Welcome to the Premiere of the Peace Correspondent.
Volume 1, Issue 1: Racial and Social Justice
Bear with me as I make an effort to make best use of Medium.com’s Publications feature. What follows is the first issue of an experimental news journal of the International NGO, Writing for Peace. Continue on to read the complete issue featuring seven distinctive voices of emerging Peace Correspondents. There will be more coming!
Editorial Outlook, The Peace Correspondent
By Elissa J. Tivona
Welcome readers and cautious optimists,
I am humbled and honored to put the finishing touches on the premier edition of the Peace Correspondent, an enduring journalistic dream of mine. My first encounter with the pioneers of peace journalism was a fortunate accident. In 2010 I submitted my research on the 1000 PeaceWomen Across the Globe for presentation at the International Peace Research Association conference. The paper was accepted and then assigned to the Peace Journalism Convention chair, Jake Lynch, acknowledged leader of the emerging peace journalism movement. My first reaction was, “The what?”
Years before, I had walked away from an established media production career. Following the Columbine High School shooting 20 miles from my home, I became deeply troubled by media’s incessant and sensational coverage. I yearned for stories to enlighten, to provide context for this incomprehensible tragedy. Instead of light I found noise: hyped up stories, produced by journalists competing for breaking news of another horrific incident. I banged hard against an inescapable conclusion: news media stoke the fires of fear; we are complicit in creating the cultures of violence and hopelessness that saturate communities.
But what I can’t walk away from are the hundreds of peace narratives that pour into my life from every direction on a regular basis. Every time I feel compelled to distribute another news bulletin, whether covering a project by Combatants for Peace in Israel and Palestine, or BloodBonds, a collaborative blood drive among Christians, Jews and Muslims in Fort Collins, I get the same response from readers. “How do you know about this? Why doesn’t the media write these stories?” Well, I’m here to say that NOW it does!
The Peace Correspondent stands at the intersection between reporting and narrative. This intentional mash-up is to provide readers with context. Peace Correspondents understand that social unrest is never a simple matter of good guys vanquishing evil-doers, not in the shocking and polarizing ways currently depicted in conventional media. We will attempt to listen deeply to voices of people at the margins and people who live at the heart of conflict and struggle, the people who are trying their best to effect more peaceful outcomes for themselves, for all their relations and for all of us.
We also commit to fact-finding and fact checking around the issues we report on. When we bump up against bias in ourselves or in others we will do our best to disclose it. We will eschew the simplistic and the outlandish. What we’re reaching for is to elevate solutions and creativity above controversy for its own sake. When we research and report these stories, multitudes come into focus — the ordinary and the extraordinary people who stand at the nexus of struggle but forsake violence. We also discover that there are no limits to creativity and to potential ways forward, the optimistic signposts for cultures of peace.
I want to acknowledge my deep gratitude to Carmel Mawle, director of Writing For Peace, who is generously providing a platform for the Peace Correspondent, and to Melody Rautenstraus, student intern, and Andrea Doray, Board Member for W4P. When we came together as an editorial board, we set a modest calendar for the first year. But our lead theme was anything but modest. We boldly put forward the theme of Racial and Social Justice. What you find in these pages are people reporting and reflecting in new ways on critical issues. Peace Correspondents stepped forward to talk about Black Lives Matter and how public schools can address a racialized America; the Water Protectors at Standing Rock North Dakota and a gathering of Christian, Jewish and Muslim youngsters from Jerusalem and the U.S, who refuse to succumb to hopelessness. But enough from me, read and be inspired by the peace journalists themselves.
VOICES FROM THE PEACE FRONT: Feature stories, the Water Protectors at Standing Rock.
1000 Grandmothers to Stand in Solidarity for the Water Protectors.
by Christinia Eala
Good morning and a warm handshake to each of you whose eyes see this story. I will pack to travel to Chicago very soon to visit my daughter and two beautiful grandchildren. I struggled with the decision to travel that way because I want also to be back at the Protectors camp in North Dakota to help with preparations for winter, but first I NEEDED to reach out to each of you who have taken the time to join this page and to “speak” words that have been on my mind. Foremost, I am thrilled to be a part of this 1000 Grandmothers stand and know that like each one of you, wherever we stand, wherever we are, we complete this Sacred Circle.
