Desmond Tutu and Minneapolis Youth Rally for Peace (preview)
Posted by Adam Hanson on April 10th 2008 in Events
photos | courtesy of Steve Floyd
In a small room in Kwanzaa church, North Minneapolis high school and college students gather to plan one of the largest peace conferences ever held in Minnesota. These young men and women are participants in the PeaceJam program or its Upper Midwest affiliate, Youthrive. The PeaceJam and Youthrive programs teach youth about the lives of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to inspire them to engage in peacemaking activities and teach others to make peaceful choices.
Because these students are committed reducing the violence in their community, they have sacrificed their time to organize a three-day peace rally that will include blocking off Broadway Avenue, a major downtown street, to allow hundreds of Minneapolis high school students to distribute food to the hungry, stuff teddy bears for African children, write letters to AIDS patients, and many more service projects.
PeaceJam members have also arranged for Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu to come and teach the city his powerful message against violence and challenge peaceful youth to continue their work in the inner city. Many Minneapolis city officials believe so strongly in these students’ vision that they have gone out of their way to help make this conference happen. The Minneapolis police department even arranged for extra officers to donate their time to help with event security. Tutu will speak to the public this Friday night, April 11, in the Minneapolis Convention Center auditorium at 7 p.m. Perhaps his words and the heroic commitment to peace of these youth will give people in the city an excuse to stand against the tide of inner-city violence in our generation.
If you are going to be in the Minneapolis area, tickets cost $50 and can be ordered by emailing chesay.colson@metrostate.edu or calling 651-793-1816. (Please leave your organization name, contact person, contact phone number and the number of tickets desired.) Any tickets left on Friday will be for sale at the Convention Center for $25. For more information on this peace conference, visit www.youthrive.net or look for the follow-up article here in the NEED blog after the event.
