Featured Keynotes, Facilitators, Practitioners and Artist

Kazu Haga a trainer, educator, student and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice. He is a core member of Building Belonging, the Ahimsa Collective and the Fierce Vulnerability Network, is a Jam facilitator and author of the book Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. He teaches nonviolence, conflict reconciliation, restorative justice, organizing and mindfulness in prisons and jails, high schools and youth groups, and with activist communities around the country.

Kazu was introduced to the work of social change and nonviolence in 1998, when at the age of 17 he participated in the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage; a 6-month walking journey from Massachusetts to New Orleans to retrace the slave trade. He spent a year studying nonviolence and Buddhism while living in monasteries throughout South Asia, and returned to the US at age 19 to begin a lifelong path in social justice work.

He spent 10 years working in social justice philanthropy, while directly being involved in and playing leading roles in many movements. He became an active nonviolence trainer in the global justice movement of the late 1990s, and has since led hundreds of workshops worldwide.

Kazu is an avid meditator and enjoys being in nature. He is a die-hard fan of the Boston Celtics and of mixed martial arts, the latter of which he is still sometimes conflicted about. 

He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA.