Transcription of Moses Small and Tim Wilson for the show Prioritizing Peace #165
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 165, airing for the first time on Sunday, November 9th, 2014. Today’s theme is Prioritizing Peace. How do we get to a place of peace? Usually by navigating through conflict. It can be difficult and uncomfortable to understand others who do not share our views.
Today, we speak with Tim Wilson and Moses Small from Seeds of Peace about the importance of truth, dialogue and mutual respect in conflict transformation. We also talked with Ted Coffin about how The Summit Project honors lives that have been lost in the interest of peace. Thank you for joining us.
Here on Love Maine Radio, we understand that in order to be peaceful and compassionate and have a peaceful and compassionate community, it really is something that we need to actively engage in. There are 2 individuals with us today who really can speak to a much greater degree than even I can.
Today we have with us Timothy Wilson. Tim who is the senior international adviser for Seeds of Peace and the Maine Seeds director for Seeds of Peace. Thanks for coming in.
Tim: Thank you.
Lisa: We also have Moses Small who is a junior at Portland High School and considered to be a Seed. You are a Maine Seed. Is that true?
Moses: I am.
Lisa: Thanks so much for coming in.
Moses: Thanks for having me.
Lisa: Tim, let’s start with you. You have a very extensive background with Seeds of Peace and I want to talk about what Seeds of Peace is but first I want to understand why is this idea of conflict transformation whether it’s in Maine or whether it’s international, why was this so important to you?
Tim: Let me start of by saying that Seeds of Peace is 23 years old or will be 23 and the person who started it was John Wallach. He passed away in 2002 much too young but it was his idea. He believed that the transformation came from young people and a way to do that was to interact with conflicting groups with young people.
He had a term that wanted enemies to see the other person’s face so that he would understand a little bit more about him, about that person. That’s the crocks at the beginning of the program which started in 1993. I can only say that John had a vision and I happen to be along, a partner in a sense and that with the other cofounder, Dr. and Mrs. Bobbie Gottschalk who is still alive and she’s still very much involved with the program.
She’s like the grandmother of it but it was John’s program and I just happen to be there at the time when they wanted to start it and I ran the camp up until 2006 and then retired for about half a minute and they got me to continue. We have a situation where the camp is the foundation but we ran programs in the Middle East and that’s Egypt, Jordan and Palestine.
I happen to be the person after that to go out, 2002, 2006. I lived out there and helped develop some of those programs. I had really interesting time in the international part of it and we have our domestic side which is Maine and Syracuse where we take some of the things from the original program and move it in to our own issues that we have in our country with the influx of immigrants from around the world.
Lisa: What people will typically remember Seeds of Peace for is the camp here in Maine …
Tim: That’s correct.
Lisa: … where children who I think are at their high school age.
Tim: They are.
Lisa: Are brought from Israel.
Tim: Israel, Palestine.
Lisa: And Palestine.
Tim: Egypt and Jordan were the Big 4. They evolve to that around 2007. Before that we had countries coming from North Africa. We had countries from the Gulf. In one time, we had 22 countries in camp and the same time. It was different plus we did the Balkans and we did Cyprus. The Balkans doing the Balkan work and we did Cyprus with their whole issue. We did a week in Turkey separate.
Lisa: Also it’s interesting to me to hear you talking about this and think about the interview that we did with George Mitchell and the work that he has done with conflict and conflict in the Middle East and other parts of the world and to know that this is something that Maine has for some reason gotten involved.
Tim: I think knowing the senator. I mean, do know him and he has spoken many times to Seeds at different confabs. We’ve had as well as he’s received an award from Seeds. He’s been an integral part of the growth of our program. I think the best way to put this is that John felt that Maine was a perfect place to have Seeds of Peace.
He felt that where the camp was located. He felt that the way things were done here were left alone to do what you needed to do. He tried to do that in New York. We’ve undated by press and people all the time but being in Maine people let us do what we had to do which is only 45 minutes from here to camp.
The people understood what we were but gave us the room to do things plus the government, our own Maine government was involved. Angus King was involved, Jack McKernan at the very beginning, Governor Baldacci even Governor LePage.
They’ve all been involved at some level as well as our congressional delegation. I think that’s the other side of it that the support of the people who actually live here as well as the leadership, what was there to help us along the way.
