In this special crossover episode with our friends at  by MennoMedia, we have a conversation with Marshall V. King, the author of Disarmed: The Radical Life and Legacy of Michael “MJ” Sharp. 

The book tells the story of Michael “MJ” Sharp ‘05, whose commitment to peace and peacebuilding led him to work with Mennonite Central Committee and the United Nations. Sharp spent most of his life grappling with both the concepts and realities of militarism and war, violence and peacemaking. His murder in 2017 while working with the United Nations as an armed group expert sent shockwaves around the world. He was ambushed with UN colleague Zaida Catalán of Sweden, who was also killed. The investigation into their death is ongoing;.

The topic of Sharp’s life and legacy continues in a series of linking episodes of. Check out the series as host Ben Wideman interviews MJ’s parents Jon and Michele Sharp, his peers and fellow students at EMU, and David Nyiringabo MA ‘20, a graduate of EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was the first beneficiary of the MJ Sharp Peace and Justice Endowed Scholarship.

King was drawn to the story through “an early sense of injustice” at his murder and the sense that Sharp’s life was the story of “a modern Anabaptist …wrestling with the world.”

Guest

Marshall V. King

Marshall V. King is an award-winning journalist based in Goshen, Indiana. For more than 20 years he worked at Elkhart Truth as a reporter and eventually as Managing editor. He is an adjunct professor of Communications at Goshen College. He is a member of Assembly Mennonite Church.

Transcript

Marshall:
You know, Menno Simons, and MJ, when you put them in the same conversation, like it’s, it’s interesting. Menno is the guy for whom we’re named, and he was a Catholic priest who left the Catholic priesthood, put his life at risk. He didn’t end up losing his life like many of the Mennonite martyrs did, but that willingness to go out there for what you believe is something that some of us do better than others, and MJ probably did it to the utmost.

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Patience:
Happy Wednesday to you! Welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation Podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at ��ݮ����. My name is Patience Kamau, and this is a special crossover episode with our friends at MennoMedia’s Ing Podcast. Our guests this episode are:

Marshall:
Marshall King, I’m the author of “Disarmed: The Radical Life and Legacy of Michael “MJ” sharp.”

Ben:
I’m Ben Wideman, I’m an ordained Mennonite minister and the producer of Ing podcast, which is a podcast produced by MennoMedia.

Patience:
Marshall V. King is an award-winning journalist based in Goshen, Indiana. For more than 20 years he worked at Elkhart Truth as a reporter and eventually as Managing editor. He is an adjunct professor of Communications at Goshen College. He is a member of Assembly Mennonite Church.

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Patience:
Hi Marshall.

Marshall:
Hi Patience, it’s lovely to be here.

Patience:
Lovely to have you! Thank you so much for being on this podcast. Uh, we are here to talk about a book you recently authored and was… when was it released?

Marshall:
January 11th, 2022.

Patience:
Generally we begin this podcast by asking our guests who, most of them have some kind of tie to EMU. Could you tell us what your journey to EMU was? Uh, and when you graduated?

Marshall:
So I, uh, will start at the end. I graduated from Eastern Mennonite then, College, soon after ��ݮ���� in 1992. I arrived in the fall of 1988 as a young Conservative Conference Mennonite kid who had gone to a public high school in Northern Indiana and, uh, was, was, had found a place in the Shenandoah Valley after a couple visits where I felt very comfortable, uh, and arrived with some assurance that it was the right place for me to come attend college, and, uh, that indeed was true.

Patience:
And this led you to a career that you had for 22 and a half years, which then pivoted to you authoring this book. What happened in March, 2017?

Marshall:
On March seven, uh, March 12th, uh, 2017, um, a young man who was also an alum of ��ݮ����, Michael J. Sharp, uh, known affectionately to, to many of his, uh, friends in the States and his family as “MJ,” um, was working as, uh, part of the UN group of experts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So he was investigating and on this day, some, uh, mass graves and, uh, the use of child soldiers and was, um, uh, misled, lied to by some folks the day before, uh, set up and, and, and essentially led to his death on, on that day, the 12th of March, uh, he was missing for several weeks before it was really known that he was dead and was found, uh, a couple weeks later. Um, and during those two weeks, I mean, at EMU, uh, in Northern Indiana and communities, um, Mennonite and, and such around the world, there were prayer vigils for him and Zaida Catalan, the Swedish woman, um, who was also missing and doing the investigation with him that day.

And so, uh, it was during that time that when he went missing, it prompted local news stories in Harrisonburg and in Goshen where he had some ties and where I live and, uh, and in other places, and it also made some national and international headlines. And, and somehow I felt this, this disappearance and this loss deeply, I felt like MJ had actually gone into the world and, and done some, was doing some of the peacemaking work that we often talk about, um, that we often, you know, proclaim to believe. But, um, but MJ was actually doing it and then for a time was missing and inevitably found dead. And so from the beginning, um, just saw it as kind of a remarkable story and felt somewhat drawn to the story, and, um, and so in the weeks after his death, with his father’s permission, um, started thinking about a, telling of the story, a longer telling of the story other than just the headlines and, um, over time earned the trust of his family and dozens of other people who knew him and, um, kind of began this project.

Patience:
Mm, did you know, MJ personally yourself?

Marshall:
You know, I had met him a couple times. I was actually with him on New Year’s eve, um, two and a half months before his death. And, but I, but I didn’t, uh, I didn’t know him well, I didn’t engage him to the level that in many ways now I wish I had, um, I didn’t realize what he was doing in the world. And so MJ was pretty good at compartmentalizing, like he gave, he didn’t, you know, show up at every social gathering, talking about his work in the world. Um, he didn’t always share that, um, broadly and wear that on his sleeve. I mean, there are, there are expats that he worked with in, in the DRC who didn’t really even know that he was Mennonite or what drove his passion for peacemaking.

And so I didn’t, uh, interact with him to a great deal, but I knew him somewhat. I knew his, his family and his dad a little bit. Uh, as soon as I started, I mean, one of the first lessons of, of undertaking this project was how interconnected we are. Uh, how many common, how many people we had in common, uh, how many close friends we had in common and, and even family like, uh, you know, his, his, uh, one side of his family and one side of my family are intertwined. And so we’re are actually distant cousins. Uh, us Mennonites in North America are real small tribe, and I learned that really quickly. So,

Patience:
[Chuckles] Yeah. So you, did you play your Mennonite game in your brain to try and do the connection?

Marshall:
I mean, constantly and I, and I, and I learned to just kind of grin and, and, um, you know, be, uh, not be inevitably surprise at the Mennonite connections. Um, but also, I mean, MJ, I think like myself, you know, expanded beyond the Mennonite world and wasn’t just in the Mennonite world. And so, uh, it was important and particularly in doing research for the book to, to, to get beyond that as well. I mean, I, and again, I like to say I’m, I’m in my basement, office where I wrote a lot of this manuscript and that basement office happens to be about roughly a hundred meters, 150 meters from where he lived here in Goshen, in my neighborhood for a while. Not at the same, we didn’t live here at the same time, but, but again, I can walk down the street near my house and go, oh yeah, there’s, there’s MJ’s house. Like, um, somebody else lives there now, but that that’s a, that was, that was where MJ spent his high school years. Um, the pictures of him and his Porsche, one of his Porsches over the years, uh, are, is in that driveway. And so like that, that kind, those kinds of reminders are never far away.

Patience:
Mm. Do you recall the moment or day or time when you heard that MJ was missing and what was that effect on you?

Marshall:
I remember it really vividly. Um, I, I, I’ve done a lot of food writing in my life. I, I had a newspaper column where I, um, wrote about food for, for more than 20 years. And, and I, and I intend to kind of return to, to write about food. I hope, but, but I hit pause on it a little bit because of the book project. And in March of end of March 2017, I had actually gone to Las Vegas with, um, some local restaurant folks from Northern Indiana here in Elkhart county, because one of them was competing in a pizza competition in Las Vegas.

And so I thought it’d be fun to go along kind of like, “why not? I’m a, I’m a freelance writer. I, I can go do this. I can go have fun with these guys. I can go to this pizza competition.” And so, um, we were out for dinner at a, at a steakhouse in Las Vegas, and I got a message from one of the editors at the Goshen news who knew that I was tracking the story and interested in the story and, um, and kind of helping them track the story a little bit. And I got a message saying they had found MJ’s body, um, or, or what they believed to be MJ’s body, and, and that was indeed confirmed. And so we went to a reception on a second, uh, on a, on a, on a deck kind of overlooking the Las Vegas strip after supper. And I’m with all these guys who aren’t Mennonite, and in fact, many of these guys I was with that night have kids in the military. And so, um, I was kind of, I was rattled by this death and I was feeling the death.

