Best Of Peace Talks 20 Years

Arianne Kerry, Sunday School Student at First Unitarian Church, Albuquerque: Well, take Martin Luther King for an example. He was trying to make world peace for the African Americans. He was saying to them, you know, don’t fight about it. The white men are your brothers.

Dana Brown, Peace Brigades International: And he just burst into tears. It was just a gorgeous moment that I think typifies what we are there to do, which is allow people to do the work that they want to be doing so that their country can move forward.

Daniel Goleman, author/researcher, “Emotional Intelligence”: One thing I or any of us can do is remind ourselves that our first urge to get angry is probably coming from the amygdala and we need to give the rest of our brain time to catch up.

Mark Johnson, "Playing for Change" Project: Religion and politics, they can be beautiful, but they guarantee division. Music can guarantee connection. Music is, in my opinion, the best way.

Paul Ingles, host:  We had a conversation with University of Toronto Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon about the awarding of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, University of Toronto: I think it’s good. I think that people do need to recognize that climate change has security implications. In combination with other factors, it can lead to violence. It can lead to societal breakdown. It can lead to enormous trauma within societies. There are some people who think that climate change doesn’t have any security implications at all, but I think they’re wrong.

Paul Ingles, host:  We heard from Vietnam veterans about their journeys back to Vietnam to meet their former enemies.

Al Plapp, Vietnam Veteran who returned to visit Vietnam: Tom Tien was a Vietcong, a former enemy. He greeted us with a big smile and hugs. He wants to hear your story. He told us his story. “We shot him and left him for dead, but he held no grudge.”

Paul Ingles, host:  Also, we met prison inmates who reformed their lives with the help of a special in-prison program.

James Alexander, Former Prison Inmate: When you find someone to treat you like a human being not like you are someone to be thrown away, it has an impact on you and it had a great impact on me.

Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States: One of the things that I’ve learned in the last 20 years since I left the White House much more clearly than I did when I was President …

Paul Ingles, host: Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter talked with us the year he won the prize in 2002.

Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States: There is no way to separate a commitment to justice and peace and freedom and democracy and human rights and environmental quality and the alleviation of suffering. That’s why we have seen that in order to maintain peace in a country, you really have to deal with the most abject facets of life because quite often when people have no hope and no self-respect and no prospect for a bare existence, they tend to turn to anger and begin a civil war or lash out at their neighbors.
                       
You can’t separate the alleviation of suffering or environmental degradation when people lose their land and lose their streams from their inclination to despise their leaders or even to hate distant success stories like in America. They’re all interrelated. That’s the basic point.

Paul Ingles, host: One of our most inspiring guests was Azim Khamisa whose son Tariq was murdered in a random act of gang violence on the streets of San Diego in 1995. Instead of seeking revenge, Azim forgave his sons’ imprisoned killer and then partnered with the killer’s grandfather and created a school program aimed at stopping the violence.

Azim Khamisa, TKF Foundation: I started with a very simple premise, that violence is a learned behavior. Nobody was born violent. None of our children were born violent. If you accept that violence is a learned behavior, non-violence can also be a learned behavior. Who teaches that? At TKF, we do teach it.
                       
And let me answer your question by an example. We have a lesson on empathy. The theme of empathy is I don’t know you until I walk a mile in your shoes and you don’t know me until you walk a mile in my shoes.
                       
There was a seventh grader named Alex who had all the signs, the sway, the encounter, the colors. You could see a want to be gang member written all over this kid.
                       
Somehow this lesson on empathy got to him. The homework was that they have to practice empathy for the whole week and the week after before they get their lesson on compassion.
                       
They’re asked to share their homework on empathy. When the teacher asked, “Who wants to share their lesson on empathy?” it was Alex. Remember this is the most disruptive kid in the class. What he shared was very powerful. He said, “As I was walking in my hood last weekend, a kid gave me a dirty, angry look.”
                       
“The rules of the hood are that if a kid gives you a dirty, angry look, you go beat him up. But because you taught me that you don’t know me until you walk a mile in my shoes and I don’t know you until you walk a mile in my shoes, I walked up to this kid and said, ‘Why are you giving me a dirty look?’ The kid said, ‘I’m not giving you a dirty look. I am angry because my brother was shot and killed last night.’”
                       
“What did you do, Alex?” “I held his hand. We cried together. I gave him a hug. I told him, ‘I know how you feel because I lost my uncle six months ago.’”
                       
One lesson! You think that this kid walks the hood every weekend. Tell me you can’t teach non-violence! You see the power of this. What could have become a fight became a compassionate action. One of the key messages that we teach is that from conflict love and unity are possible.

Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Model Founder: Nonviolent communication says let’s learn how to be honest about how we are.  First of all, tell people specifically what they are doing that is or is not contributing to our well-being. Be very specific about that and do not mix in any diagnoses or any analyses. Just a clear observation.  Then, once we’ve done that, we’re honest with people, but we’re honest with them from the heart by telling them what is alive in us when they do that and that more specifically is how we feel, what emotions we feel. We connect our feelings to our needs.
                       
Then we follow that up with the other question, “What would make life more wonderful?” We answer that with a very clear request, not using any fuzzy language, but exactly what we would like back from that person at this moment in response to what we have said, in response to the fact that some of our needs are not getting met by their behavior.
                       
Many people use the mechanics hoping that it will be a way of getting what they want. One of the hardest things for people to give up in using nonviolent communication is the objective of winning, getting what they want.
                       
Now when I say that many people think then that I’m suggesting that you be a chump and just give up your needs and give in. No, no, not at all. The objective is to create the quality of connection that will get everybody’s needs met. That means that we cannot be addicted to getting our request fulfilled by the other person. It means that we're more interested in the quality of connection than in any specific result.

Roxy Manning, NVC Trainer: Peace starts within, right? I think about peace happening in many different places. There is a peace in myself. How am I holding myself?
                       
I know that when I started NVC, one of the things that really powerfully drew me to it was my realization that I had internalized all of society’s judgements about me. I’m a black woman. I’m an immigrant. I am fat by what people would normally consider an ideal body weight. I’m hearing impaired. I’ve got a lot of different things that people discriminate against and I had internalized a lot of negative messages about these. I found myself moving through the world judging myself harshly about everything.
                       
It is hard to create peace, to look at other people nonjudgmentally when we are applying that to ourselves. So, start to look at how you’re holding yourself. Is there a way to bring more compassion to yourself and then to the people in your inner circle and then to widen that to the people in your community and then to the people who you don’t see as part of your community?
                       
Peace actually has to start from within because otherwise we just start to perpetuate these dynamics that also spread out and keep us divided from each other.

Karl Steyaert, Family Systems Therapist: When we live together with other people, particularly if we do so over a long period of time and we develop a bit more closeness with each other, we begin to have reactivate family pattern dynamics. We begin to have the same kind of attachment distress or attachment bonding. Both have plus sides and some of the challenges that we had with our family of origin.
                       
The classic example is one that I often go back to, the dirty dishes and how often that becomes a lightning rod in so many communities because our core childhood reaction to caring for common space, whether it’s cleanliness or noise can bring up a lot.

Maria Silvia, Community Facilitator: My daughter is 20 years old, and she moved in last year for the first time with a college friend. I could see the trainwreck ahead. They had a good relationship, lots of things in common, but despite my guidance to my daughter, they did not talk about agreements around the shared space.
                       
Preemptive talks are so powerful and yet, at least in the societies that I navigate, people are so reluctant to do that. We are clinging onto just finding the right person. If we find the right person, we don’t need to go through all that mundane unpleasantness. We are just so addicted to this idea of romance and the one and the person who will make it all perfect, we just land crashing from that one.

Suzanne Kryder (host):  Kevin, back to what Victor was saying about emotional fluency. Different generations speak different languages, right? So, what tips do you have? It’s like you have to interpret across this generation between your generation and your mom and dad’s generation. What tips do you have for other young people listening to our show about how to communicate feelings with their parents?

Kevin Malone, Student: Okay, well, I know that kids today feel that their world and our experience with our friends and youth today is something completely alien and separate from anything that our parents can relate to which makes it very difficult for us to try to explain what’s going on to our parents, so from time to time, we try to come up with a scenario that they can relate to more which may or may not be the truth.
                       
I think that kids today need to realize that their parents, because they love you, want to relate to what you’re going through. They want to understand your experiences. You should not worry about their response because they are going to be shocked at what you experience every day, but they need to understand that before you can relate to them at all.

Victor LaCerva, MD, podcast host: I would just add something quickly to that if I may and that is that when young people do begin to open up about some of what’s happening in their lives, a lot of times we as parents want to get into fix-it mode which then in some ways actually becomes a barrier to intimacy. We need to be really careful about that. Sometimes all we need to do is say, “Oh, that’s interesting” or “Tell me more about that” and just keep inviting them as opposed to saying, “This is what I would do,” or right away getting in there and trying to fix it.
                       
Again, that notion of stepping back and getting into active listening mode as Lily Tomlin says, “Listen with the intensity normally reserved for speaking” or “Listen as if there is a thief in the house.” It’s an active process of just trying to be present and not get into fix-it mode which can shut things down.

May Freed, Creativity for Peace Camp Counselor: Many times, instead of really listening, we’re thinking about how we’re going to respond and that is not listening. That is something that needs to be practiced so hard because it’s not something that comes naturally. When you’re a listener, it’s not about you, it’s about the other person, so give them their place. In this conflict and in life in general, it helps.

Carol Boss, Host: I want to ask both of you, do you think that how to listen and how to speak and being able to see the humanity in the other is a pathway to peace?

May Freed, Creativity for Peace Camp Counselor: Absolutely. When you learn to speak your truth, people are listening. When you try to speak other people’s truths or a nation’s truths it just causes antagonism, but when you speak your own truth, people will notice that you are a human being and nobody can ignore that for the long term because everybody has a human being inside of them.
                       
When you show that you are a human being, it’s much, much easier to listen to you as a human being and to treat you better. I think that’s a secret that many people don’t know. They try to talk as if they’re representing a group or an idea instead of just representing themselves.

Iris Chen, Author, “Untigering”: If we just normalize suffering so much then we don’t feel any motivation to help change the suffering of others or to validate when others suffer then we may say, “That’s just the way life is.”
                       
I think it’s something that I can honor and have understanding and compassion for and yet learn how to deal with my own suffering with more wholeness, more wholeheartedness where I allow myself to feel, I allow myself to weep and to grieve, to feel depression, to feel lonely, but to find strength in those feelings instead of strength in not feeling.
                       
I mean, imagine how much courage it actually takes to be vulnerable. That is actually such a huge sign of strength where we just know that our love and our worth is grounded enough where we can show our weaknesses to other people and not feel threatened and insecure. It’s because I know that I am loved and worthy that I do know that I have something to offer the world not from a place of not knowing if I’m worthy and trying to do all these things to try to earn my worthiness.
                       
I do believe that all of us have something to offer the world. It doesn’t have to look superhuman, but just us being ourselves is such a gift. If we could all realize how amazing we are and come from that place of rootedness in our deity in some ways, in the god likeness in all of us, that’s where the power comes from. Again, that’s not based on our performance, it’s just who we are.

Paul Ingles, host: You’ll notice a lot of these shows focused on crafting inner peace and interpersonal peace and better communication and self-talk intending to reinforce the message in the old spiritual, “Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me.” Our own personal responsibility for cultivating a culture of peace has been a key focus of Peace Talks Radio in its first 20 years.
                       
Today we’re mostly interested in focusing on the message in this presentation and a little bit less on worrying about who the messenger is, but you can be sure that we’ve always done our best to vet our guests for their thoughtful take on topics and for being a good contributor to the reasoned discourse that seems all too rare to come by in our world today.
                       
Now a few more from the hundreds of voices that we’ve shared our platform with over 20 years of Peace Talks Radio.

Kathleen O’Malley, Albuquerque psychotherapist & activist: I know I always tell this story, but it really is one that I hold onto about my little Zen bird who starts off on a long flight across a massive country. And as the bird flies, he sees a little whisp of smoke off in the distance. As the bird approaches, he sees huge billowing smoke and recognizes that there is a monstrous fire that is destroying the land. The bird turned around and went back to where he had started because there was a teeny tiny pond containing a drop of water to start the flight back to the fire.
                       
I remember hearing that story and being so disturbed by it, the dharma instructor at the end of that story said, “And this is how you must live, knowing it won’t make any difference. You have to do it anyway.” I think in moments in time like this, at least for me, I keep hearing that drop knowing that it probably won’t make any difference, but I have to do it anyway.

Justin Remer-Thamert, New Mexico Faith Coalition for Immigrant Justice:  There is an inherent risk to standing up. I don’t think that in my personal journey that is something that I want to paralyze me. Courageous resistance is something that we learn step by step. Standing up when we see a very small act can lead us to standing up when we see something bigger happen.
                       
Especially at this moment in time when we’re seeing across the globe so much division and so much xenophobia, the cost of not standing up will end up being something that is much more problematic than being willing to take the risk that it bears on our lives.
                       
Our lives and our spiritual journey are intertwined. While I may aspire toward letting go of ego and moving into higher connections with source energy, I also am living in the physical plane and want to acknowledge my neighbors who don’t have the same privileges that I do or that have been historically oppressed and learn how to extend that liberation onto others and stand with others who are struggling for liberation.
                       
We hear a narrative of people who are rapists and murderers and terrorists, but that is not the reality. First, knowing the facts is helpful. Second, understand the story is helpful.
                       
