Commonweal New School presents:
Healing the Roots, Transforming The Future | Kazu Haga and Host Serena Bian

Virtual event only; join us on Zoom
Suggested donation $15, no one turned away
Register for this virtual event HERE.

What becomes possible when we understand social and political harm not only as injustice, but as expressions of collective trauma? In this conversation, Kazu Haga—activist, trainer, and author of Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging Through Collapse—joins host Serena Bian to explore why healing is so essential to radically reimagining the worlds we wish to build in the midst of collapse.

This conversation explores the possibility that the work of social transformation cannot be separated from the work of inner transformation. Rather than reinforcing the familiar patterns of opposition of  “us and them,” “right and wrong," Kazu invites us to consider pathways of change that are rooted in relationship, spiritual practice, and the long arc of healing.

Drawing from decades of work in nonviolence, restorative justice, and Buddhist practice, Kazu reflects on the limitations of movement strategies that mirror the very dynamics they seek to transform. What might it mean to respond to harm in ways that do not escalate division, but instead create the conditions for healing, within ourselves, our communities, and the larger body politic?
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Kazu Haga is a trainer, educator, student and practitioner with more than 25 years of experience in nonviolence and restorative justice. He weaves in lessons from decades of Buddhist practice and trauma healing work to advance social change and collective healing. Kazu is author of the books Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging from Collapse.

Kazu was introduced to the work of social change and nonviolence in 1998, when at the age of 17 he participated in the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage; a 6-month walking journey from Massachusetts to New Orleans to retrace the slave trade. He then spent a year studying nonviolence and Buddhism while living in monasteries throughout South Asia, and returned to the United States at age 19 to begin a lifelong path in social justice work. He spent 10 years working in social justice philanthropy, while directly being involved in and playing leading roles in many movements. He became an active nonviolence trainer in the global justice movement of the late 1990s, and has since led hundreds of workshops worldwide. https://www.kazuhaga.com