According to Accipio, unpredictability, stress, conflicting access to resources, perceptions and personal values are some of the causes of conflict. We have seen so many conflicts in our society already, and we can expect to see many more along our road to recovery. They need to be adressed quickly so that our community is able to pivot and adapt to the new norm quickly and thrive together.

This is a prime time for us, the conflict resolution professionals and advocates, to play a critical role in supporting the community. We have tools to meet wherever the conflicts are and knowledge and ability to offer options in how disputes are resolved and how parties can participate, to create an optimum environment to make people feel safe and foster resolution.

In order to do this well, we need to be sure that we are well. Matsunaga Institute for Peace’s webinar recording of the “De-Stressing:laughing Your Way Through These Unprecedented Times” by Lu and Tom Digrazia is available at https://youtu.be/fDSTEV2pLt8.

Hope you are all well because our community needs us more than ever.

Here is a related 2-Day Free Training for qualified 40 participants…

The William S. Richardson School of Law’s Conflict Management Institute (CMI) is pleased to offer an exciting opportunity to participate in a free online dispute resolution (ODR) training conducted by nationally recognized experts Jim Melamed, Colin Rule and Clare Fowler. This opportunity is limited to the first 40 registrants who meet the criteria of being an experienced mediator. If you are unable to attend, the video of the training will be posted on the William S. Richardson School of Law’s website.

If you are an experienced mediator and are interested in participating in the two-day training on June 18th and June 19th, please click on the link below.

MEDIATING ONLINE: A PRIMER
https://www.mediate.com/products/pg1367.cfm

This training is sponsored by the William S. Richardson School of Law’s Conflict Management Institute (CMI). CMI helps legal, business, and community leaders maximize the use of collaborative conflict management strategies.

Sharing information about upcoming event on ODR on June 18…

The William S. Richardson School of Law’s Conflict Management Institute is hosting the second presentation in its 2020 Conflict Management Speakers Series. This second timely presentation will focus on online dispute resolution (ODR). Nationally recognized ODR experts, Jim Melamed and Colin Rule, will present on current ODR trends and the future of ODR. We hope you will join us to learn more about ODR and how we can incorporate best practices into Hawaii’s business community.

To register for the event, please click on the link below.

ONLINE DISPUTE RESOLUTION (ODR):
WHERE’S IT AT, AND WHERE’S IT GOING?
https://www.mediate.com/products/pg1365.cfm

The William S. Richardson School of Law’s Conflict Management Institute (CMI) helps legal, business, and community leaders maximize the use of collaborative conflict management strategies. The 2020 Conflict Management Speaker’s Series is the first in CMI’s offerings of short programs, CLEs, and continuing education courses for attorneys, business professionals, executives, and community leaders.

We could all use some help in finding peace in the new norm we are living in now to help us continue our important work in helping others resolve conflicts peacefully.

We wanted to share information about the free online training opportunity presented by:

The Hawai‘i State Judiciary Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution & Matsunaga Institute for Peace

“De-stressing: Laughing Your Way Through These Unprecedented Times” with Tom DiGrazia

Friday, June 5, 2020

11 AM -12:15 PM HST

Register here, https://bit.ly/3cUnTTP

(Details for logging into the Zoom meeting will be provided the week of the event)

About Event:

Mediation Meets Meditation:  Learn Yoga exercises that can be done from the comfort of your remote workplace in order to de-stress. No prior experience necessary.

About Tom DiGrazia:

Tom  has been a lawyer and professional peacemaker/mediator for 50 years and has studied, practiced and taught Yoga since 1975. As a registered 500-hr.-E-RYT with the Yoga Alliance, he teaches private classes at the YSK Yoga studio in Kailua, Hawai‘i.

Co-Sponsors:

Conflict Resolution Alliance (CRA), Hawai‘i State Bar Association Alternative Dispute Resolution Section (HSBA-ADR), The Mediation Center of the Pacific (MCP)

Please note that currently only The Mediation Center of the Pacific on O‘ahu, Ku‘ikahi Mediation Center on Hawai‘i Island and West Hawaii Mediation Center on Hawai‘i Island are offering the Rapid Response Landlord Tenant Mediation Program. Please contact those three centers directly to learn more about their respective programs.

We apologize for any confusion.

The Rapid Response Mediation Program offers mediation through videoconference, telephone, or a secure text-based online platform. An impartial mediator helps property managers or landlords and tenants to discuss a variety of options that will enable landlords to continue receiving some amount of payment and tenants to craft a realistic future for remaining in their home. Because of the immediate community need for this service, the Rapid Response Program is being offered for no cost.

If you have tenants or are a tenant that have difficulty paying their rent due to furloughs, layoffs or other complications from the COVID-19 crisis, please call contact the mediation center on your island below and schedule a mediation through this free program.

Here is the program flyer.

Oahu:

The Mediation Center of the Pacific
1301 Young Street, 2nd Floor
Honolulu, Hawai`i 96814
Telephone: 808-521-6767
Fax: 808-538-1454
www.mediatehawaii.org

Big Island:

Ku`ikahi Mediation Center
101 Aupuni Street, Suite PH 1014 B-2
Hilo, Hawai`i 96720
Telephone: 808-935-7844
Fax: (808) 961-9727
www.hawaiimediation.org

West Hawai`i Mediation Center
P.O. Box 7020
Kamuela, Hawai`i 96743
Telephone: 808-885-5525
Fax: (808) 887-0525
www.whmediation.org

By Gerald S. Clay

We are plagued by “default thinking” here in Hawaii and around the world. Over and above every curse which the human race has had to contend with, there is one curse that stands out above all others: the curse of wanting to be right.

History has a dismal record of wars waged over the certainty that, “my religion is right”. The thought pattern is this: “If I am right, you cannot also be right.” So, “Because I am right, you need to think the way I think.” How many millions have been killed because of this line of reasoning?

This need to be right is a “default thought pattern”. It is what we think automatically without thinking about it. This “default” has been ingrained in our automatic nervous system’s fight, flight or freeze response to perceived survival threats.

Thankfully, over the last 40 years, a new thought pattern has emerged that promises better outcomes. This new thought pattern is based on thinking about “what is in my long-term best interest?” Or, even better, what needs do I have to address in order to make me feel more secure?

I qualify “best interest” by acknowledging that the decision I choose must not only be in my and your long-term best interest, but must also satisfy my basic human need for security and safety. The Native American people believe that in making decisions now we must look ahead Seven Generations: how will present decisions impact the future interests and needs of my family, community, nation and planet?

So, it may be in my short-term best interest to lie. I may score an advantage in an argument or I may get more money. However, lying can never be in my long-term best interest especially if my basic human needs for food, clothing, shelter, education, health and financial security go unmet. A lie will always be a burden I carry with me. It requires I make no future decisions that contradict my lie. Lying is not consistent with living in a way that is pono.

We need to live by values that have stood the test of time and that we know intrinsically are “right.” Values like not lying or even exaggerating in order to get an advantage. Values like thinking about mutual best interests, our respective needs and about how you and I can both benefit through reciprocal kindness. This harks back to the ancient cooperative human value that ensured mutual survival. We need to honor values like taking responsibility when we make a mistake, and refraining from violence in word, thought and deed.

Identifying long-term best interests and needs to solve problems calls for Mediation. The Mediator helps each disputant to recognize what is in his or her long-term best interest, and whether their apparent and underlying needs are really being met. Although the mediation process may be challenging for all involved, it is preferable to war, political division and protracted civil disputes.

Restoration of community health calls for mediation

It is time for the study of “long term needs-based best interest” to become a focus of our academic scholars. We need to train our young people to think in terms of clarifying the difference between their interests and needs, and the long-term consequences of how they settle conflicts that arise. The mediation process will allow for conflicts—whether it’s a divorce, corporate, public policy, national or international dispute—to be resolved while being mindful of present and future consequences for all. We should look forward to a day when communities and nations finding

themselves in a dispute, instinctively reach out first to a mediator, not a lawyer. Mediators can be our peace builders. We are blessed with an abundance of experienced and passionate private and public mediators here in Hawaii including the Mediation Center of the Pacific, the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution, Conflict Resolution Alliance and the Matsunaga Institute for Peace.

At this time when businesses are shuttered, when government agencies are functioning partially or remotely, it is even more important that we all truly focus on what really addresses the community’s needs.

Listen to the powerless as much as the powerful

We must be attentive not just to those with power and access to power, but to those who are powerless, who cannot afford or have access to lawyers, lobbyists, financial resources or military might. The mediation process can help to bridge the gap between rich and poor that hinders justice in our courts and causes so much collateral damage.

It is easy to say: “we are all in this together.” Yet so many cannot afford to feed themselves or purchase needed medicine. The rising numbers of the unemployed, many of whom are falling into homelessness heightens the need to abandon shortsighted default thinking that spawns winners and losers. Our elected leaders must set an example by using mediation in their deliberations and governance whenever possible. It is imperative that we think like mediators, like the peacemakers that we all called to be. We must embrace mediation with urgency and commitment to nourish the human connection. Think about what we spend on armaments, lawsuits and Hollywood movies. Mediation deserves something approaching that degree of investment.

Post-pandemic, let’s reject the violence-begetting zero-sum, winner-take-all game as the default approach to settling disputes. At the heart of a creative transformation in the dispute resolution field is a commitment to the primary ethic of using nonviolent methods to resolve conflict. Even the most vexing disputes can be settled if the flow of communication between the conflicted is maintained with the help of the mediator. This flow replaces being critical and judgmental with a sincere effort at understanding the interests and needs of others. Legendary mediator and nonviolent communications educator Marshall Rosenberg said: “We can’t win at somebody else’s expense. We can only fully be satisfied when the other person’s needs are fulfilled as well as our own.” The good health of our community on every dimension—economic, social and political– depends on our willingness to embrace this belief. It’s time.

Full story is posted at: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/05/03/editorial/insight/tenants-feel-the-squeeze-socially-distant-mediation-can-aid-landlord-tenant/

With thousands of layoffs and furloughs, tenants are stretched to pay their rent, and property owners are worried about how they will pay their mortgage and other bills. If owners and tenants do not talk and work out payment plans, they may find themselves in bitter disputes frustrated by a back-logged eviction process now and then later when the stay-at-home moratorium is lifted.

In response, the five mediation centers recently created a joint “Rapid Response Owner-Tenant Mediation Program.” Using videoconference, telephone or a secure online platform, an impartial mediator helps owners and tenants discuss options, such as payment plans, temporary rent reduction, deferred payments, and other creative solutions. The goal is finding a way for owners to receive some fair level of payment that also lets tenants stay at home.

The incentive to compromise is clear: Making a plan, even a temporary one, can help relieve fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the future.

The community mediation centers are providing the owner-tenant mediation services at no cost to the participants.

Mediation cannot solve all problems. But even during a pandemic, mediators need to — and can — use safe, civil, and respectful ways to solve conflicts and take their services, socially distanced, directly to people who want these services, wherever they are.