Summer Peacebuilding Program

In his 1989 movie “Do the Right Thing”, Spike Lee explored the Kingian tension between love and hate, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Lee paints a dark picture of the state of civil society in the USA in a post-civil rights era, a reality charged with lasting racial tensions and emphasized differences.

For those of you that didn’t watch “Do the Right Thing” yet, I highly recommend it. It’s a must-watch for anyone interested in revolutionary philosophy, American history, gentrification, police brutality, and… hip hop. It’s a seriously good movie.

I was reminded of this film several times during Kazu Haga’s talk this evening, about the “militant power” of Kingian nonviolence. Spike Lee obviously did his research for the film. Haga’s presentation tied quite directly with some of the issues that Lee raises in the movie, in ways that I didn’t think about before. Take a look at this clip, for example:

(and, by the way, both clips I’m linking to have some strong language, so watch out if you’re not into that)

Radio Raheem’s monologue alludes to the differences between MLK’s strategy and Malcolm X’s, a topic which created and continues to create tensions within the Black community in the United States, and rightly so.

What strategy should we use, as oppressed peoples? In Palestine, the issue of nonviolent vs violent resistance comes up quite a lot. Palestinians became pros in nonviolent resistance. In the West Bank, weekly demonstrations have been held for years in villages like Bil’in, Ni’lin, and others, all of which have a strong nonviolent emphasis. Protesters march down the road to the separation wall, singing songs and waiving flags, nonviolently, until they’re forcefully dispersed by the Israeli military and the demonstration is over. In the U.S, MLK led the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement, calling for full equality for all American citizens in any and every context, using the same kinds of strategies.

Having experienced Israeli retaliation at it’s harshest during the Second Intifada, many Palestinians quickly realized that violent resistance is not worth it, even when it’s legitimate and justified. I know a lot less about the history of nonviolent resistance in the US, so I will not try to explain where it originated, but I am sure the reasons are similar. Turning the other cheek, as Haga explained, is an act of defiance when facing a stronger adversary. Do it. It’s easy to hit me with the back of your hand; now try with the palm.

Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” is about the relationship between interpersonal and structural violence in American cities. It’s about poverty and accountability. Who should I blame, as a poor Latino in Queens? Who should I blame as a young Black man, for being beaten down on my own block for no good reason? The movie explores every possible answer – the members of the community are to blame for their own immobility, the police are to blame, privileged White America is to blame, the rich are to blame, hell, maybe it’s because it’s too damn hot in here.

Humans live in a built realm, use and buy designed products, create and design our individual realities. All around the world people live in a built environment, whether it is designed formally or informally. What designers create affects and changes the lives of individuals and societies. Peace processes and related practitioners are often unaware of issues related to design and environments. Likewise, design professionals often do not see the importance of social, political, and economic ramifications of their work. Designers possess training and skills that could service the needs of billions living in harmful environments and alter how they live. In summary, design can address the needs of the ‘unrepresented’ and help to promote social change, peace, and security.

The design professions are underrepresented in the field of peacebuilding. Yet during our daily academic experience this past week, I have noted issues highlighting the connection between the built environment to peacebuilding. Firstly, Chief Kelly McMillin gave us a tour of the Salinas Police Department and I saw how the space limitations they are currently confronting affect their operations. For example, they use a closet for finger printing purposes. Chief Kelly also told a story about helping a soldier through his window on a day when the Police Department was closed. According to the proposed building renovation, this sort of interaction will not be possible. Instead, the proposed design will push the community even further away through the use of massive structure elements, fewer windows, and being set back even further from the street. These two distinct designs illustrate how buildings and constructed spaces respond to historic changes in societal violence.

Secondly, I noted that during Dr. Jeff Knopf’s “Nuclear Weapons and Global Security” lecture I kept asking myself, “What to do with these spaces after disarmament happens?” The example of a missile solo retrofit illustrates what can happen to space designed for nuclear war after the conflict—how it can be adapted for another use, that of housing.

Unknown. (n.d.). [Mixed Media.] Turn this…Into this... Retrieved from http://just-thinkin.net/2007/11/i-want-my-own-missile-silo/

Thirdly, we visited Rancho Cielo’s transitional housing units that students built themselves. Here the architects designed the interior hallways to be wider than normal to avoid the possibility of residents touching while passing. This one small physical design element can help to proactively eliminate future conflict between opposing groups living in a space together.

Lewis, K. (2015, July 30.). [Photographs.] Rancho, Cielo, Salinas, California, USA.

Finally, Dr. Richard Matthew concluded his lecture on “Natural Resources, Violent Conflict and Peacebuilding” with a point that reiterates what I wrote at the beginning of this essay: it is essential that more planners [architects, and designers] are needed in the peace field. Considering my original point at the beginning of this post, I could not agree more.

Dr. Richard Mathews spoke with us on Friday about natural resources, violence, and peacebuilding. Although I feel I have always known that the environment is involved in conflict (and often a victim), I was a bit struck by how much of a role the environment plays in not only the instigation of conflict but in the process of peacebuilding. I guess it makes sense. The land we live on and the environment in which we survive is vital to our existence. Dr. Matthews pointed out several challenges facing us in the 21st century, including a growing (and aging) population, economic inequality, security, public health, and others.

While these points didn’t surprise me too much, I felt drawn in by the case studies of peacebuilding he spoke about. Be it northern Pakistan or Sierra Leone, conflict broke out in places where an outside group came in and disrupted decades or centuries of stability. The exploitation of one resource (timber, diamonds) brings down the house of cards of an entire people’s livelihood. The speed of this downturn is incredible, but what is sad is how long, if ever, the population can ever recover. By the time the dust settles on the initial conflict, the cultural and societal framework  is so shaken up that no one knows how to heal it, often leading to further violence.

I was happy to hear Dr. Matthews talk about how peacebuilding does not happen in 2-5 years. I have often thought of this, particularly about a country like Haiti. After a conflict or natural disaster, the world pours in resources which likely are not used properly or get blockaded off and taken elsewhere. Then as quickly as the assistance had arrived, it is shut off and moved to the next crisis. Countries in this situation need a 5, 10, 15 and 20 plan to recover most likely. Each situation is unique and complex, making it all the more challenging. But without it we will just keep repeating a vicious cycle. Now who should be responsible for overseeing the country in such a comprehensive and long-term plan? Who knows. An actor such as the U.N. has the advantage of having a “big picture” of the situation. But such a task will take so much more than one organization to carry out. Just something more for me to think about!

The first week of the program has  come to an end, leaving us with two more weeks of exciting and challenging learning to go. The intensive schedule of the program did  in all honesty make this weekend more than welcome – especially given all of the wonderful activities Monterey has to offer. My numerous encounters with various aquatic animals and wonderful outdoor experiences have, however, also allowed  me to finally step back and truly reflect on my experience.

So, allow me to share a few late night thoughts.

Every single day of the program has offered a variety of  engaging lectures and site visits that have expanded my spectrum of what I previously considered the field of peacebuilding. Having a rather long-term experience with international humanitarian law and human rights has definitely fostered a tendency for me to almost automatically focus on the  macro level perspective of peacebuilding and the rather narrow field of international justice.  However, our visits to Salinas police station and Earthbound farms, combined with lectures ranging from topics like nuclear weapons to the role of neoliberalism have consequently left me with some rather juicy food for thought. The variety has made me realize what a multifaceted field peacebuilding really is, and that an incredible range of individuals, whether they know it or not, are involved in peacebuilding in one way or another. I do not think it is unreasonable to say that every individual in a society, either directly or indirectly, is involved in peacebuilding making it an impressively inclusive field of work.

However, this is also what makes it so incredibly complex and challenging. Peacebuilding is a process in which all aspects of society, from the micro to the macro level, truly matters, and it has to be an ongoing process even in the most peaceful of societies. Peacebuilding never stops. One can not only focus on the role of institutions like the police or judicial system, because the capacity to bring about true peace in a society also has to be reflected in our broader societal structures – involving fields such as economics, city planning, as well as education. We therefore have to make peace a central objective in all aspects of society and the interaction between them.

This fairly simple, yet critical, reminder is consequently something I am taking with me as the program enter its second week.

Last week, we visited the Salinas Police Department. Salinas is approximately 30 minutes away from Monterey and has significant problems regarding gang violence. The city’s overall violent crime is higher than California’s average. Chief of Police, Mr. Kelly McMillin, showed us around the police station, explained police training and operations. He also answered some of our questions regarding legitimacy, community involvement, and the current challenges that police officers face in the 21^st century.

I must say that this is one of my favorite sessions in the Summer Peacebuilding Program. Aside from the fact that I felt like a cool law student visiting a police department for the first time,  I learned plenty of information from our visit and obtained a clearer understanding of the complexity of the police’s role in contemporary society. This was my first experience inside a police department. Chief officer McMillin told us about his background and what led him to his career as a police officer. Then, he showed us around the police office and clearly explained the different aspects of police operations. For me, it was such a great experience to see this aspect of the state first-hand. As scholars of political science, we often have a very narrow view of state operations. We are often stuck in the “Ivory tower.” We talk about the importance of policing to project state legitimacy and eventually strengthen the justice system to promote peace and order. Without the aid of the police, the world would be inherently anarchic and anarchy is undesirable. When we talk about these concepts, we simplify them. However, visiting the police department opened my eyes to the complexity of policing.

