Angie Gangi
News Editor

A panel of internationally recognized peacemakers and representatives of peace-minded organizations will hold a forum at 7 p.m., March 24, in La Fetra Auditorium.

The forum titled “Practicing Nonviolence Amidst War and Conflict,” is focused on reconciliation, humanitarian aid and nonviolent action in war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. Everyone is welcome to attend and there is no charge for admission, but a $10 donation is requested to help with the panelists’ travel costs.

“In the absence of knowledge about nonviolence, we are lurching from crisis to crisis, making each one worse,” panelist Michael Nagler said.

The forum panel includes Nagler, Le Ly Hayslip, Sarah Holewinski, Claude Anshin Thomas, representatives from Peace Boat Japan/USA, and Dr. Waqar Al-Kubaisy. They will give first-hand accounts of their work in war zones and elsewhere. Filmmaker Mark Manning will also introduce a presentation of the documentary short film, “Caught in the Crossfire: The Untold Story of Falluja.” The documentary graphically shows the effects of war on the civilian population in Iraq.

Panelist Le Ly Hayslip founded the Global Village Foundation in 1989 and the East Meets West Foundation, which provide humanitarian aid to Vietnam and to the tsunami areas of Thailand and Sri Lanka. She was the author and subject of director Oliver Stone’s 1993 motion picture “Heaven and Earth.” Stone will serve as co-host with Hayslip at the Global Village Foundation’s 2006 Bridge of Peace Awards banquet, being held March 25 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles.

“Right now the world in general and the leadership in the U.S. in particular, know only one response to virtually all problems, namely force, and thus they are doomed to use wrong means which, as Gandhi and so many others have told us, can never bring about right ends,” Nagler said.

Nagler is the founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the nation’s most respected peace scholars and activists. He is also the internationally known author of “Is There No Other Way?: The Search for ?Nonviolent Future,” which received an American Book Award in 2002.

Panelist Dr. Al-Kubaisy currently teaches in Syria, where she was forced to flee following an armed attack on her home in Baghdad.

Dr. Al-Kubaisy is the only female recipient of the International Arab Medical Prize, and the Order of Merit from Algeria. She will return to Iraq later this year to deliver 100 desperately needed hospital beds that were donated by Peace Boat of Japan. She was recently added to the panel and will receive the Courage Award at the Bridge of Peace Awards the following night.

“A person with new ideas can influence others strongly in times when the old ideas have worn thin and people are getting desperate for a change,” Nagler said.

The panel has a variety of experiences to share and the forum will focus on the nonviolent options society needs to recognize in order to live peacefully together.

“Each person living on this planet has an equal right to live a harmonious way of life,” Hayslip wrote in an e-mail. “We are so lucky to live in the United States where we have the freedom of speak, read, write, protest and give a strong voice against something that we do not agree with.”

Angie Gangi can be reached at agangi@ulv.edu.