Threads of Grief, Threads of Love: A Blessingway for Gaza’s Children

The Resource Center for Nonviolence, founded in 1976, is a peace and justice organization promoting the practice of nonviolent social change through education, training, and community events. Resource Center for Nonviolence is a program of Eschaton Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation, federal ID #23-7209584. You can find us athttps://rcnv.org/

The Resource Center for Nonviolence

36 handmade quilts. 720 infants remembered. A community gathering to hold grief, witness, and care together.

Resource Center For Nonviolence

For 50 years, the Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV) has equipped our community with tools to build a just and peaceful world. This event is part of RCNV's Loving Justice: A Transformational Path Towards Interbeing initiative cultivating Beloved Community, shared learning, and solidarity. We hope you'll join us as we continue to deepen our collective integrity and accountability. Since ancient times, textiles have offered both shelter and story—threads that hold together what might otherwise come apart.This gathering accompanies an exhibit of 36 baby quilts sewn by community members in Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay area, and beyond, commemorating 720 infants in Gaza killed before their first birthday.Community members made these quilts because watching from a distance—in a country whose government is implicated—was not bearable. We cannot disentangle our lives from this harm. But we can refuse indifference, and in that refusal, we stitched with care, imagining the babies who should have been wrapped in them. The GatheringWe gather in community for reflection, witness, and conversation—a passage toward presence and responsibility.We do not equate our grief with that of families who have endured these losses. But we can allow their loss to deepen our attention and shape how we live with one another.In a democracy, what is carried out in our name asks something of us. This gathering is an invitation to remember these children with care—and to consider how remembrance might move us toward greater responsibility in the choices we accept, and the futures we help shape.

<a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/" title="https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Jewish Voice for Peace</a> activist Dorah Rosen will moderate a conversation with:<ul><li>Mo Sati—Mo is a Palestinian writer, playwright, poet, documentarian, and podcaster whose work centers on witness, memory, and the full humanity of Palestinians too often reduced to numbers. He is the creator of They Have Names, a nomadic theater and storytelling project carrying Palestinian names and stories into communities through performance, film, and audio.</li><li>Rolla Alaydi—Rolla is an educator, author, and community advocate seeking to amplify voices of resilience and foster compassion, cultural understanding, and human connection. She is the author of NORAH: From My Grandmother’s Kitchen: Palestinian Recipes and Memories, preserving Palestinian heritage through storytelling, memory, and tradition.</li><li>Unhae Langis—Unhae is a literature teacher turned writer, artist, and organizer. Her recent works include Common Sense in the Time of Genocide, a civic meditation on war, empire, and conscience, and Shakespeare and Wisdom (with Julia Reinhard Lupton). For her, quilting brings together political expression, poetry, calligraphy, and textile art.</li><li>Rami Chahine—Rami is a Lebanese artist and educator whose work explores imagination, ecology, death, and regeneration. Living among the redwoods of California, he draws on both the natural world and collective memory in his artistic practice.</li><li>Maha Taitano—Maha is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, textiles, and mixed media. Born in Baghdad and raised across Lebanon, Guåhan (Guam), Morocco, and California, her work explores identity, memory, decolonization, and the layered histories carried through materials and process. </li></ul>Together, they will share lived experience, artistic practice, and reflections on grief, memory, and care. Join UsHonor these children by remembering them. Honor them by refusing indifference. Honor them by choosing care, in the quiet and public ways available to us. Everyone is welcome.Sliding scale ticket donations ($0-50) support RCNV's vital work.

<h3>Special thanks to our promotional partners: </h3><a href="https://www.instagram.com/campesinawombjustice/" title="https://www.instagram.com/campesinawombjustice/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Campesina Womb Justice</a>, the <a href="https://www.crcsantacruz.org/" title="https://www.crcsantacruz.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Conflict Resolution Center of Santa Cruz County</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PalestineJusticeCoalition/" title="https://www.facebook.com/PalestineJusticeCoalition/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Palestine Justice Coalition</a>, <a href="https://www.santacruzmah.org/" title="https://www.santacruzmah.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH)</a>, <a href="https://www.centerforworldnetworking.org/" title="https://www.centerforworldnetworking.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Center for World Networking</a>, <a href="https://www.tzimtzumcommunity.com/" title="https://www.tzimtzumcommunity.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">TzimTzum Collective</a>, and <a href="https://communitystudies.ucsc.edu/" title="https://communitystudies.ucsc.edu/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">UCSC Community Studies</a>

Agenda

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Panel Discussion

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Threads of Grief, Threads of Love: A Blessingway for Gaza’s Children

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