Perspectives on Peace: Transforming Tomorrow
Perspectives on Peace: Transforming Tomorrow is the podcast hosted by The M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence that seeks to inform & inspire a better future.
We are based in Rochester, New York and seek to cover topics that are vital to our community and serve as the launching point to transform tomorrow. We attempt to do this in a way that feels authentic & inclusive.
Join us as we investigate perspectives on peace so that we can work on transforming tomorrow!
About The M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence:
The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence (MKGI) is a nonprofit that equips people to use nonviolence to create a sustainable and just world for all.
MKGI collaborates with local organizations, academic institutions, students, and committed peacemakers in these areas: Nonviolence Education, Restorative Practices, Environmental Sustainability, & Racial Justice.
We prioritize programming for people between the ages of 12 and 24. We offer training in skills such as Nonviolent Communication, meditation, cultural humility, de-escalation and experiential interconnectedness.
By serving as a physical manifestation of Gandhian principles and Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community, the Gandhi Institute seeks to advance the cause of peacemaking regionally and beyond from within a neighborhood challenged by poverty and violence.
Perspectives on Peace: Transforming Tomorrow
Perspectives: On Restoring Schools & Prisons with Dominic Barter
Dominic Barter returns to Perspectives on Peace: Transforming Tomorrow to discuss his work with Restorative Practices in schools and prisons. In this episode, Dominic sits down with Erin to share insights from his recent research and experiences in schools and prisons worldwide, including a visit to Padilla High School in Rochester. He explores the parallels between schools and prisons, the role of listening in creating change, and how restorative practices can reshape social systems for the better.
Learn more about Dominic's work: https://www.restorativecircles.org/
Welcome to Perspectives on Peace Transforming Tomorrow, the podcast brought to you by the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. My name is Aaron Thompson and I'm very pleased to be seated once again with Dominic Barter. Good morning.
Speaker 2:Dominic. Good morning Aaron. It's a great pleasure to be back here. Really good to and with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the same. Very good to be chatting with you once again. Dominic is, I wouldn't say, a frequent flyer, but has been on here a couple times in the past, and we have talked about some of the work that you do, dominic, in the context of restorative processes and practices. Would you agree with that characterization? Yep, okay. So, dominic, you were last on the program, I don't know a year or so ago and letting no grass grow under your feet as you do. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what you've been up to since that point in time, as a highlight to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a really interesting time in my life because my daughter has grown up and gone to university and now she's in employment and lives with others and is having her life. So that sense of needing to always rush back home has changed into the spaciousness to be able to develop the work that I do outside the context of Rio de Janeiro specifically and Brazil in general. So I've had the opportunity to spend extended periods of time in different places around the world and begin to pick up the possibility notice where sprouts are sprouting, where seeds are being planted for the possibility of doing the work that I do in a deeper and more structured way way. So that's involved a second phase of the work in prisons in Italy building restorative systems amongst the prisoners for the conflicts they have with each other, but also stretching that to those prisoners who are on work leave, so they still sleep in the prison but they get to leave during the day and work. It's meant being able to go into new wings and to start projects in new prisons. Sometimes we don't even actually get to the prisoners in one particular prison. The focus of the work the folks in the prison who make this decision has been on simply supporting the governor and the court team. They all just recognize that their capacity to bring about the kind of changes that they want to see in that context is dependent on their ability to just survive the day in their job. We know from studies all around the world that the mental health impact on prison officers and administration in prisons is incredibly high and, of course, the impact on prisoners and their mental health is also incredibly high, and it just creates a hugely problematic environment. So that's been a very interesting new turn. And then just lots of work in schools, which always requires ongoing commitment and time. So we started a new project in high schools in Italy, started a project in a public primary school in Switzerland that's the first of its kind in that country and the first time I've worked in that particular context. And that month last year, the last time we spoke in the States, was really fascinating Went to different communities in different parts of the country, both urban and rural, and just sitting down with people who are on the different kinds of front lines and looking at what their reality is like and what they need in order to shift things in a direction which increasingly trusts the intelligence of the community, trusts the experience of people who are suffering the most adversity and just transitions away from this logic, which is still really dominant, of seeing everything in terms of projects and programs and manuals and trainings.
Speaker 2:Everything is about the imposition of knowledge from outside and, however wonderful that experience is, however useful the origin of it is, the fact is that we keep repeating this basically colonial dynamic where we're saying the folks who are suffering are unable to sustain themselves and something must be brought in from outside, are unable to sustain themselves and something must be brought in from outside, and we keep accidentally trampling on their own endogenous understanding of their own reality, the understanding that grows where they are in their life experience and missing so much of that wisdom. So it's been wonderful to do that and I'm super happy to be back and have another go.
Speaker 1:Indeed, I am really intrigued by the work that you're doing in the prison system, which, almost by definition, is hyper regimented, rule based. There's a strong imposition of order. I'm really curious about your ability to work your way into an actual prison system and begin introducing some of these concepts that would seem to undermine a lot of the order and the ways of maintaining safety that are hallmarks of prison systems. How have prison leadership received you and been receptive to your message?
Speaker 2:All around the world, wherever I go, folks and institutions are aware of the pressures that they're under. Um, so many aspects of the way that we're currently living are not sustainable? Um, for all kinds of reasons, and one of the very basic ones is that they are their. Their procedures are diverging increasingly from our most basic human values, and that's the door that's left the jar. And really the challenge is having the concrete experience that enables them to be able to think okay, this is someone I can let in.
Speaker 2:It's not lack of willingness, it often seems, I think, to many people oh, my goodness, how am I ever going to make it into the big building where people make decisions?
Speaker 2:But those people are looking out of the window longingly at us outside thinking. Please will you give me the solidity, the experience that I want to feel that you've been through the things that I've been through minimally enough for me to be able to justify letting you in because we need so much help. But, of course, when we stand there either shouting at them to change or saying well, I have this brilliant idea, you should give me a chance to experiment with it. Well, that's a pretty tough call to make when you are responsible for an environment like a prison, like a school system, you can't really play around. It's not very good reason why they don't let us in. So I think a lot of it is just making sure that we have done the groundwork before we knock on the door, and most times I find these folks know their systems well. They can work out in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1:So are you approaching prison officials with a specific proposal? What are you?
Speaker 2:offering when you approach them. I think the most fundamental thing that we're offering is that we're interested in learning from them more than we're interested in applying our good ideas. Okay, and that's already sadly very refreshing for many of them. They've had a lot of proposals, they see a lot of projects. They're always aware that there are folks in political positions and different places in the hierarchy or neighboring hierarchies that want to make their mark by doing their pet projects and they have to deal with the consequences of that. So if someone shows up and says I'm actually interested in finding out what you have noticed works best and strengthening your ability to do that, that's already interesting.
Speaker 2:The place where it gets tricky and potentially powerful for them, but also somewhat disorienting, is when we say and we want to do the same, for instance, in the school system with the students, or in a prison system, we want to do the same with the prisoners, we want to listen to the guards. In the same way, I'm interested in the experience of the people who sweep the floors and cook, because everybody in these contexts has really valuable wisdom to share. But the folks who are most distant from the center of the hierarchical power are often the ones who have most access to that local intelligence that often goes is ignored, unnamed, unseen. So it's not every administrator of a social system who is willing to take those steps. But, unfortunately or not, as things get harder for them, the willingness increases because they know they need help, even if it's uncomfortable for them to take it from people who don't have the same structural power that they do.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned that you've been active in the prison system and in the education systems and a lot of your earlier work and current work has been focused in Brazil, but now you've also moved into Italy and Switzerland.
Speaker 1:In the school systems, um, in both cases and in the prison system prison system in Italy I am, um, I'm curious about what you are, um, what's consistent in these, in these environments that you're in and you know, uh, what's consistent in these environments that you're in and you know, with the bulk of your early experience being in Brazil? I could see how it might be thought that there are certain elements that are particular to location or to the particular circumstances of the schools that you've been working in in Brazil, like are there universal takeaways that you're arriving at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm always curious about that. I can't say. Maybe none of us can ever say that something is universal. But already many years ago because I would obviously travel, even if only briefly I can remember walking into a prison in the middle of a rural area of Senegal and immediately knowing where I was and thinking, well, how is this possible? How am I not disoriented? This is a completely different culture.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but that, that model, that that colonial suggestion, that this is how we deal with conflict, um, that, unfortunately, is similar everywhere. So there, we may not be able to say it's universal, but you can certainly say where there's European colonial influence, you see the same strategies coming up time and time again and you see the same thinking that the population needs to be trained in in order to be able to sustain these processes, and it needs to be really strong indoctrination, because these strategies are horrendously ineffective and profoundly dehumanizing. There are so many reasons why you wouldn't want to do this. It's expensive, it corrodes community safety, it diminishes the cohesion, it breaks up families. It's a horrend, horrendous strategy. So why would it be so popular? Why do we put so much resources and attention into it? Um, so, yeah, so it's, it's pretty common.
Speaker 2:And then, uh, another painful thing to notice is that the architectural similarities between prisons and schools. That's also pretty common everywhere you look, and it hasn't been different in the buildings that I've been able to observe everywhere I've been so far. So there's also something going on there. And as we're talking about both prisons and schools at the same time, it's inevitable we recognize the similarities and how different that is from the original vision of what education is to be. And a school is a space in which all the conclusions and fixed ideas are temporarily suspended so that we can look and inquire into the dynamics of the universe and of ourselves and of all the different subjects, all the different aspects of life on this planet which are so fascinating to us. That dream of a school. It's extraordinary that it's still alive, but it's under huge pressure from the imposition of these ideas that in there is one group of people whose job it is to control the other group of people.
Speaker 1:How long does an engagement last? Because I'm hearing that you're doing a lot of deep listening, um for um, for people's perspectives and stories, uh, across the spectrum of different roles that they hold in the school or in the prison. You're you're you're. You're getting a sampling of um kind of a holistic view. Ideally, after that, listening takes place. What happens next?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's interesting because most people would invite me in to initially observe, to listen, to notice what's going on and then expect that there's a response. But my understanding is that listening is learning. There isn't an after the listening. Listening is, in fact, the activity. So listening to ourselves, listening to each other and of course that includes listening to someone with life experience and wisdom that I don't have, listening to someone who's profoundly studied a subject so that I can borrow and grow from their learning and from the knowledge that they have. But it also means the piece which is often missing from many of our current schools, especially in the high school area, which is the time to listen to each other, to process what it is that we're learning and that subject which gets left off the curriculum again, which is particularly important for adolescents, which is me.
Speaker 2:A primary source of learning of adolescents is themselves there's so much to say and the capacities that they're going to need to not just live in the world as it is, but to survive the current moment that we're in and to adapt and transform the conditions that science tells us are unsustainable and to be able to deal with processing and transforming the many injustices which we're increasingly unable to repress within us and between us and in society, and are coming out and for health and survival, need to be expressed, and not just expressed, to be heard in a sense, like oh yeah, and I heard what you said, but to to, through being heard, to actually transform the reality that that we're, that we're talking about. So I'm not sure that there is an after listening. Okay, I think, because of listening, then action is possible yeah, you know, hmm, you know.
Speaker 1:there's this saying time is money.
Speaker 2:You've heard that.
Speaker 1:And certainly here in the States in the West and throughout the world largely, there's kind of this capitalist sensibility that wants to. That's like keeping track of time spent on a thing before you got to get to the next thing and there's a sense of like scarcity of time and I think that that's contributes to some of the um, the lack of evolution and movement and change in some of, in some of our, our systems that we're, that we're working in. You know there's, there is a sense of pressure that's felt and you know any movement away from what's known and established or any experimentation, it's like you know there's an expectation of payoff for that. I'm curious about your relationship with time and if there's any sort of um sentiment or sensibilities that you hope to like stimulate in people that you're interacting with in in these forays into the schools and the prisons relating to time and pressure, um uh, that you hope might, you know, continue to reverberate after, after yourate, after your immediate work.
