Peace Talks Radio
Conflict Engagement
Paul Ingles: This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Jessica Ticktin.
Well, the world is filled with conflict. Now more than ever we need to think about creative and nonviolent ways to engage others with whom we differ. What is conflict engagement versus conflict resolution? Why are these tools important in our society right now and how might they be used in our daily lives?
On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, Jessica Ticktin interviews Jay Rothman who is an expert in the field of creative conflict engagement and peacemaking. In fact, even though we’ve been using it for years, we’re going to hear that Jay Rothman doesn’t actually prefer the term “conflict resolution.”
Rothman founded the Aria Group which provides mediation, coaching and collaborative visioning for leaders in both the public and private sectors to creatively transform complex conflicts. Jay Rothman is a widely published scholar on identity-based conflicts and conflict resolution theory. He served as the founding director of the Jerusalem Peace Initiative at Hebrew University and most recently was a visiting associate professor at The School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego.
In Jessica’s interview with Jay Rothman, he talks about how he felt called to the field of peacemaking and explains some of the tools and techniques he employs to move people out of a place of antagonism and into conversation.
In the second half of our program, we head to Yellow Springs Ohio to speak with two community members in a town that became deeply divided over a school levy issue. Jay Rothman helped the school board out and the community to listen to each other and find common ground so they can move forward with a plan to upgrade their dilapidated school buildings.
Here now is Peace Talks Radio’s Jessica Ticktin.
Jessica Ticktin: We’ve all been hurt by conflict on one level or another. Jay Rothman asserts that conflict and hurt are part of our social condition, but that conflict can also be a source of tremendous creativity. We can make great discoveries about ourselves and in so doing about others. Why do I care so much? Who am I? What are my values? What makes me tick? Conflict can also open this possibility for us to then ask who are you? What do you care about? Rothman says there is a huge opportunity for connection.
He’s also very musical and speaks about his work in musical metaphors. He calls it moving from dissonance into resonance. There are solos and duets and synchronization. Once people are resonating with each other they can move into what Rothman calls “integrated problem solving” and from there to action. This is the acronym and the concept of ARIA, like a song or a piece of music, Rothman makes pieces of peace.
JESSICA TICKTIN: I’m really excited to have this conversation with you today. How did you get started in this work?
Jay Rothman: My story begins at age eight. I went to this wonderful, free school known as the first democratic school in America called The Antioch School in Yellow Springs Ohio. It was the laboratory school for Antioch College founded by Horace Mann, a great educational reformer. It had this notion that kids were their own best teachers and the relationships between kids were the ways for them to learn how to problem solve and be good citizens and be life-long learners.
Here is a story of me when I was eight. I got this story from my then teacher who was 85 when I interviewed her. I thought that I was going to write a book about this, but I haven’t yet. This being my own journey, why haven’t I done this? I asked her if she remembered anything from some 40 years previous and she said, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Do you remember anything that might have led me to this path?” She said, “I do” right away. She was married to the school. We were her kids, so I wasn’t surprised when she did.
She said, “You came running in one morning and said, “Bev, Bev, there is a fight on the tetherball court, and you have to do something!” She said, “I looked at you and I said, ‘Jay, what do you think you should do?’” I said, “I don’t know! I’m just a kid!” She said, “Jay, yes you do.” I said, “Oh, maybe I do. I know, let’s ring the bell.” So, I rang the bell and no matter how bad we were behaving we knew that when that bell rang, we came in and circled up. Everyone came in and circled up, all 20 of us.
I was sitting next to Bev, and everyone was looking at Bev and Bev was looking at me! I said, “Now what?” She said, “You know.” Apparently, I ran a really good meeting. I helped engage their differences and helped them come to a peaceful outcome. I had been called to this and found myself in the third sided role often.
At age 17, I left my small peaceful town of Yellow Springs Ohio and traveled around the world to discover the world. Of course, what I discovered is that it’s a tough place and asked who in the heck am I and what am I doing?
I was going to visit a friend who had come to Yellow Springs when we were in sixth grade. His father was on sabbatical. He happened to live in Israel. I say, “happened” because though I was born Jewish, that identity wasn’t important. My family were universalists. In fact, we were trained that religion in separate groups were the problem in the world. I had no interest or no identification with Israel. Nonetheless, my friend was there, so I decided to go visit him.
The moment the airplane touched down, I started seeing people like my father and hearing people talk like my grandfather. All of sudden I realized, wait a minute, I am connected to this country and these people. I wasn’t very happy about that because that suggested a kind of nationalism and religious identity that I rejected. I spent time in Israel trying to understand that and my two-week visited turned into a six-month visit. I was very conflicted because all of a sudden, what I was trained to be, a universalist, was really challenged, but I still believe in it. How can I believe in both and also my secularism? I believe in religion too. I believe in all of it. I’m also confused by the fact that by being a people we are by definition in opposition to another people whose story I also believe. I’m very confused!
