2017 UN International Day of Peace Boston

Sunday 24th September 2017 at 1 pm

Boston Common near the Park Street MBTA Station

Music, Dance, Song, Poetry,

Artwork, & Peace Education

Face-painting and Activities for Children

Followed by

Walk to Garden of Peace

then

Workshops

Premiere of "Peace and the Planet:

War, the Environment, and Your Taxes"

and

Play for Peace: Praxis Exploring Ethics and Strategies of

Peace & Justice Organizing

Beacon Hill Friends House

6 Chestnut Street, Boston

and

Values Over Violence - Political Culture of Forgiveness

and Reconciliation: Unavoidable Challenge for Human Survival

Church on the Hill (Swedenborgian)

140 Bowdoin Street, Boston

starting at 3:30 PM

United Nations Theme for 2017 International Day of Peace:

"Together for Peace: Respect, Safety and Dignity for All"

This year's program includes the following:

Sofia Wolman

Sofia is pursuing the Masters of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School.

Wompimeequin Wampatuck

Wompimeequin Wampatuck comes from a long line of royal Chief Sachems, including his relative Wampatuck, who was claimed by the English settlers to have "sold" to the British all of "his" land, including a great portion of Massachusetts State and the land on which the City of Boston was established. Young Sachem Larry Fisher, known as Wompimeequin Wampatuck, who traditionally bears the name of this ancestor, currently serves as the Tribal Chief Sachem for the Mattakeeset Tribe of the Massachuset Indian peoples, and also represents many more indigenous peoples and organizations in various capacities.

Wompimeequin is president of the Living Curators of the Americas for the Sunshine of the Americas Foundation; National Director for NACHP (National Association for Cultural Heritage Preservation); founder of PGGR (Promoting Government-to-Government Relationships), lead facilitator for the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Massachusetts); Indigenous representative for the United Nations NGO South West Native Cultures; Indigenous youth representative for United Nations NGO New Future Foundation; Board Director for United Nations NGO African Views in consultative status with ECOSOS Economic and Social Council; and ambassador of the United Indigenous Peoples and Tribes of the World to the World Energy Forum. In 2016 Wompimeequin was appointed as Chair of the Aboriginal and Indigenous Peoples session for the World Energy Forum, and is the newly appointed Global Chief Organizer for Indigenous world governments at Global Green.

In 2015, Chief Sachem Wompimeequin was acknowledged publicly of his most honorable position as Tribal Chief Sachem. In October of 2015 Chief Sachem Wompimeequin was granted an unprecedented opportunity to speak in Washington D.C. at the White House for the Millions More Movement in front of 3 million people, and to address the conditions of Indigenous peoples and to offer an honor song to the world for peace and healing. Today this young visionary chief leads his community and many others in representing Indigenous peoples regarding the violations committed against them through his consultative status with United Nations NGOs, in order to assist governments with new viable solutions toward building and strengthening relationships between each other.

Chief Sachem Wompimeequin has worked in a number of ways on redressing past mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. One important achievement has been to improve the situation for Indigenous people through his leadership in developing effective systemic mechanisms for universities, by challenging practices and implementing favorable admission requirements for Indigenous students as a proper form of redress for universities who have benefited from urban development on sacred ancestral sites that was done without the free prior or informed consent of the Indigenous people concerned. Wompimeequin has also assisted research institutions, scientists, archeologists, and historians through his extensive assessments and evaluation reports pertaining to Indigenous knowledge. He has worked with mental health physicians in extensive research on the effects of epigenetics and is currently developing medical terminology to fit untreated illnesses caused by insidious and trans-generational traumas that may only be diagnosed by the indigenous person affected. Wompimeequin has worked extensively on assisting in reducing everyday psychological trans-generational trauma inflicted on indigenous peoples. Not only has Wompimeequin worked closely with City of Boston archeologists to carefully reexamine Boston's historical infrastructure around culturally monitoring land digs, but he has also investigated laws, ordinances, and policies that disenfranchise Indian peoples, and helped to eliminate forms of genocide -- whether paper or physical -- meaning to bring light to mistaken identity or classification, and has assisted tribes in negotiating with those who oppose their existence as well as drafting recommendations for states and governments to model after.

Wompimeequin continues to lead in the recovery of sacred sites, intellectual properties, and archeological digs done on Indigenous settlement villages through illegal conveyance, as well as the recovery of conservation lands illegally conveyed to conservation commissions. He is working in a collaborative effort with grass root organizations around the U.S. to bring awareness to states and to assist in righting the wrongs for Indigenous people, and continues his message of peace, harmony, and balance.

Chief Sachem Wompimeeqquin is finishing up his first book, "The Unearthed Doctrine of Paleo America," and working on a dissertation to obtain an honorary degree of Doctor in the history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences while introducing the complex theory and study of Mental Health Sovereignty.

Raymond Street Klezmer Band

The Raymond Street Klezmer Band plays the music of the Jewish culture often enjoyed at celebrations, social gatherings, and weddings. Since the Middle Ages, Jewish musicians, known as klezmorim, have traveled all over Europe. The music they played was a blend of many musical influences of Eastern Europe and circus music. The klezmorim acted as court musicians for sultans and caliphs, kings, and emperors. They also performed at both Jewish and Christian celebrations, in synagogues, as street musicians, for weddings, at pubs, fairs and community festivals. Jewish immigrants introduced Klezmer music to the United States. Once in the US, the music incorporated influences from jazz and vaudeville. The Raymond Street Klezmer Band is based in southern New Hampshire and has played at a variety of festivals and community gatherings. They represented New Hampshire in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., appeared at the Lowell Folk Festival and the state fairs of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The band members are: Sandy Dickens (vocalist), Alan Green (clarinet, saxophone, vocalist), Ruth Weiner-Harris (accordion), Gordon Hegfield (keyboard), Ray Aucoin (percussion), Bruce Smith (bass, vocalist).

Brian Quirk

Brian has worshiped with the Lawrence/Andover Quakers since 2003, and played bagpipes since 1980.

He is a member of the Merrimack Valley People for Peace in North Andover and the Sutherland Pipe Band in Natick.

Tunes he'll play during the walk to the Garden of Peace will come from this collection: Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya, Danny Boy, Mist Covered Mountains,

A Man's a Man for a'That, Flowers of the Forest, Balmoral/The Green Hills of Tyroll/When the Battle's Over, Lullaby for the Dead, and Fields of Athenry.

Zenaida Peterson

Zenaida is a fire starter, a southern green witch and a queer of color who likes the wind chimes outside her window and giving rocks to people they love. By day, Zenaida works at VISIONS, Inc., an anti-oppression consulting company. By night and weekend, Zenaida is a poet and organizer. Zenaida has competed in 5 collegiate and national poetry competitions, placing in the top ten each time. Most recently, Zenaida was on the House Slam team placing 3rd nationally and is currently organizing the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam, the first slam tournament for feminine people happening this October. Zenaida believes the softness and floral of people is silenced too often. They also believe everything they hear, so you shouldn’t lie to them. Zenaida unwrites the lies they've been given. Zenaida also unwrites violence, misogyny, racism and their ancestors’ curses.

Dr. Rodney Petersen

Rodney L. Petersen, PhD, is Executive Director, Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries; Executive Director, The Lord's Day Alliance of the U.S.; Visiting Researcher, Center for Global Christianity and Mission, Boston University School of Theology.

National Liturgical Dance Network -

Massachusetts Chapter

The National Liturgical Dance Network – Massachusetts (NLDN-Mass) provides organizational development and leadership training to Christians who participate in, lead or have a vision to begin liturgical dance ministries at their respective churches or for independent ministries. NLDN—Mass strives to:

Help dance ministries witness to the unsaved through dance, and to edify God’s kingdom by enhancing the praise and worship experience for the church universal;
Promote the development of an intimate relationship with God through praise and worship;
Provide ongoing training, support and resources for dance ministers that will help them continually mature as leaders over their respective ministries;
Transform people into leaders that can submit, support and complement the authority of their church or independent ministry; direct a group with authority, compassion, confidence, and commitment; and
Provide outreach opportunities for worshippers to go outside of their respective churches and share God’s love with others.

NLDN-Mass is comprised of children, youth and adult worshippers from churches and independent ministries across the Commonwealth.

Dr. Abdel-Ramen Ibrahim Mohamed

Dr. Abdel-Rahman Ibrahim Mohamed is the Director of Communications for the Islamic Council of New England and a professor at the Boston Theological Institute.

Toussaint Liberator

Toussaint Liberator is a man born to sing. An Indiana transplant who was heavily steeped in the Gospel scene, this singer/songwriter and dynamic performer learned the ropes from his Mama who was the lead soloist in his church choir and his Papa who was the Pastor. He first received international recognition when he wrote and recorded the soulful album No Place Like Soul with the group Soulive in 2007. Next was a solo project called Black Gold released in 2010 on I Grade Records based in St. Croix and with that record established himself in the reggae world. His voice has been described as “raspy silk” the versatility of his voice has allowed him to share the stage with musical legends such as the Rolling Stones, Wyclef Jean, Talib Kweli, and Burning Spear to name a few. When he isn’t performing, he spends his time as a social justice advocate living and working in the Boston area teaching West African drumming and anti-racism workshops within schools, prisons, and churches. His love of music connects instantly with his fans through his gritty, authentic performance leaving the audience uplifted and spiritually moved.

