SEEKING PEACE Irish visitors gather clues in Providence BY IAN DONNIS

Working from the literal fault line that separates Catholic West Belfast from Protestant Shankill Road, workers at Northern Ireland’s Forthspring Inter-Community Center have no illusions about the challenge of overcoming centuries of ingrained hatred and mistrust. "If we are going to crack this problem, we need to come up with a new way of looking at identity," says the Reverend David Compton, a Methodist minister at the center. "We need to almost look at a separation of nationality and citizenship."

Taking solace during a recent visit to Rhode Island, Compton noted how it was considered madness and unrealistic a few hundred years back when Roger Williams advocated for religious freedom. Compton and two colleagues, Bernie Laverty and Eddie Wallace, found encouragement, too, in the efforts of the Providence-based Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence (http://www.nonviolenceinstitute.org/), whose eight or so streetworkers have been credited with helping to diminish the amount of violence in some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. "To think it can happen with such a small team is mind-blowing," Laverty says.

In West Belfast, Forthspring Inter-Community provides a place for people from the Catholic and Protestant communities to gather with various programs for women, children, parents, and senior citizens. The "peace-line" a 40-foot wall, stretching from the center of Belfast, separating the Catholic and Protestant sections, runs directly though the church. The connection between the Irish peace workers and the institute’s executive director, Teny Gross, an Israeli who settled in the US, was struck when his father-in-law, the activist Warwick-based minister Duane Clinker, visited Forthspring on an exchange last summer.

In Providence, the Irish visitors, who hope to establish a similar program, have seen the fruits of the streetworkers’ efforts in defusing tension at such places as Hope High School and Kennedy Plaza. They were also slated to meet with officials including Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman, A.T. Wall, head of the state Department of Corrections, and Jay Lindgren, director of the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families. As Gross notes, taking people out of their typical environment offers a chance to think in new and different ways. And after meeting their Irish counterparts, the Providence streetworkers hope to be able to visit Northern Ireland.

In West Belfast, although there’s far less violence than in the past because of a 10-year-old ceasefire, "The level of tension is still very much there," Laverty says. "People are always alert for something to happen."

In trying to make a change, Compton says, "It comes down at the end of the day to shoe leather, and the investment of time and money into local areas." As far as reconciling the separate longing for a united Ireland and maintaining ties to England, finding a different path remains vexing. "Nationalism is a19th-century construct," Compton says. "A lot of it is that we need [a different and broader] vision. We don’t have that yet."