And I talked about kind of what I had found out that night and one of them kind of, you know, points back over his shoulder to the Las Vegas strip and he says, “this isn’t real! Like, this isn’t…like your friend and like that in the world, like, that’s real, but like, what we’re looking at here, isn’t real.” And, and I remember walking back, um, to my hotel that night just angry, just angry at what had happened. And I, and I was like, oh, wow, there’s some emotion here, what is this? Um, and I think it was, it was an early sense of injustice. Um, and I, I, I mean that, I remember that night and I also remember like, like I said, being drawn to the story and feeling like MJ was a character who lived in this interesting way in the world and was doing this remarkable work, and now we have a death that in many ways is like a death where, um, you know, a military family will get the knock on the door.

And as Mennonites, we don’t, that doesn’t happen to us very often. And in some ca… in some ways it happened to John and Michelle Sharp, and, and MJ’s two sisters that, um, in that in March of 2017. And so I, I just felt drawn to the story; I feel like in many ways, the telling of, of the story chose me as much as I chose it. I mean, it meant earning trust, it meant doing this with, uh, the permission of the family, but it also, um, meant kind of, I, for some reason, I feel, even though this has, this is not a food story, that’s what people that, what people would expect me to be writing my first book about, um, but, but it was this other story because I felt like it’s a modern Anabaptist tale, and it’s a way in which maybe we understand how we’re as modern men…Anabaptists wrestling with the world.

Patience:
Can you say more about, can you tell us more…for our audience more about Mennonites and Anabaptism, you have a whole chapter on it in the book. Um, just give a quick overview for people who don’t…who may not understand Mennonites and/or Anabaptism. And your own background in it, right?

Marshall:
My own background in it, right. I, uh, I’ll, I’ll use my own background as the lens and then, and then expand a little bit. I, um, all my grandparents at one point in their lives were Amish. Um, two of my grandparents, my father’s parents, um, were Amish until they died. But even as Amish people, they learned to somehow abide and literally live alongside their non-Amish children. And my father ended up being excommunicated from the Amish church as a young man and went into voluntary service in Arkansas. And my mother had grown up in Northern Indiana as a, as a Mennonite, the daughter of parents who had been Amish, but had left the Amish church before she was born. And, um, she had found her way to a different voluntary service location in Arkansas, around 1960. And so they met and, um, I ended up being born in Southern Arkansas in, in 1970, and there’s, it’s a little, uh, voluntary service unit that’s part of the Conservative Conference Mennonite church. And so Conservative Conference is, uh, one of about 40, um, well, one of dozens of Anabaptist groups with a particular, um, you know, kind of set of beliefs and, and things that they adhere to.

So my mother has and continues to wear a, a prayer covering, um, you know, she, she looks Mennonite, um, in ways that perhaps, um, not everyone does. Um, and so I have, and so, you know, Conservative Conference Mennonites, um, Amish, um, Brethren, all of these are offshoots of a group of people that started really around the time of Martin Luther’s reformation, uh, reacting against the church and state, uh, at the time in Europe. And so really through Russia or through, uh, Europe, this group of people formed over a number of years, and I mean, some of their primary beliefs were it that the sword is not the way to, uh, to justice or that it, that it doesn’t, um, solve all their problems and so there’s this commitment to peace. Uh, and for, for many people that continues to and has meant kind of separation from the world, like we’re all gonna be over here doing our thing, and you all do your thing, and we just happen to, we won’t join the military, um, you know, you can’t, you can’t force us to pick up a gun, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna be over here believing our stuff and kind of the quiet and the land. But over time, I mean, particularly in the last a hundred years, Mennonites have left the farm, they’ve gone into the world, uh, to do mental health work, you know, rather than fight in a war, or they were, they became social workers or nurses or teachers, or, and so this is kind of who we, who we’ve become as Mennonites.

And so, but Mennonites, I think have continued to wrestle with how to be in the world, like we do we really believe that carrying a gun is like…that complicates our lives when we call the police, or, um, when we, when you look at the international stage and armies and military are such a part of it, uh, one of the people I interviewed for the book had this, had this great line that has stuck with me, and that I say a lot, and it’s “Mennonites just don’t have a very good foreign policy.” Um, and I think that that’s true; and so it’s complicated and messy, but, but that’s what MJ was wrestling with. And MJ, MJ’s dad had been a pastor and historian, one of his best friend’s dad worked for Mennonite Board of Missions or Mennonite Mission Network for decades. And, you know, MJ’s friend and him talked about how they would, you know, they, they would try, they were trying to figure this out, but they thought that they had years to figure that out together, and then MJ’s life was cut short. So, um, you know, Menno Simons, and, and MJ, when you put them in the same conversation, like it’s, it’s interesting. Menno is the guy for whom we’re named and he was a Catholic priest who left the Catholic priesthood, put his life at risk. He didn’t end up losing his life, like many of the Mennonite martyrs did, um, but, but that willingness to go out there for what you believe is something that, um, some of us do better than others and MJ, MJ probably did it to the utmost.

Patience:
He lived “fully engaged,” is the line that I kept seeing in the book.

Marshall:
“He lived fully engaged,” that’s a line that his parents have used often and I think it’s one that, that fits.

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Patience:
How about the parallels between his life and yours? So MJ went out into the world and in a previous conversation, you have said that after you graduated, you went back home. How, how have you thought about those two?

Marshall:
Um, after I graduated from EMU, so during my time at EMU, I, I showed up thinking I’d be a history or social-science educator, and there was one education class and I realized that I wasn’t too interested in being a teacher. Uh, um, I, thanks to JB Landis and Omar Eby, um, I kind of, they fostered what I think that was already there, a love of words and a love of stories, and they kind of, um, fanned those flames to where, um, I realized that like writing and journalism was kind of perhaps the path for me. I didn’t have models for what I would do when I graduated from college because I, I was really a first-generation college student and wasn’t sure what I was gonna be doing.

And I, I fell into the newspaper business and I was pretty good at it, and I liked it, and it was something new every day and I never got bored, and, uh, you know, turns out that, you know, when you can write pretty quickly, that’s prized in the newspaper industry, you know, cuz we have all these deadlines. So I came back to Northern Indiana and I almost left a couple times, um, but somehow stayed here and stayed in this community where I had come to when I was five or six and had been then been raised in until I graduated from high school. And so after college I came back, I, I moved briefly to Washington DC, where I had been in, uh, where, which now known as the Washington Community Scholars Program for a year, uh, during my time in college. And so, but I, I ended up back in Northern Indiana, and I ended up doing this, this community newspaper, community journalism work for more than two decades.

And it wasn’t, um, that I didn’t want to go, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to do something else, it’s that I ended up having a really good gig. Um, I mean, when you get to work for a family-owned newspaper and they over time, let you write about food and, uh, you, you work your way up into management and even oversee the newsroom, like, it was a good gig. And so I think, um, I didn’t necessarily have the desire to go into the world, the same desire that MJ had. I mean, MJ loved to travel and got that honestly, but he loved to travel, he loved being out there, he had been to, you know, many countries, even by the time he graduated from EMU. And so that love of language and that love of travel is something that he was able to transition, to, to find meaningful work. And that started with an assignment in Germany, uh, with Mennonite Mission Network, helping soldiers who were stationed there, who were struggling with being asked to continue fighting when maybe they had growing, um, a growing conscience against it.

And so MJ and others would work with them to even go so far as stay in trial for, um, their over their objections, and often in some cases were sentenced to, to military prison because of their objections. And so that was MJ’s work in Germany. And then, um, he got, he went to graduate school –another thing that I thought that I would do someday, but then never did. Um, Omar Eby once told me, he said, Marshall, I couldn’t imagine you in graduate school because you, you couldn’t have something along the lines Omar said that I wouldn’t have wanted to be anonymous, I needed to be known. Um, but, uh, I, I I’ve often wondered exactly what Omar meant that day, but I, I don’t know. I think he thought that, you know, this, uh, the journalism stuff actually fit me pretty well.

So it’s one of, that’s one of those, you know, riddles that I’ll, I’ll always kind of wonder about, and maybe someday I’ll do graduate school and, uh, abide it happily, we’ll see. But, um, but MJ, MJ found this way into the world and, you know, he took great delight in where all he traveled and, um, I enjoy that too, but never as much, and so MJ really became a global citizen in ways that few people do let alone Mennonites.

Patience:
Would you say that this…writing this book, the, the process of it, which obviously took time, I imagine to build the trust and the relationships that it takes to write the kind of story that you’ve put together in this book, which is very engaging by the way…

Marshall:
Thank you!

