Click here to email this page to a friend.
Click here to email this page to a friend.
Duration:
3 - 4 Months
As you can see there are no rules written on my class syllabus. This is because we decide on the rules together as a class, and then everyone, after adequate discussion and agreement, writes in the rules that we agree upon. This assures we build and strengthen community by taking ownership and responsibility for each other’s well being, and that the members of the class are not being told how to act or behave by any one single individual.
Violence exists in many different forms. Two of those forms are physical and psychological. Violence is a result of ignorance and fear. It involves causing harm to any other form of life and also putting others into distress.
Ken Butigan describes violence as, “Verbal, emotional, or physical behavior that diminishes, dominates, or destroys ourselves or others. Violence crosses boundaries without permission, disrupts authentic relationships, and separates us from other beings.”
Dialogue and communication are the first steps to conflict resolution. Conflict is not inherently bad, and in fact, there is much to grow and learn from conflict. Imagine the creation of a diamond or a mountain. In order for either to form we need conflicting forces that press up against each other and transform the land or the coal into its new form.
How we are able to handle a conflict determines whether it will result in violence. For purposes of this course, conflict is bad when it results in violence.
In this course the teacher is also the student and the students are expected to reach beyond their known limitations and take the initiative to contribute in making the course successful. Because we all have knowledge and experience to share, we will be learning from each other.
By creating a safe and comfortable environment the teacher will make sure the students know one another and engage in meaningful dialogue and discussion. We will perform role-plays, and simulative/cooperative games, and we will read selected book excerpts, articles, and essays. These readings will revolve around alternatives to violence and peace and conflict resolution, and they will be intended to help the students gain a greater understanding of proactive versus reactive ways to solve problems.
By the end of the course you will be equipped with the analytical tools to be able to think for yourself.
To think independently and reflectively is the challenge; to always think with others in mind is the goal.
This course asks students to make changes in the way they live their lives. It requires students to engage in a continual process of self-analysis and reflection. This course requires the student to question previously held attitudes and beliefs, the teacher, and each other. The basis of trying means to speak out when you are not interested in the topic of discussion and then to offer alternatives.
Each student is asked to keep a journal and folder/binder to store and collect all materials from the class during its course.
Using a philosophy that ability is determined by effort, your grade for this class will be determined by how hard you try and how honest you are. Of course, that can only be determined by one person—-YOU. I am not here to judge you.
Written by Nathaniel X
Academic Violence refers to attitudes, behaviors, or actions in a classroom that put our cognitive development in distress.
Is grading a form of academic violence? You must reach your own conclusions.
The pacifist argument is that grading is a form of coercion, separation, and control that ultimately diminishes human personality. Grading is coercive when it exploits the learner’s fears—of not receiving parental or peer approval, of not being accepted by some colleges or some employers, etc. Grading is controlling when grades are imposed by the teacher-authority to direct behaviors of the learner (i.e., punishing bad behaviors). Since authoritarian coercion, separation, and control tends to put humans in distress—primarily by fostering insecurity—the nonviolent teacher will find alternative methods of assessment, even if the alternatives require a great deal more energy and creativity.
Imposing grades, though giving the appearance of empowering one to succeed, arguably disempowers the learner because it inhibits self-assessment, which is one of the most desired educational outcomes of Alternatives to Violence—more so even than learning about the people, history, and ideas of non-violence.
YOU are the only one who truly knows how you are doing academically—how well you are learning, how hard you are trying, how much you are improving, etc. If you believe in the system of grading—of assigning numbers and letters to the human personality—then it is far better that you take full responsibility for this system YOURSELF.
Students and teachers have been conditioned to rely on the system of grade imposition. A partial solution to this "violent" system is self-grading. In grading oneself, one has a precious opportunity to self-reflect and to choose honesty. Imposing grades would remove this opportunity. Honesty, of course, can come only from one’s own desire to be honest. Honesty should never come from coercion by others. In fact, if truthfulness is obtained through coercion it is not an expression of honesty, but of fear.
Choosing honesty when assessing oneself is not easy; in fact, it is one of the most difficult tasks a person will ever undertake. Ignorance, fear, and denial often prevent even the best of us from assessing ourselves honestly. But, even being honest about the reasons you choose to be dishonest is making great progress towards living honestly.
"I don’t have a choice" is a dishonest statement. Each choice we make is always our own.
