Belfast: Breaking through the mental barriers
2:27 PM Fri, Oct 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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Thursday, 10/11/2007 -- At the nonviolence training, a long discussion develops on the fourth principle of accepting suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause, and the sixth principle, which states that the universe is on the side of justice. Nonviolence is simple to those who look to understand it rationally, but it takes a lifetime for those who want to live by it.
In Northern Ireland, outreach workers/youth workers go to college to study their craft. Deidre, the outreach supervisor at Forthspring, and I discussed the relative merits and weaknesses of a highly structured outreach program. We agreed that a program should have a ‘soul.’ A balance between professionalism and an open-minded passion to make a difference might be the key.
The youth workers at Forthspring found an ingenious way to help the youth break through mental barriers. They organized a soccer game at the open gates of the 'peace wall.' If a team wanted to score a goal they had to enter the half of the field that was in the other neighborhood, and so kids who never set foot on the Catholic or the Protestant side of the 'peace wall,' rushed through like Beckham on their way to score a goal, finding themselves unperturbed by their own happy transgression.
We are dinner guests of two older Catholic nuns, Bridgett and Myra, who live by the 'peace wall' on the Protestant side. They had been startled numerous times by stones flying over the wall and through their windows. They found a way to talk to the youth. It has been quiet since October of 2006. If elderly nuns can seek and talk to rowdy youth, might we?
We took a cab, with a Catholic driver, father of two. He thought it was more dangerous now to drive than during ‘the troubles’, because then one knew who to avoid, and now, anti-social behavior can be random and unexpected. He proceeded to list the old man who tried to stop two girls and two boys from stealing his car, and was murdered; the women from abroad who got raped while her family was on the cellphone with her.
As we drove through the Protestant neighborhood on Shankill Road, he said that here they (the paramilitaries) did not lose control, where as in his neighborhood, The Falls, they (the IRA) did. I asked why the difference? His reply was that the IRA is accountable to Catholic elected officials, while the Protestant paramilitaries are not beholden to a particular Protestant elected party.
Blame it on the Americans, he said sadly. The Game Boy and other video and violent media programming that make it harder for parents to raise their kids safely.
-- By Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence.
Belfast: A society in transition faces new challenges10:05 AM Fri, Oct 12, 2007 | Permalink | Email
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Wednesday, 10/10/2007 -- The youth workers who are going through our training are presenting today examples of the six principles of nonviolence. On 'avoiding internal violence’, Musti, who is a Kurd from Turkey, asks whether a hunger strike that ends in death, as it recently did for some women in Turkish prisons, is not internal violence. A discussion ensues.
A game invented by the trainees places a sticker on ones’ forehead and through repeated questions one has to discover who one is. The commitment of the Forthspring organization to expanding its peace work is remarkable.
Eddie, the former youth worker at Forthspring, who visited us in Providence, and now works with at-risk youth in group homes and secure facilities, explains that in the past the Catholic neighborhoods were strongly controlled by the IRA, and one positive effect was that drug dealing was not allowed, nor was drug use by youth. Control was severe through ‘kneecapping,’ the practice of shooting a person in the knee as punishment. It is a visible punishment that indicated betrayal or illicit activity. For drug use, a person would be dropped in a manhole, blind-folded, for a day.
The control is much looser now that the conflict is largely over, and one negative effect is that drug dealers have less to fear. Community discipline and enforcement are down, and youth drug experimentation starts a lot younger, at the age of 12 or 13.
It is 7:30 p.m., and Deidre, outreach supervisor at Forthspring, and Eddie, former outreach worker at Forthspring, take us on an outreach walk through the Protestant neighborhood of Upper Shankill, and Catholic neighborhood of Springfield. We cross the ‘peace wall’ from Springfield Road into the Protestant neighborhood. Eddie says that the youth describe throwing bricks and bottles across the wall as ‘recreational rioting.’
Before President Clinton came to Belfast in 1996, the city’s leaders decided that the flimsy corrugated fence would not look good on the international news, and they invested in a taller, more robust fence. It has an eerie sound when it is windy. Developers built housing for pensioners by the wall. They reasoned that no one would throw bottles and rocks at pensioners. The opposite happened.
There is some talk about taking the peace wall down. Politicians are pushing for it. The sense we got from people living on both sides of the road is that they are not quite ready. Things are quieter. A few weeks back, in the nearby North Belfast, some Catholic youth came down to a busy intersection and threw some rocks.
We look at two houses that are inhabited by Catholics who are in the Protestant side. They are supported strongly by the neighborhood organization.
Up the street, a larger than usual Swastika was painted on a wall. We are told that not always the full meaning is clear to those who draw it, and that it often represents WASP (White Ango-Saxon Protestant) sentiment.
The paramilitaries used to collect 50 pence from 10 and 11 year olds as membership dues. Kids thought it was cool. Those who smartened up by 16 or 17 and wanted out had to pay 2000 pounds, which is a fortune. They could choose punishment instead. While in the group, as they got older, they needed to prove themselves, and their loyalty to the cause.
The paramilitaries still control to some extent the enforcement of mores in the community. Some youth killed a cat. The lady called not the police, but the
paramilitaries and asked that it be sorted out, which means taken care of through violent punishment. The youth had an ’appointment’ at a local pub, known as a stronghold of a paramilitary group. The youth knew his hand would be broken.
That is barbaric, not much different from laws in Saudi Arabia, where a thief might have their hand cut off. Good people live with the knowledge that this is a common practice. In our 2005 visit to Belfast, a group of militants asked me how we deal with offending youth. They said that the youth did not respect or care much about the struggle of their Catholic or Protestant community. They want to live fast, get a nice car, live the life they see on global television. The militants said that the only tool they know how to use for discipline is ‘kneecapping’, shooting a person in the knee. They were genuinely seeking another way to stop their youth from getting involved with ‘anti-social’ behavior.
It is easy to dismiss their dilemma as primitive barbarism. Societies in conflict have generally narrower allowance of freedoms. Northern Ireland is in a transition from intense religious-sectarian conflict to a ‘normal’, ‘western’ society, and there is constant discussion on the ills that ‘normal’ modern western society brings with it.
The adults are constantly talking with concern about the rise in drug and alcohol use among youth. I was asked in the past by Palestinians if the freedoms we enjoy in the ‘West’ are worth the rapes, murders, and other ills. The Northern Irish society is in transition and resembles a scuba diver coming slowly for air, careful not to emerge too fast and suffer from decompression illness. Many understand that the disciplinary methods need to change, but are not sure what can replace them, and know that the harsh discipline they use works. They are not sure that urging youth to act well will work. They are afraid that if they move too fast, and discard their current harsh methods, their society will go into a tailspin of anti-social behavior. In addition, governmental form of control, mainly the police, is only slowly emerging from decades of deep distrust from the community, which forced each community, Catholic and Protestant, to enforce their own behavior codes.
With 15,000 homicides a year in the USA, I often think is the democratic model, which I deeply love, truly better? Is the democratic model applied better somewhere else? I reject the Northern Ireland model, though I understand the context within which it grew, and I admire the honest discussion and care that community activists and the police display in thinking about the generation of youth that is now growing in a mainly post-conflict era.
I also am completely unimpressed with the American model, where per-capita murder rates in the past 30 years are almost identical to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland had a good excuse: civil war. What is the excuse for the USA high murder rates? Are other democracies, as they move up in wealth, gap between rich and poor, and into global culture, destined to see their youth suffer from lack of direction, good opportunities and education, resulting in higher depression, drug use, and increased violence? This issue is also emerging as a topic in my country, Israel, a place that is far from resolving its own ‘sectarian’ conflict with the Palestinians, but which is experiencing an increase of social ills.
-- By Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence.
October 11
Tuesday. 10/9/07 Today is the deadline for the UDA (Ulster Defense Association), a Protestant paramilitary group, to start putting their weapons ‘beyond use’.
They face a deadline from the minister of education, who threatened to take away 1.2 million British pounds that go to the UDA reconciliation project managed by Farsett (which manages the hostel where we are staying in an area divided between Catholics & Protestants).
The nonviolence training is in its second day and is going well. The people we train are mainly youth workers who are eager to use the tools of nonviolence in the 'interface' area where they work. An 'interface area is an area where Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods come into contact. These areas were the hotspots during the conflict or ‘troubles’ that dominated the lives of residents in Northern Ireland for decades. Since the agreement of 1994, steady progress has been made, with significant reductions in sectarian violence.
We take a cab with a Catholic driver, who also says that things are much better. He almost quit driving in 1994 after he was shot for the second time. Cab drivers here are often targets of sectarian violence. It was well known what cab companies were Catholic and Protestant, and cab drivers were lured by phone from the city center to rival neighborhoods, and often they were robbed and shot.
The cab driver added that when he grew up they had very little, and that youth now often get caught in the world of cheap drugs and alcohol. Later in the night, the BBC aired a program on the rising random violence in Belfast that is nonsectarian, but is closely related to drugs and alcohol. Attacks on cab drivers have increased by 50 percent in the past three years in Belfast. A pill of ecstasy now costs 2.30 British pounds.
The television reporter summarized: "The kids are suffering violence from access to cheap booze and drugs, but they are not the ones supplying them." I doubt that a reporter would have made the same comment in the USA. We often vilify youth. It is easier than taking responsibility.
My colleagues laugh at my habit of engaging everyone I meet here with a series of questions. My guess was that upon our return to Belfast, we would find a much quieter city. I was curious to find out if the international crowd that is attracted to conflicts pulled out of town, taking the funding with it.
Indeed, President Clinton was down the road from where we stayed a few years back, announcing amid great fanfare the establishment of a new university. The field is still empty.
A wise youth worker commented that the paramilitary wall paintings are still around for the sake of the tourists, "Otherwise, why else would they come?"
We end up at a beautiful village of Hillsborough. The home to the queen when she visits Northern Ireland. It is a very different place than Belfast.
-- By Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence.
10/8/2007. Monday. First day of nonviolence training. A group of Forthspring youth workers are eager to learn the basics of nonviolence. It is a long day of training that starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m.
Ajay and Sal go over to an elementary school in Shankill Road, opposite the Orange Order Hall, and for years the heart of Protestant militant sentiment in Northern Ireland. The school principal says that there are fewer traumatized kids in school now than in the past. He doesn't seriously worry about the future of as many of his children as he once did.
Still, dropout rates are very high in neighborhoods like this. Parenting is a big issue, as well as alcohol in the home. Some kids are known to miss Mondays or Fridays, due to parents drinking on the weekend.
The school is clean and orderly, and the staff manages with little resources. Currently there is a strike of teachers’ assistants.
We play football (soccer) at night in Holywood, a mainly Protestant suburb of Belfast. Later in the Dirty Duck pub, I ask a fairly conservative banker, whose father use to be the principal of the elementary school we visited in the Shankill earlier today, why he thought the conflict has abated.
I prefaced my question by saying that I understand that he does not take much stock in nonviolence and mediations as factors in the end of hostilities. He smiled and said: "I think both sides were exhausted."
I said that I agree, and that despite the common belief that people who work for peace are naïve, we count on people becoming fatigued with conflict.
In fact that is exactly why our streetworkers visit young people in prison, or at the hospital in the aftermath of a shooting. The often projected "excitement" of gang or paramilitary violence looks a lot less attractive from a hospital bed-side or at a funeral parlor.
-- By Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence.
10/7/2007. Sunday. I start the day with an early run through Sandy Row, a strong hold of Protestant unionism. The store-front crates here are down and little graffiti is in evidence, a sign that the sectarian conflict is quieter. I continue to run up the hill and end up at the Queens College area, which is so close yet worlds apart.
I think to myself that really there are three groups in Ireland: The Catholics, the poor Protestants who live in areas like Sandy Row or the Shankhill Road, and the Protestants who have access to power and England, as those who live near the college.
As in America, the violence is mainly concentrated in the poor areas. I was told that in North Belfast, an area with many ‘interfaces’ between Catholics and Protestants, 25 percent of the killings took place.
I continue and run back toward Sandy Row and up Donegal Street, where Union Jack, UVF and UDA flags are flown, the latter two being Protestant paramilitary groups.
Swastika’s are noticeable. Written in black markers, they express resentment toward the newly emergent immigrant community, and some links to fascist groups. With the sectarian conflict being much reduced, the relative calm and a better economy attract a mainly Eastern European and some African workforce. Some Protestants and Catholics are less than happy that the forces of globalization are impacting their communities before they had a proper chance to benefit from the end of hostilities.
I end my run at the Methodist Church on Sandy Row.
Later we enjoy a great breakfast at an overcrowded and lively Maggie Mays, as well as a stroll through Queens College’s Botanical Garden, where bended glass and metal was first installed, prior to the famous Kew Gardens.
At night we meet for dinner with the director of Forthspring Inter Community Group, Bernie Laverty. The organization, located near the ‘peace wall’ that divides the Catholic and Protestant communities, is dedicated to promoting dialogue, peace and dignity for all.
Bernie's partner, Karl, joins her. Karl is a longtime trainer on reconciliation and peace. Their commitment to peace and justice is inspiring.
On the ride home, the Protestant cab driver tells us that things are definitely better. Now he can drive to almost every Catholic neighborhood, even at night.
-- By Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence.
The last few months at the Institute have been challenging, and I am glad to be in a foreign country. With me are Father Ray Malm, a co-founder of the Institute and a priest at Saint Michael’s Parish on Providence’s South Side; Maggie Meany, operations director at Amos House, and a trainer at the Institute; Ajay Benton, program manager, for the Streetworkers Program at the Institute; and Sal Monteiro, streetworker and trainer at the Institute.
It is a particular joy to bring along two streetworkers to experience another culture.
We are returning to Belfast to train Protestants and Catholics in nonviolence and share with the youth workers in Belfast the lessons from Providence. For Ajay and Sal it is their first trip abroad.
They are eager to share their stories and knowledge of growing amid challenges in Providence; of their later work as youth workers in Providence, using the tools of nonviolence. I imagine that Belfast is doing better than when we last visited in the summer of 2005, when the city emerged from nightly riots.
We enjoy a stroll through the center of Belfast. At a restaurant the Catholic waitress says that "nothing will change." She explains that the former combatants still use force to extort protection monies.
Later we end at the Crown Pub, considered a neutral place. We had a discussion with Protestants and former soldiers, who initially said that "nothing will change" with the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. When I pressed them that the city looks better than in 2005, they agreed. After further reflection one added: "The excitement is gone."
I find this statement very true to what drives conflicts. There needs to be an ideological core to conflicts, driven by fairly well-argued grievance or cause. Yet, often a large number of those who participate in the conflict are young males who to some extent like the "excitement."
Conflicts make for strange bedfellows. Some Protestants support my country, Israel, as it is often the case that the Catholics support the Palestinians. There was a lot of talk about how great the Israeli army is.
Ajay and Sal, like true streetworkers, waste no time in making friends in Belfast. They end up going around town with an African activist, who is promptly denied access to all clubs. Because of past sectarian violence in Belfast, bouncers are well adapted to recognize troublemakers.
-- By Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence.
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