online – Making Waves with the Golden Rule: A Model for Social Action

This webinar will focus on the essential relationship of the Golden Rule (both the universal ethical principle and the historic nuclear disarmament-promoting sailboat) to survival of life on the planet. Of particular importance in this relationship is the role of faith and peace communities in insisting on nuclear disarmament. As part of the Golden Rule Project, sponsored by Veterans for Peace and collaborating peace groups, the Golden Rule has undertaken a voyage along the Great Loop to hundreds of cities and towns; it will be sailing into Boston Harbor in June. Mass Peace Action’s Public Engagement & Movement Building Committee is planning a number of events to welcome the Golden Rule to Boston. This webinar will be our launching event. Join the discussion with three committed activists who have spread the message of nuclear disarmament—on the land and seas, at the pulpit, and behind prison walls.

 Helen Jaccard.  Helen Jaccard has researched and written about the environmental and health effects of militarism. She is currently Project Manager of the Veterans for Peace Golden Rule Project. For her presentation, she  will talk about: the history of the Golden Rule, a wooden sailboat that sailed in 1958 to stop nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands;  the Golden Rule’s current 15-month 11,000 mile “Great “Loop” voyage around the eastern half of the US with 100 stops scheduled along the way; the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty,  Back from the Brink measures to stop the possibility of nuclear annihilation, and actions people can take to help prevent extinction.

Rodney Petersen. Rodney Petersen, PhD, is an historian and theologian. He served for a quarter century as Executive Director of the Boston Theological Institute, teaching in its member schools, and then worked as Executive Director of Boston’s inter-faith Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries. He has been actively engaged in restorative justice work with organizations such as the New Democracy Coalition. He will discuss the role of faith communities in the moral pursuit of nuclear disarmament. Currently Dr. Petersen is a Visiting Scholar at Duke Divinity School. His bibliography is extensive. In his presentation, he will focus on the question: “Where do we go from here: Cooperation or catastrophe?”

John Bach.  John Bach spent three years in the federal prison system for refusing induction during the American war in Vietnam and has tried for the last 60 years to work and live for universal justice and enduring peace. He lives with his wife in Arlington, MA, makes his living as a house painter, and is the Quaker chaplain at Harvard. He plans to use an image from the Vietnamese resistance (“The Egg and The Rock”) to highlight the role of persistence and faithfulness in the struggle for a better world.

Register to attend.