Multifaith Strategies for Nonviolent Direct Action
This conference has now passed — deepest thanks to all our partners, presenters, and participants!
You can click here for video of some conference sessions on the Interfaith Center’s YouTube channel.
Keynote Address: Rediscovering Dr. King through Nonviolent Action Today
Rev. Claudia De la Cruz is committed to the struggle in defense of human rights and social justice. She the New York State Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, as well as Founder and General Coordinator of Da Urban Butterflies Youth Leadership Development Project (D.U.B) – a membership based project working towards the leadership development, capacity building, and the personal and collective empowerment of young women in Washington Heights, and New York City as a whole. She is an educator, community organizer/activist and minister with over 10 years of experience working with different communities in New York City, particularly immigrants, youth and women in the West Harlem and Washington Heights/Inwood communities. She holds an Mdiv/MSW from Columbia University/Union Theological Seminary.
Keynote Response and Reflection
Dr. Betty Reardon is a renowned peace educator, author, and academic. She is the Founding Director Emeritus of the International Institute on Peace Education, an annual intensive residential experience in peace education. Since 1982 the IIPE has been held at universities and peace education centers in Asia, Europe, Latin America and Central America. For this work she received a special Honorable Mention Award from UNESCO in 2001. Having taught as a visiting professor at a number of universities in the U.S. and abroad, she has decades of experience in international peace education and the international movement for the human rights of women. She has served as a consultant to several UN agencies and national and international education organizations.
Panel Discussion: The Multifaith Roots of Nonviolent Direct Action
Sahar Alsahlani is a peace-builder, community activist, and media professional. She is an active member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Religions for Peace, the Al-Khoei Foundation, and other organizations. She is also working to develop video productions promoting interreligious peace-building. Originally from Iraq, Sahar moved to New York from Los Angeles, where she had been working as a television writer, producer, and editor. She currently lives in the Community of Living Traditions at the Stony Point Center, in Stony Point, NY – one of the country’s only intentional multi-faith communities geared towards studying and practicing social justice and nonviolence.
Rajni Bakshi is a Mumbai-based author and activist. She was the Gandhi Peace Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations from 2011 to 2017, and is currently a member of the Advisory Board of NYC-based Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus, as well as the Board of Citizens for Peace. Among her many publications is Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi (Penguin, 1998) which inspired the Hindi film Swades starring Shah Rukh Khan; Bazaars, Conversations, and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear (Penguin, 2009) which won two Vodafone-Crossword Awards; and a research paper on Gandhian economic development entitled “Civilizational Gandhi” (Gateway House, 2012).
Rabbi Michael Feinberg is a long-time activist in social movements for peace, racial justice, human rights, worker rights, and immigrant rights. He is the Executive Director of the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition, as well as Co-Chair of the Micah Institute’s Economic Justice Committee, and a board member of Stony Point Center and the Rural and Migrant Ministry. Michael is a graduate of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where he received his rabbinic ordination. He is also the recipient of a Revson Fellowship and Union Square Award, and is proud to have served as an intern at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
Rev. Dr. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki is a Buddhist priest, ordained in the 750-year-old Jodoshinshu tradition of Japanese Buddhism. He is a President and Founder of the newly established HEIWA Peace and Reconciliation Foundation of New York. He is also an Executive Officer and former President of the Buddhist Council of New York, as well as a former Board Member of the Interfaith Center of New York, a Hiroshima Peace Ambassador, Nagasaki Peace Correspondent, and NYPD Clergy Liaison. Rev. Nakagaki is the long-time organizer of an interfaith memorial service commemorate the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, as well as the 9-11 WTC Memorial Floating Lanterns Ceremony (held from 2002-2011).
Civil Disobedience Training
Brittany Ramos DeBarros is a social impact consultant, an active member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, and an active member of the New York Poor People’s Campaign Coordinating Committee. Her previous service as a US Army logistics officer, and her experience in strategic communications, brings a unique perspective and diverse set of skills to her work for racial and economic justice.
Closing Reflection and Discussion
Rev. Joel Gibson is the Director of the Micah Institute, a multifaith coalition working to transform New York City for love and justice through political advocacy campaigns for economic justice, immigration reform, police-community relations, affordable housing, and education. Joel is an Episcopal priest, ordained in the Diocese of Washington D.C. Prior to his leadership role in the Micah Institute, he served in a number of faith-based and secular nonprofit organizations, most recently as the Director of Faith Based Initiatives at Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.
