Excerpts We Should Read, Talk About and Act On: Important Passages to Guide Us towards Reconciliation
Join us for Zoom conversations based on book excerpts that can impact how we move
towards reconciliation as a community and as individuals.
No need to read the books; we will share excerpts and guide discussion.
Discussions will be held the first Thursday of each month beginning in October from 7-8 pm.
Register for the Discussion HERE
October 5, 2023 7-8 PM
Leon Ford
An Unspeakable Hope: Brutality, Forgiveness, and Building a Better Future for My Son
In 2012, nineteen-year-old Leon Ford was shot five times by a Pittsburgh police officer during a racially charged traffic stop stemming from a case of mistaken identity. When he woke up in the hospital, he was faced with two life-changing realities: he was a new father, and he was paralyzed from the waist down. Leon found the only way to move forward was to let go of his bitterness and learn to practice forgiveness.
November 2, 2023 7-8 PM
Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World
How do I forgive? Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has witnessed some of the worst crimes people can inflict on others. Writing with his daughter, Mpho, they lay out the simple truths about the significance of forgiveness, how it works, why everyone needs to know how to grant it and receive it, and why granting forgiveness is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves when we have been wronged.
This event is postponed and will be rescheduled for a later date
December 7, 2023 7-8 PM
Pardeep Kaleka and Arno Michaelis
The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness after Hate
The powerful story of a friendship between two men―one Sikh and one skinhead―that resulted in an outpouring of love and a mission to fight against hate. When white supremacist Wade Michael Page murdered six people and wounded four in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin in 2012, Pardeep Kaleka was devastated. The temple leader, now dead, was his father. His family, who had immigrated to the U.S. from India when Pardeep was young, had done everything right. Meanwhile, Arno Michaelis, a former skinhead and founder of one of the largest racist skinhead organizations in the world, had spent years of his life committing terrible acts in the name of white power. When he heard about the attack, waves of guilt washing over him, he knew he had to take action and fight against the very crimes he used to commit.
January 4, 2024 7-8 PM
Alice Wong
Year of the Tiger: An Activist Life
This groundbreaking memoir offers a glimpse into an activist’s journey to finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability justice, from the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project. In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s book will galvanize listeners with big cat energy.
