The Gandhi-King Conference will heature a diverse array of workshops, panel discussions, engaging speakers, art, music, film and more. Please check this page often as we continue to add information on the exciting opportunities for learning and engagement at this years conference.

Program booklet now available... Click here to download pdf file
Workshop Schedule is now available.... Click here to download

 

Working groups • The Gandhi-King Convergence: From Shared Ideas to Coordinated Action

The Gandhi-King Convergence is an opportunity for people from across the country and around the world to come together to vision, share ideas and resources, and further our work in a more unified and collaborative way. Participants will form issue-based working groups and engage in a process to share insights and experiences, find ways we can be of support to each other, and create an action plan for the coming year. Presenters will act as resource agents in this process to provide guidance and support. We will also form a network so that these groups can stay connected and support each other in their common work throughout the year. These working groups will help us dig deeper and turn our knowledge into action! Ready to take the next step? Join us!

Working group meet up times:
Friday 5:15-6:15pm
Saturday 4:45-5:45pm
Sunday 10:15-11:45am

Performing at the Sunday morning spiritual service:

Grupo Danza Aztec
The group is formed thanks to the hard work of Mr. Noe Ramirez founder of Grupo Danza Aztec Quetzalcoatl in 2003. It first started by doing presentations in different Catholic Churches, now the group has done several performances through out the city of Memphis and several other states surrounding Tennessee. They have done performances at the University of Memphis, Rhodes College, Christian Brothers University, WIN's Faith and Labor Picnic and many diverse Pow Wows. The object of Grupo Danza Azteca Quetzalcoatl is to preserve and show the ancestral art of the pre-Hispanic Dance to the world.

Performers include:
EDUARDO TELLEZ, AGUSTIN DIAZ, REFUGIO PANTOJA , JOSE RUIZ, MARIBEL FLORES, FELIPE FUENTES, RAFAEL FIGUEROA, & RAUL VENEGAS

 

 

Workshop Presenters (just a few of the dozens of talented trainers, educators and activists)

La Onf and Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Peaceful Tomorrows is an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11th who have united to turn our grief into action for peace. By developing and advocating nonviolent options and actions in the pursuit of justice, we hope to break the cycles of violence engendered by war and terrorism. Acknowledging our common experience with all people affected by violence throughout the world, we work to create a safer and more peaceful world for everyone.

La Onf (”No Violence” in Arabic) is a network of Iraqi civilians and civil society organizations who are working together use nonviolent action to bring peace to Iraq. La Onf was established in 2005 by a group of activists in Baghdad. This year they are organizing their third annual Week of Nonviolence, with nonviolent actions taking place throughout Iraq starting on October 10. The work of La Onf was featured in the documentary Masalla, Activists in Iraq. La Onf’s website is entirely in Arabic, but more information can be found through the Peaceful Tommorows site.

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United to End Racism (UER) is a group of people of all ages and backgrounds, in many different countries, who are dedicated to eliminating racism in the world. We understand that eliminating racism is necessary for humankind to progress. We are committed to ending racism, and we support the efforts of other groups to accomplish this goal. The main work of UER is to illuminate the damage done to individuals by racism and to undo this damage on an individual basis, using the resources and process of Re-evaluation Counseling.

UER also examines the racism in many of our societies' institutions and encourages its members to become actively aware of it and to find new ways of combating it. UER offers both an ongoing system of support that assists people to sustain their efforts to eliminate racism, and effective tools for eliminating racism that can be taught and used on a one-to-one basis.

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The Community Media Workshop, founded by a journalist, Hank De Zutter, and a community activist, Thom Clark, is a small institution trying to link the two Chicagos by encouraging the media to tell the stories of the other Chicago, the oft-neglected neighborhoods and back streets of Chicago, where the problems are felt most deeply and where solutions are most likely to be born. The Workshop trains people working on these problems to tell their stories to the media, tips sensitive journalists to the importance of these stories, and tries to create better relationships between the media and the diverse communities which make up Chicago and the Midwest.

