Deëscalation tip #50

It was long ago--2004--and the Republican National Convention was in New York City. A student of mine, a young indigenous woman, wanted to go and to write about it. She was raised as an indigenous radical--her father was part of the occupation of Alcatraz way back in the day. 

I made her a press pass for The Oregon Peaceworker, a newspaper for which I was Associate Editor. I laminated it and wished her best of luck. 

She did two amazing deëscalation actions in the course of the days in New York. 

The first was at Central Park. Demonstrators were massing up against the police barricades. Cops were massing on the other side. My student--and writer on assignment--started a chant, grinning at everyone around her: Give the cops a raise! Give the cops a raise! She told me later, "It totally broke the tension, everyone relaxed, and no one got beaten or arrested."

The second was at Madison Square Garden, the site of the actual convention, and the Republicans from around the country were packed in there, with a growing mass of protesters surrounding the building. She saw police snipers on the roof. Someone had brought reflective pieces of paper to spell out messages. By this time she was seen as the Idea Woman and she argued that for the benefit of the snipers the message should point up first, not forward, and the message should be one simple word: PEACE. Others agreed, and they pointed the message up for a few minutes and then toward the police massed at the entrance. Again, she later told me, no one got shot, beaten, although there were a few arrests, just folks who stepped past the wooden barricades.

Conflict can be creative and constructive or destructive, depending on our approaches and responses. My student taught me how to deëscalate an entire mass of police--I will never forget her lesson for her professor.