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Public Forum on Gandhi's Legacy Sponsored by Garrison Institute at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC
Gandhi's example inspired the 20th century's most effective social change movements. Can it now inspire us to confront and transform climate change?
This is the question before environmentalists, social change and thought leaders gathering from around the world at a major public forum on April 13 in New York City. Satyagraha: Gandhi's "Truth Force" in the Age of Climate Change will be held April 13, 2008 7pm at New York's Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street. The event, organized by the non-profit Garrison Institute (www.garrisoninstitute.org) and its Hudson River Project in cooperation with the Cathedral, is free and open to the public.
In interactive discussion, reflection and music, the event will explore Gandhi's concept of satyagraha or "truth force" as a non-violent method of social change. Satyagraha has an American lineage connected with Thoreau's civil disobedience, Emerson's self-reliance, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s agape. This tradition is relevant to how we confront climate change and other deep environmental problems.
The timing coincides with the opening at the Metropolitan Opera (www.metopera.org) of the opera Satyagraha, by Philip Glass, who will perform excerpts of it at the April 13 event. It also observes the 60th anniversary of Gandhi's assassination and the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's. Various events in the New York area in April will thematize various aspects of satyagraha, non-violence and social change, as part the Satya Graha Forum (www.satyagraha. org).
"The Garrison Institute works to draw the connection between today's environmental imperatives and our sense of spiritual values, faith and ethics which can reframe problems and find transformative solutions," said the Institute's co-founder Jonathan F. P. Rose. "We call that 'transformational ecology.' Our Satyagraha program draws the connection between Emerson, Thoreau, Gandhi and King's teachings of achieving peaceful ends with peaceful means and our burning need in this century, individually and collectively, to reverse humancaused climate change. Environmentalists have long viewed Gandhi, King, and the civil rights movement as models and inspirations for their work. This year there is a growing sense that is time to reinvoke them towards a deeper and wider mobilization in response to climate change."
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