Peace & non-violence seminars
lay groundwork for local group

By Tom Moore

A recent weekend of local seminars on peace and non-violence has laid the potential groundwork for an organized peace group in the area. The culmination of the event was a workshop led by Rosalyn Falcón Collier, director of the Peacework Initiative and co-founder of the Peace Center, both in San Antonio.
One of the people interested in forming the group is Sister Marianne Mullen of the Ursuline order. "The purpose of the meetings was to help us raise an awareness of the need for peace in our world, and that each of us has a responsibility to do that, beginning with ourselves in our own lives," said Sr. Mullen.
The small, informal group of organizers is made up of lay people as well as members of religious orders. "We're hoping that there will be a peace group formed, or a network of peace groups in the area," said Sr. Mullen.
About 800 people, including teachers, members of the Catholic clergy, parish staff and volunteers, eucharistic ministers, and chatechists, attended the event, which consisted of two workshops at a Laredo Diocesan conference with the theme of "Living Non-Violently in Our World." Additionally, a second seminar was held for those who do ministry work within the diocese entitled "Living Non-Violently in Our World -- Walking Jesus' Path for Peace."
The meetings involved only clergy and those of the Catholic faith, but "we're hoping to expand and make the group interfaith," said Sr. Mullen. "That was part of the purpose of having the meetings."
Peacework Initiative director and Peace Center co-founder Rosalyn Falcón Collier spoke to two classes at Laredo Community College and was interviewed on KVTV's noon show, in addition to leading the workshop.
"About a dozen or so people are interested in following up on what ordinary people can do to help lessen the violence in the world we live in," said Collier, whose workshop was entitled "Living Faithfully in a Violent World." "We're trying to experiment with how we can learn from peacemakers who have gone before us, like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela," she said.
Collier co-founded the Peace Center in San Antonio with a Lutheran minister, Rev. Ann Helmke, in 1995. The organization grew out of a gang peace summit in 1994.
The Peace Center is an interfaith group. "From the beginning we wanted to be inclusive," said Collier. "We felt that we were being called to open a place to people of all faith traditions, where they could come and talk about issues of peace and non-violence. It helps give people a perspective, to start looking for those kernels of wisdom on non-violence that are right there if they know where to look."
The Center has won praise from the Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by attorney Morris Dees, who has fought successfully against segregation and militia groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center's bi-annual magazine Teaching Tolerance, which goes out to 750,000 educators nationwide, called the Peace Center's work an example of "global issues married to local action."
"It's a labor of love," said Collier of the Center, a non-profit organization with a core group of about six or seven people. "We feel the need is really, really great for people to start to form a dialogue to find a way out of the violence."
Collier is helping the Laredo group organize by fostering contact with other organizations like the Peace Center. "What we've really tried to do is network other groups to all the peace groups that deal with areas of violence and non-violence," she said. "Once they start connecting with peace groups that are connected to other peace groups, it works."
That assistance is another example of "global issues married to local action," in Laredo in this instance. "Non-violence is all about pro-active non-violence, stopping it before it even begins, not reactive non-violence," said Collier. "You start out with little projects. Once somebody becomes clear about what they want to do, and they meet somebody who is clear about they want to do, the path begins unfolding in front of you."
For more information on the peace group in Laredo, contact Sr. Marianne Mullen at (956) 723-9185 or marmullen@juno.com, or Sr. Rose Tresp at (956) 796-3841 or rmtresp@laredo.mercy.net. Rosalyn Falcón Collier can be reached at (210) 930-2950 or through the Peace Center website at www.salsa.net/peace. The Southern Poverty Law Center website is www.tolerance.org.