Ali Abu Awwad is hard to summarize. He grew up with a mother in the PLO, and served jail time for his role in the resistance during the First Palestinian Intifada. In an Israeli prison, Ali learned the power of nonviolence when he and his mother went on hunger strike to see each other. After his brother was killed by Israeli soldiers, his family met with a group of bereaved Jewish parents. Awwad says witnessing the shared humanity of Palestinian and Israeli mourners "turned his world upside down."

Awwad has been working as a peacebuilder since 2002, and has given talks around Israel, Palestine, and the world. His current work is leading Taghyeer, a Palestinian movement —"to take nonviolent responsibility for self-development and forging a path to end occupation." Awwad says he founded Taghyeer, a "DNA Palestinian movement" to focus on the "homework" needed to lay the foundation for true Palestinian self-governance and an end to Israeli military occupation. In this conversation, Awwad gives us an intimate view of his own inner transformation, and an inside look at Palestinian identity and self-determination.

LEARN MORE

Watch: An Israeli and a Palestinian talk peace, dignity and safety a conversation with Ali Abu Awwad and Ami Dar, Israeli peace activist and founder of Idealist.org, from TED.

Read: “I Don’t Want to Resist the Occupation—I Want to End the Occupation” an interview with Ali Abu Awwad in the Nation Magazine

Read: Nonviolence Is the Missing Path to Israeli-Palestinian Peace editorial by Ali Abu Awwad in "The Daily Beast"

Listen: Ali Abu Awwad and Robi Damelin on Nonviolence as The Path to Freedom for Palestinians and Israelis on "Unlocking Us" with Brené Brown

Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Blue Dot Sessions.

Special thanks to Cloe Shasha Brooks.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Most people feel that peacebuilding – resolving conflicts and decreasing violence – is a positive thing. But as we've said many times on this podcast, peacebuilding is virtually invisible in the world.

Today’s guest, veteran mediator and peacebuilder Mark Gerzon, says to strengthen peace and reconciliation efforts, we need to make peacebuilding mainstream. And to do that, the reasons behind the practice need to be practical and more accessible to both the public and to donors. He says the messaging we've been using for years, grounded in a moral imperative for peace, isn't working. And today, he’s working in the United States to train leaders to work across the partisan divide.

Gerzon has served as advisor to the UN Development Program and multinational corporations. He is president of the Mediators Foundation, an incubator for social action projects that bridge divides around the world, and has authored several books on the topic of polarization and reconciliation.

LEARN MORE

Leading Through Conflict and other books by Mark Gerzon

Harvard Business Review: To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold?

Documentary by Mark Gerzon: The Reunited States

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and SFmusic.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Social entrepreneurs are a unique breed of people, capable of conjuring up a vision, a new way of doing something, a solution to a problem; but they also have the skill and the determination to overcome all the obstacles to implement their vision. John Marks is a remarkable social entrepreneur who, with his wife Susan Collins Marks, built the largest peace building organization in the world, Search for Common Ground. When they stepped down from leadership in 2014, Search had 600 full time employees and offices in 35 countries. Search was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

His new book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship, explains how he built Search for Common Ground, and what made it so successful. His new book delivers practical guidance on building bridges and creating meaningful change. Of particular interest to us at MPV, John is a remarkable innovator, not only in the production of effective media to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts, but also in the breakthrough ways he found to disseminate the media, and ideas and approaches they celebrated.

RESOURCES:

Virtual book talk with John Marks with Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, September 23, 2024

Clips from Common Ground Productions:

· Radio in Burundi: 1:42 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qghsd3-Wpv8

· Children’s TV in Macedonia with Sesame Workshop: 2:04 - https://youtu.be/ifyCYSbHp2A

· Reality Series: CNN piece on “The President: 2:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQFlmUzi6ys

· Adult Drama: Team trailer: 2:14 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqYVapttDEQ&feature=youtu.be

· PSA: Ziggy Marley: 0:23 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llinHdw_gdU

· Music Video: Ring the Bells: 3:38 - https://youtu.be/5Rs94ztNROI

Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Podington Bear, Xylo-Ziko, and Faszo.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Imagine living next door to a person who murdered your father, raped your sister, or even killed your child. This was the case for many people in Sierra Leone who endured a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002: the majority of the 50,000 who died were those killed by their own neighbors.

While working with a program that facilitates ritual reconciliation processes in Sierra Leone, a process known as fambul tok (or “family talk”), peacebuilder and philanthropist Libby Hoffman learned that justice for Sierra Leonians isn't about punishing or ousting a perpetrator. Rather, justice comes through making the community whole again. “When you hurt somebody, you don't just hurt them; you hurt the community as well,” says Hoffman.

In this episode, host Jamil Simon speaks with Libby Hoffman about fambul tok, a process she calls “building peace from the inside out.” Fambul tok is an ancient tradition where disputes are solved through community-wide conversation around a bonfire. In this post-war context, Hoffman and her team facilitated the revival of the practice for Sierra Leonians.

Hoffman also documented this remarkable peacebuilding process in her award-winning documentary film Fambul Tok, which has itself catalyzed further reconciliation within Sierra Leone’s war-torn communities. Hoffman's book about her experiences in Sierre Leone is called The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out.

Libby Hoffman is the founder and President of Catalyst for Peace, a US-based private foundation building peace from the inside-out – creating space for those most impacted by violence to lead in building the peace, supported by healthy, inclusive systems. A former Political Science professor, Hoffman has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.

The film Fambul Tok is available for private viewing through MPV's Peace Docs initiative. Watch the film here: vimeo.com/26644766.

This episode was produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. It was originally published in October 2022.

Music by Xylo-Ziko via freemusicarchive.org.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

On July 28, 2024, a teenage boy carried out a fatal stabbing attack on a dance class in Southport, England. Three little girls were killed, and eight other children and two adults were injured. Police arrested and detained the assailant. They didn't release his name, because he was under 18.

A user on X posted that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker named Ali Al-Shakati. A prominent YouTuber claimed the attacker was an "illegal migrant." As rumors quickly spread on social media, attracting tens of millions of views, Brits on the far right used platforms like X and TikTok to organize violent protests around the country. In one town, a mob started a fire outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and and smashed a glass door, chanting "get them out." In another, demonstrators attacked a mosque. By the end of the next weekend, violent protests had taken place in at least 18 towns and cities, and 147 people had been arrested, as Tortoise reported.

When a judge eventually released the attacker's name, Axel Rudakubana, it turned out he neither Muslim not a migrant, but a Christian and the British-born son of Rwandan parents.

This is just one of many stories of online misinformation leading to real world harm. Our guest this episode, Lena Slachmuijlder, is working to stop the flow of misinformation in a world where so many get their news from social media. She heads Search for Common Ground's Digital Peacebuilding initiative, which identifies and trains "digital stewards" around the world, people who are trusted by their communities and help stop the spread of fake news online. Also, in her work as co-chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion, Lena is envisioning ways to design new tech that fosters real conversations online, including the use of AI.

Learn more:

Digital Community Stewards free online course

Digital Peacebuilders' Guide

Searching for Safer, Healthier digital spaces - review of digital peacebuilding initiatives

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Gloria Laker Aciro was a teenager when war upended her family’s life in Northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army, led by the infamous Joseph Kony, were known for their brutality, and for kidnapping children and making them child soldiers or child brides.

As a young displaced person, Aciro became a journalist so the world would know about the suffering in Northern Uganda: The abductions, killings, the ambushes, the destruction. But after a few years, she wondered if focusing on bloodshed was the right approach. What if journalists like her could help bring peace to the country?

Today, Aciro is director of the Peace Journalism Foundation of East Africa. Peace Journalism -- as you might remember from one of our previous episodes -- is when editors and reporters make choices that improve the prospects for peace. She covers peace and conflict, refugee issues, and the environment, and trains journalists around East Africa in peace journalism.

Aciro was a finalist for the 2022 Women Building Peace Award given by the United States Institute of Peace. And in 2019, she received a Golden Jubilee Medal awarded by Ugandan President Yoweri, for her coverage of the LRA conflict and her contributions to current peace efforts in Northern Uganda.

Aciro sat down with Making Peace Visible Education Director Steven Youngblood to reflect on her decades in the field in Uganda, and the real impact of peace journalism in the face of war and gang violence.

Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Joel Cummins.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Close your eyes and think of the word “war” or “gun violence.” What’s the first image that comes up? Maybe it’s news footage of the wars in Gaza or Ukraine. Or maybe it’s a scene from a movie like Hotel Rwanda or Bridge on the River Kwai, or a shoutout in any number of crime and cop dramas.

Scripted storytelling, with its ability to get up close and personal with human emotions and struggles, also has a powerful influence on our perceptions of the world. And with news outlets increasingly politically siloed, perhaps Hollywood has a better chance of shifting perspectives than journalists do.

Our guest Kate Folb is director of the Center for Hollywood Health and Society, a project of the Lear Center at USC Annenberg. Hollywood Health and Society (HHS) provides expert guidance for screenwriters, producers and actors about issues from HIV, to immigration, to gun violence. They have projects on the threat of nuclear war and the impact of military expenditures on our lives and wellbeing. In this interview Jamil and Kate discuss how HHS gets Hollywood writers to think differently, as well as shows and movies featuring compelling heroes without guns that you should be watching.

Series and films mentioned in this episode, in order of appearance:

How to Get Away with Murder (ABC)

The Cleaning Lady (Fox)

Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount Plus)

Arrival (Paramount Pictures)

The Diplomat (Netflix)

Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)

Madame Secretary (CBS, available in the US on Netflix)

Getting Bombed (YouTube)

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

“The United Nations was not created in order to deliver us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” - Dag Hammarskjöld.

“To Save Us From Hell” is a new weekly news and analysis podcast about the UN. Mark Leon Goldberg, a veteran global affairs journalist and editor of the news outlets UN Dispatch and Global Dispatches, and Anjali Dayal, a political science professor and author at Fordham University, co-host the show. They join us on Making Peace Visible to explain the significance of the UN today, especially when it comes to deescalating conflicts and laying the groundwork for peace.

Goldberg and Dayal’s intense focus on the UN and its work comes at a time when the world’s focus on the institution seems to be diminishing, while violent conflicts are increasing. We also have global crises like climate change, infectious disease, and refugees. The one global institution designated to deal with problems at that scale is the UN. So what’s missing from mainstream news coverage of the UN, and can it save us from hell?!

Subscribe to “To Save Us from Hell” at globaldispatches.org.

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Siddhartha Corsus, and SFmusic.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!