Community is the supportive web of relationships that happens when people are at peace because they choose to do conflict well.

 

 

If you would like to look into a conflict done well training for your business, or Peace Practices for your school, please click here.

Organizations and Individuals who become members are entitled to free, availability-contingent consultation and services, as needed and confidentiality permits. If you are a member or client and signed in, you will see below this line any shared work areas to which you have access. If you would like a free consultation in order to determine if our staff or facilitators might be able to address a specific situation, please call (866) 236-0346 and we will get back to you within 24 hours, or email administration at abcglobal dot net.


From http://ethicalmetalsmiths.org

Few materials used by jewelers can be traced to their source. Gold, diamonds and gemstones are mined in remote areas of the world and supply chains are obscure. There are few standards or monitors to assure jewelers that the materials essential to their craft were responsibly mined and processed.

Mining is a dirty industry. Large open-pit mines operated by multi-national corporations consume wilderness areas, destroy ecosystems and violate human rights. Artisanal mining in impoverished nations exploit labor, poison communities and ravage environments. Countless organizations are responding to these issues and are working to protect communities and the environment, promote fair trade and defend human rights.

 

Ethical Metalsmiths’ approach is to raise awareness and activate people who make jewelry to support real change that leads to responsible mining and supply chain transparency. Ethical Metalsmiths is committed to leading jewelers and consumers in becoming informed activists for responsible mining, sustainable economic development and verified, ethical sources for gold, diamonds and other materials used for jewelry. Ethical Metalsmiths' vision is a world in which people can create and enjoy jewelry made with materials from responsible sources that respect and protect the earth, its peoples, and cultures.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ethical-Metalsmiths/150658958321426

https://twitter.com/EthclMtlsmths

http://ethicalmetalsmiths.org/about-us/our-team/

http://ethicalmetalsmiths.org/about-us/futuring-committee/

http://ethicalmetalsmithsblog.blogspot.com/

http://crafthaus.ning.com/profile/EthicalMetalsmiths

 

 

 

 

 

 These are events which may or may not be officially connected with ABC but which we would like to bring to your attention. Please consider participating. One or more of us will probably see you there. If you'd like to find out for sure who will be where you might email brandon at abcglobal dot net. He'd be most likely to be able to find out quickly.

 

 Please include your upcoming events here, in order of occurence (tomorrow just below this message and next month further down the page). If your event is in the past, please move it to Past Events

 


 

Peace Practices+Events Classes

Regular Classes

We welcome to you one of our upcoming classes (see the calendar below). All but our Pacific Rim International School (PRINTS) classes are open to the public and open for all levels of experience. See details for each class in the live google calendar embedded below.

Peace Practices Classes+Brandon leading class
 view (Titled) not supported for Peace Practices Classes+Weekly schedule

Meet our Instructors

 

Support the program here

Start your own program here

We are now hiring!

 

Roundtables

Community Building Roundtable recruitment flier general
 

 

Culturesmith Roundtable recruitment flier general

 

 


 

Some events in our community life mark a life transition. These we keep separate from other past events, as they mark us and, in part, make us who we are and will be. Births, deaths, weddings, funerals, graduations, divorces, birthdays, you name it. People participate consciously and unconsciously in rituals to mark their big shifts. Community is, at least in part, defined by who participates and then remembers and tells the stories.

 

 

 

2008 06 17 Wedding - Michael and Randy
Edit section

Dear Friends and Family,

Our wedding yesterday was documented by the Oakland Tribune. 
We enjoyed getting married ... again.
It really was incredible getting married legally for the first time in the United States!
Please feel free to share this video-link with others. 
If you have the time to send a note to the photographer, Jane Tyska, info below, to thank her, that would be great.
Love,
Michael and Randy

 

There are also some still pictures at the article below:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_9617219

We decided to register with EQCA, Equality California, which is doing great work and helping to make sure our wedding stays legal past November. Any support to their efforts would be greatly appreciated!
The link is: http://www.eqca.org/site/pp.asp?c=kuLRJ9MRKrH&b=4183811
Just look for our listing under “Randy Sweringen and Michael Mansfield.”
(Note: Our names most likely will show up on Wednesday or Thursday…sorry for the delay.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Tyska, Jane
Sent: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 1:47 am
Subject: thanks again!

