Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Peace

  • We Say, They Say

    They say Peace Education is dangerous and subversive and teaches students to be rabble-rousers.

    We say Peace Education empowers students to live happier, healthier and more productive lives. It teaches them the value of contributing to society and to their community. It teaches them that creating positive change is not up to someone else, it is up to them! Peace Education provides tools for better communication, for better relationships and more healthy interactions with the people in the students’ daily lives – their parents, their teachers, their friends and their community. Peace Education provides a context for students to develop compassion, better listening skills and tangible conflict transformation techniques which will help them throughout their lives.

    The “Solutions to Violence” class explores peacemaking through the eyes of Gandhi, Dr. King and a host of other famous peacemakers whose lives and teachings are revered worldwide. The class promotes thoughtful discussion, respect, creativity and critical thinking and writing. Students become better writers and articulators during the semester and often take on special projects outside of class which contribute to a more peaceful community, like organizing canned food drives, becoming part of youth resource councils for their cities and writing grants for renewable energy resources, to name a few.

    They say Peace Education should be extra-curricular, not a part of the regular school day.

    We say that Peace Education must be a part of the standard curriculum so that students can learn the legitimacy of nonviolence and peacemakers throughout history. If Peace Education is relegated to a “once-a-year” event, it will not receive the credibility and thoughtful study which it requires to internalize peacemaking. If we want our young people to go out and become the peacemakers of the world, we must give them the classroom instructional time to develop those skills. We would not expect them to grasp all the finite details of Algebra in a one-day seminar – why would we expect the same about peacemaking?

    Many schools have Anger Management groups, Peer Mediation and Leadership classes. “Solutions to Violence” is special because it examines peacemaking from a historical perspective and makes the material relevant to students’ lives in a meaningful way. Students report healthier and happier attitudes and behaviors after taking “Solutions to Violence.” Their grades tend to improve in their other classes, as well. This class is important because it follows the Patch Adams philosophy – that every teacher is a student and every student is a teacher.

    They say there is not enough time in the school day to address peacemaking. Teachers are already too busy!

    We say teachers *are* too busy to add extra lesson plans. They have so many needs and requirements with the advancement of placement tests, standardized tests and teaching students to take these tests and pass them! One of the goals of peace education is to partner with colleges, universities and credentialing programs so that teachers are being trained to teach peace education in schools as a permanent part of the curriculum.

    “Solutions to Violence” explores many kinds of violence in our world – like hot and cold violence, structural violence, interpersonal violence and academic violence. Academic violence is particularly relevant to students who have been continually let down by our educational system and who have grown to distrust teachers, administrators and school in general. There are students for whom tests are daunting and depressing, and after each multiple-choice exam feel like failures. There are teachers who feel stifled and offended by the trend toward standardized testing which limits their creative license as a teacher and human being.

    The strategy of implementing “Solutions to Violence” as a standard part of high school curriculum works in tandem with training teachers to fill the needs of schools utilizing this semester-long class. Eventually, student teachers will be able to teach “Solutions to Violence” in preparation for teaching future classes.

    They say it’s too difficult to fund Peace Education.

    We say it is far more costly not to fund Peace Education. What will be the cost to future generations who grow up without knowing the fundamental skills necessary to be peacemakers?

    We must believe that Peace Education is worthy of receiving funding through grants, through permanent teachers’ salaries, and through community-based initiatives. Where we spend our money gives clues to where our priorities lie. Therefore, we must find creative and permanent ways to compensate teachers for teaching the most important subject in school: Getting Along With Others.

    It is important to be thinking about funding Peace Education, to be partnering with peace and justice groups, with school districts, and with organizations whose donors believe in teaching peace. There is no right or wrong way to approach funding for peace education. Many communities have anti-violence grants which never get spent. Many district have student needs which go unfulfilled due to the lack of funding. It is up to us to be resourceful and to make sure that Peace Education is on the radar screen in our lifetime.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Our Taxes, Our Voices

    Originally Published by Common Dreams

    “A government which spends more on its military than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    As April 15th nears and Americans devote countless grueling hours toward tax preparation, how many people examine where their money actually goes?

    Certainly the prospect of shelling out money each spring to the Internal Revenue Service does not contribute to an atmosphere of personal tranquility and peace in the days and hours before the postmarked envelopes and begrudgingly-written checks are sent to the faceless bureaucracy which keeps our country afloat. The process of relinquishing hard-earned money sends pangs of frustration and resentment through many people.

    Is there a way to make this less painful? Can we envision a day when we give with glee because we know that our taxes ending up in the right places, helping the right people and addressing the problems in our society which affect us all? Can we ever become less resentful about paying taxes? Perhaps the answer is found in our priorities.

    If you want to personally quantify your values, follow where you spend your money. Are you buying movie tickets, supporting millionaires? Are you buying gasoline? Shopping at the GAP? Eating out? Are you donating to worthy causes? Are you sponsoring an underprivileged child overseas or in your town? If we want to know on an individual level where our priorities are, our expenses can provide important clues.

    If we want to know where our priorities are on a national scale, we can follow our federal spending as well. This year, our federal budget gives a big boost to the military, our way of solving problems internationally. The Osprey aircraft and Virginia attack submarines received a combined $4.2 billion dollars and nearly half our budget is allocated for past and present military spending. At the same time, significant cuts were made in “programs of social uplift”: $700 million in job training and employment, $85 million to train doctors in children’s hospitals, $596 million from the Department of Education and $417 million to repair housing. Interesting.