Jessica Ticktin: Jay comes back to his hometown of Yellow Springs Ohio and begins studying at Antioch College and decides that this is where he wants to integrate these two selves that he has discovered, his American Universalist and his Jewish Particularist.
Jay Rothman: I go back and forth; am I going to stay and be an Orthodox Jew living in shiva in a sequestered world and maybe bring a little secular enlightenment thee or am I going to go back to the secular world and bring some of these values of depth of connection of community of song of identity? I chose the latter.
A lot of my work is organized around the notion of reflexivity which is where we use ourselves as the mirror as well as the lens to understand the world. I’m going to speak reflexively about how I got into the field because it was very much a personal identity search, identity conflicts and efforts to bridge them within myself. That’s my work. My work is about helping people tell their stories, the passionate, often painful, sometimes visionary stories that they can then mesh and merge with other people’s stories and create more pieces of peace in our increasingly broken world.
Jessica Ticktin: I want to stop here for a minute and say that it was at this moment that Jay Rothman met my cousin, Adina Back. This amazing occurrence draws a direct line of connection between me and Jay, something we discovered in this conversation. They were both at Antioch College in the late 1970s and she and my cousin Erin had a big influence on him. Jay said that Adina was the first person he had ever met who was both deeply Jewish and deeply Universalist who was connected to Israel and conflicted by it. She became a very important person to him because she held these identities so elegantly.
Maybe you can jump to founding your company.
Jay Rothman: The company was started in 1998. It’s called the Aria Group. ARIA [Antagonism, Resonance, Invention, Action] is the acronym that I came up with when I was systematizing the problem-solving workshop approach at Kelman, Burton and Azar.
Basically, what I discovered when working with Israelis and Palestinians is the first thing you have to do is have a choreographed explosion. If you don’t do it on purpose, it will happen when you’re not looking. It’s really easy. All you have to say is, “What’s this problem about?” What they say will be bam. They do attributional analyses. The other side is who they are because that’s their nature. If I’m aggressive or hostile, it’s because they made me so. Situation. That’s a vicious loop. Then they’ll blame the other side. They may even project some of their own shadows on the other side and they will certainly polarize. That’s what happens. I summarize that as antagonism. That’s the first A for ARIA.
Then a lot of the field of conflict resolution, I call it creative conflict engagement, there are some major reasons that I do that. One of the main things we need to do to defang conflict to make it move from destructive to constructive is reframe. If our main frame is you’re the bad one, this is happening because of you, etc. what is the reframe? The reframe is simple and excruciatingly hard to do. The simple is why does it matter to me? Why does it matter to you. Not what did you do but why do I care so much? That’s really hard to do.
Jessica Ticktin: And this is still on resonance?
Jay Rothman: Yes, resonance. Once we have reframed from antagonism to resonance, the inventions are about the resonance. We’re not saying how do we invent ways to stop hurting and hating each other. That’s going to happen, but if we can build more resonance of less fear and more hope, that’s when we start inventing what I call “pieces of peace” things that are big enough to matter but small enough to work. That means very basic things like better education, different approaches to learning about each other, better municipal services, more possibilities for encounter with the other side, very practical, small, concrete things.
Finally, developing an action plan.
That’s ARIA, antagonism, resonance, invention, creative inventions, integrative inventions –
Jessica Ticktin: And action is the last step, but what about finding ways to resolve conflict through compromise? There is a common idea in the field of conflict resolution that compromise is the best way and that is rarely the case when it is identity-based for example between Israelis and Palestinians. He lays out three ways of solving problems.
Jay Rothman: There are really three approaches to solving problems. One is domination. One side wins, the other loses, that’s called win/lose.
There is another approach which is called compromise where people think I’ll give up a little, they’ll give up a little and if it’s about material issues, that’s great. If it’s about identity issues, you can’t give up a little bit of yourself. You can expand yourself and therefore be more inclusive, but you can’t give up parts of yourself.
The third approach is called integrative problem solving. We do integrative invention where both sides feel like they get more of their needs met and their frustration level is reduced. That’s a good integrative invention. Finally, we try to sustain it through some kind of action.
That’s ARIA, the acronym. Aria is also a metaphor, and the metaphor is very central to my work. In addition to wanting to be a writer, I also wanted to be a musician, but I got diverted by this Israeli/Palestinian stuff. When I got married, my father-in-law to be under the canopy said, “I am so lucky. I have a son-in-law who will have lifelong employment working on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.” Before I got diverted into that I thought that I would be a writer or a musician. Aria became my pathway to reclaim my musical artistry.
Also, the notion of moving from dissonance to resonance. There are all sorts of metaphors. Aria suggests that conflict is also a source of tremendous creativity, maybe the deepest creativity. I don’t think that you have to suffer in order to be an artist, but you certainly have to know about conflict. That often suggests suffering of some kind, but Aria is suggesting it also can be very beautiful and we can make great discoveries. Answering the question “Why do I care so much?” is also answering the question “Who am I?” What are my values and what makes me tick? Conflict is also a possibility for discovering who you are and what you care about and an opportunity for connection.
When we get to invention, old solutions to old problems often don’t work. We need new ways. The Aria metaphor of music of imagination and creativity is really important to me.
Finally, I organize my work in accordance with solos. I help people do their own work about conflict. “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to anyone” said Polonius in Hamlet.
Jessica Ticktin: This is producer Jessica Ticktin for Peace Talks Radio. I’m speaking with Jay Rothman, an expert in creative conflict engagement and the author of five books.
My next question is the distinction between conflict resolution and conflict engagement. Why is that reframe so conceptually important?
Also, thinking about success and failure, I know you have said that failure is part of the process. It makes me think of the musical metaphor or dance and choreography and how people come together. Dancers are in contact with one another, moving away and forming many different configurations. I am having visuals. Could you speak to the engagement versus resolution or not versus but what those distinctions are?
Jay Rothman: Let me start with a somatic example because you mentioned dance and because I’m also interested and engaged with dance. I created a walking path in my space. I have a gathering space where I bring people for deep retreats. After having traveled a lot with my career, I’m having people travel to me now. I have this space and we built what I call a synchronous walking path. On this synchronous walking path, people who are disputants and people envisioning a future walk together in step, straight down and then it breaks off and they keep walking together in step but separately. That both metaphoric and actual experience of we’re together when we’re together, but we’re also together when we’re apart is the idea of this engagement.
One of the things that is so beautiful about walking in synchrony is that our sympathetic nervous system starts firing in common. There has been some serious research indicating that it changes attitudes towards each other, not only towards the other individual but also if they represent a group that you’re in conflict with, it can actually change your attitudes towards that group. It’s mind-blowing. I sometimes spend weeks and months getting people together for this three-minute walk that intrigues people.
I know from my experience that when I take people to do that walk, being together is together, but being apart is also together even when we’re in conflict with the other. How can we accept this conflict as something which is irresolvable; our identities, our religions, our histories, our backgrounds, our races, our classes, our countries, so many things?
As I said, just two people like me and my wife, we are agonistically different which means we had radical differences. Hopefully, with my wife after 36, we’ve discovered how our differences are also things that we learn from and grow from. It’s not always easy, but we were creative and overcame the ways in which they were destructive. That’s a life-long process.
For disputants, it’s mostly a sense of acceptance; “I accept that we are radically different. I accept that we see the world differently. I accept that we have hurt each other. I wish we hadn’t. I want to do everything that we can so that we don’t hurt each other anymore.” That’s not resolution. That’s just this is our reality. It’s going to be filled with differences, debates and controversies, but hopefully not violence.
Jessica Ticktin: I asked Rothman what if the past keeps coming up in a conflict and you want to just put it behind you and move forward?
Jay Rothman: You can’t wall off the past because the past has its way of having its way. If you can guide the past so that it doesn’t restimulate trauma, then it helps you say this is reality. We can’t change it but we can change our real understanding of it so that it doesn’t have to condition violence. We can reduce violence and increase the amount of cooperation. I’m confident.
Jessica Ticktin: Rothman goes on to explain that there are three different fields or schools of thought. The first is conflict resolution, then conflict management and the third is conflict transformation. Rothman believes that they should all be integrated and that we need to be really careful about our language because not all things we call conflicts are conflicts. He has a contingency model.
Jay Rothman: I say if it’s a dispute, we settle it. If it’s a problem, we solve it. If it’s a conflict, we engage it. I don’t use the words “management, transformation or resolution” because they misguide us. It depends on the type of conflict and its level of development to determine which type of approach we need to take.
The problem with the phrase “conflict resolution” is that it gives us a false promise and then failure is almost certain. We think that we’re going to solve problems and they will go away and not come back. Then when they come back, they are worse.
The problem with “conflict management” is that its aim is too low. It is more of a technical solution. That has been the policy of the Israelis over the decades and that has led to disaster. You can’t just manage conflict particularly when it is identity-based, so therefore when it’s a conflict we have to best engage them and that’s the alternative to developing an unrealistic goal of resolution and an unhelpful goal of management.
Jessica Ticktin: It’s so common to say “conflict resolution” because that’s what we are always aiming for.
Jay Rothman: A lot of failures, even if we reach success in the room, how do we maintain success outside? I’d say it’s more common for my successes to fail than for them not. Increasingly I’m working on sustainability from small things like “come back in two weeks” to the larger thing of building a conflict positive culture where you’re proactive about having everyone in your organization engage conflict when it’s at the resource or goal level before it gets to the identity level because once it gets to the identity level, you can’t do it yourself. You have to call us. Do your own work so you can get rid of us a mediators. That’s our job, to put ourselves out of business.
Jessica Ticktin: It’s like when you clog the sink, you’ve got to maintain and do the right things before it gets clogged, so you don’t have to call a plumber.
