Lex Witness, Crimes of Silence, etc.

Things move along on many fronts, as usual.

I’m working with Ethan Katsh to write a chapter for an ODR textbook that will be published by the Springer Press later this year. I remember my first interaction with the Axel Springer group back in 1980 – they had (may still have) an office building that was built right up to the Berlin Wall. They built it as a poke in the eye to the East, and I remember standing at a window on one of the upper floors looking out over East Berlin and seeing all of the antennas pointed back toward the West.

I also just agreed to write a short piece for “Lex Witness,” an Indian online journal. (http://www.witnesslive.in/) I’ll focus on the ODR work that the NMB has been doing for the past few years, and on a new idea that we are pursuing to bring together all of the small Federal agencies who have ADR programs that deal with “the public.” The idea is to gather together in a summit meeting to see if forming some sort of interest group would offer some Open Government opportunities.

A draft of a contract for a number of artists from Haiti who will be the contributors to the next PeaceTones collection is wending its way through the signing process – if we can get that off the ground, and connect it to a concert or two in the U.S., perhaps we can pump some resources back into Haiti, where they are sorely needed.

Aura Vilalta put a note on her Facebook page about a “crimes of silence” conference in which she was participating in Spain. I’d like to look into the proceedings of the conference, for it seems that, to quote one of the participants, “crimes of silence are the worst kinds of crimes,” because they allow injustice to thrive. I think in Spanish law there is a formal category for crimes of silence that dates from the Franco regime.

Finally, we may have found a funder for the playground and child trauma center we are trying to construct in Bethlehem. I’m putting together a course in conflict and trauma with Miki Kidron, a psychologist from Israel, that we will teach in July, 2011 – I really hope we can have the playground in place at Wi’am in Bethlehem by then, and that we can hold at least one of the class meetings there.