I offer thanks and much love to my sister/friends, Elissa Tivona who thought of this lovely idea, Carol Rothman, (Elissa’s dear friend from protests past) whose encouragement and organizational skills mean the world to us, and Mary Dorgan, an Irish lass who created this page for us with much love coursing through her fingertips with each stroke of the key, …and of course Holly Near, who wrote the lyrics of her song “1000 Grandmothers” which has such power and meaning for those of us of a certain, grandmotherly age. The first time I listened to it (two weeks ago, or thereabouts)) I choked on air through my tears. And still, when I listen I can’t speak through the thick emotions that arise in my throat. Thank you Ms. Near for a song that has awakened and brought forward the Warrior Goddess me and so many grandmothers.
As I write this thinking of the ‘1000 grandmothers song’ the words that grabbed my heart and attention were these:
“If you think these women are too soft to face the world at hand
Then you’ve never known the power of love and you fail to understand
An old woman holds a powerful force when she no longer needs to please
She can cut your shallow life to bits and bring you to your knees
We best get down on our knees”
http://www.songlyrics.com/holly-…/1000-grandmothers-lyrics/…
As I heard those words for the first time, I found my mind starting to wander to the many stories and songs I’ve read and heard about the strength of grandmothers and one of those brought is the story of “Two Old Women” by Velma Wallis. It is “based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generation from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.
Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community and forgiveness ‘speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness and wisdom’. (Ursula K. LeGuin).
At the time that I first read this book, these two old women made me think of the many journeys my sister and I traveled together and how as children we depended on each other for survival many times; and then one day, we found we had to travel separate ways and so we did…for many years. She married and had her first daughter at the very tender age of 17 while I left home at that same age and made my way to Los Angeles in order to explore and possibly re-invent myself. I believe that my dear sister was carefully molded to become a caretaker of others, (whether this was by the Creator of All That Is or
our parents no longer matters) but that is what she did her entire life, was take care of others.
She cared for a neighbor’s wife as well as our mother admirably, and then her half-side when he became very ill. She was by the side of each of them when they crossed over. After her half-side made his Journey…she realized, at 68, she no longer knew who she was or what her purpose in this life was. I offered to show her many ways that she might find other roles, which would still be in service to others, but after much reflection, I believe she was too sad for what she never had; the freedom to choose for herself what her life would have become, and too tired to come explore with me, so she left me…her little sister, which is where her care-taking began. But that is another story. I pray that when it is time for me to transition, she will be among the first to greet me with a warm hug and show me around.
Her crossing had a huge impact on her children and mine of course. It awakened them to the REALITY that life is NOT INFINITE after all. So when I had open heart surgery they became very protective of me…over-protective. But six weeks post surgery, I went hiking with friends in the canyons of beautiful Colorado, and felt the Earth Mother beneath my feet again. I inhaled the scent of the mountain environment we were in, I listened to the sound of the wind singing through the trees in harmony with the birds and the insects, and I felt a hunger course through my body. A hunger to see, feel, hear, smell and touch everything the Creator of All That Is gave each one of us to enjoy.
So I set out to do just that, but my beloved children had other plans for me. They wanted me to stay home and stay safe but in my mind, that would make me in-valid as a woman who still has much to do before I exit stage left. As it’s said “I’ve got places to go, things to do, breathtaking sunsets to see, great people I have yet to love and hug.” So while I understand and try to respect my children’s concerns and reluctance to let me continue my explorations…explore I continue to do because like the ‘two old women’, my inner strength, that I allowed to become dormant, has been reawakened and I realized playing the societal role expected of us dear “old grannies” was just not who I am…I still want to visit the Indigenous Peoples of every nation, in every environment around the globe and do ceremony with them and eat their food and dance their dances…and fight the GOOD FIGHT with them, and each of you…and me by their side.