Jay Rothman: Right. Failed success, successful failures are more interesting because in this work of human relationships, politics, intergroup relationships and identity-based conflicts there is never a great success where people come out dancing. At the moment you might feel pretty exhilarated, but you know what you’re up against. Often times people say, “The work that we’ve done is just the beginning. Now it gets hard.”
Jessica Ticktin: This is producer Jessica Ticktin for Peace Talks Radio. I’m speaking with Jay Rothman, an expert in creative conflict engagement and peacemaking and the author of five books.
What are some of the ways that you use some of your own tools in your everyday life?
Jay Rothman: Just mediating between a husband and wife, I don’t do divorce mediation. They may be wondering about divorce but they’re not there yet, so I see if I can help them. If I can’t help them and they do want to get divorced, then I will turn them over to a divorce mediator or a collaborative lawyer, but I will have set them up I hope for some useful ways to communicate.
I was talking with a couple the other day and noticed that every time he asked her a question, they were not real questions. They were statements, a point or a principle. I pointed that out to him and suggested a different way. He did well and their conversation was better.
My wife asked me a question that was not a question but was making a statement and I said to her, “Hey, is that a real question?” She said, “Oh, don’t use that on me!” I can be as antagonistic as the next person. In some ways, I can even be more because I believe in it. Sometimes I don’t censor myself because I believe you have to engage. I’d say that my family is more contentious in conflict than many other families, but partly because we know how to do it and we’re willing to keep trying.
Jessica Ticktin: The field is full of people working in peace and conflict resolution. I asked Rothman what he offers that is different.
Jay Rothman: One thing I’ve been talking with a colleague about recently is how to scale up. She said to me that she thought that my work has been an example of scaling up more than other approaches. I say two things, one of is to focus on identity-based conflict. I really think that’s essential and talking about how to engage it creatively instead of trying to resolve it.
The other thing is how do we have a way to scale up from the inside out, from the necessitous individual to the coherent group to the collaborative intergroup? How do we move in that way? I talk about self-group systems and that we have to always be thinking about those levels of analyses. What do individuals say, feel, think, suggest?
Jessica, remember there is a Palestinian/Israeli woman who ran a fabulous project among Palestinian/Israelis to help the Palestinian citizens of Israel envision a future for Israel that they could be part of. It’s a pretty interesting effort. Israeli Jewish leaders were very afraid of it. I was actually asked by the Prime Minister’s Office to help them make sense of it. It was an interesting process. This is a tragic example of a successful failure.
I asked her what this document was, what was its value, what was its benefit both to Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jewish citizens of Israel. She said, “Really, I can tell you in two words.” It was a 50-page document, two years of work, please listen. That emphasis on “please listen” please listen to our identities to our stories to our narratives, lots of us do that.
Moving up from this individual voice to the collective voice of the group and then from the group going up to the system. So many people, particularly people who don’t have a deep understanding of identity dynamics in their own lives who are maybe mostly universalists like many people in this field are and like I was a youth. Groups are the problem. Let’s get past groups. Let’s move to this system, to this universalist reality.
Well, that doesn’t work, particularly if you’re dealing with identity-based conflict. We have to go from the individual self to the group, the collective soul of the group and then finally, the group of groups or the system. Make sure that we pay attention to those three levels in that order.
It’s really essential in that we figure out a way to scale up. I’ve been scaling up a lot with action research tools. This asking of people, “What are your goals? What do you care about? How do you want to accomplish your goals?” It’s not because I want to write an article about it, although we actually did, a number of them, but rather it’s to give them the opportunity to reflect deeply and to be practical about what they want. I’ve done that recently in school board conflicts that we might talk about.
After we worked with the staff and the school board to help them reach consensus about what they wanted to put forward as a school levy, we then asked the whole community through a survey to respond to the different proposals and to have their voices heard. That involvement of individual leadership, top-down and in the whole community, bottom-up led to a successful outcome of a levy campaign that had failed for years which is middle-out. I think that’s a mark of success also.
Top-down leadership has to engage this somehow. They have to say, “Yes, we want to do this. We need help and input.” Then community says, “Here is our voice. Here are our values. Here is our vision.” Then finally, we had the institutions that carry the water. Top-down, bottom-up, middle-out.
Jessica Ticktin: What do you do to relax when you’ve gone through so much stuff and there is a lot of negative energy and hostility and viciousness? What do you do to let that go?
Jay Rothman: I walk a lot. We have a wood near me where I spend a lot of time. I hang out with my dog and my family. My music is still big. I’m painting these days. Painting is fun. Artistic expressions, nature expressions, people expressions and I’m not great at them. I suffer.
I just recently heard a Buddhist teaching about the difference between empathy and compassion. What he said was that if you have too much empathy, you can start identifying with the other person and then you’ll be hurt by their hurts. You’ll take in the wounds of the world, and you won’t be any good. You’ll start burning out.
If you have compassion, a Buddhist notion to heal suffering, then you have some detachment. You see it is their hurt and their pain and you don’t identify with it so much. You keep not objectivity because a mediator is never object and never neutral. That is one of my bandwagons. We can be disciplined about our biases. If we start to get too emotionally involved, then we know that’s not going to be helpful.
