Tag Archives: activism

Historic Golden Rule Anti-Nuclear Vessel Comes to Philadelphia and Swarthmore College

Golden Rule @ Swarthmore: Crew Members Talk & Archival Exhibit Poster

In 1958, an intrepid crew of (mainly) Quakers attempted to sail the small ship the “Golden Rule” to the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, to try to “get in the way” of massive nuclear tests the United States was planning there. They were arrested in Honolulu, but they left a lasting legacy connecting peace and environmental justice concerns. Now, a new crew from Veterans for Peace is using the same ship to campaign against the MAD-ness [Mutually Assured Destruction] of nuclear weapons. Read more about the campaign in the Global Nonviolent Action Database at Swarthmore College.

The Golden Rule, a 34-foot wooden ketch, will visit the Delaware Valley May 9-14, 2023 as part of a 15-month voyage around the eastern half of the USA, making 100 ports-of-call.

The Peace Collection at Swarthmore College is the archival repository of the Golden Rule project and will join the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies and the VFP Golden Rule Project to co-sponsor a program by the crew when they arrive in our region. Members of the crew and other guests will offer a presentation, and archival material and memorabilia from the collection will be on display for visitors to explore.

When: Thursday, May 11, 2023, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Where: McCabe Library (Lib Lab) Room 104 at Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081 (Google Map)

Download and share a flyer.

The Golden Rule’s barometer resides in the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College.

This event is open to the public. See a map with parking details here. Drop off and accessible parking spots are available at the turnaround circle outside McCabe Library. Primary parking is available at Ben West House and in the North Lot.

Obviously, the Golden Rule is now sea worthy and under sail, but these short videos offer a brief history of the original Golden Rule project, its renovation, and its contemporary educational mission.

The crew, 1958. Photo VFPGoldenRuleProject.org

Here is a schedule for a range of related events in the Philadelphia area May 7-13. Download and share a copy.

Sponsors: Veterans for Peace Golden Rule Project, the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, and the Swarthmore College Peace Collection

Contact: Department of Peace and Conflict Studies 610-328-PEAC, peacestudies@swarthmore.edu

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Dancing with History: George Lakey TriCo Memoir Launch

We are thrilled to welcome our former colleague and Lang Professor, George Lakey, back to campus to help launch his latest book, a memoir, Dancing With History: A Life for Peace and Justice. Join us for this public TriCollege book talk sponsored by departments at Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr Colleges. A reception and book signing will follow.

Date: January 31, 2023

Author-Student Meet-and-Greet Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: Lib Lab in McCabe Library at Swarthmore College

Public Lecture Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Science Center, Cunniff Hall (Room 199) at Swarthmore College (Parking in Whittier Lot in Google Maps) (Walking directions to Cunniff Hall)

Lakey Dealing with History book cover — George Lakey’s new memoir, “Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice.”

Download an event announcement flyer and share!

George Lakey is a scholar, writer, activist, trainer, and formerly a Lang Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, where he founded the Global Nonviolent Action Database. He has taught or trained at all three Trico colleges (Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore). Since the age of 19, he has been a tireless leader in peace, justice, and civil rights movements, studying and engaging in nonviolent campaigns for social change. A prominent Quaker, Lakey founded Training for Change here in Philadelphia, and his work can be traced across the anti-Vietnam War movement, gay liberation, Movement for a New Society, Men Against Patriarchy, Jobs with Peace (a labor coalition), climate justice movements, and more.

A prolific author throughout his career, his book include Toward a Living Revolution; How We Win; and Viking Economics. Copies of Dancing with History are available in the Campus Bookstore and can be purchased at the event.

Whet your appetite for this event by watching a trailer from a film about George’s life that is in development as well as the endorsements below.

George Lakey is a national treasure, whom I met when I was 22. Dancing with George was a blast. His unstoppable, thoughtful, contagious approach to democratic action has inspired my life’s work.
Frances Moore Lappé, Director, Small Planet Institute.

In his memoir, George Lakey recollects his past and current experiences, layer by layer, narrating a life of building peace and justice through one’s actions.

George Lakey’s memoir is an important book, for Friends and for the wide radius of activist groups his life of witness has influenced. It is a testament to the adage that the personal is political, and the political is personal. One can hear eighty years of American culture pulsating through his body and spirit – not simply as unreflected zeitgeist, but as spiritually discerned and focused by a resilient concern for actionable analysis and strategy for a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world.
Doug Gwyn, author of A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith & Practice in the Renewal of Creation.

