The Resource Library

WHAT YOU WILL FIND HERE and HOW TO FIND IT

This library is meant to provide information and ideas for anyone seeking to promote peace, social justice and democracy. It contains materials either generated or recommended by TRUST Network Partner organizations and Members, plus links to Partner libraries, recordings of our public presentations, and our Dispatches. Our goal is to be trans-partisan, so you will find materials here that reflect a variety of views. By definition a resource collection is always a work in progress; TRUST Network Members are invited to submit materials to help us fill gaps and cover the breadth and depth of these rich topics. Feedback is welcome.

Click a button to get to a category quickly.

These groupings may help you find resources with a particular focus but we encourage you to browse widely. We believe that all of these areas of action support each other within the larger goal of achieving greater positive peace in our nation. For example, it is intuitively clear that violence interruption and addressing extremism are subsets of violence prevention, that the fairness and inclusiveness of democratic processes directly influence social stability or unrest, and that how language is used in messaging is a pervasive topic. Be aware also that some practitioners use the phrase Early Warning Early Response (EWER) while others including the TRUST Network are moving towards using the phrase Early Warning Early Action (EWEA).

NOTE: To go directly to the resource, click on the Author or the Source. Clicking on the Title or the Picture will bring you to our internal resource page, where there may be more details.

Here are more choices, including links to other resource collections in our field, from of our Partner organizations:

For SITEWIDE KEYWORD search, use this search window:

You can also use the search field above to explore items from these sources found in our library —

Individuals — Authors and Presenters:

Per Aarvik, Lisa Broderick, Samantha Brown, Jim Bueermann, Joe Bock (Joseph Bock), David Brooks, Rachel Hilary Brown, Melinda Burrell, Silvio Calabi, Peter Coleman, Michael Collins, Monica Curca, Daryl Davis, Mel Duncan, Molly Ellenberg, Melanie Greenberg, Elizabeth Hume, Hope Hyder, Herman Karl, Allison Lecce, John Paul Ledarch, Daryl Paul Lobban, Grande Lum, D.G. Mawn, Frank McCrary, Bridget Moix, Tabitha Moore, Thor Morales, Jesse Morton, Katy Mytty (Kate Mytty), Mike Niconchuk, Kerry Noble, Brendan O’Hanrahan, Anna Orso, Samantha Owens, Shannon Paige, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Farah Pandith, Marta Poblet, Ashley Quarcoo, Emily Risch, Idean Salehyan, Joseph Jimmy Sankaituah, Prabha Sankaranarayan, Theo Sitther, Anne Speckhard, Maria J. Stephan, James Waller, Jacob Ware, Zander Willoughby, Aseel Zahran

TRUST Network Partners in addition to the materials that we produce ourselves here at TRUST Network:

Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), Bridge Alliance, Cure Violence Global (CV), DC Peace Team, Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI), National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM), National Center for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), Nonviolent Peaceforce, OverZero, +Peace (PlusPeace), Parallel Networks, Peace Direct, PIRUSA, Police2Peace

Other Organizations & Publications/Websites:

The Atlantic, Beyond Conflict, Build Up Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Centre for Humanitarian Dialog / Oslo Forum, Citizen Data, The Conversation, Council on Foreign Relations, dm&eforpeace, Essential Partners, FairVote, Humanity United, Just Security, Medium, Metta Center for NonViolence, National Task Force on Election Crises, One America Movement. PassBlue, Independent UN Coverage, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Political Violence at a Glance, Protect Democracy, Protect the Results with Greenpeace, Stanley Center for Peace and Security, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum / Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, Waging Nonviolence

Reminder: On an individual listing, click on the author or other source to go directly to the resource. Clicking on the title will bring you to our internal resource page, where there may be more details.



 
 

Tips about language and responsible reporting — by you, the media, or anyone else….

We influence the stories we tell by how we tell them, and stories influence people and politics.

