What is my role as a peacebuilder?

A brief reflective ramble ahead of Monday…

What is my role as peacebuilder?  Am I trying to prevent violence and hate?  Is my role to work with conflict as a creative force for change?  What kind of peace am I ‘for’?  These questions relate to our values, how we understand the current context of ‘converging crises’ and our thinking about social change.

Thinking of the three examples in Phil Champain’s thoughtful post – UK summer riots, Golden Dawn & Italian activism I am aware of my own tensions in thinking how to respond to each of these. 

The 2011 summer riots in the UK seemed to have a complex dynamic in each area.  Deciding to try and intervene in London after the shooting of Mark Duggan, perhaps by helping to facilitate communication between the Met and members of the community who gathered outside the police station waiting to speak with senior Police, seems clearer cut than thinking about how to respond to the looting that took place in Salford and Manchester. 

Despite a love of Greece my knowledge of the rise of Golden Dawn is obviously from the outside looking in.  My understanding of how people have chosen to respond to the Far Right and Hate in the UK is that there is a spectrum of responses which include: outright challenge, engagement in order to transform through interaction and myth busting, listening to needs in order to eventually bring people into dialogue and using abstract images to prompt gentle shifts in empathy.  The somewhat crude categories I have listed are approaches used both by a range of peacebuilding organisations and people working with perpetrators of hate crime.  The difference in emphasis relates to how we analyse ‘the problem’ and how we think it best to respond.  A key question for me is whether we know enough about what works in relation to challenging hate.  If context is a key driver do we focus on the cause, the symptoms or both?

In relation to the Italian activists.  How do they see themselves?  Are activists also able to be peacebuilders particularly when they are seeking to challenge the structural causes of violence?  Italian activists joined people from other social movements at Agora 99 in Madrid this November.  The aim of the gathering was a participatory conversation to share ideas about challenging austerity policies sweeping Europe:

Gonzalo Mosqueira, of the Italian organization Cantiere, explained in a session on housing that in Milan, for instance, there are more than 80,000 empty houses, and activists are working to stop the evictions of people in squatted houses who can’t pay rent. They’re also promoting new squats with the group Occupy Sfitto. “The participation of neighbors in the actions is very important,” Mosqueira said.http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/11/european-movements-share-strategies-in-madrid-ahead-of-general-strike/

As ‘peacebuilders’, ‘community builders’ or whatever we choose to call ourselves, do we need to reflect on where we cast our gaze?  Is it to the violence or unrest on the streets or should it also be toward what my colleague Jenny Pearce describes as the ‘violence of the elites?’  Given the context of our times do we need to manage peace or actively strive for it?