I have dedicated my life to working in as many forms as possible with individual, community, and global healing and peace building. I was raised with many Russian-Siberian, Romanian, and Polish family members, who saw so much violence and inequality in the world that they spent their lives creating an equal, peaceful world in every way they could discover, both politically and personally. As a child, all of our family friends in New York were from other countries, so valuing diversity and communicating closely with people from different ethnic groups was a natural way of life that offered all of us many wonderful perspectives and friendships. It also instilled in me a heightened awareness at an early age of the need for human equality, as I often witnessed the pain and conflict that arose from being treated as less than equal in the lives of my dearest friends and family members. When I was 11 years old my family starting a local political community radio station, dedicated to equality for all people, true freedom of speech, and creating a peaceful, non-violent world. We offered sanctuary and voice to many groups of people during the sixties, including minority and culturally oppressed groups of people during the sixties, one of which was CORE. After Core was on our air show, our family station began receiving a lot of death threats, and we were fire bombed in 1967. The bomb was planted by a group of people who wanted to silence us, as we were pro-minority, Jewish, Russian, and were quite vocal about supporting equal freedom of speech for everyone. My family and many of the surrounding communities worked day and night to get the radio station back on the air in 48 hours, making it very clear that peace and free speech can never be silenced by any group. I am grateful for learning very early in life that we can each make a huge difference in creating a peaceful, equal world, which was one of the many gifts from my family.

Growing up with my father Albert, who started our family radio station, my mother Betty, who took over when my dad died a few months after the fire bombing, and my aunts and grandparents who spent their lives changing the world politically, and writing about anti-Semitism after witnessing massive amounts of inequality in Russia, has given me a legacy of healing and international peace building that lives deeply within my heart. For me, living in true peace must extend to all living beings, so my way of touching the world is to remember together the amazing lives that we share the earth with in all forms, ... from the animals, to the winged ones, the crawly ones, the trees, rock people, flowers, ocean creatures, herbs, and all of the other wonderful living beings that we share our natural world with side by side. May we all remember together that there are infinite forms of life, all of which differ and deserve our complete honor and respect. We are all connected in more ways that we may realize, as there is truly no separation, and it is time to remember how to live together in peace.