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Afterword
- Syracuse University Press
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163 Afterword HOW DO W E A S SE S S the consequences of an intervention like the Bernal one? Formal means for evaluation are hard to come by. What constitutes success? Is it a continuing absence of conflict? Or is it more that future conflict is productive, creating change rather than harm? In a world as complex as ours, one person’s progress may be another’s injury, so even concepts of progress and injury are complicated . By the goals of the participants, the Bernal mediation was clearly a success. It moved the community beyond a seemingly intractable dispute. It restored friendly relations among many people who had been seriously at odds with each other. It even brought about a resolution to the immediate dispute, changing the physical face of the library itself. As I write these concluding words, art is going up on the walls. The members of the task force formed out of the mediation group have continued to work together, losing one member to mortality, another to relocation, and gaining a couple of new participants. The group hired a splendid project manager, an accomplished woman named Gia Grant. Well experienced in the complexities of working with city agencies to produce new cultural forms, Gia guided the task force through mazes of tasks, raising sizeable amounts of money (with admirable support from Mayor Ed Lee), selecting and hiring artists, soliciting community input, and riding out the inevitable ups and downs of the process. The ups have been many. Not the least of these from my perspective is the way the members of the task force have worked together. Differences have most certainly arisen, and I’ve regarded with great 164 . The Bernal Story satisfaction the ways people used what they learned in the mediation to work them through. At key moments, the group has recommitted itself to the fundamentals of consensus, remembering that each individual stood for the dignity of every point of view. People have spoken hard truths with kindness; at the hardest moments, affection has carried the day. I’ve remained involved. Although I wished to pull back and cede control to community members, within a few months the task force asked me to help them through a hard moment. Once done—very easily, I might add—they strongly requested that I stay on, not as mediator but as facilitator. Inevitably, I’ve served in the dual role of participant-neighbor as well as facilitator. This question of what happens after the mediation is over is a puzzling one. My chosen work is diving into the thick of controversy; I’ve mostly stayed away from organizational consulting after the fact. But now and then I hear a compelling reason to stay involved. When people have a genuine desire to work inter-culturally, and when they recognize the need for ongoing learning in order to do so, then I see a role for my continued leadership. Also, in the Bernal case, I continued to act both as leader and as neighbor. From that close vantage point, I’ve enjoyed seeing how much each member of the task force has learned, with what heart and effectiveness everyone takes part. What is harder to assess is the impact on the community as a whole. To me, a perfect result would have included our finding more ways to involve the larger community than we did. The work of organizing and producing the art has been all-consuming. Everyone involved, even our professional project manager, is engaged in busy other lives. A largely volunteer force can only do so much. To be sure, there has been a visible impact on the community. At one point, the process was delayed by some legal questions raised by a person who had not earlier been involved in the Bernal conflict, who in fact had no particular relationship to the community. He made some nasty charges about some of the officials who supported the project. Another man living in a nearby neighborhood was shocked at these allegations. So on an early Saturday morning, he decided to hang out near the Bernal library and [174.129.190.10] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:17 GMT) Afterword . 165 ask people what they thought. He stopped many passersby at random. A couple of people had no opinion, but everyone else fully applauded what we were doing. Several said they had wanted no artwork on the walls, or that they mourned the loss of the original mural...