Most of the media coverage this week seems to be glossing over the significant detail that the U.S. investment in Iraq, in terms of personnel and dollars, will continue.  Instead of uniformed troops from the military, we’ll have 15,000-16,000 people there in the form of other government employees and private contractors.  We’ll be spending almost $4 billion there in 2012.  These numbers are lower than what we’ve been investing, but they are not small numbers, and they still represent a significant commitment on the part of U.S. taxpayers, let alone on the part of the soldiers still on the ground.  We can’t afford to start thinking or talking as though our involvement in Iraq is through.

It also seems appropriate that when we talk about the human life lost in the course of the U.S. presence in Iraq, we avoid artificial exclusions based on nationality.  The story and cost of war is incomplete if you only recognize the count of killed and wounded on one “side” of any conflict.  As we consider this particular milestone, let us reflect on the totality of what has been sacrificed, taken or destroyed along the way.

I want to be careful to say that I don’t write about this trend in this space with any promise or implication that my election or anyone else’s could prevent individual crimes or save lives.  We know that no elected official and not even the best trained and funded police forces can prevent individual violent crimes when there are so many other background factors that go into these horrific events.

But I think our reaction to this trend as a community will speak greatly about our future prospects for building a version of Richmond that is safe, vibrant and thriving.

If we follow initial temptations to drift toward finger-pointing, increasing fear, vigilante justice and further isolation from each other as a solution, we risk unhelpfully turning against each other as members of an inter-dependent community.  In tough economic times, it is precisely because of increasing fear and isolation that the most troubled and under-served individuals in our society turn to more and more desperate and dangerous actions to survive.

People talk often about wanting smaller government and more individual freedoms, but a city with those qualities is also a city made up of people who know how to work together despite differences, to care for those among us who are at risk or in need, and to engage in our shared responsibilities around building relationships and resolving conflict, instead of abdicating that responsibility to centralized authority figures or resorting to violence.

So, how does a community address this particular kind of troubling trend? Is it about community policing and neighborhood watches and more funding for law enforcement? Maybe.

But could it also involve more interpersonal accountability, healthier families and neighborhoods, cultural shifts away from inherent fear of those who do not look or act like we do, examining the media messages we consume and what they encourage about problem-solving, better education of our children, and new models for how individuals can be valued, have self-worth and make a living? I think so.

City Council and city government has a role to play in that, but so do we all. It’s an intricate puzzle and no one elected official, election or legislative decision is going to affect our violent crime rate overnight. But if we step back from a fear-based response and look at the big picture, we can as a community decide to make changes that begin to address this and all of the interrelated issues we face.

Having served on the CRC board in the past and having volunteered as a trained mediator, I came to greatly appreciate the idea that members of a community can resolve our interpersonal conflicts in ways that promote non-violence, justice, reconciliation and a deepening of connection, without resorting to the sometimes scarring machinations of the legal system. The CRC existed to facilitate those experiences, through its mediation program, educational work with local youth, and its rich history of related efforts in the Richmond area and beyond.

As a mediator, I had the honor of witnessing some magical moments between family members or co-workers where the conversation transitioned from accusation and battling to understanding, compassion and hope for moving forward. As a board member, I had the honor of working with a driven and passionate group of volunteers and staff who believed in what the CRC was about and what it could do for the community.

While the principles and practices of mediating conflict are certainly still available to anyone who wants to pursue them, it’s sad to see that a place like the CRC can’t sustain itself right now.  My hope, of course, is that this is an ending that will lead to other beginnings down the road.

Many people have given life and breath to CRC’s mission over the years, and I’m so thankful for their work.  I’m especially thankful for the careful and surely painful work that the current board members have taken on in reaching the conclusion to lay the CRC down.  I hope that Richmond can find some way to honor what CRC did and stood for in the ways that we carry forward.

