Making Peace: Meditations on Activism

Thousand Waves is a community where traditional martial arts and self-defense training includes an emphasis on personal responsibility, conflict resolution, self-worth, and compassion in action. We are deeply concerned with violence in our lives, our community and in the world. 

Making Peace: Meditations on Activism is a quarterly free public lecture series that was inspired by an impromptu meditation class held at Thousand Waves after the September 11th attacks. The class provided a space to help members deal with the complex emotions of fear, sadness, anger, and confusion that the attacks engendered. It allowed members to share feelings and concerns and to begin to consider possible responses. Members expressed a desire to remain thoughtful and open-hearted in a stressful time and to seek ways to implement the principles of compassionate self-defense, not centered on revenge, embodied in Thousand Waves practice.

The Meditations on Activism series grew out of those discussions. It seeks to link individual and community experiences to events in the larger world and to deepen understanding of violence around the globe. Since 2003, Thousand Waves has periodically invited anti-violence activists to speak about their work and members of the public to listen and engage in dialogue with the speakers. Now offered quarterly, the Meditations on Activism series informs us about global conflicts, helps us draw connections between our lives and the causes of and solutions to violence, and provides a spur to discussion, reflection, and action.

Topic #24: Yuyanapaq: In Order to Remember

How can we convey the horror of 70,000 violent deaths? How can we rebuild a nation when some sectors of society remain oblivious of the suffering of the rest? In trying to come up with ways to present their findings to the nation, the members of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission conceived a photographic exhibit to help Peruvians face the horrors of their recent past. The curators of the exhibit, Nancy Chappell and Mayu Mohanna, combined aesthetics and history to evoke “compassion, solidarity, and reconstruction.”  The presentation will show slides of the photographs presented at the exhibit, as well as a multimedia CD distributed by the Center for Collective Memory and Human Rights. During the talk, Margarita Saona will reflect on the interaction of images and space in the attempt to provide a starting point for the healing of the nation.

Margarita Saona (PhD, Columbia University 1998) is the author of Novelas familiares: Figuraciones de la nación en la novela latinoamericana contemporánea. She has published several articles on gender in Latin American literature and culture, and is working on a book on the representation of masculinity in Peru. She has also presented several papers on memory and social trauma. Her article on the use of photography by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “The Knowledge that Comes from Seeing” will appear as part of a number of Hispanic Issues dedicated to Human Rights.  Margarita teaches Latin American literature at UIC. 

This free public program will take place on Sunday, December 7, 2008, from 3:00 – 4:30pm
Light refreshments provided.  RSVP not required. 
Held at our Center at 1220 W. Belmont in Chicago 

Click here for information on past speakers and topics in our Meditations on Activism Program.