by Alisa Roadcup
from Amnesty International

Amnesty’s Women’s Human Rights Coordination Group member Alisa Roadcup was fortunate to sit down with Pamela Hogan, Director of Women, War & Peace, a bold new five-part PBS television series challenging the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain.  The first part of the documentary airs Tuesday, October 11, on PBS.

1. Tell me about your initial idea for this project.  Why “Women, War and Peace” and why now?

It’s hard to remember back that far!  My partners Abigail Disney, Gini Reticker and I had a fateful lunch at which we realized we’d all been noticing the same trend in war reporting: a focus on the men and the guns, and a dearth of stories about the women and families who are disproportionately targeted in today’s conflict zones—but seldom covered in news reports. We’d all individually witnessed this blind spot in the coverage of conflict, and we agreed that the gap between what’s reported and what’s occurring on the ground was enormous. Women, War & Peacewas born!

 2. Why do you think documentary film, specifically, can serve as a powerful medium to ignite social change? 

Documentary film has the power to bring the work of individuals to life in a way that policy reports and court documents, and even the printed word, doesn’t have.  One of the lead funders of Women, War & Peace said it so well: “We’ve been writing reports on these issues for years but in your films the women jump off the screen and people feel an emotional connection and really get the urgency.” Documentary storytelling is a visceral medium, and when the lights go up audiences often feel a call to action.

3. Tell me about a portrayal of women in war captured in “Women, War and Peace” that somehow plays against type or was unconventional.

So often women living in war zones are portrayed as victims.   Big mistake.

In The War We Are Living, two Colombian women – Clemencia Carabali and Francia Marquez – brave constant death threats to prevent their communities from being forced off of the gold-rich lands their ancestors have lived on for generations.  In Peace Unveiled, Afghan women are excluded from the international conference where President Karzai first suggests negotiating with the Taliban – so they crash the event anyway.  InPray the Devil Back to Hell, ordinary Liberian women who are sick and tired of 14 years of war stand up to President Charles Taylor and the warlords.  In I Came to Testify, sixteen women from a village in Bosnia take the witness stand in the first trial ever to focus exclusively on sexual violence in wartime – and the landmark judgment establishes wartime rape and sexual slavery as a crime against humanity.

All of these women are taking personal risks, risks that jeopardize not only themselves but also their children and extended families.  All of them make me ask myself, could I summon the courage to make that choice if I were in their place? Given the stereotype that women targeted by war are victims; they most certainly break the mold.  These women are revolutionaries!

4. As human rights activists, what can we do to spread the message that violence against women in conflict has to end? 

What a great question.  That is exactly what we are asking people to do: spread the message. I think human rights activists and advocates are crucial members of the Women, War & Peace audience. As broadcast journalists, one of our responsibilities is to investigate and uncover stories that may otherwise go unnoticed and to seek to give them a national and global platform through film and television and the web. The human rights activist community can broaden that platform, ensuring that the world hears these stories not only on their televisions and in their living rooms—not only on PBS—but also from the mouths of those working in the field and on the ground. One first step in ending violence against women is turning the world’s eye on this violence–growing the number of people who can bear witness to instances in which rape, attack, intimidation, and assassination of women is used as a deliberate tactic of war. The activist community can help us accomplish that.

Click here to read the full article

From YouTube and The Pluralism Project

The North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) held its annual conference, NAINConnect 2010, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The theme of the 2010 conference was “Many Faiths, One Family, Building a World of Harmony,” organized by a series of panels.

CPWR Communications Director Alisa Roadcup was one of twelve NAIN Young Adult Scholarship recipients who attended NAINConnect 2010. In this video, she and other scholarship recipients discuss the future of the interfaith movement and the role of the next generation of interfaith leaders.

Click here to learn more about NAIN 2010.

From The Salt Lake Tribune

Religious awareness and sensitivity are the missing ingredients in American diplomacy, professional peacemaker Douglas Johnston told interfaith leaders gathered in Salt Lake City Monday.

Johnston, president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy in Washington, D.C., freely quotes the Quran, refers to Islamic history and praises the goodness and accomplishments of Muslims in his work in Sudan, Kashmir, the Middle East and even this country to engage Muslims and others in conflict resolution.

Instead of asking how Jesus would react in certain situations, he gets participants to consider what the Prophet Muhammad would do.

Because Islam literally means, “submission to God,” Johnston once told a hostile group of 57 Taliban commanders, religious figures and tribal leaders, meeting with him in the mountains of Pakistan, “we’re all Muslim.”

“I was there to build upon common values, show respect and to create confidence,” Johnston told more than 100 representatives of the North American Interfaith Network, whose three-day gathering concludes today at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Salt Lake City. “It’s the only way to defuse rage.”

