Webinar Series: The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence

We need to talk about peace and nonviolence. Urgently.

Webinar: 8pm AEST, Wednesday 7 August 2024

The language of peace is starkly missing from politics. And the practices of nonviolence, from the interpersonal to the global, are less and less part of the way we act. It is crucial that we reclaim the language of peace. We must talk about nonviolence, read brilliant works seeing to understand it, work to define and articulate it as an active, even aggressive (as Judith Butler says), force for change.

To support this, the Green Institute has just launched The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence, a program of work on peace, nonviolence and demilitarisation. And to begin this important conversation, we are delighted to have two of the founders and elder states-people of The Australian Greens, Jo Vallentine and Bob Brown, coming together to discuss why peace, nonviolence and demilitarisation were core to the Greens’ founding ideology, how this has played out over 40 years, and why it is as crucial as ever in the 2020s.

Jo Vallentine was elected to the Senate for WA for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984, and re-elected for the Greens in 1990, serving until 1992. A life-long peace activist, Jo has been arrested at Pine Gap, was involved in the Jabiluka blockade, and helped found the Alternatives To Violence Project.

Bob Brown was founding leader of the Tasmanian Greens, entering the state parliament in 1983, immediately after being released from prison, having been arrested at the Franklin blockade. He was elected to the Senate in 1996, and served as leader of The Australian Greens until 2012. Among Bob’s first public political stands was a hunger strike on top of Mount Wellington, protesting the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise docking in Hobart.

Webinar: 8pm AEST, Wednesday 7 August 2024

Register below to join in the discussion. This webinar is first in a series we’re hosting over the coming months. We look forward to having you along!

Full bursaries are available. Email event organiser (email listed below) with your request.

Jo Vallentine headshot (used in feature image) photo source: Photo CC-BY-SA, from Love Makes a Way on flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lovemakesaway/15243500094/
Bob Brown headshot (used in feature image) photo source: Jes from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons