Influenced by his parents, who were active in the civil rights movements during the 1950s and 1960s, and as a child of the Vietnam era, Reitman felt drawn toward the law. He became an attorney and for years practiced labor and employment law. In 1990, Reitman switched gears and became a full-time mediator.

“I am a mediator, which means I help people resolve conflict or try to get out of the conflict that they are in,” Reitman explained in an interview with The Times Record on July 15. “I do that in Maine, and New England, and domestically, working with people who are, who might be in the middle of a lawsuit.”

Well known within the state for his work mediating Patten Free Library and Sears Island disputes, Reitman also has worked abroad in Israel, Palestine and Bosnia. He is a partner at Gosline & Reitman, a Maine-based mediation firm.

Although he is not aware of the exact number of cases he has mediated, Reitman says that his conflict resolution challenges now number more than 1,500.

When starting out, he would offer his services. Now clients, towns, individuals and groups, approach him to help resolve impasses.

The first thing he does is simple: Listen.

“If you get stuck in a formula, my belief is that you are not really being present, because you are thinking, ‘Oh gee, where am I in the formula?’” Reitman said. “Most of what you try to do in the beginning is to get people to open up, to tell you what’s really bothering them, what’s really underneath their concerns.”

Sometimes, Reitman applies his mediation skills to help formulate resolutions to very personal conflicts, such as marital disputes, custody cases and property rights. Other times, he’s asked to try his hand at salving cultural or political wounds that have festered for centuries.

Although Reitman said that every case is complex, he pinpointed cross-cultural conflicts as the most difficult, most intractable disputes.

Spending a great deal of time working in Israel and Palestine, he has experienced violence firsthand. One day he left from a train station that was bombed only five minutes later. Still, Reitman remains optimistic that there can be peace, in part because he sees an inkling of trust developing between the factions.

“I do see an end in sight. I’m just not sure it will happen in my lifetime, and that used to bother me, but it no longer does,” he said. “Because my job is to do the piece that is put right in front of me, and all I know is that in the 10 years I have been teaching (mediation skills in the Middle East), probably 10,000 people have been exposed to mediation and conflict resolution in a new way who weren’t before. So what are the ripple effects of that?”

Reitman also traveled to work in Bosnia two months after the Dayton Peace Accords, which were concluded in November 1995. Arriving in January, he worked with a nonprofit organization that was asked to come to Bosnia and assess what kind of conflict resolution would be possible in the post-war period.

“We put together inter-ethnic workshops,” said Reitman. “Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and for many people this was the first time they had been in the room with ‘the other side’ since” war tore asunder what used to be Yugoslavia. “Things got very heated. Everyone had been traumatized by the war. There were no winners. When the noon siren went off, people would scramble under tables convinced it was a bomb alert. And people were very quick to point fingers at one another. They had a lot of rage still. So our job was to create a safe environment where people could say what they needed to say, express that rage.”

During a five-year period, Reitman made 17 trips to the former Yugoslavia. Working throughout the region, he said that 14 years later, ethnic tension remains, but it has lessened. For perspective, he noted that an undercurrent of tension — ethnic, political and religious — can be found in almost every nation, including the United States.

Reitman’s wife is also a mediator by training. This can make things interesting in the house when a dispute arises.

“One of the things we say is that success in conflict resolution is understanding the other side’s point of view, which sounds kind of counter-intuitive,” Reitman said, noting that 90 percent of a mediator’s job involves getting disputants to understand the other side’s perspective.

A common response to that strategy is, “How can I get what I want if you’re telling me I have to spend all this time understanding the other side,” Reitman said. “So when my wife and I have a disagreement, she goes, ‘Whatever happened to 90 percent…’ It’s bad when someone knows all your tricks.”

Regardless of the scope or severity of a conflict, Reitman remains optimistic. Having been told hundreds of times that an impasse cannot be broken, that it’s impossible, the disputants — often with help from a mediator — find a way to hit upon a solution.

“When conflict gets resolved it’s not because I’m brilliant, it’s not because I have been the cog that transformed the whole situation,” he said. “It’s because I have created an environment where the people who were in conflict were able to transform their situation.”

Now confident in his job choice, Reitman has no plans to retire any time soon.

“(I’ll work) as long as I’m able,” said Reitman. “It’s what I was put on this earth to do.”

This summer Reitman is not traveling in the Middle East, instead opting to remain in Brunswick, spending part of his time working on a book he’s co-authoring with a Palestinian colleague.

He’ll take time off Saturday from that work to facilitate a discussion and accept an award at the sixth annual Peace Fair on the Brunswick Mall. His conversation, titled “The Building Blocks of Dialogue: How We Can Get Our Lives and Our World Unstuck,” is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m.

http://www.resolutionmediation.net/

Resolution Mediation

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