I’ve just completed scanning, proofing and laying out 77 essays for the 16-week “University Class” of nonviolence. A new section, not covered in the 8-week course, is about the Trappist monk, writer and peace activist Thomas Merton. This first video is about the connection between Merton and the Dalai Lama, the second is a hauntingly… Read More »
Educators are invited to join this free online workshop designed to introduce new materials exploring migration and identity, hosted by “Facing History and Ourselves.” The free workshop is from 03/26/2009 – 04/08/2009. Through facilitated online activities and conversations, the workshop will consider how schools negotiate both the needs of diverse student populations and the national… Read More »
Video, “Young Indiana Jones,” The Greedy Heart of Halide Edip, Vol 3, disk 2 For International Women’s Day I watched an excellent “Young Indiana Jones” mini-documentary about Halide Edip Adivar (1884-1964), a Turkish writer, scholar, translator (George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”) and public figure dedicated to the rights of women and Turkish independence (she was the… Read More »
My favorite essay in the Class of Nonviolence is Letter to Ernesto Cardenal: Guns Don’t Work, by Daniel Berrigan. This is a video of Fr. Cardenal reading his paraphrase of Psalm 5: HEAR MY PROTEST Hear my words, Oh Lord, give ear to my groanings. Listen to my protest. For you are not a God… Read More »
I had an urge to re-watch the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup (1933), and was rolling on the floor for one hour and eight minutes. The going-to-war minstrel scene (“They got guns, We got guns, All God’s chillun got guns! I’m gonna walk all over the battlefield, ‘Cause all God’s chillun got guns!“)is in exquisite bad… Read More »
We’d be interested in finding more short videos that illustrate contemporary instances of civil disobedience. These two 2007 videos — 15 minutes each — are good. The first shows a CD campaign in Portugal, against genetically modified seeds that are driving small farmers out of business. The second (produced by high school students!) is about… Read More »
Civil Disobedience PDF Handout Most of the examples of Civil Disobedience that we hold up are ancient history to many of our students. They “get” Gandhi’s Salt March and Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus but have trouble relating it to contemporary issues. This .pdf handout is a list of… Read More »
DVD “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” 2004, NRPDF HandoutIn lesson one of the Class of Nonviolence we read Alfie Kohn’s “Human Nature Isn’t Inherently Violent.” A good film clip that supplements this essay is an 8-minute “bonus” feature from Howard Zinn in “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” On Human… Read More »
Albert Schweitzer: Reverence for LiveYoung Indiana Jones, DVD, (Vol. 2, Disk 4) 2007, NR In 1993 George Lucas produced a television series, Young Indiana Jones, which showed his hero participating in many of the great events of his time. The series itself is surprisingly engaging, but the real gems for a peace educator are the… Read More »
BobbyDVD, 2006, R Bobby is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968 shooting of Robert F. Kennedy following his win in the California Democratic Party primary. The last scene (#16, 10 minutes) shows the assassination and its aftermath. As we watch in horror, Kennedy’s voice engages us, slowly intoning… Read More »