or thought that they could just simply come to town and leave
town without any commitment. And so there was a question, certainly in my mind, and in the
minds of both Wilbur Reed and Manny Salinas as to whether we actually had an agreement or
not. We thought we did, and McGraw Hill came back with signed documents.
Question:
What did you do to hold it together?
Answer:
At that time, we waited, and then eventually, I got on the telephone and talked to their
contact and eventually to an attorney. And the attorney asked a lot of questions that we
were able to work out. And by that time, incidentally, the minority community group also had
attorneys who, if my memory serves me correctly, worked with the NAACP and through
MALDEF.
Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
How do you deal with impasses?
What happens when you've got one party here saying, "I won't take
less than this," and the other party saying, "I won't give more
than this," and they're not coming together?
Answer:
I was doing a court mediation case
against a federal agency. I'm part of that agency, Department of
Justice. It was over an action INS took in a community in
apprehending day laborers, and that town's police force helped
INS in conducting this action. The plaintiffs felt there were a lot of
civil rights violations, such as the fourteenth amendment, first amendment, seizures laws, and all
that stuff. They filed a suit in court against the Attorney
General, against the Department of Justice, against that city,
and against the city's police department.
So the plaintiffs asked me if I would mediate it after it
had gone to federal court. They all got together, and even
though I work with the Department of Justice, they were asking me
to mediate. I had worked with a lot of the plaintiffs before.
They felt I would be fair and impartial. It's the same idea with being Hispanic, dealing
with issues involving Hispanics. I'll never stop being who I am,
but I will try to be as fair and as impartial as I can.
To be able to help them. When I'm in town they say, "Well are
you going to talk to the sheriff?" I say, "Of course." "Are you
going to help him?" I say, "Of course. I've got to help the
sheriff deal with you, and then help you deal with the sheriff.
If I can't do that, then I don't have any business here."
In this court case, once we got the judge's okay for
mediation, we had a second meeting where some new lawyers came
from Washington. The plaintiffs were asking for class
designation and for thousands of dollars to pay for their
attorneys. The government said, "No, there's not going to be a
class designation and we're not going to give you money." They
were asking right off the bat for about $600,000. Then said I asked the government, "If you give
them $100,000, is that reasonable?" "No." "$50,000?" "No." "$25,000?" "No."
"$5?" "No." "Five pennies?" "No." Nothing, zero, no pennies,
nothing." So the plaintiff's attorney was there, and he said,
"Okay, you're not going to give us class, you're not going to
give us a penny, then we're out of here." So they just walked
out. I called for a recess and a caucus. I talked to both sides
about how important this was. The government wasn't going to
give up any money, but what would be reasonable? What would
their supervisor and the taxpayers feel was comfortable? But it
became a personal matter to them about giving up anything. So
now they're playing hardball.
Then I talked to the plaintiffs and their party privately
about their ultimate goal. Is their ultimate goal getting class
and getting money, or is their ultimate goal reaching settlement
on correcting the problem they say happened? What are you here
for? Are you here to make money, are you here to declare that
this is a class action, or are you here to get what you can get
for the people you represent? I also said, "Okay, if it's
critical to you, think about how much money you want. Also, why
don't we put that at the back end of the discussions?" So it
becomes issue number twenty instead of issue number one. That
way, you all feel you've accomplished a lot if you've
accomplished eighteen of the things on your list. Of all the
things you really wanted, corrective action on the police
department was very important, corrective action by the
government. If you get that, then maybe money won't mean as
much. Now you've gotten pretty much all that you wanted. And
that's how we did it. It involves helping them realize what
their true self-interest is. I just helped them through the process
of analyzing their interests. The plaintiffs didn't get half a million
dollars. That's what they felt they had spent in legal fees. As for the class,
they were just defined as one. But everybody got a whole lot of
what they came there for. They went to the judge and the judge
gave the okay a few months later.
Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
There was an impasse for some
four or five months before the Hispanic group called me, and I
called the management and I got discussions going again. I was
managing the process, came up with proposals, and there were
objectives to that. We amended the proposals and there were
objectives to that. We would meet together, and we would meet
separately, but finally they came up with an agreement. The
Hispanic position was that the whole rodeo culture contained a
lot of Hispanic culture. Even the word rodeo is Spanish.
All the terminology used in the rodeo are Spanish terms.
Hispanics introduced the idea because Spain brought horses to
America back in ancient times, so they developed the culture then
adapted it to Western culture and Texas culture. And that's how
the rodeo evolved, but they claimed they were being left out as
an identifiable group.
In their discussions and negotiations they struck a deal.
They later changed their name to fit the rodeo structure's
naming, so they're the Go Tejano committee but they do
scholarships targeting Hispanics, and they could also educate
everybody and change their criteria for applications and then
advertise that. A million dollars is now being given out because
there are a specific number of Hispanics. Also, they created a
Tejano Day for the rodeo. They set rodeo records of attendance
every year for that particular day, and they got to 60,000 this
last year. Now they've added a carnival, and they're into the
hundred something thousand.
Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
How did you deal with impasses,
when you reached a situation where negotiation was at a stall?
Answer:
I told you earlier when those parties almost walked out, they
just couldn't agree. So there was no progress, so we just talked with them privately,
privately, and discussed the whole situation over. I helped them
analyze where they were, their positions, and asked them to
think. That if the whole concept was to find remedies and
solutions. It wasn't to make points, not to find somebody
guilty, and we were confident that they could do it. We helped
them explore options and possibilities, and then they saw how
they could really continue and progress by looking at it slightly
different. This was after a re-analysis of their positions and
what was being asked. Things are very fluid and everybody has an
idea of where they want to go, but there's glitches along the
way, you have to work them through and help them do that.
Ozell Sutton
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
I'm wondering, when you encountered an
impasse, let's say in Memphis, or any of the other cases you mentioned, how did you break that
impasse?
Answer:
Well what you do is, you deal with realities. The realities are power.
Question:
So part of it is to provide some factual information, is that what you're saying?
Answer:
Factual information in the right setting. If I'd gone down and reported that [police
harassment] to some of the chamber of commerce type people, I would have been just another
disgruntled black person. But in that setting, it had an impact that I alone could have never
created. I must know how to create those kinds of settings where the information is not all that
graphic.
| Edward Howden
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
How did you do that?
Answer:
I explained the negotiation process and explained that in order to get into mediation they
would really need to decide one, two, three, four, five, what they wanted. What did they want to
ask of the other party and what kind of solutions did they want to ask for, what remedies for the
problems? This was a slow, slow process.
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