Interview of Mitch Hall by Norm Lee

(Originally published in The Norm Report--Month 86, February 2009, www.nopunish.net

“I wanted to be part of all humanity, not of one separate group."
- Mitch Hall

Mitch Hall is committed to peace building, social healing, children's rights, nonviolence and spiritual cultivation through education, advocacy, counseling, mentoring, mediating, and meditative practice. His recent writings include Psychology and Peace (with Marc Pilisuk, in press, 2010), Mindfulness and Peace (2007), The Social Healer (with Marc Pilisuk, 2006), The Power of Peace (with Madeleine Y. Gómez, 2004), Peace Quest: Cultivating Peace in a Violent Culture (2003), and The Plague of Violence: A Preventable Epidemic (2002). In his writing and public speaking, he draws on recent research in attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, social psychology, and other disciplines.



Mitch's mission for peace building and spiritual cultivation is rooted in early childhood experience. He has an undergraduate degree in religion from Columbia University, a graduate degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, and did doctoral-level studies in psychology at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.



Over the years, in a humanistic spirit of dialogue, he has read in the literature of diverse spiritual paths and has practiced for extended periods with teachers from Yogic, Jain, Taoist, and Buddhist traditions. He continues to practice taichi, qigong, yoga, and meditation (primarily vipassana). Life experience and significant interpersonal relationships have been his main teachers.



Mitch is a member of the Board of Directors of Parents and Teachers against Violence in Education (www.nospank.net). In recent years, he has been invited twice as a speaker to the professional summit conferences, "National Leaders in Nonviolence and the Child." He also spoke for the past three years in peace psychology symposia at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association and made a presentation on "A Framework for Peace and Nonviolence" at the 12th International Conference on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma.  He has served with such organizations as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Peace Corps, which gave him intercultural experience in Europe and Africa respectively. He currently works as a clinical therapist with a non-profit agency in the San Francisco Bay Area.



Norm Lee: I understand you were midwife for the home-births of your six children?



Mitch Hall: One son, three daughters, two more sons. I was filled with wonder and awe at the beauty, vulnerability, utter dependence, and need for love of children who emerge so wet and soft and open. When my daughter Amela looked directly into my eyes, moments after her birth, she was clearly a conscious being, seeking loving contact and support. Not only did I see her, she saw me in a soulful way. My first son was born in 1972, and the last was born in 1990.



NL: And what did the babies teach you?



MH: I learned of the importance for parents to understand human development throughout the stages of the life cycle. I learned also of the importance for a couple that might have children to discuss ahead of time their vision for how to raise children. Differences of approach to discipline, for example, can be devastating to the kids. I learned how, under stress, it was all-too-easy to revert to doing unto the children as had been done unto the parent, for better or worse. I learned, or rather had my predilections reinforced, that punishment is never necessary, that spanking, shaming, and inducing fear and isolation are inevitably harmful, and that setting a good example, reasoning, establishing limits clearly and holding to them are important, as are good nutrition and other healthy habits.



NL: What is most important for parents to understand?



MH: Parents need to face themselves, to learn their own stories, to heal and grow and be as emotionally mature and balanced as possible. I learned that raising children is one of the most demanding yet important activities a human can ever have the privilege to do, and parents need family and community support to do it.



Disharmony between the parents can be devastating to the children, and divorce is turbulent and heartbreaking, especially if children are involved, but that staying together in an unviable, incompatible marriage can be even worse.



What I learned with my kids was to play again in a childlike way, and to revel in stories, children’s books, puppetry, and more. I made some mistakes along the way as a parent, but I tried to learn from them and do what I could to counteract them.



NL: In 1964-65 you taught in a private school, then in '68-'69 in public school. What happened while teaching kids in NYC schools? What challenges, satisfactions?



MH: My first job out of college was as a 5th and 6th grade history teacher at Grace Church School, near Greenwich Village. After two years of Peace Corps teaching in Togo, West Africa, and a year getting my master’s degree in sociology at the University of Chicago, I taught in an inner city junior high school on the upper west side of Manhattan.



NL: That was when the war in Vietnam was close to its height.



MH: The war was raging, and the army decided to call on graduate students to serve. In inner city schools there was a critical shortage of teachers, so that was a legitimately deferrable activity - which fit with my own sense of mission in life.



