Amazing Peace Activist Trainees
This year there were more applicants [25!] – and more diverse applicants – than ever before for WWFOR’s Peace Activist Trainee (PAT) program. The month-long summer program is primarily funded by the Abe Keller Peace Education Fund. We stretched our capacity and took 10 amazing students. We also had a larger “staff”: Ellen Finkelstein, Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm (2005 PAT, 3rd year as assistant director), and Dante Garcia (2007 PAT, Evergreen student), with Mike & Ruth Yarrow.
The PATs did some amazing things during the course of the month. They met a number of activists working on a variety of issues and had trainings in nonviolence, racial justice, facilitation, public speaking, and other organizing skills. They spoke their truths powerfully on a soapbox outside Pike Place Market. They went on an “inequity tour” in Georgetown, South Park, and Magnolia (neighborhoods in Seattle). After an eye-opening visit to Tent City 3, they chose to conduct a survey about homelessness, and then were visible allies, attending and speaking at a Seattle City Council hearing on homeless encampments legislation. They met with King County Councilman Larry Gossett to talk about homelessness, as well as King County legislation that would restrict detention of undocumented immigrants. They spoke with Iraq War veterans (Alex Bacon & Greg Miller from Coffee Strong), followed by an appointment with a Navy recruiter, and then debriefed. The PATs attended a youth-of-color organized-and-led rally featuring spoken word outside the King County Courthouse that addressed the death of Trayvon Martin, the hunger strike at Pelican Bay prison, the criminal justice system, and its impact on youth. Motivated by that experience and information about the school to prison pipeline (among other things), their final project included a flash mob at Westlake followed by an energetic, visual march and rally (“Youth in Danger: Police Brutality and the School to Prison Pipeline”) from Garfield High School to the King County Juvenile Detention Center in the Central District. That’s the short list of all that the PATs did, and we imagine, they’ll continue to do amazing things.
In Their Own Words (highlights and what they will take and apply): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krblrji0wCQ
Azeb Tuji shared her own thoughts about her “Life-Changing Summer.”