To be sure, I think the President (and any President) deserves an unusually high level of courtesy in that particular setting, and that Wilson’s actions were unusual and historically unprecedented in their dis-courteousness.  But I don’t think they represent some aberrant, isolated flare-up on the part of a single person.  Instead, I think Joe Wilson has highlighted the fact that much of the conversation about health care reform – and much of the way politics are done in Washington in general -  is driven not by respectful dialog, but instead by emotionally charged, disrespectful outbursts that come in many forms.  As unfortunate and ill-considered as his shouting was, we can at least commend him for acting from the heart, where as his peers in Congress typically reserve their uncivil comments for settings where they know they won’t be held as accountable to them, masking their failure to engage in real dialog with feigned respect and disingenuous, emotionally manipulative exchanges.

By yelling out at the President during the speech, Joe Wilson showed the true colors of the way most politicians are approaching the health care debate: interrupting, yelling, disrespecting, misrepresenting, trying to get a laugh or a jab in without ever engaging the substance of the issues at hand, and with so little concern for the people actually affected by the conversation that you’d think they weren’t actually agents of democracy, just people who play them on TV.

It’s not clear to me why we entrust such an important conversation to such ineffective, duplicitous people.  Is it clear to you?

There are some exceptions to this phenomenon: politicians, issue advocates and community organizers who are actually trying to engage the substance of the issues and work for a real solution that actually addresses real needs.  You don’t hear from those people too much – they certainly aren’t interrupting Presidential speeches or inciting hateful speech at Town Hall meetings.  They’re too busy trying to get something done, and sometimes, the broken systems and processes in place actually move aside enough for those people to succeed.  But we know that’s rare, and certainly not as exciting to talk about on cable news as death panels, abortion funding and illegal immigrants stealing your soul in the night.

In this sense, then, it might benefit us all for members of Congress to stop pretending and speak from their hearts like Joe Wilson did.  If you follow that to its natural conclusion, you know it would get pretty messy before it got any better, but perhaps it would be a step forward in creating a process that honors real dialog and integrity, instead of political convenience and artificial appearances.

I would be happy for our representatives in Washington – who often hold life and death issues in their hands – to show us their true colors on live national television every day.  Wouldn’t you?

But then something curious and possibly amazing happened.

Someone, probably a White House aide who thinks a little differently than her or his colleagues, realized that there might be another way forward.  Someone suggested that maybe if the parties involved in this escalating conflict sat down together and talked in person, a better outcome could prevail.  And apparently that suggestion got whispered in the President’s ear, because Gates, arresting officer Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley and Obama are expected to sit down together this week.  Over a beer.

It may seem like a small thing, but it really does represent a total departure from the cultural norm related to how we resolve conflicts.  The idea of just sitting down to have a conversation instead of “lawyering up” is not the direction most of us take, and if you believe the evening news, we often go really far in the other direction of perpetrating further injustices on one another.  But here we have the President of the United States suggesting an in-person conversation, and we have the other men involved responding positively.  The lawyers are stepping back, the media circus is calming down, and there’s going to be a conversation.  Nice!

Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to overcome, and a lot of pressures that make this a less than ideal conversation scenario.  It probably would have been hard for either man to say “no thanks” to the President, and so both are somewhat compelled to participate.  The White House isn’t exactly the most neutral setting for any conversation, and talking through complex issues while slightly intoxicated is probably not ideal.  Both men have ratcheted up the stakes involved – for Gates, it’s about calling attention to racial profiling and for Crowley, it’s about defending the integrity of his and his fellow officers` actions – so neither can easily walk away from the conversation and just say “it’s all good now” without having hoards of special interest groups and supporters demanding further action.  (And yes, there are legitimate and serious issues around racial profiling and law enforcement practices that need to be addressed here.)

But regardless of the outcome, it’s heartening that a seed has been planted: there are other ways to resolve our conflicts.  And the seed is there at the highest levels of a governmental system that generally eschews considering the humanity and complexity of any given person involved in any given dispute.  Might we call that progress?