The main challenge in teaching was to help traumatized kids connect with the value of learning and literacy. A second challenge was in coping with the animosity of conservative, establishment-oriented teachers. Many students were poorly prepared academically and had, for example, third-grade reading levels while in 8th grade. Most of the students lived in dangerous housing projects and neighborhoods. They were ethnically and linguistically mixed, many of families that came from Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. The majority were African-American, a few were white children of Columbia University professors with their reading already beyond the high-school level.



NL: In inner city schools, only the exceptional teacher can even control the classroom, much less teach anything.



MH: The school was chaotic. Additionally, the entire NYC teachers’ union called a strike that year, and I was one of a small number of teachers who opened our school and held classes during the strike. The reason: We were in solidarity with the local school board in Ocean-Hill Brownsville, Brooklyn, who had fired a few teachers, after due investigations, on the grounds that they were racist. The teachers' union, under Albert Shanker, refused to honor the legitimacy of the school board. I and other young idealists felt our solidarity was with the local people of color, not with the relatively privileged union membership. Teaching during the strike with a handful of other young teachers was an adventure. I also spoke at hearings in support of the local parents’ right to have a say on what went on in the schools. This garnered the animosity of long-term career teachers who continued to resent the young idealists when the old guard returned to school at the end of the strike.



NL: Heady times, indeed, requiring courage. You are not the kind of teacher who clings fearfully to the assigned textbook. How satisfying has teaching been for you? Do you think of yourself as primarily a classroom teacher?



MH: I enjoyed classroom teaching a lot and had many varying roles, experiences, and contexts as a teacher. I have been concerned first and foremost not with subject matter, but for the well being, self-understanding, and development of the students. I practiced teaching as, in a sense, a healing profession, an opportunity to help students whose spirits may have been broken to discover their own potentials for curiosity, discovery, expression, connection with their own core and others, and service. Over the years, many students have said I made a crucial difference in their lives.



One of the satisfying things I did was to experiment with the curriculum. For example, I found the American history textbook to be somewhat racist and superficial, so I locked it up in a closet and used other materials. When students asked about it, I took it out and used it for exercises in critical thinking. I told them they needed to look for evidence and logic and use their own intelligence to discern truth from falsehood.



When faced with the difficulty of getting these kids to connect to writing, I looked for books that related to their everyday lives on the streets and in the projects, like "Down These Mean Streets", by Piri Thomas. I did a dramatic reading, and the previously unruly classes became engrossed and silent. They loved the story and wanted more. I cut a deal. If I would buy a box of 100 books at a big discount, would they each buy one at my cost? They all agreed. The books quickly sold out, and even kids outside my classes came to buy the remaining copies. We got lots of lessons from the book, including a lesson on getting the girls to analyze the portrayal of females in the book.  When I invited them to write their own stories, they produced some stunning, authentic, autobiographical narratives.



NL: A teacher's job is, unfortunately, not only classroom lessons; it is dealing with the school's political pressures as well.



MH: During that time I was not far from national politics, not even in the classroom. The son of Roy Inness, the national leader of CORE, was in one of my classes. A girl whose father was Juan Correa, a Vietnam veteran who was heading up the mercenary forces fighting with General Ojukwu for Biafran independence from Nigeria, was in another class. The girl, Juanita, went to Biafra over the Christmas vacation and brought back horrific war pictures and told of how her father got up from the dinner table to go out back and execute someone. She was certainly traumatized by her experiences and got into some fights during that period.



NEXT: The search for identity, work in Europe, Peace Corps in Africa, and current work as therapist with traumatized children.



(Part 2 of the Interview by Norm Lee was originally published in The Norm Report--Month 87, March, 2009, www.nopunish.net)



" I think my advocacy of children's rights stemmed from

that year when I was abused and traumatized."



-Mitch Hall



Norm Lee: What were the political influences in your youth? What are the roots of this social conscience?

