Mubarak Awad

Dr. Mubarak E. Awad is a renowned peace activist in the United States and overseas.  He believes that every cultural and religious tradition can discover and employ culturally appropriate nonviolent methods for positive social change and international peace.  He also has a desire and commitment to have a positive impact on the systems of services for youth, and his organizations missions are founded around the principle that children and adults thrive best when they are surrounded by a caring and committed community.
 
Dr. Awad is the founder of Nonviolence International, a decentralized network of resource centers that promote the use of nonviolent action. Nonviolence International (NI) promotes nonviolent action and seeks to reduce the use of violence worldwide. Nonviolence International (NI) is a 501(c)(3) organization registered in Washington, DC, USA.  NI assists individuals, organizations, and governments striving to bring about changes reflecting the values of justice and human development on personal, social, economic and political levels.  The organization provides tactical assistance to nonviolent campaigns and movements.  NI’s affiliates offer assistance and consultations and its trainers help activists develop appropriate educational programs and strategic campaigns for nonviolent social change.

Dr. Awad is also the founder and former CEO of the National Youth Advocate Program and the Youth Advocate Program International, child welfare organizations that have provided foster care, family preservation, and independent living services in more than 8 states and across the world since 1978.  

Dr. Awad is a Palestinian Christian with a doctorate in psychology who, as a result of his own childhood experiences, has great empathy for individuals in crisis.  He has participated in a multitude of conferences and dialogues addressing nonviolence and the Palestinian peace process.  He is an adjunct professor at The American University in Washington, D.C. in the School of International Service and has lectured at universities across the country and the globe.

Rudy Balles

Rudy Balles was in high school when his father died of a cocaine overdose. His mother “stopped caring,” and Rudy moved in with his grandparents. When his grandpa passed away, Rudy lost his sense of hope and direction. The prevalence of gangs, and the mounting pressures to join one, won him over. Looking for ways to “become a man” and find a new family, he was soon caught up in the gang lifestyle: stealing, shooting at people and defying authority. By age 19 Rudy had attempted suicide.

Rudy luckily came upon El Centro del Quinto Sol, a center that helped young Chicanos in gangs and other at-risk youth learn how to do something more positive for their communities. That's where Rudy heard about PeaceJam, and it changed his perspective on life.
“PeaceJam helped me look beyond my own world and realize that there was more than the injustice I was feeling,” says Rudy. PeaceJam's dramatic impact on Rudy was accomplished through exposure to Nobel Peace Laureates, who work personally with youth from diverse backgrounds to pass on the spirit, skills and wisdom they embody.

Apprenticeships under such Laureates as Rigoberta Menchú Tum – who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy of civil rights for indigenous peoples – helped Rudy learn the meaning of diversity and open mindedness. “In the Chicano community, we're not exposed much to other communities. And the schools I went to didn't allow open conversations on controversial topics. Through PeaceJam, I heard first-hand the wisdom of Laureates who made me aware of the bigger picture and gave me a new sense of reality,” says Rudy, who grew up in Pueblo, Colorado.

Rudy has proven this is true. At 29, he is now program director for the Gang Rescue and Support Project in Denver, helping gang members make better decisions for themselves and stop causing harm to their communities. “Violence is taught and endorsed everywhere, but peace is not. Peace needs to be discussed as a new tool to overcome violence. It's gonna take a world to heal the world. PeaceJam has brought the world to my neighborhood,” he says.

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly, 55, of Chicago, IL, helped initiate the Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/US sanctions against Iraq. For bringing “medicine and toys” to Iraq in open violation of the UN/US sanctions, she and other campaign members were notified of a proposed $163,000 penalty for the organization, threatened with 12 years in prison, and eventually fined $20,000, a sum which they’ve refused to pay.

Voices in the Wilderness organized 70 delegations to visit Iraq in the period between 1996 and the beginning of the “Operation Shock and Awe” warfare (March 2003). Kelly has been to Iraq twenty four times since January 1996, when the campaign began.

In October 2002, Voices in the Wilderness declared their intent to remain in Baghdad, alongside Iraqi civilians, throughout a war they still hoped they could prevent. Kelly and the team stayed in Baghdad throughout the bombardment and invasion and maintained a household in Baghdad until March, 2004. During 2007, she spent five months in Amman, Jordan, living amongst Iraqis who’ve fled their homes and are seeking resettlement.
During the first two weeks of the Gulf War, she was part of a peace encampment on the Iraq-Saudi border called the Gulf Peace Team. Following evacuation to Amman, Jordan, (February 4, 1991), team members stayed in the region for the next six months to help coordinate medical relief convoys and study teams.

Kelly helped organize and participated in nonviolent direct action teams in Haiti (summer of 1994), Bosnia (August, 1993, December, 1992) and Iraq (Gulf Peace Team, 1991). In April of 2002, she was among the first internationals to visit the Jenin camp, where conventional military forces of the Israeli Defense Force had destroyed over 100 civilian homes, in the Occupied West Bank.