Wow, what a pleasure it was to meet you both and film your wedding today. It was a beautiful event and you are both the nicest people! I don't have the exact link yet, but you can find the video in the player in the lower left-hand corner of the page below. From within the player you can send to friends, link to, or embed the code for the video in a homepage.

http://www.insidebayarea.com

I normally shoot and edit 2-3 minute videos, but so much unfolded that this one was a little over 4 minutes...still not much for such a big day!

I appreciate all your help and wish you both all the best!

Regards,

Jane

Jane Tyska, Multimedia Reporter/Photojournalist
The Oakland Tribune, 7677 Oakport Street, Suite 950, Oakland, CA 94621  510-208-6438
http://www.insidebayarea.com

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

This was a post in the Comments section of the NYTimes article on the
weddings this week...

•  73. June 17th, 2008 5:13 pm
I just retired after serving 26 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. My partner of 12 years is currently an active duty marine. We are looking forward for his retirement so we can get married in California. We are both natives of the San Diego and we will celebrate with our friends and family. I worry that inviting our marine friends might put an
unwanted light if they attend our wedding. An old salty gunnery sergeant marine friend of ours asked, "What will the Marine Corps do if I attend your gay wedding? Will they make me shave my head and go back to Iraq for a 4th time?" There you go….courage!   — Posted by Daniel

 

 

 

 

September 2013

15th through 21st
All Free Aiki and Golden Bears classes during Aiki Peaceweek will offer training in Martial Nonviolence. MNv is a method created by Brandon Williamscraig Sensei and offered within the Peace Practices curriculum. Traditional aikido skills allow for balance retention and body management under pressure. MNv and PcPx extend these principles into specific practice with communication and group facilitation skills. Peace is conflict done well and requires practice beyond what is usual. Please join us!http://www.aikipeaceweek.org/en/event/free-aiki-dojo-peaceweek-classes

 
Tuesday 17th - 19:30
Kayla Feder Sensei will offer a special Aiki Peaceweek themed class at Aikido of Berkeley. Please come an train with us!

http://www.aikipeaceweek.org/en/event/kayla-feder-aiki-peaceweek-class 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The Myth of Peace:

a culture of peacemaking, the process arts, and the emergence of a global communitarian mythology

Join us for a Webinar on March 28th &/or 31st, 2010

Please visit http://mythofpeace.com

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

This page is the permanent residence of material on the ABC site related to Huston Smith. The appearance here of any material or opinion, unless directly quoted from Dr. Smith, is solely the responsibility of the party who posted it. For a history of changes to this page, please click on "Changes" in the hidden menu next to the visible "Edit" option.


To purchase either DVD please click the Donate link to the right and become a supporter of ABC (Beamish Process Arts d.b.a Association Building Community) for $30 or more. Specify in the special instructions which session you would like, where they should be mailed, and how we may best contact you.

To purchase the 2 DVD set of both events, please click the Donate link to the right and create a monthly recurring donation (to Beamish Process Arts d.b.a Association Building Community) of at least $10. After five months you may cancel at any time. Specify in the special instructions where the discs should be mailed and how we may best contact you.

Huston Smith and Brandon WilliamsCraig host two community conversations.

 

Epworth United Methodist Church and Association Building Community
present

Tales of Wonder

Sunday July 5th, 2009
11:30 - 1:00

Huston Smith
Author of  The World's Religions
and the new autobiography Tales of Wonder

In celebration of Dr. Smith's 90th Birthday

a conversation in community
with mythologist Brandon WilliamsCraig

Beginning with an excerpt from The World's Religions, religious, psychological, and mythological themes will be considered with building community on purpose in mind. Following the conversation, questions for discussion will be co-created on and off-line by the community.


