On April 23, Philadelphia will have the honor of hosting Johan Galtung, the principal founder of the field of Peace and Conflict Transformation studies and Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now for conversation about some of the most pressing issues of our times.

Location: Friends Center – 1515 Cherry Street, Philadelphia PA, 19102

2pm – 5pm    Workshop
What would a sane foreign policy look like? This workshop on conflict analysis and peace building will draw on Galtung’s TRANSCEND methodology while focusing on 15 different conflicts. Register now for this limited space event by emailing info@envisionpeacemuseum.org Cost is sliding scale ($20-$50); no one turned away for lack of funds.

5pm – 6:00pm    Reception: Join us for refreshments and frank conversation.

6pm – 7:30pm    Conversation between Johan Galtung and Amy Goodman
What are the connections between peace, justice, and economics? What role do movements like Occupy play in building democracy and constraining empire? What are the prospects for peace at home and abroad? This lecture is free and open to the public.
Register on the facebook event page: http://tinyurl.com/7sd23do

7:30 -8:30pm    Book Signing for Galtung’s new book, Reconciliation.
Professor Galtung will be joined by his co-author, Diane Perlman, PhD. Many of Galtung’s books will be available for purchase and signing.

Johan Galtung
Johan Galtung is a Norwegian mathematician and sociologist and the principal founder of the field of Peace and Conflict Transformation research. Galtung is a prolific researcher and has published more than 1000 articles and over 100 books
and mediated conflicts around the world. Economist and fellow peace researcher Kenneth Boulding said of Galtung that his
“output is so large and so varied that it is hard to believe that it comes from a human”. He was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize
in 1987, and has received many other accolades.

Amy Goodman
As host of the only national radio/TV news show free of all corporate underwriting, Amy Goodman is able to present a range of independent voices not often heard on the airwaves. “Dissent,” she explains, “is what makes this country healthy.” On October 1, 2008, Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, The Right Livelihood Award Foundation cited her work in “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”

Sometimes, curiosity leads to an entirely different life path, as Erica Chenoweth, PhD, discovered toward the end of graduate school. A scholar of violent conflict, she attended a workshop on nonviolent conflict at Colorado College as a skeptic, agreeing to participate in research she believed would support her viewpoint.

Instead, she discovered that nonviolent movements from 1900 through 2006 were more than twice as effective as violent insurgencies in accomplishing their objectives. “That was pretty shocking to me because I was coming from a totally different background. Now, that’s what I’m most excited about in my research – sharing that finding with pretty much anybody who will listen, in the hopes that it might change their minds about the best way to pursue what they want,” says Chenoweth, today an internationally- recognized authority on terrorism, counterterrorism, and nonviolent resistance.

Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and the author of three books including “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” Chenoweth believes that the Envision Peace Museum (EPM) can fill a critical void by demonstrating the long-term effectiveness of nonviolent campaigns in producing healthy societies.

“Even when violent campaigns win, they…end up institutionalizing a norm that says that in order to get what you want…you kill people, or torture them, or terrorize them, and most societies don’t end up emerging from that kind of a foundation without a pretty rocky road,” she says. “If you win by the sword, you’re going to rule by the sword. [Conversely], the experience of civil resistance often creates a sense of responsibility, responsiveness, and engagement in a way that violent resistance cannot.”

To a greater extent than their counterparts, nonviolent campaigns rely on the support of thousands of people with a clear consensus to succeed in their mission. Chenoweth says the recent Occupy Wall Street suffers from a lack of agreement that dilutes its effectiveness, with “half the country thinking the real culprit was over-regulation and high taxes, and the other half of the country thinking it was crazy over-spending, and corruption.” In contrast, the Ogoni tribe in Nigeria was successful in curtailing the use of its land for oil drilling, “because of almost universal support from its people,” she says.

Chenoweth’s vision for Envision Peace Museum would be a place where people with very difference experiences, agendas and viewpoints could come together to share the lessons they’ve learned with each other in a public way. These people would find empowerment in learning that “in some of the worst places in on earth, more people choose nonviolent resistance than violence to change what they see as intolerable circumstances. Whether you share with the Envision Peace Museum, which has traveling exhibits…or you have some sort of educational positions, like…fellowships or the person in-residence who will organize events and bring people together to educate the public and others – any of these would be really huge contributions.”

Thank you to our communication subcommittee members- Erica Woods for conducting the interviewing and Claudia Stahl for writing this article.

On March 29, 2012, Helen Caldicott, MD was honored with the 4th Annual Haas Award for International Peace & Social Justice, in recognition of her lifetime dedication to creating a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons.

The Envision Peace Museum co-sponsored the 2012 Awards Ceremony at the WHYY studios, commemorating the occasion with an interactive demonstration. Participants were invited to make their own photos, forming the flag semaphore letters N (for nuclear) and D (for disarmament) – the origins of the familiar Peace Symbol.

Watch the slide show below to see a selection of these images from the event.