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.
If we learn of yet another murder of a person of color by police and do nothing about it, we are partly responsible for the next murder.
If we refuse to recognize the costs to everyone of the centuries of oppression, denied opportunity, income inequality, enforced poverty, and deliberately-induced hatred experienced by some of us, we are endangering the future of all our nation’s children.
If we blame peaceful protesters for the violence perpetrated by right-wing infiltrators in their midst, we are supporting the infiltrators and encouraging their violence.
If we support “law and order” over peace and social justice, we are promoting fascism at the expense of democracy.
If we “talk a good ballgame” regarding the evils of racism, but do nothing to end it, we are facilitating the next injustice.
If we take the knee once to show support for resistance to racism but do nothing more, we need to look harder for ways to make a real difference.
If we label protesters “terrorists” and let the government treat them accordingly, we are not only undermining First Amendment rights for everyone, but also empowering govenment terrorism against anyone (of any color) seen as a threat to the wielders of power.
So what can we do?
We can, for example, arm ourselves with facts-e.g., click here
We can also learn and share what white people can do to deal with the racism plaguing this continent since the first gun-toting white Europeans arrived here:
[Here’s just one example from that list: “Google whether your local police department currently outfits all on-duty police officers with a body-worn camera and requires that the body-worn camera be turned on immediately when officers respond to a police call. If they don’t, write to your city or town government representative and police chief to advocate for it.” ] Check out the others.
by Andre Sheldon, Director of Global Strategy of Nonviolence
Question:
After Covid-19, in a world divided and fraught with global crises, will people
find a way to work together to create a “new normal” characterized by peace and
justice for all?
Answer:
Yes, with new leadership that speaks truth to power, enlists the people,
and—most importantly–embraces nonviolence, a new normal can be created that
provides a better world….for the children.
Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed, Krishna, Moses, all the
sages through the ages, and Gandhi, King, and Mandela in the past 100 years, lived
and died to teach us that nonviolence is the answer. Are there leaders today who have the ability
to influence the world’s people and all their governments to “commit to
nonviolence?” Yes, there are!
The ideal leader is a person who can see that the
first thing we must do to achieve a more peaceful and just world is unite under
one umbrella. The response to Covid-19 of
countless people confirms that people everywhere see the value of solidarity
and unity. The opportunity is here for
leaders to create a new global peace movement to promote kindness, compassion,
trust, respect, and stopping war!
Leaders and Movements Must Come Together
Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben have highlighted the
dangers and causes of catastrophic climate change, as well as remedies and
strategies to rescue the planet. Klein
and McKibben know we have to unite and think big. Klein wrote,“… strengthening the threads tying together our
various issues and movements – is, I would argue, the most pressing task of
anyone concerned with social and economic justice.” Klein
also wrote: “Sensible people are always telling us that change needs to come in
small increments. Well, we rejected all of that.”
Recognizing the strength of the Golden Rule, religious
scholar Karen Armstrong formed the Charter for Compassion
10 years ago to bring together leaders of all religions. According to the
Charter, “The principle of compassion lies at
the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always
to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.”
Other organizations promoting unity include Global
Citizen, We,
the People, founded by Rick
Ulfick, and ONE,
founded by Bono, is dedicated to
eradicating extreme poverty. World
Humanists , together
with World Without War
(WWW), recently sponsored the second World March for Peace and
Nonviolence to promote the strength of unity for stopping
war. The founder of WWW, Rafael de la Rubia, visualizes
nonviolence as the tool to change the world.
Covid-19 prompted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to issue a call for a Global Cease-Fire— a critical recognition of the fact
that stopping wars affects all issues and that
we need peace to devote significant efforts to the other crises As Guterres noted,
“It is time to put armed
conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.”
There are brilliant people leading their
organizations and promoting new ideas that should be in the mainsteam: David
Swanson from World
Beyond War, Margaret
Flowers and Kevin Zeese from Popular
Resistance, Marianne Williamson
and Dennis Kucinich in politics,
and economist Jeffrey Sachs from
Columbia University who has his finger
on the pulse of the world.
Madeleine
Rees,
the Secretary-General of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK,
in 2015 highlighted their initiative’s slogans at the Geneva II Peace talks to
stop the war in Syria. WILPF’s slogan is
“WOMEN’S POWER to STOP WAR.” CODEPINK’s
slogan is “WOMEN SAY NO TO WAR.” These
slogans highlight the direction to take to sustain and perpetuate the
cease-fire and to create a nonviolent new normal.
Moving Forward
I believe the two individuals who most convincingly
speak truth to power, and show the potential to unite all movements, all religions,
all governors, mayors and community leaders, and all the “people” in every
village, town, and city in every country under one umbrella – nonviolence, are Medea Benjamin and Naomi Klein.