We are seeing thousands of Central American migrants coming to the United States and they are largely people under five feet tall who are very skinny. They are often times malnourished because of how painful and problematic the journey was for them to bring their children to this country.
                       
Just looking at someone like that, they don’t pose a threat to us. I think that if those people are people of faith, recognizing that our faith calls us to be kind and extend generosity and hospitality to our neighbors, particularly to people that we don’t know, the people who may be called strangers in some traditions.

John Biewen, Radio Producer, “Seeing White”: All it takes for our white supremist society to perpetuate itself is for good white people to go about their lives being good non-racists. The way that we typically think about race in America is as a problem of personal attitudes and personal behaviors.
                       
The questions that we are constantly preoccupied with are, “Is that individual person a racist or not? Am I a racist or not?” Meaning am I a member of the KKK? Do I use the “n word”? Am I mean to people of color? Things like that, but that’s not what racism is. It’s not that those things don’t matter at all, they do, but it’s much more a matter of a structural, systemic situation that would take more fundamental change in our institutions.
                       
Probably the biggest and most tangible things that need to happen probably need to happen at a governmental level, government policy, the way our institution’s function, things like the criminal justice system or what [inaudible 26:15] called our “so-called criminal justice system,” the deep structural inequities on who gets policed and who gets punished. For example, the education system, the way that we allow ourselves to have this deeply unequal and unequal in a racialized way education system.
                       
But then there are also things like reparations, job guarantee or a the baby bonds proposal where children would be given a bond, basically a trust fund and if they were a descendant of enslaved black people, they would get a bigger trust fund than a comfortable white person.
                       
Actually, job guarantee polls quite well now sort of like the WPA in the Great Depression where anybody who wanted a job but could find one, the government would provide one. These are big, expensive programs. We do a lot of big, expensive things including the trillion dollar tax cut that we say that we don’t have the money for, but we find it.
                       
If we wanted to really address the deep inequalities that have come from this history and that persist, these are some of the things that we could be looking at.
                       
From an individual standpoint, it becomes a matter of getting yourself educated and then then next time you a potential Presidential candidate talk about a job guarantee, I’m not going to just roll my eyes and say, “That’s crazy, we can’t afford that!” I might actually think about whether that’s something that might be worth supporting.

Rev. Alvin Herring, W.K. Kellogg Foundation:   I think one of the ways in which we let ourselves off the hook when we are made to confront our biases is by saying that we have black friends, we have Jewish friends, we have Muslim friends, we have white friends, we have Latino friends, we have Asian friends as though that then excuses us from ever holding either consciously or unconsciously attitudes, biases, prejudices and perceptions that ultimately support and become the fuel of the systems that deprive us all of equal access, equal opportunities and equal treatment. That is never sufficient.
                       
It’s one thing to say, “I have black friends.” It’s another thing to say, “I understand through my close associations with my black friends what that experience is like.” It’s another thing to say that you have really walked inside of that space intentionally with your friend and have come out on the other side as an ally, a person committed and willing to work not for just what’s good for yourself and your family, but what’s good for them and their family.
                       
Even folks who say, “I have good friends,” when you ask them if those friends visit with them, if they know their children’s names, if they’ve shared anniversaries, birthdays and holidays with them, sat with their sick loved ones and they’ve sat with yours, then that “I have a friend” thing begins to breakdown.

Megan Kamerick, Host: You have chapters on white silence and white saviorism. In the first you write that “No matter what level of power or influence we have, our voice is needed but not as white saviors.” Explain the different here, how trying to do the first could lead to people mistakenly doing the second.

Layla Saad, author of the book “Me and White Supremacy”:  Right, and people really struggle with this because it becomes an “either/or.” Am I supposed to speak up or am I not supposed to speak up? It’s really important for people to understand that there is no checklist for how to do this work perfectly.
                       
When you see something racist happening, it is up to you to say something because often in a situation, the person of color may be one of the only people of color there and everyone else is white. When you speak up, the person of color speaks up and says, “This is racist.”
                       
Often times they will be gaslit and be told, “This wasn’t really about race. Why are you playing the race card? They didn’t mean it that way.” But when a white person stands in solidarity with them, which is what allyship is, to back up their voice, that person of color knows that they are not alone. That’s very, very important.
                       
Even also when there isn’t a person of color there, but just white people and racism is happening, say something. You know it’s wrong. Say something.
                       
White saviorism means that it’s very important to interrogate the intention behind which you may be trying to do something. Are you doing it because you want to look like the good white person or are you doing it because it’s the write thing to do? Furthermore, in trying to help, are you taking the stance that you know what is best for them or are you consulting with them asking how you may be of service?
                       
