by Kathie Malley-Morrison, Pat Daniel, and Joe Kandra
Please join us in celebrating the move of Engaging Peace to its new home with Mass Peace Action (MAPA). This cartoon reflects our intent to join not only with MAPA but also with countless collaborators in the broader peace movement.
Let a million flowers of peace bloom!
Our thanks go to all of you who participated in the Engaging Peace mission by submitting articles, comments, poems, artwork, videos, cartoons, and donations. Thanks also to the volunteers, interns, and board members* who supported this work. Our effort to engage peace would not have continued for more than 10 years without you.
Many thanks also to all of you who read our posts and learned about how the plutocrats, the military industrial complex, the war profiteers, and the corrupters of human beings and environments promote moral disengagement in ordinary people, making them believe that doing harm is doing good.
Thank you also for reading the many stories by and about ordinary people who have become morally engaged, who speak truth to power, who strive to live by the Golden Rule, and who recognize that we are all members of the same human race and that we are all responsible for the environment in which we live.
Your own peace activism is now more important than ever. Please continue your own grassroots efforts and join with other peace and social justice groups in your own community, state, and nation.
Peace and love,
The Engaging Peace Team (Kathie, Pat, and Joe
* Special thanks to current and past members of the EP board of directors: Alice LoCicero, Doe West, Susan Strobel, and Dot Walsh.
P,S. Please come see Pat, Joe, and me at our webinar for Mass Peace Action Thursday May 27 at 7. Click here for the announcemnt and registration link. We’d love to see you there.
by Kathie Malley-Morrisonm, Joe Kandra, and Pat Daniel
Thu May 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm at Mass Peace Action
The field of peace psychology has given considerable attention to the dynamics of moral and immoral thinking as expressed in peaceful or violent behavior. Waging war violates the most universal moral code ever evolved by human beings—the Golden Rule. Yet ruthlessly, through the centuries, humans have been persuaded to commit atrocities such as warfare while viewing themselves as moral beings. How do they do that?
One answer is moral disengagement—ways of thinking that allow people to convince themselves that it is moral to promote war against others who are portrayed as less than human, a threat to future peace, troublemakers, etc. Unscrupulous leaders have known for centuries how to feed into those self-deceptions to justify violently taking the lands and resources of other people. However, throughout the centuries there have also been people who have fought violent tactics, people who are morally engaged on behalf of peace and social justice.
In this webinar, psychologist Kathie Malley-Morrison will provide brief examples of both moral disengagement and engagement offered in posts in the Engaging Peace archive. She has published many books and articles both on family violence around the globe and on the views of ordinary people from around the globe on the issues of war and peace. She will be followed by Joe Kandra, the cartoonist for Engaging Peace, who has already begun creating cartoons for MAPA. He will provide examples from the Engaging Peace archives of the ways in which political cartoons can be used to educate and engage for peace and social justice. Pat Daniel will moderate the session.
This webinar features key posts on the psychological underpinnings of engagement in warfare, as explored in the blog of Engaging Peace Inc.— a non-profit begun in 2010 by Kathie Malley-Morrison and Pat Daniel to promote peace and social justice. Kathie and Joe are now bringing their peace advocacy to MAPA, and MAPA is expanding the resources available to its members by acquiring the blog archives of Engaging Peace.
Saturday’s rally in Brattle Square Plaza, Cambridge, MA, to end the U.S.-Saudi blockade of Yemen, began just as the morning’s rain ended and pedestrians returned to Harvard Square.
Activists held signs and gave out leaflets urging an end to U.S. support for the Saudi blockade.
As the leaflet noted, “Yemen is a Massachusetts war. Raytheon is headquartered here in Massachusetts. It makes the bombs for Saudi Arabia and it makes the jet engines for the planes that drop the bombs. Let’s do all we can to end this connection between Massachusetts and this terrible humanitarian disaster.”
Further information is available at the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign (617-354-2169), and at info@masspeaceaction.org.
Pegean says: “If you’re concerned about the situation in Yemen, let your national and state legislators know.”
11:20 AM -11:40 AM: Supporting the Treaty at State and Local levels
· State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, Massachusetts
· Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, Easthampton
11:40 AM – 12:10 PM: Panel Discussion – “ICAN pledge –Collecting signatures in other nuclear-armed and nuclear-reliant countries”
· Heidi Kassai (ICAN Germany)
· Tilman Ruff (ICAN Australia)
· Erin Hunt (Mines Action Canada/ICAN Partner)
12:10 PM – 12:30 PM: Breakout Rooms – Writing to Your Elected Representatives
Participants will break up into small groups by state/region to write letters and emails to federal, state, and local representatives in their own states and districts.
12:30 PM – 12:40: Debrief and next steps
12:40 PM – 12:45 PM: Closure
Background on the ICAN Pledge and Nuclear Ban Treaty:
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) went into effect on January 22nd of this year. Everything to do with nuclear weapons is now illegal in 54 countries, and that number will continue to rise. In countries where governments are not yet ready to sign this treaty, their elected officials are pressuring them to do so. Over 250 parliamentarians in Italy have signed the ICAN Pledge, nearly 200 in Germany, over 100 in Australia, and almost every member of the Scottish Parliament.
So far, ten members of the US Congress have signed the ICAN Pledge. Join us on April 24th to hear from Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and from ICAN campaigners around the world, on how they have successfully used the ICAN Pledge to build support for nuclear abolition in other nuclear-armed and nuclear-weapon-reliant countries. Also hear from US legislators who have signed the ICAN Pledge or are considering doing so. We will discuss how to get many more members of the US Congress to sign, and how this could begin to change the conversation about nuclear weapons in Washington towards a clear call for the abolition of these weapons. We will also look at how getting state and local legislators to sign the Pledge can help build pressure on Members of Congress to also sign.
Event Co-Sponsors: NuclearBan.US, The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Massachusetts Peace Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF US), World Beyond War, CodePink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Sierra Club, Veterans for Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, United Methodist General Board of Church and Society and Baltimore Nonviolence Center, Beyond Nuclear, Catholic Worker New York City, Center for Nonviolent Solutions, Coalition for Peace Action, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Engaging Peace, Inc., Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution Peace Task Force, Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace, Granny Peace Brigade New York City, Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Hampton Roads Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Maryland Peace Action, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, New England Peace Pagoda, New Hampshire Peace Action, Northampton Friends Meeting (Quakers), Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Nuclear and Carbon Free Future Coalition, Nuclear Hotseat Podcast/Broadcast, Nuclear Resister, NuclearWakeUpCall.Earth, Nukewatch, Nukewatch New Mexico, Oregon PeaceWorks, Outrider Foundation, Pax Christi Baltimore, Pax Christi Metro New York, Peace Action Maine, Peace Action New York State, PEAC Institute, Physicians for Social Responsibility Kansas City, Prevent Nuclear War Maryland, Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, Tri-Valley CAREs, Upper Midwest Chapter World Beyond War, Veterans for Peace Chapter 27, Veterans for Peace Chapter 34, Veterans for Peace Chapter 80, Veterans for Peace Golden Rule Project, War Resisters League New York City, Women Against Military Madness, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, War Prevention Initiative Jubitz Family Foundation.