Session 1:
Who are we? Getting to know our classmates and reasons for being here. Activity: 2 Truths and a Lie.
Session 2:
Diversity Workshop: Simulation: Turning ourselves Inside-Out
Session 3:
Celebrating Diversity Cont…
Session 4:
Selected Quotes for discussion and
Studying the lyrics to Bob Marley’s “War”
Session 5:
The Theory of Connectivity and –
The Butterfly Effect
What happens to one happens to all.
Session 6:
Kinds of Violence (Physical, Psychological, and Structural)
Session 7:
Origins of Violence –
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Understanding ear and Ignorance (Ignoring Yourself)
Session 8:
Proactive versus Reactive Ways towards Problem solving
Session 9:
Empathy versus Apathy
The Bystander Effect
Session 10:
POWER and it’s relationship to Violence.
Session 11:
Oppression, Exploitation, and the Psychology of Dependency
HW: No television for 4 days.
Session 12:
Homelessness and Gentrification
Session 13:
Homelessness and Gentrification cont…
Film: Fighting for Housing Rights
Session 14:
Hate Crimes – Sexual Assault, Rape, and Homophobia
HW: Find somebody who is depressed/sad (having a bad day) and make them happy/smile.
Session 15:
Alternatives to Violence Skills: Responses to Conflict
HW: 2 days without including anyone in a conversation if they are not present to hear what you are saying about them (i.e. no gossiping).
Session 16:
Alternatives to Violence Skills: Active listening, stating your position clearly and getting all perspectives.
Session 17:
Alternatives to Violence Skills: Handling your anger and emotions. Anger Mountain. Self-Analysis.
HW: Forgive somebody and let them know that you are letting go of the grudge.
Session 18:
Evaluation and Reflection of Progress
Session 19:
Alternatives to Violence Skills: Handling the anger of others.
Session 20:
Alternatives to Violence Skills: Developing options, negotiation, mediation and arbitration.
Session 21:
Institutionalized Racism, Discrimination, and Xenophobia.
HW: Have a Conversation with somebody who is not part of your “stereotyped group.”
Session 22:
Institutionalized Racism: The Criminal Justice System
and The Death Penalty
Session 23:
Institutionalized Racism: The Education System
Session 24:
Institutionalized Racism: The Prison-Industrial Complex
Selected Readings
Session 25:
Film: Corrections
Session 26:
Human Nature: Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau
Selected Readings
Session 27:
Animal Rights
Session 28:
Speciesism Cont…
Session 29: Trust Before Suspicion: Book Discussion and Reflection
Session 30:
Trust Before Suspicion Cont…
Activities in Building Trust and Conquering Fears.
Session 31:
Lying, Cheating, and Stealing—- Who are you really hurting?
HW: Go 4 days without lying and/or documenting every time you lie and what you are lying about and for.
Session 32:
The United Nations and World Citizenship.
Film: Crossing Borders
Session 33:
Patriotism or Peace, Selected Reading Tolstoy.
God Bless America or God Bless the World?
Session 34:
Evaluation and Reflection of Class Progress
Session 35:
Wealth Disparity
Session 36:
Our Peace Makers: Selected Readings
Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton
Session 37:
Loving Your Enemies,
Selected Reading, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Session 38:
Globalization and Privatization of Basic Human Necessities
Session 39:
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
Session 40:
The School of the Americas (Training soldiers overseas)
Session 41:
The Military-Industrial Complex
Session 42:
Being a Loving Parent and Raising your Child Non-Violently
Session 43:
Discussion with Young Single Mothers.
Session 44:
One Common Unity – Circle of Life Workshops. You are in training to become a non-violent facilitator.
Session 45:
One Common Unity – Continue developing your lesson plans.
Session 46:
Go to Elementary School and Conduct Workshops.
Session 47:
Gandhi… Your life is your message. Selected Readings.
Session 48:
Film: A Force More Powerful
Session 49:
Fasting for Peace. Hunger Strike in the Turkish Prisons. What would you die for?
Session 50:
Levitation and the Plant
If you don’t believe it will never happen.
The power of thought and word… "you can’t or you will." Changing our vocabulary – Do you really hate and are you really starving?
Session 51:
Final Evaluations
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."
–Mahatma Gandhi
"You must listen to be heard."
–Ancient Proverb
"Don’t ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them."
