I was able to attend the 4th annual Social Justice Summit at CSUF this Saturday. Listening to Suheir Hammad eloquently relay experiences of New Orleans was inspiring. I am not a huge fan of poets abstractly or written poetry, but when a poet speaks it has the potential to transcend, which Suheir did.
I attended the "Student Movement for a Department of Peace," "Witness: Living a Life of Justice Through Non-Violent Civil Disobedience," and "Biking as Alternative Transportation: Raising Awareness, Building Critical Coalitions" workshops. The first one was not very well attended, but it was quite awesome. A high school student talked at length about her involvement in the Student Peace Alliance and it was quite inspiring. My favorite bit was her talking about winning over the republican vote for a proposed bill with pie. The second session was fantastic and featured Jarret Lovell and Jeff Dietrich. I think this was the highlight of the day for me. Jeff spoke about how he came to tour the world after dodging the draft and found his calling to the Catholic Worker as a servant to humanity. Finally I attended the bike workshop which was great. Leading the talk were representatives of NOCBAC and the Bicycle Tree about getting around and getting represented as alternative commuters.
The one thing that I keep coming back to is the practice of peace by looking toward the self and attaining it individually. From there one can find true compassion and look to serve compassionately. So here is a video on that:
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