SAN ANTONIO • Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and international peace educator, led a march on Feb. 5 from the SAMM’s Shelter to the Arneson River Theater downtown, focusing on the connections between overcoming poverty and creating justice, if we seek a peaceful city and world.
    This was part of the Season of Nonviolence sponsored by the San Antonio peaceCENTER. Amy Shfranek noted, “Hearing him speak reminded me that the idea of peace can only spread through action.”
    Among the speakers and organizers were people who take action assisting the homeless, working against racism and speaking for the rights of Native Americans and immigrants.
    Paul Lewis Ph.D., assistant professor of philosophy at UIW is a member of the “Mombasa Code” which provided music for the extraordinary event which commemorated that 75 years ago Mahatma Gandhi led a march to the sea to make salt.
    This salt making challenged the British monopoly on salt and transformed history with Gandhi’s effective use of non-violence to get freedom from the strongest empire in the world. People carried posters of Martin Luther King, Jr. who used Gandhi’s techniques.

    Joan Braune, president of the University’s Amnesty International, said, “About 300-400 people marched, and there was this incredible sense of unity. Indians and other Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Middle-Easterners and Anglos — people from all over the world — were marching under the banner of peace, chanting, ‘The people, united, will never be defeated!’ That’s a force empire-building leaders are going to have to contend with. That’s a force that can’t be ignored.”
    Lewis said, “Anyone who has ever worked even a little for the sake of social justice has had to take stock of the many obstacles against it. Seeing UIW students and faculty at the commemoration of Gandhi’s salt march was a clear reminder that the honorable heritage of our own university stands firmly alongside the work of these great souls.”

    The University of the Incarnate Word will host Father John Dear, SJ, speaking on “Gospel Nonviolence” for the 2005 Pax Christi Texas State Conference on April 23.
    For more information, contact Sister Martha Ann Kirk, CCVI, at (210) 829-3854 or e-mail her at www.paxchristitexas.net.