Prof. George Lakey supporting students during a month-long sit-in for fossil fuel divestment at Swarthmore College in 2015.

Co-sponsors: Peace & Conflict Studies (Swarthmore); The Peace Collection and Friends Historical Library (Swarthmore); Swarthmore Friends Meeting; Peace, Justice, & Human Rights (Haverford); Peace, Conflict, & Social Justice Studies (Bryn Mawr); Sociology and Anthropology Department (Swarthmore); The Lang Center; Gender & Sexuality Studies

Prof. Amy Kapit Wins Research Grant To Study Student Activism

Let’s celebrate with Professor Amy Kapit, Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace & Conflict Studies! She has won the support of the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund for her research into the suppression of university student activism and the development of a Student Rights Watch Report. This is important work that resonates strongly (especially with a long history of student activism at Swarthmore. Professor Lakey recently reminded us of his first arrest, with Swarthmore students, in the 1960s during civil rights actions in Chester.) If you see Prof. Kapit, offer her a high-five or elbow-bump! Congratulations!

Professor Amy Kapit; Visiting Assistant Professor Peace & Conflict Studies

The goal of this project is to help the granting organization, the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH), to develop a methodology for tracking and analyzing the suppression of university student activism, including through acts that violate student activists’ rights. The project will support SAIH’s advocacy and campaigning to raise awareness of the role that students play as defenders of human rights and to increase protections for them. Kapit will work with student research assistants to carry out data collection to develop an initial methodology, code book, and preliminary set of indicators that SAIH can use to produce an annual Student Rights Watch Report.

“This is a really important and really neglected area of work,” says Kapit. “Many people who become human rights defenders become involved in activism as students. If student activists aren’t protected and the space for student activism isn’t allowed to flourish, that’s likely to also suppress future activism. What I’ve found so far through the research is that there’s a big gap in attention to student activists. Groups that support protections for human rights defenders don’t specifically focus on students. And groups that focus on issues like academic freedom tend to be more focused on the work of academics, rather than on students. I’m also really excited to be working with students here at Swarthmore on this project. This project is about students, and I feel strongly that it needs to be shaped by student perspectives.”

“Half-Mile, Upwind, on Foot” film screening and panel

Please join us for a film screening of Half-Mile, Upwind, on Foot, with the filmmaker and anti-pipeline activists featured in the film.

This film documents the efforts of two communities challenging fossil fuel pipeline projects in Pennsylvania, including the Mariner East 2 pipeline that cuts through Delaware County, not far from Swarthmore College.

Wednesday, 13 November 2019
7:00 – 8:30 P.M.
Scheuer Room in Kohlberg Hall
Swarthmore College

This event is open to the public. You can find directions and a campus map on the College’s website. Download a flyer and bring a friend.

Brian McDermott, the filmmaker, writes:

Half-Mile, Upwind, On Foot tells the story of communities who are working to challenge two different pipeline projects in Pennsylvania that are considered by many to be disruptive, dangerous, and unnecessary. Through use of eminent domain, billion-dollar pipeline projects are being developed close to homes, schools and community centers—all for the delivery of natural gas and “highly volatile liquids” overseas. The film shares stories of people who are rising up to assert their basic right to a clean, sustainable environment and a safe community as they are confronted by extraction companies and an unfriendly system that often favors corporate power over the rights of people.

In the film, we meet Ellen Gerhart, a retired special education teacher and grandmother who was jailed twice for protesting the taking of three acres of her land (through eminent domain) for use by a pipeline company. Ellen catalogues the degradation of nature that has been taking place on her property, and she gives an overview of some of the ways companies take advantage of their use of eminent domain. We then follow Ginny Marcille-Kerslake, a geologist who testified in court against a pipeline company and successfully stopped construction on her land by documenting how the pipeline construction was damaging the environment.

We also hear from a group of Catholic Sisters known as the Adorers of the Blood of Christ who built a chapel in a pipeline’s path on their land as an expression of religious freedom and their belief in caring for the earth. Sister Bernice Klostermann provides us with a history of the Adorers who settled in Pennsylvania and she teaches us why it is important to preserve the land.