    And the core values which we hold dear are reflected in the national budget: power, authority, defense and protection. Education, healthcare, social services and investment in workers get short shrift this year. Nine million children (one in seven) have no health insurance in the United States. One in eight never graduate high school. One-fourth live with only one parent. Over the next ten years, more than 2.2 million teachers will be needed to address the high turnover rate in the educational system and compensate for retiring teachers. The average length of time a new teacher sticks with the profession? Two years.

    At the heart of the matter is what really will make us more secure – a big military or a healthy, smart, fulfilled population. Can we actually become safer if we are better educated, well-nourished and have well-paying stable employment and hope for the future? Or is a big military the only way? And what do taxes have to do with this?

    Almost half of our taxes are applied to keeping our country safe through a strong military.

    The quote by Dr. King gets at the heart of the matter. On a personal level, we are taught to rely on gadgets like mace, tasers, martial arts and self-defense, The Club and complex home security devices to protect our stuff and our well-being. On a national level, we are taught to rely on national missile defense, nuclear weapons, a large well-equipped military and the theory of mutually assured destruction. These ploys play upon our fears of death and insecurity, and they make a great deal of money for a small amount of people. Imagine if we began to embrace the idea that life is fundamentally insecure and that regardless of all the protective measures, the gizmos, the gimmicks and the firepower we buy or rely on, that our time on earth is limited and fragile.

    Moreover, do we need to live in fear and suspicion of others in order to be safe?

    By addressing the root causes rather than effects of violence – like lack of education, low-paying jobs, poor health care, stress and relationship problems – through adequate funding and appropriation of financial resources shows that American people are at the heart of our concern. In contrast, focusing only on tragedy and insecurity detracts from the positive components in American society.

    This year, Hart High School in Valencia, CA had to cut funding for its bus transportation for extra-curricular activities which require distance travel; many other high schools nationwide have experienced similar cutbacks. Is it morally right to deprive students of after school activities, thus increasing the likelihood that they will end up unsupervised and getting into trouble? Can we justify spending $1.1 billion in military aid to Colombia rather than funding buses for high school sports teams and bands?

    As tax day draws nigh, we as Americans are challenged to examine our lives, our budgets, our bank account balances and our priorities. We have power through deliberate acts of conscience to challenge the IRS to appropriate a portion of our money to a peace tax fund. We can ask Congress to fund a cabinet-level Presidential advisory Department of Peace. Our paycheck is our power and our voice. How should our money be spent?

    We decide.
    *An admirer of Henry David Thoreau, Leah C. Wells advocates peaceful applications of tax dollars toward increasing teachers’ salaries, funding to after school programs, college scholarships and social services.

  • Peace Proposal: Bring in the Children

    We receive many positive proposals for peace from friends and readers of the Sunflower and our wagingpeace.org web site. I want to share some of them from time to time with a broader audience in the hope that they may spark your ideas and actions. Here is one from Janie, a mother in Philadelphia. She begins by observing that “the world seems to be falling apart” and notes that the format of international meetings hardly changes and the results are generally minimal. “What are we to do?” she asks.

    She answers her question this way: “When things don’t work out with a child, a new tactic is in order, and various tactics are attempted until the right one surfaces and the final breakthrough is accomplished.” Based on her experience, she makes the following proposal:

    “Why doesn’t someone initiate at the next world conference for anything (nuclear disarmament, environment, peace in the Middle East, etc.) that each representative brings to the meeting a grandchild (under the age of about 7 years) and if no grandchild fits this category then a grandniece/nephew or any child that one is extremely fond of?”

    “I think the results would be alarming, surprising,” she writes. “Representatives to these meetings come with their egos, agendas, power, etc. No wonder nothing much is achieved. Get some children in there and what will happen right off the bat is that no one’s heart remains with quite the same hardness and impenetrability. The egos become a little less, the feeling of nationalism decreases a notch. My religion, your religion doesn’t quite hold the power it had. Why? Because the hearts of children have the power, tremendous power to melt the heart, anyone’s heart.”

    She concludes: “So that’s my contribution to conflict resolution, the peace process, disarmament put the future generations before these people, put their very own loved ones, vulnerable ones, sweet and innocent ones in their face and maybe things could get moving to secure a world that they deserve. I am so very serious about this. Is it not worth a try?”

    Of course, it is worth a try. We need leaders who think and act as if they are in the very presence of future generations. We need leaders who are able to shift their thinking and actions from representing powerful corporate interests to representing people and particularly the children who, after all, are the future. We need leaders who, like the native Americans, think of the seventh generation in the future when they make decisions.

    The problem, of course, is how to get a great idea like Janie’s implemented. It seems clear that it would change the tone and tenor of international meetings concerned with peace, disarmament, human rights, the environment, etc. It is difficult to move entrenched leaders, particularly those that seem indebted to vested interests. Perhaps the best way to implement an idea like this is for the children themselves to make their voices heard and to demand a seat at the table.

