The plight of Afghan women cannot be overstated. My first experience of them was in Chicago when a group of young women who had been studying in Canada and were lobbying to stop the war in Afghanistan formed Afghans for Peace. They joined Iraq Veterans against the war on a march against NATO in 2012.
My collaborator, Adjunct Professor Suellen Semekoski of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, had invited me over to experience how art and non-violence training could bring peace to a volatile situation. The thought of putting those things together seemed like the most unrealistic combination ever. Suellen, along with Ken Butigan of Pace e Bene, had already done some training with veterans over a long weekend.
Although Ken was doing the training as an independent, the organisation he was working for – Pace e bene – is a peace organisation that started with the Catholic Church and although it still has spiritually at its core, it has become pretty non-denominational. They do amazing work all over the world and have an excellent online training programme.
My experience that year in Chicago was to go to a cool gallery that Suellen designated a ‘non-violent gallery’, which seemed curious to me. “Well, we are just declaring this gallery as non-violent,” she said. First we had some young Vietnamese women turn up to make art, then slowly the gallery filled up with Vietnam veterans, then Iraq veterans. We made some art and proceeded with non-violence training. At one point the young women who were Afghans for Peace came into the room and everyone got a bit edgy, but I will always remember the passion and power of how they spoke.
Full article by Bronagh Lawson at the link below
