Art & Peace

Thursday October 9th is Denver's ImaginePeace Paint-in. It takes place on John Lennon's Birthday and will benefit Yoko Ono Lennon's ImaginePeace.com organization. All levels of artists will be there including art classes from all grade levels. It will take place in the Civic Center Park and will feature various national and international peace groups, as well as vendors and musical artists that all have peace as their overall theme.

Paint in for Peace

Another interesting tid-bit of information to tie into this now is the film Who Does She Think She Is? This documentary, released October 17th, is about society today with women being expected to choose family over working. The film focuses on five mothers who refuse to choose and are determined to make themselves known as artists. This film focuses on how our world hasn't changed completely to accept women as equals, and although 70-80% of art school students are women, the majority of people have trouble naming five female artists.

This also just tied into my Peace & Justice class this morning, where many find themselves hard-pressed to find information on women leading nonviolent action movements. This is because the majority of the authors of the books published are men and focus on what is most familiar to them-- And with the main nonviolent leaders, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King leading chauvinistic lives it isn't hard to see why information on female leaders isn't as well-known. 

However as society is beginning to change information on women is becoming more accessible. The women's group CODEPINK: Women for Peace is gaining ground, and their book Stop the Next War Now by Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans gives great information on the women working for Peace today.

So before I start off with what is going on in the world, I'll put up a little about what influenced me to major in Peace & Justice.

After volunteering for small town events I was finally able to experience what's going on in the real world in High School. After a few trips to Manhattan to participate in Midnight Runs in which we delivered food and clothing directly to the homeless on the streets of NYC, I began to learn a lot about the injustices in our society. The majority of these men just happened to end up in unfortunate situations, losing jobs and homes, and were too stubborn to ask family and friends for help. Many, after being viewed as homeless, find looking for jobs pointless. And others, such as Buddy, keep their spirits high and wander the streets singing outside the Metropolitan Opera House for those waiting in long lines by day, and in the evening he goes to Subway shops to gather the left over sandwiches for others on the street.

I then was able to get out of the country to volunteer in Africa where I worked at the Urafiki (Friendship) Center, a center for the most impoverished children in the area. There I saw firsthand the hardships that people suffer every day. The children there were provided free meals, and for those who were suffering from extreme abuse, or whose parents had left them for a few days, would be given a safe place to spend the night. It was estimated that nearly 45% of them had been exposed to HIV/AIDS, as the majority of their parents had it. For many of them their grandparents were their main guardian if their parents had passed away from either AIDS or Tuberculosis. Even though the kids were in bad situations they all came with smiles every day, and the center did all they could to make sure that they would learn a trade to help them make their own profits in the future.

After seeing these people suffering in front of me, both in our country and out of it, I decided I wanted to do something to make a difference in people's lives. The pictures below are a few from Tanzania.

Tanzania, 2006

What this blog is all about:

I'm currently a student at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Regis' motto is "Men & Women in Service of Others," which follows the Jesuit question that is always in the air here "How Ought We to Live?"

As a Peace & Justice major at Regis it only seems appropriate to begin a blog with various postings on Peace and Social Justice issues from the area, as well as around the world. So here it is. I'll keep you updated with bits and pieces of Peace that I find going on throughout the world.