Peace & Justice Activists Posters “Bi...-Bo...-”
with curriculum enrichment resources for social studies classrooms, teachers, home schoolers, offices.

Hildegard von Bingen
Amelia Bloomer
Kees Boeke

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bono
Norman Borlaug

Saint Hildegard von Bingen
b. 1098; Germany
d. 9-17-1179

Saint Hildegard von Bingen should be considered a “polymath” (a person with varied knowledge and learning). She was an “abbess, artists, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, teacher, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, activist, visionary, and composer”.

• Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias

Amelia Jenks Bloomer
b. 5-27-1818; Cortland Co., NY
d. 12-30-1894; Council Bluffs, IA

Amelia Bloomer, whose early adoption of women's trousers based on the clothing of women in the Middle East and Central Asia, led to her married name forever being associated with the fashion.

Bloomer, as the editor and publisher of The Lily, her newspaper advocating temperance and feminine rights, provided a voice for Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer quotes:
• “The costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once to her health, comfort, and usefulness; and, while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.”
• “Man represents us, legislates for us, and now holds himself accountable for us! How kind in him, and what a weight is lifted from us! We shall no longer be answerable to the laws of God or man, no longer be subject to punishment for breaking them.”

Kees Boeke
b. 9-25-1884; The Netherlands
d. 7-3-1966

Quaker missionary and WWI pacificist Kees Boeke, who trained as an architect, is best remembered for his 1957 essay/book Cosmic View which presents the universe from the galactic to the microscopic scale, and as the founder of “De werkplaats” (the workshop), a Montessori inspired school where Boeke introduced his idea of sociocracy where students are co-responsible with teachers for their curriculum.

FYI -
• Boeke was a cofounder of an organization that later evolved into War Resisters' International.
• The Cosmic View was the inspiration of several films - Charles & Ray Eames' The Powers of Ten, Cosmic Zoom and Cosmic Voyage.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
b. 2-4-1906; Breslau, Germany
d. 4-9-1945; Flossenbürg concentration camp - executed

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred for his participation in the German resistance movement against Nazism. Bonhoeffer's best-known book, The Cost of Discipleship, a study on the Sermon on the Mount in which he attacked “cheap grace” as a cover for ethical laxity and preached “costly grace”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes ~
• “There is no way to peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture.”
• “The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . . And they must not only have peace but also make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. . . . His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they over-come evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.”
• “We have learned a bit too late in the day that action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility.”
• “When we come to a clearer and more sober estimate of our own limitations and responsibilities, that makes it possible more genuinely to love our neighbor.”
• “There is not a place to which the Christian can withdraw from the world, whether it be outwardly or in the sphere of the inner life. Any attempt to escape from the world must sooner or later be paid for with a sinful surrender to the world.”
• “Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.”
• “In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give; life can be rich only with such realization.”
• “So long as we eat our bread together, we shall have sufficient even for the least. Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.”
• “There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.”

Bono
née Paul David Hewson
b. 5-10-1960; Dublin, Ireland

Bono, the main vocalist of the rock band U2, has organized and played in concerts for the benefit of Africa. His activism has been recognized with a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, and was named as a Person of the Year by Time (with Bill and Melinda Gates).

Bono quotes ~
• “Music can change the world because it can change people.”
• “You can't fix every problem, but what you can fix, you must.”
• “The soul needs beauty for a soul mate. When the soul wants . . . the soul waits.”

Norman Ernest Borlaug
b. 3-25-1914; Cresco, Iowa

Norman Ernest Borlaug, an agricultural scientist and humanitarian, has been called the “father of the Green Revolution”. Nobel Peace Prize, 1970

• food posters

Don Bosco
b. 8-16-1815; Italy
d. 1-31-1888

Catholic priest, educator and writer Don Bosco is remember as one who put into practice the convictions of his religion. He dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth and employing teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that is known as the preventive system. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1934 and is popularly known as the Patron Saint of Magicians.

FYI - A dream Bosco had was inspiration for building the planned city of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

Elise Boulding
b. 7-6-1920; Norway
d. 6-24-2010; Needham, MA

Sociologist and author Elise Boulding was a major contributor to creating the academic discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies. She chaired the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and created the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) to work with the United Nations through UNESCO and the University of the United Nations.

Boulding taught at the University of Colorado and Dartmouth; she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Elise Boulding and her husband Kenneth Boulding, a cofounder of General Systems Theory, were Quakers.

Elise Boulding quote ~
• “A favorite concept of mine is the 200-year present, a way of thinking about change. The 200-year present began 100 years ago with the year of birth of the people who have reached their hundredth birthday today. The other boundary of the 200-year present, 100 years from now, is the hundredth birthday of the babies born today. If you take that span, you and I will have had contact with a lot of people from different parts of that span. So think in terms of events over that span and realize how long change takes. You can see how difficult it has been to create these bodies and new ways and how in many ways we are slipping backward; but in other ways we are not. I take comfort to know that super-power hegemony has a very limited lifespan (decline and fall of Rome, the Ottoman Empire).” ~ from 2003 interview with Julian Portilla