What I learned from the visit was that being a police officer is extremely demanding. Their job as protectors of society and the law affects their personal lives in many ways. Everyday their lives are in danger and they are always placed in situations of unrelenting pressure. However, they must act upon these societal standards. I was trying to find solutions for the problems of the Salinas police department. However, the problem was utterly complex. Nevertheless, the visit was educational to me. I will keep in mind the Salinas police department throughout this program and maybe at the end, I might have a solution.

“Peacebuilding” is a strange concept. It’s loose. As I mentioned in my first post, it seems that our program’s focus on this loose concept is deliberate, and rightly so – in conflict-ridden, violence-struck areas, the only way for policymakers to achieve true long-lasting peace is to think holistically; to balance the different conditions that each “branch” of peacemaking requires. On the ground and on the policy-level, environmental, economic, legal and political aspects must be incorporated into the peacebuilding process. In other words, all kinds of violence must be eliminated for any peacebuilding process to be considered successful.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, though, I would say that in certain cases, a particular form of violence needs to be addressed first; that sometimes certain kinds of violence urgently need our attention as peacebuilders, practitioners, policymakers, etc. To me, this week highlighted the harsh structural violence inflicted upon disenfranchised communities by the neoliberal state.

As we discussed in Dr. Arrocha’s session on Wednesday, the state is primarily concerned with protecting private property rights in a neoliberal world. Marxist thinker David Harvey defines the role of the state in a neoliberal economy quite nicely: “[The state must] set up those military, defence, police and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets”.

Throughout our visit to the Salinas Police Department, Chief Kelly McMillin was preemptively defending the Police against accusations of excessive violence, racism, and militarization. I think I can speak for everyone in the group and say that Chief McMillin made a great impression on us. He seemed perfectly competent, knowledgeable, responsible, and friendly. The perfect policeman. But the problem is not the police. The real violence is inflicted by the system they represent, by the laws that protect the rich and powerful at the expense of the disenfranchised. As discussed in Dr. Arrocha’s class, Salinas’ residents are not poor by accident, and they’re not arrested by accident. They are arrested because they have no public space to protest on, because they are denied access to proper banking, because they can not keep up with a system that demands from them more than what they have.

This theme was not confined to our Salinas P.D visit. Globally and locally, the need for development is a direct consequence of the neoliberal free market economy, which is a reality – not merely an ideology – in the vast majority of countries. Poverty is a global reality not because of a lack of free market economies.

Once more, I don’t think that the structural violence that is carried out in the name of neoliberalism should be our sole focus. There are other motivations for both personal and structural violence, of course. But, from a purely utilitarian perspective, the enormous scale of structural violence brought about by the neoliberal state ought to tell us something, as possible future policymakers. Where power is concentrated and kept at the hands of the few, we should also expect to find systematic violence. We must reconsider development if we wish to make a real, sustainable impact because, surprise surprise, “free market + democracy” is not a good enough recipe.

This past week has been a whirlwind of long, informative days. In attempt to learn about what peacebuilding is, I feel as though a more encompassing question is “what isn’t peacebuilding?” From nuclear weapons to conflict and water, we have already been exposed to so many different themes that all revolve around peacebuilding, and although I acknowledge this fact, I think that we all have consciously or subconsciously determined which of these many topics interest us the most. With that said, tying all these issues into ways that I can impact change right here in Monterey and the surrounding areas regarding peace has taken priority.

Between Police Chief Kelly and then Earthbound Farms, in combination with the amazing lectures given by Professor Matthew and others, the opportunities here are plentiful. This shift in my perspective was initially shocking given my normal international focus in coursework at MIIS up until this point, and I don’t think that I have moved out of that focus just yet. However, I do think it is possible to have an interest in both and that is how my mentality has changed. How can I focus on theory and practice that can benefit both local and international communities, with certain commonalities present in both that emphasize my personal beliefs and passions; building personal relationships with individuals while having an enormous focus on culture sensitivity and language.

Finally, a emphasis by many (direct and indirect) on the environment and the importance of improving our impact on our planet when discussing development in any context really has prioritized itself on my internal list of passions. For me, change starts with the individual, living as the example that you are talking about…which is exactly what I will do (or continue to do).

