MAKING OUR WAY TO THE PEACE BENCH

A STORY OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN DIVISIVE TIMES BY MARGY CAMPION

I was in the middle of a Zoom meeting of the CFS Business Committee when our doorbell rang. It was a Wednesday, October 28, 2020, six days before election day, and at the door was my 10-year old friend, Vivian. Viv and her mom rent our little house. “There’s a man in your driveway with a gun,” she told me. “I’ve come to get a grown-up.” Together we walked through the woods to our adjacent property. Standing at the bottom of the drive was our across-the-street neighbor. His face was still and stern, his gaze set on the car at the top of the driveway. In that car, a white Volkswagen Jetta, his hands clenched to the wheel, sat a young man with close-cropped, bleached-blond hair and a face drained of color. I stood at the driver’s window and asked his name. He turned to look at me, his eyes huge, and said, “Jacob.”

I asked him what had happened. With shaking voice and tears brimming, he told me that he had taken a Trump sign from the right-of-way; that the man had shouldered and pointed the gun at him; that he had dropped the sign on the road, apologized, and tried to drive away; that the man then stood in front of his car and would not let him pass. “I pulled up your driveway to get away from him.” Knowing that my husband was on the phone with emergency services, I told Jacob that the police would come and it would be alright. His tears dripped and – aware of breaking COVID-19 protocol – I reached through the window to touch the back of his head, assured him that our politics aligned, that he shouldn’t have taken the sign, but that having the police come was a good thing. “Those signs make me feel unsafe,” he whispered. I touched his shoulder, looked back at Viv where she sat, safely up on the porch, and said: “I’m going to go talk with him. It’ll be ok.”

These neighbors live in a house surrounded by trees, set back from the road. I see them rarely. From our scant encounters, years before our country’s more recent inability to communicate across factions, it was clear that our outlooks differed. We first met 25 or 30 years ago when his Cub Scout sons appeared at our door with … perhaps it was wrapping paper … to raise money for their troop. Since then we’ve had one encounter, this past August, when he came to the door alone, his boys long since grown. He asked us to take down a tree on our property. I smiled at the little boys and bought the wrapping paper those many years ago, but in neither case was I gracious.

The gun was long and flat-grey. He held it in his right hand, along the length of his leg, pointed down at the road, its barrel ending just above his ankle. My eyes followed the length of the gun and it was then that I saw a torn TRUMP 2020 campaign sign at his right foot. “He shouldn’t have taken your sign.” And for the first time his eyes focused on me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Please remind me of your name? I’m Margaret Campion.” “I’m Daniel Cook,” he said, his eyes sliding back up the driveway. Lifting his chin to point, he declared, “He’s trying to silence me.” Gesturing towards the sign, “If he would take this, who knows what else he would do.” “He should not have taken it. . . . you’re right, Daniel. But you must know that that,” my eyes dropped to his gun, “is only escalating this.” His eyes unfocused and he repeated, “He’s trying to silence me! I don’t know what he’ll do!” “Look,” I said, “we may not be able to easily give one another the benefit of the doubt, but we just cannot expect the worst. We just can’t.”

At the urging of his wife, and with my assurances that I would not let the young man leave, he agreed to put the gun away. He crossed the road and was soon out of sight among the trees and the deepening dusk. I turned back towards Jacob’s car and had just reached the top of the driveway when a shot echoed through the neighborhood, shattering the tense silence we’d gained. I patted the air down with both hands and looking back and forth between Vivian and Jacob, said, “I’m sure that was an accident. That had to have been an accident.”

Minutes later the police arrived, five cruisers with sirens screaming and lights flashing. The officer in charge spoke with Jacob first, then with Mr. Cook. When the officer came back up the driveway I heard snatches of words: “I’m not going to pursue this ... apologize … the political situation right now ...” and soon thereafter everyone dispersed and the dark settled.

I did see Daniel Cook again. One of those scary Quaker impulses drove me up his driveway the following day, the kind of insistent impulse that makes your heart beat fast during silent meeting, demanding you stand to speak even though you have no idea what you are meant to say. I find that scary. But turning my back on it makes me feel worse. So I drove up his dim drive. Our conversation that day was wary but hopeful. Daniel apologized, we talked, and I left his porch feeling that the neighborhood was safer for his opportunity to express remorse.

At CFS we believe in seeking peace with oneself and others. As the School’s philosophy states, this implies: commitment to achieve a level of self-awareness necessary to interact genuinely with others; effort to foster relationships founded on trust; commitment to a life of nonviolence; belief that peace is not the absence of conflict but the peaceful resolution of conflict; accept[ance] that the resolution of personal and interpersonal conflict is a lifelong task.

Though never a student at CFS, I’ve been educated and changed by my experience as a parent, and by my work on the Board of Carolina Friends School. One of the strongest influences has been the Peaceful Schools initiative (https://www.peacefulschoolsnc. org), the work of Renee Prillaman, Ida Trisolini, Christel Butchart, Rachel Anderson and many others. Christel and Rachel came to our November Board meeting, to tell the trustees about this work. There is little that stirs my mind and heart more than learning about the impact this has on our children at CFS. This vital initiative has grown slowly and organically, present now at five other schools in the southeast, to countless educators who have participated in Peaceful Schools conferences, and to teachers training at university programs in the US and China. It is work that is absolutely necessary for the hard labor of peace-making that our country and world so desperately need. One of the first pieces of conflict resolution that our youngest students learn is that they can take their arguments to the Peace Bench. They can do this on their own or they can ask a teacher to help them.

I have asked Christel to help me as I approach Daniel Cook to ask if he will engage in conversation with me. I have written the piece you are reading to keep myself accountable. Though I would like to decline this “opportunity,” I believe we are meant to have these conversations across the gaps, now become yawning crevasses. I have no idea what I will say when I “stand up to speak;” I am attracted and repulsed, and quite sure I will feel worse if I do not heed this call. I feel a responsibility to this community which has taught me so much. And I know that I want a better country for my grandchildren.

If the youngest of us are brave enough to make their way to the Peace Bench, why should I not try? Stand by.

Margy Campion is an alum parent and long-serving member of the Board of Trustees. She currently co-clerks the Governance Committee. Previously, Margy was an early childhood educator (ages three and four), and eagerly awaits opportunities to again be involved in Carolina Friends School’s classrooms.