Our conference this year is on August 20 & 21, 2010 and you can learn more about our featured presenters, Ed Kinane, Fr. Jerry Zawada, Diane Reiner and Joyce Reeves and Rich Goodhart here:
Rich Goodhart
Rich Goodhart is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and recording artist working with world music in non-traditional forms. He has written, produced, arranged & engineered seven albums of progressive World Music. His latest CD of world rhythm shamanic journeys and healing sound meditations is titled "Shaman Mirror Medicine Tree", and his third recording, "Never Give A Sword To A Man Who Can't Dance" was hailed as "The ultimate soundtrack to one's most private ritual dream" by New Age Retailer magazine. World percussion master Glen Velez has described his music as having "a true sense of adventure, with plenty of backbone and vibrant heart". Originally a keyboardist, for the past 25 years he has also been a hand drummer and world music practitioner and has studied with master musicians of Africa, India, America and Indonesia. He has performed and collaborated with many highly regarded musicians, dancers and writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Daevid Allen, Jon Anderson, Collin Walcott, Deepak Chopra, Joanne Shenandoah, Bill T. Jones, Nawang Khechog, Steve Gorn, Shahram Shiva, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Paul Horn, Mark Nauseef, Robert Gass, Gilli Smyth, Michael Harrison, Russill Paul, Krishna Das, Shiva Rea and David Newman (Durga Das).
His Sound Healing studies include extensive work and a ten year close personal association with Divine Healing Sound Master Sarah Benson, intensive training with sound master Tom Kenyon and additional studies with Russill Paul, Dabadi Thaayrohyadi, Chloe Goodchild, Fiona Whitmore, the work of Jonathan Goldman, Don Campbell, Zacciah Blackburn and many others.
In addition Rich is a Qigong and Tai Chi instructor and has extensive experience with meditation, yoga and esoteric shamanic practices. For many years he was a regular teacher on the Omega Institute HSP faculty and has also taught at the Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA, as well as assistant teaching at Rowe Conference Center. In 2006 and 2007 Rich returned to Omega as a Core Faculty Tai Chi Instructor as well as leading Sound Healing and Transformational Sound and Energy Workshops as Staff Faculty. In 2008 and 2009 he presented the "Immersions In The Stream Of Cosmic Sound" workshop at Omega as an extended course meeting twice weekly for four weeks totaling 24 hours of class time.
More information may be found at: www.richgoodhart.com
Ed Kinane
Drones, Blowback and Domestic Surveillance
"The hunter/killer reaper drones in our midst", what are they? Why are the Pentagon and President Obama so gung-ho about using them? What are the legal, strategtic and moral implications of these actions? How and where are drones being used for domestic surveillance? What actions are upstate New Yorkers doing to educate the public about the Reaper at Hancock Airbase. These questions and a host of others will be addressed in Ed's presentation.
Ed Kinane
Ed is a social justice activist and federal tax resister. Nonviolence and low consumption are his beacons. A retired educator who has spent 33 months throughout Africa, Ed spent a year teaching math and biology in a one-room Quaker school in rural Kenya. He also taught anthropology at Bellevue Community College near Seattle. Ed writes letters to the editor, op-eds, articles and reviews. Off and on since the seventies Ed has been an editor of the Syracuse Peace Council's monthly "Peace Newsletter."
During the seventies Ed worked with the United Farm Workers in California. In the late eighties and early nineties he worked with Peace Brigades International providing protective accompaniment to local activists threatened by death squads (some financed by U.S. military aid) in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Sri Lanka. Ed was chair of PBI's Sri Lanka Project and a member of the PBI/USA coordinating committee.
Since the mid-nineties Ed has been active with the CNY SOA Abolitionists and the School of the Americas Watch. These -- through civil disobedience, prison witness and legislative lobbying -- seek to close the U.S. Army's notorious anti-insurgency training school at Fort Benning. Georgia. For his protests against the SOA, Ed has twice served time in federal prisons. Upon his release, he served on the SOA Watch national board. He and his partner Ann Tiffany produced "The Gandhian Wave," a 100+-page civil disobedience handbook to close the SOA.
In February 2003 Ed joined Voices in the Wilderness' Iraq Peace Team, remaining in Baghdad throughout "shock and awe." Coming home, he spoke to classes, community groups and congregations across the U.S. In August 2003 Ed returned to Baghdad with Voices for ten weeks to monitor the occupation. Ed continues to work against the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. His current focus is the Reaper drones hosted near Syracuse by the NY Air National Guard. This past spring he spent a month in Israeli-occupied Palestine. In 2007 he took part in a Fellowship of Reconciliation citizen diplomacy delegation to Iran.
Ed and Ann are based in Syracuse and have been activists together there for nearly 25 years. Google "ed kinane" for some of his writings. Contact him at edkinane@verizon.net.
Fr. Jerry Zawada, OFM
We Are All One!
I was born on April 28, 1937 (same day and year as Saddam Hussein). My first home was East Chicago, IN. My dad and all my grandparents were immigrants from Poland. I was the 2nd of 5 siblings. Several years later, two of my cousins, orphaned at an early age, became my sisters, thus making us a nuclear family of nine.