–Booker T. Washington
"Building more prisons to address crime is like building more graveyards to address a fatal disease."
-Robert Gangi
"A lot of people don’t have a lot of food on their tables… but they got a lot of forks and knives… they gotta cut
something."
-Bob Dylan
"It is wrong to be tolerant of evil perpetrated by those in power. True tolerance is the dynamic approach of forging open relations with all people—and there wage a resolute struggle by nonviolent means; to spread the force of good through dialogue.
A third millennium, imbued with respect for the sanctity of life, free from nuclear arms and war and rich with the rainbow hues
of diversity, will come into being only through the efforts of empowered and responsible citizens who don’t wait for someone else
to take the initiative."
-Daisaku Ikeda (Soka Gakkai International)
"The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence will be not the system but our own lives."
–Jim Douglas
"If we could read the sacred history of our 'enemies,' we should find in each man and woman's life, sorrow and suffering enough to
disarm hostility.”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
-Abraham Lincoln
"Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could;
for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot
do for yourselves."
– Eugene Debs
"Fighting for peace is like f—ing for virginity."
-Unknown
"If it’s natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn how?"
—Joan Baez
"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist."
-Indira Gandhi
"Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian between meals."
-Ammon Hennacy, US Labor leader
"Realization is nothing to be gained afresh; it is already there. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought 'I have not realized.'" -Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Notice how painful it is, to constantly be wanting, wanting. This is our suffering."
-Jim Gilman
"Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and to let him know that you trust him."
-Booker T. Washington
"First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—for I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me."
-Pastor Niemoelle, speaking of the Nazis in Germany
"As long as there is a lower class I am in it; as long as there is a criminal element I am of it; as long as there is a soul
in prison I am not free."
-Eugene Debs
"Too often we under estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest
act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
-Leo Buscaglia
"Forgiveness remains the only path that leads out of hell. Whether we’re forgiving our parents, someone else, or ourselves, the laws of mind remain the same: As we love, we shall be released from pain, and as we deny love, we shall remain in pain." -Marianne Williamson
"Great minds discuss ideas; average mind discuss events; small minds discuss people."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"
-Oscar Wilde
"Being considerate of others will get your children further in life than any college degree."
– Marian Wright Elelman
"If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the present, for that is the past’s effect. If you
want to know your future, then look at yourself in the present, for that is the cause of the future."
-Buddha
"You can only change the man by changing the conditions under which he lives."
-Clarence Darrow
"It required years of labor and billions of dollars to gain the secret of the atom. It will take a still greater investment to gain
the secrets of man’s irrational nature. It is easier, someone has said, to smash an atom than a prejudice."
-Gordon W. Allport (From The Nature of Prejudice)
"Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
-James Baldwin
"If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive. If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in
return for hatred."
-From the Bhagavad-Gita
"Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow."
-Isinore of Seville
"In order to contemplate our spiritual individuality in its fullness we must free ourselves of practical life and of its
routine."
-Henri Bergson
"It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
-Harry Truman
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
-Confucius (551 – 479 B.C.)
"True compassion is not merely tossing a coin to a beggar. It is not haphazard or superficial. True compassion comes
to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
-M.L.K. Jr.
"Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees."
-William Marriott
"We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading."
-B.F. Skinner
"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; and when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live
in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a
bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”
– Kahlil Gibran
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white,
or women created for men."
-Alice Walker
"After the last tree has been cut down. After the last river has been poisoned. After the last fish has been caught. Only then will
you find that money cannot be eaten."
-Cree Prophecy
Focus:
Balance, Health, The Art of Thinking and Moving
Duration:
3 - 4 Months
Suitable Audiences:
Offered for groups preferably no larger than 30. Each session shall last a minimum of 60 minutes, although, 90 minute
sessions are optimal. Also room requirements are essential to be met. Contact for more details.
Positive Stretch is an opportunity for students and teachers to explore the role that health and fitness play in balanced and effective leadership and peace-building. The classes, through visualization, deep-breathing and meditation techniques, help participants gain greater mastery over their emotions and reactions; hence, positively influences their choices, so they have added control of the direction their lives are moving. Through these sessions, students discover how to become effective leaders by remaining physically and psychologically strong, and also, calm and relaxed in moments of turmoil.
Positive stretch is a fusion of yoga, meditation, and martial arts. It involves exercise; stretching both mind and body. Key topics include: moderation, positive thinking, the art of listening, honesty, healthy food intake, forgiveness, understanding anger, awareness, and disciplined practice. The classes help participants realize and experience how through a healthy mind, they shall have a healthy body, and how through a healthy body, they shall maintain a healthy spirit.
Week One -
Understanding and Using Breath
Week Two -
The Art of Visualization and Introductory Yoga
Week Three -
Disciplined Diet, Healthy Food Intake, and Beginner’s Yoga
Week Four -
The Art of Positive Thinking
Week Five -
Awareness Stretch and Movement
Week Six -
The Art of Listening
Week Seven -
Slow Movement and Deep Breath
Week Eight -
The Science of Meditation
Week Nine -
The Sword of Truth
Week Ten -
Moderation and Intermediate Yoga
Week Eleven -
Interconnectedness and Fast Movement
Week Twelve -
Meditation: Quieting the Mind and Understanding Anger
Week Thirteen -
Transformation Through Vocabulary: Changing Your Life By The Words You Use
Week Fourteen -
Forgiveness Visualization: Letting Go Of Hatred and Intermediate Yoga
Week Fifteen -
Giving Thanks and Intermediate Yoga
If interested in having Positive Stretch facilitated for your school, university, youth group, or NGO, please contact us to discuss potentialities and fees. Please note, Positive Stretch is just as suited for professionals, teachers, staff development, and team building, as it is for youth.
Listed are the names and descriptions of workshops Hawah commonly facilitates.
Resolving Conflict and Anger Management
Celebrating Diversity: Dismantling Racism and Discrimination
What is anger? From where does it arise, and how does it affect our lives? Do you ever feel like anger takes control of your emotions, your words and actions? What can we do to successfully diffuse anger before it makes us do something we may regret in the future? In this workshop, students shall learn basic skills and ways to identify anger and transform it into a force that heals, rather than something that hurts and causes pain. They will also be presented with issues of conflict and be asked to formulate solutions to solve them non-violently. By examining real-life examples and challenging hypothetical scenarios, you will be asked to decide whether one person—you—has the ability to transform the world.
Are you interested in dismantling, confronting, and overcoming racism? Do you want to learn how to harness the diversity in your school and community to be an effective leader and peacemaker? In this workshop students will dialogue about the root causes of racism and discrimination. The participants are challenged to reflect upon some of their own prejudices and stereotypes, and are guided through exercises to explore different ways they may become more accepting and understanding of those who may not fit into their racial, cultural, religious, and/ or sexual group. Together, we will identify the violence that commonly results from our prejudice, and ways we can, through our leadership, stop the hate.
In this workshop students have the opportunity to dialogue and learn about the root causes of hatred and violence. Through interactive exercises meant to increase awareness of humanity’s potential for peace, students are challenged to explore how they may utilize their leadership skills to bring stability and sustainability into the world. The workshop, interwoven with poetry, creates an environment for positive communication and self-expression. Participants should seize this opportunity to develop new ways to understand fear as it relates to hate and forgiveness as it relates to violence. In the end, we shall attempt to more clearly understand what Mahatma Gandhi meant when he said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
The "Circle of Life" workshop engages students in interactive exercises for the purpose of developing awareness and understanding their potential for Peace. The workshop is conducted with students sitting in a circle, and includes light music; hence, creating an environment for positive communication and self-expression. Throughout this workshop, participants are encouraged to release suppressed emotions and develop new ways to understand their relationship with each other and the world. The prevalent themes throughout the workshop are the interconnectedness and interdependency of all life, and learning to maintain emotional wellness by channeling your creativity through traditional deep breathing and meditation techniques.
In 2002, with One Common Unity, Inc. launched the "Circle of Life" High School Tour in several D.C. Public Schools. Organized as a response to a city-wide call to support grieving students after the loss of classmates to gun violence, the popular Tour later became institutionalized at Woodrow Wilson HS as "Peace Week", where it has been held for the past 3 years, featuring a uniquely empowering weeklong activity-based program that facilitates peace building and conflict resolution skills in students, faculty and staff.
OCU and THE EVERLUTIONARY TRUST now introduce Erase The Hate week, a proactive opportunity for school communities to direct creative and emotional energy toward decreasing the likelihood of violence. Students lacking inspiration and proper guidance often express their anxieties in violent and misdirected ways; Erase The Hate week counters this phenomenon, introducing techniques to solve problems and redirect stress and anger through non-violent, peaceful means.
