Program: Sunday, August 22

9:00 AM PDT
We Didn’t Come This Far Without You

Here we are, at our virtual WILPF Congress. We’ve been offered so much to take in, assess, and act upon. In this 55-minute session, Darien will be honoring you, our Congress participants, by providing you with a space to meet each other and briefly confer. We know that you are all thoughtful and (after two weeks of Congress sessions!) well informed: Now what? What has touched you deeply? What has moved you to action? What will you do now? We’ll be facilitating an opportunity to step “outside” the main room, into guided dyads and triads, to introduce yourselves to each other and confer.

Darien De Lu, WILPF US President and Congress Tech Team Core Member is a peace, justice, and Latin America solidarity activist in the Sacramento branch. She writes her California ballot guide (for over 20 years) plus political and labor songs – and sings frequently!  Prior to retiring, she bicycle-commuted for twelve years to her California state jobs, addressing substance use and co-occurring disorders.  She and her husband bike, especially to the local food co-op. Darien speaks several languages and has traveled extensively. An activist for over fifty years, Darien has been a consensus process and nonviolence trainer. Her civil disobedience direct actions and subsequent jail time inform her activism.

10:00 AM PDT
Update on Afghanistan

Matt Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Until his resignation five years ago, he was a board member of Council for a Livable World, one of the larger national security/arms control organizations in the Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG).

10:20 AM PDT
Lebanon the Forgotten Country, A CRY for Help

Lebanon’s current crisis is a blunder of internal and external conflicts. In a short documentary, we will report from the streets reflecting the deteriorating economic situation of Lebanon.  We will explore the condition of the growing number of refugees in Lebanon in a country that cannot even provide for its own citizens. A cry for help, after a devastating explosion of the port of Beirut with yet no accountability, no international aid, and no end in sight.

Nada Farhat is a human rights activist in Lebanon and in the United States. With an educational background in Human Services and Psychology, Nada works effortlessly to improve the quality of life of those less fortunate. Women, children, and persons with special needs are her main focus. An ambassador of the National Rehabilitation Center in Lebanon, her recent work includes the establishment of a technical school for kids with learning difficulties, as well as COVID-19 relief to women and children of the mountains of Lebanon. Nada’s focus within WILPF US is in the Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee, recently focusing on the corruption and deteriorating economic conditions in Lebanon. 

Shirine Jurdi started her career working on consultancy projects with Ministry of the Return of the Displaced, UNODC and as a researcher Lebanese Heritage at Lebanese American University. Ms. Jurdi is a WILPF Lebanon member as well as the WILPF International Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Regional Representative. In March 2019 Shirine joined the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict as the MENA regional Liaison officer. She has extensive work with the Women Peace and Security as a regional consultant, as well her work on disarmament. She has been active with the Permanent Peace Movement on disarmament issues and is currently team leader of WILPF Lebanon on Banning KILLER Robots Campaign. 

Hala Kilani joined the climate movement in 2016 and has been serving as Senior Communications Officer with the international Secretariat of the Climate Action Network, grouping more than 1,300 organizations advocating climate action and ambition. She has been working with the network since then while pursuing various activities with a number of other organizations to support advancement on human and women´s rights including WILPF Lebanon. She has an MA in Anthropology from University College London.

11:10 PM PDT
Keeping Hope Alive in Palestine-Israel: Contributing to the Creation of a Just World

The Tent of Nations (TON) Project, directed by Daoud Nassar, is an educational and environmentally conscious farm near Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank surrounded on three sides by Israeli settlements. Learn the story of Daoud’s family’s non-violent struggle to keep the farm, which has been in their family since 1916. The family has faced devastating destruction of their property, including recent attacks. WILPF’s Iowa members met Daoud in 2019.  They will share how deeply his message impacted them and led them to suggest a project with the youngsters who attend TON’s annual summer camp to write a children’s book to share TON’s story.  

Jan Corderman works with local and WILPF US committees to bring the Palestinian narrative into the public discourse.  She served as a union organizer for over 30 years prior to her retirement.  Jan has served as the WILPF US Treasurer since 2017.

