What brand will you settle for? Maybe not the “Made in America” Variety. Part II


Meeting hall where the armistice talks between the North Korean and Republif of Korea-USA-UN forces were held in 1953. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Author: Clay Gilliland.

by Kathie MM

Negative peace sounds pretty good, right? Signing truces and other agreements to end all the dirty little wars in which our government involves us, and putting a stop to terrorism, gang wars, domestic violence, and the other forms of violence haunting our lives today—wouldn’t that be heavenly?   Yes, but wouldn’t it be even better to help peace endure at all levels of society?

Unfortunately, at the international and national levels, the history of peace treaties, ceasefires, nonaggression pacts, and truces is not very encouraging. Treaties and truces have been made and broken repeatedly, at the cost of millions and millions of lives, as greedy governments have used increasingly sophisticated armaments to seize land and resources from resistant others. 

At the family level, despite innovative truce bells and family truce intervals, marital cease-and-desist agreements often fail to produce lasting marital peace, leading instead to the negative peace of separation, divorce, and angry children, with all parties smoldering with a sense of unfair treatment.

As for gang violence, truces among violent gangs are relatively commonplace, but like those between nations, also commonly broken.  Some evidence indicates that while truces may work for awhile, gang warfare usually resumes in the absence of efforts to address fundamental political and social welfare challenges like marginalization, unemployment, and lack of equal opportunity.

Such concerns are very much the purview of positive peace advocates. Positive peace, by definition, addresses the roots of violence. As conceptualized by Johan Galtung and other peace advocates, positive peace means cooperation for mutual and equal benefit. It means reform of the political and social structures that create and reinforce inequality. It means genuine respect for human rights. It means that women’s voices matter, that people of color don’t need to fear entering their churches, that people of non-Christian faiths can walk fearlessly on our streets. It means that war profiteers are not enabled to put their pursuit of profits ahead of the well-being—indeed the lives—of everyone whom they can “other” for their differences.

Positive peace may sound like the impossible dream, the delusion of cockeyed optimists, but if we don’t strive for it, what kind of future will the world have?

For further reading, see Galtung’s Mini-theory of peace.

You can’t have one without the other

Washington, DC December 16, 2010 This is a group of Minnesotans who traveled to Washington DC to join a demonstration against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 100 were arrested in front of the White House. The event was endorsed by groups such as: Veterans For Peace, ANSWER Coalition, CODEPINK, Fellowship of Reconciliation, March Forward!, Peace of the Action, United National Antiwar Committee, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Resisters League, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, World Can’t Wait. his file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: Fibonacci Blue

By Kathie MM

 Regarding love and marriage, Dad was told by mother, you can’t have one without the other.

In the sophisticated 21st century, we know that what the song was really about was sex and marriage, but one could argue that the essential link between the two is love.

Well, similar things can be said about peace and social justice.  You can’t have peace without social justice, and the essential link is love for humanity and the earth, expressed through activism.

Think about the huge profits the military industrial complex reaps from warfare,  arms sales,  military bases, and “defense” budgets. How does one shake their dedication to promoting targets for rage on the home front in order to serve their desire to keep the country in perpetual armed conflict against designated enemies within and outside national borders?  It is pretty obvious that the MIC will not give up their billions easily;  active protest is essential.

To reintroduce our new series emphasizing the intimate connection between peace and social justice, today’s offering is a reincarnation of one of engaging peace’s first posts back in 2011.

 Negative versus positive definitions of peace

Posted on May 16, 2011 by kathiemm

*Negative peace refers to definitions that identify peace with the absence of war or armed conflict.

*Positive peace refers to definitions that focus on the prerequisites and criteria for a sustainable peace, including respect for universal human rights (which are not synonymous with the legal rights granted by any particular legal authority).

The major public media in this country certainly do little to promote the idea of peace per se, let alone positive peace.

A report released by the Institute for Economics and Peace in October 2010 described a study regarding violence and peace in television programs. Included in the research were 37 news and current affairs programs from 23 networks in 15 countries, including the United States.

Overall, only 1.6% of the stories examined in the study considered issues of positive peace. However, there was some variation across the countries in amount of media time devoted to issues of violence. According to the report, “Of the 10 TV programs with the highest level of violence coverage, 8 are from the United States or the United Kingdom.”

Do you think there have been any changes in our culture of violence since 2011?  Do you see any signs of resistance to the business as usual of hatred and violence?  What actions, what protests, are you aware of in our society today that might contribute to resistance to endless war and social injustice at every level of society?  Please share your ideas.

Holding Space for Hope

Holding space for hope. Author: Kathie Malley-Morrison

 

By Rev Dr Doe West

I have come to deeply appreciate the concept of “holding space”. Two examples of what that means were expressed in  articles I clipped–one by Lynn Hauka  and one by  Heather Plett .

Lynn offered that “When you hold space for someone, you bring your entire presence to them. You walk along with them without judgment, sharing their journey to an unknown destination. Yet you’re completely willing to end up wherever they need to go.”

Heather added that “It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgment and control.”

Love those definitions.

As I was having deep and painful – yes, even grieving – conversation with friends concerning the gravity of the darkness of these times, I wondered if I could use this understanding for something less tangible than a person. Could I hold space for hope?

Could I bring my entire presence to hope – even as I watched unarmed children, women and men shot down in Gaza?! Could I walk without judgement as I listened to this POTUS call immigrants “animals”?! Could I not try to fix them or impact the outcome when I have devoted my life to the work of Social Justice!?!
As I sat with that contemplation, tears of rage and sorrow poured down my face. What was the worth of even considering such a thing?

And then – as that peace that passes all understanding finally washed over me again – I found my answer.

I learned the art and tool of not judging vs. mindfully observing to allow myself ultimate understanding. I learned the art of not trying to fix a person vs. work to assure I was not acting in a way that either paralleled or allowed their actions. If I do not judge them vs. assure my own convictions and actions are within my ethical and moral place on higher ground, then I am doing the work of social justice… for that is always worked from within first and foremost… always built on a foundation of depth of self-awareness and clear perception of actions so that my own fear, anger, and negative perception does not create my own lie as I live the moment.

I must face my truth; live my truth and so offer the truth of resistance. And my truth will always be cloaked in hope. Not false hope; honest hope that cannot help but arise when your truth is justice. Justice is born of hope in the face of the worst of adversity. Resistance is fed by hope that allows us to walk through the bullets to aid the wounded.

Hope is one of the greatest expressions of love I know. I am holding space for hope.