Erase The Hate week is a dynamic, 5 days of interactive exercises and activities that encourage the entire school community to choose peace over violence. One Common Unity serves to facilitate Erase The Hate week; however, it is important to remember that the participation of the entire student body and faculty/ staff is critical to the success of Erase The Hate week at your school.
OCU facilitates the in-class workshops, gives a dynamic assembly presentation a school-wide assembly at which the facilitators showcase their creative talents and offer their shared perspectives on the importance of values, ethics, and character., and positively awakens trust in your school community with morning and/ or afternoon drum circles, announcements and quotes; however, other aspects of Erase The Hate week which may be organized at your school include but are not limited to:
These are just a few of the many activities that can be implemented during your school’s Erase The Hate week. For maximum student empowerment, we recommend that these responsibilities are delegated and stewarded by a school group(s), such as the Student Council, National Honor Society, Amnesty International, etc… One Common Unity can also support the selected school group with consulting, resources and suggestions on how to best facilitate these activities.
Click here for a list of In-class Workshops.
Project H(Om)E is a 6-week arts-based peace and reconciliation tour through South Asia, meant to help unify two nations which at one time were one. Hawah and Shahid—the founding directors of H(Om)E—are artist-activists with familial origins in Pakistan and India, yet personal origins in England and the United States, respectively.
Project H(Om)E shall consist of street theatre, speaking engagements, musical performances, poetic verse, and workshops on art, activism, and forgiveness. Each component is designed to inspire Pakistanis and Indians—Muslims and Hindus—to resign any hatred and animosity towards one another in favor of recognizing the multicultural ideal represented by their shared cultural history.
Since Shahid and Hawah have the experience of being born and raised in the western world, they have a message to those now living in South Asia from their perspectives as children of the Diaspora. While a race toward "development" increasingly contorts the policies and cultures of nations in the developing world, they wish to share their views on the costs of industrialization. They hope that through their stories, depicting the destructiveness and alienation of materialism pervasive throughout western culture, they can help build resistance to it in other parts of the world.
In addition, the artists will share the perspective of—and as important, mere news of—citizens organizing for peace and justice in the United States. The effort will entail serving as cultural ambassadors on behalf of the great number of other Americans who are working to stop war and hegemony.
Our target audiences are youth (ages 17 - 35) of Pakistan and India. Their experience and encounter with H(Om)E shall encourage them to maintain independence from a western-focused culture and economic system. It will also inspire them to find tangible, creative ways to proactively create alternatives to violent cultural norms.
The tour's impact will extend well beyond its 6-week duration. It will promote the arts within Pakistan and India by employing indigenous social networks, entrepreneurs and artists, and building capacity among those supporters. The tour will both encourage and concretely assist these partners to develop their art and resistance to oppression and violence. The ultimate aim is building an international cadre of peace warriors, who explore conflict transformation in their respective communities by creating positive atmospheres to facilitate communication through artistic-interpersonal and inter-community empathy and solidarity.
H(Om)E is seeking an accompanying entourage/ band. Including Shahid and Hawah, H(Om)E will comprise a core team of 8 who will remain with the tour throughout its 6-week duration.
H(Om)E is seeking a diverse balance. The following positions are still open and available:
Media liaison / Event coordinator:
This project participant will have two sets of responsibilities, with corresponding sets of qualifications:
Small stipends will be available to project participants to help identify arts and activism networks in the various places where the project is scheduled to visit. They will assist the event coordinator with planning events, organizing event promotion, and liaising with venues in each city (including a combination of shared venues at which the project will be part of a previously scheduled bill / event, and separate events in which the artists will be the headliners seeking local talent). They serve as the artists' "guides," and will assist in liaising with local hosts in each destination. They must have well-developed social networks in their respective cities, and preferably, prior projects with synergies for the tour (such as organizing human rights or peace groups).
This project participant should have prior experience producing a documentary film. They shall film, write and photograph over the duration of the 6 week tour. Their primary responsibility will include documenting performances and other events, ideally in formats viewable directly via internet. This functionality would enable a video blog available globally. Their work shall continue for up to several months after Shahid and Hawah return to the U.S.
