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PROMOTING ENDURING PEACE ANNOUNCES JACKSON BROWNE AS FIRST ARTIST TO RECEIVE GANDHI PEACE AWARD
Lyman Center for the Performing Arts 7:30 Friday, September 14, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven, CT
New Haven, CT — Promoting Enduring Peace announces that the 2018 Gandhi Peace Award will be accepted by singer-songwriter Jackson Browne on Friday September 14, 2018 at a ceremony beginning at 7:30 p.m. at the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, 501 Crescent Street in New Haven, Connecticut. Seating is limited for the event.
Browne is the first artist ever to receive the Gandhi Peace Award. He is being honored for extraordinary contributions of time and talent to the inseparable causes of world peace, environmental harmony, and social justice. The Award comes with a cash prize and a medallion forged from peace bronze composed of metals salvaged from the control systems of U.S. nuclear missiles. The Award Ceremony will feature short musical tributes by local performers, an appeal for action on the local and planetary levels, and the presentation of the Award itself. Consistent with tradition, Browne has been invited “to present a message of challenge and hope” to those present. A reception follows.
The Gandhi Peace Award, named after Indian anti-imperialist and nonviolence advocate Mohandas Gandhi, derives its international renown from those who have accepted it over the years, beginning with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960. Among the other 53 awardees are Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King, Jr., Norman Thomas, William Sloane Coffin, Benjamin Spock, Wayne Morse, U Thant, Dorothy Day, Daniel Ellsberg, Kay Camp, César Chávez, Marian Wright Edelman, and George McGovern. Since 2011 the Award has been accepted by Arik Ascherman (Rabbis for Human Rights), Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!), Bill McKibben (350.org), Medea Benjamin (Code Pink), Omar Barghouti (BDS), and Ralph Nader (Public Citizen).
Jackson Browne has composed and performed songs widely regarded as among the most literate and moving songs in popular music, defining a genre of songwriting charged with honesty, emotion, and personal politics. Inducted in 2004 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and in 2007 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, he has three albums counted among Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 greatest albums of all time.
Browne has organized or participated in thousands of benefit performances to support the environment, social justice, and human rights as well as causes such as music and arts education in public schools, and has worked with two former Gandhi Peace Award recipients, Amnesty International (1978) and the Children’s Defense Fund (1990). He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music by Occidental College for “a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social justice.”
Several of his albums, such as Lives in the Balance, World in Motion, Looking East, and Standing in the Breach, directly challenge imperialist foreign policy, environmental short-sightedness, and corporate greed, and question the sustainability of the present civilization. The title track of Lives in the Balance calls out the “shadow on the faces / Of the men who send the guns / Of the wars that are fought in places / Where their business interest runs” in civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
In response to the Three Mile Island nuclear near-catastrophe in 1979, Browne co-founded the groups Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) and in more recent years, Nukefree.org. During the 1980s he was active in the Central America solidarity movement, co-organizing concerts in Nicaragua, Cuba, and elsewhere. Lately he has turned his attention to the seas as a member of the advocacy group Ocean Elders.
Last December Browne released “The Dreamer” a song that considers the situation of those protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Reservations are recommended for the September 14th ceremony honoring Jackson Browne with the 2018 Gandhi Peace Award and can be made at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gandhi-peace-award-2018-tickets-48315261247
For more information on Promoting Enduring Peace and the Gandhi Peace Award:
PEPEACE.ORG ● GANDHIPEACEAWARD.ORG ● PEACENEWS.ORG