Tim Pluta and Thomas Brinson

March 5-8, 2009
Thurs dinner thru Sunday lunch

Nonviolence training for veterans by veterans!  A weekend of empowerment, camaraderie, and mutual support.  This interactive workshop will strengthen your spirit and skills for overcoming violence and help you plan your own project.  Sliding scale fees begin at $50 for food, housing, program and music.  CCP certificates. CEUs.

To register online, please click here.
 
Dr. Timothy Pluta 
Tim’s nonviolence background stretches back to his high school days when he took a punch after intervening in a conflict, and then asked the attacker if he felt better.
 
Since then, Tim has talked his way out of being shot after a gun was put up his nose when he was an exchange student in Bolivia, served in the military and got out as a conscientious objector, practiced his right to freedom of speech and was jailed for it in Washington, DC, and is currently considering becoming a Buddhist monk.
 
He is a consultant for the healthcare industry and also has a private Massage Therapy practice.

Thomas Brinson
Thomas has been an activist for peace and justice since he returned from his year’s service in Vietnam in 1967-68, flying into Washington, DC’s National Airport, early in the evening of April 4th, being puzzled as to why Washington was burning in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination. Before going to Vietnam as an ROTC-commission Lieutenant, he had grave reservations about the illegal, immoral, inhumane war of his generation and organized one of the earliest Teach-ins against the War at his alma mater of Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio in the spring of 1964.

Except for the October, 1967 March on the Pentagon, when he was running convoys throughout II Corps in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, he participated in every major Vietnam War protest in Washington, DC and led the 1970 Student Strike at Catholic University, where he was a graduate student in theatre.

A New York State licensed social worker, specializing in addictions and trauma, he and a colleague, Vince Treanor, wrote seminal literature and did initial trainings nationwide on the correlation of addiction and PTSD among combat veterans.

From September 2003 until June 2005, he served as a peace worker with the Nonviolent Peaceforce near Trincomalee, Sri Lanka in one of the most conflicted areas of that 25-year civil war, surviving the devastating Tsunami of December 26, 2004.

On VA 100% disability for PTSD, he has been a member of Veterans for Peace since 1989 and a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War since 1992. He is the founding facilitator of the VFP Long Island, NY, Chapter 138, and a member of the VFP National Board. He is most grateful to have received Creating a Cultural of Peace Training in 2008.

For a full write-up of this program suitable for public posting, please click here.