Wednesday, September 26, 2007

New hunk of infrastructure for peace

Getting ready for a little hunk of infrastructure. Omni people are preparing to join the media revolution. On October 12 we will (if all goes as planned) submit an application to the FCC for a high-power radio station license. It'll have the potential to reach a big hunk of Northwest Arkansas, and a bit of Oklahoma and Missouri.

We have big hopes for this station. I imagine it radiating out between the hills and through the hollers of the Ozark Mountains, bringing surprising new insights to hill people who pride themselves on their lack of larnin. Maybe inspiring people who think there's nobody else like them in the universe, because they think there must be some better way to get through life, then what's happening now.

Maybe we can find some hill folk who want to do programming. Some Cherokee Indians who want a voice for their tribe. They'd be a wonderful addition to the list I've got in my mind, of environmental programming, talks by UA professors on intriguing topics, stories by Omni travelers about what they learn in the world, students showcasing current bands, music from all over, reports on the City Council, children's stories teaching peace, justice and an earth restored... and lots of people making it all work.

A year ago we'd almost given up hope. After months of meeting, thinking and planning we just couldn't seem to pull all the strands together. Several of us attended the Great Media Conference in Memphis where FCC Commissioner Johnathan Edelstein played blues, and Bill Moyers said "we change big media or die trying." The real reason I went was to find something. I needed to find the information, or the inspiration, or the people, to pull the radio thing off, or die trying. Well, maybe not die... just give up the project. That just didn't seem like a good option though.

Well, there was Joe Newman. He came to the media conference looking for some way to do radio too. And he had some skills to give it a good shot. I'm glad you came along Joe. You've done a lot of hard work on preparing for this FCC application. If we don't get it, we'll have done our best, and you're the bulldog who's kept the ball rolling. He's not the only one though. We've only just begun, but lots of people have already put good work, and solid effort, and real money into this, and I'm proud of us. Very proud.

Media for peace, justice and ecology. This is a piece of peace infrastructure. Pretty exciting, very challenging, with incredible potential to help make the changes that need to happen. We're stepping into the media world with faith that our voices are incredibly valuable. With confidence that the world needs to hear us in a serious way. I am proud of us. Very proud.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Down the dirt road to Building A Culture of Peace


My mind keeps going back to last weekend, when my hubby and I went to the state peace groups’ conference, "Building a Culture of Peace." It's the second year we've done this in Arkansas. Last year, Omni Center started it out, and this year two Little Rock Groups - Arkansas Coalition for Peace & Justice, and Arkansas WAND - hosted it at Ferncliff Conference Center.

We're still a pretty small group. Maybe 40 or so folks. There's just something good about hanging out with people who share your passion though. It's interesting to see who comes back a second time. There was ACPJ, and WAND, and the determined Springfield Missouri bunch sent a rep, and the radiant Sisters from St. Scholastica Monastery, and some new women from Russellville and Fort Smith with new ideas and new contacts. New people were just really exhilarating, and seeing 'old' groups in a new light. Speakers from the WAND and ACPJ group kinda gave me an insight into where their groups are focusing energy. I love that.

Something I wasn't expecting at all was a comprehensive set of historic albums that Antje Harris has been constructing for several years. Attentively mounted photos, programs, flyers, speeches... memorabilia of years of peace work from the two groups she works with (ACPJ and WAND). It's a marvelous history. Wish our archivist could have seen them. They weren't elaborate or cutsey... just well made and attractive. She had an album from the first peace conference in September 2006. It was amazing to see the story of that, laid out in the material we'd collected.

They let me show my "Search for the Structure" powerpoint. I've been working on it for Omni leaders. Wasn't hard to change it around for other peace workers. Wonder if I can attach it to this blog? May try it. Nope. Won't do it. The blog likes photos or video. Maybe I'll try a slide from it instead.

I like this powerpoint. It's got some pretty pictures, and lots of good ideas from "Strategic Peacebuilding" . That's a little book from Mennonite Eastern University, by Dr. Lisa Schirch. Great ideas for peace makers. We need a long-term plan in a really big way. This is kind of ground work for that. We need a strategy. A strategy first, and then better infrastructure.

That's a question I dwell on. What infrastructure do we need to actually have a culture of peace? One thing I like about Dr. Schirch's book is the way it begins from the values and skills necessary to create peace. As you read this list of skills, it's clear why we have a violent society. We're hardwiring ourselves for it. Just look at this list:

Skills for Peacebuilding

  • self reflecti0n skills
  • active listening skills
  • diplomatic and assertive speaking skills
  • appreciative inquiry skills
  • creative problem-solving skills
  • dialogue skills
  • negotiation skills
  • mediation skills

When did they ever encourage anybody to think this stuff was acceptable in high school? Especially the 'self-reflection' part. Nah. When I was in high school, all problems would've been solved if we'd had a nicer car and name brand clothes. I don't think that part of school has changed much.