Though a Christian, Johnston comes at diplomatic relations from a military and academic perspective. He is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and holds a master’s degree in public administration and a doctorate in political science from Harvard University. He worked for the Department of Defense and founded the Kennedy School’s Executive Program in National and International Security.

Yet he knows a lot about many faiths and does a lot of listening as he partners with local groups to develop proposals.

In his keynote speech sponsored by Utah Valley University’s Religious Studies Program, Johnston said he first tested his ideas in Sudan a decade ago, where the war between the Islamic north and Christian south had brutalized the country for decades. Where other nongovernmental organizations flooded the south with services to victims, Johnston went north to find the root causes. There he found surprising openness among some Muslim leaders. Women didn’t wear burkas, for example, and were well-represented in the country’s Parliament and at the university.

Click here to read the entire article.

From the Shambhala SunSpace,

The first Parliament of the World’s Religions Event, held in 1893 in Chicago, was not only one of the earliest and most important interfaith gatherings in modern history, but also a watershed in the history of Buddhism’s transmission to the West. This past December saw the fifth Parliament in a 116-year period occur in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of this event, Make a World of Difference: Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth, reflected “the urgent need for religious and spiritual communities and all people of goodwill to act on their concerns for the environment, peace, and overcoming poverty, and to take responsibility for cultivating awareness of our global interconnectedness.”

As with all of the Parliament events, this one included significant meetings and discussions between Buddhists and others. My friend and former Naropa University colleague Alisa Roadcup, who now serves as Outreach Director and Development Associate for the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions spoke with me via email about significant aspects of the Parliament for Buddhists…

The first Parliament event, held in 1893 in Chicago, was not only one of the earliest and most important interfaith gatherings in modern history, but a watershed in the history of Buddhism’s transmission to the West. Would you say something about the role that that Parliament, subsequent Parliaments, and the Council have played in this sense?

The 1893 Parliament was not only a fundamental event in the history of the interfaith movement, but also the first formal presentation of Eastern religions to the West. This introduction presented the opportunity for Buddhist study that helped to develop an emerging field of comparative religious studies that today is so important to the interfaith movement.

For Buddhism to emerge from the 1893 Parliament with as much respect and popularity as it did says a great deal, given the auspices of the first Parliament as a subtle means to announce the universal supremacy of Christianity. Buddhist presenters endured the assumption that religions outside of Christianity were inferior. This sleight of hand is obvious in some of the 1893 titles alone, such as “Some Characteristics of Buddhism as it exists in Japan Which Indicate that it is Not a Final Religion”, and “What the Christian Bible has Wrought for the Orient”. Buddhist presenters forged ahead in spite of this discrimination and courageously established their religion as one worthy of respect and admiration. This forbearance and humility played a role in Buddhism’s establishment in Western conversation.

A remarkable Buddhist presence was Anagarika Dharmapala in 1893. With an ancient statue of the Buddha resting on the platform beside him – Dharmapala gave two addresses on the Four Noble Truths and The Law of Karma, presenting formal teachings to a Western audience for the first time. Shaku Soyen was another remarkable leader, remembered as the person who brought the beloved Zen scholar, D.T. Suzuki to the West.

At one point, Dharmapala compared the 1893 Parliament to the Council of Asoka, and predicted that Dr. Barrows (an 1893 Parliament organizer) would be remembered as the “American Asoka”. This comparison offers insight into the high esteem Buddhist leaders held for the 1893 Parliament and the level of importance they believe it had for Buddhism’s transmission to the West. These presenters were also influential representatives from different traditions within Buddhism, which provided the 1893 audience with a glimpse of Buddhism’s rich diversity.

Paul Carus’s contribution is of key importance. In 1894, the year after the inaugural 1893 Parliament, Dr. Carus wrote The Gospel of Buddha, the classic text on Buddhism, which introduced many Westerners to the teachings of the Buddha. Because it resembled a Christian “gospel” in structure, it was more culturally compatible for Christian audiences. Paul Carus is remembered as a bridge-builder between religions and science, philosophy and society and Buddhism and Christianity.

Today, the Carus family remains a major supporter of the Council by offering The Paul Carus Award for Outstanding Interreligious Achievement, which provides a $100,000 grant to leaders in the interfaith movement at every Parliament.

The Parliaments have certainly played an important role in terms of Buddhism becoming a global phenomenon.

While Parliaments from 1993 onward have brought many people to greater awareness of the dharma, the religion was already a global phenomenon by the 1993 Parliament, in large part due to the precedent set in 1893.

The expanse of time between the 1893 and 1993 Parliaments did not hinder Buddhism’s flourishing in the West. Both an increase in Asian immigration and continued intrigue in Buddhism post-Parliament led to Buddhism’s growth. This set the stage for Buddhism occupying a much greater role in terms of the large number of Buddhist participants and programs at the 1993 Parliament and subsequent Parliaments.

Click here to read more about Buddhist participation at the 2009 Parliament