Students at Alternatives in Action's Bay Area School of Enterprise (BASE) and West Alameda Community Programs began a "Season of Peace Building," which will last through Cesar Chavez Day on March 31. The students are responding to the escalation of gun violence in the East Bay, specifically the January killing of 5-year-old Gabriel Martinez in Oakland. They launched the Season of Peace Building in solidarity with their peers at Oakland's Alternatives in Action's Community Programs at Life Academy of Health & Bioscience. In order to demonstrate their commitment to building peace, the students and staff members are participating in a 40- day fast relay and facilitating a community "peace pledge."

Each day at noon, they will bless a new "faster," who ties on a fasting armband, and reads the peace pledge aloud in a public ceremony. The students have launched a blog (http://seasonofpeace.tumblr.com/) to chronicle the event and to share photos and reflections of the fasters' experiences.