Monday, August 25, 7pm: Peace & Justice Conversations: Creating the World We Want
One of the most effective nonviolent movements in modern history was Gandhi’s campaign to free India from British rule. His success wasn’t built on protest alone. Gandhi believed that civil disobedience was just half the work. The other half was what he called constructive programs—alternatives to the unjust systems he sought to replace. These were the foundations of a new society, built within the shell of the old.
This is a call to revive that approach, to use nonviolent constructivism to create new, life-affirming systems as a form of resistance. It draws on historical and present-day examples to offer tools, strategies, and inspiration for how we can start building the world we want right now, even in the midst of a crumbling one.
Barbara Peterson is a veteran activist for social justice, beginning as a high school student with the Clamshell Alliance. In graduate school, she became interested in the history, theories, and methods of nonviolent action written about by Gene Sharp from the Albert Einstein Institution. Her doctoral work at UNH involved researching, writing, and publishing about peace education, and as a high school teacher, she created and taught a Peace Studies course. She writes and publishes in the area of nonviolent citizen action, and she continues her work as an activist to protect democracy against the rise in oppression and authoritarianism.
AFSC-NH is a cosponsor of this event.