An eight-week online course taught by Kathy Kelly starting July 2021
Dear Friends,
I’m writing today to invite your participation in a course called “Lay Down My Sword and Shield.” For eight weeks, spanning July and August, as part of the School for Social and Cultural Change, participants will study causes and consequences of war. Along with weekly written presentations and opportunities to respond with “Comments,” we’ll gather each Saturday for a one hour Zoom conversation.
When the course was offered in April and May of 2021, we were joined by young people from India, Afghanistan and Mongolia. Adding to international perspectives were participants from Kuwait, Ireland, and Australia. I hope the summer course will be equally inclusive of people from around the world and across generations.
Please visit the website https://sscc.teachable.com/ to learn more about this course as well as other courses being offered by challenging and thought-provoking teachers such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert.
“Lay Down My Sword and Shield” is designed to help participants clarify their views about participating in, paying for or in any way tolerating warfare. In April and May, 2021, we welcomed guest speakers such as Ken Jones, Ann Wright, Diane Wilson, Lisa Savage and Asma Qaisi to speak with us about military contractors, nonviolent campaigns to challenge militarism, environmental concerns about militarism, economic war through siege, and aerial attacks against civilians such as the recent Israeli assault on Gaza.
I’m mainly familiar with wars waged by the U.S., having lived alongside people trapped by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there is much to learn from people still trapped in or seeking refuge from other warzones. Articles, interviews, films, art, literature and data will be presented about ongoing wars against Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza.
Participants in the April-May class initiated several helpful projects which will be available to future course members. Abdulhai Darya set up a website to feature peace activist causes which various course members advocate.
Doug Mackey collected recordings of each Saturday zoom call and made them available to all of us.
Others have written op-eds for their local papers, helped organize demonstrations protesting wars, and shared with us poetry, slide shows, and recommended videos for future use.
Here is the link to the school: https://sscc.teachable.com/courses
If you’d like to enroll, just follow the link. And below is information about the school’s sponsors.
With all good wishes to each recipient of this letter,
Kathy Kelly for “To End All Wars”
SSCC is sponsored/hosted by two organizations described and linked below — PARC Media and RevolutionZ. The sponsors handle maintenance, promotion, and other technical details, aiding faculty and students alike.
PARCMedia is a news and media project founded by two USMC veterans, Sergio Kochergin & Vince Emanuele. They give a working-class take on issues surrounding politics, ecology, community organizing, war, culture, and philosophy. PARCMedia offers video and audio podcasts and uses a space it maintains for all manner of gatherings, social, cultural, political.
RevolutionZ is a podcast hosted by Michael Albert. It addresses vision and strategy for a better future. It is all about what we want and how we get it. The word “Revolution” indicates attention to transforming basic underlying social relations and structures, not solely replacing bad actors and policies. The letter “Z” identifies with the web host, Z Communications/ZNet.