When Erin Thompson's home was burglarized, it wasn't just his sense of security that was stolen—what he gained was an unexpected path to peace through the power of restorative justice. His transformative experience led him all the way to the helm of the Gandhi Institute, where he now serves as the executive director. Our conversation with Erin takes you through the corridors of nonviolent advocacy, as he shares his personal evolution and the vital role the institute plays in both preserving the legacy of peace leaders and actively fostering critical dialogue in Rochester and beyond.
Erin touches on the fact that nonviolence is often mistaken for weakness and peace work is branded as naïve. This episode peels back the layers of these common misconceptions, engaging with the complexity of promoting peace in a world accustomed to conflict. We uncover the gifts and challenges inherent in this noble pursuit, and highlight an endeavor that is as resilient as it is misunderstood.
When Erin Thompson's home was burglarized, it wasn't just his sense of security that was stolen—what he gained was an unexpected path to peace through the power of restorative justice. His transformative experience led him all the way to the helm of the Gandhi Institute, where he now serves as the executive director. Our conversation with Erin takes you through the corridors of nonviolent advocacy, as he shares his personal evolution and the vital role the institute plays in both preserving the legacy of peace leaders and actively fostering critical dialogue in Rochester and beyond.
Erin touches on the fact that nonviolence is often mistaken for weakness and peace work is branded as naïve. This episode peels back the layers of these common misconceptions, engaging with the complexity of promoting peace in a world accustomed to conflict. We uncover the gifts and challenges inherent in this noble pursuit, and highlight an endeavor that is as resilient as it is misunderstood.
Katie:
Hello and welcome to Perspectives on Peace Transforming Tomorrow. I'm Katie Thomas and I'm sitting here with Michael Jones.
Katie:
And today we're going to sit down with Aaron Thompson, and Aaron is a familiar voice who you've probably heard as a part of our podcast team. But today we're sitting down with Aaron to talk about his recent transition from co-director to executive director. Aaron was currently serving as co-directors with the lovely Gwen Olton and recently his transition to executive director. So, aaron, what we'd love to do today is sit down with you and first have you introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your role and how you found the institute.
Erin:
Fantastic, very cool to be here with you two again, very interested to be on the other side of the microphone being interviewed. And yes, I am Aaron Thompson, currently serving as director at the Institute here since February 1, 2024. This marks about 10 years that I've been in the institute universe here. I found it by being turned on to a sort of justice process by my then neighbor, jennifer Bannister, who's over at Teen Empowerment was a partner of ours Around 2010,. We were living in an apartment downstairs from Jennifer, first floor, and apartment was burglarized by a young man who lived in the neighborhood. It was a traumatizing event. I came in through my son's window and the house was wrecked and whatnot. Things were stolen and he was eventually apprehended.
Erin:
We found that again, he was this 19-year-old kid who had family down the street. He was out of the house for whatever reason, didn't have a place to stay, and so we were faced with the option of how to proceed with the justice side of things, the legal side of things, and I didn't know anything about the institute, I didn't know anything about restorative practices, but Jennifer had my ear and talked about this potential kind of alternate track that we could take where we'd have some opportunity to engage with the young man, potentially have greater closure than we would get through the court system and also still have there be the necessary accountability and us to feel like we're made whole through the process. So I pondered it with my wife, son, and especially thinking about the possibility of our son, who was like six or something, being able to kind of make sense of things in a meaningful way is what contributed to us agreeing to this restorative circle, and it was literally that we had the young man, some of his family, some of the other folk who live on the block and the facilitators there talking this through and that gave me the opportunity to share the way I was impacted. The impact that I saw had on my wife, son Yixing, was there was able to actually lay eyes on this young man and see that it wasn't like this monster figure that he had in mind. It was in fact this vulnerable young man, young black man who was in a real bad place, gave him the opportunity to explain himself, to apologize, to see the impact that it had and to really consider how he wanted to, what choices he wanted to make, moving forward. And this was like playing out in real time you could see the processing going on and it was successful.
Erin:
So that was like my first introduction to some of the work that the Institute does. And then I was a few years later finishing up school for accounting and looking for ways to both utilize the skillset that I had developed while doing work that was meaningful to me and was community based, which was what some of my family's background is. So an opportunity came up to do kind of a clerk level accounting work at the Institute, jumped on that, had a conversation with Kit Miller who was the executive director at the time, and that was my kind of entry into working at the Institute. And I've held a number of different roles over the years, kind of as I've gained in tenure and familiarity and grown some of my skills. So the rest is history. As I say, I could walk through that. You know chronology, but that's how I learned about the Institute.
Michael:
Thank you for sharing Aaron. It's great. Your first interaction with the Institute was something, so this role and like connected to our mission. What is the mission of the Institute and how do you see your role serving that mission?
Erin:
Concerning the mission of the Institute and my role, I consider the mission of the Gandhi Institute to represent, inspire, teach and create peace.
Erin:
Our goal is to interrupt this race that humanity is on toward destruction and to help us to awaken from this trance that we have fallen under, where we just accept and expect violence as a way of life. Our work at the Institute is basically focused toward the creation of a new reality that orients around cherishing all life, and that includes the life of future generations. When my role as a director, I work to coordinate, cultivate and grow and leverage all of the Institute's resources in the service of our mission. So those resources would include our personnel, our physical location, our finances, our partnerships and our various media platforms. And then, on the day to day, I basically focus on staying attuned to what's happening in the world, especially what's happening locally, and then creating effective systems inside the Institute that best enable our team to work collectively and in a complementary fashion. And then I handle, of course, the back office administrative work at a nonprofit like the Gandhi Institute requires in order to stay organized and to keep moving forward.
Michael:
Yeah, thank you, aaron. I'm hearing that you're facilitating us, facilitate nonviolence in Rochester. So what do you see as a nonviolent organization within Rochester? What are strengths and weaknesses to our location? What are opportunities, threats?
Erin:
Okay, kind of the SWAT, swat assessment, if you will right.
Erin:
One strength that I see about doing nonviolence work in Rochester and prospects for future nonviolence work in Rochester is that here in Rochester we have a physical manifestation of peace and peace work in the Gandhi Institute. I think having that physical location that stands for peace is a major advantage to those doing peace work here. I mean it stimulates curiosity, it spurs conversation when people are on premises here at the Gandhi Institute. It automatically establishes a certain vibe when people are on the premises and we also serve as a repository of stories about and information about peace movements and leaders here at the Institute with our library and informational resources. So that's one strength.
Erin:
One weakness would be that I think nonviolence is very misunderstood by a lot of folk, not just in Rochester but in Cluton, rochester. I consider nonviolence to often be thought of as passive or even as a weak reaction to violence and to conflict. And I think the history of peace work is given a very reductionist treatment in our education systems. I mean it kind of boils down to Martin Luther King and Gandhi and basically only very basic details about the two of them. I think some folks to this day see peace work as being naive or idealistic or out of touch with reality. That would be weakness and opportunity.