Untitled design

We are then introduced to Malinda Harnish Clatterbuck (a Mennonite pastor) and Mark Clatterbuck (a Professor of Religion at Montclair State University), the Co-Founders of Lancaster Against Pipelines who have been working tirelessly for the past four years to protect communities and to inspire others to take action. They reveal what they’ve learned about eminent domain law and regulations regarding pipeline construction, and they provide insight into how extraction companies are able to receive permits for projects even when those projects may be damaging to the environment or disputed by a large number of citizens. Mark and Malinda also demonstrate how communities can move forward in peaceful ways to protect what they love.

Ultimately, we hear Senator Andrew Dinniman reinforce what many citizens had suspected all along: eminent domain is being compromised in Pennsylvania, and those who oppose the demand for public safety and a clean and sustainable environment, are actually opposing the Constitution of Pennsylvania.

Co-sponsors: Peace and Conflict Studies, Environmental Studies, the Office of Sustainability, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsiblity.

Download a flyer:

Nationalism, Class, and Activism in Lebanon in the Shadow of Syrian Civil War

Nationalism, Class, and Activism in Lebanon in the Shadow of Syrian Civil War

Yasemin Ipek, Assistant Professor in the Global Affairs Program, George Mason University

Monday, April 1, 2019, 4:30-6 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall

Between 2011 and 2014, more than a million registered Syrian refugees came to Lebanon, making the tiny country host to the largest refugee population per capita in the world. Based on ethnographic research in Beirut between 2012 and 2015 with a wide-ranging set of actors such as unemployed NGO volunteers, middle-class social entrepreneurs, advocacy activists, the returning Lebanese diaspora, and Western aid workers, this talk examines the reconfigurations of Lebanese nationalism and sectarianism in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war. The Lebanese experience of activism, which has been transformed in the context of the Syrian civil war and the refugee crisis, questions the common theorizing that tends to romanticize activism as inherently subversive. The talk suggests that local framings of activism cannot be understood only through lenses of the liberal human rights discourse or neoliberalism, but are also tied to diverse postcolonial aspirations and practices related to national identity.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Islamic Studies, Global Studies, the Arabic section and Peace and Conflict Studies

Free and open to the public.

Three “Reflections From the Field” events

We are thrilled to announce three upcoming events in “Reflections From The Field”, a new speaker series at Swarthmore College, which brings people working on the front lines of conflict and social change to campus to reflect upon *what* they do, *why* they do it and how *they* came to do it.

1. “These Birds Walk”, a film screening and conversation with director and cinematographer Omar Mullick.

Monday, March 13th @ 7:30PM
Science Center 101

In Karachi, Pakistan, a runaway boy’s life hangs on one critical question: where is home? The streets, an orphanage, or with the family he fled in the first place? Simultaneously heart- wrenching and life-affirming, THESE BIRDS WALK documents the struggles of these wayward street children and the humanitarians looking out for them in an ethereal and inspirational story of resilience. Listed by The New Yorker as one of the best foreign films of the 21st century, this is a must see!

Omar Mullick is a film director and cinematographer known for his work on the 2013 feature film THESE BIRDS WALK. A 2016 Sundance Institute fellow, his most recent work can be seen on VICE’s HBO series, Black Markets, and the Gloria Steinem hosted show Woman on VICELAND. Current clients as a director and cinematographer include CNN, PBS, HBO, VICE, Discovery and The Gates Foundation. Trained as a photographer, his work has been published in The New York Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, National Geographic and TIME. He has received awards from the Doris Duke Foundation, the Western Knight Center for Journalism, Annenberg and Kodak.

2. “Closing the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want”, a virtual conversation with Ricken Patel, Founding President and Executive Director of Avaaz.org, the world’s largest online activist community.

Monday, March 27th @ 4:30 PM
Science Center 199

Ricken is the founding President and Executive Director of Avaaz, the world’s largest online activist community with 44 million subscribers in every country of the world.

Ricken has been voted the “ultimate game changer in politics” (Huffington Post), listed in the world’s top 100 thinkers (Foreign Policy magazine) and described as “the global leader of online protest” with a “vaunting sense of optimism” (The Guardian). Prior to starting Avaaz.org, Ricken was the founding Executive Director of ResPublica, a global public entrepreneurship group that worked to end genocide in Darfur and build progressive globalism in US politics, among other projects. Ricken has also lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan, consulting for organizations including the International Crisis Group, the United Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Harvard University, CARE International and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Born in Canada, Ricken has a B.A. from Oxford University and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard.

3. “From the streets of Kabul to the streets of New York: Reflections on covering war and crime”, a conversation with New York Times reporter,
Joseph Goldstein.

