Americans Who Tell the Truth
 

Betty Burkes

Betty Burkes - ©2008 Robert Shetterly-

Betty Burkes Biography (1942 - )
Peace Educator, Activist

"How do we redefine ourselves to be motivated to connect and share rather than shop and consume, replenish rather than extract? How does this transformation happen? ...

At the heart of this transformation is not technology but relationships, tens of millions of people working toward restoration and social justice."

Betty Burkes has come to understand the world around her through relationships, through community. She believes Peace is relational and that we can get there through the hard inner and outer work of honest dialogue and self-reflection.

Learning, listening, and teaching have always been at the heart of her long career. Growing up in working class Ohio, Betty experienced respect and support at home but racism out in the world. After college, Betty joined the Peace Corps, teaching in Ethiopia. After studying Early Childhood Education and teaching in Berkeley, California, she lived in England for many years where she studied art, dance and taught at the American School in London. In 1986, she returned to the US and opened Montessori Paradise, and Summer Center on Cape Cod. Through both programs, Betty explored the world with pre-school children, developing their respect for nature, relational skills, and self-responsibility, as well as arts, crafts and music.

In the 1980's Betty joined Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and served on the national board and as its U.S. Section President. In an interview about WILPF for Enviro Close-Up, Burkes discussed the "culture of power" in the US, where we are often taught that our way is THE way. She suggests investigating our own U.S. history of violence and deception as a way to understand the attitudes and values that live in us and shape relationships that are reflected in our national policies. She believes that educating ourselves, opening our hearts to the realities of those whose lives and views are different from our own, and joining our individual efforts with others are viable strategies for effecting change.

From 2002-2005, Burkes worked for the Hague Appeal for Peace, an organization whose goal is abolishing war and establishing peace as a human right in collaboration with the U.N. Department of Disarmament Affairs. She served as Peace Education Program Coordinator on a project in Albania, Cambodia, Niger and Peru. With in-country partners, she helped design Peace Education curricula for national school systems and programs for promoting community building and conflict resolution skills locally.

Wherever she is located, she has worked locally for global change, for racial and community justice on Cape Cod, for the environment with earth circles and with the Cambridge Peace Commission supporting sister relationships with Palestine and El Salvador, creating community peace circles and promoting peace-building.

Currently, Betty coordinates programs for “Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools". Rethink is a program that arose in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It supports and engages Middle School youth to both envision and contribute to the rethinking of New Orleans Schools. Developing transformational leadership, critical thinking skills and community among young people with opportunities to speak to those in power is the Rethink vision.

Betty Burkes believes in a “beloved community,” where all life is valued and relational living and awareness is at the heart of human interactions. She believes that transforming the structures of power is possible through nonviolence with education that promotes inquiry and investigation, patience and love. She believes it and strives to achieve it in her life and work.

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Read about Betty's organization Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools here:
What part of Betty's work with students could you implement in your school? A great project for students to get them involved in their school communities.
 
 
In the late '60's, after serving in the Peace Corps, I found myself
teaching in the public schools and studying at the University of
 California at Berkeley. When I moved there the city council had recently
 adopted 'busing' as a strategy for desegregating the city's segregated
 neighborhood schools. There was enormous enthusiasm in the city for
 desegregating the schools. Busing was considered a controversial but
 innovative idea for a bold, progressive community like Berkeley. The
 city was celebrating their success and decisively moving forward.
 School administrators and staff were poised to engage their respective
 constituencies in community building skills, sensitivity trainings and
 anti-racism workshops. Curriculum was being developed to educate young
 people about diversity and especially the history of people of color.
 Teachers were being coached about how to reassure families who were
 afraid or had concerns about the complicated busing routes.
 However, I noticed that none of this was enough to soothe the wrath
 spawned by the white minority who felt their needs and opinions discarded by those in power.As the " losers" in the voting process, their concerns were then
 marginalized by the process of majority rule exacerbating the tension. And although they represented a diversity of opinion, attitude and solutions, they were treated as a monolithic voice, all racists and pro-segregationist.
The city was divided more around the issue of busing than the issue of
 desegregation but its unwillingness or inability to collaborate with
 those who disagreed and to solve conflict creatively resulted over time
 in a failing public school system. Private schools sprung up, public
 school funding waned and dissension grew in the ranks of the majority.
 All this finally undermined the city's desegregation effort. The city
which undertook the task of doing the right thing failed not because of
racism and segregationism but because one group exercising power over
 another group created desperation and a city of broken relationships.
Positioned in the classroom during this busing experiment, I had the opportunity for many conversations with those who agreed and disagreed
 with the busing solution to desegregated schools. I understood the fear
 and resentment that pained their hearts and the existence of more than
 one side to every story, Efforts to build a bridge between those opposing voices was not kindly received in places of authority and power. I witnessed a well
 intentioned desegregation effort disintegrate. I was one of the self-
righteous ruling majority who longed for an end to racism and
 segregation, but lacked humility and the relational skills to engage the
whole community. I understood a city trying to do the right thing and
suffering from an unenlightened decision making process that rewards the will of the majority and disenfranchises the minority. I felt powerless in the struggle for busing to prevail and left the country. I spent the next 15 years living abroad reinventing myself and discovering the way of the middle path.
  In the mid '80's I returned to the US with a partner and 6 year old
 daughter, enrolled her in the local public school and during her first
week on the school bus, one of her bus mates called her a nigger.
This was my AHA moment, a transformational moment.  My matured,
 reinvented, relational self knew just what to do. Organize! Go slow!
Beware of taking anything personally! Listen deeply! Speak the truth!
Remember your own best self and invite others to be their best selves.
 "Armed" with all of this, I went to the school principal with the inquiry "how were we going to partner to address our shared concern about this learned, unconscious hurtful behavior?". My life was never the same.
 
Betty Burkes