Peace Talks Radio

This time on Peace Talks Radio, how sports can be used to point to peace. While sports headlines these days are as much about pro football players facing domestic violence,  child abuse, shooting crime charges and crippling game injuries, there are still examples of the potential for sports to bring together athletes from all ethnicities, nationalities and sexual preferences to bond and celebrate the fun, skill and mutual respect of sport.  We spotlight an annual sporting event that on the surface may seem sort of small – a two day summer basketball camp in the border city of El Paso, Texas.  But the hearts behind the camp seem sort of large and the perspective the camp offers is sort of large too.  Carol Boss talked with Rus Bradburd, one of the directors of "Basketball In The Barrio." Bradburd is a former collegiate basketball player and coach who both loves sports, sees some potential for good in it, but also doesn’t especially like where sports has come to sit in the order of priorities.  He was led to us

This is the second of two programs exploring the special challenges of raising boys into becoming young men who DON’T turn to violence and crime and sexual domination. Young boys and sex will be the focus of this program. Among the statistics that we heard in the first program are these sex-related crimes – the super huge majority committed by men, young men or boys – 87% of stalkers are male, 86% of domestic violence assaults resulting in physical injury are done by males, 99% of rapes are committed by males. Some high profile rapes and shootings have involved a certain misogyny like the apparently misogynistic mass shooting in 2014 in Santa Barbara by a young man who seemed to be settling the score with young women who wouldn't go out with him. These cases have many of us wondering. Not wondering so much about where those messages are coming from. Everybody seems to know that although we debate which is more at fault, the misogynistic messages and perpetration of sexual myths come from other adults, s

Statistics show that males commit about 90% of all the murders and almost all of the other violent crime in the United States.  On these programs, we’ve chosen to not just list the symptoms and multiple sources contributing to the culture of violence in the U.S., but to look upstream to learn what parents and the community can do to understand why some boys and men are drawn to violent themes and sometimes turn violent.  We’re asking our panel, what we can do to catch our boys and young men before they fall into the abyss of the criminal justice system or worse, lose their lives and take others with them.  Our next episode will focus on the sometimes confused takes on gender and sexual roles that young men sometimes develop - becoming misogynistic, domineering and sometimes violent  in their intimate relationships. Suzanne Kryder hosts. Our guests include a former educator in San Francisco who left teaching behind to study youth violence and try to end it.  Dr. Joseph Marshall runs the Omega Boys Club/Street

August 20, 2013, school clerk Antoinette Tuff was at her job at a Suburban Atlanta elementary school of 800 students. She was only temporarily filling in at the front office, when an agitated 20 year old man carrying an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition came in threatening to open fire. Now you may not remember this story because it only made news for about a day or two. There were no deaths, there was no community in mourning, no reporters camping out for the funerals a week later, and there was no shooter turning the gun on himself or a good guy with a gun finishing the suspect off. There was, however, Antoinette Tuff, the 46 year old school clerk there , using calm words, empathy and compassion --- while most of the time, having an open line to the 911 operator…and truly being in the line of fire. In part, what Antoinette Tuff employed was a kind of nonviolent communication that we’ve covered before on PEACE TALKS RADIO. We go back into our archive to re-visit one of tho

If one had a philosophical or religious objection to military service, why would they volunteer? The modern CO application, as it’s called, comes from those who sign up for service, but come to their conscientious objection during their tour of duty, like Dante Searcy and Fanny Garcia who tell us their stories of being granted “CO” status on this program. Also on this program, we hear from Maria Santelli, the Executive Director of the Center on Conscience and War, an organization that began in 1940 and today offers assistance to people like Searcy and Garcia to prepare their Conscientious Objection applications that go before Pentagon Panels for review. We placed three calls over the course of a week to the public affairs office at the Pentagon to get the Defense Department take on the Conscientious Objector discussion, but no one returned our calls.

