Experts to lead Karuna
Center event focusing on overcoming hate

NORTHAMPTON — On Monday, March 20 from 7:30-9 p.m. at Edwards Church in Northampton, Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will host a public discussion with three prominent leaders of interventions to counter the spread of hate.

The event, “Radical Compassion: Overcoming Hate and Building Understanding,” will focus on the speakers’ own experiences working against white supremacist groups and ideologies, and how they have used understanding to help lead people away from ideologies that promote violence. The event is free and will be livestreamed at karunacenter.org/events.

The talk features scholar-activist and Smith College professor Loretta Ross, who for decades has led efforts to monitor and fight hate groups and to promote racial and reproductive justice; Tony McAleer, co-founder of Life After Hate and author of “The Cure for Hate,” himself a former neo-Nazi; and Robert Örell, who draws on his experience as a former white supremacist in Sweden to advise and set up youth-focused prevention programs and pathways out of hate in the U.S. and Europe.

The speakers will address the current context of hate groups and ideologies that promote hatred, the factors that lead people to join violent extremist groups, and the place of “radical compassion” in confronting the spread of hate in local communities.

This event is held in conjunction with Karuna Center for Peacebuilding’s Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism in Schools (BRAVE Schools) project. The following evening, Tuesday, March 21, McAleer and Örell will lead an information session open to all parents and guardians in the area on the topic: “How are youth lured into hate online?” That event will take place 7-8 p.m. in the Library of Amherst-Pelham Regional Middle School, 170 Chestnut St., Amherst, second floor) and be livestreamed at karunacenter.org/events.

Mark the spring equinox at the UMass Amherst Sunwheel

AMHERST — The public is invited to view the sunrise and sunset on the day of the spring equinox among the standing stones of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Sunwheel on Monday, March 20 at 6:45 a.m. and 6 p.m.

These Sunwheel events mark the astronomical change of seasons when days and nights are nearly equal in length everywhere in the world, which is the source of the term equinox (for “equal night”), and UMass astronomers will give talks explaining the astronomy of the seasonal changes.

During the approximately hourlong gatherings, UMass astronomer Stephen Schneider will discuss the astronomical cause of the sun’s changing position and how the Sunwheel helps track these motions.

The UMass Sunwheel is located south of McGuirk Alumni Stadium, just off Rocky Hill Road (the continuation of Amity Street). Visitors should be prepared for wet footing this year. Rain or blizzard conditions cancel the events.

McGovern to join Indivisible Williamsburg for a Town Hall

WILLIAMSBURG — Congressman Jim McGovern will join Indivisible Williamsburg on Saturday for a town hall conversation on the issues that matter to western Massachusetts voters.

Congressman McGovern, a senior member of the Committee on Agriculture, will discuss the upcoming Farm Bill and the end of SNAP emergency allotments, combating climate change, lowering inflation, creating jobs, and more.

The town hall begins at 1 p.m. at Anne T. Dunphy School, 1 Petticoat Hill Road in Williamsburg.

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