The following tips apply to yourself and can help others as well. You can reach out to your local communities and media, and make a difference by sharing this guidance for responsible journalism. You do not need to amplify the rhetoric of politicians and pundits, and you can hold them to account for what they say.

  • Be thoughtful about how you frame actions you witness and report.

  • Stay with the facts as you know them. Don’t speculate, don’t make assumptions, and don’t leap to conclusions.

  • Do not reduce a complex situation to a sound bite or an oversimplified cause-and-effect.

  • Do not place a group of people in one pool, labeling many with one label or “othering” them.

  • Use factually accurate descriptive words. For example:

    • self-organized armed groups are not “militias”

    • “protests” are not the same as “mobs”

    • “protestors” or “activists” may be but are not necessarily any of: “militants,” “far-right” or “far-left,” “white supremacists” or “anarchists” etc. Groups of protestors are likely to be quite diverse in their makeup, opinions, and motivations.

    • do not label people or groups as “terrorists” unless they have been listed or labeled as such by an authoritative source that is using the term in a researched and responsible manner

  • AVOID

    • sensationalist language when describing violence (e.g., “violence erupted,” “tensions spilled over”), which can fuel anger and fear.

    • words that are divisive and call in or normalize a war mentality, such as “enemy,” “the other side,” and “defeat”

    • "exceptionalist" language such as "this is not Kabul” or “you’d expect that in Baghdad, not here"

    • inflammatory predictions such as “this is the death of our democracy”

  • DO consider context and ask others, particularly journalists, to do the same — for example, about the root causes of violence (poverty, racial inequity, increasing economic divide, unemployment, disproportionate impact on minorities of access to health, education and housing, food and housing insecurity)

  • WHEN TAKING IN THE NEWS, consider the advice below from “On the Media.” You may click on the image to go to their page.

This tip sheet is a compilation by TRUST Network from Partner sources. For a downloadable pdf, click here.

 
 

Interpreting Breaking News

From On the Media, these reminders. To see more, click on the image or use this link

 
 

Understanding the Numbers

Click here for a rundown of how not to be unduly influenced by numbers and statistics in the news or any article or argument.

 
 

Some Ideas

Just a few of the things that our on-the-ground partners and convening centers are doing:

  • Looking freshly at issues, causes, and contributors (e.g. why is voter turnout low? what is missing to engage youth? who are the influencers? and so on)

  • Listening circles/healing circles

  • Outreach to community leaders -- local community mediation centers, influencers such as faith leaders, business or community leaders, elected officials

  • Outreach to media, providing accurate on-the-ground information and holding them accountable for responsible journalism (click HERE for tips on language)

  • Multiple approaches to security, ranging from UCP (Unarmed Civilian Protection) to relationship-building to improve police-civilian interaction, as appropriate in each locale.

 
 

A Note to Mediators and Facilitators

In light of current national tensions we call on our peacebuilders to help support all our communities in finding healthy ways for people to express their feelings and be heard. We remind mediators that "neutrality," which can function as detachment, is not appropriate in the face of injustice of any kind. We work towards -- as is stated in the 8th Hallmark of NAFCM -- initiating, facilitating and educating for collaborative community relationships to effect positive systemic change. And we prefer the word "omnipartiality" to the word "impartiality," to reflect our commitment to the humanity of all parties.


 
 

 Elections, Democratic Processes

ARTICLES

RECORDINGS

 
 
 

Extremism, Radicalization

ARTICLES

RECORDINGS

 
 
 

Messaging and Media

ARTICLES

Click for our Tip Sheet on using language responsibly and advice about interpreting breaking news.

RECORDINGS

 
 
 

Violence Interruption/De-Escalation, Policing, and Alternatives such as Unarmed Civilian Protection

ARTICLES

RECORDINGS

 
 
 

Links to Other Libraries and Resource Collections

In addition to the below, all our Partners’ websites are rich sources of blogs, issue papers and the like: go to our Partner page and click on the logos.