    I encourage you to talk this idea over with friends and family, including your children and grandchildren. Perhaps we should withhold our votes from leaders who do not make decisions as if in the presence of future generations and who would not be willing to bring children into the halls of government and to international meetings to determine whether it is possible to live in peace with our planet and each other.

     

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • For a lasting peace in Iraq

    Originally Published in The Jordan Times

    When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. Two nations like the United States and Iraq have unlimited potential for rendering irreversible damage to each other, to the environment and to the innocent people who get trampled underfoot in the stampede of war.

    As a pacifist, I do not endorse violence.

    But let’s imagine for a moment that I went along with the idea that removing President Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was a good idea, that this action would decrease the cycle of violence in the world, and that it were a decent and honourable thing to do.

    Imagine that we got rid of Saddam. Then what?

    There are still 23 million people living in Iraq, so long as we did not kill a significant number of them in dethroning the infamous leader of the Ba’ath party. Among the Iraqis left standing are young men and women who have grown up in a decidedly anti-American environment, who have been nutritionally deprived since conscious memory and who are living daily with the threat of future bombings which have dotted the landscape, virtually escaping Western media reports for the past eleven years.

    Are we naive to think that this same underdeveloped population that has endured hellishly hot summers, putrid water and abominable health conditions will now embrace American presence and show gratitude for our reinvigorated military effort against them?

    Imagine for a moment that we stopped finger-pointing and blaming Saddam for starving his people for the past eleven years. Imagine that we stopped blaming a recalcitrant Sanctions Committee and policy making team from the State Department. Imagine that we viewed the humanitarian crisis in Iraq simply as people in need. The unending, maddening seclusion maintained by the world community could then be addressed.

    What will we do for these civilian Iraqis with whom we have no argument, the unseen innocent survivors of an eleven-year siege?

    A lasting peace plan in Iraq would have to begin by addressing the immediate needs of the average Iraqi people — their access to potable water, their educational infrastructure, healthcare system, their agriculture and oil industries — as well as their access to interstate and international travel. Restrictions on travelling to and from Iraq must be amended so that a dialogue may begin between Iraqis and other cultures throughout the world, starting with study abroad and student exchange programmes.

    In Iraq, doctors need vaccines, syringes with needles, X-ray film and blood bags. Teachers need books and pencils. Children need shoes and a happy childhood. Nursing mothers need proper nutrition to provide a healthy start for young lives. Iraqis need a wider array of food options and nutritional intake other than the lentils and rice available under the oil-for-food programme.

    Iraq needs an infusion of currency, a way to pay its citizens who desire to work, achieve and fulfil the demands of providing for their families. Immediately, Iraq needs a plan to rebuild its infrastructure — the water and sewage treatment plants and electrical facilities so that air conditioning and ceiling fans function when the temperature is 140 degrees.

    We must accept responsibility for the life-altering consequences of our policies on people who should not have been targeted.

    The world community, led by the United Nations, must apologise formally and publicly to the families who have lost loved ones as a result of the sanctions and no-fly-zone bombing campaigns in the North and south of Iraq. We must offer our sincerest condolences for our complicity in the crimes that killed more than half a million children.

    Unless we do this, the civilian Iraqis who are not the enemy will have every justification for taking every opportunity to avenge the egregious wrongs done against them.

    Gandhi tells a story about a wise man meditating by a river. A scorpion in a tree repeatedly falls into the water, and the wise man rescues him each time. And each time, the scorpion stings him. Another man sees this drama played out several times and approaches the wise man, asking why he continues to save the scorpion and risk being stung every time? “It is his nature to sting,” says the wise man. “I am a human. It is my nature to save.”

    Iraq needs no new war, no more bombs. They need simple human-to-human outreach. That is the right thing to do.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and travelled to Iraq last July with Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness. She contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

  • Peace and Nuclear Disarmament: A Call to Action

    Speech by Dennis Kucinich

    “. . . Come my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world,” . . . Alfred Lord Tennyson

    If you believe that humanity has a higher destiny, if you believe we can evolve, and become better than we are; if you believe we can overcome the scourge of war and someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace on earth, let us begin the conversation today. Let us exchange our ideas. Let us plan together, act together and create peace together. This is a call for common sense, for peaceful, non-violent citizen action to protect our precious world from widening war and from stumbling into a nuclear catastrophe.

    The climate for conflict has intensified, with the struggle between Pakistan and India, the China-Taiwan tug of war, and the increased bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians. United States’ troop deployments in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Columbia and Indonesia create new possibilities for expanded war. An invasion of Iraq is planned. The recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya are considered by the United States as possible targets for nuclear attack catalyzes potential conflicts everywhere.

    These crucial political decisions promoting increased military actions, plus a new nuclear first-use policy, are occurring without the consent of the American people, without public debate, without public hearings, without public votes. The President is taking Congress’s approval of responding to the Sept. 11 terrorists as a license to flirt with nuclear war.

    “Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war,” the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision. Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from the consent of the governed.

    In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy.

    We have reached a moment in our country’s history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace?

    Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world.

    Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space.

    Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. In the past week there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government:

    1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
    2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons.
    3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
    4. Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.

    Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the “war on terrorism” with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option “on the table.” He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes, without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside our nation’s Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the storage of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons.

    Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared and hated the “godless, atheistic” communists. In our schools, we dutifully put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our very neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you “nuked” others you “nuked” yourself.