We've got a long way to go before the infrastructure for the culture of peace is strong enough to carry the kind of load we're laying on it. Whatever we do in groups like Omni Center seems so meager, but it's a start. There was a time when all highways were dirt, and everybody was fine with that. But the infrastructure grew as its value was understood. Having paved roads was only the beginning though. The people carving out the dirt roads couldn't have imagined 12-lane highways with on-off ramps, tunnel systems, built-in sensing systems, lighting systems... all this elaborate jazz we have to have in major cities.

If the human race survives long enough, the culture of peace will grow too. The infrastructure for it is at the dirt road stage, but it will change as its value becomes apparent. It's the perfect metaphor for a small but beautiful peace conference, in our small but beautiful state.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Adding global warming to the horrendous problems list

I wasn't planning to take on the environment. I got into the peace work business when the president decided to start declaring preemptive wars on whoever struck his fancy. Suddenly a whole range of unexplainable elements in our country's behavior started falling into place at the pit of my stomach. It brought back all those memories of the Vietnam era, pushing the stroller along the route of peace marches. The peace work thing is what has its hooks in my heart. If the preemptive war thing hadn't happened, I'd have been so content to get my kicks teaching Sunday school, instead of organizing demonstrations. If you've never tried either of those things - Sunday school or demonstrations - you've missed out on a lot.

So after going-on-five years of intense work to end war (which has been all-consuming for a lot of that time), the black reality of global warming starts setting in, with this whole other conversation about how to address that problem. And it's such a biggie. One that moves to the top of the "Horrendous Problems" list.

Hum. Wonder what else would be on the Horrendous Problems list.

HORRENDOUS PROBLEMS
global warming
endless war
economy hijacked by oligarchs
environmental refugees (Arkansas had a bunch of those after Katrina)
overpopulation
mass starvation
collapse of social institutions (malfunctioning bureaucracy, schools, health care, economy etc.)
extinction of species
destruction of habitat
breakdown of social support systems
political system hijacked by oligarchs

That's enough. Every item on my list is followed by reams of subheadings. It's just too depressing. This is NOT the world I want my grandkids to think is normal.

You may not believe this, but I have friends who suspect that the Horrendous Problems list is a reason to give up. I guess if you get caught on the first two items on the Horrendous Problems list, you'd say "if endless war doesn't get us, global warming will."

Some of us just can't do that though. Can't give up and wait for short-sighted greed and foolishness to work it's way. I think that's because of this fire that burns just under the pit of the belly where fear tries to hang out. It's not necessarily a big fire. It's just big enough to keep fear toasted crisp and crumbly so it can't take over major bodily systems.

The "giving up" thing though, that's such a fantasy. You see pictures of starving African children with stick-thin arms and legs, sitting by a road with flies in their eyes. From the picture, you might think they "give up." They don't though. They'll put one foot in front of the other for hundreds of miles until they find help, or die. The body giving out doesn't mean the spirit giving up.

Amnesty International has all those stories of people who're imprisoned for years in tiny cells without light, without decent food, with bad water, brutalized in every way. Most are not Nelson Mandela's who come out and lead their people to freedom. Most come out suffering from PTSD. But for some strange human reason they don't give up. Seems like they could. Somehow they keep trying in the face of horrendous odds.

That's who I want to be when I grow up. I want enough fire that I can face down horrendous problems and hold onto my humanity in the end. If I never have to face down horrendous problems, that'd be ok with me. I'd go back to teaching Sunday school in a heartbeat. But for some unexplained reason, the world isn't moving that way. If I really value my humanity, I'd like to be prepared to defend it with wisdom, when problems get to the "horrendous" level. And be prepared to teach my grandchildren the same thing.

Friday, September 7, 2007

What to do with criticism of the peace movement?

There’s a fair bit of criticism going around directed at the peace movement. There are those who say that for all our preaching and protesting, we’re not making much progress. I just want to say that, speaking from way down here in the South, there’s value in speaking your mind, even if it seems like nobody with clout pays it much attention. If the Constitution bites the dust; and all our jobs go overseas, and our kids are forced to be corporate soldiers to feed our grandkids; if shortsighted greed and consumer lethargy drive us into big time global warming; at least we’ll have the righteous satisfaction of saying “we told you so.” It’ll be a family tale the grandkids tell each other as they expire on the parched desert of Northern Minnesota somewhere.


But back to the criticism… the most annoying thing about it is its relevance. Everybody I know who’s engaged in the struggle to resist the imperial juggernaut, are people deeply committed to the part of it they’re working on. There’s an incredible variety of people, issues, and approaches embedded in major cities and medium-to-small towns all across the country. There are Vietnam vets in the most remote Ozark woods with tiny radio stations that send out Democracy Now to hill folk who’ll never have heard of it before. There are people carrying placards on the streets of Tulsa, who get paint thrown at them by their uninformed neighbors. Now how do those critics think these dedicated folks feel, when they go saying that their dedication and suffering are a waste of time? Well, it feels pretty annoying. But even more annoying is the thought that after a 5-year-long protest, and hard work for an election that we imagined we’d won, we’re still bombing other people’s countries. Our fearless leaders are even thinking of more to bomb.


