Close to 300 people were registered to attend this forum, and the feedback received was very positive.

  

One of the morning workshops was about the Drug War, which the speaker, John Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation called "a massive waste of money."  The PowerPoint slides that he used for his presentation are available at WARNING FILE SIZE = 7,700 K Drug War.
      

Clay Adams of Covenant House presented a workshop entitled, "Putting a Face on Youth Homelessness."  These are "still photos" from the video he showed:

  

 

  

 

Click here to see the video. 
      

The morning keynote address was by Mark Wexler from an organization called Not For Sale which helps communities strengthen their own economies and thereby avoid becoming prey to human traffickers.  Not for Sale's website is shown below.  Also below is a notice about a DVD for $14.00 showing Mark Wexler's presentation and two others.
  

  
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), link

   

Covenant House California, Opening Door for Homeless Youth, link

  
Educators for Fair Consideration, supporting undocumented students in their pursuit of college, career and citizenship, link

  
Fellowship of Reconciliation, working for peace, justice and nonviolence, link

  
Food and Water Watch, link

   
JustFaith Ministries, link

   
Not For Sale, empowers marginalized communities to seek their own dignified employment and break the cycle of exploitation, link

     
United Way of the Bay Area, link

  
DVD for Sale

   
A DVD is available for sale for $14.00 which includes shipping. The DVD contains all three of the following recorded sessions:

    
Morning Keynote Session: Mark Wexler, Not for Sale, who shared about their organization's unique efforts to combat Human Trafficking.
  

Morning Workshop Session in the Regents Theater: Jose Arreola, Educators for Fair Consideration gave a powerful historical and personal perspective on Immigration.

  
Afternoon Keynote Session with Rev Deborah Lee, Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the young adult panel including Wardah Chowdry, Yvette Jimenez, Wei Lee and Mario Lio, talking about their perspectives on the current climate for comprehensive immigration reform moving forward.

   
All three sessions are on 1 DVD, and it makes a great way to share some of the excitement of the event with your friends and colleagues who couldn't attend. You can also organize small group discussion with friends on each session.
If you would like to order a DVD, simply mail a check or money order, made out to Holy Names University and send it to the following address:

  
Sister Susan Wells, SNJM
Holy Names University
3500 Mountain Blvd
Oakland, CA 94619

On January 29 an official of the State Department gave a talk at George Washington University about public diplomacy and public affairs.  [Wikipedia has a detailed article about public diplomacy.  Here are excerpts: "Standard diplomacy might be described as the ways in which government leaders communicate with each other at the highest levels... Public diplomacy, by contrast focuses on the ways in which a country... communicates with citizens in other societies. Effective public diplomacy starts from the premise that dialogue, rather than a sales pitch, is often central to achieving the goals of foreign policy: public diplomacy must be seen as a two-way street..."] At the end of her talk the speaker illustrated public diplomacy by describing a website that is a "virtual embassy" to Iran, a country with which the United States has no formal diplomatic relations.  She said,

  
"So, how do we engage with people in a country that is closed to us, and where our governments are deadlocked on many issues? Well, in this case, we have created a virtual embassy. We just marked the one year anniversary of our Virtual Embassy Tehran website and our Farsi language social media platforms which include Facebook, Google-plus, Twitter, and a YouTube channel.
    

"On the embassy website, we've had 2 million page hits from 4,000,000 visitors. On Facebook, we now have 456,000 followers and nearly 61,000 of them are inside Iran. We have nearly 30,000 followers on Persian language Twitter. As for the 170 Persian videos we've posted on YouTube? We've had 800,000 views.
    

"Those are encouraging numbers by any standard. These viewers and followers are learning about our commitment to educational opportunity, freedom of expression, defense of civil liberties, and a voice for the Iranian people.
   

"And we are countering negative regime portrayals of U.S. policy, as well as creating debate and discussion inside Iran to isolate extremists and hardliners. We are patiently reaching out to the Iranian people.
   

"Of course, patience is not the most popular strategy to advocate in Washington. But it's a large part of what public diplomacy is all about. No matter what the challenges, we can and must continue to engage. As we do so, we must continue to be more nimble in our advocacy of U.S. policy as we work to take charge of the communications space, so that we can be even stronger defenders of our own American values and ideals."

  

The virtual embassy website is at link..  The text of the State Department official's talk is available here.