    The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear weapons, pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space. It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

    We must overcome our fear of each other, by seeking out the humanity within each of us. The human heart contains every possibility of race, creed, language, religion, and politics. We are one in our commonalities. Must we always fear our differences? We can overcome our fears by not feeding our fears with more war and nuclear confrontations. We must ask our leaders to unify us in courage.

    We need to create a new, clear vision of a world as one. A new, clear vision of people working out their differences peacefully. A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence, nonviolent intervention, and mediation. A new, clear vision where people can live in harmony within their families, their communities and within themselves. A new clear vision of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.

    At this moment of peril we must move away from fear’s paralysis. This is a call to action: to replace expanded war with expanded peace. This is a call for action to place the very survival of this planet on the agenda of all people, everywhere. As citizens of a common planet, we have an obligation to ourselves and our posterity. We must demand that our nation and all nations put down the nuclear sword. We must demand that our nation and all nations:

    Abide by the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
    Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.
    Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.
    Persist towards total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.

    Our nation must:
    Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.
    Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.
    Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.

    We are in a climate where people expect debate within our two party system to produce policy alternatives. However both major political parties have fallen short. People who ask “Where is the Democratic Party?” and expect to hear debate may be disappointed. When peace is not on the agenda of our political parties or our governments then it must be the work and the duty of each citizen of the world. This is the time to organize for peace. This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to concieve of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness. This is the time to concieve of peace as respect, trust, and integrity. This is the time to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness which compels violence at a personal, group, national or international levels. This is the time to develop a new compassion for others and ourselves.

    When terrorists threaten our security, we must enforce the law and bring terrorists to justice within our system of constitutional justice, without undermining the very civil liberties which permits our democracy to breathe. Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath and informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason. Which is why we must pay attention when we sense a threat to survival.

    That is why we must speak out now to protect this nation, all nations, and the entire planet and:
    Challenge those who believe that war is inevitable.
    Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right.
    Challenge those who would build new nuclear weapons.
    Challenge those who seek nuclear re-armament.
    Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.
    Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear target.
    Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations.
    Challenge those who would break nuclear treaties.
    Challenge those who think and think about nuclear weapons, to think about peace.

    It is practical to work for peace. I speak of peace and diplomacy not just for the sake of peace itself. But, for practical reasons, we must work for peace as a means of achieving permanent security. It is similarly practical to work for total nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear arms do not even come close to addressing the real security problems which confront our nation, witness the events of September 11, 2001.

    We can make war archaic. Skeptics may dismiss the possibility that a nation which spends $400 billion a year for military purposes can somehow convert swords into plowshares. Yet the very founding and the history of this country demonstrates the creative possibilities of America. We are a nation which is known for realizing impossible dreams. Ours is a nation which in its second century abolished slavery, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation where women won the right to vote, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation which institutionalized the civil rights movement, which many at the time considered impossible. If we have the courage to claim peace, with the passion, the emotion and the integrity with which we have claimed independence, freedom and, equality we can become that nation which makes non-violence an organizing principle in our society, and in doing so change the world.

    That is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a bill to create a Department of Peace. It envisions new structures to help create peace in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our nation. It aspires to create conditions for peace within and to create conditions for peace worldwide. It considers the conditions which cause people to become the terrorists of the future, issues of poverty, scarcity and exploitation. It is practical to make outer space safe from weapons, so that humanity can continue to pursue a destiny among the stars. HR 3616 seeks to ban weapons in space, to keep the stars a place of dreams, of new possibilities, of transcendence.

    We can achieve this practical vision of peace, if we are ready to work for it.
    People worldwide need to be meet with likeminded people, about peace and nuclear disarmament, now.
    People worldwide need to gather in peace, now.
    People worldwide need to march and to pray for peace, now.
    People worldwide need to be connecting with each other on the web, for peace, now.

    We are in a new era of electronic democracy, where the world wide web, numerous web sites and bulletin boards enable new organizations, exercising freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, to spring into being instantly. Thespiritoffreedom.com is such a web site. It is dedicated to becoming an electronic forum for peace, for sustainability, for renewal and for revitalization. It is a forum which strives for the restoration of a sense of community through the empowerment of self, through commitment of self to the lives of others, to the life of the community, to the life of the nation, to the life of the world.

    Where war making is profoundly uncreative in its destruction, peacemaking can be deeply creative. We need to communicate with each other the ways in which we work in our communities to make this a more peaceful world. I welcome your ideas at dkucinich@aol.com or at www.thespiritoffreedom.com. We can share our thoughts and discuss ways in which we have brought or will bring them into action.

    Now is the time to think, to take action and use our talents and abilities to create peace:
    in our families.
    in our block clubs.
    in our neighborhoods.
    in our places of worship.
    in our schools and universities.
    in our labor halls.
    in our parent-teacher organizations.

    Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize and take action to create peace as a social imperative, as an economic imperative, and as a political imperative. Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize, march, rally, hold vigils and take other nonviolent action to create peace in our cities, in our nation and in the world. And as the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

    This is the work of the human family, of people all over the world demanding that governments and non-governmental actors alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is the work of the human family, responding in this moment of crisis to protect our nation, this planet and all life within it. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. As we understand that all people of the world are interconnected, we can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. We can accomplish this through upholding an holistic vision where the claims of all living beings to the right of survival are recognized. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant where each person on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she may consciously evolve in mind, body and spirit.

