The twin blasts in my University that day changed my life, as it was the first strike on women students in Islamabad. This incident left a deep effect on my life. Bringing me face to face with a disaster which in its wake brought a lot of challenges.

Sadly I am a victim of that incident, but I have been lucky to survive to tell my story, and look at life in a different perspective.

February 21, 2012, marked the forty-seventh anniversary of the murder of Malcolm X. What does that mean for us? What should it mean for us? As individuals? As a community that wages peace? If one described Malcolm X’s life in accordance with the information proffered by mainstream American history, it would be easy to say [...]

(English translation) O mundo e sua história foram construídos por guerreiros, que não se preocupavam em parecer loucos ou desordeiros, mas sim em mudar a dura realidade que viam em torno de si. Esses guerreiros não se preocupavam em respeitar os status quo, nem se prendiam no conservadorismo e, graças a esses grandes seres humanos o mundo vem mudando constantemente, nos dando a esperança sempre de que é possível sim sonhar com a paz. Guerreiros como Mahatma Gandhi, Madre Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Lech Wałęsa e tantos outros mudaram o mundo sem armas nas mãos, usando apenas as palavras e o amor pela humanidade.

Happy Birthday Dad, I miss you still and today I am reflecting of all you achieved, all the people who loved you, and all you gave me. I am also thinking of all the people who have lost loved ones and have been injured through violence, terrorism, war and genocide. My heart goes out to [...]

In my youth it was illegal for groups of two or more gay men to gather together in public. Those who dared to congregate in homosexual-friendly clubs risked raids and arrests. This is what caused the Stonewall Rebellion that started the modern gay rights movement. Now it is mostly illegal to discriminate against queer people, but that is the law, not the reality. How many straight people have lost jobs when it was discovered who their life partners were? How many straight people have had friends killed because those friends were straight?

It matters not when the healing begins. What matters is that there is a conscious intention to be an active participant in our healing by changing the stories that we tell about our experiences. I had to work to forgive my captor, the disease of alcoholism, in order to be free of an old drama of resentment and hurt. Compassion was the missing key that helped me to understand the lock that seemed to trap me in my painful experiences.

Volunteering at a holiday home for people with severe disabilities, I met a retired police officer who had been attacked on duty which had left her paralysed. She told me that “she had joined the police to help people” and I asked her if she hated the person who had injured her. She replied, “No, because there is too much hate in the world”.

I have been a part of this remarkable organization for almost a year now, and I have witnessed firsthand the power and immense depth of the human need for compassion and ability to give it as my fellow artists, writers, and thinkers incorporate this declaration in their daily lives. I say this because just a year ago I suffered from a terrible notion myself, which I have come to realize plagues us all in one way or another; the very issue of finding the basic human goodness within one’s self, which is something that I was struggling with for a very long time. We work hard to combat hate and ignorance in the lives of others, but what of the hate and the ignorance within us?

When I was a kid my summer job was to sell Kool-Aid to people at my mom’s rummage sales which she and her girlfriends had several times each summer. I remember overhearing one of mom’s customers complaining, saying something about being able to “Jew down” at our neighbor’s yard sale. I wasn’t sure why but I knew at age six that this kind of talk was very wrong and it was very offensive. Yet I would have thought nothing about hearing someone say that they got “gypped” at a rummage sale, car dealership, or a candy store. In fact it was not for another twelve years before I learned that Gypsies were a race of people with over 1,000,000 people in the US, and 10,000,000 in Europe, making them Europe’s largest ethnic minority.

Life After Hate is honored to bring you Wisconsin Wars B-Boy/Breakdance Battle, a statewide tournament celebrating B-Boys and B-Girls and the healthy challenge they engage with. Please join us in supporting this magnificent example of diversity, inclusion, and fearless creative expression!

Project Somalia: Convoy for Hope is a beautiful way to directly help children who desperately need it in war-torn and drought-stricken Dhoobley Somalia. Please donate as you are able and share this link to help spread the word.

Life After Hate is honored to be part of the global Against Violent Extremism network. All of us are actively waging peace with renewed urgency in response to hate and violence happening all over the Earth. Love, prayers, and compassionate energy going out to all of our brothers and sisters who suffer in the aftermath.

A former racist skinhead examines aspects of his past: Where did the hate begin? How did a teenaged alcoholic become a central figure in the white power movement of the late 80s and early 90s? What happened to bring about his drastic change of mind and heart? With a collection of reflective essays, disturbing flashbacks, and an interview, My Life After Hate scrubs scabs off the festering wound of racism, then soothes with the essential wisdom of forgiveness and compassion.

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