POW: Peace Over War: Using Mediation and Conflict Resolution to Reconcile International and Local Disputes

By Barbara Melamed

Based on her own activism in the Gandhi International Institute of Peace and Mediators Beyond Borders this book applied her Harvard Law School Negotiation Principles of Mediation to 9/11, Kent State University killings, Croatia-Bosnia, Cambodia, Immigration and orphan issues and todays Racial, Ethnic and Socioeconomic Class injustices. PTSD and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Melamed
• Release date: Oct 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959182139

Barbara Melamed

Dr. Barbara Melamed her work as a Mediator Beyond Borders International, and participation in Rotary International and for the Intensive Training Institute of Women Peacemakers in Jakarta and Bali Indonesia is a continuation of her volunteerism in countries during conflicts which people/families are at risk for PTSD. As Founder and Director of Behavior Medicine Associates for over 20 years as a Board Certified Clinical Health Psychologist she earned an University of Hawaii Matsunaga Institute of Peace & Conflict Education. She achieved in 2019 Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation Master Executive Mediator. She actively mediates struggles between indigenous peoples and political forces. She has funded research from NIH, NIMH, Cleveland Foundation and Arthritis Foundation for research in anxiety, trauma and health. Her book on Behavioral Medicine received the 4th Best Book Award from Behavioral Science Books. She also co-edited a book on Child Health Psychology and family issues. She was former Director of Training at Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii's foremost military hospital and worked with the V.A.'s programs during Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and devotes volunteer work with our returning warriors and their families. She was editor of Health Psychology and currently serves on many journals including European Journal of Psychology & Psychiatry. She presented at NATO in Turkey and gave the invited address at the International Congress on Aging in Bengalura, India. Currently is a Clinical Affiliate Professor at the University of Hawaii and former Adjunct Professor at John A. Burns College of Medicine and supervises healthcare workers, faculty and students during the COVID epidemic.

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ISBN 978-1-959182-11-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-959182-12-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-959182-13-9 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Barbara G. Melamed

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the contact number below.

Barbarian’s Dragonheart LEADER OF THE TRIP

Barbara G. Melamed

5079 Maunalani Circle

Honolulu, Hawaii 96816

808 737-7420

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication to Those Whose Lives Made a Difference.

My kid brother Marty Greenstein, teacher of children and sister’s loving protector.

Dean of Yeshiva University at Albert Einstein

College of Medicine wouldn’t have happened without mom and dad.

Reminder of Auschwitz visit made with me by mom and dad.

Contents

PREAMBLE: How She Got This Way

Author’s Presence

Foreword

Audience

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Morals and Ethics of War

Chapter 2: Youth Activism: Integrating Woolworth’ s lunch counter: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Tom Hayden

Chapter 3: Kent State University, May,1970: 4 Dead on Campus

Chapter 4: Croatia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Vietnam: Disaster and Orphans

Chapter 5: 9/11 Towering Inferno: World Trade Center (WTC) and Resilience

Chapter 6: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Minimal Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI): Treating soldiers, veterans and their families for consequences of war, including guilt, self-blame, suicidal ideation and parenting issues.

Chapter 7: The Whole World is Watching: Spirituality versus the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)

Chapter 8: Indigenous rights. Native Indians in America and Canadian Eskimos

Chapter 9: Xenophobia: Immigration and Racism

Chapter 10: We all Bleed Red Blood: Do Black Lives Matter? Women? Gay and Lesbians?

Chapter 11: Pandemic to Peace: Positivity—Community Survival

Chapter 12: Can Peace Win Over War? Mediation and Meditation Rather than Litigation or Medication

Chapter 13: The Whole World is Watching: When No Compromise Leads to the Destruction of the Peace Process. The Ukraine-Russia Tragedy.

References

APPENDIX I: Peace Organizations

APPENDIX II: Programs of Interest with current conflicts

Bibliography

Afterword

Postscript

The Importance of Hope, Family, Love and Overcoming Uncertainty

Life is a balancing act . . . keep on moving.

PREAMBLE: How She Got This Way

PREAMBLE: How She Got This Way

In the beginning . . .

Mom said to Dad, I feel it coming, as her contractions got ever stronger and closer, and he—in the middle of his weeknight cards of pinochle, so engrossed and already father of one girl, not ready for the other girl—said:

Take a couple of aspirins; maybe she will go away. But she did not, and so, on March 31st, instead of becoming an April Fool’s baby, ten minutes till midnight, I came screaming into the world . . . and I have not stopped yet.