Patience:
Yeah, did it change you in any way? Are you different now than the person you were when you started it? And in what ways?

Marshall:
I would hope so. Um, I mean, I’ve said writing this book is the second hardest and second, most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done behind marriage. And we’re just, we’re still in the early stages, I mean, that’s standing here today with the book just in the world, having spent four and a half years interviewing people and even, and I got to travel the world a little bit. I didn’t get to the Congo for a variety of reasons, but I got to Sweden and spent a day with Zaida’s sister and mother. Uh, I was in Germany where MJ had lived and worked, uh, and talked to people who knew him at that point in his life and in the states, you know, spent time with the family in Kansas and in Albuquerque with some friends because that’s where MJ was settling, um, trying to, to, uh, settle and find “home” as he, um, inevitably, I mean, I think that was the plan, and then, uh, his, you know, this last assignment with the UN changed that obviously. Yeah. I’m, I’ve learned from MJ.

Um, one of the things that MJ used to say, and, and there’s a recording of it, you know, of him telling an NPR reporter, “you can always listen,” um, you can always listen to people who are, are, are, are different than you. Um, in fact, I’ll read the exact quote: “You can always listen. You can always listen to people who want a chance to talk about how they see the world.” I I’ve spent, you know, most of my life doing newspaper work, where I did learn to listen. I did learn to, if I didn’t listen, you know, I didn’t keep my job. You know, there’s only so many times you can not hear somebody correctly and misquote them before a newspaper editor will send you packing.

And so I did learn that, but I don’t, I think, I think from MJ and studying, researching his, his life and then writing this book, I’ve, I’ve learned more about what that means. I’ve learned about…I mean, I, I saw it as a modern Anabaptist tale and by doing the research and, and trying to put MJ in the Mennonite-Anabaptist context, I think I understand Mennonites and Anabaptists a little bit better. Um, I certainly know more about the Congo and how it actually reaches into our lives. I mean, our, our lithium batteries and our iPhones and our, you know, there’s any number of things that we use almost on, on almost a daily basis that come from beneath the ground in the DRC. And we’re mostly, you know, oblivious to that.

And so I’ve learned about that. And then I ju…that’s all separate from just the process. I mean, I utilized the skills that I’d learned in the newspaper, in my newspaper career to interview people and to put pieces together. And at one point I think I calmed my anxiety by saying, well, you know, it’s just 60 or 80 newspaper columns strung together in a book. Like that’s all the book really is; it’s just a whole bunch of newspaper columns strung together. You know, rather than writing a column in a week, I, I was like, at some point I was like, wow, this is how am I gonna do this? And, and what inevitably, that’s how it happened was writing roughly newspaper column, length chunks and, and piecing ’em together, and then going through much more editing than I’ve ever gone through in my life and to create a work that is better than your average daily newspaper. So, um, that’s a good thing.

Patience:
Yeah, I learned a lot about the DRC also through reading this; there was what I was aware of, but the details of, uh, king Leopold were very, uh, eye opening. Um…

Marshall:
If any, I, I would highly rec…and I was honored a, uh, Adam Hochschild who wrote “King Leopold’s Ghost: A story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in colonial Africa,” um, endorsed this book. And now, and that was that’s, uh, warms my heart because his book on king Leopold is an amazing read. There’s also a, a documentary or a film on, on, I believe Amazon Prime you can is where you can find it, but king Leopold’s ghost, if anyone is interested after they finish “Disarmed,” like, and you wanna keep going, read “King Leopold’s Ghost.” It’s a, it’s a stunning tale of greed and power and colonialism and the damage that white people have done to, to other people in the world.

Patience:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, just reading it. I mean, I only got a, a snippet of it, and I think I may be one of those who’s interested in reading the books you just talked about, but I remember noting in my head that was 44 years of that kind of absolute cruelty and unabashed greed. And it was just shocking to actually just reflect on it.

Marshall:
Yeah. I, it, and actually it’s, uh, I mean, in, in Hochschild’s book, he raises the question of whether the roughly 10 million people, Congolese, who were killed…I, I mean, Congolese, we, you know, I’m not sure they were called that then as such, but, um, roughly 10 million people killed by this Belgian king, roughly half the population of, of that area at the time. Um, you know, was this genocide?

Patience:
10 million killed and so many more maimed.

Marshall:
Yeah, exactly. So was this genocide and, and, and Hochschild, like plays that out in his book and, and kind of says, well, technically it may not have been genocide because it’s not like he was trying to wipe out this group of people. It was, it was just a byproduct of his greed and how he was doing what he was doing. And it’s like that that’s just chilling at any level. Um, and so, um…

Patience:
He may not have been trying to wipe them out, but he…they was certainly very disposable!

Marshall:
Yeah! And the DRC, I, I is, you know, I mean, one of the other works that, uh, I, I don’t think I read it in school. Um, but “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad is another book that, you know, like if we know something about the Congo, we might know it from “Heart of Darkness.” Like, it’s one of those things that many people have read, and it’s, it’s, it’s all about that colonial, colonialism and that era. Um, and so what we have done to people and the DRC because of greed, because of bad leadership, because of dictators and like, it continues to be a place that’s just not, uh, not easy to live in, not easy to survive in. And yet, uh, MJ went to this place, loved the DRC called it paradise and, um, planted seeds of peace in this, in this place that continue to take root and, um, continues to, to be part of his legacy.

Patience:
In talking to his friends and his family and people who knew him well and loved him. Why did he choose the DRC?

Marshall:
I think mean it was a little bit, it was a little bit random maybe? He was in Goshen, uh, after Germany and was trying to figure out what to do next. Uh, he had, he had tried something, it didn’t quite work out, wasn’t working out, he needed to get back out into the world. MCC was adding a position in the Eastern DRC and approached, uh, Sarah Nahar who had known MJ in high school, and she said, I, this, I can’t do this, but I know a guy and recommended, recommended MJ and MJ met with the country reps, Tim and Suzanne Lindt, and, and was offered the job. And they had qualms because MJ didn’t know French, uh, he had just come from Germany, which is about as stark contrast to the DRC, as you can find. I mean, if there is a country that loves order and democracy more than Germany, I’m, I’m not, I mean, I, I don’t know of one necessarily. I mean, it’s a highly ordered country. Um, I mean, the day I arrived in Germany to do interviews for the book was a day that a thunderstorm had disrupted the train schedule and I’m riding trains between airports to get to Bummenthal and the mere disruption of the train schedule, the stress was just so evident on people’s faces and I’m like…”they’re trains.” And the trains running late in Germany was like this like massively stressful thing to people.

And MJ had gone from that place to the DRC, which is just chaos. MJ relished the opportunity to, to learn a new language, to go to a new place and to, um, do this work, which was food relief and distribution, and, um, kind of working to get to know armed groups. And it wasn’t very long until he was urging the, the men that he worked with in the church program that, uh, was tied together with MCC to, to go meet with leaders of armed groups. And, um, he would do the laborious travel in the DRC to go do that and came to relish that work and really became the expert on one of those groups, the FDLR. So that was then what, um, propelled him in many ways out of MCC and into the UN.

Patience:
Again, just related, in conversations with his friends and coworkers and just all people who loved and cared for him, even though him ending up in DRC, like you said, was somewhat accidental, but then at some point it’s clear that he chose to be there. How do you think DRC changed him, in your conversations with people and in your writing the book, do you think it changed him?

Marshall:
Yeah, it, it, it clearly did. He loved the DRC and its people, he loved the challenges of his work. He loved wrestling with, uh, you know, in his, in his role with the UN, he was part of the state. He was part of an entity that had an army and depending on his actions or his reports, those would potentially result in actions against other people, military actions against other people. And, and he often held firm to try to protect people, even from those military actions, if he could. And, and sometimes even with U.S. officials, like there were conversations where he would kind of not give them everything they necessarily wanted, um, because it might result in some sort of military action. And so, um, I mean he clearly learned and, um, and loved this work. Um, there were threads, you know, he was an editor of the Weathervane when he was at ��ݮ���� and did some really good investigative journalism. And, and there are threads of that investigative work and writing, you know, even when he was a UN investigator.

So, um, but he clearly learned how to navigate this culture and do what was helpful and needed in many cases, but also somehow abide that, um, you know, international relief work is often messy and nonlinear and difficult. The one thing, the one thing I, I, I think I can say with a pretty amount of, with a pretty fair amount of assurance is that MJ loved his work in the DRC, but he was also wrestling with what came next, because he was, he had seen some horrible things. He had been under a, a lot of stress, and I think he was trying to figure out what to do next that maybe didn’t involve being in the, in the DRC as, as, uh, directly as he had been. A lot of expats are there for a time and then they need to, uh, they need to move on. They need to, to work elsewhere, they need to go somewhere else.

