SOCIAL JUSTICE in ACTION:
The Kindness of Stories
Sunday, May 17, 2026
7:00-8:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time
Exploring social justice in its many faces and forms, through folk tales and personal stories, we dive deeply into multiple experiences of justice.
Social Justice in Action:
The Kindness of Stories
Sunday, May 17, 2026
7:00 pm-8:30 pm EDT
Can’t attend in real time? No Problem!
All registrants will receive a link to watch the recording.
Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of social justice in action in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales and personal stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of justice in action.
A told story is a living experience of social justice. This evening’s tellings exemplify the radical kindness of being swept into a story, regardless of situation and lifted out of preoccupations that distract or fuel aggression. What obstructs us from being together, and present, is vanquished in the act of true listening.
Format: The story session opens with a concert of seasoned tellers exploring our theme with stories, and community tellers sharing stories of how they promote social justice as storytelling and kindness. The second half of the event invites listeners to respond and reflect on what emerged for them on the nature of storytelling as an act of profound social justice and kindness in these troubled times.
Purpose: We all need a little more justice and kindness in our lives. Perhaps a story can take us there.
“If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.” Bell Hooks
About the Storytellers
Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American raised in the remote Nuu-chah-nulth village of Ohiat on the west coast of Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. He was raised in the traditional ways by his grandparents, and sent by his elders to share their teachings with all people. Johnny is a master storyteller, oral historian, traditional healer and respected spiritual leader. Johnny, whose traditional name is Whis.stem.men.knee (Walking Medicine Robe), carries the Si.Si.Wiss (sacred breath, sacred life) medicine teachings and healing ceremonies of his Northwest Coast people. Fluent in eight Native languages, he is a traveling ambassador for Northwest Coast cultures. He shares the knowledge and richness of his spiritual and cultural traditions with people across the United States and Canada through storytelling, lectures and workshops.
Rafe Martin is an author and storyteller who has received of multiple national, regional, and state awards including the Empire State Award for the body of his work. His books have been featured in Time, Newsweek, USA Today, and the NY Times, and his writing has appeared in such noted journals of Buddhist tradition, myth, story, and spirituality as Tricycle, Buddhadharma, Lion’s Roar, Parabola, and The Sun — among others. He has been a featured storyteller or speaker at numerous storytelling/literary events among them the National Storytelling Festival, the National Storytelling Institute, the American Library Association National Convention, the American Museum of Natural History, the Joseph Campbell Festival of Myth and Story, as well as at Zuni Pueblo and Standing Rock (Lakota) Reservation. He is also a senior Zen teacher (roshi), founding teacher of Endless Path Zendo, Rochester, NY, authorized to teach the complete Harada-Yasutani koan curriculum.
http://www.endlesspathzendo.org https://www.rafemartin.com
Laura Simms is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, writer, teacher and humanitarian. She combines traditional stories with personal narrative. She is artistic Director of the Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center in NYC and served as a Senior Research Fellow for Rutgers University Peace Center under the auspices of UNESCO. She is a founding member of the Healing Story Alliance and serves on their programming committee. Laura saved a zoo in Romania, and won the Sesame Street SUNNY DAYS AWARD for work with children worldwide. She received the Hasbro September 11 Grant designing a manual and training for storytelling for children in crisis. Laura has worked in post conflict and climate disasters with International Medical Corps, and Mercy Corps, Inc. She is a certified dharma art teacher and a senior meditation instructor in mindfulness awareness practice. She has five books and many recordings. Recently Laura was story advisor for the Fetzer Foundation Sacred Story
Project. She continues to work with The Constellation. https://www.laurasimms.com
Community Tellers
Aldo Civico is an Associate Research Scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) and an Affiliate of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Currently, he is the founder and the director of the International Institute for Peace at Rutgers University, Newark. An anthropologist, he has been conducting fieldwork in Colombia since 2001, focusing on internally displaced people and the paramilitary. Since 2003, Civico has worked to facilitate the country’s peace efforts with the National Liberation Army, or the ELN guerrilla. For the CICR, he designed and conducted several conflict resolution workshops in Colombia and Haiti.
Civico’s research interests include democracy, state, sovereignty, political violence, human rights, conflict, refugees, resistance, and civil society. He teaches courses in anthropology (of political violence, human rights, and religion) at the New School University of New York and at the William Paterson University in New Jersey. He also leads conflict resolution seminars organized by the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín and in Turbo. Civico has worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and for post-conflict assessment in the Balkans region, and is a contributor to the UNDP Colombian magazine Hechos de Callejón. With the president of the Sicilian Renaissance Institute Leoluca Orlando, Civico consulted the Secretaría de Seguridad Pública of Mexico City on issues related to civil society and the fight against organized crime. He is a member of the Club of Madrid working group “Dealing with Violence” and was among the scholars who participated in the International Conference on Democracy and Terrorism in March 2005 in Madrid.
Rangira Béa Gallimore, Ph.D., is the founder and former president of Step Up! American Association for Rwandan Women. Dr. Gallimore is a Retiree Professor Emerita at the University of Missouri—Columbia where she taught for 25 years and continues to do research on gender and violence. She has published books and articles in the area of Francophone Studies and on the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Gallimore is also a trained trauma counselor, and a member of Step Up! Trauma Training Team. She served as an expert consultant to UNESCO, UNDP and other international organizations on the role of women in post-conflict recovery. She also served
as a consultant for the US State Department on implementation of the Gender-Based Violence Law in Rwanda.
Emcee
Milbre Burch is a GRAMMY-nominated spoken word recording artist, an internationally known Oracle-Award-winning storyteller, and a sought-after teaching artist. The preeminent interpreter of Jane Yolen stories, she has performed and taught across the US, Europe and Asia since 1978. She has created nationally recognized residencies, workshops and pre-conferences, as well as locally lauded community outreach events. A produced and published playwright, Milbre holds a PhD in theatre and performance studies from the University of Missouri. She is dedicated to addressing issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, to working for peace and justice and reconciliation, and to speaking the truth of women’s experiences.
Healing Story Alliance is a not-for-profit, educational, arts organization which provides online resources and concert, workshop, and community programming
in support of storytelling as a healing art. Please donate to help make programs like these possible.
To listen to past Kind Stories in Concert & Social Justice Stories, visit our archive of recordings.