Suzanne Kryder, co-founder of Peace Talks Radio, hosts this exploration of the world of disability two years after experiencing an AVM, an arteriovenous malformation, which disabled her in 2012, compromising her speech and movement. She shares details of her experience living with the disability and offers some ideas about how the disabled and non-disabled world can get along better. She also asks others about it - attendees at a 2013 disability conference and a college professor and researcher whosuffered a spinal injury herself and has written about these issues.

This episode features two stories born in World War 2. A Japanese man who was only 5 in 1945, but survived the Atomic Bomb blast in Hiroshima that led to the end of the war in the Pacific. He visited the U.S. recently to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. Also, an excerpt from a mid-1990's talk by the late Miep Gies (meep-geese), who helped hide Anne Frank's family from the Nazi's in World War 2. Ms. Gies was the one who found Anne Frank's now-famous diary. And a chat with foreign aid proponent Jamie Drummond. All on the next edition of Peace Talks Radio.

This program will trace the influences on Chavez, as a child, young man and adult, that led him on a path to nonviolence. We'll also recall the major moments during his campaigns when his dedication to nonviolence and social justice were put to the test. We'll talk with Dolores Huerta, his colleague, friend and co-founder of the UFW. Also Jose-Antonio Orosco, whose book "Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence" seeks to elevate Chavez as an original thinker, who added significantly to the peacemaking toolkits of more celebrated nonviolence heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Finally, we hear from Texas community organizer Juanita Valdez-Cox, who worked the fields there with her family in the 1950's and 60's and recalls Chavez and Huerta leading the organization of farm workers in her state. Our guests will discuss what Chavez' own actions and theories about nonviolence have to offer to our daily lives as well as how they can be used to address today's social and political issues. Archi

You’ll hear from Dr. Vincent Harding, Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado and a personal friend and speech writing colleague of Dr. King in the 1960’s. Also mixed into our program, you’ll hear Dr. Clayborne Carson, who at Coretta Scott King’s request, has been directing the King Papers Project since 1985. Dr. Carson established the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in 2005. The speeches these scholars chose were… King’s last address, the night before his assassination in Memphis in April, 1968. Also, the speech he made a year to the day before he was killed, called “Beyond Vietnam,” in which Dr. King came out publicly and explicitly in opposition to the Vietnam War. And from March of 1965, Dr. King’s remarks that he made at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery marches, considered a turning point in the struggle for Voting Rights and equality for African Americans.

The program features conversations about restorative justice programs, peace journalism, activism to prevent gun violence, a winning domestic violence prevention project, and the peacemaking roots of Mothers' Day. Also excerpts of our programs about Nelson Mandela, Peace Pilgrim and Sister Peggy O'Neill. And we'll recap our countdown of the Top Ten Peace Songs of all time. Paul Ingles hosts.

A new e-book for young people by Alex Paramo helps children understand and appreciate multi-culturalism, cooperation, forgiveness and more. Also positive thinking researcher and Ted Talk star Shawn Achor talks about his 2013 book Before Happiness . And John Dear, an internationally known peacemaker, organizer, and lecturer talks about the blueprint for living set out in his book The Nonviolent Life.

In Minnesota, 38-year old Robert King is trying to make peace in his relationship with his wife. After 20 years of abusing women, Robert finally was forced into getting help through what’s now being referred to in domestic abuse circles as “The Duluth Model” - a Domestic Abuse Intervention Program – the heart of which is to get both offenders and victims to talk openly about their experiences, and to get multiple agencies to work cooperatively around the understanding gleaned from the true stories. So Robert King has been talking in these week after week sessions and learning how brutal he’s been to women and how to break the cycle of violence. We hear him tell his honest story as well as hear from the man who's been leading the sessions Robert's been attending. That's Scott Miller, system coordinator for the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, Minnesota. Also featured, Melissa Scaia, Executive Director of Advocates for Family Peace in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Carol Boss and Paul Ingles h

The hosts of Peace Talks Radio present a special program counting down the Top 10 Peace Songs since the late 1960's. Also featured are honorable mention selections that didn't quite make the list.

While in prison from 1964 to 1990, Mandela became a symbol for the apartheid resistance which withstood bloody massacres and continued oppression while Mandela and other resistance leaders were in jail. Pressure from both within and outside of South Africa resulted in political changes that resulted in Mandela’s release and the allowance of parties like the African National Congress. Mandela helped negotiate the end of apartheid policies and was elected president of South Africa, a post he held from 1994 to 1999. Today, we’ll hear some of our former Peace Talks Radio guests who, during our interviews with them assessed the importance and impact of Mandela’s life and example. We’ll hear from others too, including radio producer Joe Richman who researched Mandela’s life for over a year to produce the 2004 series and special Mandela: An Audio History. Joe’s allowing us to excerpt some of the more compelling moments from his award-winning series which blended archival tape, news reports, old and new intervie

In this episode, we’ll hear the stories of three people . One, Colin Goddard, the survivor of the mass shooting in 2007 at Virginia Tech where 32 were killed by a disgruntled highly armed student. After 2 years of healing, he joined national efforts to promote mandatory background checks on gun sales. Second, we’ll talk with Annette Nance-Holt, the mother of an innocent 16 year old boy who was shot and killed on a Chicago city bus. She's helped start an organization called "Purpose Over Pain" that assists other families who've lost children to street violence as well as addresses some of the root causes of gang violence. And third, we’ll meet Scott Cameron, an Albuquerque father of two boys. When he heard of the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in CT in 2012, although he was 2,000 miles away, he began to organize in his own community, setting up events he thought might reduce the chances of a Sandy Hook happening in his city.

Do common conventions of reporting instead inflame conflict and omit viable non-violent options for resolving conflicts. Can severe hate speech and alarmist propagandathat threaten lives in developing nations be quelled with targeted training? Our conversation today starts with Steve Youngblood, the director for the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. Also we'll hear from Ugandan Journalist Gloria Laker who took Youngblood's "Peace Journalism" workshops in Uganda, then helped facilitate them to other journalists across her homeland. Finally, Humankind radio producer David Freudberg, who calls for the development of a "Peace Beat" at news organizations, offers his thoughts on the responsibilities of journalists to cover conflict thoughtfully.

The story of Julia Ward Howe's 1871 Proclamation for Peace and her call for a universal Mother's Day to promote peace and disarmament. Host Carol Boss talks with Kate Stickley, a direct descendent of Howe, and Jane Smith Bernhardt, an actor who portrays Howe onstage. Plus conversation with Susan Galleymore, author of a book called "Long Time Passing: Mothers Talk About War and Terror."

Two women, two elders, who deep into the later years of life, made peace their goal – one, Catholic Sister Peggy O’Neill landed in war-ravaged El Salvador in the 1980’s and has been there ever since. The other, a woman who in 1981 had a 28 year personal campaign for peace come to an abrupt end when she had just turned 73. In 1953, Mildred Norman changed her name to Peace Pilgrim and started walking for peace. She kept doing it until the day she died.

Restorative Justice programs often bring offenders, victims, family members and other stakeholders in the society together to work through what happened, to identify the harm done and together to work out appropriate punishment and possible restitution. There have been examples of restorative justice style practices throughout history. As you’ll hear from some of our guests, many cite the talking circle model practiced by First Nation and Native American Communities as an inspiration for today’s restorative justice programs. Maybe the most well-known application of restorative justice practices in recent history has been the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission assembled in the mid- 1990’s in the aftermath of the abolition of apartheid. Although there were critics of the commission – which granted amnesty to about 1 in 10 offenders who went through the process, generally the TRC was thought of as successful in promoting honesty and healing in the country. But parts of the restorative justic

Engaging, inspiring and informational clips from episodes featured on Peace Talks Radio, the series on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution, between 2002 and 2012. Among the voices you'll hear: Jimmy Carter, Jody Williams, Arun Gandhi, Daniel Goleman, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Marshall Rosenberg, Byron Katie and more...on ways to reduce conflict in our own lives and around the world.