Author Archives: MU_Peacemaking

When we last heard from Szymczak Grant recipient Alexandrea Newell she was held in rapture after performing an ode to the Somalian refugee population in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Newell gave her account of uplifting a child to a historical powerful moment, which gave rise to the creation of her poem, History.

The healing did not stop there. Newell preformed the poem at a coffee shop and relates the following experience showing healing only begets more healing. Newell writes:

When the echoes of the microphone stopped, and we stepped offstage, we were swept by many passing compliments and congratulations. One gray-haired man stood smiling. His name was Sorre, and he was a former poet laureate of Somalia, a poet who had been silent for nearly 20 years. When the war was first escalating, he was asked to perform a poem at a conference with the United Nations. He said he couldn’t stand for that nation, that corruption. Since then, he has not spoken poems. He has been heartbroken, living within reach of the Somali American community but floating outside of it. Still, he told me, these words need to be spread, need to be translated to Somali. He could not do it though, and he turned and walked away. Some time passed, and he returned. He would do it. He would write again. These words must be spoken. 

Healing and elevating a refugee community can seem like a distant task. These necessary elements can seem like a hazy unattainable goal, like a distant mirage through oily heat waves.  Breaking through this barrier feels as refreshing as a light misty breeze.

Szymczak Grant recipient Alexandrea Newell and Nadreen Bogoun have been alleviating the pain of a Somali refugee community in Minneapolis Minnesota.  Newell shares a profound breakthrough moment in her reflection peace which puts smiles on the faces of the Center for Peacemaking geting to witness progress in Peace.

  In this place, I have been welcomed. In this place, I have been accepted. In this place, I have been inspired.  In this place, I have been loved. In this place, I have been.

   The Somali community of Minneapolis, Minnesota has become my community. To know a place, I had thought that one needed to trace the stiches that interweave land and people. What, then, happens when a people are torn from a land? When they are immigrants, refugees, exiles? When a country’s independence day is a day of mourning for the loss of its unity? When the national anthem has become a funeral dirge, in memoriam to a nation branded as anarchy? To know a place like this is to gather the threads of its history.

   Somali history is not bounded volumes, chronicles of victory, and bolded lessons. It is the fables I heard across the patchwork campfire on our first weekend here. It is the memories neatly laid out in a language so lyrical, it is almost an injustice so see it bound in printed characters. It is the prayers rising up between the neon lights as I write this. Theirs is an oral tradition that stretches beyond timelines. Introducing yourself means listing fourteen generations of names. Past, present and future are held in these words.

   Ka Joog Nonprofit Organization exists for the sole purpose of the youth. So the mission statement begins. These children were born into the place of Somalia though many of them have never seen it. Steeped in the stories of the homeland like the endless pots of tea that set conversations adrift, they are Somalia. “Today we make history” was a cheer one young boy began as he and his friends embarked on their first ever camping trip with Ka Joog. The others echoed it enthusiastically, and with time, the words grew. They became truth. I watched as these same boys went from standing on picnic tables reading the poems I helped them form in a camp workshop to standing in a conference room before representatives of the Department of Homeland Security eloquently stating their hopes and their concerns for their community.

   I wrote this poem as a dedication to the Somali people, their strength and their struggle. I said just this as I performed it at an open mic night at a local restaurant, paired with the melody and refrain of the Somali National Anthem sung by my coworker and friend Abdihakim. The small tiled room quieted and we began:

HISTORY

Today we make HISTORY

We say what we wish to be

We pray from sweet memory

The past will not end with me

You say it’s a mystery

My faith and the risk of me

I say there’s a bliss to be

Free, proud, and Somali

(SOMALI NATIONAL ANTHEM CHORUS)

HISTORY

Pages of pride pressed in gold-lettered hide

Chapters of hate stack shelves sealing my fate

Proclaim in my name this unspeakable shame

Defame and then blame but I am not the same

HISTORY

In poison pen I am branded

Broken and empty-handed

My tears like black ink smeared

War paint and tribal ties

I can’t hide when my eyes are burned on the inside

HISTORY

You say terror runs in my veins

Subcutaneous cursive of verses profane

Instantaneous curses averse to my name

I say

LISTEN

My words are my creed

Preserved as I speak

My HISTORY

I’ve watched the stars fade like bullet holes in the night

I’ve seen the knots made in the trunk of the tree of life

I’ve breathed deep the smoke from the funeral pyre

Released it, knowing it’s bound for something higher

LISTEN

HISTORY is whispered over the embers of the flame

HISOTORY is written in the wrinkles on her face

HISTORY is waiting in his fingers interlaced

HISTORY is wrapped in her veil neatly laid

HISTORY is trapped till we see it as it’s made

We are where we’re meant to be

We speak freedom, we seek peace

From war to solidarity

We’ve been torn, but still we keep

A voice, a truth, a name, belief.

