NOLA and Peace

Last week found me intentionally in New Orleans at the annual Association for Conflict Resolution conference.  The conflict resolution (CR) field is actually very small compared to other associations such as the American Bar Association.  I am able to sit next to a published author in one workshop and then attend a presentation by the very same professional later on in the afternoon.  The CR folks are a very generous and committed group of professionals.  We have a great diversity in practices with many wearing multiple hats:  mediators, facilitators, trainers, educators, ombudspersons, conflict coaches, arbitrators and attorneys.    We share best practices, theories and techniques and help generate ideas for growing our business by learning what others are doing across the nation.

Hawai'i is represented at the conference that it is heavily populated by practitioners from the east coast.  Many of the nonprofit and governmental agencies are located between Washington D.C. and New York so this geographically makes sense.  To my knowledge, there were 3 of us from Hawai'i and I was the only one from Maui.  What this means to conflict resolution in Hawai'i is that there are many untapped opportunities for strengthening communication and building stronger discourse in our communities.  Over the upcoming blogs I will focus on these areas.

Our keynote presenter was Leymah Gbowee http://leymahgbowee.com/.  She is a Nobel Laureate who provided ACR with a memorable and motivating speech about the work she is doing in Liberia.  She is in great demand as a speaker and we were very fortunate to have her present at our conference.

A thought I want to leave you with is regarding debates:  how do we shift from having debates to dialogue in the election season?  Imagine what could transpire if we shifted from the standard positional debate responses to dialoging about what the true interests and needs of our nation are; the people as a whole.  Using real voices and real solutions to bring us together as opposed to separating us as being different.  Are we really all that different?  If you were from a different country, you would see ALL Americans as belonging to one group.  Heck, if you were an alien from outer space, you would see ALL humans as a belonging to one group.  So why do we focus so heavily on creating a divide through sub-groups within a dominate group?  Yes, it is partially human nature but it is also one of our greatest weaknesses.