    Nuclear disarmament and peace are the signposts toward the uplit path of an even brighter human condition wherein we can through our conscious efforts evolve and reestablish the context of our existence from peril to peace, from revolution to evolution. Think peace. Speak peace. Act peace. Peace.

  • The Message of the Sunflowers: A Magic Symbol of Peace

    Dedicated to the Children of the World Who Will Sow the Sunflower Seeds of Peace

    Once upon a time the earth was even more beautiful than it is today. The water was pure and deep, reflecting within itself the sunlight which gave life to all the creatures beneath the waves.

    The earth was green with many kinds of trees and plants. These gave food and shelter to the birds, the animals, and to all mankind. At night the air was so clear that the starlight gave a glow almost as bright as the moon.

    The people of the earth lived close to nature. They understood it and honored it and never took more than what they needed from it. The people lived in peace so they prospered and began to build many nations all around the world according to nature’s climate.

    But one day, a terrible thing happened. A strange spirit of greed entered the hearts of mankind. People began to be jealous of one another, and they were not satisfied will all the good things they already had. The nations wanted more and more of everything: more land, more water, more resources. They squeezed precious minerals from the earth to build terrible weapons to defend their nations from other greedier nations. They killed one another. They polluted the air and the water with poisons. Nature began to die. This is called war. War is ugly. It destroys love and hope and peace.

    Then one day a magical thing occurred. The birds of the air, the animals of the land, and the creatures beneath the waters came to an agreement: if they were to survive, something would have to be done to stop these wars. Only through peace could their world survive.

    “We cannot speak the human language,” they declared, “and mankind can no longer understand ours. We must find among us a symbol of peace so brilliant that all who see it will stop and remember that peace and sharing is beautiful.”

    “I am what you need,” said a golden sunflower. “I am tall and bright. My leaves are food for the animals, my yellow petals can turn plain cloth to gold, my seeds are many and are used for food by all living beings. Yet, the seeds I drop upon the ground can take root and I will grow again and again. I can be your symbol of peace.”

    All nature rejoiced, and it was decided that the birds would each take one sunflower seed and that they would fly over every nation and plant the seed in the earth as a gift. The seeds took root and grew, and the sunflowers multiplied.

    Wherever the sunflowers grew, there seemed to be a special golden glow in the air. The people could not ignore such a magical sight.

    Soon they began to understand the message of the sunflowers so they decided to destroy all of their terrible weapons and to put an end to the greed and to the fear of war. They chose the sunflower as a symbol of peace and new life for all the world to recognize and understand.

    A ceremony was celebrated by planting a whole field of sunflowers. Artists painted pictures of the sunflowers, writers wrote about them, and the people of the world were asked to plant more sunflowers seeds as a symbol of remembrance.

    All nature rejoiced once more as the golden sunflowers stood tall with their faces turned eastward to the rising sun, then following the sun until the setting in the west.

    They gave their goodness to the world so that everyone who sees a sunflower will know that the golden light of peace is beautiful.

    Sunflowers have become the symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons. After Ukraine gave up its last nuclear warhead, the Defense Ministers of the US, Russia and Ukraine met on a former Ukrainian missile base, June 4, 1996. They celebrated by scattering sunflower seeds and planting sunflowers. Former US Secretary of Defense William Perry said, “Sunflowers instead of missiles in the soil will ensure peace for future generations.”

  • Nonviolence 101

    Conversations pertaining to work often begin like this:
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m a high school teacher.”
    “What do you teach?”
    “Peacemaking.”
    “Huh?”
    And then it takes a moment to register. The follow-up question usually is, “Is that a real class in high school?”

    And thus begins the story of how classes on nonviolence wind up in high schools.

    I tell people about the various chapters, how we start out at the beginning of the semester with personal peacemaking and nonviolent responses to assault. Students always want to know how a pacifist would respond if he or she were to be attacked by a random stranger leaping from the bushes or from behind a dumpster in a dark alley. So I ask them how many of them have ever been physically hit by a random stranger in any way at any point in their lives. Maybe one or two people. Then I ask them how many people have ever been physically hit by a member of their family or someone they know at any point in their lives. Nearly every hand goes up. We worry about the boogeyman and abandoned buildings but fail to address some of the most conflict-ridden arenas, the places where we usually go like home, school and work.

    That’s how the semester begins, by examining our own personal lives. This first chapter introduces students to nonviolence, the myths, the truths and the power of responding with nonviolent force to our precarious lives. We create a working definition of peace, of violence, conflict and of nonviolence. We explore where we need to create spaces for peace in our lives, in our communities, in our state, in our nation and in our world. We start to learn about consensus, following a process and taking turns. We begin to disarm our disbeliefs, our doubts and our misgivings about peacemaking. We start to let our defenses down in order to let peace in.

