FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: National Peacemakers Summit Meeting Leads to Creation of Shanti Sena Network Portland, OR - September 16,

2012 Seventeen people from across the United States and Canada, committed to nonviolence and teaching the tools of third-party nonviolent intervention, gathered this weekend at the Whitefeather Peace Community house in Portland, Oregon to discuss unifying their efforts to create a nonviolent response to violence in their local areas. The three-day gathering resulted in the creation of the Shanti Sena Network (SSN). Shanti Sena was a term coined by Mahatma Gandhi, and it means peace army. Representatives from the Metta Center for Nonviolence, Michigan Peace Team, Veterans for Peace, the D.C. Peace Team, the Minnesota Peace Team, Global Peace Services, the NCI Network, PeaceVoice, Washington Peace Team, Nonviolent Peaceforce will be working together to develop the Shanti Sena Network. The SSN will cohesively link peace organizations and nonviolent skills trainers from across North America as they endeavor to teach violence prevention/de-escalation techniques, create regional peace teams (both long and short term), and work together to deploy trained peace teams to areas of potential violence where requested. Michael Nagler (2002 American Book Award winner for The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, our Families, and Our World, and considered one of the worlds foremost authority on Gandhi) was an integral part of the meeting, and said The purpose of this work should ultimately hinge on the uplifting of the human image as powerful creators of nonviolent change. Matthew Price attended the meeting on behalf of the D.C. Peace Team. Spending the weekend with such peaceful and inspirational people was a blessing for me as an individual and as a member of the D.C. Peace Team. Not only will the D.C. Peace Team be able to strengthen our current initiatives at Aiton Elementary but we will now be able to leverage the wisdom and talent within the Shanti Sena Network to better serve the D.C. Community. Gandhi saw the Shanti Sena as comprised primarily of volunteers whose mission is to provide constructive, creative avenues for violence prevention and control, and felt it would be crucial to the development of world peace: any truly free society must be able to manage its own conflicts without resorting to violence or fear lest it become obligated to a military class and thus forfeit significant parts of its democracy. Currently, the SSN plans to meet quarterly as they begin building the national network. For more information, please contact Eli McCarthy at (510-717-8867/esm52@georgetown.edu) ###