The Way of Peace: Conflict Mediators Tom and Darylene Shea Find a way when all else Fails

“One definition of conflict mediation is that it involves helping people to have a difficult conversation,“ says Tom Shea.
Those “conversations“ between angry people can be over anything from barking dogs and noisy teenagers to irritation over the folk festival next door.
As founders of the five-county Conflict Resolution Service in Northern Michigan, and the instigators of similar groups all over the state, mediators Tom and Darylene Shea have been involved in soothing tempers and finding a solution for just about any sort of problem you can imagine. This Thursday, Sept. 26, they‘ll be honored for their contribution to the State‘s justice system with an award presented by the Michigan Bar Association at the Amway Center in Grand Rapids.
“What we do is help people surface with their issues and then help them to talk about it,“ says Shea.
And that‘s not all; through the years, the couple have conducted over 15 mediator courses, training between 300-400 volunteers statewide in conflict resolution. Their local group includes 42 volunteer mediators serving Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Benzie, Wexford and Missaukee counties, and there are 26 such conflict resolution centers which they helped launch throughout Michigan, including Petoskey, Gaylord and the Upper Peninsula.

BEGINNINGS
Tom and Darylene‘s interest in conflict resolution goes back to their days as peace activists opposing the Vietnam War in the ‘70s, as participants in the Nuclear Freeze movement in the ‘80s, the Michigan Peace Team in the ‘90s, and with other pacifist causes. If there‘s a cause related to peace in Northern Michigan -- such as the Women in Black who march every Friday in Traverse City -- you‘ll almost always find Tom and Darylene out on the street, drumming up public support.
“We went to the second Conference on Disarmament together back in 1982 when there were a million people marching on the streets of New York that day,“ Tom recalls. The huge turnout for the Nuclear Freeze demonstration rattled the Reagan administration, leading to a disarmament treaty with the then-Soviet Union.
Their interest in conflict resolution developed in the early ‘80s when Darylene was working as a home care nurse and Tom served as an administrator for Community Family and Children‘s Services in Traverse City.
“I had followed international affairs from way back with the peace movement, yet being involved in middle management, I found myself involved in conflicts on the job all the time,“ he recalls. “I had to find a way to deal with the problems of the people who worked both below and above me.“
At Darylene‘s suggestion, the two attended a course in conflict mediation in the early ‘80s at a time when there was little written on the subject. That experience led them to a course taught by Quakers at Swarthmore College in 1986.

BIGGER THINGS
The Shea‘s interest in conflict resolution blossomed. Together, they developed and taught a 40-hour graduate couse in leadership skills for the Institute on Creative Conflict Management at Syracuse University from 1988-‘91, along with similar courses at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. They also received training in the Michigan model of conflict resolution from Martha Wierick, “everybody‘s Aunt Bee,“ who was a Grand Rapids-based pioneer in the field. With Wierick, the Sheas co-trained Michigan‘s first class of 25-35 mediators in 1990.
At the same time, Michigan‘s court system was awash with civil cases which slowed the wheels of justice to a crawl.
“There are 13 ways to deal with a court case before it goes to trial, including arbitration, evaluation and mediation,“ Tom notes. “Of civil cases, only four percent reach the trial stage.“
Civil courts face everything from neighbor disputes over garbage, noise and abandoned cars, to family arguments over wills, property boundary conflicts, falling-outs by business partners... in short, anything and everything that two people might disagree over.
“Judge Phil Rogers really took some leadership in his court,“ Tom recalls. “He said that some parties should go to Conflict Resolution Service before moving the case forward.“
The Sheas also received the support of Traverse City Police Chief Ralph Soffredine and local attorneys such as Peter Doren. Ultimately, their work was validated by the Michigan Legislature, which brought the state to the forefront of conflict mediation across the country.
“A new state law was written which verifies this kind of mediation,“ Tom says. “Today, you can come to a mediator as part of an overall plan for resolving your case.“

WHAT IT IS
“When someone comes to mediation, they‘re generally doing it because they want to keep the relationship,“ Darylene says. “They may be family or neighbors who decide they want to stay on good terms. We help set up a process where we can call in experts if they‘re needed.“
Sometimes, a simple phone call is all that‘s needed. A neighbor may not realize, for instance, that his barking dog is a problem. Other times, a party may be offended to think that mediation may be needed, as was the case with one family whose kids were in a dispute with another.
Family businesses are the worst, says Tom, along with disputes over wills or what to do about aging parents. “First you have to let them vent and get that out,“ he says.
“It‘s a pretty rigid structure,“ Darylene adds of the mediation process. “You let each side get it out and then start a dialogue.“ Typically, a donation of $25 to $75 is requested to help fund the non-profit organization.
When the mediation process is beyond the scope of a volunteer, it may be referred to a professional, as was the case when Traverse City attorney Peter Doren mediated the dispute between the BlissFest and its neighbors last spring.
The mediation process brings out the worst -- and then the best -- in people.
“Sometimes you get into a mediation a little way and you start thinking, ‘what am I doing here? These people are out of their minds!‘ And then a minute later, they settle and everyone‘s friendly again,“ Darylene says. “We‘ve had people come in so angry with each other that it‘s impossible to describe how angry they are, and then they‘re hugging each other when they leave.“

For information on Conflict Resolution Service, call 231-941-5835.

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SIDEBAR

Give Peace a Chance
A mediator‘s view of the Middle East

By Robert Downes

Solving the problems of the Middle East may not be easy, but it‘s possible, say conflict resolution mediators Tom and Darylene Shea.
“You‘ve got to get at the causes,“ says Tom. “I don‘t think it‘s any more possible to have a mediation with al Queda than it would have been with Al Capone, but you can still look at the causes which created terrorism in the first place.
A member of the Michigan Peace Team‘s delegation to the Palestinian refugee camps in Hebron in 1995 and ‘97, Shea notes that youth, unemployment, poverty and a lack of basic freedoms and human rights all contribute to the powderkeg in the Mid East.
“Eighty percent of the people in the Mid East are under the age of 30 and unemployed or underemployed,“ he says. “They‘re living with an extreme sense of frustration under these oppressive governments and they channel their aggression to strike out in political groups. When you add religious fanaticism to these other problems, there are people who lash out.“
In Israel, the feuding parties have their own unique situation, set apart from the Islamic fundamentalism of the Arab world. Tom notes that Palestinian problems began with what they call “the Catastrophe“ of 1948, in which Israeli forces led by Ben-Gurion evacuated and destroyed 420 Arab villages in an ethnic cleansing that still echoes with blood feuds and violence in Israel today.
Most visitors to Israel see its democratic side and prosperity, but not the ugly reality of the refugee camps, Darylene says. The Sheas say that news from the camps is brutally suppressed, giving the outside world little or no view of what goes on beyond official Israeli press handouts. “When I was in Hebron five years ago, here was a Palestinian journalist shot in the leg and another Palestinian journalist shot and killed by Israeli troops,“ Tom says.
“The Palestinians tried non-violence and they (Israeli troops) just come in and shoot them down,“ Darylene says. “They don‘t have any media to let the world know that they‘ve tried non-violent solutions.“ She says the failure of non-violent means and expression led to the suicide bombings.
Tom adds that in America, 120 pro-Israeli political action groups (PACs) keep U.S. legislators occupied with a one-sided vision of events in Israel, without any resolution of Palestinian concerns in sight.
The United States also periodically blows it with band-aid diplomacy, as in the case with its proxy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union pulled out of Kabul, the U.S. left the shattered country and its native allies to the mercy of the Taliban.
“If we‘d stayed there and established schools and an economy, we wouldn‘t have the problems with terrorists that we have today,“ Darylene says. “There‘s not support for people like Osama bin Laden when there‘s no poverty.“
Still, the Sheas see hope for Israel‘s problems. They note that a peace movement is uniting progressive Jews and Palestinians in the country, sometimes demonstrating together at great personal risk. Common Ground also hired 600 Palestinian and 525 Israeli pollsters this year to gauge the possibility of peace in the country. “Both parties found that the great majority of people there are willing to work towards a non-violent solution.“

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