Speaker 2:There is done, chosen, different aspects, different kinds of time than maybe we do these days in the way that we speak about it. Our understanding of time, clock time is very much focused on stimulating productivity, and that has its place. We have a financial system which there's always more debt than there is money in circulation, intentionally, and that keeps us running after the sense of lack all the time and keeps us in a state of competition with each other, even if we've never met, or even as we sleep. We're basically competing for the scarce resources to try and compensate for what's missing. But there's so many other aspects of time and I think, in an environment like a school, relational time which is not measured by the clock but measured by the depth of meaning and connection between human beings and the games, both playful and very serious, that we can make the agreements that we can question, the agreements that we can transform. This is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in the transformative power of conflict, because conflict requires that relational time, it requires a dynamic of shared power, it requires a circularity in order for the change that it is offering us to manifest in new possibilities, in new agreements. So I think there needs to be an understanding, an economic understanding of forms of time beyond the productive, and I think education is a key space, social space, in which that's possible there are. In a religious environment, the time of contemplation is also equally crucial to our well-being. But in an educational perspective I often miss that sense of time. So the last two weeks of August, so just the week before last, I had a wonderful opportunity to experiment, creating an experimental testing ground for what could be a high school in Italy. We just had two weeks together and I heard on the last day a phrase that I've now heard everywhere I've been. Someone was saying I usually feel so alone, even with my friends. Sometimes I feel so alone. And here I feel so alone. And here I was never alone in the sense of abandoned, when I was without other people. It was because I was fully engrossed in the activity that I was learning myself, and it gives me the sense that I've known all of you forever, even though I actually only met you two weeks ago. So this is a high school student talking about that position and that experience of time being suspended. I mean not being able to measure how long we've been together. That indicates for me a very fertile and essential potential for development. There's a sense of being, a deep sense of belonging and connectedness into a community of people not based on knowing their name or agreeing with their opinions on things liking the same music, wearing the same clothes. It's not based on affinity. Same clothes it's not based on affinity. It's a sense of community based on a shared understanding of the fact that we inhabit this planet together. So the realities that we create on that level are the fundamental realities that will end up having been most meaningful.
Speaker 2:One of the subjects the kids wanted to look at, of course we were looking at history, philosophy, mathematics, music, languages. There were all kinds of subjects that they wanted to look at, which wouldn't be strange on a school curriculum. But they also wanted to look into questions like how does change in society happen? They ask questions like what do I need to do now so that when I'm 60, I don't think that my life was wasted? So obviously that was a little bit hard for me to hear because, like, 60 is your idea of what old is. I was hoping that they were going to think about that in terms of 80, but no, okay, 60. And these are questions that normal schools don't have space for and these are questions that require time.
Speaker 2:It was they that organized the timetable. They decided that we were going to spend three hours together every day, 2.30 in the afternoon till 5.30. We didn't leave at 5.30 a single time. We were leaving at 7.30, 8.30. One day we left at 9.30, and the reason was because, after the more subject-focused lessons that occurred, they wanted to process what they learned, they wanted to investigate what it meant for them and they wanted to hear what it meant for us. And those conversations require a quality of listening which the clock cannot attain, which the clock cannot attain.
Speaker 1:Could it be said, dominic, that you're in a sense kind of preaching to the choir in the environments that you're in? So these are non-traditional, perhaps schools? Right, and correct me if that isn't the case. I am thoughtful about how does this experience spread into the mainstream? Like, what is? What is the process of that? You know you are a dynamo and you, you, you. You go to and find yourself in different spots around the world and you are an individual. So do you have co-conspirators? Do you have people that you're working with? You know how does this work begin to scale?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am interested in creating new social systems that are founded on a dialogical or relational conception, rather than the ones that we're used to, and the high school that we ran in Rio for several years and this little two-week experiment last month in Italy are examples of that. But most of the schools in the context that I'm talking about, they're very traditional, very hierarchical. They're schools like I went to, like we went to. I'm not really preaching to the choir, I'm listening to the choir, thank you, I'm learning from them. These experiences were entirely created the two I just mentioned by the students and by the adults. It's not a student-led institution, it's a dialogical institution, so it's about the interaction between people, and all knowledge is welcome and valuable in that context. Context, but most schools that I go into are not like that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so yesterday I had the great privilege to finally spend an entire day in a school in the US, so it was in Padilla, here in Rochester, on the Franklin campus. So the school that many of you may know previously as having been called Franklin and now it's called Padilla, and so you're an adult. So you go in through adults, you meet adults initially and adults are the people you orient to. But as you get to spend more than a few hours but a whole day there, you keep noticing the same faces showing up, the same kids on corridors in lessons, coming into the help zone, and you see the liveliness of them. And you also see them indicating. They're pointing towards something, they're speaking about, a possibility. They may not have language for it, they might not be able to articulate in the way that adults are interested in or give value to, but what they're pointing to, what they're indicating, is of great value to me and great interest.