It was this…and so much more that took me to Standing Rock to be with the People of ALL NATIONS. As everyone I met there has said…I could not have NOT traveled there.
I love you all and I offer each of you Wicosani in your life.
Fact Finding in North Dakota
by E. J. Tivona
I roll to a stop at a roadblock along North Dakota county road 1806; a camouflage-garbed youth, toting a semi-automatic, strolls up to my rental car.
“Do you know what’s happening 25 miles down the road?”
“Yes sir, I do.” He flashes a friendly smile, and cautions,
“Well, a lot of people are walking along the road so slow down; drive carefully.” The National Guard’s equivalent of “Have a nice day.”
I’m stopped a second time by Lakota security as I turn into the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) camp near the Standing Rock Reservation. An unarmed young man walks up to my rolled down window. Do I plan to camp? Yes, I do. He ties a yellow ribbon on my door handle and clears me to drive down an impressive roadway lined with flags from nations across the globe.
After parking, I stroll through the camp and connect with a number of proud, generous, and good-humored people. I also sense their suspicion, those whose hearts have been besieged by centuries of broken promises. The Hunkpapa Lakota and Yankonai Dakota people, who make their homes on the land spanning North and South Dakota, stand firm in the commitment to halt construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline, granted by permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Richard Smallteacher of CorpWatch reports, “The company did not consult with the tribes whose lands are likely to be affected, such as the Standing Rock Sioux, despite the fact that the pipeline will pass under the Missouri River a half-mile from their Reservation.”
The Army Corps of Engineers approved plans for the 1170-mile pipeline intended to transport 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily from fracking sites in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. In a public statement, Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, says, “We have laws that require federal agencies to consider environmental risks and protection of Indian historic and sacred sites, but the Army Corps has ignored all those laws and fasttracked this massive project just to meet the pipeline’s aggressive construction schedule.”
I’m directed to Karen Antelope’s camp across the Cannonball River from the main Oceti Sakowin, where I find my longtime colleague and director of a sustainable homestead project on the Pine Ridge reservation. Christinia Eala is a Lakota elder, originally from Rosebud Indian Reservation, present at Standing Rock to protect safe drinking water into the future for her 13 grandchildren.
“This is not just for [Lakota] children, but for ALL the children. If the pipeline breaks and contaminates drinking water, everyone will be affected,” says Eala.
In fact, the original route planned for the pipeline was to run under the Missouri 10 miles north of Bismarck; however, the Army Corps concluded that the Bismarck route jeopardized municipal water supply wells. Standing Rock residents are left to wonder why the pipeline represents a risk for the people of Bismarck but not for the Lakota people.
I quickly settle into the cozy dome tent Christinia has set up with cots. I know she is eager to join the sweat lodge this evening. Even so, she has waited for my arrival and welcomes me with her unique brand of Lakota hospitality — a charming blend of glee and mischief, which I have grown to love about working together. She runs off to find a skirt so I can join her in the sweat lodge and returns with a XXL cotton print dress, which billows over my size medium body. I’m in undies, teeth chattering, and by the time we’re done rushing about, we are both reduced to belly laughs.
So begins my brief fact-finding trip. Over the next three days, I will take part in several direct actions along with water protectors. The first is the one that lingers.
Early on the morning following my arrival, I stumble from the warmth of my sleeping bag, piled high with quilts, and emerge into the nippy North Dakota haze. Once my blood gets moving, I intend to help organize the camp kitchen and sort through mountains of donations. However, I’m summoned by a call to action by Red Fawn, the daughter of Christinia’s longtime Lakota friend, Troylynn Yellowood. Red Fawn is urging us to jump in cars, drive over to the main camp and join the multitudes in an action at a DAPL worksite.
Except by the time we get to security across the river, the line of cars we were expecting is gone. Red Fawn knows the route to the worksite and so we drive. I don’t realize we’re headed nearly 25 miles across gravel, backcountry roads to intersect the slash in the earth delineating the path of the pipeline across the Dakotas. The cut is referred to among indigenous people as the black snake.
