Update: Proposals for Presenting are no longer being accepted.
The Planning Council for the Sustainability Summit is seeking Presentation Proposals from the community. There are three groups of presentations being sought fitting the flow of the Summit.
Multi-media presentations: Opening Ceremony ~ depicting current social construct vs living the new earth. Indigenous Universal laws. Universal Declaration of human rights. Morning media presentation integrated with speakers, poets, visual arts ~ Showcasing evolutionary models in Detroit, those who hold visions for models to be implemented and giving voice to models around the world that could be implemented in Detroit.
Bridging the Gap between Current Culture and a New Collaborative Culture
Community Open Forum Dialogue for sharing and writing a document that voices the values and beliefs of the current culture vs. the Beloved Community. Speakers/Poets and community voicing both. Peter Hammer speaking on beliefs and conditioning. The impact beliefs and conditioning have on our lives, our relationships, our systems and how they keep us in a culture of separation. Part One of Public call with Peter Hammer and David Korten for building the new Earth. Continue reading Presentations for Sustainability Summit→
Acknowledging Committee & Contributors: Barbara Beesley, Kim Bergier, Stephen Boyle, Brenda Bryant, Lila Cabbil, Linda Campbell, Paula Cathcart, Cass Charrette, Will Copeland, Jesse Cox, Susan deCaussin, Margaret Dwyer, Alicia Renee Farris, Richard Feldman, Peter Hammer, Darryl Eley Jordan, Joe Kochajda, Gloria Lowe, Gloria Rivera, Helen Weber,
Mike Whitty, Gwendolyn Winston, and expanding. Full list will be posted on website. http://www.CiiesOfPeaceDetroit.com
The Sustainability Summit is coming up within a month. Join our email news list to keep up to date with upcoming events.
The conversation around “Two Detroits” and the many dichotomies being lived feeds our perception of difference and divide. Sometimes there are simply omissions and these can lead to misconceptions.
The article posted lists 5 ways to bring about an “Our Detroit” from Two Detroits as prevailing perception offers. Skillman Foundation CEO Tonya Allen references the work Martin Luther King Jr did with the Beloved Community. We at Cities of Peace Detroit see a requirement for the Beloved Community to be embraced here in Detroit.
Women Creating Caring Communities is holding a conference celebrating International Women’s Day on Saturday, March 14 from 10am-3pm. Registration and continental breakfast begins at 9am. The location is UAW-GM Center for Human Resources, 200 Walker, Detroit
We received this wonderful email and simply have to share it with you.
Greetings! I hope this message finds you well. I recently learned about an amazing opportunity, and thought I would be remiss if I didn’t share it with you, given that it’s a special opportunity to help build the beloved community in Detroit, and to explore the healing of personal and collective wounds.
It’s a 16-week online training designed and led by James O’Dea, past President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, co-director of The Social Healing Project, and former Director of Amnesty International (D.C. office). I took the class two year ago, and it was absolutely phenomenal. It cost $600 to attend when I took it, but this year they are offering a special “United Detroit city-wide initiative,” for those invested in building the beloved community in Detroit, for an incredibly low fee. This is a HUGE opportunity! I have signed up to take the course again, and am looking forward to what may result from connecting with others invested in peace and healing in Detroit.
The course explores five pillars of peacebuilding:
Deep personal peace
Healing personal and collective wounds
Communicating peace
Mastering systems change
Activating and organizing for peace
Lecturers for the class this year include:
Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi (I listened to his pre-recorded lecture two years ago and it blew me away to hear him describe his personal experiences with the Mahatma)
William Ury, co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and co-author of the famous Getting to YES book (as well as Getting to Peace aka The Third Side)
Azim Khamisa, internationally renowned expert on forgiveness who is a fantastic speaker (I heard him speak in person last February ~ his story is amazing, as is his free forgiveness workbook at www.azimkhamisa.com/wp-c…/uploads/forgivenessworkbookweb.pdf)
Aqeela Sherrills, celebrated peacemaker who brokered truce between the Crips and the Bloods in Los Angeles
All class lectures are recorded and transcribed, available for later download. There is more information than you could possibly want about the class at www.citiesofpeacedetroit.com.
Please pass this information on to others who may be interested, and note the 16-week class starts this Wednesday.
“We have to look within ourselves and our personal agendas and build peace there first. Then we can touch the lives of others and transform our communities. We can find ways to help people rise above their circumstances. As we have opportunities to represent others we have to be responsible in connecting with greater purpose. How can we represent when we aren’t at peace in ourselves?”
Our children are born into belief systems, values and conditioning from their elders for living the essential truths of consciousness, interconnected as one humanity, living within a just. equitable, sustainable culture.
True democratic equality is at the heart of our knowing that the least among us are endowed with the ability to live a fulfilled life.
Government Is Of and For The People
When the resources needed for a fulfilling life are made available and accessible to all the people, then we will have a government of and for the people.
A true government of and for the people enables all people to be valued, to have a quality education, healthy food, clean water, safe shelter, health care, and mobility both physically and economically. Communities operating close to purpose understand how to enable all to have what is needed to live cooperatively. Cooperative communities understand how to delegate the responsible use of resources from The Commons. We move from punitive to restorative justice processes. It insists on processes that hold truth and justice at its core.
Equality In Democracy
When all people can be heard as equals, whether in agreement or dissent then we begin to have an open dialog for true democracy.
A true democracy establishes communal conversation with all voices heard discussing needs, resources, and developmental processes. Working together to assess community needs and implementing effective communal solutions. As a representative in government or community, there is assumed responsibility that includes due diligence and comprehending the decisions made affect the lives of many. Embracing transparency and open collaboration with all people is required by representatives. It is a high priority to value people over goods and services and without this understanding, we are not serving all people. Rather, our systems create division, separation, categorization, and ultimately oppression.
…Where we will no longer need to fight for social justice and human rights.
…Where we will no longer need our voices heard in mass protests that speak of the injustices of the world created by separation thinking. Rather, communal consciousness values all people. The removal and displacement of people from cities will not be a unconscionable thought, nor in terms of profit gained.
…Where we will no longer need to be involved in a struggle for all people to have access to resources that are essential for human life, such as water, health care, shelter and food.
Where we will no longer need to fight for social justice and human rights.
Where we will no longer need our voices heard in mass protests that speak of the injustices of the world created by separation thinking. Rather, communal consciousness values all people. The removal and displacement of people from cities will not be a unconscionable thought, nor in terms of profit gained.
Where we will no longer need to be involved in a struggle for all people to have access to resources that are essential for human life, such as water, health care, shelter and food.
We hold a Vision that these honorable fights, raising our voices and struggles will be a thing of the past only to be told in our history books…
for we hold a vision that caring for one another as a collective and living unity consciousness principles within all of society will be prevalent in our government and communities as a new global meme.
We not only have the courage to voice what needs to be heard and transformed, we have the courage to envision a whole new world.
Let us take the steps for transformation as a community to become a reality at the deepest level. Allowing our passion for social change to merge voice and contemporary skills for taking the leap into cocreating, from the Essence of our Being, a new way of life.
Imagine people breaking free all over the world from fear and pain stuck in the human psyche lead by emotional and mental conditioning and patterning of domination and control to Freely Being the Expansion of our True Nature and Living the Full Expression of Purpose.
Imagine the transformation of daily indignities, devaluing and even persecution of our fellow beings to Living in Joy and Honoring each other.
Imagine witnessing the transformation of critical mass emerging from the collective systemic current world order and mind frame of separation to Living the Profoundness of Unity Consciousness integrated with Mindful Intentions and Actions Permeating the World.
Imagine the Prevention of all Social Ill Manifestations of the World.
Imagine the Absence of Warfare.
ImagineConsciousness permeating our families, neighborhoods, work place, communities and throughout the world…Living in the Beloved Communities.
Imagine the beneficial Awakening for Maintaining the Glory of our Environment.
ImagineConsciousness proclaimed throughout the Voices of our Religious and World Leaders as One Collective Conscious Humanity.
Imagine Consciousness Prevailing throughout the Hearts and Souls of our Parents.