Say it now. Say it with me.

Today – We Made – HISTORY

The relentless heat continues to saturate the hazy twilight of summer this July in Milwaukee.  The fierce efforts of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking Szymczak Grant recipients continues as an unrelenting source of power all over the world.  The following piece speaks from recent graduate and employee of the Center for Peacemaking, Nadreen Bagoun, and her peace works with Alexandria Newell with in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis is a city of people with a certain peaceful monotony that characterizes its movement.  Minneapolis is a first world Muslim city.  Despite the fact that the majority of Muslims are Somali, to describe it as a Somali city would be unfair to the Somali identity.  Unlike being Muslim, being Somali is not something that can be researched and understood fairly well in the course of a few days.  To understand what it means to be Somali requires that one lives it.  We have been in Minneapolis for over two weeks now.  Our days we spend in a sea of Somali everything, yet somehow the essence of being Somali remains to us an obscure enigma.  We ask infinite questions, but somehow the more answers we receive the more questions swarm our minds.

The Somali women of Minneapolis remind one of Africa.  Many say the hijab is a sign of oppression, but in this city it soars like an eagle.  To say that women comprise the backbone of society is an understatement in Minneapolis; women are the society.  But for constant use of Somali, the East African men of Minnesota would only be black male Muslims.  The men’s colorful African heritage manifests itself in the long, floating, picturesque fashions of the women.  The Somali women of Minneapolis invalidate the image of the Muslim woman engulfed in black so much that her identity is nothing but abstract darkness.  Fashion for Somali women means color.  In the brightness of the days, the women, in their iridescent skirts, are, in fact, an extension of the city’s brilliant summer patterns.  They give the city its soul.  Years ago they also were the soul of another faraway city.  Maybe it was beautiful; maybe it was not, for that is relative.  What is absolute is that this distant home of theirs now weeps of wounds of war inflicted on it by its own.

The legacy of war hangs heavy in the air of this city.  An invisible spark, it fires up in the people’s conversations for it is inescapable.  Within the folds of the khimar of passerby women hide untold stories of the debacle of the Horn of Africa, and the atmosphere screams of the shameful smugness with which the world has chosen to erase this fact out of its memory.  But the ability to forget does not mean the ability to not be reminded.  Somalia has written its name on the face of this city.  The streets of Minneapolis, its shops, its murals, its people all are proof that beneath the ashes to which Somalia has been reduced simmer defiant flames of hope.  Or maybe revolution…

Overworked and underappreicated mothers of the Las Delicias community set aside precious time to attend an community building work shop with the help of Center for Peacemaking grant recipient, Claire Wild Crea.

“Working on our collective Life Story” Photo Credit Claire Wild Crea

This segment is taken from the blog Peace in Las Delicias.

Symczak Grant recipient Kelsey Simkins branches her urban gardening project with another green Milwaukee operation, Growing Power.

Growing Power prides itself on sustainable and fruitful cultivation of healthy plants and livestock grown local for the Milwaukee area.  Growing Power buds a diverse range of fecund fruits and vegetables in six greenhouses ranging from mustard greens to radishes. The diversity and environmentally conscious mission statement extend into their six hydroponic fisheries, worm depository, composting operation, apiary, complete with an anerobic digester turning waste back into energy.

Kelsey Simkins writes, “The organization grows an impressive variety of vegetables and raises small livestock such as goats and chickens. The farm’s greenhouses feature aquaponics systems for raising tilapia and other fish. The organization is funded by money brought in from selling produce and other farm products. Growing Power seeks to better the community through sustainably grown food and food education. Find out more about Growing Power’s history on their website!“

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”- Dorothy Lange

A moment held in time, a representation of a tangible frame in time, an explanation that transcends words; photography is the medium of truth. Perhaps Peacemaker and Symczak Grant recipient, Ciara McHugh seeks truth and peace through her summer project.  McHugh is the recipient of a sponsorship from the Center for Peacemaking.   Her project is titled “Dialogical Peacemaking: A Photographic Exploration of the Murals of Belfast Project”.