The ride takes over an hour and when we turn up the access road to the site, we are surprised to find we’re the only ones there: we joke that we are two old crones (Christinia and I), a mother (Red Fawn) and three maidens (three of Red Fawn’s young nieces, who are producing a documentary film for school). We turn the car around, park and continue walking up the access road, arriving at an active work site. We have no intention of violating law; there are no posted signs warning against trespassing. In fact there are no signs at all. We begin taking pictures.
At the top of a rise, we gaze out over several miles of disconnected pipe, laid end to end in a slash of rough roadway some 50 yards wide. About a half-mile away from where we stand, we watch a tractor grading the earth along one side of the pipes, pushing scoops of dirt across the hillside.
At one point, Christinia walks up to the nearest pipe, puts her head near the opening and begins to sing a ceremonial prayer. The sound of her voice spills out in ripples from the other end of the pipe, a haunting melody of supplication and strength. For those moments we all stand motionless and listen.
We move on, walking close to a different tractor parked in the road. Our proximity to the pipes and to DAPL equipment must have triggered alarm in nearby security forces, even though we were doing nothing more than recording video and taking photos.
We turn back and start toward the car, each of us lost in a tight clot of emotions. Two security trucks rush to the spot we just vacated and block any return access behind us. Two men get out of the truck, wielding smart phones, and for a while we snap dueling photos.
Then a lanky, balding man walks toward us, confronts the six of us, and reads the following statement.
Sir/Ma’am, We respect your first amendment right to assemble and protest. Due to safety concerns we ask that you leave the vicinity of our worksite as you are currently affecting the workflow of previously approved operations. If you do not leave the worksite, law enforcement will be called to remove you from the site.
He walks back to the truck and returns carrying two no trespassing signs. He pounds the first into one side of the county road, crosses over to the other side, and attempts to pound in the second, but it breaks in two. Undaunted, he hammers the puny half sign into the dirt and marches stiffly off. The Lakota women don’t even try to contain their laughter. We wander back and forth across the road for a short period; I continue taking photos while my friends jeer and shame these men for defiling mother earth. As we slowly make our way to our car, the two trucks advance steadily toward us. Apparently law enforcement has been summoned and the guards are heading to meet them. We know our safest course of action is to leave.
Two days later, a large contingent of water protectors return to that same worksite for an action. Their intention, much like our own two days prior, is to pray and conduct ceremony.
But that afternoon, as the crowd is dispersing and returning to cars, riot police march to the rear flank. Other authorities have set up a roadblock, preventing demonstrators’ cars from exiting along the access road. Helicopters circle ominously overhead. Red Fawn is the first to be arrested, followed by 20 others.
But five of us in that crowd (two elder women and three girls) bear witness: two days earlier the pipeline was just a string of scattered, disconnected pipe. Today it is a welded back snake creeping ever closer to the Missouri River and the Standing Rock reservation.
At the Oceti Sakowin camp, water protectors have prominently posted principles to guide indigenous people and allies involved in resistance to the pipeline. The principles detail specifics of engagements with authorities. Some statements guide practices for lawful and non-violent ceremony, deliberately free from criminal trespass. Other principles direct those intending to engage in civil disobedience to required training, including instruction on disciplined response and police liaison responsibilities. Veterans for Peace activists have volunteered as liaisons and also help demonstrators navigate the boundary between civil disobedience and lawful protest.
The lines are not always clear. Often, in the heat of action, people over-react. Sadly, over-reaction more frequently occurs on the part of police and military ordered to disperse crowds. As I observe, police and guards react out of fear and employ much greater force than is required. The blatant show of power rarely fails to incite and too often leads both sides to dangerous confrontation.
Regardless, the people of Standing Rock and their allies have reached the tipping point. They maintain an unwavering resolve to protect their first medicine — the sacred water of life.
