Quiet Mountain Essays

Copyright ©, 2005

Peace Talks: One Woman's Passion
by
Linda C. Wisniewski

“When someone asked me what I would do for a living if money were no object, I said I’d produce
a public radio program about peace.  And when you put that kind of statement out into the world,
you have to act on it.”

At the time she was asked that question, Barbara Simmons was executive director of The Peace
Center, an organization dedicated to conflict resolution, based in Langhorne, Pa., not far from the
town where she was raised.

“I’m an NPR junkie,” Simmons says with a smile. “I have it on all day.”  She noticed that war is
often the lead story throughout the world while peacemaking goes under-reported. Simmons
decided to create a radio project called Peacetalks: Exploring the Alternatives to Violence.
Peacetalks, a series on NPR and its Philadelphia affiliates, has recorded the stories of ordinary
people in some of the world’s most volatile countries.

Simmons grew up “very blue collar,” in Bristol, Pa. “My parents ran a tap room for the local
steelworkers.  It was busy at 7:30 in the morning.” Her brother has a Ph.D., but the girls in her
family were not encouraged to pursue higher education.

She was in her thirties with two children when she started college.  Drawn to understanding the
past, Simmons studied history at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pa. and
attended the Institute for Archaeology in London.  She was looking for Native American artifacts
in Bucks County when a conflict arose between local environmentalists and the power company
over the construction of a pumping station to divert water from the Delaware River.

“That was when I first heard about stepping lightly on the earth,” Simmons says. She began to
wonder how to work with both sides on this issue.  After her divorce, she began to focus even more
on conflict resolution.

“We don’t know how to live together,” she declares. “Peace is an inside out job. I had to look
inside myself, to see what I was doing to perpetuate conflict in my life.”

Simmons joined The Peace Center in 1988 and traveled around the country taking courses in
mediation.  For fifteen years, she taught the Center’s conflict resolution classes at elementary and
high schools, until she became the Center’s executive director.

When she decided to create Peacetalks, Simmons searched in bookstores and the public library for
books on how to produce a radio show.  Unable to find information, she went to WHYY-FM, a
Public Radio International station in Philadelphia, and began watching journalists like Marty
Moss-Coane, host of the talk show “Radio Times.” Moss-Coane is on the board of directors of
Peacetalks.

“Barbara comes at journalism from a different perspective.  She is humanistic and refreshing. Her
integrity is extraordinary,” says Moss-Coane. “  At WHYY, she asked how we prepare for and
conduct our interviews.  She is very open to suggestion and criticism.”

“After we look at ourselves, we need to go out and look at how peacemaking is done in other
places.  But even journalists can ‘spin’ stories,” Simmons says.  “For Peacetalks, I wanted less
narration and more time for listening to the words of the average person.  And we needed to ask
the deeper questions, rather than just the ‘who, what, when, where and how.’ The emotions, the
heartfelt stories of people who have experienced violence are what touch us.”

Listening for the real story and then asking questions to draw out more information are the skills
Simmons teaches at Arcadia University’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program in
Glenside, Pa.

“What I like about teaching at Arcadia is the international flavor,” says Simmons. Her class is a
practicum in which students learn by putting classroom theories to the test. One of her master’s
students,  for example, is teaching Sri Lankan soldiers to be peace-keepers.

On a typical day, Simmons writes grant applications, sixty for Peacetalks so far.  She prepares for
an upcoming trip to interview families in Israel and the West Bank, or works on a story in
Brooklyn, N.Y., where former prisoners are studying conflict resolution techniques.  Once a week,
she meets with her all-female creative team, which includes Emmy Award-winning film maker
Laura Jackson, to discuss upcoming stories and decide on themes.  She recruited the actress Blair
Brown as narrator when they met at their exercise club.

Simmons transcribes her interviews and makes a story board before putting everything together
in a small Pennsylvania studio.  She has produced programs on “Masculine Consciousness,” about
Brazilian men working to stop drug trafficking and gang violence, and to educate their peers on
HIV/AIDS prevention; on Peace Trees Vietnam, which plants trees where land mines have been
removed; and on “Torba,” a play about ethnic onflict in Bosnia. One of her most heartfelt stories,
called Petals of Hope, remembers the victims of violence in Northern Ireland. Simmons
interviewed grieving relatives who came together to make paper from flowers left at a bombing
site and, in the process, reached a new understanding of each other.

Peter Clowney, editor of the PRI program “Studio 360,” traveled with Simmons to Mbolopo,
South Africa, to report on the village’s recovery from apartheid.

“In my ten years of reporting,” says Clowney, “I have not seen a journalist listen like she does.  
Her teaching and mediation skills are what make her a good reporter.  She is not afraid to let
silence hang in the air” until the person is ready to speak.  “In Mbolopo, she asked the perfect
questions,” he says, and in the process, another story came out, one of conflict between the men
and women of the village.

“Barbara kept an open mind to what the story really was,” says Clowney.  “She asked why the
unemployed men were standing around while the women did all the work of the village.”

“You will never see a man carrying water,” answered one of the villagers.  Dialogue between the
sexes began until finally, an elder statesman said, “We men need to do more.”

Pacheco says, “With Peacetalks, Barbara is recording the stories not normally reported. And
clearly, she has dedicated her life to making the world a better place.”

Simmons works long hours, but wouldn’t have it any other way.  “My work is my passion,” she
says with a smile. “The mainstream news leaves people cynical at a very young age. I want to
balance the bad news by being present with people and listening to them speak. And I want to be
part of the solution.”

"Peace Talks: One Woman's Passion" was originally published in the Women's Independent Press, June 2004.

Contributor's Notes...

Linda C. Wisniewski is a former librarian who lives with her family in southeastern Pa. where she writes for a
weekly newspaper and teaches memoir workshops at Bucks County Community College and the University of
the Arts.  Linda's work has been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Christian Science Monitor,
Mindprints and other regional and literary magazines.  She is an active member of Story Circle Network and
the International Womens Writing Guild

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