EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An article by Monica Grimaldo for Tucson News

A rash of nationwide protests against president-elect Donald Trump have brought out thousands of demonstrators and now, Tucson students between the ages of 11 and 16 are learning how to better understand the ‘nonviolence way of life’ to apply when planning action to defend human rights. Students from several Tucson school districts are participating in a two-day introduction to the Kingian Nonviolence training program, which aims to “institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence.”

Clip from video on article website
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It’s being led by the Nonviolence Legacy Project, a youth leadership program affiliated with the Culture of Peace Alliance. “The workshop is particularly timely given that many people are taking to the streets and looking for ways to peacefully and powerfully indicate their concerns and fears about the upcoming administrative change,” said Ann Yellott with the Culture of Peace Alliance.

Participants are learning how to gain additional knowledge about how nonviolence was applied in several civil rights campaigns, including those seen in Montgomery, Nashville, Birmingham, and Selma.

“Helping our children be balanced and helping them to understand compassion for another, it’s not only a bullying issue, it’s a health issue,” said program manager Hassan Clement. “These kids are leaving a legacy for other kids.”

Sixteen-year-old Naomi Reyes, a student at Sunnyside High School, is one of the program’s participants and said she suffers from anger issues from time to time and hopes this program will help.

“There’s personal experience that involves violence and that’s another reason why I’m here,” said Reyes.

Caleb Bailey, 15, is a student at Cholla High School and says he wants to influence other students through this program. Though he wasn’t old enough to vote in this year’s election, it’s the lessons he’s learning that he hopes to keep forever.

“It can teach people how to get your word out without seeming like a thug or anti-Trump supporters or something,” he said. “It’s a way to articulate without seeming violent. Even though I’m young, I still think I can do something in the community. That’s what I really want to learn so when I get older, I know how to use nonviolence, and even now, so I can be a better person.”

For more information on the Culture of Peace Alliance’s Nonviolence Legacy Project, CLICK HERE.

Can peace be guaranteed through nonviolent means?

The post-election fightback for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

By Dr. Khursheed Ahmed, Editor, Living Gandhi Today

It rained all night and everyone was anxious that Gandhi Peace Festival would be rained out. But, the gods of rain were kind and while it was cloudy all day, the rain held off for Mahatma Gandhi’s 147th birthday in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This was the 24th year that over 250 people gathered at Hamilton City Hall despite cool autumn weather to celebrate this popular peace event. The theme this year was “Refugees and Sarvodaya – Opening Our Hearts and Homes”.

Everyone gathered around Gandhi’s statue to garland and reflect
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Gandhi Peace Festival is jointly sponsored by India-Canada Society of Hamilton and McMaster University Faculty of Humanities and Centre for Peace Studies.

This year’s theme reflected the growing refugee crisis in many parts of the world and the high toll it has taken on millions of people. Dr. Chandrima Chakraborty, an Associate Professor in Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University was the Master of Ceremonies. She warmly welcomed the audience and thanked the Gandhi Peace Festival Organizing Committee for their hard work, and also thanked the many volunteers, donors and supporters for making this event possible.

Joanna Frketich of the local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator covered
the event with a very succinct article published on Monday, October 3rd, which nicely summed up the event. She wrote:

‘Canada can do better’ for refugees says peace festival speaker

The federal government was urged at Hamilton’s Gandhi Peace Festival to make a number of key improvements to how it deals with refugees. Better mental health support for traumatized refugees and funds to fight racism are badly needed, said Nora Melara-Lopez, social worker and co-ordinator of the emergency support committee for refugees at the North Hamilton Community Health Centre. Her keynote address Saturday to about 250 attending the 24th annual festival at City Hall urged the government to do more to help refugees work in their field after they arrive. She said increased funding for loans is needed while unfair charges need to be removed. She said delays in family reunification have to be reduced and backlogs cleared for those facing long waits for decisions both here and abroad. “I think Canada can do better,” she said. It’s significant at a time when more than 31,000 Syrian refuges have arrived in Canada, including more than 1,000 in Hamilton.

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What is the message to us today from Mahatma Gandhi?

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Mayor Fred Eisenberger said bringing Syrian refugees to Canada “is the right thing to do.” He called the ongoing refugee crisis “a tragedy for our humankind.” He talked about the importance of peace and generosity during his address “notwithstanding things happening across the border.” He referenced the American presidential election as bringing out a lot of “racism, hatred and misogyny.” “In Canada we represent something different,” he said.

The youth community service award was given at the festival to Rahma Ahmed Abdi, who was born in Ethiopia but grew up in a refugee camp in Eretria. She came to Hamilton in 2009 at the age of 12. She now supports more than 20 students a week in the Empowerment Squared Homework Circle Program and is credited with more than tripling its enrolment. “I want to show that peace can come out of someone who has experienced extreme violence as a child,” she said.

The adult community service award went to Leo Johnson who was born in Liberia and spent his teen years and early adulthood in refugee camps before coming to Canada in 2006. He has since founded a successful not-for-profit organization called Empowerment Squared that helps refugees, immigrants and underprivileged communities. He has twice represented Hamilton at the Canadian Council for Refugees’ International Conference.