Professionally, we can change that empathy to compassion. Yes, we have to be deeply compassionate, but keeping our detachment, which of course is hard to do when it’s in my backyard, is essential in the mastery of being a third-sider.
Jessica Ticktin: This program is dedicated to Adina Back whose life and work profoundly influenced me and my guest Jay Rothman. She had the gift of listening, a gift that is in all too short supply these days. She modeled it, exuded it and lived it. Adina was a public historian, feminist, independent radio producer, social justice advocate, writer and mother. We miss you dearly.
Paul Ingles: That was Jessica Ticktin interviewing Jay Rothman who founded the Aria Group back in the early 1990s to enhance creative engagement with conflicts in nations, organizations and communities. You can find out more about the Aria Group, find a list of Rothman books and listen to the full interview at www.peacetalksradio.com. Look for Season 22, Episode 3.
In the second half of the program, Jessica is going to speak with two community members in Yellow Springs Ohio, a town that was deeply divided over a school levy proposal. Listen to find out how they were able to overcome years of conflict through peacemaking with the help of facilitator Jay Rothman. We’re back right after this break.
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This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Jessica Ticktin. So, what happens when community leaders trying to make decisions are being torn apart by conflict? How can they come together and find common ground?
In the first part of our program on this topic, we heard from Jay Rothman, expert in creative conflict engagement and peacemaking who founded the Aria Group.
Now we head to Yellow Springs Ohio, a town that became deeply divided over a school levy issue. From the elementary school to the high school, the towns education buildings were falling apart and in a state of disrepair. In some cases, animals had taken up residence in the dilapidated buildings and kids had been learning in trailers. A school levy to pay for repairs was put to vote and failed to pass three times leading the community down a path of even greater division and conflict.
Producer Jessica Ticktin is going to speak with two members of the Yellow Springs community to hear their story of peacemaking and finally passing a vote to improve their school buildings. Jay Rothman, expert in creative conflict engagement was able to help them. Here is Jessica with the story.
Jessica Ticktin: An expert in creative conflict engagement and peacemaking, Jay Rothman had been working in Jerusalem on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for several years before he came back to his hometown of Yellow Springs Ohio only to find it engulfed in its own conflict. Rothman spent months working with the school board and other stakeholders, providing the community with tools that eventually helped them move forward.
The issue sewing so much division was whether or not to spend millions of dollars on rebuilding the town schools and if so, where to build them. It was the first time in Yellow Springs history, a town of about 4,000 people, that all of its levies failed. It’s known as an education town, home of Antioch University and a good public school system. Rothman was brought in to do a research study to find out what was going on and come up with a plan.
Jay Rothman: I did a month-long study to see the nature of – I used my ROI, resource disputes, goal problems and identity conflict. I did that analysis. I interviewed people. I did reading. I kept meeting with the superintendent to get her perspective. I met with school board members and different community groups.
Then I came back with the proposal to do a collaborative process. First, with the staff and the school board I conducted a retreat. None of this was a straight line. It was filled with acrimony. There were several times when I thought I’d rather be back in Jerusalem. There were several times when I didn’t think it was going to work. There were several more times I wondered why in the heck I was doing this in my backyard. When this was all over, I couldn’t get into an airplane and fly away.
Jessica Ticktin: Jay’s team discovered that the conflict centered around four sets of values that although were not exclusive to each other, the community felt strongly that they were in contention. The first was appropriate facilities for teaching and learning. The second was environmental concerns and green space. The last and most contentious value was affordability. The school board was at odds with each other and needed to find common ground.
Jay Rothman: It was really a three to two board with two having been elected to advocate for the affordability and the environmental issues and the other three really committed to making sure that the facilities were rebuilt. They had to make a decision about whether they were going to put one of the levies up for vote and if so, which one of them.
Jessica Ticktin: I then reached out to TJ Turner, former president of the school board who was embroiled in this battle for six years and Jeannamarie Cox, Executive Director of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation whose organization funded the peacemaking process. They talked about their own experiences and insights into the conflict as well as Rothman’s process.
Thank you both for being here. I’m really interested in digging into this discussion. Your story is one of hope because there have been issues in your community for a little while and I know recently a vote was passed.
I’ll ask TJ to start off by telling me a little bit about what brought you to want to be on the school board and how you got to b president of the school board.
TJ Turner: My involvement with the school – of course I have three children, now two because one has graduated and is now a freshman in college. Education has always been a big thing with me and my family. To me it’s a great leveling force in society, the fact that anyone can get an education. I think a lot of inequity comes about from inequity in education.
I’m a scientist for the Air Force. I got the job in Dayton Ohio. My wife and I wanted to find a good school system for when we had children. We went and talked to the then superintendent who was Mario Basora and asked him about the facilities and what I could do to help.
I knew they were ramping up for a levy issue. I had been on a previous committee for the levy for the renewal of operating funds from the year prior. He made me the committee chair for the levy before I was on the school board. That levy was fairly characterized as very disastrous, very divisive in the community. It brought out some of the underlying issues in the community. A position opened up on the school board.
From the outside looking in, Yellow Springs if very liberal, a little blue bubble surrounded by a lot of red, especially in the county if not the whole state. At the 50,000-foot level you would think that we are very homogenous but when you dive in and get involved in the community, you realize that there are a lot of different things that go on, all valid interests that compete with each other. Even though we have a role in supporting education, it still became contentious because of limited resources.
Jessica Ticktin: Jeannamarie, can you start by describing the Yellow Springs community and your involvement in this issue?
Jeannamarie Cox: As TJ mentioned, it’s a pretty diverse community. It doesn’t necessarily look that way, but it is, and every topic has a host of different opinions. I would say that the community is very comfortable discussing, talking and even fighting for their opinion. It’s always a twist. Every topic has that level of an edge to it I would say, and the levy was no different, but more passion surrounded it because of the cost involved.
From the community perspective, the Foundation is very involved in community conversations on a regular basis. We are a 501c3. We are supported by the community. We act on behalf of the community and support nonprofits through grants. One of our key roles is community conversation and helping that conversation because we don’t have a political view. By state law, we can’t have a political view like Switzerland. We are able to bring people together.
This topic started with initial discussions about the educational facilities. There were a lot of opinions and emotions around it. Cost was the number one issue, way ahead of everything else, but there was also nostalgia for buildings. For example, “I went to school there.” There were emotional ties. Some people don’t like change. There were ideas on how it could be fixed. It started as early as the initial conversations about the facilities.
Jessica Ticktin: This is Peace Talks Radio and I’m speaking with two community members in Yellow Springs Ohio, TJ Turner, former president of the school board and Jeannamarie Cox, Executive Director of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation about peacemaking in their town after years of conflict over a school levy proposal.
I asked TJ how the conflict began since it seems clear that the schools were in need of major upgrades and repair. Didn’t most people agree on this or was this need even in contention?
TJ Turner: Our district has two campuses. That’s part of the discussion. We have an elementary school that is central to downtown, a very beautiful location. We have a high school and middle school complex combined that is on the edge of the village. They were in various states of disrepair. They were old. The elementary school in the central location was built in the ‘50s. The middle school/high school complex was built in the ‘60s with various add-ons and improvements over the years. That facility was in much worse shape than the elementary school, but both needed an upgrade. The high school had bats and racoons living inside the building. There were trailers for the middle school designed with a five-year lifespan and we were going on year 30 with them.
These issues did not make it a first-class learning facility for certain. There were issues with the electrical systems. None of the schools were designed when computers were around, so now there are communications and wi-fi network cables running everywhere. A lot needed to be done to upgrade. That became part of the debate, how much to upgrade and how much to build new. In Ohio, when school projects like this are funded, the community has to be involved. A bond measure has to be put on because schools don’t have that kind of money lying around. A levy issue has to be put forward in order to be able to do the build.
Like Jeannamarie said, there is a huge diversity of opinions. Looking in from the outside, we seem progressive and homogenous, but when you really dig into an issue like this, a lot of opinions come out. We had many people like the superintendent and teachers saying, “If you go to other facilities and schools, you’ll see the difference and how much more we could do for kids if we had upgraded facilities for 21st century learning.”
Then we had other people in town who said, “I went to school there. I was fine. Look at me.” That was another argument. It's been a long time since they went to school. A lot of folks didn’t understand how education has changed. People may not have children in the district anymore.
Traditionally, we’ve done fairly well as a school. We’re ranked in the top few around us in terms of districts depending on years. The scorecards are a little different. Some folks point to that and say, “We’re doing fine. Why do we need new facilities? Obviously, our teachers are very innovative. They do fine without new facilities. I don’t care if the windows leak.” We heard both sides of the argument unfortunately.
Convincing people that it was an issue and how to go about fixing it were two pieces of that puzzle.
Jessica Ticktin: Backing up, most recent was the third time you tried to pass this. I’m imagining that things got more heated obviously. What happened the first time it failed and what did you learn? How did you approach it when the vote came up again? Was it only the third time that you looked for outside help for peacemaking and getting people to listen? How did that progress from the first to the third?
Jeannamarie Cox: We felt that the biggest issue with the levy was that nobody was listening at that point. Everyone was digging in, and nobody was listening to the other or considering information from other groups. That contentious conversation or lack of conversations was something that we could potentially work on so that’s where we started to focus. We still supported the activities and experiences of the students, but we added additional funding for peacemaking to help bring the conversations together.
TJ Turner: We actually had outside consultants on the first one. We had a political consultant that was paid for by two community members, fairly well-off, financially stable community members. They funded a political consultant and that became very controversial in 2018 because Yellow Springs doesn’t do that. Why do we need outside help? It was an interesting, eye-opening experience.