I am so grateful for the people in my life who do that, who ask me, “How can I support you in this situation? Would it be helpful if I did this? Would it be helpful if I did that?” They give me the choice.
                       
I want to end by just saying that the work is challenging, and it is hard. You will wonder if you’re going to get something out of it like a certificate or something at the end, but you don’t.

Megan Kamerick, Host:  You don’t get cookies?

Layla Saad, author of the book “Me and White Supremacy”:  You don’t get a cookie. You don’t get anything at the end of it, but here is what you do get, you get to live your life according to your actual values, your actual values being the desire to have people be treated equally without causing harm. You get that gift which is priceless. You’re not just seen as good, but you’re actually doing good.

Judy Goldberg, Host:   Here you are, someone who is concerned about what you’re talking about, concerned about racism, hate crimes, discrimination, the injustices that we are seeing mounting in our world today. What do you do if you’re interested in being more involved?

Arjun Singh Sethi, author of the book “American Hate: Survivors Speak Out”:  First, look at your own backyard. I say that because when we’re talking about things like racism, hate, misogyny, gender violence and fascism, sometimes they seem like intractable problems and they seem far away, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes there are people in our own families in our communities who have hateful and biased views. When you see those views being manifested and articulated, take them on.
                       
Two, connect with other people who feel similarly to you. There is always strength in numbers.
                       
Three, find a community organization. I will tell you that there are community organizations across this country who are looking for volunteers. They are looking for financial support. They’re looking in some cases for community connections.
                       
Finally, most people are members of different institutions. Let’s say you are a member of a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a member of the PTA, a member of a reading group, a member of your local library, interventions. Make sure your library has the newest books on these issues. Make sure they’re on display. Make sure that your PTA is ensuring that students are not being bullied in school and if they are, that they are getting the resources that they need. Make sure that your workplace has an up-to-date equity and inclusion policy. You know what? Have them bring speakers to talk about these issues.
                       
Do your part. Everyone has a role in making the world a better place, making the world a safe place for human beings, for animals, for the environment. Figure out a way to get involved.
                       
Finally, thank everyone who is doing that work. There is a universe of us. There is a large global community of us who are trying to make the world a better place.

Paul Ingles, host:  In our 20 years of Peace Talks Radio programming, we’ve done what we could like the little bird to promote more compassionate communication, to addressed different kinds of conflicts as you’ll hear ahead and certainly with the hope to bridge prejudicial gaps that exist in our society between races, religions, political ideologies and gender identity.
                       
We spoke with transgender author Sally Marie Jackson who came out as a woman at the age of 58 and has often been invited into groups to talk about biases and prejudices towards the LGBTQ+ community.

Sally Michelle Jackson, Transgender Author/Trainer: There aren’t any real challenges when people invite you to come talk to them, but when you’re being sent somewhere because somebody else felt they needed it, even if they’re there, it doesn’t help. If the people are in the room because they were forced to be there, that’s the big challenge because then you have to win them over to listen to you in the first place.
                       
I did a training at a sheriff’s department in another parish and everybody was so receptive to everything. I was told afterwards that they were there on their own time volunteering after their shifts and the room was packed. That was easy because they came to learn. They had a transgender officer who was working with them, and they realized that they had a larger transgender community than they thought, and they wanted to know how to deal with them properly. They didn’t want to be the problem in their department.
                       
One of the things that people need to understand is that when you’ve got someone who is very different from you, there is a tendency to want to back away because we’re afraid of the unknown. Well, how do you get to learn about that unknown if you just keep backing away from it?
                       
The easiest way to find out what’s going on in the LGBTQ+ community is to talk to somebody in the community. Most of us are willing to talk. You have to open lines of communication. That’s the only way to avoid perpetual fear which then goes to hate which then goes to violence. You break that cycle early just by learning.

Suzanne Kryder, host: Even when you feel like you’re in the right let’s say in terms of justice and you believe they are in the wrong, how do you keep listening to them and not say, “Hey, you’re wrong!”?

Anne Lightsey, Mediator: I think that it’s the same thing that we do at the mediation table where it’s our job to come with a mindset of curiosity rather than conclusion. I come and try to really understand. I may say, “I hear that you really believe X and I really believe Y. Can you tell me why you believe X so strongly?” I think what we really try to bring is that everybody is right from how they see the world. I’m not look for the right, I’m looking for your right and the other person’s right.

Suzanne Kryder, host: Define positions versus interests. That’s something mediators listen for, positions versus interests.