 

 

&
Sunday July 12th, 2009
11:30 - 1:30

(please bring a potluck dish)


Huston Smith and a panel of local scholars will participate in a community conversation facilitated by Brandon WilliamsCraig
responding to themes of the previous week in order to open spontaneous space
 for shared discovery of the Process Arts as peace practices

in the
Epworth UMC Beloved Community Circle
1953 Hopkins St, Berkeley, CA 94707
click for directions or cut and paste http://tinyurl.com/epworthumc


FREE OF CHARGE   ~   EVERYONE WELCOME
Come for a little bit or from beginning to end.
Please RSVP to brandon @ abcglobal dot net or call toll free (866) 236-0346
with your Name, email and mobile# or Skype ID,
and list which event(s) you will attend
in order to receive a PDF copy of the materials and an invitation to collaborate online.

Related materials:
http://www.hustonsmith.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<wbr/>Huston_Smith

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/21/DD1G17MMIH.DTL&type=printable
http://www.newsweek.com/id/<wbr/>195695?from=rss
http://processarts.net

 

 

 

If you would like your work listed on the event's References and Resources guide, please go to your User Page (click on your own name after signing in) here at http://abcglobal.net and list the words you would like to appear in the following format: name (yours or an organization) and URL; one brief paragraph about what you do in terms of mythology (world-view) and mission; contact info.

 

 

Brandon WilliamsCraig is a member of Epworth and a frequently visible presence in this community, but there are a few things you may not know about him. He began a twenty year career in the professional theater in Dallas, Texas at the age of six, and transplanted himself to California in 1995 for a two year residential apprenticeship in a martial art of peace called aikido, which he now teaches. He is President of local, Bay Area non-profit, Association Building Community, and travels nationally building community among those practicing the process arts, and is a professional conflict facilitator. He will be completing his Ph.D. this Fall in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology and has had the pleasure of working with Dr. Smith for several years, as well as the honor of his friendship through many lunches and teas and fruitful conversations, as well as an invitation to membership in the Pacific Coast Theological Society at the Graduate Theological Union.

 

Huston Smith is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. For fifteen years he was Professor of Philosophy at M.I.T. and for a decade before that he taught at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he has served as Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Holder of twelve honorary degrees, Smith’s fourteen books include The World’s Religions which has sold over 2 ½ million copies, and Why Religion Matters which won the Wilbur Award for the best book on religion published in 2001. In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS Special, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, to his life and work. His film documentaries on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won international awards. Dr. Smith has been a particular friend of the Epworth Community for many years and we are always happy to welcome him back.

 

 

HustonSmith0709GoldenRule03sigPosterBDWC

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Process Arts for Peace Open Workshop

Edit section

 

All are welcome to join facilitators of the martial, somatic, performing, visual, and liberal arts as they explore the edges and overlaps of their work, as it relates to building sustainable communities by practicing peace.
  • Martha Eddy: Dynamic Embodiment, Somatic Movement Therapy Training (BMC, Laban/Bartenieff, much more), and movement education for peace through the body
  • Paul Linden: Aikido, Being In Movement® mindbody education, and BIM Embodied Peacemaking (Feldenkrais Method, Ishinryu Karate)
  • Rosa Naparstek: community building through aesthetic experience--making connections between Art and Personal/Political transformation
  • Charles Colten: Aikido in the Schools, Nonviolent Communication, Embodied Conflict Resolution, Aikisomatics
    • Brandon WilliamsCraig: the Process Arts idea, Aikido and Martial Nonviolence® facilitation, mythology and cultural activism
  • Others, TBA, including Bill Leicht of Urban Visions and Aiki Extensions Intl.
Please join us at the
Shin Budo Kai 
77 8th Ave. New York NY 10014 (@14th St.)


for any or all of the presentations


Tue. Dec. 22
, 2009, from 12 noon until 5pm.

