Profile: Andra Medea

Profile: Andra Medea

Andra Medea Tackles Conflict with Logic and Humor

By Robin Tuthill

Growing up in one of the many urban villages in South Side Chicago, Andra Medea’s first eighteen years were sharply shaped by her Lithuanian-American background, the extreme diversity of the smaller neighborhoods, racial tension, and the violence of local riots.

For the most part, individual Lithuanians, Italians, Polish, Irish, Palestinians, Jews, and Mexicans got along agreeably. But Andra’s Lithuanian neighborhood was squarely situated between Marquette Park and West Englewood, on the edge of the black metropolis. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1966 march for open housing through the neighborhood and ended up in the emergency room after being hit in the neck with a rock. The headquarters of the American Nazi party moved in down the street.

“Violence was the background noise of our lives,” Andra says. “We took it for granted.” Her high school was known for gang fighting and riots. Kids who went to all-white Catholic schools regularly beat Andra up because she went to a school with blacks and had black friends. This was everyday life. This is what Andra knew of America .

But Andra had one big advantage: her mother was a natural-born conciliator. “My mother could take on angry racists and not get our house burned down. She was better at breaking up fights than anyone I’ve ever seen.” One bitterly cold day when Andra was about to be beaten up by a gang of kids, nurture and nature fused into an epiphany in Andra’s young, very bright mind. In that moment, she knew that she couldn’t fight her way out. She was outnumbered, outsized, and outmuscled. But she wasn’t to be outsmarted. She thought quickly and what she did was so surprising – yet simple – that the kids who had been set on pummeling Andra instead stopped and stared. She ripped off the shoe of the leader's young brother and tossed it up on a garage roof. The gang was angry, but stuck. As Andra points out, “A gang can’t do two things at once.” They had to let go of her to team up and retrieve the shoe.

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Age fifteen marked another important point when Andra attended a summer science program at the Field Museum – the first time she had ever been out of her South Side neighborhood. "It was the first time I saw kids from the city and the suburbs," she said, "and it exploded my world." Up until then she had been content with her life on the South Side and didn't even know there was any other way to live. "It had never dawned on me that there was an entire class of people who didn't get shot at."

Most importantly, she noticed that people didn’t know much about conflict. “I learned then that I am fluent in the language of conflict and violence.”

Her lifework was born. At age 18 she organized a conference about rape and co-authored the book Against Rape, published when she was just 20. She developed a self-defense technique that depends more on brain power than brawn, and in time studied aikido, which is the art of spirit over brawn. For years, she traveled throughout the country and internationally, teaching self-defense. She worked her way through college and earned a Master of Arts degree from DePaul University with a concentration in conflict management.

While teaching at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, Andra developed her unique brand of conflict resolution, which had first germinated in her mind with the shoe-on-the-rooftop incident. Her first book on the subject, Conflict Unraveled, was published in 2004 and its follow-up, Going Home without Going Crazy, is scheduled for publication in October, 2006. Her trademark seminars are called Conflict Unraveled Toolkit.™ With a liberal dose of humor throughout her material, Andra presents a method for resolving conflict that really works. Just try it.

“Conflict is not a moral or legal issue,” Andra says. “It is a series of problems to be solved.” And Andra Medea is an unmatchable problem solver who, thankfully, has made her unique insights available to all of us.

Reprinted from The Bay Area Women’s Directory