Memories of Seabeck

Eagle flies over the Hood Canal (photos: Robert Whitlock)

Earlier this month, I had the great opportunity to attend and speak at the 50th annual Seabeck conference -- a gathering of FOR members in the Pacific Northwest in early July each year. It was an honor to be one of the three national speakers at this "golden anniversary" event, with some 200 peace and justice activists present.

This year's program was organized by the Oregon FOR -- they switch back and forth with FOR members in Washington State, to share the load of this volunteer-driven conference -- and today I received two wonderful follow-up messages from folks in Oregon. One was a thank-you card, signed by a number of Oregonians, which featured a classic Molly Ivins quote:

The United States of American is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.

God bless Molly!

The other message today was a phone call from Oregon FOR organizer Janet Brown. Janet, who is living with breast cancer, called to give me the name of a book that I had picked up in her workshop, "Customs and Practices of Dying Well." She shared many books, musical selections, and other inspirational items that have been a part of her life in recent months, and I noticed that one of them was called Graceful Passages: A Companion for Compassionate Transitions [also sold as ...for Living and Dying]. The introduction to that book and CD set was written by author Sam Keen, a member of the April-May delegation to Iran, in which I also participated. It was a striking connection.

I gave a workshop on our experience in Iran, as well as one on FOR's communications efforts -- in the latter one, as so often is the case, I learned just as much from others as participants learned from me. And I delivered a keynote address, at 9 p.m. on July 4th (an inauspicious hour to do so, with fireworks starting a few hundred yards away!), in which I talked about what had led me to join FOR and to work on its staff. It was interesting, in writing that speech, to realize how many steps in my life's path had led me to FOR. I spoke about my experience of growing up in the 1980s, and getting engaged in international issues like the South Africa divestment movement and the Central American solidarity movement, as well as anti-racism issues in the United States. Then I said:

As I grew into adulthood and began to dedicate my life to activism, little did I realize how the Fellowship of Reconciliation had touched most of the movements in which I participated. With my commitment to African liberation, I should have known of FOR’s leadership in founding the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) and anti-apartheid groups in the 1950s. Given my solidarity work for Latin America, I might have been intrigued to learn that FOR members had helped organize Witness for Peace. Based on my passion for racial justice in the U.S., I probably would have been inspired by FOR’s roles in the civil rights movement, such as creating the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), organizing the first Freedom Ride, and doing nonviolent training for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Maryrose Dolezal

How wonderful it was for me to speak after such an inspiring first keynoter, George Lakey -- founder of Training for Change, workshop leader, and author of many books -- who reminded all of us that nonviolent action can be FUN as well as hard work! And to speak before the final keynoter, my wonderful colleague Maryrose Dolezal of FOR's Youth & Militarism program, who helped everyone recognize that multigenerational organizing is both necessary and doable, despite the cross-generational divide that we often see. I am excited to learn more from each of them again soon -- George will be coming to FOR's 4th annual Festival of Peace this September in Nyack, to receive the 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize, and Maryrose is headed to Colombia tomorrow, so I'll have to wait a bit to reconnect!

[If you'd like to see more images from this year's Seabeck conference, check out Robert Whitlock's collection of photos on his Flickr web site.]