Alonso Silverman

Hi. i am Alonso, known by some as Martin Silverman. Answering these questions- what is the connection with my personal story? I tell you form the head and the heart that I always been an idealist; to some naive. To me the march represents, in some way, the voice of the voiceless. It is like feeling that a way of thinking and feeling is starting to be heard. A way that goes in a coherent direction, that unites people, the human being, what is sacred within us. One would always like to see goodness, the overcoming of conflicts, the resolution of problems. One always thinks 'ideally this, ideally that, ideally things would be different' but the reality imposes itself, and 'reality' is cooped in some conditioned by imperatives that me, and many like me, what can we do like a grain in the sand, like a hope lost in nothingness. However, seeing the development of the World March from New Zealand three months ago until a little time from now in Punta de Vacas in Argentina, I feel that finally, and in some way there is a complicity, a unity, a starting to see things in a serious way, actually from reality. And reality is constituted by the experiences of a majority of people. So this is about my personal story. The sensation that 'ah, so it seems that I wasn't so naive after all, that dreaming was an appropriate activity and not one destined towards failure, no? or to hopelessness. Well, its role and significance today. I think that, or I realize that it is like a little ball that is on a terrain where it has trouble moving forward. It is like doing click on it [flicks his fingers] and push it so that it runs with more determination and strength. That little ball would be civic consciousness, the people's consciousness in each country is a foothold. That is to say, the big things depend on political powers, political powers, but in the end there are things as important, such as whether there is war or there is no war, that depend on the pressure by civil society, and the union of wills in that direction. And I believe the World March is this. The World March for Peace is a chiming of the bell, a playing of the gong, society's cry saying enough. It is a small union of small and large groups, and associations, and brotherhoods, each join each other each with their own hue and charisma, but related by something that is profound and more substantial, related their humanity, and beyond political ideology and religion. So the role is to jell, to make concrete, a precise and specific demand that the activities of the countries and the political powers be directed towards overcoming the issue of violent confrontation, be it economic, political, etc. through nonviolent means, which means respecting the human being, not using weapons, dedicating weapons budget to buy food. It is a bit like the role is to give a little more preponderance to the voice of citizens before those in power in the different places. Well, it contributions and projections. I believe it has set a precedent in terms of uniting along the way such distinct cultures, such different ways of life and ways of being in the world, that it is enough to have a few clear concepts and take on such a effort again. It is as if the basic ideas are there already, the fundamental ideas that can make a difference in the future world that we will have. Many think that the third world war is around the corner but after the World March many of us believe that no, that it is possible not to have that as a shadow on the future. And what else, well, I believe that it need to be recognized that the World March springs out of a positioning that values the human being as a central value and that has unified people that, in the political field, used to think differently and that in the area of religion didn't even speak to each other. Today there have been many events where religious people of different traditions have made acts for peace, where they have sought out proximity and fraternity, which was not the case before, or people from different political parties have been able to have conversations and together to work for this specific list of measures that are the same for all countries. And this is thanks to this outlook, based on humanist Siloist principles of universalist humanism, and this strengthens me a bit personally because i have always endorsed this way of thinking, but this planetary action in a way also makes me strengthens these values, and these principles and dent make me drop other beliefs that other humanists do not share with me such as believing in god, or celebrating god in certain ways that others would not comprehend. But we are both humanists, with different forms of belief. That would be it.