The Women’s Center will use its first Brown Bag of the year Thursday to present students with a “toolkit” for viewing and participating in nonviolent protests, M. Geneva Murray, the director of the Women’s Center, said.
The lunchtime program will feature LGBT Center director; delfin bautista, the strategic director for diversity and inclusion and multicultural programs and initiatives at the Multicultural Center; Winsome Chunnu-Brayda and department of history chairperson and professor, Katherine Jellison. The panel will discuss the history of nonviolent protest and how it can be used effectively in today’s politically-charged society.
”We’ll be using their experience and expertise to think about what nonviolent protest means,” Murray said. “The Women’s Center is nonpartisan, so the program is looking at the historical perspective and thinking about how it can be applied to anyone’s life regardless of where they fall politically.”
Murray said she hopes participants will learn skills and perspectives that will be helpful in their own lives.
“We want to equip people with the tools so that they are thinking about how they can communicate effectively, but also peacefully,” Murray said. “Ensuring that...when we are protesting, we are doing it safely and effectively.”
Chunnu-Brayda, a featured participant in the discussion, plans to speak on how a nonviolent protest draws attention to problems faced by members of the international community.
Chunnu-Brayda said the election season and the opposing opinions that accompany it make this topic even more prevalent now.
“We live in a democracy where we’re always getting a competing perspective, which is great,” she said. “I think we should be engaging in these kinds of dialogue all the time. However, there are times when some of this dialogue becomes more important and timely.”
She hopes the students who attend the event will not only be those already actively involved in the political dialogue, but also those who are still learning to get engaged, she said.
While Athens may be small in comparison to other cities in the state, Chunnu-Brayda said it is not small in the national political arena due to the university’s large and diverse student population. This makes it even more important for students to learn to engage in constructive dialogue.
“Since we’re a politically active campus, we have played a role in practically every major election...because of the demographics of our student population,” she said. “We as a university have a responsibility to consistently engage our students from all over the world in all kinds of topics.”