And so, um, it’s not that, that love for that place and that work is gone. It’s that, um, you know, it, it morphs or it shifts, or you, you find a, a spot from which you can do some of these things perhaps a little differently. And so I think MJ was, was wrestling…I know he was wrestling with what came next and what that might be, and I think that he wanted to make sure that he didn’t just shrivel up and, um, you know, not, not have some of the engagement with life and surroundings that he would’ve been the DRC.

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Patience:
You’ve touched on this a little bit. Um, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts about how he held the tension of working for an organization that was militarized and being from the background, an Anabaptist background that he came from that was very actively, historically wanting to be separate from that. How do you think he navigated that?

Marshall:
With, uh, with a lot of, I mean, I think it was, it was a, it was a, it was a constant wrestlingI think. He enjoyed many aspects of his work for the UN, and there were many aspects of the work for the UN that, that were incredibly taxing or even difficult for him. I mean, it is a massive institution and institutions are often bent on preserving themselves and protecting themselves sometimes even at the cost of the individual and, and the investigation into his death, uh, at least one of them done by, you know, someone that the UN brought on to do it was, was more about victim-blaming than actually finding the truth of what happened. And so, um, I have some reasons to hope that there will be some justice or at least a calling of account in MJ and Zaida’s deaths, even perhaps more than anyone expected, but, you know, the person we really needed to investigate MJ and Zaida’s death was MJ. Um, and, um, I mean, he, he had this immense skillset to do this kind of work; he was smart, he was savvy, he could listen to people, he was charming and he could navigate so many things in the DRC.

And so I think he did that with the UN, I also don’t think, you know, a lot of the people who do this UN Group of Investigators job, they either find a way to do it over the long-term that is sustainable, or they fly at it hard and they move on pretty quickly. And I think MJ was probably in that latter group and so I don’t think he would’ve taken another term on the group, and I think he would’ve been elsewhere trying to do something. I think it’s fascinating because I think MJ, at least thought about, “could I work for the CIA?” “Could I work for the FBI?” You know?

Patience:
Did he?

Marshall:
I, I think I’m not, I, I’m not sure I can prove that, but I know that he was working at whether he would go work for the International Criminal Court. And so if there was a Mennonite who could have worked for the CIA or FBI was probably MJ, um, I, I’m pretty sure it at least crossed his mind, but, but Patience, in the most direct answer to your question, after a spell of talking here about it, how MJ navigated working for the UN, he wrestled with it. And he found occasional folks who could help him, he found his folks who could help him do that and there weren’t very many, but there are a few other Mennonites who are doing this, this complicated work in the world where maybe they do work for the state as well, or they, and so there were at least a couple of those where he could spend a weekend, hanging out with those folks and just talk and just, and, and process and so I know that he did that and while the work was lonely at times, it, that wrestling was also something that he did find a couple other people to do that with. And that’s, you know, we all hope for that, right?

Patience:
Yeah, yeah, indeed we do. Um, is there anything else you would like to mention about MJ about the book that we haven’t covered yet?

Marshall:
Well, I’m, I’m immensely grateful and humbled to have gotten, to tell this story and to do my own wrestling with his life. And, um, getting just about every interview I did, there was a moment in the interview where I just marveled at something wise that someone said, or some observation or some piece that MJ had taught them. And that, um, being in the presence of that over and over again, was an immense.

And I tried to, to pack the book with as many of those as I could. Um, you know, there’s a story in the book told to me by Surge Lungule a, a Congolese man who was with MJ on a day when they encountered a bus that was being robbed by some, some armed men and MJ hops out of the vehicle and, and tells the men to leave, tells…shoos, the men off. And, and he gets back in the vehicle and like…Surge is like, “what are you, what are you, what are you doing?” And MJ’s like, you know, like, I mean, he had two, he had two comments, you know, that were almost prophetic, like, but he talked about, um, why he did it. And the, and just kind of matter of fact, like explained it, the little small bit of bravery, and it’s this remarkable anecdote that I keep thinking about and how, you know, it was this, one of those things that, what does bravery look like? Like that’s obviously bravery, but sometimes bravery might mean having the guts to talk to our neighbor rather than just muttering about the political signs in their yard, or, um, talk or, or having the, the, the willingness to call something racist that one of your relatives just spouted at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or, um, just being able to say, you know, I’m Mennonite, it’s complicated, I don’t have a good foreign policy, but I’m trying to figure out what it means to live in this world in a way in which we solve our problems peaceably rather than with violence.

And so I think that’s what I really hope that, that people maybe come away with if they read the book and, um, I’m grateful for this opportunity to talk about it and I look forward to some of the other opportunities. Uh, I mean, I’ll be on campus, um, at EMU, uh, and it’ll be fun to, to talk in some of those settings. And, um, there’s a number of events over the course of January and February, and, and hopefully beyond in which we’re able to, to kind of not glorify, not, um, you know, deify MJ, but, but say, you know, this guy lived an amazing life and died a tragic death. Um, what might he have taught us or what can he teach us?

Patience:
I’m grateful too, for this conversation. And, um, it will continue because this is a special episode of Peacebuilder; it is a crossover episode with the Ing podcast, and that’s why Ben Wideman is here with us. So, yeah. Ben, tell us a little bit about where people can find the second portion of this conversation.

Ben:
Well, it’s been a joy to sort of be a fly on the wall and listen to the two of you have this, uh, sort of starter part of the conversation. Um, Ing podcast as a podcast started, uh, early in the pandemic in 2020, um, by MennoMedia, the publishing house for Mennonite Church, USA and Mennonite Church, Canada. And, um, we’re excited to be hosting a continued conversation about MJ’s life and legacy. Um, and it began with the conversation about this crossover episode, so, um, today’s conversation is really the first part in, um, in a series, uh, which will continue over at Ing podcast available just about anywhere you listen to podcasts.

And, um, I’ll be starting by talking specifically to Marshall about the book and, um, we’ll move from there to interviews with, uh, MJ’s parents, some of his peers, including folks who went to ��ݮ���� with him and, um, kind of interestingly, uh, Patience, you got me connected with, uh, David [Nyiringabo], a student who was awarded, uh, the MJ Sharp scholarship at EMU. And, uh…

Patience:
That’s right.

Ben:
We’ll get to sort of get some sense about a legacy even beyond, uh, the story in the book. So I’m excited for that, and I hope that you, uh, join us as we continue the conversation there.

Patience:
Indeed. Thank you very much. Both of you. Uh, this has been a joy and pleasure.

Marshall:
Thank you. Likewise Patience.

Patience:
Marshall is the author of “Disarmed: The Radical Life and Legacy of Michael ‘MJ’ Sharp.” Following the tragic death of MJ in March 2017, EMU worked with his family and close friends to establish the Michael J. Sharp Peace and Justice endowment scholarship here at the Center for Justice a Peacebuilding to help Congolese students attend CJP. If you would like to support this scholarship, please visit emu.edu/mjsharp. Or, you can call the Development Office at +1 800-368-3383.

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Patience:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by the one and only Luke Litwiller. Our audio-mixing engineer extraordinaire is Stephen Angello.
Transcription support was generously provided by Navy Widyani.
And I am the podcast executive producer, audio-recording engineer, editor, and host Patience Kamau.

As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. Thank you so much for listening, and join us again next time.

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Dr. Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán, the inaugural executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion at ��ݮ����, is the featured guest.

Font-Guzmán, a native of Puerto Rico, talks about her journey into conflict resolution and to the position at EMU from the fields of law and healthcare. She also shares about her new book, co-written with Bernie Mayer,  (Wiley, 2021). The message at the heart of  The Neutrality Trap is that, when it comes  to the important social issues that face us  today, avoiding conflict is a mistake. We  need conflict, engagement, and disruption in order to make it to the other side  and progress toward the worthy goal of  social justice. 

The two authors, former colleagues at Creighton University, will co-teach a course on disrupting and connecting for social change at CJP’s 2022 . 

“The idea is that a lot of our value neutrality stems from a position of privilege that it’s easy to be neutral,’ such as the professional codes of ethics for lawyers and medical personnel,” Font-Guzmán explains. “But if you look at it, they’re all through the lens of really preserving a status quo and a system that was not built with people that come from a minoritized group like mine…Every time you’re thinking about being neutral or professional, what does that really mean?”

Font-Guzmán is a practitioner in the conflict transformation field and is also a professor at EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She has a master’s degree in healthcare administration from St. Louis University, a law degree from InterAmericana University of Puerto Rico and a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from Nova Southeastern Florida. Font-Guzmán’s first book “” (Palgrave Macmillan) was the winner of the Puerto Rico Bar Association 2015 Juridical Book of the Year.

