Peace Island Conference September 2-3 2008

Parallel to the Republican National Convention (RNC) will be a Peace Island conference at Concordia University, St. Paul. Peace Island promotes and celebrates peace, justice, harmony, nonviolence and care of the earth. Two days of great national speakers, with three simultaneous sessions to pick from. A commons area will feature display tables from many organizations. The focus will be on on solutions instead of just describing the problems. The cost is $50, with a student discount.

Just to show the quality and quantity, here is a listing of speakers:

Energy and
the Environment

Ron Bowen
Prairie Restorations

Matthew Commers
Public Health Researcher; Global Warming

Bruce Gagnon
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

Terry Gips
President, Alliance for Sustainability; President, Sustainability Associates

Jim Harkness
President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Susan Hubbard
Eureka Recycling

Lisa Ledwidge
Outreach Director, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

Starhawk
author of 10 books, peace, spiritual and eco-activist

Ami Voeltz
Do It Green! Minnesota

Global Peace
and Nonviolence

Brian Becker
Activist, Act Now to End War and Racism

Medea Benjamin
Co-founder, Global Exhange and Code Pink

Leslie Cagan
Activist, United for Peace and Justice

Mel Duncan
Nonviolent Peaceforce

Sara Flounders
Activist, Troops Out Now

Antonia Juhasz
The Bush Agenda; Invading the World, One Economy at a Time

Kathy Kelly
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Sami Rasouli
Muslim Peacemakers Team

Justice and
Human Rights

Anne Hastings
Director, Fonkoze Micro-Finance, Haiti

Doug Johnson
Executive Director, Center for Victims of Torture

Jim Klobuchar
Columnist & Author

Ray McGovern
retired CIA, co-founder VIPS

Bharat Parekh
United Nations Association – Minnesota; Consultant

Coleen Rowley
Retired FBI Special Agent / Chief Division Counsel; TIME’s 2002 “Person of the Year”; Peace Activist

Susan Cornell Wilkes
President, Adventures in Giving

Kevin Winge
Executive Director, Open Arms of Minnesota

Ann Wright
Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.); Retired Diplomat, U.S. State Department; Peace Advocate

(Peace Island)

Peace Island will be one of many peacemaker activities that will counter the Republican National Conference. Many of the Unconvention activities are scheduled elsewhere as a way to focus away from the Republican National Conference. The protests help the Republican National Conference(RNC) in a way, by drawing more attention to it. If we portray the RNC as a boring scripted advertising gimmick and if we tell everyone about the boring scripted agent provocateurs that are part of the RNC, then we tell them what peacemakers are really about.