Roots of Peace Fall 2011 Speaker Series at GCC
Dozens
of commentaries 10 years after the September 11, 2011 attacks on the World
Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon have appeared in the media. Most assessed the US response and whether we
are more or less secure after 10 years of militarized reaction and Homeland
Security surveillance.
In
October and November the Traprock Center for Peace Education at GCC will
sponsor speaker forums which focus on nonviolent
movements and responses over this last decade that counter the dominant media
focus and narratives on the “war on terror.”
Friday, October 7, Noon-1:30 Sloan Theater Greenfield Community College
Hardy
Merriman speaks on Nonviolent Struggle
and Confronting the Issues of Our Times.
In the last decade, the international and domestic
news media has told us of war, terrorism, financial crisis, environmental
destruction, public health crises, and more.
However, there are other narratives that the news
media often misses, namely the upsurge in nonviolent movements around the world
in the past decade. This presentation will focus on nonviolent movements
and nonviolent struggle as a way to make change at the local, national, and
global scales. It will provide a framework for understanding how nonviolent
movements work and the strategic principles that underlie their effectiveness.
Mr. Merriman is
a Senior Advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and has
worked with activists around the world. He contributed to and edited “Waging
Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st
Century Potential” by Gene Sharp and has co-authored a training curriculum for
activists, “A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle.”
Friday, November 4,
Noon-1:30
Sloan Theater Greenfield Community
College
Members
of September Eleventh Families for
Peaceful Tomorrows will speak about the remarkable anti-war organization
for survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their own personal
narratives about embracing a nonviolent response to the attacks.
Peaceful
Tomorrows was launched on February 14, 2002, at a press conference at the
United Nations headquarters by members of families that had lost members in the
9/11 attacks who did not want their grief to justify attacks such as the
American bombing campaign in Afghanistan, and to ensure that these actions were
not done in their names and the names of their loved ones.
We just marked the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In this forum we will be introduced to 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11th who have united to turn their grief into action for peace. We will hear from 3 members whose chose peace-building over the national mood of revenge, the government’s now 10-year war in Afghanistan, and the dominant media focus on the “war on terror.” Each has pursued creative peace-building actions, on which they will speak.