Anne Lightsey, Mediator: If you think about it, a position is a solution, it’s a demand. It’s what someone wants. “I want you to take your Christmas decorations down by the first of January.” That is a position.
                       
In conflict resolution, we don’t pay a lot of attention to positions because that may not really be what is at the heart of the conflict. “Why is it important to you that I take my Christmas decorations down by the first of January?” That’s what we’re really looking for.
                       
The position is the “what.” The interest is the “why” that position is important. It takes a lot of skill and practice to move from understanding what someone’s position is to having them feel comfortable saying and identifying what their interests are. It’s a very big complex topic.

SONG:  Peaceful World, Song by John Mellencamp: Everything is cool as can be in a peaceful world.

Paul Ingles, host: Well there are the very first sounds heard on our Peace Talks Radio series, John Mellencamp’s song “Peaceful World”. It opened up our first episode in January of 2003 on our only station at the time, our dearly loved and appreciated KUNM in Albuquerque New Mexico.
                       
Twenty years later we are up to episode 236 the one you’re listening to right now probably on one of 85 stations in 25 states. I’m Paul Ingles and we’re listening back to a relatively few minutes of our roughly 13,000 minutes devoted to peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution strategies on our program.
                       
Like from these two guests who take a deep dive into empathy, first about teaching empathy in the classroom and then efforts to promote more empathy in the medical profession. Here first, Courtney Custer who helped direct the local chapter of a national program called Roots of Empathy.

Courtney Custer, Roots of Empathy: Roots of Empathy is a social and emotional literacy program for elementary school and middle school children. It’s designed to increase students’ empathy and reduce bullying and aggression and increase their social and emotional skills.

Suzanne Kryder, host: Courtney, who is the teacher?

Courtney Custer, Roots of Empathy: The teacher is a baby actually. We introduce an infant to the classroom that will visit the classroom periodically throughout the schoolyear to help the children learn about emotion. We also have an instructor that guides every class, so it’s not just the baby, but the baby is our star.
                       
The students can be anywhere from kindergarten through eighth grade.
                       
A couple of years ago I was teaching in a third grade class and our baby was visiting that day. The baby was seven or eight months old and sitting independently. The baby reached for a toy, fell over and started to cry. My job as the instructor is to coach the children. “What just happened? What did you notice?” I ask the students, “Can you identify how the baby was feeling?”
                       
A little boy raised his hand and said, “I think the baby is frustrated because he couldn’t get the toy and he fell over.” Then from there we springboard it to talking about times that they have felt frustrated and how they handled it. How do calm yourself down? How do you not get out of control?
                       
Then I asked for examples of frustration. Another little kid raised his hand and said, “I’m trying to learn how to ride a bike and I can’t figure it out. I’m very frustrated.” His neighbor right next to him said, “I live in his apartment complex. I know how to ride a bike, so maybe I can help him.”
                       
Those exchanges came just from seeing the baby play and we got to increase their emotional vocabulary, identify their feelings, identify how friends feel, how to help friends, how to calm ourselves down when we’re upset. That’s the power of the baby. Whatever is happening with the baby, the instructor’s job is to use that to guide the children to increase their social and emotional skills.

Megan Kamerick, host:  You write to encourage people to turn towards suffering.

Dr. David Rakel, Author, “The Compassionate Connection”: Yes and it’s a difficult sell! Which would you rather do, go get a massage or turn towards suffering? Everybody is going to go get a massage.
                       
If we’re really going to explore those root causes of disease or a symptom, at some point we have to turn towards it. If we’re brave enough to do that together, some wonderful things happen, things that make your hair stand up on the back of your neck and things that energize us, both of us because “Caring goes one way, us to them, but healing goes both ways.” We get just as much out of this as the other person does.

Megan Kamerick, host: It’s interesting, you write that we are all hardwired to be fixers rather than healers. What’s the difference?

Dr. David Rakel, Author, “The Compassionate Connection”: Well, there is a big difference, and both are beautiful. If I have a broken femur, take me to UNM Hospital and let me be fixed by one of our great orthopedic surgeons and if I get fixer who is also a healer, ah, then I’ve got it. Then I have the surgeon who comes and sits by my bedside before surgery and puts me at ease and creates the positive expectation that they’re going to get me better. “You’ve got a great team around you to help you succeed. We’ll get you back to work and reconnected to your family.”

Megan Kamerick, host: Can you teach empathy?

Dr. David Rakel, Author, “The Compassionate Connection”: That’s a big question. I believe yes, but there is also a difference between empathy and compassion. I’d like to just hit on that a little bit here. Empathy requires me to feel your pain and then do something about it. That’s different than sympathy. Sympathy means we cry together and go home. There is no action. Empathy requires action to what I feel from you.
                       