Naomi Klein, in her book and film of the same name This Changes Everything, extensively documents the history of repeated victimization of native populations and wholesale extraction of natural resources on indigenous lands, solely for corporate profit. Klein points out:
“Our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction of humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.”
How this war ends is up to each one of us. The indigenous people of Standing Rock, as leaders and stewards, point the way for all of us. However, survival will require our collective will to make the critical transition from reliance on fossil fuels to reliance on renewables.
GUEST PEACE CORRESPONDENT reprinted with author’s permission
THE FUTURE CRIES OUT: ‘WATER IS LIFE’
By Robert C. Koehler
The dogs growl, the pepper spray bites, the bulldozers tear up the soil.
“Water is life!” they cry. “Water is life!”
This isn’t Flint, Michigan, but I feel the presence of its suffering in this cry of outrage at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. No more, no more. You will not poison our water or continue ravaging Planet Earth: mocking its sacredness, destroying its eco-diversity, reshaping and slowly killing it for profit.
The dogs growl, the pepper spray bites, the bulldozers tear up the soil and a judge rules against the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s demand that construction of the Dakota Access pipeline be stopped. Sorry, the wishes of the rich and powerful come first. And you protesters are just common criminals.
But sometimes the forces of corporate supremacy don’t get the final word. Something about this tribal-led protest could not be ignored, even by politicians. Initially, the permit application to build the 1,172-mile pipeline, from North Dakota to Illinois, had been fast-track through the federal bureaucracy. No matter that it would cut under the Missouri River or destroy ancestral burial grounds.
Environmental and tribal concerns were not considered. The permit was granted and that was that. But shortly after the judge’s ruling upholding the permit, three branches of the Obama administration — the departments of Justice, the Interior and the Army — issued a joint statement temporarily suspending pipeline construction . . . and, good God, suggesting the intervention of a larger consciousness:
“. . . this case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects.”
Water is life? And the feds give a damn?
As Rebecca Solnit wrote a few days later in The Guardian: “What’s happening at Standing Rock feels like a new civil rights movement” — one, she said, “that takes place at the confluence of environmental and human rights” awareness.
“Indigenous people have played a huge role, as (have) the people in many of the places where extracting and transporting fossil fuel take place, as protectors of particular places and ecosystems from rivers to forests, from the Amazon to the Arctic, as people with a strong sense of the past and the future, of the deep time in which short-term profit turns into long-term damage, and of the rights of the collective over individual profit. All these forces are antithetical to capitalism, and it to them.”
This extraordinary movement is also taking place at the confluence of the past and the future. David Archambault II, Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman, put it this way recently in a New York Times op-ed: “As American citizens, we all have a responsibility to speak for a vision of the future that is safe and productive for our grandchildren.”
The world’s most powerful governmental bodies have demonstrated an alarminginability to do this on their own, beholden as they are to the military-industrial status quo and its need for endless growth. This is the maw of capitalism, which could care less about the future.
“We are also a resilient people who have survived unspeakable hardships in the past, so we know what is at stake now,” Archambault writes. “As our songs and prayers echo across the prairie, we need the public to see that in standing up for our rights, we do so on behalf of the millions of Americans who will be affected by this pipeline.
“As one of our greatest leaders, Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Lakota, once said: ‘Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.’ That appeal is as relevant today as it was more than a century ago.”
As Winona LaDuke said of the Missouri River itself, this is a force to be reckoned with.
“Water is life!” they cry. “Water is life!”
“It is early evening, the moon full,” she writes. “If you close your eyes, you can remember the 50 million buffalo — the single largest migratory herd in the world. The pounding of their hooves would vibrate the Earth, make the grass grow.
There were once 250 species of grass. Today the buffalo are gone, replaced by 28 million cattle, which require grain, water, and hay. Many of the fields are now in a single GMO crop, full of so many pesticides that the monarch butterflies are dying off. But in my memory, the old world remains.”
