In the wake of the election of Donald Trump who used much anti-Muslim rhetoric in his campaign, there has been a wave of incidents of harassment and threats of people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, and Muslims. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a young Muslim woman was accosted by a man with a gun who told… Read more »
Transforming Initiatives
Disarming the Mind by Sports
The United Nations 2016 Person of the Year Award was given to Kenyan Ambassador Tegla Chepkite Loroupe. Ambassador Loroupe was the organizer of the Refugee Olympic Team that competed in the 2016 Olympics in Rio. In 2014 she visited the Kkuma Refugee Camp in Kenya and met a number of refugees who were athletes. She… Read more »
Mosque Forgives Man Who Shot at Them
Members of the Baitul Aman mosque in Connecticut forgave a man who shot up their mosque following the Paris attacks. When members discovered he was a neighbor, Ted Hakey, Jr., they visited him and invited him to the mosque. In a tearful encounter the mosque members forgave him, and Hakey expressed his wish that he… Read more »
Women Wear Black to Protest “Machismo” Culture
Following a vicious rape of 16-year old Lucia Perez that led to her death by cardiac arrest, thousands of women in Argentina wore black and walked off their jobs to protest the culture of “machismo” which has allowed so much violence against women. The protests had started earlier in June, but the recent violence brought… Read more »
A Bottle of Water and a Rose
A bottle of water and a rose. Those are the symbols for the beginning of the Syrian revolution, a period that has been overshadowed by the horrific war in Syria which is now in its 5th year. The beginning months of the Syrian revolution were nonviolent–on the part of the protesters, though certainly not on… Read more »