The political consultants who were brought in were folks who work on issues like women’s health and getting libraries funded and greenspaces and parks, a group under most circumstances most groups in Yellow Springs would agree with, the things that they support and help to get passed in the political realm.
Even they didn’t understand Yellow Springs. When they left, they said, “Wow, you guys are a little different.” The vitriol that happened online, especially on some of the Facebook pages, was surprising. I was part of that. For a community that prides itself on being kind, I received threatening phone calls that threatened me and my family. Somebody left a box of human feces at the end of my driveway. All related to the levy and trying to educate children. You can see that it became a very passionate and very divisive issue in the community.
We had a new superintendent who went through a similar levy issue at her last place of employment so she thought we could handle it. I think even she misjudged exactly how the community would react.
We tried a different levy, instead of one single building, it was to remove both buildings and build a single K-12 complex. That was resoundingly rejected as well by the same two to one margin. Both of the two levies were clear but maybe for different reasons. With the second levy, there were a lot more environmental concerns with losing green space in town if we moved the central location.
The third time, it was our idea to have Jay Rothman and Daniela Cohen from the Aria Group step in. Jay talked to the superintendent and said, “I think I can offer some skills to help people listen to each other.” In cooperation with the Community Foundation, that was set up. There are laws about what schools can fund. No school funding or public funding was used for that. The Community Foundation set up listening spaces, areas where people could decompress from this whole argument and start listening to the other side of the argument trying to understand that everyone has validity and going about finding a solution.
Jessica Ticktin: My guests today are TJ Turner, former president of the school board in Yellow Springs Ohio and Jeannamarie Cox, Executive Director of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.
Was it surprising to you who have been community members? Jeannamarie, you’ve been there for 30 years. Was that something new that you had seen and if so, why do you think that it became so contentious?
Jeannamarie Cox: Before I moved to Yellow Springs, opinions and listening to others was always part of the culture. Negativity and angst were definitely peaking last year. I don’t know if it is relevant to our national situation. I think it’s not just Yellow Springs, but much more across the board as a country as well, an intolerance to listening.
Yes, it was surprising, and it was why I felt like we needed funding to figure out ways to not just help the school situation, because that was not where I started, it was much more about the community itself. We needed to find our ability to listing again. I didn’t know where we would end up. It was much more around the bigger issue but zeroed in on the school situation as well.
Jessica Ticktin: Jeannamarie, what did that peacemaking look like? How was it different from what you had tried in the past?
Jeannamarie: I give Jay Rothman a ton of credit. His approach, giving each person on the school board and major stakeholders and the facilities committee opportunities to sit and chat with him on a regular basis, discuss their angst and talk about what was working for them and what was not independently. It gave people a safe space to talk independently about their opinions of the issues and test some of their thoughts on someone else without it being shared.
He had a perspective of where everyone was because he listened very carefully and gave people time, energy and opportunity. Then he started weaving into that process different components that might people bring their thoughts and find common ground. He wasn’t about trying to convince people to do A, B or C, but rather chipped away in a more compromising way.
Where some of the facility ideas and options started shifted over time to incorporate the thoughts and key ideas from individuals on the school board and facilities committee. It was more of a weaving together.
Jessica Ticktin: Did you get feedback from people in the community? Were people listening more? Did people feel like they were being heard? Did you get any positive or negative feedback about the kind of facilitation going on?
Jeannamarie Cox: Absolutely, we had multiple community members reach out. Some community members asked how to be part of the conversation. “How do you get included? I have something to say.” Others, “Don’t forget this group. They need to be heard. Nobody is asking them.” There was a lot of skepticism voiced at first, but then, towards the end of the sessions, a lot of applause.
Once the school determined that they were going to put the levy on the ballot, at that point, we no longer proceed with the work. Jay had the school board vote on something where they all voted for the same thing. If you think about where we started, it was a very split school board, so having a vote that was unanimous on one topic was a higher goal than we had even hoped. Jay and I thought that that would be ideal because it gave a spot for the community to work from. The school board being behind something is huge versus them being split.
Jessica Ticktin: Yes, that is huge. There are multiple factors, but how do you think that you guys got there in the end?
TJ Turner: It still amazes me. I had a lot of discussions with Jay, which were fantastic. Before every school board meeting, he and I would talk about options and how best to approach different board members.
I remember the vote well. I was fairly convinced that it would be another three to two vote, another divisive levy issue. I was pretty depressed walking into the meeting.
It turned out that the two board members who had worked on the facilities committee were pretty far apart. They don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. Jay and I discussed a technique and a few details on what we could offer for a compromise between the two. I remember in the meeting talking to both of them offering them those options.
They were sitting next to each other, deliberately to have better discussions during the meeting. One turned to the other and said, “What happens if we do X?” The other one offered some counterpoints, details and plans and literally, within five minutes, they said, “This is a different option from any we’ve discussed so far.” They put it on the table, and it fit. It was another way to slice the apple. They were happy and I was happy. It was not the ideal solution that I would have chosen, but it got to all the different concerns, keeping the two campuses for the greenspace, doing a lot of renovations, not just new builds, but a combination of those with the potential option for a preschool that could be much cheaper to the available preschool options. There were all these benefits.
