Nonviolent citizen movements for peace, environmental change and social justice in the United States and Japan have caused social and political change in both nations. Leading American social activist and former California State Senator Tom Hayden and James Orr, Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at Bucknell University and author of The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (2001), discuss the manner in which citizens of both nations have utilized strategies of nonviolence to effect social change, and how these methods have influenced citizen response to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moderated by Amy Goodman, co-founder, Executive Producer and Host of Democracy Now! Followed by a reception.

This program is part of the Satya Graha Forum, a series of events throughout New York related to Satya Graha, or the idea of transformation through nonviolence. Inspired by Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha, which opens at Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House on April 11th, the forum is organized by Helen Tworkov, founder of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and current President of the Board of the Tricycle Foundation. For information on The Satya Graha Forum please visit www.satya-graha.org

For additional online information, please visit:  www.japansociety.org