Kids Vote

I voted first thing this morning. All told it took about an hour and felt sooo good. Ah democracy. Don't fail us now.

Then I went back to middle school. No, really. I'm spending the day with some 8th graders at a Middle School in Minneapolis talking about global citizenship. I'm making the connection between the right and responsibility to vote and the responsibility to understand issues beyond our borders and take action to resolve global issues or respond to injustices.

At the beginning of class, the students get to vote and the comments I've been hearing have varied. Some highlights include, "do I have to?" (teacher's answer: no - its your right as a citizen to abstain from voting), "what are these other categories?" (of course, people know about the presidential race, and maybe the senate races, but not much beyond that), "it's stupid just to vote based on race" (there was an interesting discussion/argument about this in the largely African American class) and "all these people are running for president?" (this girl was appalled that she hadn't heard of them...which I can understand. The teacher said it was their fault that they hadn't gotten their name out there more...which is a pretty oversimplified explanation, but it wasn't really the time to go into party politics). Anyway, it's been an interesting morning. (Oh and in case you're wondering...it's lunchtime:)

And just to make the connection between peace and this election, I just want to point out how lucky we are that we don't have to fear a military coup, rebellion or violent uprisings at the end of the day. Sure some people may not be happy with the result. But even 8 years ago when we didn't have a clear winner there was no mass violence. We don't hear about everything, and I'm sure there have been some instances of intimidation, but when you compare our election to so many others, I think we should all feel pretty lucky that our election is so peaceful. Even if it is long as hell.

Live from PJSA - Day 3

Today was the final -- and perhaps most productive -- day of the conference. The morning plenary wasn't terribly interesting, but I then went into a sizeable (for this event) workshop on building peace studies curricula in community colleges. It was incredibly fascinating learning about different approaches, the terrific array of opportunities that are in some ways unique to the community college population, and the trials and tribulations of getting courses and programs approved. Of course, I also enjoyed being able to shed some light on the internationalization of this kind of work. I followed up the workshop with a meeting by the higher education outreach person at a major peace organization, and we had a great time brainstorming ideas.

At lunch time, we were quite lucky that the Portland farmers market was being held right outside the conference building, so I had a tasty, fresh, mostly organic lunch, and then stocked up on food for the plane ride tomorrow. There not being much on the conference program of interest for a few hours, I took a long walk through town, which helped me get a slightly better feel for the place.

I wrapped up the day at a small session on creating social change agents through study abroad programs, which is exactly the kind of information I came here to get. There were just a few of us, but the programming the presenters described sounded exceptional, and is probably a good model for making international student exchange about something more than just going someplace where you can enjoy tasty new food and fine art.

All in all, the conference has been what I had hoped it would be. There are clearly some organizational issues that need to be worked out, but since this is still a slightly new event hosted by a pretty small association, that is to be expected. On the whole, it was quite worthwhile.

We now return to our regularly scheduled peaceniks programming, already in progress.

Live from PJSA - Day 2

The morning began with an incredible plenary session on "colorizing and localizing" the peace movement. The two speakers made a point of stressing an issue I've grappled with for some time, namely the peace movement's complete failure to deal with issues of race. The [predominately white] movement even refuses to admit to its own racism. Of course, this makes building a truly broad and inclusive peace movement impossible. One of the two also pointed out that the peace movement needs a strategy for moving forward. He noted that while the vast majority of the American public is now opposed to the continuation of the Iraq war, the movement has offered no viable way to end it, other than saying "end it." If so many agree on that, why can't the peace (and perhaps separately, the conflict resolution) community offer some suggestions for next steps?

After that fun, there was a fascinating session on using English as a second language classes as a means to teach peace studies, which fits in very neatly with the day job (and is why I'm here). Another plenary followed, which was rather run of the mill until the inimitable Betty Reardon started going over her latest theorizing around issues of patriarchy and the war system. One of many money quotes: "I saw a magazine cover last week that said 'Sarah Palin: the new face of feminism.' If that's the case, I'm post-feminist." This was followed up with a smaller breakout with Reardon and a colleague of hers on patriarchy and peace pedagogy, which was great, but sadly didn't have enough time. A final afternoon session proved... well....

On the whole, I've made some good contacts and have been able to talk to a few people about my work project. The event is pretty small -- maybe 300 or so participants -- but there are some good connections to be made. I even ran into the director of the peace and conflict studies program at my alma mater, where I was too indecisive to major in peace and conflict studies.

Finally, a few critiques:

• The program needs to list session abstracts.
• The 50-minute sessions are too short.
• They're trying to cram a bit too much into a day.
• They need some dedicated networking space, and perhaps some meet and mingle events.

Tomorrow is another full day, with a few meetings to have, and a few more sidebar conversations to seek out.