Activists Seminar in Peqiin – a Personal Experience
When I invited my friends to join the Activists Seminar in Peqiin, they responded with sayings like "but I'm not an activist" or "what dose activist means?". And so I began to think: am I an "activist"? And what does this big word truly means to me?
Some 200 man and woman from across the country, Jewish and Arabs come to the seminar. It was originally thought of four years ago, by 15 students active in Mahapach-Tagir, who wanted to promote co-learning about social and environmental issues and to encourage cooperation among others how want to promote change. So what does the meaning of this co-learning? I once assumed that those seminars are a place where people who already agree with each other, meat to talk about subject that they already familiar with. I discovered that when a person brings his own knowledge and experience, we can argue, change our personal conventions and come out of it with new insight about the world. Most important, you can think, by yourself of with others, about how to make life around here a bit more meaningful – instead of whine, to talk about it and maybe even do something about it.
Each day of the seminar was consist out of 10 rounds of activities and lectures, held simultaneously about different subjects. Each participant was asked to chose a lecture or activity according to his\her own interest: from building compost out of lumber and cigarettes, to increasing awareness to social involvement in the media. There were movies, lectures and activities carried out by professional and students, new initiatives such as soul-performance from Horfiesh and circus of Jews and Arabs youth from the Galil. Every day there were tours in Peqiin that included meetings with residents from the area.
The activities were interesting and also fury-raising. I've learned about the history of oppression in the country, about the media, about the Druze community and about the recent incidents in Peqiin. I saw a movie by 'Breaking the Silent' and learned to look especially about that the things I'm not been told about, and why there are 'black holes' in out knowledge. The different activities refined my understanding that there is always a man with an interest, and that everything has a broader social-cultural connection. I learned, listened and got angry. Mostly, I found out how much I don’t know. I wondered if all those emotions meant 'activism': Was I an activist? Have I changed anything?
I like to say I have, that I promoted Jewish-Arab partnership, that I've initiate projects and got to the headlines. Unfortunately, it didn't happened, but I was encouraged to keep on learning, to change my consciousness and that of those around my. Apparently, this is where 'activism' starts, in the will of being active and to refuse to accept thing as they are. During the seminar, a few students from Tel-Hai College had the idea of creating 'activist cells' of students in the academic institutes across Israel. To keep on learning; so that eventually, the fury will raise so high, that we would have to do something in order to change it.
The first meeting of the 'Tel-Hai activist cell' will take place on the 31st of May, at the student club in the east campus. I would like to invite each and every one how wants to be active in his/her own life. The goal is to learn about meaningful subject – to empower and to expose knowledge. Even if all you want to do is to find out what 'activism' means, came and talk about what ever makes you happy or annoyed – it might just bother some of us enough to actually do something about it.
Tal Gadot
