I recently came across this article and I had to share this one! There are some very alarming facts about what the youth in the United States have to face.
Look up the HHCF (Hip Hop Chess Federation) and make a donation to fund this project. This is a project that will make a difference!
The Best Strategy for Peace Is Forgiveness
By: Adisa Banjoko I have always believed that the timing of a book coming into your life is usually more important than the contents within it. The Book of Forgiving was a book I did not know I needed – until it arrived. I run an organization called the Hip-Hop Chess Federation (HHCF). We are the world’s first nonprofit to fuse music, chess and martial arts to teach kids about unity, strategy and nonviolence.
The HHCF teaches chess to mostly at-risk youth to help them discover who they are and what they want to be. In addition, we help them develop a plan to actualize their goals and dreams. We join together with many artists includingRZA from the Wu-Tang Clan, various jiu jitsu masters and technology leaders to inspire our kids.
If Hip-Hop, chess and martial arts have taught me anything, they have taught me that everything has a process. If you ignore the most efficient ways to do any particular thing it is not only going to be less efficient, it is going to put a dent in your personal joy. The Book of Forgiving seems to be one of the best formal methods of understanding and actualizing forgiveness (of others and the self) that I have found.
When I created the HHCF, I did it to help young people, mostly teens, navigate through the minefield of life at any stage. I quickly learned through consistent re-engagement of young people that most of them are in deep pain. The root of their pain has many sources. Sometimes, it’s simply poverty. Other times it might be physical or mental abuse. Still others might be from the early death of a parent or sibling. Often times, in my line of work though, it’s violence.
Rap music is often an unwelcome barometer for many topics on race, religion and education that the mainstream media often try to ignore. What many of us call PTSD, rappers and teens in the San Francisco Bay Area use a different term: Turf War Syndrome. There is an album by rapper T-KASH on the subject that was released in 2006. Many people outside of the Hip-Hop world would not know it but one of the most talked about recent releases is by rapper Pharoahe Monch, called PTSD. The mainstream media is ignoring it, but in a few years I predict huge studies on the topic of kids who have suffered in American urban war zones.
A few years ago, I wrote a two-part series on how many American children suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the media outlet NewsOne (readone here, and two here). This might seem odd to a lot of you. For me, it was mind-blowing. When we mention places like Oakland, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, New York we don’t think of the same kind of damage as kids experience in Kabul, Mosul, Baghdad and Kenya. We prefer to think of America as super developed and cool – “better” than the other places I just mentioned. In reality, for many young people (especially Black and Latino males and females) their day-to-day personal exposure to extreme violence is much more common than we think.
The work that Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho have created now gives us all an authentic blueprint to heal ourselves and one another from the major and minor traumas we collectively suffer. One of the reasons I think many political, religious and gang-related wars seem perpetual is because neither side has truly begun to heal from the pain caused by the violence. This locks them into a scenario where revenge is not only the easiest option, but also because of the promotion of violence as a viable solution – it is often the most readily available one.
The Book of Forgiving helps us break that cycle – and from a place of true peace, true love and respect for life, choose to stop the cycle. The children of America and the world need books like this to help them navigate the pain they have endured as well as the pain they have caused. The first thing I did after reading only a few pages was ask some of my immediate family for forgiveness of transgressions for things I have said and done in the past. At the same time I began to understand why different family members or friends or enemies hurt me in the past and I began to release that pain. It was not always easy and if I’m honest I still struggle with some of it. But where I have addressed it, I have found it to work.
The Book of Forgiving will be a book the HHCF plans to make mandatory reading for all our staff members and we will promote it to all of our youth members as a necessary text. I think it is the perfect tool for young people who have experienced and acted out violence. I don’t believe many young people have been handed an easy method for coming to grips with their experience. But that day has come. Since reading this book I have been working to implement the lessons in it. I’m not sure I’m as strong as all of the people in The Book of Forgiving, but I am determined to try.
The Book of Forgiving has taught me that the strategy for peace is in forgiveness.
Adisa Banjoko is the Founder of the HHCF. They are currently hosting a FREE Summer Camp for kids K-12 in San Jose, CA. To learn more visitwww.hiphopchessfederation.org or follow HHCF on Instagram @realhiphopchess
Source: http://forgivenesschallenge.com/2014/07/10/strategy-for-peace-forgiveness/
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