Imagine people of all ages Awakening from the sense of smallness, judgment and lack of worth to knowing the Essence of their Being within themselves and SMILING.
ImagineConsciousness Shining through the Eyes of all our Children.
Imagine Unity Consciousness Echoing throughout the Continents and the dialogue being discussed for new evolutionary solutions.
You were born for such a time as this. I ask you to look at your world….and face this moment in time consciously and with all the discernment and clarity within your power, with intellect, with heart, with Spiritual intelligence. Decipher the hour, the moment, in this evolutionary time that calls you to be a witness. Indeed you are called…otherwise you wouldn’t be here now in this defining epic of earth’s story and in the human story itself.
I know that you must feel challenged. Heroic efforts are being raised everywhere to bear witness to ecological destruction, disease, poverty, genocide, violence and hostile aggression.
The scale of humanitarian challenges can seem overwhelming. I ask you not to be disillusioned for we know that this is the time for an awakened consciousness,a heightened focus and clarity about the nature of our challenges.There is a fundamental difference in an awakened consciousness that regards transformation on all levels, from the individual to the collective.
We know that this evolving transformation touches something very deep, something so essential that it affects both heart and mind. This transformation may be preceded and followed by steadfast effort, the summoning of will and the continuum of practice, but it has its own mystery. It can bring a subtle shift which reveals an entirely new perspective or it can bring a jolt, a flash of insight for which has the power to re-organize our livesor it can provide the impetus of a great leap of faith.
More than anything transformation requires courage.The courage to face the truth that your own being has great depth.Yes, that within you, consciousness can flow from separate little islands of thought and conditioned responses to oceanic senses of connectivity and coherence.
If you were looking for confirmation of interconntiveness and expanded human capacity, the evidence is there. If you were looking for evidence of transformative love, the evidence is there. If you were looking at the role that consciousness plays in healing, physically, psychologically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, the evidence is there.
If you have decided to face the stark reality of the world as it is in the moment knowing fully that the very basis of international law and civility has been eroded, that fear, hatred and disillusionment are on the rise, that humanity is fueling bitterness, resentment and violence,then you must also have the courage to facein the midst of disillusion, dysfunctional hierarchy, dying powers, wars over beliefs and resourcesin the midstof systemic breakdown and the collapse of unsustainable behaviors and world views, there is something stirring that offers the possibility of personal, social and global transformation.
This stirring in consciousness imperils the understanding that once we see the damage being done to the whole, we can no longer aggressively pursue the limited self interest of the individual parts. When the parts are at war with each other then the whole suffers. This is truth in the health of an individual, as it is in a family and within society. As we now see in the earth in its entirety.
We see a new bread of economist, psychologists, scientist and spiritual activist who not only appreciate this truth they have begun to embody it in a new science of healing, a new interdependence movement that lays out the vision and practice of economic and ecological sustainability. We see that consciousness itself is an almost limitless resource of creativity and compassion.
We have begun to see that an education that starves the inner life of children, fails to nurture emotional intelligence and does not nurture the Soul. [Education such as this] simply will not serve us for the mighty task ahead. It takes courage to heal, to speak on behalf of the whole, to be a voice and its full expression for the earth and for all human life.
For our consciousness knows that peace is our inheritance and that our responsibility is to reveal our interdependence. It takes courage for science and spirituality to dialogue and illuminate new possibilities for human kind. It takes courage to reach towards a vision that turns enemies into allies and disillusionment into hope. But you were born for such a time as this.
The Struggle for Democracy, Peace and Social Justice Continues
On Jan. 19, 2015 we will hold the 12th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Rally & March beginning at Noon in the sanctuary of the Central United Methodist Church. This year’s theme is “From Selma to Detroit: The Struggle for Democracy, Peace and Social Justice Continues.”
We are recognizing the valiant contributions of the struggle for voting rights by Dr. King, the founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and others who paved the way for the advances gained during the 1960s and 1970s.
Nonetheless, today we are facing the most profound challenge to the status of civil rights, human rights and economic justice since the martyrdom of Dr. King in 1968. In the state of Michigan fundamental rights to a living wage, collective bargaining, municipal pensions and public services have been eroded.
etroit”
