Robin Toma - Moving Beyond "Tolerance" in Race and Human Relations 4/8

Robin S. Toma is the Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, has broad experience in the field of human relations. He was appointed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 2000 after working five years with the Commission. He was invited to be a member of the US Delegation to the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, held in South Africa, Japanese American Leadership Delegation to Japan in 2003, and the Climate of Trust Delegation to Russia in 2005. He is co-author of the manual: Day Laborer Hiring Sites: Constructive Approaches to Community Conflict, and authored A Primer on Managing Intergroup Conflict in a Multicultural Workplace."

Toma was lead attorney in seeking redress for over 2,200 Japanese Latin Americans who were forcibly brought to the U.S. and imprisoned by the US government during World War II. He is also part of an ongoing gathering of leaders known as the Executive Session on Criminal Justice and Human Rights organized by Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served as staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California for nearly 7 years, promoting human rights and building multi-ethnic coalitions to bring about institutional change. A native of Los Angeles, Toma received his Bachelors Degree in Sociology and Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Masters degree in Urban Planning and his Juris Doctorate from UCLA. He completed a three-year Kellogg National Fellowship/Leadership Program studying how genuine democracies can be built in culturally diverse societies around the globe. Toma lived two years in Barcelona, Spain and is fully fluent in Spanish.

The Soka Gakkai International (SGI-USA) Culture of Peace Resource Centers in New York, Santa Monica, Chicago Washington D.C., and Honolulu have launched the Culture of Peace Distinguished Speaker Series to engage people in a dialogue on the values, attitudes and behaviors that reject violence and inspire creative energy toward the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Lecturers in this series focus on one or more of the 8 action areas defined by the 1999 United Nations Declaration and Program of Action on a Culture of Peace: (1) Fostering a culture of peace through education, (2) Promoting sustainable economic and social development, (3) Promoting respect for all human rights, (4) Ensuring equality between women and men, (5) Fostering democratic participation, (6) Advancing understanding, tolerance and solidarity, (7) Supporting participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge and (8) Promoting international peace and security.

We hope that this eclectic and thought-provoking series of dialogues will empower community participants with a heightened awareness of the subtle shifts in our attitudes and behaviors that can help attain and sustain a culture of peace and to apply what they have learned in meaningful ways to their families, schools, workplaces and local communities. This annual lecture series begins on January 26 of each year to commemorate the founding of the Soka Gakkai International and the yearly publication of a peace proposal by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda. All lectures are free and open to the public.

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