Robert Lewis

Robert A. Lewis is a VISIONARY, LEADER, EDUCATOR, INNOVATOR AND WINNER. A tireless advocate for prison reform, youth development, entrepreneurship and financial empowerment.

Miranda Henne

Cellist Miranda Henne is a passionate player and dedicated teacher. Watch her live and you might hear classical, folk or her own improvisations. She is currently touring with “Regeneration” by Dr. Nancy Rappaport, a one-woman play about Rappaport’s journey with breast cancer. Miranda improvises the music, bringing listeners to deep emotional and spiritual places. In addition to upcoming shows with Dr. Rappaport in New York City, Washington D.C. and Iowa City, Miranda’s schedule includes solo and chamber performances in Boston.

Highlights of Miranda’s stylistically varied career include a solo performance with the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra and two appearances at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. She has also shared the improv, rock and folk stage with the likes of Mike Mills from R.E.M., Abigail Washburn, Mike Block, Rushad Eggleston, fiddler Bruce Molsky and the piri and Saengwhang player Gamin. In 2012, Miranda collaborated with Shen Wei, choreographer of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Ceremony, to create and premiere The New You, featuring her musical improvisation. She has also worked with and premiered pieces by composers such as Libby Larson.

Miranda maintains a private cello studio in Boston, MA and coaches chamber music for the Northeast Massachusetts Youth Orchestras and the Lexington Chamber Music Center. During the summer, she teaches cello, improvisation and poetry writing at Friends Music Camp at Earlham College in Indiana. While residing in Dallas, TX, her cello students advanced to All Region Orchestra with twenty students winning top honors at the 2014 Plano I.S.D. Solo Contest. In her twelve years of teaching, her students have ranged from ages 8-80.

Miranda holds a B.A. in Music with a minor in English from the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University and a M.M. from Southern Methodist University. In 2015, she studied at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. As an undergraduate, Miranda spent a semester studying Shakespeare’s plays in Oxford, U.K. and a month in Wallacedene, South Africa helping local high school students write and produce a musical play. An avid runner and soccer fan, Miranda played on the champion intramural team at Southern Methodist University and continues to play in Boston.

Cole Harrison

Cole is Executive Director of Massachusetts Peace Action. He is on the coordinating committee of the Budget for All Massachusetts campaign, recently renamed the Massachusetts People's Budget Campaign. He is a co-founder of the People's Budget Campaign, and leads Peace Action's national Move the Money Working Group. He is a member of the planning committee of United for Justice with Peace (UJP) and coordinated the Afghanistan Working Group of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and served on its coordinating committee from 2010 to 2012. Born in Delhi, India, he has a B.A. from Harvard in applied mathematics and a M.S. from Northeastern in computer science. He worked for the Symphony Tenants Organizing Project and the Fenway News in the 1970s, participated in the Jamaica Plain Committee on Central America (JP COCA) in the 1980s, and worked as a software developer and manager at CompuServe Data Technologies, Praxis Inc., and Ask.com before joining Peace Action in 2010. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts.

Ian Harrington

A lifelong Quaker, Ian is a member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge. A retired transportation planner and grandfather of three, Ian is co-chair of International Day of Peace Boston and has been part of the organization since its inception in 2010.

John Gross

John Gross was born in Bridgeton New Jersey 1958, the brother of six sisters. At the age of 10 he relocated to Boston Massachusetts with his father where he would continue his primary and secondary schooling. Gross always had an interest in writing, dealing with hatred from his father's side of the family being biracial (African American/Mexican) - it was a safe haven, a place to escape. The first inspiration came from watching his mother's pain and wanting to heal her, so he began to write. Throughout his life he would find himself reverting to writing, whether it was to release emotions or voice an opinion, it has always been his choice of therapy.

When Gross entered high school, his father opened a grocery store along side an oil company. By Gross' junior year in high school he was working for the family business, delivering oil. Common in most households approaching adulthood, Goss and his father began to bump heads, so after high school Gross joined the military where he would spend the next few years of his life.

Upon his return, Gross began to work for the family oil company again. Gross then ventured off to purchase his own truck where he would become an over-road truck driver. Driving close to two million miles across our country, Gross met people from all walks of life, but one thing he noticed was the common denominators across black communities in which mirrored his own all too often. This, alongside a few other things, sparked his interest to really get back into writing.