Lisa: You spent 2 years as an educator. You were a language arts teacher.
Tim: That’s correct.
Lisa: You saw some need for conflict transformation for addressing what goes on within relationships between students firsthand.
Tim: True. I think that the part that I don’t always speak to but I guess it’s appropriate for now is I am a black American and so being in Maine for nearly most of my adult life over 50 years, I’ve seen the transformation many different ways and I’ve seen young people who get the opportunity to meet people … I mean remember now, this is 97% white state, all of a sudden you’re putting all these new people in and you see the transformation how people react to each other overtime, over the last 10 years.
That alone would give you a little bit of that thought which you brought up and in classes especially, in schools. There are schools that have no one but yet still the kids that come from those schools to be a part of Seeds of Peace go back with the knowledge and having the opportunity to be around young people who knock from their backyard and they’re empathy, their knowledge rubs off on to the rest of the neighborhood which is good.
On the other hand you have a Native American population where people ostracize them and our young people are asking the questions why which is also good for right now for all the kids who are now a part of Seeds of Peace because they see that is another frontier for them to change in this state so that we’re more representative of what we should be doing in home. I mean it’s fun for me to watch.
Lisa: Moses, as you’ve been listening to this, how has this been relevant to your experience? You’re an AP student. You’re studying AP classes at Portland High School. You’re a musician, you’re currently a broadcaster but you’re an aspiring broadcaster. You play a violin. You play soccer. You’ve done drumming. I mean you’ve done so many different things. You’ve been so involved in your high school community. What is it that Tim is saying that you can relate to in your own life?
Moses: What I really do most in the camp is just seeing so many different types of people because even by some doing these different activities, I met different types of people but I’ve never really engaged with them because at camp you live with these people for 2 weeks and you really do become a family in a way that’s hard to describe and hard to relate something back at home.
I know for myself at least like I was able to talk with a lot of other African-American kids who grow up with the same stereotypes I had being one of which in particular was being called white because you speak or act a certain way and then you get to see an outside perspective from the people who would interpret that type of thing as a joke. You get to hear everyone’s different view and you get to hear something that you would never hear back at home.
Lisa: You bring up an interesting point. I would never have thought about it I guess because I am white. I’ve never thought that being called “white” would be derogatory or in any way problematic. That’s very fascinating.
Tim: It’s been going on for years. It’s not anything new. I grew up with the same stuff that kids know when I’m talking to them. As you said I’m a language arts teacher. I came out of a city and because my parents, I had older sisters, sister and older brothers who graduated from college as long before me.
Because I’m able to speak and act a certain way you were branded acting white because that was a way to keep you in your place within a smaller group of people in your own community. It goes back to identity, it goes back to just what people were like and this isn’t new.
It’s just as you said you’ve never heard it before but we hear it all the time and it is that part that affects kids like the kids who come from Syracuse to our program. It affects them a lot more than it would somewhat for Moses because in their community they don’t have what I call the idols of young people that they can look to that are moving along because they’re all caught in a time warp for me because the schools aren’t.
Some of those places is good as some of the schools here. I mean that’s just the fact. Their communities are having a tough time. You’re talking about larger cities, finances and everything else. They’re the last people to get things. Some of the kids here are realizing that even though there are issues they’re realizing. They’re getting opportunities here that they couldn’t get elsewhere.
Moses: Just expanding on that is all about different social experience that I think in the Maine session and just the African-American stereotype that I personally dealt with to just one example. One thing they think you really were in there is that you spent 2 weeks escaping categorization. You spend 2 weeks without social anxiety, without fear of judgment and that just really changes you. It makes you see everyone else in a different way.
Lisa: That’s true and I think high school in particular can be a very challenging social times that you’re dealing with just really baseline things that are related to things like identity and socialization and understanding your own just where you fit in the larger scheme of things so to be able to have that space at Seeds to explore things from a different vantage point must be very useful.
Tim: What they get to do at 90 minutes. That means a lot. It’s called dialogue and then we have 2 professional facilitators to help them and that’s a safe space and the kids in those dialogue sessions you talked to that talk about things they would not normally talk about but knowing it was a safe space and none of that was going to go somewhere else other I should say unless it was a health and safety issue.