At 14 years of age, I left home for a Franciscan minor seminary in Wisconsin. After graduation in 1955 I became a novice in the Franciscan Order at the age of 18. Having finished seminary training in 1964, I was ordained a priest.
My first assignment was to the Philippine Islands, spending the next 6 years mostly in remote areas on the island of Samar.
Having returned to the States in 1971, I joined a mixed community of religious sisters, married couples with their growing families, single persons, street folks, and 4 of us friars. We called ourselves, “The Gospel Family”, striving to follow more closely the original charisma of Sts. Francis and Clare and the inspiration of the Catholic Worker movement.
In 1983, while studying Spanish in San Antonio, Texas, an event occurred that affected the pattern of my life ever since. I met a school teacher from El Salvador who had been horribly tortured at the hands of the military death squads, a regime backed up by our US government. Marta’s story opened the way for my involvement at the Mexican border. The sanctuary movement and underground railroad initiated a few years earlier in Tucson, Arizona, prompted many in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to provide similar help for migrants escaping the ravages of the Central American wars. I felt the urgency of the call to join the efforts to help in the survival of our sisters and brothers south of our borders.
Because of the risks I was taking while working in a border parish, I was ordered to leave the diocese of Brownsville, TX. I soon left for Chicago, joined an affinity group with Kathy Kelly, Karl Mayer and others in the Pledge of Resistance and the Religious Task Force on Central America. Shortly afterwards I incurred my first arrest at a naval recruiting center in downtown Chicago. Several arrests followed and by the next year
(1985) I was on the move, this time to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In 1988, I joined a large Midwest Coalition preparing actions at nuclear missile silos in Missouri. We called ourselves, “The Missouri Peace Planters ‘88”. On August 15, 1988, 15 of us occupied 10 nuclear missile silos in Missouri farmlands. On the following days we entered other silos, always very careful to demonstrate clearly and nonviolently the purpose of our visit.
Eventually, because I had occupied a total of 5 missile silos, I received one of the harsher sentences of 25 months in county and federal prisons.
After release in 1990 and because of our invasion of Iraq in 1991, I violated the terms of probation by getting arrested 8 times. These arrests resulted from my opposition to the war and the testing of nuclear bombs in the Nevada desert. Because of this I was returned to prison for another five months.
Since the early 80’s, Fr. Louie Vitale, a Franciscan from California, had become one of my closest friends. His dedication to justice, peace and non-violence, to the person and values of Jesus, have drawn me into further actions and risk-taking towards a more compassionate world.
Along with Louie and several other friends, three of my trespasses at Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA, have earned me a total of 18 months in county and federal prisons. The practice of torture, whether engaged by the US military, CIA or by repressive regimes with the backing of our government prompted such actions of civil disobedience.
In the 1990’s, I had opportunity to spend most of my time at safe places for torture-survivors and those seeking political asylum. In Chicago, at the Su Casa Catholic Worker while accompanying torture survivors for therapy, I was greatly moved by the terrible ordeal they had experience from the repressive regimes of their own countries. In 1993 another Catholic Worker and I accompanied a torture survivor and his father back to their home in the hilly farmlands of Guatemala. To reassure their safety we stayed a month at their home.
Thanks to the enormous support of Kathy Kelly and others connected with “Voices in the Wilderness”, a group profoundly dedicated to bringing safety and survival to Iraq, Palestine and others in the Middle East, I was welcomed to join delegations to those places during the 1990’s and the early years of the 21st century.
After spending 3 years at Pace e Bene and the Nevada Desert Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada, I moved to Tucson, AZ in the fall of 2008. My focus once again has been on the migrants crossing the Mexican/Arizona border. And once again issues of torture, the nuclear threat and warfare have given purpose to my involvement. Communities here and many friends provide inspiration for my journey. Thus far I have spent approximately 5 years in jails and prisons. In or out of confinement, I find myself truly blessed by many who give direction to my life.
Diane Reiner and Joyce Reeves
Council of All Beings!
On Friday evening, 08/20/10, Diane Reiner and Joyce Reeves will present “A COUNCIL OF ALL BEINGS” , a colorful, communal ritual which “allows us to step aside from our human identity and speak on behalf of other life forms.” (Joanna Macy in Coming Back to Life.) This will be a fully participatory event that promises to shift perspectives and to offer fresh opportunities to speak out about our world today. Diane and Joyce will be with us on Saturday also conducting a workshop.
Diane Reiner
Diane Reiner is well known in the Capital District for her photography. Her pictures powerfully capture and express the human condition. Her images of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. She is the founder of “Jajja’s Kids,” an organization that provides comfort and counseling to Ugandan street children. In 2005, Diane traveled to Iran and Syria with Academics for Peace and continues to speak about her travels and photography on behalf ofworld peace and citizen diplomacy. Diane is also an environmental activist and student of Joanna Macy, facilitating workshops on reconnecting with life.
Joyce Reeves
Joyce Reeves is a seasoned psychotherapist who is passionate about peace and social justice, environmental stewardship and nuclear guardianship. A highlight of her activism is a trip across Kazakhstan with International Peace Walk, to bear witness to victims of Chernobyl and to plant a Peace Pole at the nuclear test site. Joyce facilitates Earth-focused workshops and support groups inspired by her travels as a citizen diplomat, her lifelong love affair with nature, and the teachings of Joanna Macy.