Daoud Nassar is a Palestinian Christian, a farmer, and the Director of the Tent of Nations Project.  Focusing on living a life from faith, hope, and love, Daoud lives from an ethic of non-violent resistance:  “refusing to be enemies” in the face of continuous obstacles he faces on a daily basis.
 

Virginia Wadsley is an Iowa farm girl who did community organizing with a low-income community that was being displaced in Atlanta, Georgia.  She has also authored several books and is active with social justice issues.  She “captains” the TON of Hope Book project’s team.

12:30 PM PDT
Native American Boarding School — Violence & Whitewashed History

Janna Pratt and Sikowis Nobiss are cousins and both citizens of the George Gordon First Nation and will discuss the rape, torture, and murder of Indigenous children in Canada and the US due to boarding school / residential school policy in the US and Canada and the silence behind the Indigenous genocide on Turtle Island. Janna lives in Saskatchewan, Canada and Sikowis lives in Iowa, USA. They will also delve into the work they are doing to overcome historical trauma and combat the erasure of this crisis by white supremacist governments.

Sikowis (Christine Nobiss) is Plains Cree/Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. At 19, she began her life's work of uplifting Indigenous voices when she got her first job at the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council in Fredericton, Canada and now she is the Founder and Executive Director of Great Plains Action Society—a 100% Indigenous organization working towards climate and social justice. She is also a speaker, writer, and artist and believes that environmental and social justice work are inextricably linked and change will only happen when we dismantle corrupt colonial-capitalist systems and rebuild them with a decolonized worldview. Sikowis graduated from the University of Iowa with an MA in Religious Studies (with a focus on Native American Religion and Culture) and a Graduate Minor in American Indian Native Studies.  

Janna Pratt is a member of the George Gordon First Nation and an Indigenous Matriarch from Treaty 4 territory, Canada. She has spearheaded a labour law campaign that led to changes in Saskatchewan to empower First Nation leadership in 2020. With the recent discoveries of children who perished while attending Indian residential schools, her sights are now set on finding the children. Janna is a 4th generation residential school survivor and has lived through the decimation of culture these schools forced upon children, built under a policy enforced by the Canadian government to inflict cultural genocide. Janna is currently working on an archive that will gather information on residential schools, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples, and veteran information to build resources for Indigenous communities. She hopes to inspire other projects with this knowledge and create Indigenous virtual reality experiences that are accessible no matter the distance.

1:30 PM PDT
Presenting Items from Theater: Teatro de la Tierra

Janet Slagter is a retired philosophy Ph.D. who has been a professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She taught for more than 20 years at CSU-Fresno, and also at Southern Illinois University, Earlham College, in Malaysia, in Kenya, and at men's prisons. Jan has been a social justice activist since the mid-60s, working on ending wars and establishing peace since the US war on Viet Nam, on advancing women's rights, abortion access, justice for survivors of sexual assault, on rights for students and faculty members, on the ERA, and on uncovering US government and corporate exploitation in many countries. She has been an active WILPF member for more than 20 years in the Fresno branch and currently serves as the alternate Regional Director for the Americas on the WILPF International Board of Directors. She serves on the committee that developed this Congress.

Patricia Wells, a musician/actor/director, first studied theater with Agustin Lira in 1974 and later studied guitar and voice, upon returning in 1979 from Mexico City D.F., where she was a student at UNAM. Aside from playing and singing, she became the business manager and tour coordinator for the  musical group Alma, recording CDs and touring the Southwest and US for many years. Invitations to festivals in Mexico and Cuba followed; in recent years she performed for the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Program - Homegrown Series & the Millenium Stage of the Kennedy Performing Arts Center 2011 and the American Folklife Festival Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert Series in 2015. She and Agustín Lira started Teatro Inmigrante in 1999. She has acted, written, directed, and produced a number of shows with Lira: http://teatrotierraonline.org/plays/. Wells is among 72 women featured in Victoria Alvarado’s book, Mujeres de Consciencia/Women of Conscience (Floricanto Press, 2009), which is “a tribute to Latinas who have made a definite and longstanding contribution to the Hispanic community and country at large.”