1968 being one of the saddest years modern America has experienced, writing was his equalizer. Battling a divorce, the absence of his children, and the harsh realities of life, Gross realized he has yet to experience peace. Living through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and watching the Vietnam war unfold, he saw this world has always been in turmoil. Writing being the place where he still escapes to, Gross feels voices need to be felt rather than heard at this point.

Victoria Grimes

Victoria is a graduate of Northeastern University with a Bachelor's Degree in Communication Studies. She has been working in Governor Baker's office for two years now, and she is currently serving as the Executive Assistant to the Senior Advisor as well as a Program Coordinator for the Operations office.

Joseph Gerson

Joseph Gerson is Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Peace and Economic Security Program and Executive Director of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security. He organizes and educates at local, national and international levels for peaceful and just alternatives to U.S. foreign and military policies, concentrating on great power tensions, nuclear weapons abolition, the impacts of U.S. foreign military bases, and Pentagon spending. He serves as Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau, co-convenes the Peace & Planet international network and is a member of the No to NATO/No to War steering committee. He is recently returned from the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and an IPB delegation to Okinawa. His books include Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World, The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of U.S. Foreign Military Bases, and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination.

Kaeza Fearn

Kaeza Fearn is committed to serving the world on a trajectory toward awakened, embodied care, honesty and interconnectedness. A sacred circle dancer for many years, Kaeza leads Global Circle Dance Meditation in the Boston area and is a guest teacher in other groups around New England. A pianist-singer-composer and performer, she teaches at music schools and is a music director at a Unitarian church. She is also co-founder of DevotionFest and summits coordinator at the change-mobilizing organization The Shift Network. kaezafearn.com

Ghanda DiFiglia

After seven years as a teacher, five of them with special needs children, Ghanda Di Figlia has been affiliated with Unitarian Universalist organizations where she worked closely with the denomination's religious educators. She also wrote a history of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee to mark the organization's fiftieth anniversary. As a member of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee, Friends Meeting at Cambridge, she has long worked on issues of peace and justice. She retired in 2006 as Department Administrator in the Philosophy Department at Harvard. In retirement, she is pursuing her interest in writing and editing with several projects, including two film scripts, in process.

Her works include:

Books:

Roots and Visions: The First Fifty Years of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Home from Bethlehem, A children’s picture book about what happened to the three Wise Men after they returned home. (self published)

Video Script:

Peace and the Planet: War, the Environment, and Your Taxes (Friends Meeting at Cambridge)

Editing:

Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War (Beacon Press)

Rodney Dailey

Rev. Rodney E. Dailey is co-chair and emcee of International Day of Peace Boston. He is the founder of two successful youth development and violence prevention organizations, Gang Peace and Street Peace.

Clementina Chéry

Chaplain Clementina (Tina) Chéry is the founder, President, and CEO of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute. With over two decades of experience as a survivor serving families impacted by murder, Chaplain Chéry has developed the best practices in the field of homicide response. Her ultimate goal is to transform society’s response to homicide so that all families are treated with dignity and compassion, regardless of the circumstances.

Chaplain Chéry and the Peace Institute were selected as 2016 Social Innovators by the Social Innovation Forum in recognition of the Institute’s groundbreaking solutions to social problems. Chaplain Chéry has developed innovative tools for families of murder victims and the providers who serve them, including “Always in My Heart: A Workbook for Grieving Children” (2011) and the Survivors Burial and Resource Guide (2013). Chaplain Chéry is also coauthor of an article entitled “Homicide Survivors: Research and Practice Implications” published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2005.

Chaplain Chéry has extensive experience training public health professionals and law enforcement officials to better serve families impacted by murder and interrupt cycles of retaliatory violence. She has trained doctors, social workers, psychologists, street workers, religious leaders, police officers, homicide detectives, and other providers at city and state agencies, hospitals, and community-based organizations. Chaplain Chéry has presented at the National Organization for Victims Assistance conference three times. Chaplain Chéry worked closely with the Boston Police Department to establish the Family Resource Officer position on the force to better serve families of homicide victims.

Chaplain Chéry has received countless awards in recognition of her courageous leadership and tireless peacemaking work. Most recently, Chéry was named one of Boston’s 100 most influential leaders of color in 2016 by Collette Phillips Communications, Inc. She was also given the 2016 Impact Award by Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard University. In 2014, Salem State University Awarded Chaplain Chéry the Champion of Peace Award. She was named Citizen of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers in 2011. Chaplain Chéry holds honorary Doctorate Degrees from Regis College in Weston and Mount Ida College in Newton. She was ordained as a senior chaplain with the International Fellowship of Chaplain, Inc. in February of 2012.