A free-will donation of any size will be requested.


For more information and to stay in the loop for work of this kind, make sure you are a member at http://groups.google.com/group/assocbuildingcommunity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Here are the people with official and informal responsibility, who have agreed to work to build community and the process arts in a structured way, including Board members, administrators, interns, and volunteers.

 

If you'd like to join our team, please investigate our available opportunities here.

To explore our workspace (online work area), please click here.

 

Board & Officers

Team+President - CEO

Brandon WilliamsCraig+Image

Brandon WilliamsCraig

Peace Practices, community building and conflict facilitation; mediation and negotiation; social benefit organizing and administration, ensemble creation, and team building; spoken and media-based communications and performance; academic learning and administration; supervision and management.


 

Team+Board Chair

Philip Emminger+Image

Philip Emminger

Founder, President, and CEO of Emminger Commercial Interior Fabrication and Fine Millwork

Emeritus Board Member of Aiki Extensions and Project Manager for innaugural Training Across Borders seminar in 2005.

 


 

 

 

Team+Board Members

Leon Regelson+Image

Leon Regelson

Leon was born near Cleveland as the Great Depression was getting underway. His family moved to Palestine for several years but in 1936 returned to settle in The Bronx. At age 17 Leon entered the military for a short tour. He has worked and made his home in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early 1950's. When Berkeley was becoming known for growth of the  counter-culture he was drawn further into meditation, activism, and the campus milieu. He entered the conscious search for a way of being in the world that accepts the individual and invites loving co-creation of relationship and has been a part of personal and collective transformative efforts ever since, including:  the Community Liaison Group (1967-1968), the Cultural Integration Fellowship (1971-), the Pea Soup Community (1972-), the World Citizens Assembly (1974-), the International Cooperation Council (1975-1977), Communal Grapevine (1981-), PeaceMAP (1984-1985), Peace and Environment Coalition (1984-1985), ongoing Community Building circles, and the Dedicated Weekly Group (1997-1998).

Not belonging to organizations but exploring individual paths of growth developed his sense of the necessity for inclusivity and the individual in co-creation. Through all of these things Leon was looking for something and becoming disappointed. A longing for "something really decent, without all the skeletons in the closet," and disinclined to unravel as a result of relational glitches. Trying to find peace happening within peace-making organizations seemed more and more unlikely, activists displaying an inclination to "fight like cats and dogs" within their ranks. The foregoing resume suggests some "flashes of glory" but misses a central theme from Leon's life - the longing for deeply rewarding relationships, community, and the co-creation of a more decent world. He is particularly drawn to combining the uses of silence with applied communication skills. 

 

Administration

Team+Book Keeper

Team+Book Keeper+search 2014+Naomi Keepin Even Keel VT+Image
Naomi Keepin

Naomi Keepin, following professionally in her mother’s footsteps, began her bookkeeping career while still in high school. After graduating from Mills College in Oakland, California with a B.A. in Economics, Naomi specialized in accounting work for nonprofits and fiduciary attorneys. A Vermont native, she is pleased to assume her new role, leading the professional staff at Even Keel and supporting the businesses and organizations that make Vermont’s economy vibrant.

 

 

 

Team+Data Manager

We are looking for a Data Manager. If you, or someone you know is interested in this work, please visit our invitation here.

Team+Web Developer

We are looking for a web developer. Please contact us at administration [at] abcglobal [dot] net if you would like to know more.

 

Instructors

Brandon WilliamsCraig+Image

Brandon WilliamsCraig

Peace Practices, community building and conflict facilitation; mediation and negotiation; social benefit organizing and administration, ensemble creation, and team building; spoken and media-based communications and performance; academic learning and administration; supervision and management.


