Day Five: Bridges to Peace in Londonderry
LONDONDERRY — Our fifth and final full day started with a panel on the healing process in Northern Ireland and the connection between trauma, art and reconciliation. The class heard from Archdeacon Robert Miller, actor Michael Doherty and playwright Jonathan Burgess.
While we ate pastries and drank coffee and tea at the office of the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe, the three men sat across from us and shared how their work facilitates healing for themselves and others.
“The problem is we have the same history but remember it differently,” said Doherty.
As we asked questions, the meaning of his words became clearer and clearer. Between the panelists themselves, the same historical events triggered different emotional reactions and memories.
The Good Friday Agreement, the deal designed to end the violence of the Troubles and signed in 1998, made great improvements in initiating peace, but the conflict persisted in subtler ways.
Burgess talked about how Brexit was a “disaster” in the progress Northern Ireland had made. Being a part of the European Union was a wider geopolitical identity used as a unifier for Northern Ireland, and when that identity was stripped away, it felt like another division to some, he explained.
One of the problems that persists in post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland is that trauma gets in the way of reconciliation. Burgess, as a playwright, tells lesser-known stories of working-class Protestants.
Miller shared a quote from Abraham Lincoln that inspires hope.
“Do I not destroy my enemies completely when I make them my friend?”
The Role of Women in Peacemaking
After the main panel ended, our host Karen Campbell and Professor Liz Donovan sat down at the front of class to discuss the role of women in the peace process and how to interview sources about their traumatic life experiences in a way that gives them agency.
Campbell explained that most women did not have a role on the front lines, but instead worked behind the scenes. Prayer was a tool for many women in the conflict. "Prayer can move move mountains, especially when you don’t have a voice in public,” she said. After hearing many male voices this week, this conversation was a great way to learn from another perspective on this nation’s history.
Reporting Time
In the afternoon, we all split up to report or explore Londonderry.
Dana Binfet, a student reporting on Druidism this semester, met with Bryan Sutherland, a Druid who grew up in Londonderry. The two met at a cottage-style restaurant on the day of the Spring Equinox, a day of spiritual significance in the Druid faith marking the beginning of spring. The source took Binfet on a tour of Londonderry, highlighting important landmarks in the Druid tradition. The religion, which fundamentally believes in the spirituality of nature, incorporates the natural world into daily rituals — such as gathering near trees, interpreting their symbolism in human relationships and recognizing them as sacred elements in shared experience.
“He emphasized that the religion is on the rise because people are seeking something that will return them to nature despite global warming and other things that are going on — it’s just really encouraging,” Binfet said, reflecting on the interview.
The source, who is autistic, is part of an interfaith acting group for people with disabilities. Their shared experience of living with disabilities transcends their religious differences, offering an example of how peace could be bridged in the country.
Another student, Hayley Duffy, met with a woman who works for Soul Purpose Productions, a theater company that seeks to illuminate social and public issues. They met at the source’s Londonderry office, located in a building that is partially a converted convent with the other half a modern building. The woman is working on a digital exhibition featuring stories of survivors from Magdalene Laundries and mother-and-baby institutions.
These facilities housed more than 10,500 women from their inception in 1922 until their demise in 1990. The institutions were prison-like environments where women were often abused, causing them long-term physical and mental health problems.
Duffy is reporting on survivor perspectives regarding the fate of these buildings — whether they should be demolished, repurposed or memorialized.
She is also investigating whether survivors feel empowered in the decisions being made about buildings the institutions were once housed in, and how they want them to be remembered, if at all.
It’s taken a lot for these women to come out and share their stories. Duffy is working to carefully report the story, given the trauma that remains for many women in Northern Ireland.
Student Abbie Hopson had an interview with a source named Mikey Cullen. Cullen is a poet from Dublin featured in a pro-Palestinian collaboration by over 100 artists. The project is about “relating this anti-colonial struggle” between both Ireland and Palestine. A main theme in Cullen’s piece is the role of women throughout Irish history and in the pro-Palestinian movement in Ireland. “The biggest leaders, a lot of them are women,” said Hopson. The song written by Cullen celebrates these leaders, but also grieves for the mothers in both Ireland and Gaza who have lost their children to violence. Hopson found a lot of connections between this interview and the earlier discussion with Campbell and Donovan, which will help inform her writing.
Rosario del Valle, Liza Monasebian and Laine Immell wanted to hear about the younger generations’ outlooks on the division in their city, so they went to Richmond Shopping Centre to find some. The mall was filled with teenagers hanging out after school. One young woman they met said it wasn’t common to be exposed to a perspective different from your community’s until university. Because of this, the tension of the past wasn’t really present while they grew up in the Londonderry area. They also spoke to a couple. The young woman was a Protestant from the city center, while the man was a Catholic from the Bogside. They didn’t let the violence between their communities in the past impact their relationship, though, and claimed to not think about the conflict in general outside of schooling and history.
Jake Angelo met another young man in the Yellow Yard, a vintage store in the city center. His name was Callum and he was from the Bogside. Much like the teenagers in the mall, Callum told Angelo that he rarely felt the tension in his community. However, he did say that on St. Patrick’s Day, the Protestant Orange Order had an unsanctioned march through the mostly Catholic Bogside neighborhood, which made many people wary. It seems that, while young people in Londonderry don’t experience the conflict at the forefront of their lives, moments of uncertainty still exist.
Our Last Supper
We reconvened after our various adventures that afternoon at the Maldron Hotel. Once the group was whole again (minus one student, Bella Bromberg, who had traveled back to Belfast to meet a source), we set off on our journey across the River Foyle to dinner. The Peace Bridge, a towering blue-and-white pedestrian bridge, connects the Catholic and Protestant sides of the river.
As the sun set across the water, we took pictures to commemorate our final night before heading inside Walled City Brewery.
Once we were seated and our drinks ordered, Professor Greg Khalil clinked his glass, quieting the group. He introduced the game for the evening. The rules were simple: Each person would say the moment that impacted them the most during the week. Then, they would toast a person in the group who inspired them or who they admire. The person toasted would then repeat the process.
Slowly, over the three-hour meal, each person divulged their favorite moments of the trip and celebrated one another. It was an evening of appreciation, respect and reflection. After a week of tours, interviews and powerful, though sometimes difficult, conversations, this dinner was a moment to fully appreciate the rare opportunity we had been given in this class.
After the dinner, the group went to a pub called Lizzie O’Farrells for live music and our last drop of Irish culture. As we sat around a table talking, laughing and playing games, the two-person band began to play “Linger” by the Cranberries. We all gathered by the stage to listen, swaying and singing together. With the hustle and bustle of New York, Columbia Journalism School and our normal lives waiting for us in the morning, we listened to the song wishing we could linger here just a little longer.
Image at top: Robert Miller, Michael Doherty and Jonathan Burgess talk about peace-building. (Photo by Rosario del Valle)