I was the middle child and always used that as an excuse to say that I was being deprived of something, whether it was vanilla ice cream or opening the Chinese Fortune cookie at the Brighton Beach Chinese restaurant or getting to hold the puppy I could never convince my family to let me bring home.

What was life like in my birth year of 1943? Where were you? Or were you just an idea not yet planted? We lived in a small home in a gated community—Sea Gate; outside George the Cop at our Neptune Avenue security gate lurked Coney Island, Brooklyn’s playground of New York State. Steeplechase always seemed like a good ride, although watching the people on the parachute hit top, I always closed my eyes and was glad I had not been talked into the jump.

Coney Island Steeplechase

The times were challenging. We changed; move unwanted. From a single-family home looking over the water of Canarsie Bay across from Fort Hamilton to a modest house on top of a house—second floor, less space, and a pull-out bed with my sister Judy, the princess who slept on the solid side while I slept on the pullout wobbling one. Money was tight as my dad got laid off from Bellevue Hospital and found a spot in the clinical laboratory of Coney Island Hospital, boss of the shop of one.

My earliest memories were nice. Public School 188 allowed us to mix with non- Jewish folks who lived outside of the Gate. Occasionally, we played with fire, riding our bikes, quickly stealing fruit from Johnny Judas’s vegetable market in his truck with our catch of the day—a pear, banana, or grapes. Did not matter; we got away with it. Our refrain was something like, Sea Gate cops take bubble baths.

The Gate was our salvation. Parents were rich enough to intimidate the police officers from making an arrest of a few seven-year-olds—all whom had skin colored white, not like the hoodlums living on the other side of the Gate—and I, the slowpoke on my bike, was asked by the cop from his police vehicle, Excuse me, young lady, did you see a pack of boys drive by?

Yes, I responded quickly. Just a minute ago, I replied, pointing to the opposite direction from which they fled.

What Did I Think? This was right after World War II. Every once in a while, a fellow student would enter the classroom holding a cardboard sign, and the teacher would look at us and announce: Take cover.

We learned to duck quickly under the seats, facing away from the windows in case the flash would happen. It was remote in my mind what trouble we were practicing for. Was it real? Would Japan again drop a bomb? And so, it continued for a couple of grades; we would often be singing in the halls while escaping the threat of a nuclear attack. I was beginning to realize that despite my game playing on the beach in a cement-built army fort that had been used in World War II, this was real. War still lurked in the air.

So, I was now in Mark Twain Junior High School. No more time for play. Study hard as I made the cut and would skip 8th grade because I was special. But I liked playing the flute in the orchestra and would have to switch to the violin as the flutist would be there the entire 3 years of middle school and was more valuable than one of five violinists. What do you remember from your Junior High School? For me it was a time to begin to realize that the boy who twanged my training bra could be someone I might want to let me be felt up by. First time I was aware that tomboys were not the only way to be. And how about you? When did you begin to realize there was such a thing as sex?

So, we never were bombed, and our fathers were not being conscripted into the armed forces. Then one day, it all changed. My friend, Michael Birdie, who had gone to West Point Academy instead of Lincoln High School, was dead. He had been killed in the war—which war? Does it matter which war when you lose your family member or friend?

I was still in Abraham Lincoln High School and worked with Elizabeth Holtzman (later Senator Holtzman) as I was the general organization president. Did I think that fellow students Lou Gossett and Neil Sedaka would one day be famous persons? And after graduating 3rd in my class (never to be valedictorian or salutatorian, to my mother’s dismay), I moved on to get a college education.

So, I was going to be allowed to go out-of-town for college. I was, however, restricted to Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan as that is where my older sister Judy was enrolled, and she would oversee me to keep me in line and out of trouble. But first: a summer at Camp Brotherhood, Beacon, New York, home of Pete Seeger—yes, the guy with the banjo they said was a Commie.

My mom had lived through my volunteering with a homebound girl (her only reason for learning at home was that she was obese and did not want anyone to see her). Also, I had survived working at a camp for kids with HIV and their parents with AIDS, watching some of them die even though they were lined up with non-sick kids to disguise their identities as infected and given the medical injections to soften the pain.

Then I did a stint at Montebello Camp for the Blind, inspired by the owner, a blind woman, and her fourteen-year-old blind son. I was a waterfront counselor, and that was the easy part—watching some self-stimulating behavior of a young girl masturbating while holding a doll each night made me realize it was not a normal camp, but these kids were different. They had no sight; insight was limited.

Also, it was a time of the polio epidemic, and camp was the routine escape (more for our moms), only we did not realize that being upstate New York would protect us from the bug or whatever was causing the epidemic. I had seen our neighbor’s kid brought home in an ambulance and delivered with a stretcher entombed in glass. He died. I never heard of a kid dying . . . and right across the street from me.

So now I was spreading my wings and looking forward to my last camp as a volunteer before college. Never did I realize that Camp Brotherhood in Beacon, New York would change my kuleana, a Hawaiian concept of goal or purpose in life. And it was strange. The Negro kids were not just the ones seated in the back of the lunchroom; they were the leaders of the camp. These youngsters were the chosen ones. We all had achieved some notoriety in our high school graduating class. I received the Mayor Wagner and National Conference of Christian and Jews Brotherhood award. A New York Post 1963 article headlined: Shy Kid Starts to Do Good. Where did they ever get that shy kid bullshit? Ivanhoe Donaldson was my summer boyfriend because he lived in Harlem and had Native Indian blood in addition to Black skin. He said since I had freckles, he would make an exception and accept me.

When he became Deputy Mayor of Washington D.C., we worked together to restore voting rights, education and marital choice. Sitting wherever one wanted on the bus and helping launch the Freedom Riders. So, what did I learn singing in a circle at the bus stop where we returned from Camp Brotherhood outside Pennsylvania Station downtown NYC? We shall overcome. Instead of someday, we yelled, Today! Today! Passer-byers looked at us as if we would soon go away . . . the city of anonymity.

How did you express your acceptance or indignation of the Freedom rides?

So, okay, the college years creep up so quickly, and you are supposed to change from ‘having fun, fun, fun’ to ‘study, study, study’ all night long.

However, Ann Arbor had lots of unusual features. For one, students, though separated by sexual identity, were cohabiting in Alice Lloyd Residence Halls, one floor on top of the other. Yes. So, I opted after a year to go into a co-operative living facility, which was cheaper and more honest, where we all chipped in to plan, eat, and clean up. Then the unimaginable occurred. The day was November 22nd or 23rd—while planning to take a leave during Thanksgiving, I was at the computer newsfeed in Angel Hall, of all places, when it came over the teletype: President Kennedy was shot. Then shortly after that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was dead. Unbelievable to a girl who had spent her life fighting for freedom, health, and the Peace Corps. Ask not what your country will do for you . . . but what you will do for your country. I had even been to India with the Experiment in International Living the year before and spent a half day with Jawarhal Nehru and their then-president. Assassination right next to Jackie whose blouse got red with blood—no, it could not be happening here. Not to my Gandhi again.

What do you do when disbelief of such events hits you in the face?

So even though I was already hooked up with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and worked with Tom Hayden on all things not Jane Fonda (his mate at the time), I was shaken to my Jewish roots. Had I just been gassed? We had already sat-in at the local Woolworth lunch counter despite sneers, spits, and bumps, but I had my first set of FBI fingerprints. (I did not reveal to my mom that another set now existed besides the ones of my fingers and feet on the birth certificate.) I did finish University of Michigan with a fancy degree, Magna Cum Laude, despite the time away from study, I chose to participate in campus politics.

Summer Camp Brotherhood was also a captivating experience that set me forth on a mission to help all humankind receive equal benefits. Pete Seeger of the civil rights period sang for us every evening and made us realize that We Shall Overcome. Brownies and Girl Scouts were supposed to be humanizing, but being with others of diverse backgrounds from all income levels and skin colors was the better experience.

Moving to be with my future husband at the University of Wisconsin did not seem important . . . still Midwest . . . still isolated and protected in a university town . . . but I was oh-so wrong. It was not long before our teacher aides were meeting on the fifth floor of the psychology building to plan for protesting the beginning of the Vietnam era.

I did not know what it looked like to be hit with Agent Orange . . . although I was on the top National Academy of Sciences and National Institutes of Health committees to prevent PTSD in our Gulf War troops. I continue my current work with our soldiers and their families and devote an entire chapter on their needs.

Protests were mostly peaceful. We marched to the capitol around the square and back home to the psychology building, feeling like we had done our shtick. Then, that night, a bomb went off, killing a research assistant in the commerce building who was just trying to get the grades posted. He died . . . I did not know him personally, but I could identify. So, Wisconsin’s Mad City, (called that because it was in Madison) for all its liberalism, did not act the way I expected. Buildings were closed and students were told we would lose our teaching fellowships if we marched. The Union, (our campus meet-up venue) had become occupied by others (the police officers) and no longer did we meet on Lake Mendota’s beautiful terrace to plan our next demonstration.

So on to my first job as research assistant, which is what they called us young faculty (unpaid professors) at Kent State University. I had a baby in my belly who was eight months along,