“Nonviolent Action and the Struggle for Land: Experiences in India and Brazil”

Kurt Schock (Associate Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University)

Monday, November 24, 2008, 4:30 p.m.

Scheuer Room

Kohlberg Hall

Swarthmore College

Prof. Kurt Schock is author of Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies (University of Minnesota Press). “He is currently researching land reform and land rights movements in the global south. He is examining how various methods of civil resistance, such as protest marches and land occupations, are being used to promote a more equitable distribution of land and resources. He is also interested in how constructive programs such as rural cooperatives and small-scale sustainable agriculture are being used to promote agrarian reform. More broadly his research seeks to understand how methods of nonviolent action and ‘people power’ movements are able to successfully challenge state domination and economic exploitation.”

Light refreshments will be provided.

Campus maps and directions to Swarthmore College are available at http://www.swarthmore.edu/visitordash/dash_visitors.php

A .pdf flyer is available at http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/peace/documents/Schock_F08_poster.pdf

Sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology with the Peace and Conflict Studies, Asian Studies, and Latin American Studies programs.

Now that we know who the next U.S. President will be, what are some options for people who want major change in national policies both domestic and foreign, in the direction of justice, peace, and environmental sustainability?

George Lakey will present a multi-dimensional strategic framework for radical change.? Based on research but guided by vision, the framework offers meaningful actions for the next four years for people with diverse gifts and backgrounds seeking unity of collective strength.

Lakey is in his third and final year as Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change.? In a fifty-year span he has authored seven books, facilitated1500 workshops on five continents, and led social change projects on local, national, and international levels.? A Quaker, he was first arrested for a civil rights sit-in in Chester, PA.

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George Lakey began his career as a trainer at the Martin Luther King School for Social Change, and has since gone on to lead over 1000 workshops on five continents. He has run trainings for coal miners, therapists, homeless people, prisoners, Russian lesbians and gays, Sri Lankan monks, Burmese guerrilla soldiers, striking steel workers, South African activists, and others. Trained as a sociologist, he has taught at the college and graduate level and is the author of six books. He consults regularly with a wide range of nonprofit groups.

George has given leadership to a number of social change movements. In late 1989 he led a team of Westerners in Sri Lanka who for 24 hours a day accompanied human-rights activists at risk of assassination. He has done neighborhood organizing, once successfully preventing tree-cutting and another time creating a neighborhood festival to celebrate ethnic diversity. He co-founded the Movement for a New Society, which for nearly 20 years specialized in organizational innovation. He founded and directed the Philadelphia Jobs with Peace Campaign, a coalition of labor, civil rights, poverty and peace groups. He was a designer of and staffed the Campaign to Stop the B-1 Bomber and Promote Peace Conversion, which mobilized sufficiently to gain cancellation of the B-1 in 1977 and raise the visibility of the concept of economic conversion. He was director of A Quaker Action Group when it assisted Puerto Rican nationalists in stopping the U.S. Navy from using the inhabited island of Culebra for target practice. He was also a founder of Men Against Patriarchy, which organized pioneering projects for the early men’s anti-sexism movement of the mid-’70s.

George has taught peace studies at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn he brought the program from 11 students in one class to 105 in three sections; the administration lauded the program for the way it reached out to students of color. He also created a group dynamics lab at Penn for training men in new leadership styles under a federal grant for feminist education.

George’s sixth book is on organizational development: “Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times” (1996). He is author or co-author of five previous books: “A Manual for Direct Action” (often called the “Bible” of direct action by Southern civil-rights activists of the ’60s); “In Place of War, Moving toward a New Society”; “No Turning Back: Lesbian and Gay Liberation for the ’80s”; and “Powerful Peacemaking: A Strategy for a Living Revolution.” His publications have been translated into Swedish, German, Danish, French, Japanese and Thai.

On the personal side, George is a Quaker, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather in an interracial family. He received the national Giraffe Award (1992) for “sticking his neck out for the common good,” and the Ashley Montague Peace Award (1998) from the International Conference on Conflict Resolution.

bio from http://trainingforchange.org/content/view/29/45/index.html

Seeking Justice and Digging Up Bones: The Plight of Mayan Survivors in Guatemala

A Talk by Manuel Calel Morales

Monday, November 17, 2008

7:00 p.m.

Kohlberg 115

In Guatemala, anthropologists and villagers are uncovering the past. They unearth secret graves containing remains of victims of the mass murders carried out by Guatemala???? military and death squads (backed by the U.S. military). Manuel Calel Morales is a villager from El Quich?Î?. After serving against his will in the Guatemalan Army, Calel Morales became a human rights activist, a mass grave finder, and a community leader. He directs the K????malb???? Rech Tinamit Ixium Ulew, a group seeking justice for the survivors of the massacres.

The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, based in Washington, DC, invited Calel Morales to conduct a speaking tour to inform the public about the plight of so many. Calel Morales has also spoken before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations.

Sponsored by: Forum for Free Speech, Latin American Studies, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Peace and Conflict Studies, and the Provost’s Office.

A Lecture by Dr. William M. Speidel, the first executive director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Program for Chinese and American Studies; the first US Peace Corps Country Director in China based on Chengdu, Sichuan.

November 13, 2008 4:15-6:00

Swarthmore College – Kohlberg

Room: Kohlberg 115

Contact Information:

Name: Haili Kong

Phone: 610-328-8457

Email: hkong1@swarthmore.edu

Event Sponsors:

Modern Languages and Literatures Department

Presentation by Silvia Hernandez

Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, Mexico

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

4:30 p.m. in Kohlberg 115

TEACHING REBELLION

A compilation of testimonies from longtime organizers, teachers, students, housewives, religious leaders, union members, school children, community activists, artists, journalists, and others who participated in the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca.

“In 2006, Oaxaca, Mexico came alive with a broad and diverse movement that captivated the nation and inspired communities organizing for social justice around the world. Fueled by long ignored social contradictions, what began as a teachers’ strike quickly turned into a massive movement that demanded direct, participatory democracy. Hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans raised their voices against the abuses of the state and participated in marches, occupied government buildings, took over radio stations, and held sit-ins, while hundreds were arbitrarily detained, tortured, murdered by government forces or death squads, or forced into hiding.”

Silvia Hernandez, a sociology student active in the barricades and in the defense of Radio Universidad when it was under attack by state police, continues to actively organize for autonomous space and alternative to the state’s neo-liberal development plans. Silvia was arrested in July 2007 and spent nearly a month as a political prisoner. She belongs to VOCAL – Voces Oaxaquenas Construyendo Autonomia y Libertad (Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Liberty) and gives workshops in recycled art and urban agriculture.

Sponsored by:

Forum for Free Speech, Latin American Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, The Intercultural Center, The President??s Office, and The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility