Peacemakers Conference

Peacemaker Conference
I was invited to give a workshop and performance for a conference that took place last week at the convention center. The focus was on middle schoolers and high schoolers and strategies for conflict resolution. I believe about 500 students were in attendance, along with grown up chaperones- mostly teachers from the many schools represented.

The workshop that I did brought me a lot of inner joy, I hope the students liked it too. A big part of it was discussing issues that were important to us as a catalyst to prompt our writing. So we generated this list of issues that included: war, drugs, violence, safety, environmental issues, homelessness, education funding cuts, government, and so on. Then they each chose one topic to write on freely and of course I had people share what they wrote or at least let us know which topic they picked. What made it so joyous for me was that I got to be really political with youth and they clearly appreciated it. As they brought topics up I addressed them even if only briefly, and as they raised questions such as "why exactly are we at war?" I answered honestly, money interests, oil, the profit motives of destroying in order to "rebuild" which is so basic to the nature of capitalism. When a couple of young people expressed their concerns about the legitimacy of homeless people's requests for money and wondered why they didn't just get jobs and try, I didn't get harsh with them but I broke down the realities of the working poor, rising housing prices and non-livable wages as well as the true waste of resources called corporate welfare.

Then of course I performed for all the conference attendees as the closure. Some of the students there were from a school I just did a residency at a couple of weeks ago and I saw several familiar faces. When I left the building I felt pretty on top of the world actually. Some people have opposite reactions to performing and being immersed in a crowd of people, especially teens. For me it is the ultimate adrenaline rush, inspiration and natural high. I felt so energized! Then, as the extra icing on the cake, a couple of young ladies came up to me while I was waiting on my bus and personally thanked me. What meant the most was that they were thanking me for being honest and real and talking about the things that don't necessarily get addressed in their schools and environments. As I told the adults at the conference, it is important that we remember that young people are not just thinking about material things and shallow pursuits- they are grappling with heavy duty issues and we need to support them, cause their ability to be more open-minded than previous generations is what will help to change the world in which we live.