That leads to empathy fatigue because when we’re dealing with suffering, that’s assuming that I can fix your suffering, which I can’t, I can’t do that, but compassion is different. That’s two people suffering together. The route essence of that word, “we are one.” When I help you, I help myself.
                       
When I have that mindset when I walk into that room, that makes it more fun because I’m going to connect to your story. Once I hear that story, we’re going to try to figure out a better path towards your health and we’re going to do it together through dialogue where that word means meaning “running through.”
                       
How do we open up that conversation? In helping you I help myself. The beautiful thing about this work in medicine is that sometimes if you have this relationship with your patients, they’ll come into my office, I’m supposed to be treating them and they’ll say, “Dave, you don’t look so good. Are you getting enough sleep?” And we start to treat each other.

Paul Ingles, host: As we’ve mentioned, one of our goals on Peace Talks Radio has been to elevate the stories of some of the courageous peacemakers throughout history as well as today. But whose history is often being elevated anyway? A peacemaking topic in and of itself. We talked with Dr. Jeffrey Darensbourg, Tribal Councilperson for the Atakapa-Ishak Nation.

Dr. Jeffery Darensbourg, Tribal Councilperson, Atakapa-Ishak Nation: The thing about history is that so often it does not include very much from the point of view of either native people or enslaved people or from people of color in general in the general narrative of American history. For some of us who are Louisiana Creole, I always like to put in elements of people who are both African and Native, which I am.
                       
I think that’s an untold story. It’s remarkable when we think of the things that we teach students about say westward expansion and so-called pioneers, people who went into places that were already very well populated and destroyed ways of life.
                       
Trying to understand American history from the Native point of view means that you have to teach some things that are not necessarily going to be on the state mandated exams and that’s always a tension because the students need to pass those exams.
                       
At the same time, there is also a commitment one has to have to the truth where one has to say there are things about this that are not being told that you need to think about. For example, think about how influential the Era of Reconstruction is in the South and the formation of Jim Crow.
                       
Louisiana history in high school begins at 1849 and skips the Civil War. That seems like a very deliberate attempt to avoid discussion of some of the uglier aspects of American history that passed through this place. I think that it’s important that the people in this country know a broader story about what happened, a story that encompasses more types of people of every sort. That helps them not only get a better picture of the past but also a better picture of current situations that people endure now.

Paul Ingles, host:  We mentioned at the beginning of our show that it was the 9/11 terrorist’s attacks on the United States that got Suzanne Kryder and I talking about creating a show that might balance the coverage of conflict that we were certain that we would be in for with coverage about peacemaking.
                       
A few years after 9/11, we were intrigued by a group that called itself “9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows” which included Anne Mulderry whose son Stephen was trapped in a conference room in one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and died on that day.

Anne Mulderry, 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: I’ll tell this little story because it was one of the first instances of my being brave enough to speak my mind after my sons’ death. I spoke my mind to a truly treasured person who came to me and said, “What they have done to your son is so terrible and I know they are in hell.”
                       
I love this person who said those words to me. I knew it was an attempt to comfort me. It was a desire to comfort me. I said to him, “All I can say is that my darling son Stephen has gone to another world in the company of the people who did this and all I can see is him saying to them as I heard him say to his brothers on the basketball court, “What did you do that for?” when somebody had done something they shouldn’t have done.
                       
I don’t know how to explain my faith that that is the case, but I do believe that we all share in the guilt of the violent solutions that are effected in our lifetime. I believe that we can all share in the healing and peace if we will struggle as Martin Luther King says (and that’s the name of our group) “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. If you think you can make a peaceful tomorrow with a war, you’re a foolish person.”

Paul Ingles, host:  In our own attempt to craft a peaceful tomorrow, ten months after 9/11, Suzanne Kryder and I and a small audience were gathered in an auditorium to tape a pilot program for the Peace Talks Radio Series with local meditation teacher Eric Kolvig as our guest.

Eric Kolvig, Meditation Teacher: Developing inner peace in challenging times, keeping our heart open in hell, which sometimes we are called to do means really engaging fear, really engaging the anxiety itself immediately.

Suzanne Kryder, host: Engaging the anxiety. When I get anxiety, boy I’m sweating, my heart is pounding. How do I engage that?

Eric Kolvig, Meditation Teacher: Well, you know Franklin Roosevelt when he first became President, his very first words to this country are the ones that are most memorable, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” This was in the middle of the Great Depression. A lot of people were suffering.
                       