In addition to the speeches and awards, the Festival featured music, poetry and dances to warm up the spirits. The Colombian Refugee Association dazzled the audience with 20 dancers in traditional colourful costumes with lively music. This was followed by the popular Hamilton musician Kojo “Easy” Damptey, an Afro-Soul music producer, song writer, composer and poet, born and raised in Accra, Ghana. Three animated Hamilton Youth Poets also entertained the audience with their poetry. The last presentation after the Peace March was a beautiful performance of an Indian classical dance by Lamia Syed, who is well-known in Hamilton and has performed in previous festivals.

A number of groups providing services to refugees in Hamilton set up information tables. Darshana Limbachia, an avid Gandhi admirer, brought her impressive collection of books and photographs on Gandhi to display.

The cultural program was followed by people gathering around and garlanding the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on City Hall grounds. Leo Johnson, this year’s Community Service Award winner recounted the plight of refugees and the struggles they must go through because the international community tries to bring “peace” by bombing their cities and homes. He said “nobody would want to leave their homes if there was true peace”.

The peace march through downtown streets warmed the bodies and souls. There were many students and families that joined the traditional route, singing songs and chanting peace slogans. The walk also built up an appetite for a hot vegetarian lunch that awaited them, catered by India Village Restaurant and paid by donations from several long-time Gandhi Festival supporters.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

A review by David Swanson

Snowden is the most entertaining, informing, and important film you are likely to see this year.

It’s the true story of an awakening. It traces the path of Edward Snowden’s career in the U.S. military, the CIA, the NSA, and at various contractors thereof. It also traces the path of Edward Snowden’s agonizingly slow awakening to the possibility that the U.S. government might sometimes be wrong, corrupt, or criminal. And of course the film takes us through Snowden’s courageous and principled act of whistleblowing.

Trailer for film

We see in the film countless colleagues of Snowden’s who knew much of what he knew and did not blow the whistle. We see a few help him and others appreciate him. But they themselves do nothing. Snowden is one of the exceptions. Other exceptions who preceded him and show up in the film include William Binney, Ed Loomis, Kirk Wiebe, and Thomas Drake. Most people are not like these men. Most people obey illegal orders without ever making a peep.

And yet, what strikes me about Snowden and many other whistleblowers I’ve met or learned about, is how long it took them, and the fact that what brought them around was not an event they objected to but a change in their thinking. U.S. officials who’ve been part of dozens of wars and coups and outrages for decades will decide that the latest war is too much, and they’ll bail out, resign publicly, and become an activist. Why now? Why not then, or then, or then, or that other time?

These whistleblowers — and Snowden is no exception — are not passive or submissive early in their careers. They’re enthusiastic true believers. They want to spy and bomb and kill for the good of the world. When they find out that’s not what’s happening, they go public for the good of the world. There is that consistency to their actions. The question, then, is how smart, dedicated young people come to believe that militarism and secrecy and abusive power are noble pursuits.

Oliver Stone’s Ed Snowden begins as a “smart conservative.” But the only smart thing we see about him is his computer skills. We never hear him articulate some smart political point of view that happens to be “conservative.” His taste in books includes Ayn Rand, hardly an indication of intelligence. But on the computers, Snowden is a genius. And on that basis his career advances.

(review continued in right column)

Question(s) related to this article:

What are some good films and videos that promote a culture of peace?

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Snowden has doubts about the legality of warrantless spying, but believes his CIA instructor’s ludicrous defense. Later, Snowden has such concerns about CIA cruelty he witnesses that he resigns. Yet, at the same time, he believes that presidential candidate Barack Obama will undo the damage and set things right.

How does one explain such obtuseness in a genius? Obama’s statements making perfectly clear that the wars and outrages would roll on were publicly available. I found them with ordinary search engines, needing no assistance from the NSA.

Snowden resigned, but he didn’t leave. He started working for contractors. He came to learn that a program he’d created was being used to assist in lawless and reckless, not to mention murderous, drone murders. That wasn’t enough.

He came to learn that the U.S. government was lawlessly spying on the whole world and spying more on the United States than on Russia. (Why spying on Russia was OK we aren’t told.) But that, too, wasn’t enough.

He came to learn that the U.S. was spying on its allies and enemies alike, even inserting malware into allies’ infrastructure in order to be able to destroy things and kill people should some country cease to be an ally someday. That, too, was not enough.

Snowden went on believing that the United States was the greatest country on earth. He went on calling his work “counter cyber” and “counter spying” as if only non-Americans can do spying or cyber-warfare, while the United States just tries to gently counter such acts. In fact, Snowden risked his life, refraining from taking medication he needed, so that he could continue doing that work. He defended such recklessness as justified by the need to stop Chinese hackers from stealing billions of dollars from the U.S. government. Apart from the question of which Chinese hackers did that, what did Snowden imagine it was costing U.S. taxpayers to fund the military?

Snowden’s career rolled on. But Edward Snowden’s brilliant mind was catching up with reality and at some point overtook it. And then there was no question that he would do what needed to be done. Just as he designed computer programs nobody else could, and that nobody else even thought to try, now he designed a whistleblowing maneuver that would not be stopped as others had.

Consequently, we must be grateful that good and decent people sometimes start out believing Orwellian tales. Dull, cowardly, and servile people never blow whistles.