Alaska Peace Center Committed to nonviolent conflict resolution, working for peace within ourselves, our community, and our world

Alaska Peace Center T-shirts will soon be available!

They will be for sale at our booth at the Tanana Valley State Fair in early August, or contact any board member (info@alaskapeace.org).

The Fair is coming and the Alaska Peace Center needs a few good booth-sitters!

The Tanana Valley State Fair will run from Friday, August 3 through Saturday, August 11 this year. The Fair is our major opportunity for outreach each year. It is our single best chance to meet with people, both locals and tourists, and discuss issues of peace, justice and sustainability. We need volunteers to staff our booth. We have 3 shifts per day for the nine days that the Fair is open: noon-3pm, 3pm-6pm and 6pm-10pm (6pm-12pm on Fridays and Saturdays). That adds up to 27 shifts.  It would be nice to have enough volunteers to have 2 people at the booth for each shift. If you can help with this please email us at info@alaskapeace.org.

Dick Farris mans the Alaska Peace Center booth at the 2017 Fair

Celebrating Peacemakers in Our Community!

Saturday, 2 June 2018, Noon to 2:00 pm

Square Dance Pavilion, Pioneer Park

5th Annual Peace Feast, Pioneer Park, June 2017. The 2018 event will be at the Square Dance Pavilion (not Wilderness).

Come help us celebrate at the Pioneer Park Square Dance Pavilion! We’ll have our traditional free famous barbecue. Please bring a dish to share and eating utensils if possible. This will be an opportunity to relax in the summer sun and share ideas and interests. Everyone welcome! We’ll be featuring short presentations of work of peace, justice, and sustainability being done in our community.

In This Issue:

Upcoming APC Events;   Protect ANWR;   A Culture of Peace;  KWRK Fairbanks Open Radio Update;  Modernizing Destruction;  Alternatives to Violence;  Get Up, Relatives!;  Recent APC Action;  Viet Nam Full Disclosure Campaign;  Quaker Lobbying;  The Children vs. USA

Read the newsletter by clicking:  Alaska Peace Center Newsletter #14 – January 2018

Syrian White Helmets

The monthly potluck and movie for January will be a joint meeting of the Alaska Peace Center and the University Community Presbyterian Church. It will be held in the Church basement on Friday, January 26. The Church is across College Road from the Peace Center and next door to Beaver Sports (3510 College Road). Potluck at 6:00, Program at 7:00. We will watch a movie about the Syrian White Helmets and have a discussion afterwards. The White Helmets are an urban volunteer search and rescue organization that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Pastor Neill McKay has personal knowledge of Syria so this is an opportunity to get some local insights.

The monthly business meeting of the Alaska Peace Center will take place at 7 pm on Thursday, January 4, at the APC office, upstairs in the College Mall, 3535 College Road Suite 203 (the stairs are at the west end sharing an external door with the Fuji Restaurant). All are welcome.

Join us for this month’s Alaska Peace Center potluck on Friday, 29 December 2017 at the Koponen homestead at 2.2 mile (710) Chena Ridge Road.  It is on the left  just past the fire station. There will be a peace flag out at the road. The potluck will begin at 6 pm and the program will begin at 7 pm.

The program will be a video about the life and work of Pete Seeger, “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song”. It has been rated 4 stars by film critic Roger Ebert, who wrote, “I don’t know if Pete Seeger believes in saints, but I believe he is one. He’s the one in the front as they go marching in. ‘Pete Seeger: The Power of Song’ is a tribute to the legendary singer & composer who thought music could be a force for good, and proved it by writing songs that have actually helped shape our times (‘If I Had a Hammer’ & ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’) and popularizing ‘We Shall Overcome’ & Woody Guthrie’s unofficial national anthem, ‘This Land Is Your Land’.”

For more information call 479-0981.

Heather Koponen in front of the Drones Quilt Project display at the Noel Wien Library, December 2017. Photo by Rob Mulford.

Two quilts from the Drones Quilt Project are on display in the Noel Wien Library lobby throughout the month of December. The Drones Quilt Project was created as a way to remember the thousands of people who have been murdered by missiles launched from American combat drones. The use of combat drones is immoral, illegal and ineffective, yet the U.S. continues to use them, killing countless people whose names they don’t know, and don’t want to know.

Combat drones were first used by President Bush, then expanded rapidly during the Obama administration. Recently President Trump gave carte blanch to the CIA to target and kill people with drones.

The idea for a Drones Quilt came from some women in the UK who started the project as a way to memorialize the victims of U.S. combat drones. Anti-drone activists in the U.S. wanted to make their own version of a Drones Quilt, and so the idea traveled across the Atlantic. The idea is to collectively create a piece of artwork which connects the names of activists with those killed. The names humanize the victims and point out the connectivity between human beings.

In addition to the two quilts that will hang in the Library, there will be a quilt on display at the Friends (Quakers) meeting house and another at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall. The Alaska Peace Center and North Star Veterans for Peace are sponsoring the display.  Thanks to John Spitzberg, Veterans for Peace, Wasilla for initiating the idea.  The flyer for this display is here.

The monthly business meeting of the Alaska Peace Center will take place at 5 pm on Thursday, December 14, at the APC office, upstairs in the College Mall, 3535 College Road Suite 203 (the stairs are at the west end sharing an external door with the Fuji Restaurant). Among agenda items will be whether & where to put up signs from worldbeyondwar.org/billboards. All are welcome.