Defining safety for ourselves

Many issues of violence and conflict at the community level in Australia are alreadywidely described in terms of a "community safety" issue and Pt'chang has chosen to use"safety" term rather than "peace" to describe i's work. Interpersonal violencesuch as family violence, sexual assault, hate or racially-motivated attacks, streetcrime and assaults, police violence and abuse, violence in the school yard, and"youth crime" are often not perceived as "peace" issues. Safety seems to be a con-cept that relates to more people than peace when it comes to their own community.
    But "community safety" is often defined for us by the media, police, secu-rity companies etc and by politically fuelled "crime scares". Companies sellsecurity systems by emphasising house burglaries and politicians so commonlyuse particular serious incidents of violence to their own advantage. All this serves togenerate fear and to severely distort people's own sense of safety and security. The ability of people and communities to"define" safety for themselves is an important first step in that community'sability to create genuine safety. "Where and when do I feel unsafe?" "What do I meanwhen I say Safety?" Pt'chang has been asking people thesequestions for over eight years now. What we have consistently found is securitydoors, bars on our windows, surveillance cameras or even more police on the streetsdo not make most of us feel safe. What commonly does help us feel safe is knowingour friends are around (familiar faces and places, smiles), having choices and feelinglike we are in control over what's going on. It's a simple thing really and it helpsus to recognise that "violence" is actions or patterns that destroys our relationshipswith others and removes our choice and control. In other words, a good definitionof safety according to the Protective Behaviours model is: "Safety = havingchoice + control" (Flandreau-West, 1986).
    So many so-called "community safetyand crime prevention" initiatives actually isolate people and remove control. Policeblitzes, safe-city cameras and much of the environmental ("designing out crime")approaches (such as designing public seats that can't be slept on) do nothing to cre-ate real or genuine community safety.
    A high-tech security-surveillance sys-tem, for instance, might help residents of an inner-city apartment block feel safer,but remove even more "choice and control" from the homeless people using anearby alley for shelter. It is in this tension where so many mainstream commu-nity safety initiatives form nothing more than another mechanism for social con-trol. Nonviolent community safety initiatives look at safety for the whole commu-nity. Creating genuine and lasting safety is about restoring everyone's sense ofchoice and control. Building genuine and lasting peace is about creating just andequitable social structures that meet people's basic needs for safety.

Safety and peacebuilding

Many skills and concepts in peacebuilding have been developed, tried and tested inthe context of international armed conflict or war, either in post-conflict scenarios orin zones of actual armed conflict or severe political violence. Many of these samestrategies can be and are being usefully applied within local, smaller scale con-flicts present in Australian communities, cities and urban centres.
    "Nonviolent community safety" is one such approach, essentially, bringingpeacebuilding approaches together with community development and socialactivism to form empowering, nonviolent community building approaches to creat-ing safety in local communities.
    "Nonviolent community safety" describes approaches to safety that are community initiated and controlled. It ismuch more of an "opening-up" and community building process than the common"lock-up" and isolating "power-over" responses to safety that tend to dominatein our society.
    The annual "Reclaim The Night"marches in cities throughout the world, which highlight and assert women's rightsto walk free from the threat of violence, is a classic example of a community-initiated,empowering and activist orientated approach to violence. Aboriginal nightpatrols, which operate in over fifty remote communities around Australia and themany lesbian and gay anti-violence street patrols in the United States and in Aus-tralia, are just some examples of nonviolent community safety initiatives which canassertively but nonviolently intervene in actual violence, but also serve to empowerand open-up space in which people can live in safety. Nonviolent community safety - building peace locally We wanted to end this thematic section with a description ofmethods of implementing positive and practical alternatives to day-to-day problems. In this article Anthony Kelly describesapproaches and methods for creating safe local communities using some of the tools of nonviolent peacekeeping used inlarger conflict scenarios. "Nonviolent communitysafety initiatives look at safety for the wholecommunity."%%[Page: 28]%%

Components of peacebuilding

The outline below is compiled simply to show a range of activities that might fit under each of the peacekeeping,peacemaking and peacebuilding categories on a community level. It is in no way intended to be prescriptive.