Mitch Hall: My family from my mom's side, the ones who raised me, were all Jews who had come originally as refugees to escape the pogroms and poverty of Eastern Europe. They tended to be politically liberal, and they abhorred war. My maternal grandmother's oldest brother was killed in Europe as a soldier in WWI before the family had emigrated from Europe. They were from Latvia and had moved to London. In high school my mom had written an essay on the causes of war, which she found to be greed, and she won a city- wide essay contest for which she was honored. My mom's brother Ray was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, and his homecoming was a moment when I, as a very young child, saw my grandparents the most joyous I'd ever seen them. I felt strongly against war as a kid, prayed for the end of the Korean War, and kept for many years the newspaper announcing the truce had been reached.





NL: At what point did you became a pacifist, and commit your life to resisting war?

MH: As a young boy I saw a documentary about Gandhi and nonviolent resistance.



There was a small Indian man in a loincloth leading many people in a march to the sea for salt, and to sit on railroad tracks to block trains. Wow, I realized that I, too, could sit down, cross my legs, and refuse whatever did not serve my needs. My first Gandhi- inspired act, one of many in my life, of nonviolent refusal to cooperate with something, came about when I decided I did not want to go through with the bar mitzvah for which I had been preparing in Hebrew school. When the time came for me to leave for "schul.", I sat cross-legged on my grandparents' living room floor (age 11 or 12). No amount of arguing, cajoling, punishment, or manifest disappointment on the part of adults could dissuade me from my decision. I felt I belonged to all of humanity and did not want to be confirmed as a member of only one ethnic, religious group.



The fact that my dad, whom I did not yet know personally, was Christian, and that my own group identity was mixed and ambiguous in those years was undoubtedly a part of it. This was another influence. I questioned people's collective identities. I had a mixed heritage. Some Jews were prejudiced against me because of my non-Jewish name and, in their eyes, appearance. Yet in Hebrew school I had been learning about the one God who had created all. People did not act that way. I looked inside myself, metaphorically speaking, to find the admixture of two different ingredients, like chocolate and vanilla ice cream, but all I found was one person. When I looked in others' eyes, I saw that each was just one person as well, despite superficial differences. So, I wanted to be part of all humanity, not of one separate group.





NL: And in this search for who you were, you encountered many answers.

MH: As for identity, I spent a year in Detroit, coinciding with second-grade. My mom had married an abusive, violent, racist, orthodox Jewish man who traumatized me.



despite his supposed piety. In the basement of the same building, owned by the stepfather's equally abusive mother who lived upstairs, was a warm, nurturing, working- class. African-American woman named Lilly. She took in clothes to launder for a living. The stepfather had forbidden me to associate with Lilly, but my mom let me hang out with Lilly provided her husband was away and did not know about it.



Lilly befriended me, loved me, laughed at my humor, and gave me a sense of safety when I was with her. She influenced the rest of my life. When I joined the civil rights movement while in high school and college, opposing racism and prejudice, the lessons learned in Detroit, positive ones from Lilly and negative ones from the stepfather, were strong influences on me. I think my advocacy of children's rights also stemmed from that year when I was abused and traumatized. Fortunately, there were enough positive influences in my life for me to learn that not all adults treated children that way.





NL: When was it that you worked in Europe for the FOR?

MH: I worked in Europe for a year (1970) as an organizer for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. I had found an ad in a publication on the floor after a workshop at Columbia. The call was for someone who spoke at least one other European language and understood the importance of the looming environmental crisis. I applied. The night before the interview I had a vivid dream in which I saw a room with a fireplace. On the mantle were a picture of Gandhi and an ivy plant whose stems and leaves grew over and around the picture. When I reached the FOR headquarters in Nyack, NY, (and this was the first time I'd ever been there), I was asked to wait for my interview in a room that was exactly what I had seen in my dream. I had a sense I'd get this job, and I did.



I had offices first in Brussels and then in Paris and traveled in eight different nations in connection with my work for peace and ecological sustainability. Organizing an ecology conference in Menton. France, I invited ecologists to participate and arranged for the hotel and conference hall in Menton. The conference produced a document, the Menton Message, which, translated and printed, was circulated in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Other people circulated the document in other parts of the world. It was published in the NY Times and UNESCO Courier, presented to U Thant in a ceremony at the UN, and became a working paper at the first UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972. The documents from that work are archived in the library at Swarthmore College as historically important to the peace movement.