So the monarch is also part of the protest, part of the movement, with its drumbeat reverberating across the planet. The tribal peoples of Earth are making their voices heard in so many ways. Their mission is to reconnect the modern world with the circle of life — a circle that much of humanity left behind maybe ten millennia ago, in pursuit of the Agricultural Revolution and dominion over nature. In the process, we’ve succeeded in changing the climate and, perhaps, establishing a troubling new geological epoch. Now it’s time to rethink “progress.”
Building another pipeline is its antithesis.
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
© 2016 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.
SPOTLIGHT ON SOLUTIONS: Peace clips from around the world
Focus on Cincinnati: When Lives Matter, Listening Matters
by E. S. Gray
Racial justice is a strange construct. On the surface, it is sometimes easy to distinguish between extremes in traits — the degree of melanin, the shape of certain facial features, even fundamental differences in the way cow’s milk is digested. It would seem we are truly different; then, layer upon those physical markers the cultural variations in our language, the way we express emotion and concern, and the way we laugh at ourselves. All these things can be observed in a community, and yet at the same time we find that intentionally or not, we influence each other, by mixing not just our DNA, but our musical styles, philosophical outlooks, jokes, and rhythms. We constantly connect with each other. In fact I do not know if there was a single instance in human history where two differing communities met and did not leave having shared something.
In this very basic sense of human recognition, racial justice is a paradox. On the one hand we want to reconcile real differences, and how those differences have been historically exploited or redefined to fit a cruel agenda. On the other hand, “all lives matter” echoes back, as if to say those differences are all relative. There have been many conversations lately that pit the two truths against each other, so that “black lives matter” or “all lives matter” are offenses and attacks, rather than statements of empowerment or solidarity. Semantics seems to be the trickster in this story — the modern day manifestation of “Eshu” who walks between communities, manipulating perspectives to create conflict among gullible people.
Race is not a skin color, or a static culture captured in photographs or “traditional” styles of music. Race is a shared story, and like the grand epics of India, every generation adds a new chapter or verse to this unfathomably long adventure. We each have stories to share; some include sad, long struggles, and feelings of oppression or fear. Some are happy, involve a sense of family, security, and tradition. They shift and change with each person, which makes one single narrative (or single racial history) difficult to crystalize into a blanket statement or fact.
Even within the refrain “black lives matter”, there are layers and layers of differing understandings. Go to Ferguson and ask what this means to a person, and go to Cincinnati and ask what this means, and there will be some similarities, but many differences.
Which means that in order to understand one another, semantics is not just a trickster, it is a tool that we need to use to communicate and do what is so natural to us — leave the conversation having shared and exchanged something. If we cannot leave a mark on each other, something positive that we can value and use to remember our coming together, we will have failed.
It is important to honor our stories, and sing them to the skies for all to hear and appreciate, but it is just as important to listen. If a mass of people march through the streets crying with tears and blood that they have something to share, we risk destroying their humanity by ignoring their voices. Even if the message seems unsavory, perhaps it is our own insecurities, our own sense of separation that generates a fear of confrontation.
And it goes both ways. For reasons that are perfectly reasonable, mistrust exists between (seemingly) separate communities in our country. An action of persecution towards a person has repercussions generations down the line. Why? Because that story is told, in words, in DNA and hormones, in avoidance and interactions, to each person in that family or community. It is not that Angels keep vigorous records of our lives, it is us. From father and mother to child and grandchild. As keenly as we remember a nursery rhyme passed down hundreds of years, we can remember, vividly, the harm that was inflicted on our peoples.
The history cannot be altered. The memory cannot be erased; but the interpretation of its meaning to us can always transform. How? By adding a chapter that sheds new light on something. Do not all stories contain within them “revelations” and opportunities for change?
The imagination can create infinite variety in how our country will move forward with racial and social justice. However, we can recognize that at this point in history, we have the chance to move the story in whatever direction we want. In this sense, we could choose to celebrate this opportunity to communicate and add something to our narratives that was not quite there before. In every investigation of truth, a story is to be told, so let us ask, listen, and add a verse that marks that exchange with new understanding- with something genuinely shared.
