peace

Lisa Laurel Weinberg is a political asylum and human trafficking attorney with Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services and Community Legal Services and Counseling Center. She is the founder of the Asylum Legal Assistance Project and LGBT Human Rights Protection Project. Attorney Weinberg has legal experience in Senegal, West Africa and Cairo, Egypt. She approaches her legal practice from a humanitarian perspective and long-time interest in justice, social issues and the betterment of humankind.

Erin Mone is an expert in children’s rights issues, having worked with youngsters in war-torn countries for Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee. Erin is the regional director of recruitment for the Peace Corps and teacher at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work (where she graduated in 1999 with a Master in Social Work). She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica and responded: "Seeing children in adverse situations, realizing how lucky I am and where I come from—something just sparked. I felt that my goal and my responsibility was to be an advocate for them." Erin focus her enormous sense of responsibility on some of the world's toughest cases. For four years, Mone lived mostly in refugee camps with former child soldiers from Sierra Leone, street children in Indonesia and youth displaced by war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dr. Mary Lee Morrison is the founder and director of Pax Educare, a Connecticut Peace Education Center. holds a Ph.D. in Educational Studies/Curriculum and Instruction from the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut and a Master's in Social Work from the University of Iowa. A former practicing clinical social worker for over 20 years, she has taught educational foundations and courses in global social work and sociology at several universities. She has authored books and articles on peace education and has been providing consultation and trainings for schools and community groups for the past eighteen years. Dr Morrison is the co-author of Peace Education (with Ian Harris) McFarland Press, 2003 and of the Elise Boulding: A Life in the Cause of Peace (McFarland Press, 2005).

Dr. Pingeton is a physician with a specialty in obstetrics and gynecology. Dr. Pingeton brings a unique, perspective to her medical practice of walking in the shoes of both a nurse and doctor. Educated at Fitchburg State and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Dr Pingeton received yoga teacher training at Guru Ram Das ASHRAM in Millis, MA. Her commitment to healing and stress reduction gives her a unique place in the medical community. Dr. Pingeton supported youth involvement post-Katrina.

Domingo Guyton mentors youth and sings rap music to bring about peace and reconciliation among all people..” In a recent interview, Worcester Magazine wrote: "With blood oozing from four knife wounds, Boston teenager Domingo Guyton made an unusual decision—he did not want his mother to see him this way. So, he walked to a friend’s house and sat on the front steps while they waited for an ambulance. By 1990, the 14-year-old had already been in and out of trouble with local street gangs for three years. Growing up in a loving home with his mother and grandmother, Domingo had never experienced alcohol, drugs, swearing, abuse or neglect. He sang in the church choir, played the drums and his mother read Bible verses to him every night. Stepping outside their house, however, was like “entering a different world.” His neighborhood was “hardcore” and fights, drugs, and gangs dominated the streets. “Every day, someone got shot or stabbed,” he recalls.

Clementina M. Chery, speaker for the 2009 Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast at the Beechwood Hotel, October 13, 2009, founded the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute after her oldest son was shot and killed on December 20, 1993. Tina” serves as Director and Milton Jones, Operations Manager are interviewed about reaching out to families whose family members are victims of violence. The Louis D. Brown Peace Institute developed the Peace Curriculum, a nationally recognized program that teaches the value of peace to students from kindergarten to high school. Tina has been invited to the White House for her achievements by President Clinton. http://www.louisdbrownpeaceinstitute.org/

Michael A. Boover, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies at Anna Maria, has a B.A. from, Worcester State College, and M.A., Assumption College and a D.Div., Andover-Newton Theological School. Mike Boover is a lifelong peace activist and scholar of pastoral theology. Mike and his friend Joan Montesano, who was visiting Mike at the time of the interview, are long-time friends who are members of the Catholic Worker. The Catholic Worker Farm in Sheep Ranch, CA is one of the many cells of the Catholic Worker Movement. The Movement was begun in New York in 1933 by Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. It is based on direct service to the poor, voluntary poverty, communal living and nonviolent resistance to war and injustice, with a focus on the connectedness of people with their environment. The Catholic Worker is one of the earliest back-to-the-land movements in the U.S.