March -- 2006 Peace and Justice Teach-ins

March 2: Cornel West: FREE SPEECH IS FOR TELLING THE TRUTH-- David Brodsky, founder of the Education for Democracy Network, will show a video of West's electrifying and entertaining Mario Savio Memorial Lecture at University of California Berkeley and then lead a discussion. In this speech two months after 9/11, West, an African American public intellectual, called for courageous opposition to the "War on Terrorism" and the Patriot Act. Mixing philosophy, religion, politics, and the blues, he also raised fundamental and controversial questions about the progressive movement. West's speech will be preceded by clips of Savio, a leader of the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the first great student rebellion of the decade.

March 9: The Nonviolent Peaceforce and Sri Lankan Election Monitoring – Don McClain, retired professor of Peace Studies at Park University. The Nonviolent Peaceforce is an international effort to establish the Peace Army envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi. The pilot project is in the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. They were invited to provide observers, interpositioners and trainers in nonviolent conflict resolution. Their second project is in the Philippines in the conflict in Mindaneo. The NP provided 110 international election obversers from 30 nations for the November presidential elections including our speaker from Kansas City, Don McClain

March 16: US detainee operations and the Geneva Conventions -- James Gebhart.. What are the Geneva Conventions; how have our Armed Forces implemented their provisions in conflict situations since 1950; what is our current policy in this area, and what has been its impact? Major (US Army, Retired) James Gebhardt is a military historian.

March 23:Is Human Nature violent? – Roena Haynie. Roena, retired chair of social sciences at Avila, will discuss evidence from anthropology and primatology. Publications discussed will include Richard Leakey, People of the Lake and A Natural History of Peace by R. Sapolsky. The latter is available at http://www.alternet.org/story/32755/


March 30: Social & Environmentally Responsible Investing --Jim Horlacher, Jim is a Financial Investment Consultant. Jim will talk about how investers can help to produce positive social change by investing in "Socially Responsible Investments (SRI)" He will disucuss how to find SRI funds to invest in and how shareholders can use their votes to reward companies that have positive track records on environmental and military issues and how to use their votes to introduce inititives to move companies away from policies that are pro war or anti environment.