Provocate.org

Johann Galtung is coming to Indy. The most influential living social scientist, he is the founder of the academic study of peace and conflict studies, a discipline now offered as a major or a minor on virtually every college in America and Europe. He’s the author of more than a hundred books and more than a thousand articles. He is reported to have served as a mediator in more than 40 internaitonal conflicts. Think of one degree of seperation: if an academic uses the word “peace,” either she has read Galtung or she studied withsomeone who read Galtung. But is it all just a “peace racket”? (more…)

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Calling Sherman Alexie the foremost Native American writer is damning with faint praise. Novelist, essayist, poet, screenwriter, he is at the top of anyone’s game. And maybe he’ll explain why basketball is so important to Native Americans as well as Hoosiers. (more…)

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One of Provocate’s favorite groups is the Latino Youth Collective. Take this chance to see their imaginative and creative videos. (more…)

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Says Dawoud Bey: “Artists used to be the ones who led the charge to challenge the system; they were the proverbial ‘fly in the buttermilk,’ the monkey wrench that mucked up the system and made it act, function, and exist in new ways. Artists were the ones who created paradigms of everything the system was not. Marvin Gaye’s signature song ‘What’s Going On?’–a musical critique of a world gone off track–provides an apt framework for looking at the role of art and cultural production in the larger society.” (more…)

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Attend an important conference organized by the Latino coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence. (more…)

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How to fix society? Simple, get people to change their dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors. The world’s foremost social psychologist explains why this is more complicated than it sounds. (more…)

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Learn how to make the home environment safer and healthier for individuals. This program teaches volunteers how to asses their neighbors’ homes and makes recommendations that are of low or no cost to the resident. (more…)

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Come join the residents of the Indianapolis Peace House on Wednesday, July 30 for a gathering of our neighbors. Stop in any time from 5 to 8 pm to enjoy free entertainment, live music, food, and the company of the Indianapolis community. The house is located at 1421 Central Avenue, Indianapolis IN 46202.

What: Open House @ Indianapolis Peace House
When: 5-8 pm, July 30th
Where: 1421 Central Ave.
Cost: Free
Info: peacehouse.info@gmail.com

The Peace House is a program of the Indianapolis Peace Institute, founded by the Plowshares Collaborative of Goshen, Manchester, and Earlham, Indiana’s historic peace colleges.

There are 13 college students living at the Peace House, from 9 different colleges and universities and pursuing studies in everything from Art Therapy and English to Criminal Justice and Theology. The goal is to learn peace through action.

Each of the students is a full-time intern for local organization promoting peace in Indianapolis. And there are some awesome internships: working at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Exodus Refugee Center, and Big Car Gallery, to name a few. One of them is even working here at Provocate.org writing these event blurbs.

The philosophy behind this open house is that community is a lot bigger than the 13 people in the house. It’s about friends, neighbors, co-workers, people you meet at Kroger, and people you don’t know at all. It’s about the people who inspire you and teach you. And it’s about people outside your demographic—people who challenge your ideas.

That’s why the Peace House has invited the whole city of Indianapolis to their open house. They declare:

“You are our friends, neighbors, co-workers, random acquaintances, and even a few friends we haven’t met yet. You’re people we admire, people who believe in peace, and people who challenge us. In short, you are our community. When we get to know you, we create a space for peace.”

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Fifty years ago, the Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank transformed the way we see ourselves with his book Les Americains (The Americans), a photographic portrait of the United States. Then he decided to do the same for film. (more…)

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Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and became a statesman in Illinois … but between the ages of 7 and 21 he lived in Indiana, and that definitely makes him a Hoosier. Explore why that is important for understanding Lincoln. (more…)

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