In Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism’s Essen­tial Teach­ings, it says:

6. Prac­ti­tion­ers live as spir­i­tual beings on Earth, one with Earth and life. God-dess per­vades all. Prac­ti­tion­ers embrace a lifestyle of sim­ple liv­ing and high think­ing. They offer all to God-dess as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice of love, are ves­sels of divine love, and live in accord with eter­nal spir­i­tual val­ues. Devo­tees live in the present as fully par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­bers of local and global soci­ety, work­ing for the well-being of all, accord­ing to their ability.

7. Prac­ti­tion­ers work in coali­tion with those of like mind to address issues of peace, jus­tice, and the envi­ron­ment. They seek com­mon­al­i­ties rather than dif­fer­ences so that love may unite all peo­ple as the realm of God-dess man­i­fests on Earth. (39–40)

To actu­al­ize these teach­ings, I and sev­eral oth­ers are found­ing a local Gray Pan­thers group.

“We are the risk tak­ers; we are the inno­va­tors; we are devel­op­ers of new mod­els. We are try­ing on the future for size — that is our role.” — Mag­gie Kuhn, Founder

Gray Pan­thers are age and youth in action. Work­ing together across gen­er­a­tions, we amplify our voices and strengthen our power to cre­ate a just soci­ety. Sev­eral of us are orga­niz­ing a Gray Pan­thers local affil­i­ate. We are just at the begin­ning stages of let­ting peo­ple know we are here and find­ing out who is inter­ested. We will hold a potluck, kick­off gath­er­ing at a Hilo beach park to bring peo­ple together and hear what issues they are most con­cerned about and how to best address them.

We seek to engage the broader com­mu­nity in strug­gles for jus­tice. Gray Pan­thers act on our val­ues, build cred­i­bil­ity, and achieve goals. Gray Pan­thers embrace the  inter­gen­er­a­tional value of work­ing for jus­tice for peo­ple of ALL gen­er­a­tions and involv­ing peo­ple of ALL ages in our move­ment. We are NOT AARP that is just look­ing out for the elderly. (Issues of afford­able tuition for stu­dents and child care are impor­tant too.)

The Gray Pan­thers include peo­ple of all ages orga­nized to fight the injus­tices of ageism, sex­ism, and racism every­where and to pro­mote peace along with social and eco­nomic justice.

The basic objec­tives of the Gray Pan­thers are:

a. To fos­ter the con­cept of aging as growth dur­ing the individual’s total life span from birth to death, through per­sonal devel­op­ment and social involvement.

b. To advo­cate fun­da­men­tal change in areas of multi­gen­er­a­tional con­cern that would elim­i­nate injus­tices, dis­crim­i­na­tion and oppres­sion based on age, gen­der, race, eth­nic­ity and reli­gious, sex­ual or polit­i­cal preferences.

c. To help cre­ate a more humane and socially respon­si­ble soci­ety, and to heighten oppor­tu­ni­ties for all peo­ple to real­ize their full potential.

d. To act inde­pen­dently and in coali­tion with other groups to achieve both short term social and eco­nomic changes, and ulti­mately a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety that serves human needs above prof­its and reduces the con­cen­tra­tion of cor­po­rate power.

e.  To work coop­er­a­tively with the United Nations and other inter­na­tional agen­cies and orga­ni­za­tions out­side the United States on issues of com­mon interest.

Gray Pan­thers believe in active engage­ment. We believe civic par­tic­i­pa­tion and respon­si­bil­ity are fun­da­men­tal to achiev­ing social and eco­nomic jus­tice and peace. We work to:

Cre­ate a humane soci­ety — one that puts the needs of peo­ple over prof­its, respon­si­bil­ity over power and democ­racy over institutions.

Elim­i­nate injus­tice, dis­crim­i­na­tion, oppres­sion, and ageism wher­ever they exist.

Bring together young and old, women and men of all back­grounds and ori­en­ta­tions, to work in uni­son, with mutual trust and respect.

Make your voice heard! Gray Pan­thers work together on the issues you believe in.

• Cre­at­ing a single-payer, uni­ver­sal health care system

• Pro­tect­ing the environment

• Fight­ing for civil rights and civil liberties

• Pro­mot­ing peace and inter­na­tional human rights

• Ensur­ing jobs and work­ers’ rights

Our groups across the coun­try work on issues from edu­ca­tion to ageism, from polit­i­cal integrity to Social Secu­rity. If you want to know where Gray Pan­thers stand on a vari­ety of issues you can visit the www.graypanthers.org web­site and click on “Our Issues” where you’ll find an out­line of the issues with links to more res­o­lu­tions. If you would like to be involved, con­tact Steve Bohlert — sbohlert(at)yahoo(dot)com.