 

 

 

 


 

Julian Wilner+Image

Julian Wilner

I began practising Aikido at the age of 11 and quickly grew to love the rigorous yet welcoming culture of the Dojo. Within a few years I found myself assisting with the children's classes, and by the age of 15 I regularly taught at least two of the three children's classes each week. In contrast with my own intense and often chaotic learning process, learning how to work with and teach kids served to ground my ambition, humbling me and forcing me to refine my own practice again and again. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been afforded such a privileged opportunity so early in my Aikido career and I am excited to renew this passion as an assistant and instructor with Peace Practices under Brandon WilliamsCraig.

 

 

 

A place for cultural study, not necessarily stuffy. Please link to all manner of good stuff on this page, which serves as an index.

 

General Study

 

This page offers examples of the growth of community on purpose and use of the process arts in making peace.

While reading this page, creating new pages (option above) to break off topics or study areas will organize our thinking together and reflect those changes in the directory structure to the left.

 

Special Collections

(which don't get pushed down the page), are maintained here

 

Process Arts

New items push the older items down the page.

2010

 

2009

 

2008

 

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/bu...rssnyt&emc=rss

You May Soon Know if You’re Hogging the Discussion 
Edit section

Rick Friedman for The New York Times

Dr. Alex Pentland and researchers with devices they used to study the various signals and patterns of conversation.

 

By ANNE EISENBERG

 

Published: October 25, 2008

PEOPLE who want to improve their communication skills may one day have an unusual helper: software programs that analyze the tone, turn-taking behavior and other qualities of a conversation. The programs would then tell the speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking.

 

The inventor of this technology is Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has developed cellphone-like gadgets to listen to people as they chat, and computer programs that sift through these conversational cadences, studying communication signals that lie beneath the words.

 

If commercialized, such tools could help users better handle many subtleties of face-to-face and group interactions — or at least stop hogging the show at committee meetings.

 

With the help of his students, Dr. Pentland, a professor of media arts and sciences at M.I.T., has been equipping people in banks, universities and other places with customized smartphones or thin badges packed with sensors that they wear for days or even months. As these people talk with one another, the sensors collect data on the timing, energy and variability of their speech.

 

Dr. Pentland, known as Sandy, calls his gleaning and processing of conversational and other data “reality mining — using data mining algorithms to parse the real life, analog world of social interactions.”

 

The tools he has developed might help people change their communication tactics, including those that lead to unproductive workplace dynamics, said David Lazer, an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

 

Mr. Lazer praised “the richness of the data” captured by the process — the “minute-by-minute, fine-grained data on whether you are talking, whom you prefer to talk with, what your tone is, and if you interrupt, for instance.”

 

That kind of tool is rare, Mr. Lazer said. “Our existing research tools for gathering this kind of data aren’t very good,” he said — for example, questionnaires in which people self-report on conversations. Reality mining may be more accurate, and has the potential to show “all sorts of interactive patterns that may not be obvious to individuals in an organization,” he said.

 

Many of Dr. Pentland’s research studies with smartphones and badges with embedded sensors are discussed in his new book, “Honest Signals,” recently published by MIT Press. The badges use tools including infrared sensors to tell when people are facing one another, accelerometers to record gestures, and microphones and audio signal-processing to capture the tone of voice.

 

With the array of sensors, the badges can detect what Dr. Pentland calls “honest signals, unconscious face-to-face signaling behavior” that suggest, for example, when people are active, energetic followers of what other people are saying, and when they are not. He argues that these underlying signals are often as important in communication as words and logic.

For example, the badges register when listeners respond with regular nods or short acknowledgments like, “Right.” Such responses, he argues, are a kind of mirroring behavior that may help build empathy between speaker and listener. He also examines patterns of turn-taking in conversations, as well as gestures and other, often unconscious signals.

Future smartphones that take advantage of his technology may act as friendly personal assistants, automatically putting through calls from friends and family, but sending all others straight through to voice mail.

 

“The phone can be like a butler who really gets to know you,” he said, by deciding to ring brightly for an urgent call when its owner has forgotten to turn on the ringer.