In general that’s the difference even to the kids from the Middle East. They get to do the same thing. They get to talk about those things that pain comes from war, conflict. Once you get passed blaming each other and you get down to the nitty-gritty about what am I going to do to make it better how can I help, that’s the part that you said, the formidable task of that whole idea.
I think when John started it that was the key we worked at for 3 or 4 years of getting that dialogue to a place where kids felt that’s the most important thing at camp. I got to play basketball or play my violin, whatever. That 80 minutes a day makes a difference.
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Lisa: Tim, as you’ve been working through these programs with Seeds that started in ’93 you said so now it’s a couple of decades old. You personally are a little bit older than that but the program is a couple of years of decades old. It seems to be one that continues to evolve.
You’ve done the Middle East and you’ve extended beyond the borders of the Middle Eastern conflict. You’ve brought students from Maine Schools. You’ve brought students from Syracuse and you’ve actually talked about the Native American population in Maine. Do you think this is a new frontier for Seeds? Is this a direction that you may go in at some point?
Tim: It’s a direction we have to. We’ve been requested to do that. It’s taken us, believe this or not 10 years to be able to do this with the Native Americans that has a little bit on their side, a little bit on our side but we’re looking for this next summer to add the Passamaquoddy’s and Penobscot’s that make [inaudible 00:19:30] to camp.
We have the right people and the right places to now make that occur which would be good because the Northern part of Maine that’s the thing that many of the students up there that I’ve talked to said we’ve got to do something with that. I don’t know if you read the Portland Press Herald articles and some of the other things that have been written.
I mean, here we are dealing with things overseas and other places but we still haven’t dealt with this issue that’s still up in the woods. [Inaudible 00:20:05] when a lady said I’m going to have red skins for my driveway and they change it to Mic-Mac Drive Way down her street.
After all the years of cleaning that up in the state, all of a sudden somebody else wants to bring it up. We did the right thing up here. I don’t care what they do in DC with the Snider and the Washington football team, that’s a whole another issue but still it’s an issue. As you said we never confront that kind of stuff. We buried it.
Drifting a little bit but a lot of kids want to talk about they want to have a conversation on race. They want to sit down and really discuss what it means, what it spreads to the economics. I mean, all the issues around it, that surround it is coming from high school kids.
As you said what’s the age when the kids come to Maine Seeds are. Generally, most of them are sophomores and freshman, going from their freshman to their sophomore years, sophomore to junior year. An international group as a little bit different. Many times their kids are sophomores to juniors in some cases but most of them are juniors to seniors.
Some of that are race, some differences but they all come away this whole thing around socio economic issues, race. All that ties together and you have your religious issues. It’s there. They’re there. They are there. You can’t just blast over that things are fine because you got to talk about them so that people then understand I may not like you but I can respect you, I can trust you and I can communicate with you without necessarily being best friends. That’s a premise of what we work with.
Lisa: Is it because there is such enormity to these topics that people don’t want to deal with it. I mean, race is so in your face and it’s also so big that people feel like I can’t get a handle on it. It’s almost like the environmental effort. I can’t change the world so I’m not even going to bother a recycle. Is that part of the issue that people get overwhelmed or is there fear why do people … I guess, Moses you look like you have an answer for us.
Tim: Yeah, he does.
Moses: Like you said environmentally it doesn’t sound like we’re doing this. It sounds like to me that everybody thinks racism is already over and it’s such a broad topic and everyone has a perspective but most people really aren’t willing to admit that their view maybe something that’s hard for a lot of people to agree with.
A lot of Tim has said is respecting views that you might not have heard of, might not agree with but a lot of people in Portland High School in particular have heard. They’ll say I’m not a racist person. I’m not racist at all. I have a lot of African-American, Asian, Hispanic friends but I’m not going to talk to an immigrant.
There’s a real disconnect between what they see as racism, what they see as prejudice and they think that they’re completely free of racism at all but really that’s not what their actions show.
Lisa: That’s a good observation that people say well, it’s over. We had already dealt it. We have the Civil Rights Act that’s like gender equity that’s just like gender equity. Well, women and men are the same. Let’s just expect this then homophobia. That doesn’t exist anymore. I mean, there are so many different things that still persists even though we maybe have done some big to-your-face kind of things. There’s still stuff that is subtle.
