Oakville’s 20th ANNUAL Concert for peacE

Sunday, November 5, 2006
2 pm - 4 pm
doors open at 1 pm

At the:

ANGLICAN CHURCH OF THE INCARNATION

1240 Old Abbey Lane

(north of the qew at dorval drive)

$10; $1 for kids, 12 years of age or younger

Shine A Light:

20 Years of

Celebrating a Day for

Peace in Oakville!

A community event organized by the:

Oakville Community Centre

For Peace, Ecology And Human Rights,

148 Kerr Street, Oakville L6K 3A7, (905) 849-5501

Think. Act. Be Peace.

THEMES FROM THE PAST TWENTY

OAKVILLE PEACE FESTIVALS & CONCERTS:

1987 Father’s Day for Peace

1988 Youth and Peace

1989 Peace and the Environment

1990 Working for Peace in the 1990’s

1991 Building Peace in Our Community: Connections

1992 Global Unity Starts in Our Community

1993 For Human Rights

1994 Building a Healthy Community

1995 Peace and Music

1996 Tenth Anniversary Oakville Peace Festival

1997 For Peace in Oakville & Everywhere

1998 Music With a Message

1999 For a World Without War and a Peaceful Oakville

2000 Celebrating the International Year for a Culture of Peace

2001 Keep Space For Peace

2002 For Peace and the Environment

2003 For Peace in Our Community

2004 Keep the Skies Above Oakville Free of Nuclear Weapons

2005 War, No More: Peace, Poetry and the Spoken Word

2006 Shine a Light: Twenty Years of a Day for Peace in Oakville

PROGRAMME

for Oakville’s

20th Annual Concert For Peace

on SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2006

1:00 PM

WELCOME… the doors are open.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Oakville’s “annual concert for peace” is the opportunity to gain new friends while getting reacquainted with old friends. Arrive early to network with others while enjoying complimentary desserts and organic coffees, teas, and juices. Local peace, environmental and human rights groups are staffing info tables to explain how you can get further involved in making a positive difference on this beautiful blue planet.

2:00 PM

GREETINGS… from the M.C. STEPHEN DANKOWICH

STEPHEN DANKOWICH is the 1992 founder and executive director of the Oakville Community Centre For Peace, Ecology And Human Rights (OCCPEHR), coordinator of the new Halton Environmental Network (HEN, www.the-hen.net), consultant with the International Peace Bureau (IPB, www.ipb.org) and an activist with ACT For The Earth (formerly ACT for Disarmament and previously Against Cruise Testing) since 1983. The IPB is the world’s oldest and most comprehensive international peace network. Oakville’s Peace Centre emerged from an ACT-Oakville chapter!

2:10 PM

MP BONNIE BROWN SPEAKS OUT FOR PEACE

BONNIE BROWN has been Oakville’s Member of Parliament since 1993. Previously elected as a School Trustee, Town Councillor and then Halton Regional Councillor before moving on to Ottawa, Bonnie Brown is respected for her independent views. She was the first legislator in North America to speak out publicly against the war in Iraq. Long before 9/11, Bonnie has been eloquent in her defense of the need for peace on earth.

2:35 PM

MUSIC WITH A MESSAGE, THOMAS PATRICK

“Music with a message gives people greater hope as they work for peace,” said THOMAS PATRICK, an Oakville singer-songwriter who also played on our stage in 1998 at the 12th annual Oakville Peace Festival. Thomas is a graduate of Oakville Trafalgar High School and Laurier University. You will enjoy listening to “The Biggest Thief”, an original composition about the disastrous war in Iraq!

2:45 PM

THE CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKER TEAMS

“Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) arose from a call in 1984 for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war.  Enlisting the whole church in an organized, nonviolent alternative to war, CPT places violence-reduction teams in crisis situations and militarized areas around the world at the invitation of local peace and human rights workers. CPT embraces the vision of unarmed intervention waged by committed peacemakers ready to risk injury and death in bold attempts to transform lethal conflict through the nonviolent power of God’s truth and love.”

WILLIAM PAYNE is a reservist with the Christian Peacemaker Teams. A member of CPT since August 1999, William has done field-work in Chiapas-Mexico, Columbia, Burnt Church in New Brunswick and Hebron on the West Bank in Palestine. Currently, he also is completing his thesis in the department of Peace Studies in Buenos Aires, Argentina as a Rotary Club Scholar.

3:10 PM

“Two Voices and a Guitar:

SINVA - STUDIES IN NON-VIOLENT ACTION

Formerly known as Imagine Rainbow Warriors, SINVA is a rock reggae band whose songs stand for human rights and our mother earth and plant the seeds of non-violent action. This is their fourth Oakville Peace Concert appearance!

SINVA was founded in 1981 by activist writer STEVE HALL who now maintains the project with partner, AGNES CESKE. The project was designed as an educational tool which would assist and encourage non-violent action. During it’s history, SINVA has included musicians from North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Asia. Their musical, spiritual and philosophical contributions have enriched the global perspective of the project. SINVA-songs explore the genres of reggae, soca, ska, funk, rock and blues.

