What Does Building Peace in the Community Look Like?

Jan. 26, 2013 / By

sfnlbThis Sunday is the kick-off event for Long Beach’s local campaign for ‘Season for Nonviolence.’ The campaign is 64-day-long grassroots, media, and educational campaign beginning on Jan. 30– the anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. It ends on the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4.

The Association for Global New Thought co-founded the annual national campaign with the purpose of creating an awareness of nonviolent principles and practice as a way to heal, transform, and empower lives and communities.

The campaigns teachings can be a great supplement to the Long Beach landscape, where violence happens much too often. Recently, the community gathered together in an outcry after conflict with police put a Cambodian youth in the hospital in critical condition.

As a Corollary to the international event, Voicewaves will be launching our own campaign for nonviolence, in which we will highlight peacemakers from the community and share their stories of progress through our website.

We caught up with some community leaders at a parade last Saturday to talk to them about building peace. The parade marked the end of our local celebration of ‘Peace-Week’ in honor of the lives of MLK, Mohandas Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Daisaku Ikeda.

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Patrick Moreno

Patrick Moreno is a graduate of the CSULB department of journalism. He wrote for the Daily 49er and spent more than a year with VoiceWaves reporting on the diverse communities of Long Beach. Originally from Ventura California, Moreno studied photography for 5 years before transferring to CSULB to work on his writing. At the heart of his work is Moreno's love for culture and the arts, but it is through factual and fair reporting that he hopes to transform his community into a place where people can express themselves and continue to thrive. Patrick is also a musician, artist and photographer, beach bum, and capoerista!