It sounds like the subtlety that is the real painful aspect of all of this like being called “white.” Say you’re talking like a white person or the redskins example that you’ve given that these subtle things that can really cause you to feel overtime so much frustration, anger resentment.
Tim: We take people who are my age and you see things the way they’re going. Just recently someone asked me how much has it changed? I said I out really it’s changed a lot. In really hasn’t changed at all. It depends on A, economically where you are. B, educationally where you are and C you’re location.
When you put that all in to the computer now and you go through all the stuff that they do now, you’ll be surprised how much it remains the same back to what you just said and more so what Moses said. We do a good job of instant magic.
We don’t want to work in anything. Seriously, 1 person at a time. If I take my time to recycle something, I’ve done my part. Maybe my grandchildren will pick up what I’m doing and do the same thing. That’s a long term investment. It’s the investment of your time and you either make things better.
If I have a conversation with you and you have a conversation with me, we may not agree but we can open up the conversation and guess what, if somebody is listening they have a divergence of different people having conversation. It’s not all the same way. That’s legitimately wrong with politics.
Lisa: One way in which I am intrigued to see things moving is I have a 13-year-old and 18-year-old and a 21-year-old and they are able to … The older ones especially have maintained relationships as a result of technology largely in a way that never was possible for prior generations. I think it is the maintenance a relationship which you’ve eluded to that has made this so much more interesting so Moses I’m assuming somewhere around 17?
Moses: 16.
Lisa: 16. The likelihood that people that you have met when you’re 10, 12, 15, 16 and continuing some connection with later in your years. That probably shifts the way you think about them as individuals and your willingness to engage in I don’t know trust, respect. I don’t want to assume anything. What do you think?
Moses: It definitely does help you stay in contact with people. You got to talk to people who you never get to see. A friend who might have moved away, someone who lives faraway to begin with but I don’t necessarily think that it deals with any of the core issues because you still see people’s prejudice.
I mean for example I saw something I’ve really do not support on Twitter, PHS, unwritten rules, one of them is stay away from the upper cuff because that’s where most of the immigrants and people who are from the United States, that’s where they sit.
You still don’t see this prejudice and I don’t really think it does anything to break down as you said this culture of avoidance of issues. Social media isn’t going to be a place or isn’t a place now or ever really that I will see where people will deal with deep conflicts.
Many of these happen in person, face-to-face or else people are going to retreat back to their comfort zone, back to their friends, back to the people they’re following on Twitter.
Lisa: That is a good point. I think social media can be a good tool but like any tools, it can be used in a positive way and a negative way. I guess what I was thinking is my daughter who as a college she maintains some sort of contact through social media and then that causes her when she comes back from college to want to get back together with people that maybe she wouldn’t have otherwise gotten in touch with.
Not just her good friends but maybe … She was at a swim meet this weekend. She saw a good friend of hers that she used to swim with from high school. You know what I’m saying? Like that connection makes it more possible but I agree with you. I mean I think it’s the face-to-face and frankly people feel uncomfortable being face-to-face I think.
Tim: And more so now.
Lisa: And more so now. I think there is a disconnect that occurs as a result of technology.
Tim: The reciprocal conversation that kids get from me is that I use offices for an example. There are people that sits in cubicles side-by-side and something comes up instead of going around the cubicle and speaking to the person about the issue.
Lisa: They send an e-mail.
Tim: They send an e-mail. To me that’s the problem. I mean, again, I’m older. I mean I just got in touch with someone using social media who I have not seen in 40 years but it just happened that by Facebook, by the death of someone else, I followed up and we actually spent a mince amount of time with each other and here we are talking on the phone finally after all these years.
That’s a plus but on the good side of that we made a deal how we’re going to get together and see each other face-to-face. That to me is the other side of that. Going back to the issue, the problem we have is easy to spew things about people badly when you couldn’t just do this when you have to look at them face-to-face and say so-and-so is the case.
Then this is going to happen because now we have an out. Now we have an out and the more Twitter and all this other, I mean the kids have got me on some of this stuff. They joke about it. I use to throw my beeper in the water when I was at camp because not that I hated it, I’d go swimming with it years ago.
Everybody use to laugh about it because they knew it was true and my wife’s family and my son’s family said no, we got you a cellphone now. Now what are you going to do with it? A couple of times, I went in the water with that too but that’s needed here and there but the idea was I hated them and I still don’t … I mean, I do well now but I understand that part of me that just finds that just offensive.
