The Western Justice Center, an alternative dispute resolution organization, is located in Pasadena, CA. Famous as the home of the Rose Bowl, Pasadena still has the image of a rich, homogenous city. In fact, it has experienced a marked demographic shift over the past few decades. Affluent whites are no longer the majority, the African-American community is shrinking, and the Latinos are approaching 40 percent of the population. Armenians and Asians also have a presence in the city. Last year alone increased racial tensions and gang activity resulted in more than 60 incidents of violence and several homicides in this city of 150,000.

For the past 10 years, the Western Justice Center has worked with local schools, communities, courts, the police department, and government agencies to reduce interracial strife in Pasadena. Adapting models of peaceful conflict resolution to situations as they arise, the Center strives to transform the ways that institutions deal with conflict and to improve access to justice.

The idea for a center devoted to mediation and conflict resolution grew out of conversations between Judge Dorothy Nelson and a group of judges and lawyers at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court. Their vision was realized in 1996 when the Center opened as part of a complex of four historic buildings housing 17 non-profit organizations.

“We think of ourselves as a community-based, community-action think tank,”
says Najeeba Sayeed-Miller

“We think of ourselves as a community-based, community-action think tank,” says Najeeba Sayeed-Miller, the Center’s executive director. ”We ’re experts on process, not on issues. We don’t advocate for or choose the issues; the community does. As conveners of groups, we provide the skilled facilitators and bring in experts who can give the groups information they need to make good decisions.”

Sayeed-Miller assumed her position as executive director in 2005 shortly after a police officer had shot a young man, enraging segments of the community. The chief of police approached Sayeed-Miller to help him find a new way to mediate complaints from the public. The Center set up a public dialogue process that they called The Pasadena Model, a collaborative partnership among the Center, the Pasadena Police Department, and six community-based agencies. It also invited the L.A. Country Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Services and an outside oversight organization, the Police Assessment Resource Center, to monitor the meetings.

“Individual incidents can be handled by private mediation,” says Sayeed-Miller,” but public issues have to be aired in the community. Public dialogues hold people accountable.”

The Center defines dialogue as a change process

The Center defines dialogue as a change process that moves participants from having an awareness of an issue to forming a collective opinion about the issue that leads to a viable solution. To be effective, a dialogue must be continuous (lasting one to four years), represent a significant portion of the concerned populations, and be self-sustaining.

In the case of the Pasadena Model, 25 police officers and 120 members of the community attended four dialogues spread out over a year. The Center held dialogues on racial reconciliation between the police and middle and high-school students. Forty police officers attended and, to be less intimidating, they dressed in civilian clothes. One dialogue focused on the relations between the police and youth on probation. The participants agreed that the police officers could improve relations by speaking to youth gatherings and by encouraging youth enrollment in the citizens police academy. The other dialogue engaged middle-school students in a day-long program—the first time that  the police and an entire student body worked together to reach a solution.

“Whenever there’s a big conflict,” says Sayeed-Miller, “we get calls to intervene, but we refuse to do just one consultation. Our conflict resolution models are designed to be systemic and sustainable. We train participants not just in the model, but also in the skills they need to continue the project and make collective decisions after we’re gone. That’s the real test of what we do.” To that end, the Center initiated a pilot dialogue program, Points of View, at Marshall Middle School and Marshall High School for the school year 2007-2008.  By training students on campus to hold dialogues whenever a major issue emerges, the Western Justice Center set the stage for the program to be self-sustaining.

Center to serve as facilitators for three meetings called Pasadena Talks

After Pasadena experienced a spike in interethnic violence in 2006, the office of the city manager formed an Inter-Group Relations Advisory Committee that brought together community leaders, neighborhood groups, and government agencies. The committee invited the Center to serve as facilitators for three meetings called Pasadena Talks.

One issue that received a lot of attention at Pasadena Talks was the lack of jobs for youth. In fact, the city had set aside 50 summer jobs for students, but many parents at the meeting said they didn’t know how to access the information. A parent advocate in attendance offered to develop a marketing plan for the city to advertise the jobs.