Medea Benjamin can connect all the women’s
organizations and initiatives that have already begun and have practiced mobilizing
— the Women’s
March on Washington, Women
that marched in Jerusalem, Women
that Crossed the DMZ in Korea, Women
in India,
and the #MeToo movement-into
one powerful force. It is time to “harness the energy and power” of women and
nonviolence to create
trust and respect between nations and people!
Naomi Klein can connect all the leaders mentioned above
to join together, to take THE LEAP, to promote
both the climate movement and the peace movement in unison. We need both urgently!
Benjamin and Klein have the knowledge and ability to
create a “CHAIN REACTION” of leaders coming together around the world to begin and
promote a new global peace movement in September 2020! A list of leaders for the chain reaction is
compiled and available for review.
Introducing a Global Movement of Nonviolence, For
the Children
In
2002, the summer after the attacks on 9/11, I began my efforts to stop war
because I believed the United States could have addressed the attack without
using the military. I found that
grassroots initiatives for peace and humanitarian efforts were everywhere, all
trying to unite. Research supported my
theory that women had an advantage for
creating peace
by promoting nonviolence (take away the threat of violence), especially if it
was about protecting the children.
It
is my honor to announce a comprehensive plan for a Global Movement of
Nonviolence (GMofNV), For the Children, led by women. A GMofNV is not just for women, it is
for everyone, as the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was for everyone, not
just African Americans. The children are the motivation for everyone
to unite!
The plan is for a GMofNV to be implemented by an
initiative called a CALL to WOMEN, a
World-Wide Unity Campaign.
Non-governmental women leaders will ask women to be the first to rise-up
and unite as the peacemakers. I have
presented a GMofNV to U.N. Secretary-General Guterres for review! A GMofNV includes the largest marketing plan
the world has ever seen.
We
need something different and special because the obstacles to create a nonviolent
new normal are enormous. A GMofNV is designed
to be outside the box but it has tentacles reaching into every part of
society. Historian and activist, Howard Zinn was my
confidante. He wrote to me, “Your ‘Call to Women’ is excellent. Well
written, clear, strong. No doubt women represent nonviolence best.”
A new nonviolent normal will not be easy to attain
and will have risks. We need to create a
new power to change the old; therefore there will be contention. Professor
Marshall Ganz, on NOW,
stated that we need contention. Therefore, we need a peace movement!
We need elections, but we also need a peace movement
because we are in an emergency situation. Mary Robinson, Ban Ki Moon, and Jerry Brown, at the Doomsday Clock Update (see video and Fast Forward to 25:30) highlighted
the world’s crises and asked for action in 2020 because the global crises are so extreme. Also,
experts
are predicting that economic difficulties and potential chaos will
be larger than the world has ever previously experienced. Ban Ki Moon, in a
recent Post by
the Elders, called for a people movement. People movements work, as illustrated by Bill Moyers in his compilation of
different episodes
of NOW.
There will be no life-sustaining new normal if we do
not commit to nonviolence, do not support a cease fire, and do not have a unified
peace movement. Without such a commitment, military spending will take away our
ability to achieve sustainable solutions to problems. Without a peace movement, the climate
movement will fail, which means we failed.
It is time for non-governmental leadership to guide
the people to work together for peace and humanity! All the mechanisms are in place. The opportunity is here now! A GMofNV is one step away from beginning –
enlist peace, social justice, and environmental leaders to promote a GMofNV and
a CALL to WOMEN. The world must promote
clean energy and change to a green economy to provide the basic needs of the
people if peace is to be enduring.
The women leaders cited in this paper can create a unified
peace movement. All the leaders
together, promoting one voice for peace, can move the world along that path,
building on the incredible ideas that exist for a new nonviolent
normal.
Mary Robinson,
the former President of Ireland, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights, current Chairperson of the Elders, and founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation is a leading
voice in calling for action and unity in 2020.
Robinson stated,“We are faced by a gathering storm
of extinction-level consequences, and time is running out. We cannot continue with business as
usual.”
Every time I promote a GMofNV, it makes me feel
good. We need visionary leaders. The time is now and the plan is ready.
Peace and Love!
Contact: Andre@GlobalStrategyofNonviolence.org
Andre Sheldon began working for peace in 2002 to find solutions other than military action in response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. Andre is a member of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), National Organization of Women (NOW), follows CODEPINK, and is an Honorary Co-founder of the Library of Peace in Atlanta, GA. He is founder and director of the Global Strategy of Nonviolence, which was formed to promote a new narrative of committing to nonviolence and committing to helping others. He has tirelessly networked with non-governmental women leaders from around the world to set in motion a new global peace movement.