1968 was a year that gave its name to a generation. On both sides of the Atlantic, events unfolded which resonate to this day. Leaders like Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. still spoke to the hopes of millions for peace and justice. Their violent deaths fed a despair that these things remained beyond our grasp. In Eastern Europe, the Prague Spring sent the first shoots of hope for freedom there, and in Germany, young men and women confronted their parents and grandparents about their roles in a Nazi Germany that was barely 20 years in the past.
Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP) was 10 years old and had already developed its unique blend of confronting the past, serving the victims of German fascism, and taking action in the present. In 1968, this meant accepting the invitation of American Peace Churches to serve with them in the United States and fight the poverty, racism, and a legacy of war. In 1983, it meant serving in the Jewish community, building bridges, fighting anti-Semitism, and serving the survivors of the Holocaust.
In 2018, the world and ARSP has come a long way. And yet, new problems emerge even as we confront at the polling place and in the streets echoes from a past we had hoped was gone forever.
We want to welcome you – friends and partners, current and former volunteers to this, our 50th Anniversary Celebration. We hope that this will be a weekend to celebrate the past, but more importantly to consider where we are going on both sides of the Atlantic as friends, involved citizens, and as part of an organization committed to setting a sign for justice and peace today.
Dr. Dagmar Pruin, Thomas Heldt, Mark McGuigan
Friday, October 5, 2018
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018