Thinking and acting globally

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- The Warmingtons could have had it a lot easier.

Living in Corona del Mar and working as a land developer, Bob, his

wife, Lori, and their children Chace, Drew and Erin, could have stuck to

giving a donation to a local charity.

But limiting themselves to their immediate community wasn’t really an

option. As Lori Warmington put it, “community” includes the entire world.

“If we do not share what we have with others or if we do not help to

make community stronger in some meaningful way, we have neglected

something that really in the long run deteriorates our personal lives,”

she said.

For more than three decades, first the parents and later the children

have encouraged each other to get involved in finding solutions for

conflicts all around the world.

“We very much cross-pollinated each other,” Lori Warmington said. “The

whole process is to build a group of people who . . . have a vision of a

united community.”

Last week, Bob and Chace Warmington returned from an exchange trip to

Belfast, in Northern Ireland. There, they brought together former gang

members from East Los Angeles and former members of the British

province’s warring Catholic and Protestant communities.

The similarities both sides discovered about their experiences on

opposite sides of the globe were startling, said the father and son team.

“There’s a common thread,” said Bob Warmington, sitting in the

conference room of his Newport Center office Tuesday. “If it looks

hopeless and helpless, there’s a good chance that you are going to have

violence.”

For example, Belfast’s Shankill Road -- a Protestant area with 70,000

people -- has 60% unemployment and 25% illiteracy, and mirrors the

situation in South Central L.A., he said.

Chace Warmington added that the visit to Belfast was only the first

phase of an ongoing exchange.

“It was an introduction -- to see what we can learn from each other,”

said the 30-year-old researcher at Georgetown University.

Since traveling to the former Soviet Union as a youth ambassador while

a Newport Harbor High School student in the 1980s, Chace Warmington has

focused his studies on the field of conflict resolution.

Some of the former gang members from Los Angeles said they’d

discovered the importance of bringing in outsiders to deal with existing

conflicts.

“I really like . . . to be able to be a catalyst,” said Henry Toscano,

who now works as the president of the Assn. of Community-based Gang

Intervention Workers in Los Angeles County. “Bringing people to the same

table. We were the reason to make it OK. These people would have never

even envisioned being in the same building, let along in the same room

and at least start some kind of dialogue.”

Marlett Phillips, a research associate at the Center for Global Peace

and Conflict Studies at UC Irvine who helped coordinate the Belfast trip,

said such exchanges on a grass-roots level play a crucial role in any

peace building process.

“Citizen diplomacy . . . is an essential piece of securing

long-lasting, enduring peace,” she said, adding that it had to go hand in

hand with efforts of government officials to bring about a solution.

For Lori Warmington, who coordinates the volunteer Peace Associates

program that connects people who “have a passion for living in a world

without conflict,” it’s the efforts of individuals that make all the

difference.

One of the women, who has joined the Peace Associates network, used to

work as a real estate agent in Newport Beach before joining the Peace

Corps to teach English in Poland and the Middle East for six years after

the death of her husband, Lori Warmington said.

“She knew that Newport Beach and real estate is important,” she said

and laughed. “But not the most important thing in the world.”

FYI

To learn more about the Program in Citizen Peace at UC Irvine or the

Peace Associates, call (949) 369-6919.