Defining Moments: What Shapes Our Lives with Riane Eisler and Belvie Rooks
Author, social-systems scientist and futurist Riane Eisler and essayist, educator and human rights and social justice advocate Belvie Rooks have both spent much of their lives working for a better future. Join them online on Friday, Oct. 20, 10:30–11:30 AM (PT) as they reflect on the defining moments and encounters that have helped shape their worldviews and their visions and hopes for what's possible. The talk will be facilitated by Sandra Bass, Berkeley's associate dean of students and director of the Public Service Center.
About the Speakers
Riane Eisler
A defining moment in Riane's young life was Crystal Night in Vienna after the Nazis took power. This night is enshrined in our historical memory because of all of the glass broken in Jewish homes and synagogues. It was the night that the little girl watched her father dragged off by the Nazis. But she not only saw violence and injustice that night; she also witnessed what she later called "spiritual courage." She saw her mother risking her life to eventually obtain Riane's father's release.
These early experiences led to the questions that years later animated her pioneering life-work: identifying, defining, and deconstructing Domination Syst
Read an article by Riane "How Family Trauma Perpetuates Authoritarian Societies" published in the Sept. 2023 issue of Scientific American.
Belvie Rooks
As a 15 year-old, Belvie Rooks stood with tears flowing staring in her bathroom mirror. In one hand she held a glass of water, in the other a handfull of rat poison. She was in a place of hopelessness and despair and had decided that it was the day she would end her young life. She didn't only because she heard the front door slam and realized she was not alone.
As a 16-year-old she, along with 400 other California high school students, were invited to a three-day retreat, organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the service arm of the Quakers, to meet a 29 year-old minister from the South who would talk to them about what was happening there. His name was Dr. Martin Luther King. He had received his doctorate three years earlier. Belvie feels that weekend encounter with Dr. King was a powerfully transformative moment. Especially, given the absolute faith he expressed in knowing that he could trust the young people in the room to "love a better world into existence."
A commitment to that vision of hope and possiblity has been a defining influence in her lifelong journey as a social, environmental and humanitarian advocate. It has served as an inspiration and model for the intergenerational wisdom circles and dialogues that she and her late husband, poet Dedan Gills, convened.