Val Liveoak recently shared with Western Friend the text of her keynote presentation to 2018 PeaceQuest, which is online at: westernfriend.org/media/friends-peace-teams-our-history. The following is a compilation of some excerpts from that text.
A reflection on words as weapons.
Tex of Val Liveoak's keynote presentation to 2018 PeaceQuest, describing the nearly twenty-five-year history of Friends Peace Teams.
The creatures in the ocean were dying. An old woman sneaked up to the shoreline and quietly picked up a few emaciated fish – red ones and blue ones. She put them in her pockets and took them away. She nurtured them back to health in a clean pond where they thrived and propagated. When she had a large number of each, she took them back to the sea.
I want to start by distancing myself from the concept of objectivity, as any good feminist would – that is, I want to start by naming my point of view. I choose to focus on certain themes, movements, and social actors because I come from a working class background in the United States. I began developing an anarchist, anti-capitalist philosophy at an early age.
A tale wherein our Methodist-Quaker Hermanas confront a would-be attacker in their Honduran monastery and receive assistance from a character found in a novel about twelfth-century England.
Each day during the week leading up to the U.S. presidential inauguration of 2017, the Center for Courage and Renewal
