Activist Activities
On Hiroshima Day of August 6, 2005 the Tampa, Florida chapter of BPF organized The Hiroshima Memorial in conjunction with Pax Christi, designed to raise consciousness about the issue of nuclear war. The two groups released "peace lanterns" into the air and participants held vigils and various talks. On Hiroshima Day of August 6, 2006, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Santa Cruz, California used the occasion to protest the Iraq War. Participants of the group "displayed a three foot tall, hundred foot long, scroll listing 40,000 names of Iraqi civilians killed in the war. There was also a pair of booths created which listed the names, photos, and brief stories, of over 2,000 US and coalition soldiers who also died in the war."
In October 2007 the Milwaukee chapter of BPF organized a silent "lakefront demonstration" to lend their support to the Buddhists of Myanmar protesting the oppression of the military junta there. Plans were made to sneak photographs and information on the Milwaukee event into Myanmar, to let protesters know that there are outsiders standing with them in solidarity. Some members reported being told that their phones were likely bugged in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Famous quotes containing the words activist and/or activities:
“If we love-and-serve an ideal we reach backward in time to its inception and forward to its consummation. To grow is sometimes to hurt; but who would return to smallness?”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)