“This is an example of the kinds of collaborations that can come out of these dialogues,”  says Sayeed-Miller, ”but the biggest impact is on the relationships people build, especially on those who attend regularly. For example, we invited the staff of the county-wide human relations commission to be a resource to these dialogue sessions. We also invited representatives from the Latino and African-American communities to talk about their histories in Pasadena. As a result of meeting the community leaders in one setting, the commission staff developed a better understanding of the scope of the problems we’re dealing with. Now they come to Pasadena more often than ever before.”

The Center hopes that participants in a dialogue process will rally around an issue of importance to them and start their own group, which was what happened at the Pasadena Model. A group of women formed Moms on the Move, mothers who will take action to defuse violence in the community through relationships built at the monthly dialogue sessions.

Another outcome of Pasadena Talks was a 28-hour group facilitation training organized by the Center and the city. The 20 community members trained as facilitators are now providing 150 hours of volunteer time to community dialogues on violence. The Center also plans to train a core group of high school students to facilitate conflicts that arise on their school campuses.

In May of 2007, the city organized a Community Forum on Violence to address four incidents of gang-related crime, including two homicides,  that had occurred earlier that month. More than 120 community members attended. After presentations by the police chief, council members, and the president of the school board, the Center convened dialogue groups, dividing participants into break-out groups composed of community members and representatives of major city institutions. They were asked to identify issues contributing to gang violence and to recommend solutions and actions. The Center is currently working through the long list of issues the groups developed.

“It was clear that people want not just talk, but action,” says Sayeed-Miller, “and that’s what deliberative democracy is all about. But for it to work, participants need good information on which to base their decisions. We see our job as bringing the best experts to the groups, people who have knowledge of and experience with models that have worked well in other communities. Then the participants can move into the deliberative process of choosing a model or parts of models that best suit their situation.”

The Center, too, has adapted its approach

The Center, too, has adapted its approach to working with the community. After years of responding to urgent problems arising from violence, it is now initiating more action-oriented dialogues. Operating on an annual budget of $1 million and with a staff of eight,  the Center engages with a broad spectrum of the city. Among the mediation and educational programs it has initiated are: Transforming Community and Police Relations;  Conflict Resolution Training for Teachers in public schools, including a middle and high-school based dialogue program that trains students to do dialogues on campus; Healthy Families Cooperative, which trains parents on how to divert conflicts; Collaborations for the Urban Environment--a partnerships with UCLA on applying conflict resolution techniques to environmental disputes; and Education for Special Education Students. The Center also holds quarterly meeting for the 17 tenants in its complex to engage in dialogues on issues pertinent to their work. In addition, it serves as a consultant to the entertainment industry, developing public service messages and injecting conflict resolution techniques into programs aimed at young children. And, says Sayeed-Miller, the Center also works informally behind closed doors.

“Moving between different entities and organizations and different levels of leadership in the community, we can bring together local organizations that want to increase their collaboration for talks in our offices. We want our physical space to be a safe place where people can have private and confidential dialogues.”

Meanwhile, Pasadena Talks has morphed into monthly Peacebuilding Brown Bag meetings where members of the community dialogue on topics they have chosen. After one meeting on school safety, a group of parents, police, and schools formed the Safe Passage program to ensure that children come and go from school without incident. An upcoming meeting will address the topic of hate crimes to resolve the confusion many in the community have about the legal definition of such acts.  The Center has partnered with the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission and Councilmember Jacque Robinson to create a community engagement and development process called Pasadena 20/20. As one of three co-conveners, the Center holds weekly meetings with community, faith-based and civic leaders on such topics as gang violence intervention, parenting and intergroup relations, and job creation. The Pasadena 20/20 Initiative is a model for mid- sized cities interested in a public/nonprofit partnership on finding creative collaborative solutions to gang violence.

Sayeed-Miller is no stranger to conflict

Sayeed-Miller is no stranger to conflict. A native of Kashmir, she was born into the center of one of the world’s most dangerous and enduring conflicts. She moved to the U.S. with her family when she was a child, but she has returned to her homeland twice for visits. “Kashmir has one of the highest ratios of soldiers to civilians,” she says. “The military presence is shocking. Even as a young girl, I thought there must be a better way to deal with conflicts. I’ve dedicated my life to looking for methods to prevent conflicts from getting to the point they’ve reached in Kashmir.”