 

In the research, many steps are taken to make sure the identities of participants remain anonymous, said Anmol Madan, a graduate student of Dr. Pentland. For instance, when microphone audio data is collected, the microphone picks up tone and the length of speaking time but does not record any of the actual words spoken.

 

So far, Mr. Madan has found that the data gathered by mobile phones is far more accurate than accounts of the same information reported by participants.

 

“Humans have a lot of bias when they recall their behavior,” he said.

 

Tanzeem Choudhury, a former student and collaborator of Dr. Pentland and now an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth, continues to do reality mining with smartphones.

 

“We spend a lot of time talking about how to improve communication skills,” she said. “This work lets us pin down what makes conversations effective by analyzing people’s actual conversation in their social networks.”

 

E-mail: .

A version of this article appeared in print on October 26, 2008, on page BU3 of the New York edition.

 


Look here for ongoing updates to everything resembling policies, etc. Proposed changes go below as comments. This page is itself an amalgam of other fair-use policies from other sites. Please suggests ways ABC policies may better reflect our stated identity and goals.


The original content and research reproductions housed within this site do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organization or anyone who participates herein. Versions of material maintained here appear so that specific words and phrases are searchable on this free, password protected site for the not-for-profit purposes of research and cultural criticism. No copyright challenge is ever asserted or supported. All material not originated by the author is clearly marked with its original rights reserved information and appears in accordance with acceptable use practices governing public domain, academic study, or not-for-profit cultural development and critique. Any concerns about privacy or copyrights may be addressed by emails directed to administration at abcglobal dot net.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License

 

All original material on this site is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License

Each author, unless otherwise explicitly stated, claims full original and creative rights to original ideas, terms, words, phrases, and looks forward to all opportunities to negotiate their use and dissemination for the good of people in general and the flourishing of the Commons.

 

 


Building Community

 

=========================================================

 next item here

 

 =========================================================

 

from:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7366599.stm

 

BBC NEWS

Civil society's triumph on Zimbabwe
Edit section

 

By Peter Greste
BBC News, Johannesburg

 

It has been reported that China has finally recalled the An Yue Jiang, the ship allegedly loaded with arms for Zimbabwe.

 

Rights groups hailed the move as a major victory, a triumph of public opinion over political cynicism.

It seems civil society is taking the lead, well ahead of national leaders, on the question of Zimbabwe.

The An Yue Jiang is a container ship owned by China’s state-run shipping company COSCO, reported to be carrying millions of rounds of assault rifle, ammunition, mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades.

When the ship anchored off the South African port of Durban, a local news magazine revealed that it was about to off-load the weapons, and public opinion reacted with outrage.

Newspaper editorials condemned the shipment, callers rang radio talk shows complaining that the weapons could be used by the Zimbabwean government against its own people.

The South African government’s response was blunt. "So what?" they said.

Government spokesman Themba Maseko said they could do nothing to stop a perfectly legal and properly documented transaction between two sovereign states.

Then unions and human rights organisations intervened.

Dock-workers refused to handle the cargo, and a judge barred it from transiting through the country.

Demonstrators threatened to block its passage if it ever reached South Africa’s roads.

Now, after being refused entry in ports around the continent, the ship is finally thought to be heading home with its cargo still on board.

'Amazed'

In a rare show of force, African public opinion and civil organisations mobilised on a single issue to force action that politicians seemed reluctant to take.

 



The authorities have been driven by embarrassment by what civil society has done

Nicole Fritz
Southern African Litigation Centre

Peter Alexander, the director for Sociological Studies at the University of Johannesburg, says the ship’s departure was a triumph for civil society.

"I am amazed," he said. "It is very impressive that such a concerted action could have such a concrete result."

Nicole Fritz, of the Southern African Litigation Centre, which took the case to court, agrees: "The South African authorities have been driven by embarrassment in the face of what civil society has done."