Perhaps these issues seem vague. Perhaps the hippie, man-bun wearing student in me has grown. Either way, the first week in this program has opened my eyes in ways that I didn’t expect and I look forward to the personal growth that is bound to happen in the next 2 weeks, and then where my perspectives stand after.

The first week at Summer Peacebuilding Program was an exciting opportunity for me to learn from and network with different academicians, practitioners and thinkers in the field of peacebuilding. Out of the various sessions, I was very interested in learning more about peacebuilding and the relation between development and peacebuilding. Coming from a nation which is struggling to do both of these things, I want to be able to learn more about how development can be used to build peace in communities which were once hostile against each other. Nepal went through a ten year civil war, which was led with a promise for development in the poverty stricken regions of the country. After the revolution was ‘successful’, most people expected the Maoist led government to stand up to its promises, especially in the rural areas. That was in 2006. Today, almost 10-years after the end of the revolution, we have had seven Prime Ministers (unstable government), and the economy has only deteriorated. Many of the former rebels who were promised an opportunity to join the Army were rejected as they did not meet basic educational and/or physical requirements. A large majority of these young people, frustrated and rejected by the society, have taken up difficult work in the Middle East as construction workers. Others, have joined the informal sectors in the capital city, Kathmandu, leading to greater urbanization. As if these were not enough challenges, the earth decided to give us another setback with a series of earthquakes, which have destroyed our precious heritage, cost us precious lives of almost 10,000 Nepalese and pushed back the tourism industry which is our second most important sector. The situation is bleak, and it requires a lot of thought and action – both of which is not happening right now.

Coming from a situation that many development workers consider ‘difficult’, I still have hope in my country’s ability to develop. This week at the Summer Peacebuilding Program helped me maintain that hope. First of all, I learned about the relation between economic inequality and peacebuilding. As a country that is trying to come out of underdevelopment, Nepal certainly needs to ensure that our rural poor are provided with an opportunity to control their own destiny. Quite often, when focusing in development, projects are catered to meet the needs of the urban elites, while ignoring the needs of the people who are actually the driving force for change – rural poor. In the case of Nepal, this would mainly include the young people who were once part of the armed revolution. In order to change this situation, we need to provide education, vocational training and bring them into the formal sectors. The post-earthquake situation in Nepal is a wonderful opportunity to engage in these campaigns – we need more construction workers, architects, designers – and now is the time for us to train these people so that they can rise above the level of poverty while contributing to rebuild their communities. The visit to Rancho Cielo was an important example for me to understand this phenomenon – the way they engage young people in ensuring that they are able to follow their passions and then connecting them with the formal sector is absolutely fascinating.

Another session which has helped me find solutions to the problems in Nepal was during the session with Professor Jeff Langholz. He gave an engaging presentation about an innovative idea to deal with water problems in the world. During his presentation, he gave an important lesson – in today’s world, the focus is all about taking the power to the people in communities. In his examples of Airbnb, Uber and other such services which have come up over the past few years, he talked about how we can engage local communities in coming up with solutions to many challenges. I can relate to this theory because with my work in Sankhuwasabha as a team member of Diyalo Foundation, I have realized that the way we can make our schools self sustaining is by allowing communities to engage in a farming cooperative, from where, we generate income, part of which goes towards supporting local schools. Instead of depending on financial support from donors, we are now creating a community which does not need much support from outside. However, incubation is key, which is where individuals such as Professor Langholz play a big role – in inspiring communities to come with solutions for their problems and training them to self-sufficiency.

As I reflect on the past week in Monterey, I must also say that very rarely do we, as emerging members of the peacebuilding community, get an opportunity to have such intimate interaction with some of the most experienced individuals from the field. I look forward to more learning and fun, all while enjoying the beautiful (although a bit chilly!) city of Monterey.

It is becoming more and more widely acknowledged that one of the major trends of structural violence occurring in the United States (and indeed nations across the globe) is food injustice. Food injustice refers to not only the environmentally sound production of food, but also the problem also known as hunger, food insecurity, food deprivation, and a plethora of different things, according to your field and understanding of this issue. Both a symptom and a residual effect of poverty, and a topic I’ve been fortunate to study extensively, food injustice is something I’ve come to see as an extraordinarily sensitive topic. No one with a fridge full of food finds it easy to confront the privilege of their food security, and it is tremendously degrading to find oneself unable to feed one’s children. As peacebuilding scholars, we don’t need a blog post written by a peer to determine that situations of desperation and the degradation of our fellow humans, can bring us to physical violence rather easily. And with crime rates being highest in marginalised (and food insecure) communities, we see that this is already occurring.

