What's in Your Activist Toolkit?

As the final written assignment in English: Peace Studies class students assembled their "Toolkit" from the semester: concepts, ideas, tactics, readings, people, music, and art, that help them to understand, engage and practice peace and nonviolence. Here are some of their responses.
-Angelina Conti, Peace Studies Teacher

Karina: ..when I go back home, I’m going to figure out how to help people who are not given the chance to thrive in life with the opportunities others have. I believe that if you are going to try to help people you should include everyone that is affected by the problem not just a certain few.

Katherine: Structural violence really showed me how everything seems to fall back to the same key word. Structural violence can be related to our service trips, Mexico trip, food intensive and everything else we have learned at Woolman. it shows how flawed our government and society really are.

Jordan: Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s “The New World Border” speaks about unity and how to combat inequality through art, music and youth activism. This gave me insight into how it might feel to be directly affected by inequality, and it inspires me to fight it. The eloquent and poetic nature of this piece reinforced my belief that one can be more powerful in writing by appealing to the artistic side of one’s brain.

Ruthie: The power of service – The Visalia service trip taught me so much about the power of service and the differences between service and activism. I define service as something that helps people survive within a problematic system. Activism is the work done to create structural change so the system is no longer problematic. Reflecting on this experience helped me see that while activism may be flashy, service brings people home.

Tsechu: I read and learned about Satyagraha, Gandhi’s activism and philosophy. Satyagraha is a non-violent movement which is dependent on the power of truth. Its goal is to convert not coerce your enemy though understanding and open dialogue. One of the main principles of Satyagraha is to make sure that no matter what harm your opponent has inflicted, you should not react with anger or violence; instead you should win them with compassion and empathy.

Rachel: Walter Wink’s article The Myth of the Domination System introduced me to the concept of redemptive violence – that polarities of good and evil exist and we can create peace through violence that we, the good, inflict on the evil. It was an idea I had never encountered before, but now see absolutely everywhere. It made me reassess the way I view mainstream pop culture and even history. I now cannot watch television or see a movie preview without thinking of the infamous myth which has plagued our society for so long. I look forward to educating others on the myth and deterring them from supporting forms of media which perpetuate violence in our society.