Speaker 2:I'm always curious about what's lurking at the edges. What is it that's showing up but not being named? What is it that exists but doesn't appear, doesn't get validated, because that's where change, that's where innovation, that's where creativity comes from. You can see it really clearly in music. The way that new movements of music appear is always basically the same.
Speaker 2:It starts really at the edges where no one is looking is always basically the same. It starts really at the edges where no one is looking and just through pure force of creativity and insistence and just being closer to speaking a truth about the way we're living now that music is unstoppable. It just overwhelms us and I think that that is very much what Gandhi and other people were talking about when they were naming nonviolence. I think that's how nonviolence works, very similar to how art works. I think it happens in science. I think it happens in all kinds of areas of life, that something that is just closer to truth, closer to precision and accuracy. It can be repressed and denied, but eventually it will come through. I think the same happens in the sphere of innovation and social systems. So my co-conspirators are the folks who no one else is paying attention to or the people who maybe are receiving attention, but they're receiving charitable attention.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm going to help them because they're suffering, they're in difficulty, they need extra attention, but not necessarily listening to what it is that they're saying, recognizing their situation but not actually validating their voice. So those are my co-conspirators, and that's what makes it a little tricky, because the adults who invited me in haven't always planned on. I try to be as transparent as I can, but they haven't always planned on. I try to be as transparent as I can, but they haven't always planned on me doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. What does a school leader, a principal, a superintendent, what, what, what do these people need in order to invest in restorative practices in a meaningful way? What preconditions need to be there? What support? What are the ingredients that make for possibility?
Speaker 2:there most truthful answer is I don't know. I never know, and recognizing that I don't know for me is essential, because that orients me towards listening, towards learning, towards understanding the experience of the other. When I respond to any question through knowledge, then I accidentally deny their own experience and I deny what's happening right now and replace it with the accumulated memory I have of the past. So I don't know what those people need, and that's why I need to pay a lot of attention to what they say, but, more fundamentally even than that, to what they actually mean by what they say. So a lot of us are using language in the way that we've been brought up we're repeating expressions, we're repeating phrases that have already been cooked, and most of the time it's close enough to what's actually happening right now for us to be able to work it out together. But there are times and I think socially we're going through one now when we really need to be able to articulate things in a way that doesn't refer to the past, because this moment is not a moment that humanity has been through before. So I want to listen to what they say, but I also fundamentally want to see if I can tap into what they mean, and then I want to respond to it. I want to make sure that each time I listen, I never stop by saying, hmm, interesting, thanks for sharing, but that it actually moves forward into action, because if things don't change, people will stop articulating the truth. Because it's very painful to dig down inside and actually speak about what's happening and then find that nothing happens. As a result, there's no celebration, there's no mourning, there's no transformation.
Speaker 2:So I want to listen to what these people are telling me that they need, and what they're telling me that they need often is a great deal more support. Of course, support can be many kinds of material support, financial support, administrative support, all kinds of support but I think there's a quality of moral support or empathic support. There's a there's a willingness to be present to the other person in a way that doesn't interfere, doesn't try and change them, save them, guide them, teach them, doesn't agree with them and doesn't disagree with them, and that's beautiful, because anybody, at any moment, with no prior preparation, can do that, can be present to someone else like that. I think that's an essential nutrient that is missing for many people, and often the reason it's missing is time. Oh, I don't have time for that. So support is crucial.
