SF Peacemaker Awards- June 8 Cloke Workshop & June 9 Awards Ceremony

The annual San Francisco Peacemaker Awards is a benefit for Community Boards that honors individuals and organizations working to prevent and reduce violence and conflict throughout San Francisco.

The ceremony for the 2023 San Francisco Peacemaker Awards is on June 9 at The City Club of San Francisco. As a ticket holder for the San Francisco Peacemaker Awards ceremony, you receive table seating in the Grand Salon, a delicious continental breakfast, and a champagne toast. Our special guests are Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco Poet Laureate, and Melanie DeMore, Grammy-nominated musical activist.

Anyone who has mediated even a few disputes is likely to have experienced the magic of mediation, and would very much like to do so again. But if asked where this magic came from, how it happened, what it consisted of, and how they might replicate it, most would be hard pressed to answer.

Magic happens not only because of what we do, but who we are; in spite of everything the parties have said and done to each other, all their anguish and pain and trauma and loss, all their failed efforts and hopelessness. Why? Because we, their mediators, know, in our minds and hearts that magic is possible, and are ready to step into their hatred and fear and darkness and uncertainty, to search for it there.

In mediation, we allow ourselves, for a moment, to become the magic they are seeking, merely because they do not yet understand that the magic is already inside and between them; that they can become magicians and learn how to turn the lead of conflict into the gold of resolution.

We do so–not as “neutrals,” who are on no one’s side–but as “omni-partial,” and on everyone’s side – not factually, but as human beings with diverse experiences, ideas, emotions, and interests. Neutrality is a response to either/or, for or against, victory or loss, zero-sum, digital attitudes toward justice, based on a wish that our enemies will be smited, cast out, and punished for what they did to us by some superior, paternalistic power. Democracy and mediation require a different, collaborative, non-zero sum, interest-based approach.

This session will examine a few of the sources of magic in mediation and the transformational skills and transcendent techniques that allow us to move beyond conciliation and compromise to collaboration and consensus, and beyond settlement to resolution, forgiveness, reconciliation, and prevention.

MCLE: This course is approved by the State Bar of California for 1.5 MCLE credits (provider #9323).

Kenneth Cloke

Kenneth Cloke is Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution and a mediator, arbitrator, facilitator, coach, consultant, and trainer. He specializes in communication, negotiation, and resolving complex multi-party disputes, including marital, divorce, family, community, grievance and workplace disputes, collective bargaining negotiations, organizational and school conflicts, sexual harassment, discrimination, and public policy disputes; and designing preventative conflict resolution systems.

Kenneth’s facilitation, coaching, consulting, and training practice includes work with leaders of public, private, and non-profit organizations on effective communications, dialogue, collaborative negotiation, relationship and team building, conflict resolution, leadership development, strategic planning, designing systems, culture and organizational change. Learn more about Kenneth.