So it feels like the criticism shouldn’t be brushed aside lightly. If the question is one of effectiveness, (can’t deny that) we need some new ideas. I happen to think there are a lot of good ideas out there.


As Louise Diamond said at the Culture of Peace Conference in Santa Fe last spring, the peace movement is in “discovery phase.” Getting all those ideas out there to be talked about is where it’s at right now. I really like that idea because it gives all of us permission to explore our own thinking about peace and violence. It’s also something we can do, even though we lack one thing I feel is a real weakness for us: we have no infrastructure. To me, the peace movement could put a little less time into protesting, and a lot more time into creating an infrastructure for a culture of peace.


Let’s see… what kind of infrastructure do we have in place already? We have a US Institute of Peace – the research organization. That's very good. We also have good peace studies programs in some major universities. There then are the widely dispersed peace groups that spring up in protest to war and dissolve again quickly when peace is imposed…some others that maintain a presence even after. Then there are scads of service organizations who work for rights, justice and meeting human needs (most working on shoe-string budgets, with overworked staff, in the face of overwhelming odds). There’s also the Department of Peace idea slowly gaining co-sponsors (very slowly).


This isn’t the kind of infrastructure we need to effectively create a culture of peace though. The war culture has a school system that trains children from a young age to blindly respect authority. That’s very useful when they’re recruited into the military 12 years later. They have training and research institutions, well-paid internships and paid employment, think tanks, manufacture and distribution networks, connections between levels of government that are continuously refined, large buildings to house work happening, places to store things, transportation networks, and a lot of well-established funding streams, just to name a couple things. In some people’s minds, when we get together down on the corner with our placards, we’re working at some kind of disadvantage.


Well ok, maybe we are, but I think we shouldn’t give ourselves too much grief for that just yet. We have to start somewhere. But if we really want a culture of peace instead of what we’ve got, we need to start planning the next step. What infrastructure will really act to create an effective and sustainable peace movement that can permeate the culture over time? In my heart, I believe ideas for it are already percolating in there… just waiting for the moment to erupt into some heady and healthful brew that’s going to rejuvenate all of us. That is, if we don’t all expire in the global warming desert first.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Religious peace traditions and pregnant conversation

Just returned from an Omni forum made up of... here goes...

A Unitarian moderator
An Atheist (points out the absence of logic and rational thinking in war rhetoric)
An Episcopalian Priest (Jesus was a pacifist. We say we follow Jesus, so let's be true to that. )
A Nondenominational professor who teaches international students (we can learn a lot from each other)
A Practicing Catholic agnostic (social action within the church is rich, but unappreciated by many members)
A non-practicing Southern Baptist agnostic (Religion is a major source of war. Moved away from his religion when he saw its propensity to support violence and war.)
An Indian Muslim (Holy Koran teachings on peace are powerful. Mohammed and Jesus both taught peace. Believers need to return to their roots)
and
A Tibetan Buddhist Lama (Buddhist tradition is inner peace. This is the lasting way to outer peace. Seeking balance is the key.)

Hope I didn't misrepresent anybody.

The topic of the evening was "why are the churches silent?" We didn't begin to cover the topic adequately, and gave up after 9:00, with many people wishing for more discussion. Each of these leaders feel strongly that this war is a serious mistake, and thought so from the start. A majority of their fellows now agree. For many congregations that was not the case in the beginning. It's a painful process to come to believe that the leaders of ones country are not trustable, and many people are still not at that point, even when they concede that the war was handled very badly.

Some interesting points of view emerge. For one thing, non-religious people are deeply spiritual about their non-religion. And all sides tonight were prepared to hear the others out. That was pleasantly electrifying to me. People with strong beliefs and deeply held opinions can express themselves (as thoroughly as time permits anyway), and also listen to people whose beliefs and opinions differ. That may not be true in all groups. I'm relieved to be part of one where that's possible. The audience was really engaged, with lots of comments and questions.

I believe that if there's hope for the world, the hope will be based on conversation. One attender asked "If you had to abandon hope for peace, what could you replace it with?" Too bad it was at the very end, because such a large question was hard to address briefly. I think hope is precisely what Omni and its friends are trying to nurture. If hope dies in one place, we have to seek it out somewhere else, because without it, there's so little left.

If hope dies in one place, the new place we find it may also be a truer place. A truer place then we hoped from before. Conversations like the one that took place tonight renew my hope. I hope such conversations are proliferating wildly all over the earth, between such very diverse and interesting peoples. From such conversations, hope springs forth quivering with delight.