She and three companions from Voices were in Beirut, Lebanon during the final days of the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006 and subsequently reported from southern Lebanon following a ceasefire.

In 1988 she was sentenced to one year in prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites. Kelly served nine months of the sentence in Lexington KY maximum security prison.

In the spring of 2004, she served three months at Pekin federal prison for crossing the line as part of an ongoing effort to close an army military combat training school at Fort Benning, GA.

Kelly has taught in Chicago area community colleges and high schools since 1974. From 1980 – 1986 she taught at St. Ignatius College Prep (Chicago, IL). She is active with the Catholic Worker movement and, as a pacifist and war tax refuser, has refused payment of all Federal income tax for 25 years.
She currently helps coordinate the Voices for Creative Nonviolence campaign. www.vcnv.org

Barbara Love

Barbara J. Love is an exciting speaker, presenter, consultant and writer on multicultural organizational development and critical liberation theory. Dr. Love is Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her education background includes teacher education and staff development, curriculum development, and multicultural organizational development, also with degrees in History and Political Science.

She consults internationally on organizational and individual empowerment and transformation.  She has worked closely with schools and school systems throughout the U.S. and has served as Chair of the local School Committee, as well as with faculties and administration at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. She has worked with a variety of organizations in North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa on issues of diversity and inclusion. She works from a unique set of assumptions about the nature of humans and the process of personal, organizational and social change which participants have found empowering, enabling and effectively motivating.

Dr. Love's has published widely on issues such as internalized racism, self-awareness for liberation workers, building alliances for change, and critical liberation theory.  Dr. Love is greatly sought after as a keynote speaker for Forums and Leadership conferences dealing with multicultural organizational development, empowerment and liberation.

Michael Nagler

Dr. Michael Nagler has devoted his life to exploring nonviolence as an alternative to war. Professor Emeritus of Languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder and former chairperson of the University's Peace and Conflict Studies program, Nagler has become one of the world's most widely respected peace scholars and activists.

Prof. Nagler has spoken and written widely for campus, religious, public and special interest groups on the subject of peace and nonviolence for many years, especially since 9/11. He has consulted for the U.S. Institute of Peace and many other organizations and is President of the board of METTA: Center for Nonviolence Education and of PeaceWorkers, and on numerous other boards, and has recently co-founded Educators For Nonviolence (info@efnv.org). He has worked on nonviolent intervention since the 1970's and served on the Interim Steering Committee of the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

In addition to his many articles on peace and spirituality, he is the author of America Without Violence (Island Press, 1982), The Upanishads (with Sri Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, 1987) and most recently The Search for a Nonviolent Future (Inner Ocean Publishing) which won the 2002 American Book Award and is being used in many courses as well as reading groups around the country (Italian translation appeared in 2005; pending in Korean and Arabic).

Michael Nagler is a student of Sri Eknath Easwaran, Founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, and has lived at the Center's ashram in Marin County since 1970.

C.T. Vivian

The New School for Social Research named Dr. C.T. Vivian “… spiritual leader, apostle of social justice, strategist of the civil rights movement ... For decades he has been in the vanguard of the struggle for racial equality in America”, as they presented him with one of his many honorary doctorates.

Dr. Vivian is the founder of BASIC Diversity, Inc. (BASIC) a full service diversity consultancy that has been operating nationally for thirty-five (35) years. BASIC helps organizations leverage the benefits and minimize the challenges created by a diverse workforce by creating environments where people can effectively collaborate across cultural differences. BASIC’s clients, past and present, include some of the most recognizable brands in the world – CNN, Coca-Cola, DuPont, Ford Motor Co., McDonalds, the National Security Agency, U.S. Steel, and the U.S. Army. They are best known for The Race Awareness Workshop which has been evaluated as the most effective race relations seminar in the country; and was the first program to be the sole feature for two consecutive days on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Dr. Vivian was once a Christian journalist. However, he is best known for his work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was National Director of Affiliates, and strategist for every S.C.L.C. organization. He truly helped change the nation: His work in Birmingham helped win the Civil Rights Bill; in Selma, the Voting Rights Bill; and he was deeply involved in other movements such as Nashville, TN; Danville, VA; St. Augustine, FL; and Chicago, IL. Dr. Vivian had won his first non-violent direct action movement in 1947 opening restaurants in Peoria, IL.

He is featured throughout PBS’s acclaimed documentary “Eyes On The Prize” (1987 & 2006). PBS later produced a full-length presentation, “The Healing Ministry of the Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian”. He is also featured as both an activist and analyst in the series, The People’s Century (PBS/WGBH, 1998). And most recently in the Tom Brokaw documentary “King” (History Channel, 2008).

After leaving Dr. King’s Executive Staff, Dr. Vivian trained ministers and developed the urban curriculum for seminaries throughout the nation at the Urban Training Center in Chicago. He returned to the realm of seminary education as the Dean of Divinity at Shaw University Seminary. There he originated and acquired funding for an original national level program, the basis of his doctoral work, Seminary Without Walls