Since our start in a Malcolm X College classroom in 1989, thousands of nonprofit organizations have received hands-on training and coaching for their newsworthy efforts. Over 3000 groups have subscribed to Getting On The Air & Into Print, the comprehensive Chicago media guide. Another Workshop publication, Newstips, is now distributed twice-monthly to over 1200 reporters, editors and producers around Chicago. Now at Columbia College, we tap the talent and experience Columbia's communications-oriented student body and faculty can offer to the city's nonprofit community.

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The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance (WTR). Affiliate organizations and individual supporters are joined together in a common struggle for a more just and peaceful society. We oppose militarism and war and refuse to complicitly participate in the tax system which supports such violence. NWTRCC sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor. Through the redirection of our tax dollars NWTRCC members contribute directly to the struggle for peace and justice for all. NWTRCC promotes war tax resistance within the context of a broad range of nonviolent strategies for social change, and is firmly embedded in the peace movement.

NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals. These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability. WTR actions are undertaken in accordance with each individual’s moral, religious or political conscience, and with the hope that such actions will contribute to a change in the priorities and policies of the U.S. government.

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The Matrix Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion addresses key areas of diversity including recruitment, retention, community outreach, diversifying the curriculum, etc. The mission of The Matrix Center is to foster an intellectual climate that supports inclusion and collaboration to examine the intersections of oppression and privilege and promote solutions to inequality. The Matrix Center advances research, curriculum, and faculty development examining the dynamics of oppression and privilege in the United States and around the globe. Our central focus is on the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality as they interact with each other and with other dimensions of inequality. We strive to foster an intellectual climate that supports inclusion and collaboration among our faculty, students, and the community.

We are committed to eliminating barriers between academia and the broader community. We are fortunate to have many stellar, nationally known scholars at UCCS, whose cutting edge research engages issues of race, gender, GLBT, and disability. In addition, The Matrix Center has gained a national reputation as a leader in the field of intersectional studies (examining the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality) and Matrix programs are attended by activists and academics from around the country. The Matrix Center provides a bridge between our scholars and the community. The core faculty affiliated with The Matrix Center conduct research and teach about diversity, inclusion and inequality because we are committed to creating change. We seek to dispel the myth of the University as an Ivory Tower, and bring that research and teaching to bear upon the specific issues and needs of our community.

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Voices for Creative Nonviolence has deep, long-standing roots in active nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making. Begun in the summer of 2005, Voices draws upon the experiences of those who challenged the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N. against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003. Voices participants rely on and have learned from experiences of those who have engaged in active nonviolent resistance to military might in the U.S. including draft resistance; resistance to the wars in Latin America; and resistance to nuclear weapons, such as the Plowshares resistance efforts. Voices draws upon the lessons gleaned from active participation in peace teams in Haiti, Yugoslavia, Palestine and Iraq.

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At a time when the need for quality education is increasing, the U.S. is witnessing alarming numbers of young people who fail to complete high school. “Zero-tolerance” policies are pushing students out of school at faster rates. The culture of standardized testing is most demeaning to low-performing students, and even the ones who stay can lose their motivation to learn. High numbers of students display chronic disengagement in school, failing to see any intrinsic value to their studies.

How will school reach these students? By giving them what they want to learn. By building with them a welcoming environment. By providing the space for these young people to understand their identity, experience community, and gain useful knowledge about the world.

Young Spirit Foundation is a nonprofit organization designed to help teachers and schools respond to their students’ basic needs for wisdom and connection. The Foundation has a changemaking purpose. Its strategy is to provide a principle-based model which can then be adapted to any educational setting, across boundaries of economics, culture, ethnicity, and nationality.

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Educator Dr. Lucille (Sis) Levin and her broadcast network journalist husband, Jerry Levin, have formed the Community Nonviolence Resource Center in part to advocate eliminating a counterproductive education policy gap in schools of education, local school systems, state legislatures and the federal government. Scant official attention and support, they say, are being given to creating critically needed new educational funding policies. The necessary reforms would encourage and sustain the training of future teaching professionals in how to reinforce or revive in school age children the recently discovered genetic predisposition in the developing brains of the unborn for caring, compassionate, nonviolent behavior.