April 8, 2005

Prioritizing Peace ‘Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me’

By Bea Baechle
Editor

They came from all over the Bay Area, from all walks of life and from all religious backgrounds with a common intention: to spend an entire day creating a vision of peace and exploring the personal role they each could play in making peace a reality.

The “Carry the Vision” Peace Conference closed with a powerful World Peace Prayer Flag Ceremony, where volunteers presented the national flag of each country and all the conference participants voiced a peace wish for that country until all countries in the world were acknowledged.

About 300 people congregated at Evergreen Valley College on April 2 for the “Carry the Vision” Community Conference to learn how they could build a culture of peace in their families, their community and their world.

Rev. Ellen Grace O’Brian of the Center for Spiritual Enlighten-ment encouraged participants to “listen with our hearts, as well as our minds, so we can reach out and meet our neighbors and discover our strengths to build bridges of peace.”

To realize this peace, the goals of the conference stated that “we must educate ourselves, discover the tools necessary for building a culture of peace and be willing to commit to simple and profound acts that support a better world for all.”

Simply put, that translated into active and informed participation throughout most of the day.

Sista Monica Parker, one of the most admired contemporary female Blues, Soul and Gospel singers on the international music, set the tone for the conference, inspiring the audience to rise and clap along with her powerful voice.

Keynote: Dolores Heurta
Dolores Huerta, the most prominent Mexican-American female civil rights activist in the United States, presented the opening ceremony on her 75th birthday. As cofounder of the United Farm Workers along with Cesar Chavez, Huerta dedicated her life to the struggle for justice and dignity for migrant farm workers.

In the 30 years that she worked with Cesar Chavez in peaceful, nonviolent resistance, she noted that to rid the world of violence, we must understand the causes of violence. She summed up the main causes as dominance over others, greed for things we feel entitled to have but can’t afford, and ignorance, which leads to segregation and a feeling of powerless.

“What creates fear and suspicion [of people different from ourselves]?” asked Huerta. “We don’t know each other. We have to advocate and push for integration.”

She noted that after 9/11, when Muslims were being arrested and sent to jail, she asked, “Did we go out and march for that? It seems that in a peace community, we should have been out there protesting the fact that Muslims were being thrown in jail, but we kept silent.”

Sista Monica Parker rocked the crowd at key moments of the day. Photo by Coni Berliner

Huerta’s anti-war sentiment rang loud and clear. “We have been so deceived by our government,” she said, noting the recent New York Times and LA Times headlines confirming that there were no weapons of mass destruction. “All these people have been killed due to the war. And we’re paying for it, right? How can it be in democracy that we are paying for a war we don’t want?”

She gave several examples of appalling ignorance displayed on national television that justifies the war in Iraq, including a program where a man stated that Allah was Satan, thus justifying killing Muslims, because they believe in Satan.

“I could not believe my eyes,” said Huerta. “This is how far the hatred is going to justify this war. If we do not have an educated public, things will become even more violent… One thing I have learned from my years with the United Farm Workers, we cannot wait for government to correct these problems. We have to do it ourselves.”

Take direct action
According to Huerta, one way to take direct action is to support funding of Barbara Boxer’s bill for peace currently in Congress. “It won’t happen by itself, the only way it’s going to happen is to get out there and organize it. Remember the grape boycott?”

She explained that we have the model from leaders who came before us—Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez and countless others who dedicated their lives to promoting peace and justice through nonviolent means.

She described a strong spiritual force that transforms people, touches them and changes them when they practice to promote peace nonviolently.

“We, working together, can transform the world. We’ve got to have a lot of faith, we’ve got to have courage—people will make fun of us. They made fun of Cesar—they said he was crazy. But we have to take action. It’s not going to happen by itself. You’ve got to go out and organize it,” concluded Heurta.

Rev. Ellen Grace O’Brian acknowledged the youth participants of the day.

Workshops, panels, small groups
Peace conference participants then chose between eight different panel discussions or workshops based on peace in our family, our world and our community. Highlights of several of these offerings will be printed in future issues of the Times.

After a lunch provided by the Sikh Gurdwara, participants worked in small groups of six people to talk about one simple yet profound act that they could do to promote peace. They wrote down their commitments, and Evergreen’s Pattie Cortese plans to enter their names in a database and follow up quarterly.

If participants are willing, the Evergreen Times will highlight some of these local commitments in future issues.
Carry the Vision Community Conference partners included District 8 Councilmember Dave Cortese, The Center for Spiritual Enlightenment and Resources for Families and Communities. For more information, go to the Web site: http://www.carrythevision.net.