Letting Peace Reign in Mount Pleasant
Maureen Eke with Isabella County Human Rights Committee wants Mount Pleasant community to ask themselves, "What does peace mean to you?”
The Let Peace Reign event will run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Sept. 21 at Island Park for the International Day of Peace.
International Day of Peace was established by the United Nations in 1981 and has since been celebrated around the world and established into smaller events within communities.
Eke said the event is open to the public. It will include events like a peace walk, local speakers, a candlelight vigil and music.
“We wanted an event that would bring the community together," she said. "As a human rights community, we're thinking about justice, community, peace, security."
Eke has been a member of the Human Rights Committee for over ten years and she sees this as an event to meet your neighbors and discuss how you want to see peace in the community.
“All we're asking is that you come here and join us in celebrating peace or commemorating peace within our community, even if you want to focus locally or globally,” she said.
Additionally, the event is a space to dive deeper into what peace means for everybody individually. For Eke, she uses her past to work with others and spread the meaning of peace.
“I am a human rights activist," Eke said. "I am a human rights and justice warrior. I see myself as such. I've gone through war, I survived genocide, I've experienced all sorts of hostilities. Those things are enough. My history is enough to cause me to think about human rights, to think about peace all the time.”
She said the event is a non-partisan, non-religious and non-discriminatory opportunity to focus on peace and how to encourage and understand it within the community.
“I'm not thinking in terms of sitting down together and holding hands and singing Kumbaya,” Eke said. “No, I am actually talking about a peaceful society where even if we disagree with one another, we can understand or at least listen to one another without thinking of continuing.”