Manuel Gray (E.S. Gray) was born and raised in Cincinnati, experiencing in his formative years the nightly curfews following the 2001 Cincinnati riots over the police killing of black teenager Timothy Thomas. Growing up he has been very mindful of the racial tension that exists in his city and cities around the country. Coming from a mixed family with members of varying understandings of race in development, policy, and enforcement, he remains motivated to find innovative ways of promoting communication and empowerment among diverse folks.
Focus on Boston: Kids4Peace Boston
by John Vernaglia
24 kids: 12 from Boston, 12 from Jerusalem: 12 boys, 12 girls: 8 Jews, 8 Christians, 8 Muslims all coming together for 1 life-changing experience. This is Kids4Peace Boston. This innovative program was created as a chapter of Kids4Peace International, whose mission is to “inspire hope” in the seemingly hopeless Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
However, the unique part of Kids4Peace is kids themselves, who are learning and doing the actual peacemaking. As Peggy Stevens, founder of Kids4Peace Boston described, it is about “getting kids to value crossing boundaries.”
Stevens was inspired to start a chapter while visiting Israel/Palestine, where she learned that the International program was turning away more than 100 enthusiastic applicants a year; so in 2011, she held the first Kids4Peace Boston session.
The Kids4Peace Boston experience begins when 12 year olds from Jerusalem and Boston meet for the first time for a two-week intensive camp experience. Not only does this camp give kids a chance to learn about each others’ religions, but also to do team-building activities so they become good friends. What has separated Kids4Peace Boston from other chapters is the continuation program, keeping youth involved through their high school years.
As Elizabeth Nies Greeley, a 12th grade Christian participant, describes, “Kids4Peace isn’t authoritative, it’s a family. It includes kids, teens and families.” This “family” only becomes more powerful through the connections between the kids and the work they are able to do together.
For Yasmine El-Kattan, an 11th grade Muslim, one of the most powerful experiences for her occurred during the continuation program when she had the opportunity to recite her own prayers in a church. “It showed me that although we come from different religions we are all connected and can coexist in this world.”
This encapsulates the core of Kids4Peace mission: getting kids to appreciate their similarities and see the possibility of greater peace.
Discussing the future direction of Kids4Peace Boston, Executive Director Sindy Wayne states, “We need to grow the number of kids involved.” At the same time, Wayne points out that current participants need to stay engaged as Kids4Peace Boston has turned a summer camp experience into a 6-year program. Throughout it all, the mission is clear. Wayne explains, “Youth can make a difference.” The program now includes an annual High School Interfaith Conference led by teens. Teen leaders s[eal at local houses of worship and participate in social justice and service projects. Their work is far from finished, but they hope to build on their already strong foundation as peace leaders in the community and abroad.
Teen leader Greeley confidently states, “I used to believe peace was possible, but now I know it is.”
John Vernaglia joined Kids4Peace Boston in 2012. He is currently a junior at Concord Academy in Massachusetts. John is serving his second term on the Advisory Board for Creative Kids magazine, where he is a frequent contributor. John’s poetry and writing have resulted in more than forty publications and awards.
FOCUS ON DENVER
Black Empowerment: What the School System Needs to Address a Racialized America
by Amal Kassir
Jen Renaldi is a self-proclaimed “white girl from Connecticut raised by hippies.” She is a Black Literature teacher at South High School, one of the most diverse schools in the Denver Public Schools system. With 74% non-White students, Renaldi says of her school: “Diversity cannot be overlooked”.
The purpose of her class, Renaldi says, is to expose her students to great Black writers and great literature. Social justice is an intrinsic part of the class. “How could I teach a Black Lit course in the US without talking about police brutality and race? This class is meant to empower Black students and inform all students.” She emphasizes that her course is decidedly pro-Black and will always be so.
Renaldi says that because her school serves students from more than 67 countries, it can be hard to acknowledge every single person’s experience. One thing the administration and her Black Lit course does ensure, however is that every student knows that his or her experiences are valid.