Friday, April 7th @ 4:30 PM
Science Center 105

Joseph Goldstein’s first newspaper job was at the 6,000-circulation Daily Citizen in Searcy, Ark, where he wrote, among other things, a feature story about how meth-fueled treasure hunters in rural Arkansas were creating an underground economy for arrowheads and other Native American artifacts.

He soon moved to New York City, where he worked at The New York Sun, until its demise, and later at The New York Post. He joined The New York Times in 2011 and writes mainly about the criminal justice system in New York. He has reported on the N.Y.P.D.’s over-reliance on stop-and-frisk tactics and about a secretive police unit that combs the city’s jails for Muslim prisoners in the hopes of pressuring them into becoming informants. He has covered Ferguson, the emergence of the alt-right, and Afghanistan, where he was based for a year.

Sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Global Affairs Program at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Media Studies, Career Services, and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Strategic, Successful, and Spiritually Grounded Activism

Strategic, Successful, and Spiritually Grounded Activism
Speaker: Eileen Flanagan

Wednesday, April 1, 2015; 5:00 PM
Bond Hall at Swarthmore College (directions)
500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA

After five years of campaigning, Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) has pushed the seventh largest bank in the US into issuing a policy that effectively ends its investment in mountaintop removal coal mining. Eileen Flanagan will share her own story of feeling led to join EQAT’s campaign and what she is learning about nonviolent direct action.

Eileen Flanagan is the clerk of the board of Earth Quaker Action Team, a teacher in Pendle Hill’s new Answering the Call to Radical Faithfulness program, and a member of Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting. Her newest book, Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope , is about the spiritual crisis that led her to climate justice activism.

This event is open to the public.

Waging Peace: David Hartsough book talk

David Hartsough
Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist

Thursday, December 4, 2014
5:00 PM
Bond Hall at Swarthmore College
500 College Ave, Swarthmore, PA

This event is open to the public.
Maps and directions to campus are available.
A flyer is available for download.

David Hartsough knows how to get in the way. He has used his body to block Navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has crossed borders to meet “the enemy” in East Berlin, Castro’s Cuba, and present-day Iran. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines.

Inspired by the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Hartsough has spent his life experimenting with the power of active nonviolence. His new memoir, Waging Peace, offers a peace activist’s eyewitness account of many of the major historical events of the past sixty years, including the Civil Rights and anti–Vietnam War movements in the United States and the little- known but equally signiﬁcant nonviolent efforts in the Soviet Union, Kosovo, Palestine, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.

Hartsough’s story demonstrates the power and effectiveness of organized nonviolent action and shows how this struggle is waged all over the world by ordinary people committed to ending the spiral of violence and war.

Read more about David Hartsough and his work in this 2004 interview in the New Internationalist magazine.

Photo: David Hartsough (seated at right end of counter) with fellow students at a lunchtime sit-in Arlington, Virginia – circa 1960

Co-sponsored by Swarthmore Friends Meeting and the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Swarthmore College.

Using Class and Race Awareness to strengthen Social Action

Please be aware of this important upcoming workshop on “Using Class and Race Awareness to strengthen Social Action,” to be led at Pendle Hill by faculty and friends of our Peace and Conflict Studies program!

Invitation to Pendle Hill Workshop on Action Groups Moving Forward

George Lakey, Ingrid Lakey, and Sarah Willie-LeBreton will be leading a workshop at Pendle Hill entitled “Using Class and Race Awareness to strengthen Social Action,” beginning the evening of April 11 and concluding at noon on April 13, 2014.

We hope folks from Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges will participate in this workshop. Commuters pay $230 for the workshop which includes meals. (Students at Swarthmore College can apply for up to $50 to support workshop attendance, through a form on the LC website.)

Here is a link to the workshop description. http://pendlehill.org/workshops/spring-2014/939-using-class-and-race-awareness-to-strengthen-social-action

Commitment to the entire workshop is required.

Quaker Public Policy Institute and Lobby Day

Any Peace and Conflict Studies folks interested in an opportunity to “lobby your member of Congress for a more moral federal budget”?

The Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Quaker Public Policy Institute and Lobby Day is coming up November 15-16, 2012. Find more information at http://fcnl.org/events/annual_meeting/Lobby2012

UPDATE 10/31/12: Young Adult Friends who are members of a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting could receive some financial assistance to come to QPPI.

Contact:

Rachel Kent

Program Assistant for Nuclear Disarmament

Friends Committee on National Legislation

202-903-2518 / rachel@fcnl.org