|
Alternatives to Violence Project, ("AVPR"), a core to peacemaking
at our center, began in 1975 when prisoners in Green Haven Correctional
Facility and Quakers created workshops that decreased prison violence.
AVP, now international, brings peacemaking to communities and
prisons.
I-Key Workshops extend AVP to physical peacemaking with movement
and contact training in a "dojo" (martial arts) setting. Meditation,
AVP and I-Key help people resolve conflict peacefully and remove
its sources. This is nonviolent action as Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi have taught us.
Why a Peace Center?
When child kills child, glass shards fill gutters, weeds sprout
in empty lots and open air markets sell drugs, we need heart,
faith and energy to work at peace. Our Bronx streets are notorious,
so when we work hard, well and wisely, people notice and ask what
we're doing right. Some will help us struggle for liberation,
healing, community and transformation.
We seek Transformation: the liberation of love. Love flows when
faith becomes strong. Faith grows when we pay close attention
to Life around us. We attend when we affirm ourselves and respect
others. To transform ourselves and liberate our communities, we
learn and practice respect.
What Peacemakers Learn:
Peacemakers use skillful physical and verbal nonviolence to
survive and gain respect; mean streets aren't "Pleasant Places."
Therefore, we train them to pay attention always to what's going
on around and to be real. Most important, they learn how to meet
even physical attack as an opportunity for transformation in which
no one suffers needlessly. Peacemakers learn to organize the cooperative
common struggle for power and justice.
A Peace Village prepares peacemakers to transform themselves
and to liberate their communities with gentle, determined force.
They learn to let Spirit flow through their breath into word and
movement. They learn how to center themselves deeply, to accept
an attack as a "gift"- and how to re-harmonize their attacker.
Peacemakers experience Transforming Power and shape their words
and actions as its channels; this power will support them as long
as they practice these skills.
Peacemaking skills also benefit self, family and workplace:
the world rewards cooperators. They help babies to play gently,
children to find win-win solutions and youth to organize for their
community's fair share. As adults Peacemakers continue the cycle
of healing, liberation, community and transformation, of oneness
within Being (by any Name their faith may use). Humanity's greatest
prophets call on us to praise Being with our lives: "There is
no way to peace; Peace is the Way." - (A.J. Muste)
To find out more, please visit http://urbanvisionsinc.org
|
