It was shaping up to be a chaotic week at the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, as thousands of demonstrators from around the country descended on the city’s sweltering streets.
But inside the Arch Street Methodist church on Monday morning, the mood was utter tranquility as a few dozen Bernie Peacekeepers sat in silent meditation, preparing their collective headspace for a training session in mediating political conflict.
Most grassroots activists come to Philadelphia because they want their own voices to be heard. The Bernie Peacekeepers, a group of 400 volunteers overseeing the week of protests, want to make sure everyone’s are.
The group was dreamed up in June by Susan Britton Seyler, a 66-year-old retired architectural designer from Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. And while it was born in part of her Quaker beliefs, Seyler says what volunteers really have in common is a love of Bernie Sanders and a desire to prevent violence.
That means not just de-escalating conflict but also, hopefully, an alternative to policing.
“Police are figures of authority – we [the Bernie Peacekeepers] are there to be friendly. We’re there to be open and engage people,” explained Derek Toro, a 42-year-old volunteer and self-identifying atheist who traveled to the convention from Richmond, Virginia, with his mother, Avia.
A longtime attendee of civic actions (he’s been going to protests with his mother since the 1970s), Toro came equipped with a backpack full of PowerBars, coconut water and a first-aid kit. But more than good supplies, he wanted peacekeeping solidarity.
“I was thinking I wanted something like this to happen and then, I found this group,” he said of joining Seyler’s Bernie Peacekeepers group online.
He wasn’t the only one. Since Seyler started the group last month, she has seen a tremendous show of interest, with more than 450 joining the online group in the past week. “It’s good to know the idea resonates with people,” she says.
She also has a lot of support in organizing from people in the community. And one key supporter is Dion Lerman, the silver-haired man leading the training sessions at the church.
Lerman has a deep-seated belief that it’s not enough to tell people what to do – you have to let them feel it. And nowhere is that more true than when you’re working in a field that can provoke fear and stress such as taking part in protests that may possibly turn violent.
“It can be scary, intimidating, so you need to have not just verbal instructions but need to have had some experience with the techniques so you can be effective,” said Lerman, who has some 40 years of experience with such training.
To begin, he asks volunteers to name their fears (responses range from “violence” and “panic” to jokier ones like: “my ex-wife”). Then he pairs people up to role-play possible responses to the scenarios described.
The lesson feels by one turn like a therapy session, and by another like a direct channeling of Sanders. Lerman’s insistence that “nonviolence is not about pacifism”, for instance, is a line right from Sanders’ playbook – the senator from Vermont frequently reminds followers that, despite a commitment to protecting peace, he would use force where it was warranted.
At one point Lerman asked people “what kind of tree are you?”, then told them to envision themselves as that tree, thinking about the rootedness of it, the peacefulness. The most popular answers were palm and oak.
Bernie Peacekeepers support the role of police in maintaining order at protests, even as they are trained to create the conditions so that the use of force is never necessary. And one such volunteer was Chris Hassell, a Sanders supporter from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
On his way out from the training Hassell was deliberating over whether to pass out a stack of white Bernie Peacekeeper hats the group had made for protesters, or the red roses they’d bought for police. How to know whether a cop needs a flower? “You look them in the eye.”