The forthcoming gathering at the White House may not follow its principles directly, but Restorative Justice is an approach to conflict resolution that tries to foster dialog between all of the parties involved in a wrong-doing – the victim, the offender, witnesses, family members and friends affected, etc.  It tries to build up “mutual responsibility” for addressing wrong-doing in our communities, instead of perpetuating the notion that when a crime or wrong has been committed, accountability and punishment are handed down by some externalized and detached authority.  And it’s working in communities all over.  Here in Richmond, the Conflict Resolution Center trains mediators to facilitate a similar kind of conversation that, while not strictly part of Restorative Justice practices, still encourages that kind of dialog and reconciliation.

What might these kinds of conflict resolution practices look like in your community?  Are there conflicts in your life where a facilitated, face-to-face conversation might have made all the difference in resolving them?

Here’s hoping that Crowley, Gates, and Obama make the best use of their time together, realizing that they may just be helping to model something transformative for, well, the rest of the world.

On one hand, you’ve got the City painting a picture of being left out of the key parts of the relationship the EDC has with its Richmond constituents, having to fork over $730,000 without appropriate representation.

You’ve got a County official noting that the City is as well represented on the EDC board as the County or other entities, and that things are working just fine as they are, while the Chamber president notes that there may be a conversation to be had, but that the current actions being taken are too poorly timed.

What’s going on here?  Everyone seems to be making reasonable statements on the matter that represents the point of view of the entities they serve, but it sounds like they’re having the conversation with each other for the first time on the pages of the newspaper. ARGH!

If indeed the “conversation” was triggered by a City Council resolution refusing to designate its usual fund contribution to the EDC budget, then that seems like a really poor way to start things off. It sets up a battle full of pressure points and high-stakes leveraging, and needlessly sensationalizes the issue. Councilman Phil Quinn noted that they’re trying to “send a statement” – why do that with a public vote, when you could do it in a meeting, e-mail message or even postal mail? I suspect we’d be a lot farther along if there’d been in-person meetings between City, County, and Chamber officials trying to hash this out before going public with it, and while I don’t know firsthand that there wasn’t one, I suspect that they skipped that part.

By the same token, County and Chamber officials should not have responded in kind for a news story, using the media for power plays. When you say things like “it doesn’t make any sense to me,” or “this is extremely untimely” for the press, it’s a kind of public disapproval and shaming, even paternalistic finger-wagging, that can only serve to inflame whatever tensions might already exist. It also makes us look like we’re a community in chaos, which is exactly what economic development efforts don’t need. Instead, officials should have either refrained from commenting in any detail while noting that conversations are ongoing, or at least framed their concerns more positively – “We’re concerned about the timing and the reasoning here, but we’re ready to work with each other to understand everyone’s needs and broker a solution that works best for our citizens.” Would that have been so hard?

Yes, I’m basing all of this unsolicited advice on a single Pal-Item news story, and there may be other pieces of the puzzle not yet reported, but I think the theme here is not a new one for our community.

I’ve discussed the kinds of power struggles that are already built into the structure of our community building organizations, and when you throw in poor (or total lack of) communication on top of that, things are only going to get worse. I think it’s fine for community leaders to act shrewdly in the fulfillment of their vision for a better Richmond and Wayne County, but this cannot involve closing the door to dialog with other stakeholders – early and often.  Too frequently, we hear about one organization or government entity “scratching its head” at the actions of another, and then we throw up our hands and wonder why there’s little public confidence in our prospects for economic revitalization. Let’s connect some dots here, folks.

Mayor Sally Hutton is quoted as saying that “The bottom line is we want to work together…We will work something out.” Let’s hope that, for everyone involved, there’s not only an intention to work together but some actual mechanisms by which that might happen. These community leaders need to get in a room together TODAY, and they shouldn’t leave until they’ve got a joint media statement prepared that lays out a much more positive path forward. Richmond and Wayne County deserve at least that level of collaboration.

Update on 1/6/09: in an article today, the Pal-Item notes that the City Council has approved their contribution to the EDC’s budget, contingent upon a future appointment to the board.  This comes in the form of a 1-year agreement instead of the usual 4-year term.  According to the article, “No time frame was set for the first meeting between representatives of the city and county.”  This also comes on the same day as an announcement about the new EDC President.