    After establishing a baseline for conceptualizing nonviolence, the class learns about historical figures who usually get the short end of the stick in traditional high school classes. Primary sources are a must in Solutions to Violence, the name of the course which I teach and which my mentor, Colman McCarthy, founded. We study Gandhi in his own words. We watch A Force More Powerful, the video series by York&Ackerman which aired on PBS in October 2000. We read Dr. King in his own words, and learn about the civil rights movement, hassle lines and nonviolence trainings. The class begins to understand the structure and discipline which nonviolence requires. We then read Dorothy Day, learning about intentional communities and communal living. The students I teach are accustomed to mass marketing, consumerism and capitalism, so Dorothy Day’s commitment to generosity, hospitality and precarity tends to shock them. That chapter demonstrates a very exciting learning curve.

    Next we read Gene Sharp, Tolstoy’s “Patriotism or Peace”, Daniel Berrigan and a very articulate piece by Joan Baez which examines a dialogue between a pacifist and a skeptic. We learn about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq as a result of the economic embargo, about the School of the Americas Watch movement, about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, about sweatshops and maquiladoras, about child labor and child soldiers, about economics and the Pentagon and about the environment and animal rights. By the end of the semester, the Students in Solutions to Violence know how to find alternative news and pacifist perspectives on the Internet from websites like Commondreams, Indymedia and the Nonviolence Web.

    What students really learn…

    “This class made a difference in my life. I see things in a whole new way now that I didn’t see before. I’m not saying this class changed my whole viewpoint on life, but it did help me to be a little more open-minded. I’m seeing a little more color these days than just black and white. I don’t think this class is about learning a bunch of stats and info. It’s more than that. I’ve learned to be a little more positive than negative. I hope that the class becomes required in the future.”

    I hope that my students learn the specifics of nonviolence, that they learn to tell the stories of nonviolence and that they grow in their understanding of key nonviolent figures both past and present. Even more than the facts, though, I hope that they learn about themselves. About halfway through the semester, I ask the class what they think my goals are in teaching Solutions to Violence. Items from the following list invariably arise each semester in their responses to that question:

    Compassion. Compassion is a difficult skill to teach. Everywhere around them in the world, they learn to be tough, not to show their softer side and that kindness is a weakness. Perhaps the best place to start is teaching with compassion. My mentor, Colman McCarthy, gave me some good advice about how to do this. He told me that before every class, he reminds himself to listen more than talk. He says that good listeners have many friends and poor listeners have many acquaintances. Many people like to talk just to hear their heads rattle. The skill of being a good listener is perhaps the most important one in the teaching profession.

    I have learned many things from my students just by listening. In fact, even if I just show up to class and don’t say a word, the students will create their own dialogue because they so often need a forum to vent their emotions and share their experiences. When we study Gandhi and review the nine steps for conflict transformation, “Work on your listening skills” is one of the toughest on the list. I ask my class if, when they’re having a conversation or argument, if they are truly digesting the words of the other person, or if they’re planning in their heads what to say next, letting the other person’s words go in one ear and out the other. We so desperately want to be heard and understood, but have little experience in truly listening with patient hearts.

    Compassion also comes from empathy. I always hope for my students that they make other people’s experiences a part of their own, whether they live in the same town or around the globe.

    Ownership of their learning. Students have very little opportunity to exercise their natural creativity in school in no small part to the reliance on standardized testing and multiple-choice exams. These brain-numbing techniques lull the students into a passive state of receiving information without truly testing the measure of its worth, without examining it for relevance and truthfulness. Standardized tests stratify students into categories that teachers, administrators and colleges are comfortable with, but have little bearing on what students have actually learned.

    I am interested in students learning. I want them to assume responsibility for their own education, and become partners with the school and their teachers in an active pursuit of knowledge. In Solutions to Violence, students have the opportunity to grade themselves, and each semester they report that this is the toughest assignment. The class writes about what they are learning, how they are learning and how it is affecting them in their daily lives. Then they must assign a comparable grade so that the administration is satisfied. Learning ought to be a cooperative process. Sharing power with the students demonstrates respect and attentiveness to their autonomy and gives them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned. It is also tremendously valuable insight for me to know what parts of the curriculum reach the students and what elements of truth they have gleaned from the stories, videos and discussions.

    This semester, one student said the following: “Why can’t you just give us grades, Miss Wells? I mean, if you gave us grades then we could just be angry with you if we didn’t like them. If we give ourselves grades, we have to live with what we have done and either be angry or happy with our own effort. Can’t you just do our grades for us?” For me, this says it all. Students are too far-removed from the processes by which we measure them. Perhaps we don’t trust them to give honest evaluations of their work. Perhaps it ought to be part of the teacher’s job to evaluate the students independently. But I believe that empowering students to grade themselves is one of the best privileges to bestow on them. They must assume responsibility this way.

    Occasionally, students will respond with less-than-honest recommendations for their grades. So we review what they have written as a part of their evaluation, and use their overestimated grade as a jumping off point. What I have realized all too often, though, when a student grades himself or herself higher than I would have is that I have not accurately measured what that student has learned, and upon closer inspection, I learn that indeed that student has assumed a great deal of responsibility for taking back his/her education. Sometimes it takes a while to know what you know, though, and test-centered accountability does not take into account this gestation period for knowledge to develop.

    Knowledge about the world. Most students do not read the news section of the newspaper. Many students read the sports section, but that is just not comparable. Solutions to Violence teaches them how to dissect the newspaper, learn about the places in the stories and try to connect with the lives of those impacted by international events. We talk about letters to the editor, discuss news items and read through articles, point to places on the map and follow up with case studies about places that interest the students, like Palestine and South Africa.