She characterizes EMU as at “an exciting crossroad where there’s a group of people really authentically going through thinking how they can make a better world, how they can really lead together, how we can teach our students to be out there, be truly agents of social change and be leaders in affecting that social change.” 

Read about her philosophy and her leadership with new DEI initiatives on campus.

Guest

Jackie Font-Guzmán

Dr. Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán (Jackie) serves as the inaugural executive director of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), at EMU. She is also a tenured professor at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Jackie is a Fulbright scholar who has actively participated in the fields of conflict, peacebuilding studies, and DEI through national and international conferences and workshops. Her research focuses on how marginalized individuals create alternate stories and counter-narratives to transform (or dismantle) institutional/structural injustices. Her book, Experiencing Puerto Rican Citizenship and Cultural Nationalism, was selected as the Puerto Rico Bar Association 2015 Juridical Book of the Year. Jackie received her BA from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, her Masters in Health Care Administration from Saint Louis University, Missouri, her Law degree summa cum laude from the Interamericana University of Puerto Rico School of Law, and her PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from Nova Southeastern University, Florida.

Transcript

Jackie:
But I think for me, I guess my theory of change is that relationships need to be at the core of change. I think relationships have the capacity and the opportunity to alter power dynamics.

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Patience:
Hello and happy Wednesday to you! Welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation Podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at ��ݮ����. My name is Patience Kamau, and this season we are focusing on our Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) by featuring guests who will teach a course this summer, beginning May 16 through June 17. After two years of online courses only, we are returning to an in-person experience; we hope you can join us. Find more details at emu.edu/spi. Our guest, this episode is:

Jackie:
Jackie Font-Guzmán, Executive Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at ��ݮ����, and co-author of the book, “The Neutrality Trap.”

Patience:
Dr. Jacqueline Font-Guzmán (Jackie) serves as the inaugural executive director of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), here at EMU. She is also a tenured professor at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Jackie is a Fulbright scholar who has actively participated in the fields of conflict, peacebuilding studies, and DEI through national and international conferences and workshops. Her research focuses on how marginalized individuals create alternate stories and counter-narratives to transform (or dismantle) institutional and structural injustices. Her book, “Experiencing Puerto Rican Citizenship and Cultural Nationalism,” was selected as the Puerto Rico Bar Association 2015 Juridical Book of the Year.

Jackie received her BA from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, her Masters in Health Care Administration from Saint Louis University, Missouri, her law degree summa cum laude from the Interamericana University of Puerto Rico School of Law, and her Ph.D. In Conflict Analysis and Resolution from Nova Southeastern University, Florida.

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Patience:
Hi Jackie.

Jackie:
Hi Patience.

Patience:
It’s wonderful to have you here! Um, so tell us what has been your journey… what was your journey to EMU to Eastern Mennonite university?

Jackie:
So it’s been a journey actually that I’ve been following really based on my passion for advancing social justice and advancing and working in favor of people that have been historically marginalized. And so most of my life in one way or another has been based on that, my thoughts and my… my strong belief that we’re put here to use our skills to the best of our ability and that we should do that benefiting those that maybe have been less privileged than us. And so all of my history in terms of work, my education has really followed that belief.

Patience:
Is this your first role as, uh, in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion?

Jackie:
With the official title, yes, but before coming to EMU, I was the… I served several roles at Creighton University and among those roles was director of a program that is similar to our Center for Justice and Peacebuilding here at EMU and also director of an institute, which served similar goals of engaging people, conflict-engagement/peacebuilding. And as it turned out, we ended up doing a lot of work, precisely building community and inviting people to connect through their differences. So a lot of the work that I ended up doing was DEI work without really having the title, and we didn’t have –at that time– a director or a VP for DEI, and so I ended up doing a lot of that work and I was passionate about it.

Patience:
Well, we are very lucky to have you here at EMU. So what is your personal background and professional… personal and professional background in this work that you are doing?

Jackie:
Personally, I am, I’m originally from Puerto Rico and that’s home for me and where my family is and many of my friends are. I was raised there and then went to school, went to the Midwest for my undergraduate and for my graduate degrees. And then I went back home, got my law degree, did my Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution at Nova Southeastern University, that’s in terms of my academic background. And I have been privileged to have a really diverse background –so I worked in healthcare for many, many years as a healthcare administrator. And then, I worked many years, litigating as an attorney, back home, and then I entered into academia and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 17, 16, 17 years.

Patience:
And part of that is you’ve done some Alternative Dispute Resolution and Conflict Resolution. Can you talk about what those two are and what the differences or similarities are?

Jackie:
Sure. So part of my journey into conflict was as a lawyer, I, the law is a very individualistic kind of discipline, right? You, you are, you’re for the most part advocating for individual rights. And yes, there are, there are occasions where you’re doing class action lawsuits, where you’re bringing many people and you’re advocating for many of them, but it’s usually about getting rights for an individual or a group of individuals. And it is really hard to change structures and systems that way, because you’re basically solving one.

The problem that one person has or one group has, and you’re giving them a remedy, which usually is either money or maybe reinstatement even in a job, but the reasons for filing those lawsuits, what gets people there because their right has been violated are not really solved through litigation, very rarely right. The movements to change things like our civil rights in the United States and, and the shifting to, advocating for more rights for African Americans and Blacks, that really doesn’t start in the legal system. It’s almost like it ends there when people at the ground-level have been doing activism and saying enough is enough and we need to change.

And so, as I was litigating, I realized that I really wanted to do more, that I, that it was really satisfying to be able to have people’s rights, vindicated, right, so get their rights back and, and make them whole again to the extent that we could, but that it was a lot more satisfying, instead of me advocating for people, create the spaces for people to advocate for themselves. And that there was more change that could happen in that way. So both areas are needed, but obviously I started gravitating towards it. I want to  make more structural changes or plant the seeds for those structural changes to happen. And that led me to, as a lawyer, to ADR, which is known as Alternative Dispute Resolution and, and the foundation of that, and the origins is an alternative to litigation. So still very much within that framework of litigation and advocating for rights.

And, I started working in terms of processes with mediation, for the most part, as a mediator, bringing people together in healthcare areas, malpractice and employment cases, to try to bring them together with their employer, employee and see how they could basically cut a deal, right. An assisted negotiation process. And that was really gratifying, and I learned a lot, but then I realized, well, there has to be even more to this, and I found that the way I see it in my mind visually is if you’re looking at conflict, engagement and peacebuilding as a kind of a continuum where at the very, at one extreme, you have ADR and, mediation and negotiation and this individually based process, and then on the other extreme, or, towards, the other end, you have peacebuilding, which starts dealing more with structures and, changing the structures themselves and empowering people to do work at the ground level.

Then somewhere along that continuum, I started gravitating more towards the structural component of it. And so I think that’s a big difference. One of the things that attracted me to CJP was that I see immensely the potential to be a place where those two things can be bridged because you obviously need both of them.

Patience:
Right.

Jackie:
And, and so having those individual skill sets, but at the same time, being aware of having a way of thinking in a systematic way, systematic looking at the systems themselves is a way to really impact change grounded in an Anabaptist, Mennonite tradition.

Patience:
Mm-hmm.

Jackie:
Where you you’re. One of the pillars is community building and relationships and social justice, for me was almost like a no-brainer. So, it was a, that, that was a big draw in terms of being in that position to be able to, to hold those two areas or spaces where conflict engagement happens.

Patience:
How has that prepared you? So you are the inaugural Executive Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at EMU. The school is going to its 102nd year. So you would’ve joined at around over a hundred years later –how does that, how does that feel to you? How have you processed that if you have, and what, what thoughts do you have to share on that?

Jackie:
I think the way, the way I have, and I’ve been now, I think it’s nine months at EMU. I feel EMU is at an exciting crossroad where there’s a group of people really authentically going through thinking how they can make a better world, how they can really lead together how the, how we can teach our students to be out there and be truly agents of social change and be leaders in affecting that social change.

Patience:
Mm-hmm.

Jackie:
And, EMU has a lot, a long way to go, like many other institutions do. But what I find at EMU and what has prepared me to do this, is that my experiences of being able to have gone through all that continuum that I just described, like not only the individual, but also the, the systems and the system thinking part of it and the relationship building part of it has really prepared me. I think, to come into an institution that truly values community, we may not agree on everything. And we don’t, it’s not that everything works perfectly, but what keeps us all together is that, that concept and that value, that community is important, that we really truly cannot do things by ourselves, that you need to be not only collaborating, but standing in solidarity with.