The An Yue Jiang affair is probably the clearest example of African civil society leading the agenda on Zimbabwe.

But according to human rights organisations and academics, they are forcing politician’s hands in all sorts of subtle ways.

Kenyan example

The region’s leaders, grouped together under the Southern African Development Community (SADC) were criticised by the media for their mild call on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to release the results of the presidential election "as expeditiously as possible" within the bounds of the law.

Last weekend, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa held a summit of 105 civil society organisations in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

They released a communique condemning not just the Zimbabwean government, but the SADC region for failing to act decisively.

Zambia’s President Levy Mwanawasa then called on all of Africa’s coastal states to prevent the An Yue Jiang from entering their waters.

 

There is no direct link between the Dar es Salaam conference and President Mwanawasa’s comments, but it seems public opinion has moved faster than the politicians on the issue of Zimbabwe.

According to Elenor Sisulu of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, the Kenyan experience in resolving that country’s post-election violence proved the value of pressure from civil society.

"Kenyan civil society made it very clear to us that you have to be very pro-active in addressing this kind of issue," she said. 

The Council of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is also listening.

Its Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi hosted a meeting of civil groups, pledging to organise a series of demonstrations in South Africa’s major cities on 10 May.

Mr Vavi said much of the problem was rooted in the challenge that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) presented to the older political leaders who view themselves as standard-bearers of the liberation movements.

"It’s because of the fear that the MDC is led and supported by trade unions and civil society. They worry that initiative may just go on from one country to the next," he said.

"There’s paranoia and fear that suddenly the liberation movements are going to be coming under lots of pressure from these formations. That’s why there is this unwillingness to openly condemn what is wrong in Zimbabwe."

But whatever their motives, the Southern African leaders may have to take notice of public opinion, or risk being left dangerously out of touch with their own electorates.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ca/7366599.stm

Published: 2008/04/25 11:59:38 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

 

Look here for ongoing updates to everything resembling policies, etc. Proposed changes go below as comments. This page is itself an amalgam of other fair-use policies from other sites. Please suggests ways ABC policies may better reflect our stated identity and goals.


The original content and research reproductions housed within this site do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organization or anyone who participates herein. Versions of material maintained here appear so that specific words and phrases are searchable on this free, password protected site for the not-for-profit purposes of research and cultural criticism. No copyright challenge is ever asserted or supported. All material not originated by the author is clearly marked with its original rights reserved information and appears in accordance with acceptable use practices governing public domain, academic study, or not-for-profit cultural development and critique. Any concerns about privacy or copyrights may be addressed by emails directed to administration at abcglobal dot net.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License

 

All original material on this site is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License

Each author, unless otherwise explicitly stated, claims full original and creative rights to original ideas, terms, words, phrases, and looks forward to all opportunities to negotiate their use and dissemination for the good of people in general and the flourishing of the Commons.

 

 

Community, Intentional, distributed

 

Communitarianism

the idea that humanity should be headed in the direction of ethical world-citizenship - see Conversations with Huston Smith

 

 

Community, Intentional, residential 

 

Governance and Politics

 

Mythology

Comparative

Mythography 

 

Peace & Justice 

 

Psychology

Archetypal

Freudian

Jungian

 

 


Organizational Studies

 


Religious Studies

 

 

 

 

 

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The above calendar is generated from within Airset.

Please use Community Events to add more gatherings


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Network Members seeking

Help with housing

There is a request for 2-3 weeks of temporary housing for a friend-of-a-friend's family, starting in mid-August.  Let us know [ at administration at abcglobal dot net ] if you're aware of anything...thanks!!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2014
Subject: Temporary housing in Berkeley
Dear friends,
My colleague in Paris is starting a one-year sabbatical at UC Berkeley in mid-august. She has unfortunately not yet found a temporary housing for her and her family (couple with 2 kids) for the beginning of her stay. If you know some possibility for a temporary housing for her and her family for 2-3 weeks please make contact.

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