    But Solutions to Violence is more than just encouraging students to be more informed. It is giving them the tools to take action and create change in their lives, in their school, in their community and in their world.

    In the past few semesters that I have been teaching in California, my students have incorporated their theoretical knowledge about how and why nonviolence works into practical action to address current needs in the community and in the world. For example, in response to learning about the mushroom workers’ struggles to win a contract for fair pay, better health and retirement benefits, the students organized a school-wide canned food drive to benefit the farmworkers. This particular action impressed me because it was during the last week of school and coordinated primarily by the seniors in the class, people who had tuned out of nearly every other subject and had their minds only on graduation.

    Nonviolence is not only about changing the world. Students begin to learn about how their hearts and minds can be transformed by considering peacemaking a legitimate skill. We read a selection from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace is Every Step, learning to be mindful of our breathing and to recover ourselves and refocus when our attention turns to anger and potential violence. Many times my students have reported that in a tense situation, one where they were ready to loose their cool, they remembered the conscious breathing exercises we do in class, concentrating on naming our in-breath and out-breath. When they were in control of their own emotions through mindful breathing, they felt less likely to react violently. It is this exact personal transformation which makes me believe that Solutions to Violence is a worthwhile class that ought to be a part of any standard high school curriculum.

    It teaches them how to be better friends, better children, better students and better people. It helps them define their talents, articulate their thoughts and cooperate with each other.

    I, too, am transformed each semester, impressed with the level of life experience and wisdom my students bring. I learn from them as much as they learn from me.

    Teaching peacemaking in school is the most logical non-reactive component to ending intolerance, racism, ageism and all other forms of personal, structural and institutional violence. I am hoping that more people will recognize this and that the movement to teach peace will be the saving grace for the sake of our young people, our communities and our world.
    *Leah Wells is a high school teacher and the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This article was initially published in the spring edition of Peacebuilding, the newsletter of the Peace Education Commission.

  • A Peacemaker These Days

    Originally Published in Common Dreams

    What makes a peacemaker these days? Apparently with the nomination of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize, being a peacemaker means that you can drop bombs on civilians, offer few options for reconciliation to your enemies and reduce spending on social services in favor of funding an already disproportionate military budget.

    I try to explain to my students who take “Solutions to Violence,” a semester-long course on peacemaking for high schools that pacifism works and offer evidence to that fact. Nominating Bush and Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize undermines this effort significantly. So as their teacher, I have tried to note a few characteristics of peacemakers which might help to clarify the quandary we as a global community face when people who fit more in the category of war criminals are heralded as peace heroes.

    Someone seeking to be a peacemaker uses violence only as a last resort. Violence has a very simple dynamic: might makes right. Nonviolence on the other hand uses creativity with unlimited possibilities to resolve problems and seeks to evoke the human spirit in their enemies, that undeniable conscience which ought never be shelved. Alexander Solzhenitsyn speaks of the futility of separating the evil people from the good people and destroying them – the same language George W. Bush is using to delineate the evildoers from the benevolent – only Solzhenitsyn truly knows that the line between good and evil runs through each human heart. When we desire to kill evil, we commit to killing a piece of ourselves.

    I continue to remind my students of Gandhi’s message that the goal is not to bring our enemies to their knees but to their senses. To do this, we must offer ways for them to save face, rather than give them ultimatums which back them into a corner and force them to lash out in frustration of lack of options. To grant our enemies the dignity they are due as human beings is to take a step toward reconciliation. We can love the evildoer while hating the evil act.

    Many religious leaders have blessed many wars throughout the years, and just last week I heard a Catholic priest at an interfaith dialogue making excuses for the “Just War Theory.” My students sitting near me beckoned for my response. On a sheet of scrap paper I asked them if Jesus embodied “Just War Theory” – if his actions represented justifications for hatred and retaliation, or if his message called us to a greater level of understanding. Walking with our enemies. Loving them because they are difficult to love. Showing compassion and mercy. Where is this dialogue happening nowadays in our war frenzy? Dare we speak out for moderation – or are even clergy being swept away in this flood of madness and hatred? Certainly the voices of peace and justice have been drowned in the swiftly moving tide.

    A peacemaker these days would not continue to bomb Iraq while calling for an end to terrorism and violence. In the past two weeks, the United States has bombed Iraq four times, while calling on the United Nations to keep their negotiations with Iraq “short”. Talk is cheap, I suppose, when we have bombing to maintain! A peacemaker would allocate more than enough resources so that housing, health care and education never went needy. Dr. King said that any nation spending more on its military than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. We are already there.

    It’s quite handy for our government to do this, though. We cut funding for social spending and overwhelm the Pentagon’s budget. This way, our students who are prone to fall through the cracks anyway will realize that there is no future for them in school, or in the workforce, and then believe that they have no other choice than to join the military. We’re eliminating options and free will under the guise of national security, underhandedly denying educations and futures to young people who deserve them. We are killing the dreams of many young people who want to create better lives for themselves and their families.