I love guys who say I’m not on Twitter, who are up the line in media and whatever and say I’m not on Twitter. You have Facebook. They really despise it. The point is it’s not going to go away so that’s how I look at it. You can make it better by sometimes what you say but it’s there.
Moses: Definitely you can use both ways. I guess for people my age we don’t make that much of a big deal out of it because it‘s just a continuation of how we talk and communicate with people. It just seems like it’s just the same as they would in person.
This person would say something bad then they might feel more free to say it on social media but that’s the type of person that had a lot of things harbored in them to begin with. Definitely social media is not a problem for people our age it’s just how they want to say certain things.
Lisa: Moses, I’m wondering what you think your legacy is?
Moses: My legacy is basically just youth empowerment and just not having fear because in camp I realize that I was living with anxiety and everybody else wasn’t that no one was noticing because this constant pressure from social media. Some are going to subway you for this and some are going to talk badly about you for that. If I had to define what my legacy is at 16, it be breaking down this culture of avoidance.
Lisa: Tim, what about your legacy?
Tim: That’s mine. I feel fortunate because I’d been in Maine since 1960. I coached here, I taught here, I’ve done Seeds. I’ve a merit of things whether it be coaching, sports or whatever. I feel very honored I’m in the wrestling hall of fame and the football hall of fame for coaching.
I mean all community stuff. I mean my point is that I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many different people whether they’d be governors to the guy who’s going to fix my phones at FairPoint when I was at camp but it’s the kids. I’ve got people now that are superintendents of schools, principals, coaches, whatever and what they’re doing with the kids and what they see, what they’re trying to see.
Their effect on kids also my effect on them has an effect on the kids there doing it now. That’s how I see it like Moses is saying when he says makes me proud and that’s my legacy. It’s what I’m leaving behind is these young people who I think they’re going to do fine.
You have children. Mine are much older but I have 4 grandchildren. My granddaughter is just shades above me in a lot of ways I think she’s already doing it and she’s just 19. She’s a sophomore in college. She’s just unbelievable with the potential that she has. It stems from the same kind of things that Moses is talking about.
That’s where I see any parent or anyone else who has … They’re raw and young people. The idea is to move that forward so that they’re proud to be as Moses was saying the empowerment. That to me is the most important thing because we need that. We truly do.
Lisa: How do people learn more about Seeds of Peace?
Tim: We have a big website. It’s www.seedsofpeace.org. Like I said you get on that website and you can read all the things that are going on whether it’s about the staff because some of the staff is phenomenal.
Lisa: Moses is there anything you would add to Tim’s comments?
Moses: I would just say that the best way to learn about Seeds of Peace is to talk to someone about it because anyone who’s been there, anyone who’s facilitated or been a counselor can talk for hours on it and reading the words on the website you get an idea for it but it’s really more of a feeling.
You need to see how in deeply everyone really believes and what they’re saying and what we’re doing at Seeds of Peace. Just getting to use the idea in our generation that it’s a very profound idea that we’re inheriting the world and there’s going to be a day that comes very soon for all of us within the next 10 year where we’re going to be the ones in government.
We’re going to be the ones dealing with major issue. We’re not going to be on the sidelines anymore watching what our parents are doing. I think Seeds of Peace are just one way of preparing us for that. No matter how much someone in our generation might complain about our flaws but there are flaws in every generation and there are also a lot of great people that come out of each generation too. I think all of those great people come from Seeds of Peace.
Lisa: I encourage people to go to the Seeds of Peace website and learn more about all the individuals who’ve done great things as a result of being part of Seeds and then also the opportunities for these next generation that is coming up. It’s really been an honor to speak with both of you.
Tim: Thank you.
Moses: Thanks for having us.
Tim: Thank you.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Tim Wilson who is the senior international adviser for Seeds of Peace and the main Seeds director for Seeds of Peace and also Moses Small who is an AP student at Portland High School, musician and aspiring broadcaster. Having listened to your voice I really can’t imagine why you wouldn’t end up being a broadcaster.
Moses: Thank you.
Lisa: Thank you so much for being a part of Love Maine Radio.
Moses: Thanks for having us.
Tim: Thank you.