By Jean West Rudnicki
“You never change things by fighting the
existing reality. To change something, build
a new model then make the existing model
obsolete .”
Buckminster Fuller, Futurist
The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia were good for
Brenda Isaac and her small travel company. Snagging contracts
with several large corporations, her performance had been flawless,
orchestrating huge groups of people into and out of hotels and leased
housing, staging special events and designing entertainment venues
for throngs of people rolling into town for the international event.
The endeavor had proved lucrative, too, and once it was all over,
she rewarded herself with early retirement. Maintaining a home in
the heart of Atlanta, she also owned the sprawling, historic Highland
House villa on the island of Jamaica, leasing it out for retreats and
business conferences. Traveling between the two worlds, Isaac took
time to help the small, rural elementary school not far from her island
retreat, purchasing computers, printers, and soccer equipment as
needed.
She had never even heard about the Alliance for a New Humanity
when, almost overnight in December 2004, she found herself en route
to one of its forums – a trip that would change her world, and change
a tiny piece of the rest of the world, as well.
The Alliance traced its roots to a meeting in Puerto Rico organized
by the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar Arias, a former president
of Costa Rica (now president again) and founder of the Arias
Peace Foundation. In 2000, at the invitation of President Antonio
Fas-Alzamora of the Puerto Rico Senate, Arias decided to host an
international conference entitled, Peace in Peacetime. They recruited
long-time acquaintance and friend, Arsenio Rodriquez, a Puerto Rican
who had recently retired after a 23-year career at the United Nations
and a six-year stint at the World Bank. Arranging international
conferences was one of Rodriquez’s specialties and he quickly agreed
to take on the task. The meeting was on track for a December 2001
date when the events of September 11 altered everything – so much
for peacetime.
Amid the turmoil and disorder that followed, the organizers
debated the conference’s fate. Should they cancel? Arias decided
instead to postpone it, and at the same time expand it. Rescheduled
to August 2002, this time he would open the doors to people from
all walks of life and all professions, not just peace prize winners and politicians – entertainers, spiritual leaders, writers, physicians, even
former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was invited, though
he had to decline due to other commitments.
“It was a strange meeting,” Rodriquez, Secretary General of the
Alliance, admits. “No one had ever brought together so many different
people from all walks of life – they would never have met in any other
meeting because they were going out of their sphere.”
In attendance were singer Ricky Martin; physician turned author/
philosopher Dr. Deepak Chopra; astronaut Franklin Chang; human
activist Kerry Kennedy; Spanish judge Baltasa Garzon; and Irish Nobel
Peace prize winner Betty Williams, along with a host of others.
The conference opened with a speech by 91-year-old Argentinean
writer Ernesto Sabato, who challenged the group saying that he “had
not come just for a conference; peace cannot be for just words.” He
asked those present what they were going to do about it. “It was a
very powerful introduction,” Rodriquez remembers. The attendees
were deeply moved and, before dispersing, decided to create a means
to connect people who were already doing something to change the
world – whether in the social realm, the corporate world, or even just
in a personal sense.
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