    The most important quality of a peacemaker these days, I believe, can be summed up in a line from the Manifesto by Wendell Berry on the Mad Farmer Liberation Front: Be joyful even though you have considered all the facts. A peacemaker knows the obstacles ahead. A peacemaker cries with the families of those killed and labeled ‘collateral damage’. A peacemaker lives the spirit of peacemaking and is not afraid to take risks in the name of justice. A peacemaker these days aligns with the unpopular causes, speaks up for the people we’d rather hate, and questions the authority which condones cultural genocide, mass murder and rampant militarism.

    This is what my students deserve to know about peacemaking.
    *Leah C. Wells teaches high school classes on nonviolence and serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She traveled last July and August with Voices in the Wilderness to Iraq and condemns the economic sanctions as genocidal.

  • On Becoming Human

    On Becoming Human

    To be human is to recognize the cultural perspectives that bind us to tribe, sect, religion, or nation, and to rise above them. It is to feel the pain of the dispossessed, the downtrodden, the refugee, the starving child, the slave, the victim.

    To be human is to break the ties of cultural conformity and group-think, and to use one’s own mind. It is to recognize good and evil, and to choose good. It is to consider with the heart. It is to act with conscience.

    To be human is to be courageous. It is to choose the path of compassion. It is to sacrifice for what is just. It is to break the silence. It is to be an unrelenting advocate of human decency and human dignity.

    To be human is to breathe with the rhythm of life, and to recognize our kinship with all forms of life. It is to appreciate every drop of water. It is to feel the warmth of the sun, and to marvel at the beauty and expanse of the night sky. It is to stand in awe of who we are and where we live. It is to see the Earth with the eyes of an astronaut.

    To be human is to be aware of our dependence upon the whole of the universe, and of the miracle that we are. It is to open our eyes to the simple and extraordinary beauty that is all about us. It is to live with deep respect for the sacred gift of life. It is to love.

    To be human is to seek to find ourselves behind our names. It is to explore the depths and boundaries of our existence. It is to learn from those that have preceded us, and act with due concern for those who will follow us.

    To be human is to plant the seeds of peace, and nurture them. It is to find peace and make peace. It is to help mend the web of life. It is to be a healer of the planet.

    To be human is to say an unconditional No to warfare, and particularly to all weapons of mass destruction. It is to take a firm stand against all who profit from warfare and its preparation.

    To be human is not always to succeed, but it is always to learn. It is to move forward despite the obstacles.

    We are all born with the potential to become human. How we choose to live will be the measure of our humanness. Civilization does not assure our civility. Nor does being born into the human species assure our humanity. We must find our own path to becoming human.
    -David Krieger

  • Overcoming Hardships in Working for Peace

    Overcoming Hardships in Working for Peace

    When you work for peace or any other aspect of social change, there are often hardships to overcome. You must believe deeply that what you are doing is right, or else you may become discouraged and give up. I have found that there are no easy solutions to problems involving social change. When you commit yourself to creating a better world, you are most likely committing yourself to a lifetime of effort.

    To succeed, you must be willing to persevere in your efforts and you must keep a positive, hopeful attitude. In this work, it is often unclear who you are reaching or whether change is occurring. Thus, you must trust that your work for a better world matters. Sometimes change is occurring under the surface as a result of many individual actions, and suddenly the results become clear as in the cases of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of apartheid in South Africa.

    The most rewarding life is one in which there is a major element of serving others. Many people find a way to do this in their lives. Of course, there are many ways in which an individual can be of service to others. Some of the biggest problems at the global level, though, go largely unaddressed by most of us, and I think this is an area where young people can make important contributions.

    We have many global problems, but we are lacking global institutions powerful enough to effectively address such problems as global terrorism, human rights abuses, global warming, the ozone layer, pollution of the oceans and rivers, arms trade, child soldiers, war, the weaponization of space, and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Finding a way to participate in solving these and other global problems is one of the great challenges of our time.

    Global problems require global solutions. They also require World Citizens who identify with and give their loyalty to humanity and the web of life. Patriotism takes on new dimensions and becomes Humatriotism, loyalty to humankind. To change the world requires a new kind of thinking and new loyalties that transcend the nation-state. These viewpoints may put one at odds with some segments of society, but if some individuals do not have the vision and the courage to venture beyond the borders of conformity then change will never occur.

    When I resisted the Vietnam War and refused to fight in that war, it created a rift with my wife’s parents, who thought I was being unpatriotic. It was a difficult conflict within our family, but it was essential for my integrity to do what I believed was right. I believed that in matters of war, the highest guide must be one’s conscience. I followed my conscience and have never regretted it. I realized that the state did not have power over me to decide if I should participate in war. It was up to me to choose, although I had to be ready to pay the price. Years later, my wife’s parents and some of their friends, who had so strongly opposed what I had done, told me that they understood that what I did was right and they were wrong about US involvement in Vietnam.

    The lesson that I learned from this was the importance of acting on principle rather than expediency, the importance of following my conscience and doing what I knew in my heart was right. There have been many other times in my life when I have faced hardships while working for peace. I’ve always taken solace in the understanding that I was doing what I believed in deeply. I have also been helped tremendously on my journey and in facing hardships by a loving a supporting wife.

    If you can follow the path of conscience and embrace the world, you can help create a future built on human dignity for all. We all have a choice. I hope that you will choose conscience, and act with compassion, courage and commitment to create a better world.
    *David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and has served as president of the Foundation since 1982.