Zen Peacemakers’ Bearing Witness to Racism in America Retreat is a contemplative immersion held in Montgomery and Selma, Alabama — places deeply shaped by the history and ongoing reality of racism in the United States.
Rather than approaching racism as a problem to solve or an idea to analyze, this retreat invites participants to bear witness through presence, silence, and shared experience. The practice asks us to suspend assumptions, release fixed views, and listen — to the places we visit, to one another, and to ourselves.
The retreat includes visits to significant historical sites, daily council practice, meditation, and time for reflection. Participants are encouraged to remain open to discomfort, not as something to overcome, but as a doorway to deeper understanding and connection.
This is not an activist training or educational seminar. It is a practice of transformation — allowing the experience to change us.
The retreat is open to people of all backgrounds. No prior experience with Zen Peacemakers or social justice work is required.





Racism has taken its most extreme and gruesome form in Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Why is this horror not witnessed to the extent it should be by Zen Peacemakers?