There are many approaches to mitigating the effects of food security, and to promoting food justice. Yet when the Summer Peacebuilding Program visited Earthbound Farms yesterday, I found it very hard to connect the dots between what founder Myra Goodman calls ‘Big Organic’, and the reduction of this particular form of structural violence. I offer my praise for the innovation of Myra and her team at Earthbound in promoting the healthy production of food, and the protection of the environment, by using farming practices that promote land conservation in ways that even conventional organic farmers do not. I also promote the ideology of ‘Big Organic’, provided it preserves its environmental and ideological integrity.

However, as someone who remains conscious of the food insecure, I do perceive Big Organic to be, at times, myopic in its promotion of a ‘food revolution’. This is by no means to say that the food justice movement and the Big Organic movement have to be mutually exclusive: in fact, I would posit that the opposite is true. Yet I must say that as someone who has spent three years working with and studying America’s poorest communities – the homeless, the welfare-dependent, the indigent – I have found that the movement to ‘buy organic’, to ‘eat fresh fruits and vegetables’ and to ‘reduce your carbon footprint’ through ‘making the right choices for you and your family’ takes completely the wrong approach to the promotion of a just food system. That is, it assumes that escaping food security, and tackling the effects of this violence, is an independent choice; that the imperative case is appropriate language. The concern with this notion of food justice is that it fosters the idea among the general public that the indigent are to be held responsible for their own injustices. This is not an escape from structural violence, this is a perpetuation of it.

I make no assumption that our friends at Earthbound Farms are party to the perpetuation of this injustice against marginalised communities – to draw such a conclusion from this piece would be simplistic at best. What I do suggest is that companies such as Earthbound Farms, and ultimately any proponent of any peace, have an ethical and moral obligation to promote access to places such as Earthbound Farms and the nourishment they offer, because sadly, bags of mixed baby greens only go so far when at least 1 in 6 Americans – the estimated statistic to illustrate food insecurity in this country – cannot afford to buy them. As with most things we’ve learned in our first week in the Summer Peacebuilding Program, the solution is political. We need to first destigmatize food insecurity, then to disincentivise (through policies, of course) the production of unhealthy cash crops by corporate food producers, then to promote food justice in a meaningful way, by promoting and supporting agents for equitable change in the food system. This change needs to target the urban and rural poor, through transport to access healthy food, the establishment of affordable produce vendors in poor communities, Community-Supported Agriculture programs, enhanced subsidies for food purchasing, and raising the minimum wage, to name but a few.

The list of tasks to promote food justice is long, but food justice advocates should not be intimidated by it, for it illustrates to us that there are many possibilities for activism for a fairer food system. This also means that there are possibilities for Big Organic. Organic producers who are bigger would tend to be more financially stable, and would have bigger profit margins, have more to provide for poorer communities – they have more to give, and like us as peacebuilders, they should give whatever time and resources they can. Yet we need to remember what food injustice is: a question of resource distribution, and Big Organic won’t contribute to the problem unless it actively becomes an agent for redistribution.

This week, we talked about neoliberalism in Professor Arocha’s session. I must say I enjoyed that one a lot. He started by asking us to share the two things that immediately come to our minds when we hear the word neoliberalism. We all said different yet very connected things: McDonald’s, free trade, globalization, etc.. What was so fascinating to me was even though the majority of the words were very linked, not all of them linked in a positive relationship. In fact, Professor Arocha highlighted the irony of neoliberalism. He was very good at making us understand this concept.

In addition, he highlighted the dangers of the reduction of the public space. This caught my attention because this is a phenomenon that has been bothering me for quite a while now. Learning from our biggest teacher (the United States), my country the Philippines is also highly privatized. There is an understood convention that everything private is better and public is bad or substandard. This is not a lie at all. Abundant evidence shows that properties and facilities that are managed privately are managed better, staffed better, and almost everything better. Meanwhile, the public system that is relying on corrupt politicians and a poor society for taxes can barely compete. However, this causes multiples problems to our society. It excludes plenty of our low-income people because of the high prices of the goods and services. It removes the focus on improving the quality of public infrastructure because the people who have the power to complain, considering that filing a complaint signifies a long, costly bureaucratic process, would rather just pay to private companies that deal with the public system. Also, it changes the responsibility of the government. The system is now serving the businesses through protecting their private property rights. This is not completely bad. It becomes bad when this is done at the expense of the public. When this happens, how do we respond?

This question of public vs. private is very important to ask and reflect on. Let’s all think about it.