The following piece reflects McHugh’s thoughts on her experience thus far.

I have always considered myself Irish-American and when asked about my identity, that hyphenated word is the first that comes out my mouth. Identity, however, has a very intricate and complicated existence for individuals, communities and nations. During the few weeks I spent in Belfast and Derry, I found identity to be especially complicated in this small part of the world. When it comes to a place that has endured years upon years of violence in its all-too-recent past, a place where neighbors are grateful for the 40ft walls between their homes and the those just across the street, a place where ever-present political designs lining the streets carries threats to some viewers and memories to others, the idea of identity becomes a muddled mess that builds taller and more dangerous psychological walls than all the painted concrete ones around the city.

In my time here, identity underlaid every conversation I had with the people of these two cities. I had the unbelievable – and humbling – opportunity to talk with men and women, old and young, each of whom offered me a varying take on their own identity, as well as that of their city. Although the conversations did veer into a variety of other topics, words surrounding the place’s conflict – with its violence, death tolls, bombs and divisions – always underpinned the rhetoric. Every quote I took from ex-life prisoners from the UVF and IRA, from individuals who had lost their families and livelihoods to the conflict, or from younger children who had heard the stories of their parents’ experiences – all of these words exchanged pointed in different ways to a piece of the identity of the North of Ireland. And just as each picture I snapped of the murals on the walls of the two cities told me a story, I found that these communities’ stories were merely small pieces of the huge and convoluted picture that makes up the identity of these cities.

Throughout the conversations I had and during my time there, a feeling of overwhelming confusion was constant in my mind regarding the complicated nature of this conflict. I felt pulled in so many directions, not knowing which way was the best road to continue down – past or future, expression or silence, research or engagement – and even whether or not I should continue down some roads. However, after spending my time listening and dialoging in the North of Ireland, one thing is clear: although some speak of the murals and stories as historical markers to remember the past of these communities, the peace process today is an ongoing process that is more a part of the present than the past.

Milwaukee is ablaze.  The air is radiating not only with the heat of the steamy June sun, but also with the hard work and initiative from the Center for Peacemaking Szymczak Grant recipient, Kelsey Simkins.

With the Szymczak Grant Simkins seeks to develop both resources and community roots through the care and cultivation of urban gardening. Simkins will spend 10 to 15 hours gardening at the Casa Maria Worker house as well as other agricultural opportunities.

“Rhubarb and Strawberries” Photo Credit to Kelsey Simkins

Simkins explains her mission and documents her experience on the beautiful photoblog called Growing Peace in Milwaukee. Simkins professes, “My hope is not only to examine the many benefits of urban gardening, but also to specifically focus on the impact this new trend has on social justice and peacemaking issues within urban communities. Through photos, I would like to illustrate how gardening can be used to build-up urban communities and provide for the needs of low-income areas, creating a way to combat violence and grow peace.”

Stay tuned for continued updates on Simkin’s progressive work, as well as the work of other Szymczak Grant Recipients as the summer rages on.

Summer in Milwaukee brims with an an ocean of options on how to spend your precious free time. There is something for everyone between festivals, nice weather by the lake, outside dining at restaurants, museums and events.

Milwaukee has many options for the devoted Peacemaker or the adventurous at heart. Beginning this week the documentary 5 Broken Cameras, a documentary alluding the broken cameras of Palestinian farmer and activist who struggled for peace in his community. It is showing until June 12 at the for 12.50.

For those traveling outside of MIlwaukee there are other peacemaking events to attend.  To engage the mind, body, and soul of the Peacemaker can head to  the Jerusalem fund offers something a little different with an interactive exhibit. Words starting with a free introduction on June 29 will feature art by Palestinian–American Rajie Cook, and activist poet Remi Kanazi.

For the hungry peacemaker who likes seasonal fruit and buttery golden circles of peace the Pancakes for Peace at MREA Energy Fair in Waupaca serves breakfast the morning of June 15.

Summer marks an exciting time for the Center for Peacemaking.

The three month break allows Peacemakers to take their skills and knowledge of non violence into practice throughout the world.

This post comes from Claire Wild Crea who is exploring the practice of nonviolence with the community of Las Delicias in El Salvador.

The Beginning