And so being able to have had those experiences at the individual, and then in terms of process, and then thinking at the system level has been really helpful I think for me, and I think also my experience individually. So I mentioned initially I came from Puerto Rico and in Puerto Rico, I was, you know, I was a woman and women are never fully privileged in any place in our society, but I was from there. I was a part, I belonged, right. I had a family that, you know, I didn’t have to go through marginalization or a lot of oppression in the sense of looking for a job was easy and, and doing certain things was really easy.

And then I moved to the states and all of a sudden I was from a minoritized group, you know, a woman with an accent, not really belonging, not being white enough to be white, nor black enough to be black, which is a situation that many Puerto Ricans face. And so that taught me a whole series of experiences that I think have helped me to really truly remind myself of, you know, the importance of empathy and the importance of how high the stakes are. And so for me I think those, the personal experiences, and then the professional experiences and background and training have helped me coming to EMU and collaborating with a group of people that at the end of the day, they really want, they really want things to be better. They really want things, we all want to just live into our vision and mission.

And I think that this in a way, has prepared me to be at this place. I feel, as I reflect, that there is no other place right now that I’d rather be, or work, or other group of people that I would rather be working with than with the people I’m working with rightworking right now. And so usually,, I think internally that’s, that’s kind of a, a good sign of, you know, are you where you’re supposed to be?

Patience:
I would be curious, um, the combination of, that you feel that you are in the right place, and also what you mentioned, uh, just a couple of minutes ago that EMU is working towards something, obviously, it has a growth mindset. How do you navigate that gap that can exist between where we hope to be and where we are and bringing people along who may not see the vision of where we can be?

Jackie:
Yes, that’s a really good and profound question and, and not an easy answer, but I think for me, what, what I guess my theory of change is that relationships need to be at the core of change. Think, relationships have the capacity and the opportunity to alter power dynamics. It’s a lot easier to be oppressive towards someone, if you don’t really know them or you don’t understand them. And so starting to build those relationships are really important. I think what marginalization and oppression does, and misogynism, and lack of diversity, and lack of equity and inclusion and belongingness does, what is, what structures do in a way…in way is they push you toward spaces where you cannot share your common humanity. They push you to spaces where solidarity is impossible to accomplish. It’s like you’re no longer human.

And so I think a way to bridge that is by extending and reaching out to those individuals that may feel that things are okay as they are, and we don’t need to change them. And so reaching out and connecting and creating spaces for people to have the opportunity to engage with each other and simultaneously, also increasing conflict, disrupting, you can’t have changed , without disruption, but you have to have healthy disruption. So that disruption doesn’t overwhelm the system so much or the institution that then people freeze, get paralyzed, get too defensive and then change doesn’t happen. And it anchors you even more in the status quo.

So I think it’s that balance of trying to hold that tension between reaching out, having conversations, trying to get to know the other person, not even necessarily understanding them. I am very much aware when I am talking to different groups that, have been oppressed at EMU, that I will never be able to truly understand their experience. And that’s okay. I don’t need to understand it to be able to stand in solidarity with and make the necessary disruption to make change. So I think holding those two tensions is extremely important,, because the alternative for me is really not an alternative. The alternative is to completely avoid conflict and not do anything or continue to disrupt for the sake of disruption…but we’re like a hamster on a wheel, we’re not really going anywhere.

Patience:
Right.

Jackie:
We’re calling attention and we’re disrupting a lot, but the institution and the structure stayed the same.

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Patience:
So that makes me think of the book we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, “The Neutrality Trap,” that you are co-author with, who is your co-author?

Jackie:
Bernie Mayer is the first, main author of the book. And he invited me, oh my God, almostGod. , almost a year and a half ago or so,, to join him in this journey of writing this book. And,, we wanted to write a book about everything that has been going on. I mean, the murder of Floyd in our nation,, so many other murders of white, I mean, of black, African Americans or Bblacks or Bbrown people in the hands of white, mostly male police enforcement agents, although not exclusively. And it seemed like our society was going through some change. And yet both of us come from the conflict field. And we started to question something that other colleagues have been questioning, which is, are the tools and the skills and the processes that we’re using really helpful to, to make change, social change happen?. When most of them, at least in the US,  have really been developed by white male from privilege.

And so we started questioning that and obviously, Bernie at the time, said I want to have some diversity, I want to have someone have some, someone to think through things differently. And we have been colleagues for over, over a decade at, at Creighton University. And so we embarked in this journey together. And, and it’s really is about questioning many of the beliefs that our field in peace building and conflict engagement have had for, for decades or since its inception. And are they really working , what do we need to do? And dialogue is great, and conversation is good.

But when you talk to people–, I know, I personally, as a member of a minoritized group here in the U.S.– when people say “let’s have a dialogue,” what first comes to my mind is like, “really again, another one?” I mean like how many times are we going to talk about it? Yeah. And so, part of the book is struggling with all of that and, sharing some of our personal stories and how we have, come to terms with what are some of the things that need to change. And, that this disruption is a good thing. And that, and not only conflict is a good thing, which most of us intuitively at least in our field, we very much, we know that, but also to disrupt, to be able to change the systems and to be able to have a dialogue with an end game, not just for the sake of feeling like we’re good, we have a good conversation and good things came out of it. So trying to take that to the next level. And so that’s kind of what led us  to writing to, to the book, which is coming out now in January, 26th of 2022.

Patience:
That’s right. So by the time people are listening to this podcast, the book will have been out for about a week. Uh, what’s the full title of the book?

Jackie:
It’s “The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change.”

Patience:
All right. So how do we avoid that trap of neutrality? This is the question!

Jackie:
[Chuckles]

Patience:
So can you tell us how it is that we can, you keep using the word disruption? So can you help us understand how we avoid that trap of neutrality and what that actually means?

Jackie:
Yes. So we wrote a whole book on it, so I’ll try to summarizesumarize it , but thetthe idea is that a lot of our value on neutrality stems from a position of privilege, that it’s easy to be neutral. I’ll pick up an example, all most of our professional, for example, guidelines like lawyers have professional codes of ethics, medical, personnelpersonal have professional codes of ethics,  but it’s if, if you look at it, they’re all through the lens of really preserving a status quo and a system that was not built with people that come from minoritized group in mind, academic institutions were not built or created with minoritizedwithminoritized groups in mind.

Patience:
Right.

Jackie:
We have an entire system where people get insanely in debt, and so they never really can snap out of a middle class or it’s hard, it’s a cycle, right?

Patience:
Right!

Jackie:
And so one of the many ways we argue you adopt that, you change that by looking at places in the systems where we’re disrupting or changing something can have the most impact and looking at ways that if you’re in a position of leadership, you can create the necessary psychological safety for people to feel that it’s okay to do that, that you’ll have their back covered. Right?

Patience:
Mm-hmm.

Jackie:
And so we cannot continue for example, journalism, you know, or we want an objective, you know, journalist that is reporting something in a very neutral way. Well, racism is racism. There’s nothing neutral about that. And it needs to be called out and named when it happens and sitting across a colleague that is making a blatant racist comment, whether it be intentional or unintentional, or with implicit bias, that is something that we need to call attention to. And the new, the, the idea that we need to be neutral all the time stops us from doing that.

And I think people in conflict know that obviously, but there’s an entire world out there, a population of people, people that I don’t think are intentionally thinking about that. So every time you’re thinking about being neutral or professional, what does that really mean? Right. In a society that was built for a few, not now, but like, I like to say all the way from the constitution, right? Like the US Constitution, “we the people” never really meant everyone. It was the white male who knew how to read and had money.

And so, what we’re really facing here, is something that is wrapped around not only identity, but things that have been taken for granted. And we need to snap out of that trap, but with love, with kindness, with yes, assertiveness, but in ways that actually lead us to change, not in ways that destroy us. But even when you look at the language, whenever there are protests and manifestations, how it, the way that sometimes it’s reported is, “oh, they’re vandalizing,” but you know, the protestors, but no are like, are they really, like, we need to take a step back and, and challenge our definitions, of being angry, is okay. Right?

Patience:
Mm-hmm.

Jackie:
Like a lot of the time, I know , especially now in a Mennonite institution, how we’re always talking about , community and trying to not be angry. I think that that anger is a good thing, if it’s channeled wisely. It, It nurtures our sense of being offended by things that we should be offended by andny and then being able to take that and do something constructive with it.

Patience:
Yeah.