Speaker 2:And then we get onto the more practical things, and then what we need is people to just be more transparent about what they see, what they're noticing, so that we have a sense of company, because many of these people in leadership positions, almost the definition of leadership is solitude, and this is a problem. Leadership as isolation from others is not a helpful strategy. So that military definition of leadership is something that I'm really interested in transcending and moving towards a really, really different approach. And I can see I've had the privilege even here in the last few days of being with people in leadership positions who the first thing they do is humanize themselves and make it clear that they are open to a different kind of relationship. That gives me a lot of hope when I see that. I saw that at Padilla yesterday.
Speaker 1:I am curious, Dominic, about what you do to sustain yourself in the course of the work that you do in environments that are experiencing various degrees of challenge. Uh, there's, there's a pressurization that's taking, taking place. Um, you know, you're making yourself available and being present and listening, and um, and there's, there's, there's an energy exchange there you know how do you sustain yourself to continue to show up and be and be present and uh, and fully invested in this work.
Speaker 2:Well, I try to take myself as seriously as the, as the people I get to learn from. So I try to to make sure that I'm as fully nourished with support, in particular that quality of presence and empathy that I'm talking about as the folks I have the privilege to hang out with, and I try to listen to the voices, the feelings, the desires in me, which are also marginalized and unheard and often disregarded, the voices at the edges of my awareness of myself, just as I might do in a social institution, take them seriously and make sure that everybody gets their place at the table and everybody gets fed. I think that that's just as important, and I was resistant to do that for a long time. I thought it would be a kind of to take, take, basically to take care of myself would kind of be a luxury which would further separate me from other people. It's a very strong idea, um, and I only that only began to change when I realized that I don't actually get support for myself. I get support for the people who have to deal with me when I am undernourished, because, despite all my best attempts, other people will suffer the consequences of hanging out with me when I'm not well fed, given the things, the tasks that we are all trying to do together, and there will be hard moments.
Speaker 2:Just before I came in here, I was on a meeting and someone was dropping out of a project that we'd just begun, and it's a huge loss, not just the talent of this individual, but we're not keeping our word with the institution that we're working with anymore and we're one person down and I don't know where to find someone else. So a knock like that, if I don't make sure there's a space where my concern about that happening, the impact that it has on me, gets fully listened to and that transforms into action, and I'm going to come into this conversation and, unbeknownst to you, with no explanation, you're going to pay the price. Hey, what's happened to Dominic? Why isn't he not? He's just kind of not all here. He's showing up with 95% and I don't know why. And now I have to carry the can. So I think taking care of ourselves as seriously as we take care of other people is, in fact, part of taking care of other people.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that For folks who want to connect, connect with you, learn more about your work is. Are there other ways for?
Speaker 2:you to be.
Speaker 1:What are the best ways for folks to reach you down?
Speaker 2:yeah, I have to admit the last year. One of the best things that I've done is take a step back from social media. Um, I was pretty active and I took a pause because someone mentioned health consequences of it and I was a little skeptical, but yeah okay for a couple of weeks, let's see what happens.
Speaker 1:Everybody's talking about the impact on your mental health Sure it doesn't do anything to me.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I was astonished by the impact. So your mileage may vary, but it was extraordinary for me. So you can still find me online, but not as frequently as in the past. You can find me on X or Twitter. You can find me on Instagram Um, uh, yeah, I think in English. Those are, those are the. Those are the places, because most of what I posted was on was in Portuguese.
Speaker 1:Those are the places, because most of what I posted was in Portuguese. Okay, care to share with us just what's next for you, what's on your immediate horizon, before we conclude for today, damian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just about off to RIT to give a talk with students there. Then we drive to Montreal. We have work in Montreal, then back to the States. I'm going to Maine, going to Texas and then back to Brazil, and I'm just going to. At the moment I'm going to keep traveling and I'm really enthusiastic about the possibilities that are opening up in.
Speaker 1:Rochester, especially in the school district, and hoping I'll be back and able to continue that conversation in the near future. I appreciate you spending this time with me today. Dominic Barter, thank you so much. And um, this has been perspectives on peace transforming tomorrow. Thank you very much for listening.
