'What I would say if I knew they were listening' - #lakewoodnews

I was out of town last month, with limited access to the Internet and broadcast news. Imagine my surprise when I returned to find out that a) Ben Carson endorsed Donald Trump, b) Brock Osweiler went to Houston, and c) all the clocks in my house were an hour slow. To be honest, I did know about the time change ... I just forgot in the fog of an overnight flight home.

The biggest disconnect for me, however, was - and continues to be - the deterioration of the ongoing political conversation. Correction: this is not a conversation ... it's no longer even your garden-variety slugfest. It's become a slimy subversion of the civility with which people of integrity conduct themselves.

Almost everyone I talk to believes this, including people who support one or another of the subverters. In my travels, I've been queried by foreigners about what we as Americans plan to do. I have no answer because I personally have no plan - yet - about what I want to do (other than briefly consider an invitation from a Canadian to move north).

Besides making America look like a bunch of schoolyard bullies - or worse - in the eyes of the world, I'm deeply concerned about what this political bombast is stirring up for America's young people. Sure, some young adults are already making their voices heard for Bernie Sanders, and other similarly aged groups are supporting their own candidates. But what are the long-term implications of this descent into dirt on the way people, who are supposedly trying to solve problems, talk to one another?

That's why, as a board member, I'm part of an important multi-national inaugural event from Fort Collins-based Writing for Peace. Writing for Peace is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating empathy through education and writing to develop a foundation of compassion upon which to build a more peaceful world.

Part of our efforts to achieve these admittedly ambitious goals is to inspire young writers to consider how their words can bring us closer to nonviolent conflict resolution in a global society that values human rights. To these ends, we are hosting our first-ever Youth Summit at the end of April, an online conference with TED-style live-stream keynote speakers from around the world. More importantly, participants will also engage in threaded and real-time online discussions with their global peers.

Young people aged 18 to 30 from the U.S., Canada and Mexico are selected through their submissions of creative work - writing, visual arts, music, theatre and dance - on the theme "What I Would Say If I Knew They Were Listening: Conversations on Peace." It's my firm belief that the young people at the Youth Summit will dialogue with civility and respect, and will emerge with clear ideas about how they can affect change.

University of California San Diego research finds that young people are less ideologically polarized than their elders. If we have any hope for ending Congressional gridlock and have honest conversations about political issues in the future, we need less hate speech on the campaign trail and in office, and more opportunities like the Writing for Peace Youth Summit for our young adult Americans.

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