May 2009
Dan Fleshler speaks on Transforming America's Israel Lobby
By Mathew Andreini
Last Tuesday, members from various religious and secular groups across the Western New York area gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Amherst to hear author Dan Fleshler speak about his new book, Transforming America’s Israel Lobby: The Limits of its Power and the Potential for Change. The full speech can be found here.
The WNY Peace Center co-sponsored this event in cooperation with Congregation Havurah in an effort to promote an open dialogue concerning the United State’s policy towards Israel. According to his Huffington Post blog, Dan Fleshler is “a media and public affairs strategist from New York City who spends much of his free time trying to convince the American Jewish community to support Israel’s peace camp and an end to Israeli settlement expansion.”
The focus of Fleshler’s speech was establishing a pro-peace movement within the United States that supports a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Fleshler separates himself from groups like AIPAC in order to “build a lobby for the rest of us, a political block of Americans of all faith groups . . . who see no contradiction between being pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian and pro-American.”
Read more »
Calling all children ages 8-13 for Camp Peaceprints 2009
The WNY Peace Center and the SSJ Sister Karen Klimczak Center for Nonviolence are jointly hosting the 2nd Annual Camp Peaceprints, an alternative summer camp. It iss a 2 week long day camp, running July 20 - 31, Monday - Friday, 9am to 4pm. The camp is for youth ages 8 -13, with roughly 25 - 30 participants daily. People 14 years of age or older can register to become camp assistants. The cost is $100 a week, with sliding scale payments and scholarships available. For more information and to sign up, visit the Camp's main page.
Amazing Grace on Bidwell Parkway
This will be the fourth year that St. John's-Grace Episcopal Church will host an interdenominational service for Memorial Day. The service, scheduled for the Monday holiday, May 25, at 10:00 a.m., has been a great success in bringing serious religious solemnity to a holiday which is too often reduced to an occasion for shopping and picnics.
Changing Our Protest Mindset
By Irene Morrison
“Well it’s not like it is in France; you get a million people on the streets there and the French government hides in the basement.”—Anonymous Buffalonian
“New Wave” activists—and many of the old wave—believe that street protests in the US are no longer worth organizing. What exactly, they ask, have protests really done to further whatever cause one is protesting against? And when has the public noticed or cared on any specific issue? It’s not easy to point to a specific example in the US since the Civil Rights movement.
Are people more complacent than they used to be? Maybe, but the real problem does not seem to be that protests have lost their innate ability to be effective. It is the approach organizers take to them that can make them ineffective: the lack of anything new or innovative, an unwillingness to challenge authority, the lack of a clear message, and finally the dependence on mainstream media to spread an already unclear message.
The most recent large protests that Peace Center folks were involved in happened on Wall St; they probably drew 3,000 people in two days of protesting (organizers claimed 10,000, but most people I talked to at the protest didn’t believe that figure). The message was muddled—from ending the wars to bailing out students and workers instead of Wall St fat cats, and we received very minimal press coverage. Rival back-to-back protests further spread the coverage and the message; one protest was more militant than the other (not to mention a lot more fun than the other). And the second day of protesting was scheduled on a Saturday when Wall St wasn’t open, so we were essentially protesting for no more than a few news cameras. Read more »
Join Pastors for Peace in Cuba this July!
By Maxine Insera
Pastors for Peace is an ecumenical agency whose mission is to help forward the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. The Latin American Solidarity Committee of the WNY Peace Center continues to support their efforts.
We invite you to join us in breaking the US blockade as we take humanitarian aid and ourselves to Cuba without a US government license. Be with us for 9 days in Cuba in solidarity with the Cuban people as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of their revolution, and as we learn about the problems caused by the blockade and how they have creatively responded, as well as how they are rebuilding after recent hurricanes. Read more »
“Sweet sounds Of Peace” A Concert for Peace-makers
Tickets: $5 donation
($20 /family) Call 885-9443
Pilgrim – St. Luke’s
United Church of Christ
335 Richmond Ave.,
(corner of W. Utica St.)
Featuring:
? Nan Hoffman
? Glenn Wallace
? “Strike the rock”
? Jim Brucato
2009 Legislative Reception “Moving Towards Health Care for All”
Emerson School of Hospitality, 86 W. Chippewa Street, Buffalo
RSVP by May 7 to 716-881-2695 or hillary.clarke@cancer.org
2nd ANNUAL CAMP PEACEPRINTS part 2
An alternative day camp for 8-12 year-olds, Camp Peaceprints teaches diversity, leadership, advocacy, cooperation, conflict resolution, and social responsibility.
The camp will run Monday-Friday from 9am-4pm at the Sister Karen Center for Nonviolence. Youth Assistants age 13 and up are welcome.
Register Now! Contact Elea at elea@wnypeace.org or 716-894-2013
2nd ANNUAL CAMP PEACEPRINTS
An alternative day camp for 8-12 year-olds, Camp Peaceprints teaches diversity, leadership, advocacy, cooperation, conflict resolution, and social responsibility.
The camp will run Monday-Friday from 9am-4pm at the Sister Karen Center for Nonviolence. Youth Assistants age 13 and up are welcome.
Register Now! Contact Elea at elea@wnypeace.org or 716-894-2013