SINVA has done extensive work in the field of human rights, particularily with various Canadian First Nations, the African National Congress and the Martin Luther King Day Committee. As well, SINVA has worked with the Environmental Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Peace Movement and the Toronto Board of Education.

Music is clearly the strongest and most universal cultural influence on young people -those who will inherit the planet, along with an unprecedented set of social and environmental crises. Popular culture, particularly music, wth rare exceptions does not address the most important global issues. Hence, great potential power for positive change is in the hands of musicians.

3:20 PM

ACT FOR THE EARTH, OPERATION OBJECTION

The Canadian military has embarked on its largest recruitment effort in at least 15 years. General Rick Hillier and the Canadian Armed Forces have launched a coordinated military recruitment campaign called Operation Connection to exponentially increase the number of recruiters throughout Canada. ACT for the Earth has launched a pan-Canadian counter-recruitment campaign called Operation Objection in direct response to Canada's war in Afghanistan and this dramatic rise in military recruitment from coast to coast.

As part of Operation Objection, ACT for the Earth has produced “War Free Schools”, a counter-recruitment organizing kit for Canadian students and peace activists.

Operation Objection aims to spark an urgently needed national counter-recruitment campaign. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reclaim our educational institutions for peace and the interests of students from those who would co-opt them for war. Come to the peace concert to learn more!

3:40 PM

SINVA

Sinva perform again. Get up, dance and sing along!

3:55 PM

ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

Thank you very much for attending! May there be “20 more years

of celebrating a day for peace in Oakville” from 2007 to 2026!

History of the Christian Peacemaker Teams

By: Gene Stoltzfus

(Director of CPT from its inception until 2004)

“Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) was conceived in the mid 1980’s when peace church people were seeking new ways to express their faith. Grassroots wars had broken out in many places including Central America. In North America, the U. S. government repeatedly was identified with the elite groups of outmoded oppressive systems. Emerging in that period was a consciousness that by using the creative energy of nonviolence together with organized groups, ordinary people could stand in front of the guns and encourage less violent ways for change to happen. People were learning that courageous faith could overcome cynicism.

By 1992, CPT had put together a series of delegations to Haiti, Iraq and the West Bank of Israel. That experience helped to clarify the need for a trained full-time corps of people to work towards the single objective of violence reduction in crisis situations. A goal was set to develop a Christian Peacemaker Corps of 12 full time persons with a much larger number of reservists who would be available for up to two months each year. By 1998, with the achievement of a 12-person Christian Peacemaker Corps, CPT was able to sustain two full-time projects and other less work-intensive projects. Among those projects were Haiti and Washington, D.C.; and by 1995, the project in Hebron, Palestine began. With rare exceptions corps persons have extended their terms beyond the three-year initial commitment.

The work in Hebron grew out of the experiences of a series of delegations in which CPT workers gained a base of relationships with Palestinians and Israelis concerned about the occupation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Early in 1995, Wendy Lehman and Kathleen Kern, both experienced Peacemaker Corps members, spent several months exploring the possibility of a long term project and were advised to consider the largely Muslim city of Hebron where there was little peacemaking or human rights presence. A very explosive situation existed in downtown Hebron where radical Jewish settlers had taken up residence. Discussions in Hebron culminated in a formal letter of invitation from Hebron’s Mayor and the beginning of a team of violence reduction workers in June 1995.

The CPT experience has demonstrated that teams of four to six people trained in the skills of documentation, observation, nonviolent intervention, and various ministries of presence - including patience - can make a striking difference in explosive situations. Full time teams in places like Hebron are needed where the contending parties simply cannot be convinced to make changes in the distribution of power so that road to peace becomes clear. Hebron typifies a conditions in which one party has most of the power and the other has little. Until both parties have hope for a fair relationship that begins at the negotiating table, the conflict appears unresolvable. CPT workers try to emphasize or encourage nonviolent methods for redress and get in the way of violence when they can.

CPT believes that similarly organized groups of trained peacemakers in urban and rural settings around the world can provide important intervention in local conflicts. Often these conflicts are accentuated by abusive behavior of law enforcement or other security forces. In other cases, police and soldiers are the front end of fundamentally unfair policies.

CPT is a grassroots effort and most of its support comes from church members, congregations and meetings. Full-time workers are compensated according to need. This pattern allows for enormous flexibility and financial frugality. The original call for a Christian Peacemaker Teams was informed by the scriptural encouragement for creative public ministry and enemy loving in the spirit of Jesus. The Peace Churches have brought an important gift to the table; namely, the absolute refusal to kill in situations of conflict. As others join this movement to find ways for justice to happen without killing, they will bring their own special gifts to build the work. As Christians lay aside the weapons of destruction usually controlled by the culture of the mighty, the surprising power for transformation becomes a miracle available to redeem all of human kind and the earth itself.”

Shine A Light For Peace, Everyday!

Are you looking for a great volunteer job?

Call now to OCCPEHR

(905) 849-5501.