Action Days Coast to Coast—Beaverton, OR and Maine, NY Take Action in Their Communities
This year’s Campaign Nonviolence Action Days is the biggest ever with 5,049 actions across the country and around the world. Part of our role is to uplift the incredible work of these organizers and action takers—so read about a few of them below! And if you’re taking action, don’t forget to tell us about it here.
Mary Ryan Hotchkiss of The Oregon Peace Builders in Beaverton, OR writes, “We organized a tabling event and Spirit of Grace church hosted a table, Preventing Gun Violence, as part of Campaign Nonviolence – Welcoming Week last Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023 in front of the Beaverton Library. We interacted with hundreds of passers-by and received overwhelming support on our casual survey asking for a ban of assault rifles. Tabling and reaching out in a public place was both informative and inspiring. Read some of the public’s comments here. We all had interesting and supportive conversations and made some new friends. We distributed stickers saying ‘I’m Concerned About Gun Violence,’ and handouts on nonviolence and de-escalation. We provided an Art Projects table for young peace-builders. Several other organizations participated including Westside Interfaith Neighbors and Habitat For Humanity.”
Of their second event, Mary Ryan told us, “Sunday, Sept. 24, the Nonviolence Team at Spirit of Grace church conducted a special service teaching the 6 Principles of Kingian Nonviolence which included 10 congregants providing reflections and prayers. The service was presented at two in-person services, 8:30 and 10:45am, with the later service broadcast on Zoom, live-streamed on YouTube and available to rewatch here. In total about 100 people participated. The service included pertinent Bible readings, explanations of the Principles of Nonviolence, personal reflections on those principles, hymns, and a children’s liturgy on nonviolence. The organizers and participants received many encouraging comments and requests to organize similar services in the future.”
Across the country, Jack Gilroy with Veterans For Peace in Maine, NY tells us about their International Day of Peace Children’s Fair on September 21. About 250 people got to celebrate together! Jack writes: “Veterans for Peace Chapter 90 works with Broome County (NY) and Pax Christi members to create meaningful actions for adults and children. There are children's fairs but we have the only Children's Peace Fair that we know of and would like to share. You can go to childrenspeacefair.org and bcpeaceaction.org to see what we do and what we hope becomes an international action each September 21st .
We are promoting our Children's Peace Fair around the world to help build a culture of nonviolence everywhere. We have been doing the fair on August 6th or 9th and had difficulty getting childfen to attend. This year a school district and just two eager teachers joined our effort allowing 125 kids from a suburban/urban area travel to their country cousins fith graders in a wonderful park setting with a magician who focused on the Golden Rule, games of peace, a peace photobooth, oragami making and trying on of Kimonos, bee keeper booth, bird songs by flute, Jennifer the Parrot lady (one flew away but came back to her shoulder) circle drumming, learning how to write ones name with Russian and Chinese characters, and so much more. It was a huge success.”