While in Europe, I also was a liaison for the FOR with many peace movement and social justice leaders in nine nations. I met with Danilo Dolci, called the Italian Gandhi, in Sicily and with the exiled Brazilian educator Paolo Freire at his office and home in Geneva. I also worked with people from the Overseas Vietnamese Buddhist Association in Paris, including Thich Nhat Hanh and Vo Van Ai. The latter is a significant human rights activist to this day. A split had occurred among the Vietnamese Buddhist peace activists, with many becoming disillusioned with TNH, who later became even more famous and popular.



While at Norwich University I taught undergraduate courses on the sociology of racial and ethnic relations. For ten years at this institution I was director of an undergraduate program dedicated to preparing students for service leadership in intercultural contexts, such as in the Peace Corps. I collaboratively developed the curriculum with the adjunct professors' whom I hired and supervised. Students in the program conducted focus groups around the university to assess student attitudes about diversity issues. On the basis of the information gathered, the students and teachers made recommendations to the university leadership about how the school's culture could be shifted in ways that would make it more congenial for people from diverse backgrounds. And for a government-sponsored refugee resettlement program in Vermont, I served as interpreter for French-speaking refugees from Congo and Rwanda in Africa.





NL: You had then already returned from serving in the Peace Corps?

MH: I joined the Peace Corps in 1964, during my senior year at Columbia. I had married an African-American/French-Canadian woman who was a junior there. We wanted to go to Africa together to learn fIrst-hand about the lives of people in the third world who had gained independence from European colonial rule. We had a two-summer training to learn French, African studies, pedagogy, and more. In the school year between the two summers, all the other trainees completed college, and I taught in NYC.



I served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer teacher in the West African nation of Togo. There, I taught many high school students from small, economically disadvantaged, rural villages who were aspiring to improve their life circumstances through education. I taught ESL, history, and geography in two high schools in the northern Togolese town of Lama-Kara. French was the language of instruction. Classes had up to 70 students at a time. The experience was a profound one. I learned about, childrearing, for example, and the normalcy of sustained breast-feeding. I learned about how some illiterate peasant people who had never been to school carried complex cultural traditions, at times with wisdom. I learned to love African music and dance. I became even more disillusioned with materialism, imperialism, cultural hegemony of colonial 'and neocolonial powers. I learned how the US government had propagandistic purposes with the Peace Corps and how, nonetheless, most volunteers became more radicalized from their direct experiences. I learned the devastating effects of colonial occupation on the self-esteem of local people and about the corruption and ruthlessness of the military dictatorship, allies of the US that turned a blind eye to human rights abuses, of the country where I was serving.



One of my students was a paraplegic who crawled on his hands and knees a couple of miles across the countryside twice a day, for the morning and afternoon classes, between the school and his home. Through a charitable organization in the United States, I ordered a wheelchair, and when it arrived I presented it to the student. It was the fIrst wheelchair that had ever been seen in that town. The student then proudly came to school upright, often pushed by some of his friends. It made a big difference to hi~ sense of human dignity that he could be upright just like his friends.





NL: What is it like, your everyday work today as a clinical therapist? Is this what you had hoped for as the culmination of years of struggle?

MH: I work as a therapist with Community Health for Asian-Americans, a non-profit, mental health agency in Richmond, California, which is one of the most violent cities in America as measured by per-capita homicide rate. Most of my clients are children and youth from 7 to 17 years old. Each day I meet with clients, mostly kids, who have had a wide range of traumas and developmental disadvantages. I engage them in expressive arts activities, games, puzzles, dialogue about their lives, provide psycho-education, validate their feelings, empathize with their struggles, recognize their strengths, treat them with respect, warmth, and care. 1 do my best to give them an implicit experience of a decent human relationship and help them to deal with their challenges.



It seems as if destiny has led me to this work in my so-called retirement years. It allows me to use my interpersonal skills and understandings of psychology and therapy in the service of underprivileged children. I enjoy the direct service a lot. For years I have been writing and speaking about children's rights and needs, and here I can work with real children whose needs are among the most urgent. I can also be a role model and witness for nonviolence, creativity, and compassion.



I also want to give witness to the resourcefulness, courage, creativity, and decency I find in so many of the clients. It's amazing how they have adapted to and coped with trying and traumatizing circumstances in their lives.