Peacebuilding

Building relationships: Shared sporting, cultural or social activities Creating and maintaining channels for communication across difference Discovering and defining needs of the different parties Sharing information appropriately in ways that builds trust and humanises parties Living with or building relationship with marginalised or ostracised groups Getting to know people and building personal relationships Cross-community visiting programmes Prisoner visiting programmes Independent, community-run media: papers; radios; TV; internet Peace education: Nonviolence training Prominent people speaking out for nonviolence Community education activities Distribution of nonviolence resources and tools Mentoring or peer-to-peer support programs Peace journalism and reporting Anticipating safety issues and potential conflicts: Research into the conflict Conflict mapping and conflict analysis, Coordinating and planning peacekeeping or safety team responses Setting a tone for a safe and peaceful space: Cleaning up or changing physical appearance of environment Community gardens or playgrounds Socialising a culture of safety and peace Communication via "safe place" signs, rainbow stickers, etc Creative elements, community art, music, performance, humour Cultural events and activities Challenging and changing violent social structures: Awareness and consciousness raising activities Nonviolence training programme Building of nonviolent action groups and support structures Nonviolent direct action: Acts of Protest and Persuasion; vigils, marches, rallies, public meetings, etc. Non-cooperation; strikes, boycotts, rent withholding, refusal to obey, etc. Nonviolent Interventions; occupations, sitins, blockades, pickets, etc Building counter-structures; constructing institutions that meet people's needs. Including credit unions, food banks or co-ops, strike funds, independent media, papers, radios, TV, internet, alternative cultural events, peace education centres, community childcare co-ops Psycho/social healing and trauma recovery: Group and individual debriefing Cultural activities assisting community heal from past violence Community theatre and re-enactments Social actions by victims/survivors of violence Community designed memorials and commemorations Work with children healing from trauma Counselling and ongoing support Peacemaking Conflict transformation: Facilitated dialogue Ongoing negotiation pathways Joint workshops or conflict transformation training Conflict mapping Community mediation programs Restorative justice: Community conferencing Family conferencing Peace circles Community justice panels Peacekeeping Containment or disassociation: Use of community peacekeeping and safety teams Whistle projects - providing whistles to people targeted by violence Contain and limit the immediate impacts of violence Isolate or separate the parties - barriers, human walls Creation of "peace zones" - "Gun-free zones" "Time-out" periods - community truce "Living with" or building relationship with marginalised or ostracised groups in order to deter violence against them Use of legal observer teams or "police watch" networks to deter police violence Crisis Intervention: Use of community peacekeeping and safety teams Community monitoring, peace monitors or observer teams Nonviolent interventions by community members Diversion activities, clowning, music, sports activities

