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Main Characters in Fierce Light
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu is one of the world’s most beloved religious figures. A long time foe of apartheid he retired as Episcopal archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa and was then named chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission - the organization charged with bringing to light to the atrocities committed during apartheid and achieving reconciliation with the former oppressors. Tutu brings a theology grounded in both prayer and social action that “seeks to restore the oppressor’s humanity by releasing and enabling the oppressed to see their oppressors as peers under God.”
Alice Walker
Alice Walker is an activist and a social visionary who has been a participant in many of the major movements of planetary change from the American Civil Rights Movement forward.
Alice is well known for her beautiful Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple, which was made into an internationally popular film and is now a Broadway musical. Her other novels include Now is the Timeto Open Your Heart , By the Light of My Father’s Smile and Possessing the Secret Of Joy. She is also the author of three collections of short stories, three collections of essays, five volumes of poetry and several children’s books.
Ashish Ramgobin
Ashish, great grand-daughter of Gandhi, is a social activist living and working from the Phoenix Settlement in Durban, South Africa. The Phoenix Settlement is where Gandhi first discovered the power of non-violence and his legacy was born.
As a social activist, Ashish has worked with the local government within South Africa in developing effective planning mechanisms, sustainable development and community mobilization. Currently she is managing a sustainable development centre in South Africa focusing on the involvement of poor people in livelihoods promotion, institutional capacity building of NGOs and civil society development.
bell hooks
bell hooks is a black woman intellectual and revolutionary activist. She is celebrated as one of America’s leading public intellectuals and is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world.
A prolific writer she is the author of numerous critically acclaimed and influential books on the politics of race, gender, class, and culture and has focused her attention on the myriad forms of racism from subtle to blatant. Her first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism which she began when she was 19, was named one of the “twenty most influential women’s books of the last twenty years” by Publishers Weekly in 1992.
Brad Will
Bradley Roland Will (1970-2006) was a U.S. anarchist, documentary filmmaker and a journalist with Indymedia New York City. He was also a friend and a colleague. Will was an active participant in protests across the United States, usually for various social justice and human rights causes, and was involved with environmental movements such as Earth First! and the Fall Creek Tree Village in the Willamette National Forest outside Eugene, Oregon. A proponent of anti-corporate media, he hosted his own program on Steal This Radio, a Lower East Side-based pirate radio station.
During the summer of 2006, Will videotaped demonstrations at the Mexican Consulate in response to a violent police incursion into the teacher’s encampment. Shortly thereafter, Will traveled to Oaxaca in order to document and film the teachers’ strike. On October 27, he was videotaping near a barricade erected by pro-strike protesters when gunmen approached and opened fire. Will was shot twice and died while he was being carried away from the area.
On November 11 and 12, Friends of Brad Will organized a gathering in New York City to commemorate Will’s life. The event included a memorial service at St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, as well as speeches and concerts. Bradley will be remembered.
Presente!
Carly Stasko
Carly Stasko is a self-titled Imagitator who agitates imagination as a Toronto-based but globally inspired artist, writer, activist, producer and holistic educator. Her most recent publication is a chapter titled “(r)Evolutionary Healing: Jamming the Culture and Shifting the Power”, which has been published by Routledge in Next Wave Cultures edited by Anita Harris and which was developed out of a workshop Carly presented at the UNESCO Earth Symposium.
Carly is interested in love, healing, jamming with culture, as well as working and playing towards environmental and social justice through education and the arts. You might find her presenting workshops on media literacy and indymedia activism in high schools and universities across North America, working with communities for peace, dancing anywhere and everywhere, planting seeds in abandoned lots with other guerilla gardeners, dressed up like a white blood cell visualizing the immune system with cancer patients, leading laughter yoga sessions in shelters and community centers, experimenting with courageous vulnerability or meditating on loving compassion under a tree.
Daryl Hannah
In recent years, actress Daryl Hannah known for her roles in Blade Runner and Splash, has become a voice of ecological and environmental action. Her home runs on solar power and is built with green materials. She also drives a car that runs on biodiesel. An activist and filmmaker, she is a keen environmentalist with her own weekly video blog on sustainable solutions.
In 2006, Daryl was one of the first celebrities to join the 350 farmers of the South Central Farms in Los Angeles in their fight to farm the land they cultivated and lived off of for over a dozen years. She joined activists Julia Butterfly Hill and John Quigley, and for three weeks sat in a walnut tree to protest the farmer’s eviction, despite her fear of heights. On June 13, 2006, Daryl was arrested for her involvement.
Joanna Macy
An Eco-philosopher, Joanna Macy, Ph.D is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises into constructive, collaborative action.
John Lewis
An important leader in the American Civil Rights Movement, Congressman John Lewis is still ‘getting in the way’.
At the great Washington March of 1963, at the age of 23, John Lewis spoke to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. from the March on Washington and the leader of the famous march across the Selma bridge on the day known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, in which he was violently beaten. He refused to strike back, returning only love.
He came into the spotlight recently when he came out in support of Barack Obama. He spoke at the National Democratic Convention on the anniversary of the March on Washington.
John Quigley
John Quigley is an environmental educator who made national headlines in 2002 when he lived in a historic Santa Clarita Valley oak tree for 71 days to spare it from removal to widen the road. Resulting from his peaceful action, ‘Old Glory’ - as the oak was dubbed - was eventually moved to a site a quarter of a mile away.
In 2006, he peacefully fought to save the South Central Farm from development along with activists Julia Butterfly Hill, Daryl Hannah, and Joan Baez.
Judy Rebick
Judy Rebick is a journalist, a political activist, and one of Canada’s most prominent and respected left wing media figures. She is the founder of Canada’s irreverent web magazine rabble.ca and is the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Her new book, Transforming Power: From the Personal to the Political, explores the rising tide of compassionate activism from an activists perspective. Velcrow and Judy have an on-going dialogue about the relationship between spirituality and activism.
Julia Butterfly Hill
For 738 days forest activist Julia Butterfly Hill lived 180 feet high in the canopy of an ancient redwood tree to help make the world aware of the plight of ancient forests. Julia, with great help from steelworkers and environmentalists, successfully negotiated to permanently protect the tree and a nearly three-acre buffer zone. She came down to a world that recognized her as a heroine and powerful voice for the environment. Today her “what’s your tree” program encourages people inspired by her story to find their own cause - their own tree. Her message is that we are all Julia Butterflys, Gandhis, Martin Luther Kings, Mother Theresas. We all have the potential and power to become great leaders, to serve with our hearts, and to change the world.
“What is it that calls you to stretch beyond what is comfortable into places that are uncomfortable, and to realize that you are more powerful and more magical than your mind could have believed?
-Julia Butterfly Hill
Leela Kumari
Leela Kumari is the Governor for the National Federation of Dalit Women in India. The Dalits are considered the lowest in the Indian Caste system, and are currently fighting a battle similar to that the U.S. Civil Rights movement. She is a social activist and an advocate who has been working among the Dalits for two decades. She exposes the situation of Dalit Women, and the Indian untouchable apartheid. Her message is that “change begins within”.
Michael Beckwith
Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith is a world leader and teacher in the New Thought-Ancient Wisdom tradition of spirituality. He is the founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, cofounder of the Association for Global New Thought, and the Season for Non-violence, which are extensions of his vision of one human family united on a foundation of peace, based on the spiritual origin of every man, woman, and children.
Noah Levine
Noah Levine is a meditation teacher, author and counselor - with a punk rock background. As a dissatisfied kid, Noah Levine’s search for meaning led him first to punk rock, drugs, and drinking. Thankfully, his search didn’t end there. Seeing the uselessness of drugs and violence, Noah looked for positive ways to channel his rebellion against what he saw as the lies of society. Noah now holds a masters degree in counseling psychology from CIIS and has studied with many prominent teachers in both the Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhist traditions. In addition to teaching meditation classes, workshops and retreats all over the U.S. he also leads groups in juvenile halls and prisons. He is the author of Dharma Punx and Against The Stream.
Sam Harris
Sam Harris is an author with an interest in neuroscience, neuro-theology and religion. A philosophy graduate from Stanford University Harris has made a long study of both Eastern and Western religious traditions.
Harris considers the time has come to speak openly and unambiguously about the dangers posed to society by religious belief. He is especially critical of the stance of religious moderation, which he sees as essentially providing cover to religious extremism while at the same time acting as an obstacle to progress in terms of pursuing more enlightened approaches towards spirituality and ethics. Harris also wishes to recapture spirituality for the domain of human reason and creativity. He draws his inspiration from the practices (but not the beliefs) of Eastern religion, in particular that of meditation.
Sera Beak
Sera Beak is quickly becoming the voice for a new generation of spiritual seekers. She proposes that we go a step beyond spiritual activism, to what she calls “Ecstatic Activism” - falling in love with humanity and the planet. She is a Harvard-trained scholar of comparative religion and mysticism who has spent the last dozen years traveling the world exploring spirituality, from whirling with Sufi dervishes to meeting the Dalai Lama on her 21st birthday; to having life-altering visions with a shaman, and just about everything in between. She now happily deems herself a Spiritual Cowgirl.
Her first book is The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark. She is currently writing The Red Book of Spiritual Super Powers and co-directing, with Velcrow Ripper, the feature documentary film Redvolution: Dare to Disturb the Universe, about becoming your own spiritual super hero. www.serabeak.com
“Being spiritual is being who you really are, and being who you really are boldly,
to the best of your ability; really daring yourself to disturb the universe.”
– Sera Beak
South Central Farmers
The South Central Farmers consist of approximately 350 families of moderate means from the neighbouring community. For 14 years, the farmers lovingly tended the land, creating a lush paradise out of a 14-acre vacant lot, rising like an indomitable weed from the despair of the LA riots of 1992.
After the notification of the impending destruction of the garden, the group became politically active and gathered supporters in politics, higher-learning, entertainment, and abroad. Despite the farmer’s non-violent protests the garden was eventually bulldozed in June 2006, but still the spirit of the farmers could not be destroyed. In 2008 they planted a new farm on 85 acres of land outside of Los Angeles and every month they hold a farmers market in front of their Garden of Eden which remains a vacant lot they continue fighting to replant.
Aqui esstamos! nosnos vamos! We are here, and we’re not leaving!
–South Central Farmers
Thich Nhat Hanh
One of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, poet, and peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh has led an extraordinary life. He coined the term Engaged Buddhism and has been a world leader in non- violence practices and teachings. He may have changed the course of U.S. history when he persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. The following year, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Subsequently, Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks.
Van Jones
Van Jones is the successor to John Lewis and Martin Luther King, representing a new generation of spiritual activists. He is founding president of Green For All and a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. r jobs and opportunities for the disadvantaged. Its mission is to build an inclusive, green economy - strong enough to resolve the ecological crisis and lift millions of people out of poverty. He is also the author of The Green Collar Economy (Harper One 2008), which is endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle and Al Gore.
“A great convergence is happening – of spiritual people becoming active, and active
people becoming spiritual. It’s very positive, it’s very hopeful, it’s very miraculous.
For it is in this convergence that the hope of humanity now lies.”
- Van Jones