Making a Difference: The Nonviolent Life
Presented by
Richard Deats

Nov. 2-4, 2007
Participants will hear stories and struggles of these past decades and how Richard Deats built a peace vocation across racial, international and religious lines. He will share his understanding and experiences of active nonviolence and how it continues to develop, even alongside the paradoxical growth of fundamentalism and intolerance.  Together we will reflect on how we relate with children and family members who choose radically different life journeys than our own.  Richard will encourage us to share our own experiences and to reflect on the inward and outward journey of the peacemaker.  He will also talk about spiritual resources for peacemakers, with time for prayer, laughter and singing.

TIMES: Friday 6:30 p.m. dinner through Sunday lunch
FEES: Program $135; Room/Board $175, Total $310
EARLYBIRD: $35 off the total before October 2.

Richard Deats is recognized internationally as a writer, trainer, and activist, and as a leading authority on active nonviolence for social change. He worked to dismantle Jim Crow laws in Texas, taught social ethics in the Philippines, lectured and trained on nonviolent action in a dozen countries, joined delegations to Colombia and Iraq and led delegations to the USSR and Iran. At the Fellowship of Reconciliation, he coordinated the interfaith program, then served as executive, and later became editor of Fellowship Magazine.  Richard is an ordained Methodist pastor and holds a Ph.D. from Boston University. He is also a musician, humorist, and storyteller.  His articles have appeared in such publications as USA Today, Newsday, Sojourners, The Progressive and Reconciliation International.  His popular books include:
· Martin Luther King, Jr., Spirit-Led Prophet
· Mahatma Gandhi, Nonviolent Liberator
· Ambassador of Reconciliation – A Muriel Lester Reader
· Nationalism and Christianity in the Philippines
· How to Keep Laughing Even Though You’ve Considered All the Facts

For more information or to register
www.kirkridge.org

or call 610-588-1793

For Janet Chisholm
janetc@kirkridge.org

Nearly 100 people came out for the second annual Educators for Nonviolence (EFNV) Teachers’ Conference held at the U.C. Berkeley campus on July 20th and 21st.  The conference included such notable speakers as Dr. Michael Nagler of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education, Azim Khamisa of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation, Dr. Joseph Marshall of the Omega Boys Club/Street Soldiers, Dr. Rachel MacNair of Consistent Life and Dr. Cynthia Boaz of the International Institute on Nonviolence Conflict.  The conference also included several workshops and a tabling fair consisting of organizations focused on bringing nonviolence into schools.
As one conference attendee put it, “I really enjoyed last year’s conference, but this year was even better!”  EFNV hopes to continue in this tradition and provide even more engaging and relevant resources and opportunities in order to make the teaching and living of nonviolence part of mainstream education.
EFNV is a joint project of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education and the Dalai Lama Foundation.

Educators for Nonviolence, a joint project of the Metta Center and the Dalai Lama Foundation, will host its second annual summer teachers’ conference:

“Building a Culture of Nonviolence”

July 20th (7:00pm-9:30pm) and July 21st (8:00am-6:00pm)

at the University of California, Berkeley

Join teachers and educators from across the country to learn how you can manage a nonviolent classroom and teach nonviolence to your students. Workshops will focus on interactive, hands on techniques that you can use in your classroom. Speakers include Professor Michael Nagler of the UC Berkeley Peace and Conflict Studies Program and the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education, Dr. Joseph E. Marshall of the Omega Boys Club, Azim Khamisa of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation, Lynda Smith of Nonviolent Communication and many more! To register, visit the EFNV website. For more information contact conference@efnv.org or call 510-548-5550. Click here for a conference flier.

Also called “human security”: the concept that the true security of a state (or person, or group) implies much more than freedom from (fear of) attack. As Palestinian Hannan Ashrawi has pointed out, “…they [the Israeli govt.] define security as only military. We define security as human security – not just personal, but territorial, economic, geographic, historical, identity, existential, there are all sorts of different aspects to human security.” Along with common security this concept constitutes the security vision of the nonviolence worldview or paradigm.

The concept, very consistent with the nonviolent wordlview, that a state, or for that matter any person or group, cannot be secure without the other states or individuals in question enjoying security at the same time. In the common security viewpoint, an opponent who is unable to attack you may make you somewhat secure, but a former opponent who does not want to attack you makes you secure in a more meaningful, deeper and more reliable sense. It is the much deeper security that comes from not having enemies, as opposed to the conventional concept of keeping them in check. This is of course part of the positive-sum approach to conflict so characteristic of nonviolence. Compare Emma Goldman’s observation that “the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of all.” Along with total security it constitutes the nonviolent approach to the universal need to be secure.