A Glimpse at Unarmed Civilian Protection Throughout the World

Press Clip Source: MPR
Link to source: Here

Melissa Townsend from Minnesota Public Radio sits down for an interview with Donor Relations Officer, Amy Hansen, NP U.S.

*Note: This interview is also available in audio format. Hansen's segment begins at the 15min mark.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: So when the Nonviolent Peaceforce started about 20 years ago, I understand it had a mission to send peace builders not to places in Minnesota but to places like South Sudan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, where there were major conflicts. And I understand you went to South Sudan, is that right?

AMY HANSEN: Yes I did.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Tell me about what made you want to do that.

AMY HANSEN: What Nonviolent Peaceforce does is we really work on relationship building and living within the communities ourselves. We also have a lot of national staff, too. People think that guns are automatically going to keep you safe. Like, when I was in South Sudan, we were in this camp for people who were displaced. I was being guided around by one of our staff, one of our protection officers. We're all paid. They're not volunteers.

And we went out of the camp where there was-- the people who are displaced had settled on these people's land. And so it was pretty peaceful, but the people who had welcomed the displaced community were upset that the people who were displaced were bathing in their drinking water. And so we went to talk to them about that.

And they were like, we don't want to fight. We came to NP because we want to resolve this peacefully. But when we stepped out of there, there was a man who had walked into a picture that my colleague was taking, and he got really upset because he didn't want to be in the picture, understandably.

And so my colleague was explaining, I was taking a picture of the landscape. And we're nonviolent. And we're humanitarian workers. And he said, well, if you had been armed, I would have shot you. And if you think about it, we were coming to that person's community, that person's home. You don't show up to someone's home with a gun. That's not going to make them feel safe, and it's probably going to make them retaliate, if you have a weapon, so.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Yeah. A lot of people are buying guns, particularly among women. But you are pursuing something quite different.

AMY HANSEN: Yeah, like in one instance that I was talking about, there's a young man called Hunter Dalli. And someone in his community was-- a cousin of his was killed. And so he went to the chief of his community and was advocating for them not to go and do a revenge killing. And the chief was like, well, this Nonviolent Peaceforce, they don't care about us. And he said, they're here. These international people are here because they do care about us.

And then he said, well, we need to take revenge for our honor. And he said, that was my cousin who was killed, so if anything, I should be the one that gets to decide. And so the chief was convinced that, OK, we won't do this. I'll tell the youth not to get involved in killing.

Then Nonviolent Peaceforce international staff started going between the two communities, delivering messages. This takes a long time. It took six months. After six months, both the communities, after hundreds of people had been killed, came together and had a celebration and signed a peace agreement.

Yeah, people are tired of the violence. They've lived in it their whole lives. And they see that war doesn't work. And they see that Nonviolent Peaceforce provides a solution that does work.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: When I think of the word peace, I often think of war. And so it makes sense to me that you're going into these places where there's serious war happening. But now I hear you're working locally, in communities across Minnesota. So what changed your focus, and how do you think about peace here?

AMY HANSEN: With the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in 2020, I think we were seeing a lot of signs that lead up to civil war in other countries, the deepening of political divisions, a rise in hate crimes. So Nonviolent Peaceforce felt that we have the tools from places like South Sudan and Iraq, that we could do work here that would be useful to the communities as well.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Right.

AMY HANSEN: So one of the groups that we met with was EMERGE, North 4 Program. Emerge works with young men who've been formally involved with gangs, or cliques, or criminal activity, and provides a work readiness program. And then they are placed in internships for different work locations.

So Nonviolent Peaceforce provided training in de-escalation, nonviolent communication. The method we use is called unarmed civilian protection, which is basically trained unarmed civilians who protect each other.

We did poll protection. There was a lot of concerns in 2020, if you remember, about violence during the election. Recently, there was an armed conflict in the street. Two young guys were armed, going to fight each other. And these guys, they knew them. They had relationships with them. Were able to intervene and stop that armed fight from happening.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Mm-hmm. As you know, violence in schools and gun violence in schools, specifically, is a problem on many people's minds. Some propose having armed guards or arming teachers to protect students. I imagine you take issue with that. What's your thought on what should happen?

AMY HANSEN: So when the Minneapolis City Council voted not to renew the police contracts in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Nonviolent Peaceforce was asked to do training for the safety and security advisors who are providing security in the school now. And that's based more on relationship building, working with students.

So right now we're also part of a project. We're contracted by the CDC and the Minneapolis Public Schools. And there is a student advisory board. There's about 30 students. They're having discussions about how they can keep the school safe. One of the discussions was around digital security.

If there's a fight on that's videotaped and people see it afterwards, and someone wants to save face, how do you convince your friend not to get involved in that fight? So I think really working on building those relationships, getting the students involved.

There is a school in Minneapolis who was hearing gunshots go off during the day. And so they consulted a security organization, who did an assessment for them. And they wanted to put armed guards at the doors. And the administrators didn't feel comfortable with that.

So they contacted Nonviolent Peaceforce. We did a risk assessment. This was done with the guys from Emerge, North 4, the youth who live in Minneapolis. After that was done-- they looked at the school bus route. Is it safe? And they hired four of those young men to be unarmed security guards for them.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: It sounds like training is ongoing. I'm sure people are learning as they're doing. But what do you say are a couple of things that are key in the training, for people who want to do this work?

AMY HANSEN: There's a lot of different things. There's unarmed accompaniment, accompanying people to safety, interpositioning, where you're between the people who are armed and civilians. In the United States, I would say de-escalation and using nonviolent communication is very important. So some of those methods might be like when you're in a situation when violence is happening, distracting someone, working on building relationships so that when violence happens you can talk to the people who are involved in it and ask them to step back from the situation.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: OK. Well, thank you, Amy, for talking to me about your work. It's really interesting.

AMY HANSEN: Thank you very much. I hope I did OK.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Amy Hansen has been part of the Nonviolent Peaceforce since 2013. Her group works in Minneapolis and in greater Minnesota in communities who are experiencing conflict but want to avoid violence. She'll be sharing stories from her experience at an event in Minneapolis tonight, marking the UN Day of Peace. It's at the Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church, and it starts at 5:30.