Peacemaking from the "Third Side"

Do you work to transform destructive conflict into cooperation? Can you take the "Third Side" in the conflicts around you even when you’re a party to the conflict? The "Third Side" looks at conflict not just from one side or the other but from the larger perspective of the surrounding community, or “third side.” This time on Peace Talks Radio, host Suzanne Kryder talks with Dr. William Ury, co-founder of Harvard University's Program on Negotiation and author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No & Still Get to Yes and Getting to Peace (released in paperback under the title The Third Side). Dr. Ury has worked as a mediator and negotiator for over 30 years in corporate mergers, wildcat strikes in a Kentucky coal mine, and among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. He says that it takes two sides to fight, and a third to stop; that third side can transform our daily battles into creative conflict and cooperation at home, work, and in the world.

We’ll also talk with people who have used the Third Side approach to ending conflict in their communities: Danna Smith who works with the Dogwood Alliance, an nonprofit organization whose mission is to mobilize diverse voices to defend the unique forests and communities of the Southern US from destructive industrial forestry, and Gachi Tapia who has worked as trainer for several institutions in Latin America, East Europe and ex Yugoslavia. She has collaborated with experts in interventions aimed at a constructive transformation of social and political conflicts in Venezuela 2004, Middle East 2004, Bolivia 2008.