“Much of the material presented has nothing in common with them,” Renaldi says So she brings in a guest poet every two weeks, ranging from Oklahoman ex-prisoner poets to Denver vegan hip hop artists, to celebrate diversity and reinforce the idea that all voices are valid.
“It’s important to me to never shame kids for what they’ve been taught. I want to teach them that even saying ‘All Lives Matter’ is racist, but do so without shaming them,” Renaldi says. Renaldi believes she must address these ideas in non-threatening ways to correct subliminal racist values effectively.
“Many students don’t have a class where they get their voices treated as valid,” she says.
Anas Mohammad is a Denver-born Black Lives Matter hip hop artist and activist. His first experience of race was in elementary school.
The ideal curriculum to address race, Mohammad says that people need to “kindly take the back seat,”. emphasizing that to educate the community effectively, people must be willing to open their ears and listen. “They need to let go of the delusion of the mainstream narrative,” he says.
Mohammad references the Quran, saying that we must be “nations and tribes that recognize one another. Not what we look like, but actually understanding backgrounds and sensitivities.” Mohammad explains how an education system can achieve this only by empowering the Black voice and teaching Black history. “We need a system that does not push a Black inferiority complex and a White supremacy complex.
“There are different experiences for different people and not everyone is equal. Black people specifically are dealing with deprogramming,” he says.”
“We need a system that does not push a black inferiority complex and white supremacy complex. We need inclusion of real black history and real black stories.”
He argues that curricula must be tailored for black children specifically if they are to have that conversation in the first place. “There are different experiences for different people and not everyone is equal. Black people specifically are dealing with de-programming.”
Theo Wilson, a Denver spoken word artist, actor, and singer, echoes the belief that school curricula must be tailored to Black children if they are to deal with the race issue. Wilson talks about the early Black Wall Street in Oklahoma that was burnt to the ground by Whites after a race-riot in 1921. He explains that in the height of segregation, Black communities mobilized and created flourishing self-sustaining economies that did not require the interference of Whites. Wilson paralleled this historical event to the necessity of teaching Black children their own history. He said that to empower young Black children, we must help them understand where they come from, who they are, and the power they hold. Otherwise, he says, these children will grow up in a system of White supremacy and feel that they are unequipped to achieve the same privileges as their White counterparts.
“The White man had a 400-year head start on economic and social prosperity by the time Africans were freed from slavery, Wilson says.” He describes the systematic poverty and lack of education in the Black community as a result of having been pushed into housing projects and stripped of true Black history that has denied Black people of their self-efficacy. He explains that with only a White narrative in schools, Black children are taught that Africa started with slavery, and Black people have moved up from slavery to poverty to police brutality. Teaching this to White children is a reinforcement of Manifest Destiny, but teaching this to Black children is programming them to believe they are inferior. The only way to combat this is to teach Black children the truth about their roots, Wilson says.
To solve the racial divide, Anas Mohammad suggests a grassroots approach, inter-race dialogue as the main effective strategy. “We need diversity,” he says, “some form of recognition and acknowledgement of the role and presence of Black people, which isn’t achievable without teaching this to young people.”
Theo Wilson agrees that the only way to achieve productive dialogue is to make sure that children who know the “other side” of history. Although Wilson does not believe the racial issues of the United States will be solved, he does believe that the empowerment of Black children is crucial to helping them confront the racial battles.
Jen Renaldi says that, as a White woman instructing Black Literature, she understands how teaching Black children the voices of Black writers can help these children acknowledge the role their own voices play, how they can claim their struggles and be survivors of it. Renaldi’s Black Literature course empowers her Black students, and helps change the mindsets of her non-Black students. “This is the power of learning the story from the storyteller,” she says.
Although Renaldi is more hopeful about the racial issue than Mohammad and Wilson, the three do agree that young people need exposure to survivor stories and require the truth about their history to learn. Schools must accommodate the voices of the Black community and address the social, political, and economic realities these students face, as well as the historical circumstances that brought them there. Without this, the school system remains stagnant in addressing the racialized state of the United States