The H(om)e team will hire at least 4 artists to tour with the group (ideally at least one Pakistani and one Indian musician). The musicians must be skilled improvisers, and open to pursuing a fusion among multiple styles. They must have some product (e.g., a completed CD or book) representing their prior work as an activist/ artist/ organizer. They should also have some experience traveling and performing before large audiences. Ideally, they will provide H(Om)E access to their own promotion networks. In addition to 2 musicians to travel with the team, H(Om)E is seeking local artists for discrete stops along the tour on an ad hoc basis. Consideration will be given not only to an artist's musical talent, but also their ability to help facilitate the conflict resolution aims of the tour by virtue of adding demographic diversity and broadening social networks.
Collaborators in each host city. If your city is one of the places listed on the list of H(Om)e stop points then please contact us and let’s discuss how we can support one another. Specifically, we need professors and students from universities to help organize our visit into classrooms and concerts on their campuses, organizations and families to host our stay and arrange workshops for H(Om)E to facilitate.
Artists/Activists from H(Om)E destinations to join us while in their areas. Opportunities are also available to travel with the tour for up to a week to further destinations. We’re looking for everything from fire-spinners to dancers to drummers, flute players, and spoken wordsmiths. These H(Om)E team guerrilla supporters will have to contribute solely as volunteers, as the H(Om)E project budget only includes living stipends for the core team of 8.
Below is a list of targeted reconnaissance sites. The number of days H(Om)E will stay at each place is determined by the number of events scheduled for that site. These are potential major stomping grounds -- in line with its improvisational character, H(Om)E may not visit every destination below, and will be adding many others in-between and off the map.
Join the team. For additional information or to receive a collaboration/ application packet please contact:
To donate and support Project H(Om)E please make checks payable to One Common Unity, Inc.
And send all checks to:
All donations are tax-deductible (a receipt will be mailed to you after we receive your check) because of the generosity of our fiscal sponsor One Common Unity, Inc .
Born into two worlds; he struggled to see how to fuse them into One. Although his physical birth occurred in the United States, frequent exposure to extreme material poverty in India sparked an unwavering commitment in Hawah towards empowering those less fortunate.
In 1999, working as a community organizer and mentor, he completed one year of service with AmeriCorps. Then, while spending a summer working with youth who were chained by their feet and ankles, he was exploring the roots of oppression. In 2000, Hawah graduated from American University with a degree in Peace and Educational Philosophy. In 2001, as a Robert F. Kennedy Fellow, Hawah worked on a project seeking to understand Racism, and traveled around the world studying indigenous cultures and colonization.
In later years, he co-founded One Common Unity, Inc. a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, and directed a Peaceable Schools Program at D.C.’s largest public high school. In addition to teaching Alternatives to Violence and Positive Stretch, Hawah regularly trained youth in a unique Diversity Leadership Program. He independently published his first book in August 2001; Trails: Trust Before Suspicion is a collection of true stories, poetry, photographs, and drawings. His second book, Escape Extinction, released in October 2003, is a collection of essays regarding peace and war, love and hate, creation and destruction. His third book, zerONEss, may be found where the clock has been broken. everlutionary.net (creations)
Shahid is a poet, lawyer, scholar, media activist and grassroots political organizer committed to helping kickstart countercultural (r)evolution.
His family hails from Pakistan-via-England, and after immigrating to the U.S. in the late seventies, camped out in rural Missouri until he turned ten. Six years in a suburban oasis recalled shades of Different Strokes, after which Shahid moved to Chicago to begin a personal crusade for his undergraduate education. It lasted ten years, over half of which also entailed a full-time career in investment banking.
In Chicago, Shahid discovered multiculturalism, struggle, hip-hop, the urban melting pot, electronic music, rave culture, and his identity. He graduated from Stanford Law School in 2003, and moved to Washington, DC that fall. Since then, Shahid organized the first impact litigation seeking marriage equality in the State of New York, and participated in a challenge to inadequate federal campaign finance regulations on behalf of U.S. Representative Christopher Shays (R-CT), who co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
Since 2002, Shahid has organized three independent groups of political artists: the Stanford Spoken Word Collective; the San Francisco Collaborative Arts Insurgency; and the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency. His activism has focused on reclaiming public space, channeling performing arts as a means of both building community among participants, and also spreading progressive worldviews to those who might otherwise remain chained to corporate media. He hopes to see a brighter day in our collective reality soon.