In order to get past fear, to work our way through fear, we have to engage it directly to see what it is. Fear is always about something in the future. It’s never about something that’s happening in the moment. The future doesn’t exist. Fear is a project of something that may or may not happen. When you see that, if you can see that you’re simply projecting something into the future, you don’t have to believe it. You can say, “I don’t need to believe this.”
                       
Come back to whatever your present situation is no matter how challenging it is and by reducing the fear, your present situation is much more workable.
                       
Just one little example is years ago I was doing some deep therapeutic work and I was working with some severe trauma that I had as a child. As a result of doing that work, terror actually came up and not just in the therapeutic situation. I was driving to work one day, and I was experiencing terror. My hair was standing straight up. There were these waves of energy going through my body, a very intense experience.
                       
My mind happened to be strong at that moment and so I knew it was just fear and I was able to hold it. As I just held fear there and kept driving. I got to work, and a coworker greeted me and said, “How are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m experiencing terror right now, but otherwise, I’m fine and it was true. In that moment, I didn’t have to believe the terror, so it was possible to feel all the physiological reactions and all of the contraction in the mind and say, “Okay, this is just fear.”

Byron Katie, Author, “A Thousand Names for Joy”: The work is a way to identify and question the thoughts that cause all the suffering in the world. Everyone is suffering and anyone can do it if they’re open to it.   So let’s say for example I believed that he doesn’t care about me. The first question is, “Is it true?” I’m beginning to question the thought that he doesn’t care about me.
                       
The second question, “Can I absolutely know that it’s true that he doesn’t care about me?” Notice how the mind begins to flood me with proof and images to convince me that it’s true. Notice and wait and allow another answer to surface.
                       
The third question, “How do you react when you believe that thought?”
                       
The fourth question, “Who would you be without that thought?”
                       
Then I invite people to turn it around to the opposite, “He doesn’t care about me,” the opposite would be “I don’t care about me.” That’s a mindblower. How can I expect people to care about me if I don’t even care about me? Then I find ways that I don’t care about me. It wakes me up to them and I’m shocked.
                       
Another opposite or turnaround would be “I don’t care about him.” I begin to identify where that’s true and then immediately I’m awake to it and my behavior changes and it’s nothing I have to do. My behavior with that person and everyone it radically shifts because we’re working with original cause and mind is original cause. Mind is cause.

Paul Ingles, host:  We’re going to close up this special compilation hour by inviting you to go to our website, www.peacetalksradio.com where you can hear a second hour of highlights from our 20 years. You can hear and share this program again. You can read an entire transcript of today’s clips too.
                       
Importantly, you can consider a donation to our nonprofit organization that produces this program separately and apart from your own public radio outlet that you might be hearing us on. Now we encourage you to donate to both it and to us to keep us from folding this now two-decade effort to keep talk of peacemaking on the airwaves. We need more support to merely maintain much less grow this effort. Find a secure donate button at www.peacetalksradio.com.
                       
We close with a clip from our program honoring Congressman, Civil Rights Icon John Lewis who passed in 2020 and left us with plenty of inspiration to work for peace.

John Lewis, Congressman/Civil Rights Activist: You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is your mission. That is your moral obligation. That is your mandate. Get out there and do it! Get in the way!
                       
In a final analysis, we all must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. We all live in the same house and it doesn’t matter whether we are black or white, Latino, Asian-American or Native American. It doesn’t matter whether we are straight or gay, we are one people! We are one family! We all live in the same house.
                       
Be bold. Be courageous. Stand up! Speak up! Speak out and find a way to create the beloved community, the beloved world, a world of peace, a world that recognizes dignity of all humankind. Never become bitter. Never become hostile. Never hate. Live in peace. We are one, one people and one love. Thank you very much.

Paul Ingles, host:  The recorded remarks of John Lewis from an Emory University commencement address from a few years earlier. The recorded applause from that crowd gave way to an extended standing ovation from the crowd of friends and colleagues encircling John Lewis’ flag-draped casket resting in the center of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda July 27, 2020, ten days after Congressman Lewis died at the age of 80 of pancreatic cancer.
                       
For our entire Peace Talks Radio reporting team from throughout our first 20 years, Carol Boss, Megan Kamerick, Hannah Colton, Sarah Holtz, Judy Goldberg, Jonathan Miller, Avishay Artsy, Sen Zhan, Danielle Preiss, Yamini Ranjan and Priyanka Shankar. For our Executive Director, Nola Daves Moses. For the many who have served on our board of directors and for all who have donated to our cause. For our cofounder and my Peace Talks Radio partner, Suzanne Kryder, I’m Paul Ingles. Thank you for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.