The price tag remained high, the cost of construction, but when they came together and made that proposal to the rest of the board, the other three of us had not considered that mix of things and thought it was great. That’s what we put on the ballot and that is what passed.
Jay got people to talk to each other and made suggestions from the things that he was hearing from people in the community. He laid that foundation. We all stewed on it. When those two got together and made that compromise, it opened the doors.
Jeannamarie Cox: Adding to what TJ said, I think that what Jay was able to accomplish with the school board was to provide the opportunity to hear what the other person was saying and what was important to them. To get to that compromise it wasn’t all I’m worried about is what’s important to me, getting to that compromise was understanding what others had as a major stake in the ground and what’s really important.
Two points that Jay worked on were one, working as a group, a school board group, working as team to get to a solution and hearing the other individuals and what’s important to them. It had not happened before on such a contentious topic. That was really key.
Jessica Ticktin: Can you give me an example of a particular method or technique that Jay used that you personally experienced or that you felt was really interesting or different than you had experienced before in terms of conflict resolution or peacemaking tools?
TJ Turner: The board retreat was actually at his house, which was rather brave, I think to invite the public into your house. After my experience with the first levy, I was leery.
At his house, he has a path. The idea is that you start together in the middle. You walk this path and then it splits, and you both take turns, one person turns to the right and one person to the left, but then the path converges again. You do that three times, keeping your steps in sync. When you’re walking together at the same pace, it’s supposed to bring your brainwaves together and put you on the same frequency. I don’t know if it works or not, but it was interesting to try with different people. I gave it a shot.
Jessica Ticktin: As he mentioned at the beginning of the program, Jay Rothman brought the board together for a retreat and took them through various exercises on communication and listening. They went back and forth and back and forth until they got closer to understanding one another.
TJ Turner: I don’t think we ever had an “ah ha” moment per say, but all of it together changed the discussion. It was less heated. It was more constructive. It laid out all the issues, everything that was out there. It moved people off their entrenched positions. There was a listening session where people were allowed to move dots on a piece of paper. After hearing another side, people actually moved. There was an analysis of how their position had moved after listening to someone who didn’t have as much income or someone who had a young family looking for education for their children. It was interesting how that discussion happened. He gave people a safe space to talk and discuss and that was pivotal, just key.
Jessica Ticktin: What advice would you give to other communities that might be facing similar issues with their school boards or city councils if they have an issue like this that is dividing the community?
Jeannamarie Cox: From my perspective, the first thing that I would say is “slow down.” I think that taking time and giving everyone time to think through the processes is essential. Sometimes we try to rush to an answer, but that does not allow time to evolve. Getting to a compromise on our school board decision was the development of understanding, but also time to evolve one’s thought process. I think we push through too fast sometimes.
Having an outside resource if you can afford it that is not focused on the issue, but focused on the communication was key.
TJ Turner: Jeannamarie is right, slowing down and meeting people where they are, meeting them face to face, having coffee, talking, listening. Having listening sessions like we did that the Community Foundation helped us with was key. Exercises to move your point of view were awesome; understanding others and not being so entrenched or having the attitude that you’re willing to listen and maybe move your position.
Jessica Ticktin: Jay Rothman, the facilitator who helped the Yellow Springs community through this peacemaking process who you heard at the beginning of the program spoke with people afterwards about the idea of compromise.
Jay Rothman: I don’t think you compromised. I think you integrated. You took the best of the different proposals. Everybody got what they really needed. Almost everybody didn’t get what they wanted, but that is not the point.
Jessica Ticktin: Rothman calls this creative conflict engagement. The focus is not on resolution, it’s about moving from antagonism into conversation or to use one of his music metaphors, “from dissonance to resonance.”
While the vote passed and they can begin to rebuild the schools, there is also still work to be done on healing and bringing the Yellow Springs together after years of ongoing hostility and conflict, but they are not stuck anymore. They have finally found a way forward. As Jay Rothman would say, they are “making pieces of peace.”
Paul Ingles: That was producer Jessica Ticktin speaking with TJ Turner, former president of the school board in Yellow Springs Ohio and Jeannamarie Cox, Executive Director of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. To listen to the full interview and to find out more information about all of our guests, go to: www.peacetalksradio.com. Look for Episode 3, Season 22. That is also where you will find all the programs in our series dating back to 2002. There you can see photos of our guests, read and share transcripts, sign up for our podcast and make a donation to keep this program going into the future. We are our own nonprofit organization called Good Radio Shows. You can find out more and help us out at www.peacetalksradio.com.
Nola Daves Moses is the executive director of our nonprofit organization. Jessica Ticktin is our supervising producer. Ali Adelman composed and performs our theme music. For our cofounder Suzanne Kryder and the rest of our Peace Talks Radio team, I’m Paul Ingles. Thanks so much for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