Jackie:
And so our entire system is designed to keep us in that neutrality trap, mediation sets let’s set ground rules, right? Um, let’s say all the, where does this come from? Why is it that we have to start that way? Um, who is that benefiting and who is notis it not benefiting? And, and so those are the things that we feel that, um, neutrality has really done a harm in many ways in advancing social change. And so we, we wrap, we grapple with the question of, have we unintentionally those who are in the field of peace building and conflict engagement and, and agents of social change, unintentionally supported, oppressive systems, um, unwilling, unwanting and unknowingly. And, and so then we provide some examples as to how we have reflected upon that based on our experiences and the work that we have done.

Patience:
Yeah. As you said that, and you mentioned, uh, journalism, I am aware that Christiane Amanpour, that this is a thing that she’s been talk she’s talked about for many, many years where she has clearly said that journalists can’t have, can’t be caught in this neutrality trap. That sort, like you said, racism is racism. Genocide is genocide.

Jackie:
Right.

Patience:
And yeah, you can’t just go and say, we’re going to present both sides. Yeah. When clearly one side is more, um…

Jackie:
…and where clearly one side maybe is wrong on the moral ethical stand. And so, but it takes a lot of courage. And like I said, I think that doing that in a way that sends the message, but also being loving and caring and not, turning the system around where now you become the oppressor right. Or, you become the person that is marginalizing someone else. And so it’s a balance. And obviously we don’t have the full answer if we had, that would be great. but we basically struggle with and share our struggle with that, and then provide some tips of things that we feel have worked in the past.

Patience:
That’s right. Um, so later in the year, during the summer, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has a program called the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, and you and Bernie will be co-teaching a class, will you not?

Jackie:
Yes. We’re really excited about that. It’s happening between June 6th and June 10th. And what we’re going to  be discussing is a lot of those things that’s based on the book and really challenging and questioning a lot of the beliefs and techniques that we’ve been using historically to make change happen. And so we’re really looking forward to having colleagues and people from all walks of life come in  with us on this journey. We are envisioning it as a very applied connection of theory to practice where people can leave with some tangible ways of coming back and making change, whether it be in their institutions, their communities, or their personal lives.

So I think one of the things about social change is that we see it as this big thing that is overwhelming, that we don’t even know where to start. So we’re hoping with this course to talk about what does it mean, really mean to have a dialogue that can lead to change? what can you do specifically when you go back to your community or institution, um, to start working on, on change.

Patience:
And what are the dates of that course again?

Jackie:
It’s June 6th through June 10th, because it’s the Summer Peacebuilding Institute program. So it’ll be Monday through Friday, full day.

Patience:
Ok, so it is a 5-day course?

Jackie:
Yes

Patience:
And what’s the name of the course?

Jackie:
So the name of the course is “Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change.” It will be from June 6th through the 10th, and it’s a five day, Monday to Friday, two credit course. And our goal is to offer principles for how to understand the conflicts we face, but also how to change them and how to practice it, in terms of what John Lewis used to say, you know, how to get into good trouble.

Patience:
If people want to sign up for that course, they can go to emu.edu/spi.

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Patience:
So just to switch gears here a little bit and return to the place where you were born and raised, Puerto Rico, you did some research there. Do you mind talking about the research that you have done there about a past book that you wrote experiencing Puerto Rican, citizenship and cultural nationalism? Can you talk a bit about that?

Jackie:
Yes, so that was a, a research I did, it was a phenomenological study, which means me meeting with people, having one-on-one interviews and trying to understand how they experienced, citizenship and cultural nationalism within a colonial context, a place where you don’t really have a full say in the rules and laws that are governing your day to day life. And so Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. And it has been one since 1898.

And, and so it’s an entire group of people that have been colonized and marginalized and oppressed. I mean, we’ve been oppressed in so many different layers and levels, right? And so the book was me trying to explore, what, how did that actually feel? How do you take legal terms, like citizenship or sociological terms and things like national identity and, and what does that mean for people? And so it ended up being a fascinating journey where people started sharing some of the stories and in the stories, a lot of the history of Puerto Rico would surface. And so it ended up being very heavily based on the history of Puerto Rico in many ways. And, and it also started, what really triggered me for this subject was, there was a very well known, famous political leader in Puerto Rico who died many years ago, Juan Mari Bras. And at the time I was doing my work, he was living and he decided to do a, what he called a legal experiment, which was to go and follow the legal process that needs to happen to renounce U.S. citizenship. And so Puerto Ricans have U.S. citizenship because it was imposed upon them by legislation in 1917.

And so what he did was, he was a lawyer, I will go and renounce my US citizenship because he found the  statute that imposed US citizenship in 1917 had left a clause from a previous law that said that Puerto Ricans were Puerto Rican citizens. And they were Puerto Rican citizens because the Congress, U.S. Congress at the time did not want to have people from the island who were not “civil enough” to benefit from democracy, to actually have a United States citizenship. And so what he did was, he went and renounced, went outside, went to Venezuela, because to renounce, you have to leave the U.S.And he renounced. And then the question was, would he be able to come back because he had legally renounced?

And so he did and immigration didn’t quite know what to do with him. And I actually managed to get documents from the department of state of Puerto Rico, that as part of my research where they’re saying, we don’t know what to do, basically he’s putting us in ridicule, right? Because they let him in as a result of that, when he came in, he flew into Puerto Rico, which they were not supposed to because he wasn’t a citizen. But they let him come back into the country, to Puerto Rico. And when immigration started threatening him to deport him, he said a famous quote, which he said, well, I am from the Barrio Salud from Mayaguez, which is a town in Puerto Rico. So your immigration’s law states that you need to deport me to my country of origin. And my country of origin is Puerto Rico. So what it did was it put in evidence that the, the irony and, and the absurdity of colonialism and power.

And so, that was the trigger for me to do this research. And what I did, it’s a long story that is shared in the book, but Puerto Rico ended up putting out a certificate of Puerto Rican  citizenship. And so what I did was I interviewed people who had requested that certificate of Puerto Rican citizenship.

Patience:
So what does that actually mean– “certificate of…”?

Jackie:
So it was more of a local thing. It wasn’t a citizenship in terms of a nation because we’re not a sovereign nation. Right.  But What they, what he was doing was, again, disrupting and challenging the system and the status quo by saying, we have this law that is still in the books and it ended up going all the way to the Puerto Rico Supreme court. he Puerto Rico Supreme court case ended up saying that there was such a thing as a Puerto Rico citizenship. Although obviously it wasn’t one from a sovereign nation, but certifying that they were from there,  One of the unintended consequences was, for example, people from in Puerto Rico, if you want to have the Spanish citizenship, people from the colonies have kind of a, if you can prove that you are, you were once a colony and you come from a country that used to be a colony, then you have a fast track to citizenship in Spain.

And so that document, for example, could help fast track a process. If someone from Puerto Rico wanted to go in, they could use that certificate instead of their US citizenship to actually do that type of legal work. So, it became more of a, I mean, symbolic thing; when you’re challenging the system  they are important. , and it became a way of putting in evidence that we’re still a colony, but we also have a national identity and a culture that is very distinct from the U.S., and there’s some colleagues and group of attorneys back home that also continue to file cases at the international courts to, to advance, the cause of that there needs to be a self-determination process. So from that extent, it was a,it has had repercussions that continue.

Patience:
I’m fascinated by the, the interesting difference between what you said that this was an imposition of citizenship on Puerto Ricans versus the very serious battle…

Jackie:
Yes.

Patience:
…by Black Americans in the United States before the 14th, was it the 14th or 15?

Jackie:
Yes, 14th amendment, yes!

Patience:
That, that gave citizenship to Black people, that on one end it was being held back and the other it’s being imposed upon; and in both cases, it’s about power and not really centering the people.

Jackie:
And that an interesting and important distinction that you just made, Patience, because the U.S. because they’re an empire that doesn’t consider themselves an empire, right? Like if you ask people in the US, how many colonies do you own? Very few people will be able to name them. And there are many, as you know, it’s Puerto Rico, it’s the Mariana islands, it’s the US Virgin islands. It’s, I mean, it’s Samoa is, I mean, there is a long list and people don’t know that. And so one of the challenges that people, and actually indigenous nations fall into that as well. The same process that was used to impose citizenship upon Puerto Ricans and the legal cases that were used to justify that are the same cases used for indigenous nations in the United States.

And so people think in terms of civil rights and not self-determination. So what Puerto Ricans and indigenous tribes, contrary to what African Americans are asking here in the United States, which is they want equal rights. They are citizens, and they want equal rights as everyone else. The discourse and the difference between those that are colonies is we’re not asking to have a seat at the bus, we’re asking to drive the bus. We’re asking to have a process where this colonized group of people can decide whether they want to join the nation or not. And so that has never happened in Puerto Rico. We’ve had three or four referendums to decide the status quo for Puerto Rico in terms of their political future. None of them have been supported by Congress. And what that means is Congress just says, go ahead and do whatever you want, but we’re not going to honor whatever your decision is. We’re not committing to anything. And so, Puerto Rico is placed in a situation where the Supreme court has defined it as “they belong to, but they’re not part of the U.S.” And that’s the Supreme Court decision on Puerto Rico, which is still valid right now.

