News Releases
News from the Lane Peace Center at Lane Community College
April 27, 2009
LANE PEACE CENTER SECOND ANNUAL PEACE CONFERENCE:
"PEACE & COLLECTIVE ACTION: CONNECTING HOPE TO CHANGE"
MAY 29-30
EUGENE - The Lane Peace Center's second annual peace conference, "Peace & Collective Action: Connecting Hope to Change," will be held Friday and Saturday, May 29 and 30. Keynote speakers are David Solnit, direct action organizer and editor of Globalize Liberation; and Joel Magnuson, author of "Mindful Economics". The conference will bring together educators, students, community members, and activists dedicated to building a peaceful society and nation. Reflecting the Lane Peace Center’s recognition that peace is rooted in social, economic, political, racial and environmental justice, presenters will offer an engaging variety of perspectives including:
- Good Sista, Bad Sista, Walidah Imarisha & Turiya Autry, a dynamic poetry performance duo from Portland, on the connection between culture, art, and mass movement politics, http://www.goodsistabadsista.com/;
- Democracy Unlimited with David Cobb, 2004 Green Party nominee for U.S. President, and Megan Wade, Co-Coordinator for the Humboldt Exchange Community Currency Project, http://www.duhc.org/;
- David West, Director, Native American Studies Program at Southern Oregon University on 'Native American Peace Prophesies', http://www.sou.edu/Natam/dwest.html;
- Benji Lewis, honorably discharged Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, on why he intends to refuse reactivation, http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/632/1/;
- Adam Bacher, world class photo journalist, reporting and displaying his work on post-genocide Rwanda called 'Rwanda- Return to Peace', http://bachersblog.com;
- Sasha Crow and Mary Madsen of the Collateral Repair Project, a grass roots organization based in Oregon and Jordan that works directly with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan, http://www.collateralrepairproject.org/;
- Chicora Martin, Director of the University of Oregon Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Education and Support Services Program, on 'LGBTQ Social Justice-The Hope for Equality in Peace', http://www.uoregon.edu/~program/;
- Greg Evans, educator & civil rights activist on 'Post Racial America: What is the Status of the Dialogue over Race?'
- Arbrella Luvert, Eugene 4J School District Special Assistant to the Superintendent on Diversity & Human Rights and Beth Aydelott Ph.D., Professor of English at Northwest Christian College on 'Undoing Privilege and Racism';
- Stacy Vyenne of the Climate Leadership Initiative on 'Climate Change in the Willamette Valley', http://climlead.uoregon.edu/
- Will Newman, Co-founder of Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT) on 'Protecting rural and urban agricultural lands from encroachment', http://www.osalt.org/
- Ishi & Iana, positive poetry and percussion
Friday, May 29 events take place at the Lane Community College Center for Meeting and Learning, building 19, main campus in Eugene, 4000 E. 30th Avenue. Saturday, May 30 events take place at Cozmic Pizza in downtown Eugene.
Go to 2011sitearchive.lanecc.edu/peacecenter for complete program and registration information.
Keynote speaker David Solnit is a nonviolent direct action organizer for global justice and peace, who utilizes art and culture as an organizing tool. He was a key organizer in the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 and in the anti-war protests in San Francisco the day after Iraq was invaded in 2003. He helped coordinate the Coalition of Immokalee Workers cross country "truth tour" to pressure Taco Bell to improve working conditions for tomato pickers in the 'sweatshops in the fields'. He is editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World (City Lights Publishers, 2003) and co-author with Aimee Allison of Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World. His essays and interviews have appeared in YES! Magazine, Common Dreams, and AlterNet.
Keynote speaker Joel Magnuson, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized economist specializing in non-orthodox approaches to political economy. He is currently a professor of economics in Portland, Oregon; a visiting fellow at the Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, England. He is an active member of an international research group based in Europe that is working toward new philosophical foundations for economic theory and practice. His book, Mindful Economics, demonstrates how the need for endless growth has intensified environmental destruction, resource depletion, instability, social and political inequality, and even global warming. He proposes democratic, community based economics as a key solution. http://www.mindfuleconomics.com/mindful_economics.html
###
Media Contact: Stan Taylor, Lane Peace Center, 463-5820 or taylors@lanecc.edu