Intervention and peacekeeping

Methods that seek to intervene in, interrupt or de-escalate actual physical violencealso need to be considered and developed further when considering nonviolentcommunity safety and peacebuilding. For this reason, Pt'chang has been developingand experimenting with safe, effective and nonviolent ways of intervening incommunity level violence as a core aspect of its work.
    Peacekeeping strategies that have been used since the early US Civil Rightsmovement can form important and powerful ways of creating safety, interveningin actual violence and controlling our own space. But there has also been lots ofdevelopment of nonviolent intervention skills in recent years.
    The basic idea of nonviolent interven-tions into interpersonal violence is that a person, staying within their own bound-aries for safety, can act to make a conflict visible and prevent or halt the violencewithout using violence or escalating the overall level of violence. In Pt'chang wetrain in, and use, a huge spectrum of nonviolent interventions to break up violence,from simply being present and noticing the violence, to creative distractions, neutralinterruptions, using whistles, humour, human chains and physical interventions.
    People already have many personal safety strategies and techniques. Teachers,parents, social workers often practise techniques that minimise, reduce, orinterrupt violence, resolve conflict and resist harassment every day. To someextent we all do within our lives and relationships. Nonviolent intervention skillsoften draw from and are based on this everyday experience (Biernbaum, 1995).
    Nonviolent interventions are about using power, but in a way that seeks towork with, rather than against, other people. Interventions are based on co-operativeand open "power-with" principles rather than the forceful, coercing, discriminating"power-over" that is commonly seen in the actions of police and private security guards(Starhawk, 1987). This use of power-with is important and something that allows usto create safety in ways that do not exclude, alienate or repress the needs of others. Per-haps the greatest challenge for those who utilise nonviolent peacekeeping approach-es is overcoming very deep socialised attitudes about conflict and its relationshipto violence and coercion.
    Indeed, peacekeeping is about meetingpeople's needs, not only people's very basic need to feel safe but many otherneeds that may lead to conflict, aggression or violence if they are not met.Recognising and helping to meet people's needs for self-esteem, identity, controlover their lives (and sometimes actual material needs) forms the basis for nonvi-olent peacekeeping strategies for creating safety (Burton, 1987).In short, Peacekeeping is not about curtailing, suppressing, or coercing peo-ple or their behaviour (which tends to only contain violence--if not actuallyescalate it!). Peacekeeping is about creating space, often on a small scale, in whichpeople can express themselves to the fullest. A very common example of this isthe peacekeeping skill of active listening. Active listening aims to allow an aggres-sive, angry or upset person to calm down by meeting their immediate need to sim-ply be heard. Active listening also allows peacekeepers to identify other needs thatthey can then, hopefully, help to meet (Manthei, 1981). Safety teams Peacekeeping skills can best be used by trained and co-ordinated groups of peoplein situations that are particularly unsafe or when conflict, violence or repression isanticipated. According to Yeshua Moser Puangsuwan from Nonviolence Interna-tional, organised, community responses to direct violence or unsafe situations areentirely possible;
    "Teams based in nonviolent conflict manage-ment, even working with the handicap of minimal training, can effectively confront and dif-fuse violence in a society where people, are conditioned to expect violence and coercioninstead...The peace community now has enough successful experience in nonviolent intervention todevelop domestic peace brigades on a larger scale. Simply an observant presence is enough to determany forms of common crime. An organised citizen peace brigades could be used in urban situa-tions to decrease theft and fear of attack, without threat of force necessary." (1990.)
    Peace brigades have been defined as trained and well-organised groups whosefunction is to intervene in conflict using a wide range of nonviolent peacekeepingskills and strategies (Weber, 2000). Gandhi's vision of a nonviolent alterna-tive to military force has manifested internationally as a huge range of cross-border, citizen-initiated nonviolent peace teams, including Peace Brigades Interna-tional (PBI). In order to translate some of these ideas to local neighbourhood con-flict or community level violence in Australia, Pt'chang has used the term "safetyteams". The safety teams co-ordinated by Pt'chang at community events and festi-vals incorporate crisis-intervention, sexual assault, alcohol and other drug harmreduction skills and strategies as an addition to nonviolent intervention and peacekeeping skills. Safety teams can form viable and effective, community-initiated alternatives topolice and private security presence. Safety teams can include community elders,respected leaders or peers, people from within the community with particularskills, knowledge or experience. They can utilise existing youth work, social work,alcohol and other drug work experience from community members. Safety teamscan be the most effective when they are diverse, accountable and are able to drawupon the combined wisdom and authority of the community itself. To be most effective, the training and use of Safety teams or other peacekeepingstrategies to intervene in or prevent actual violence, should be applied within awider strategy of nonviolent community safety, peacemaking and peacebuilding. Local activist groups such as Pt'chang, working for peace at a local level are a smallbut important part of the wider movement toward safe, peaceful and sustainable com-munities and toward social systems and structures that meet human needs.

References: Coover et al, Resource Manual for a Living Revolution (New Society Publishers, USA, 1977); Michael Biernbaum, Stopping Violence Without Violence (Conscious Living, April 1995); John Burton, Resolving Deep Rooted Conflicts: A Handbook (University Press of America, 1987); John Burton, Conflict: Human Needs Theory (Macmillian, 1990); Narayan Desai, Handbook for Satyagrahis: A Manual For Volunteers of Total Revolution (Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, India, 1972); Diana Francis, People, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action (Pluto Press, 2002); Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means (Pluto Press, 2002); A Kelly, Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Handbook (Pt'chang, 2003); Martin Luther King, Why Can't We Wait (New American Library, 1963); John P Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997); John P Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures (Syacruse University Press, 1995); L Mahoney & Enruique Eguran, Unarmed Bodyguards: International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights (Kumarian Press, 1997); Marjorie Manthei, Positively me: A guide to assertive behaviour (Auckland: Reed Books, 1981); Yeshua Moser Puangsuwan, One Million Kilometres for Peace: Five years of steps towards peace in Cambodia (1997); Pt'chang Nonviolent Community Safety Group: Protocols and Procedures Manual (2000); Christine Schweitzer et al, Nonviolent Peaceforce Feasibility Study (http://www. nonviolentpeaceforce.org/english/resources/rs tudy.asp# Accessed 20/06/03); Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Porter Sargent, 1973); Starhawk, Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery (Harper & Row, 1987); Tom Weber & Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, Nonviolent Intervention Across Borders: A Recurrent Vision (University of Hawai'I Honolulu, Hawai'i, 2000). Anthony Kelly works with Pt'chang. Pt'chang has a 70-page Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Handbook available for AUS$10 plus postage.
Pt'chang, PO Box 2172MDC, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia 3065 (+61 3 9415 6642; email ptchang@office.minihub.org).