So we’re not part of, we belong to. And so that’s a very different way of framing. So I actually wrote an OpEd. that was picked up by the Washington post, a few years ago, after hurricane Maria, where there were a lot of journalists talking about Puerto Rico in the US saying, there’s, you know, 3.5 million fellow citizens in Puerto, citizens, U.S. Citizens, in Puerto Rico, and that was bothering me and I couldn’t figure out why. And then finally, I just said, oh, I know why, because we’re not really citizens because empires have subjects, they don’t have citizens.

Patience:
Yeah.

Jackie:
And so it was the lack of understanding of one thing is to advocate for civil rights, and advocate for same rights. Another thing is the U.S. as a nation holds colonies that have not yet had the opportunity to decide, you know, do we want to  be part and join, or do we want to  be separate? Or do we want to  be a free association, which are the three categories that the United nations allows for when people own colonies. So it’s a complicated story, but Puerto Rico is certainly not the only one in that place. So the book, what it does is it captures that history throughout the narratives that I collect from the people I’m interviewing.

Patience:
Yeah. And what’s the book again?

Jackie:
Is titled “Experiencing Puerto Rican  Citizenship and Cultural Nationalism.”

Patience:
So how come, what’s the difference? Cause it sounds to me like there were similarities between, I mean, Hawaii is a state.

Jackie:
Yes.

Patience:
How did that come to be a state and places like Puerto Rico have not?

Jackie:
I think, I mean, part of what has kept this colony, \, the short summary of it is because it has some legal components to it. When in 1898, the US purchased its first colonies, they really became an empire that owned colonies outside of the US. that was with the Treaty of Paris in 1898. And it was the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. And so, because there were just foreign people and that’s how they identified them, as savages. I mean, that, if you look at the, if you read through the congressional  record and debates what happened in the 1900s and late 1800s and early 1900s, that’s the way they’re referring to, to these new subjects that they have, like now they own.

And so they didn’t know what to do, and how these new three islands were going to play out in the current structure of the constitution of the United States. And so what they did was they came up with a, with, with a doctrine, which was these islands that are being acquired, and the ones that were eventually acquired will be known as “unincorporated territories.” If you look at the constitution of the United States, you’re not going to  find that anywhere, the term “unincorporated territories.” What you have is the term “territories,” which was the way that this nation became the nation that it is today, right? Territories would form, and when they met certain requirements, then they could be “incorporated” into the state and be and join the nation.

Patience:
Oh.

Jackie:
And so that, that, those ordinances that came during that time, that’s how the U.S. nation forms, and those are the territories that the constitution talks about. So what does Supreme Court did was it created a terminology based on that saying, well, this would be unincorporated territories and there are territories that will be, that will belong to the United States, but will not be a part of, and there will never be the intention of asking them to join the nation, like other territories.

Patience:
Right.

Jackie:
Thus, the qualifier “unincorporated territories.”

Patience:
Okay.

Jackie:
And so that was a legal decision. And so that’s the difference between if you’re in an unincorporated territory, the idea is that you will be in a perpetual state of colonialism.

Patience:
Oof!

Jackie:
And the logic behind it is “these people are different,” “these people are savages,” “these people don’t know what democracy really is,” “and they don’t have the capacity to live into our democracy.” At the same time, they make a lot of money out of these colonies. There’s a lot of exploitation financially that comes with that, and so for example, in the case of Puerto Rico, whenever…way back in the days, there was a lot of pharmaceuticals in Puerto Rico, way back in the days. And all of the birth control pills were actually developed and manufactured in Puerto Rico because none of the states wanted it. Because there, at the time there was a lot of discussion about contamination of the environment and possible side effects.

So because Puerto Rico is a colony, doesn’t have representation Congress, we don’t have a say in a lot of things. So then itallows Puerto Rico to be in this space where they can really get away with doing a lot of things because the law doesn’t apply the same way. And to bring the point home, most of you in the audience have probably heard of Guantanamo base and that place in Cuba where, to this day, they have prisoners and people there because they have been accused of, allegations of being terrorists, the reason, for that space, that Guantanamo base in Cuba is considered an “unincorporated territory.”

Patience:
Oh.

Jackie:
And so that’s why they can take these people and put them there and not guarantee them the same rights that constitutionally they would have if they would be in the United States. So it creates a space for empires to really, in this case, the United States, to really do whatever they want to do in those spaces. Because you won’t have the same level of accountability. And so there’s been a lot of, in the past, experimentation that has been happening in Puerto Rico. Similar to the genocide of indigenous tribes, there was a, a time where there was a lot of sterilization of women in Puerto Rico prior to the 1950s, and, because again, we  did not deserve to be procreated.

Patience:
Mm-hmm.

Jackie:
And so a lot of the things in the history of the United States are not really taught and it’s similar to indigenous populations and, and other marginalized groups.

Patience:
So having grown up there and being from Puerto Rico, how has, and that in all of this history, how has that informed your sense of being, especially with the person that you are today, the jobs that you do, in the place where you’re living?

Jackie:
I think that’s where it all connects with the work I’m doing now and why I’m so passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion here at EMU. Because it allows me the opportunity, together with colleagues in the institution, and students, and alums and, community people in the area to find ways of creating spaces, where those things don’t happen to find spaces where people can show up to work and not feel like they’re being oppressed to find places where students can come and really thrive. And not feel like they have to get through this to get a degree, even though they maybe, they don’t feel at home. And I’ve seen this in other institutions as well, students that have come to me and said, you know, I really think I made a mistake coming here, but I’m halfway through it. So just gonna suck it up and finish it up and leave with my degree. And I’ve heard that in, in many other places.

So this gives me an opportunity for something that is manageable. One of the things that when we’re doing change is you can’t take on the entire system. Like what, what does that even look like?  Tatum, who is a scholar who wrote a book that is called, well, I think it’s “Why are all the Black kids sitting together at the cafeteria?” And she talks extensively about, you have to find what your sphere of influence is. What is the thing that you can actually do? Where can you move the needle? And there are many places to do this, obviously, but I have chosen to do this in academic institutions because I want to be able to create those spaces for our students. I want to be able to create spaces for students to learn how to do that. And  if there’s one place that really should be welcoming, and people should feel like they belong, and curiosity should be off the charts, and people should invite new ideas, and embrace differences, it is really academic institutions.

And so those experiences have led me to say, this is a place where I can have a sphere of influence. This is the case at EMU. It is an institution where  I see upper level management, I see a board of trustees, I see people authentically wanting to make some change. How much? How quick? Those are other conversations. But I do see that things are happening in a good way. And so that’s in many parts, what led me to do the DEI work. It is a way of creating those engaging spaces, where instead of having spaces of marginalization, we can start connecting with each other and, and creating new rituals, new ways of engaging, and making change and changing policies, and then living into those policies.

And so it is almost like I’ve come full circle in the sense of this. This is, that’s why I think I said at one point in time, I can’t think of a better place where I want to do this work because there’s an authentic desire to grow. And the other thing I like about EMU is that they have named many things like, yes, we are a white institution and we need to change that we need to embrace and add more diversity, not just for the sake of diversity, but because of the richness it brings. And then not only we bring people, but what do we do to make sure that when they come here, they actually want to stay here.

Patience:
Right.

Jackie:
And so that’s part of what, what all of those experiences I’ve had in the past and my work of colonialism and marginalization and, and healthcare have in a way, let me to want to do this work to, to have an impact.

Patience:
They’ve equipped you well for this moment in time! Um, yeah. We’re getting toward the end. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about that we haven’t covered?

Jackie:
Not really. I don’t think so. I think we’re good. Well, thank you so much Patience. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Patience:
Yeah, you as well. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Patience:
Jackie is a co-author of “The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change” with Bernie Mayer, published just a week ago on January 26th. She is also the author of “Experiencing Puerto Rican Citizenship and Cultural Nationalism,” published in 2015.

We’d love for you to join us during our iconic Summer Peacebuilding Institute experience, May 16 through June 17; for details about courses, scholarships, and changes related to COVID, please go to emu.edu/spi.

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Patience:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by the one and only Luke Litwiller.
Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is Stephen Angello.
Transcription support was generously provided by Navy Widyani.
And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor, and host, Patience Kamau.
As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so that other Peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks. Thank you so much for listening, and join us again next time!

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