Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement

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Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement
by Peter Bergel Oregon PeaceWorks
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Whats the Current Strategy?

• We depend largely on 3 tactics
• Education
• Demonstrations
• Lobbying/Electoral Work

Lets take an honest look at these tactics.
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The Education Tactic

• This is where our movement shines.
• We are good at assembling the facts, getting them
  out, and overcoming establishment biases.
• We are often able to change conventional wisdom
  about foreign policy within a couple of years, as
  the current public attitude toward Afghanistan
  shows.
• Yet we rarely manage to transform public support
  into access to the levers of power.

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The Demonstration Tactic

• Once an enormously effective tactic,
  demonstrations and protests now
• Draw relatively few people,
• Are largely ignored by the media so few people
  know they are taking place,
• Are frequently herded into so-called free speech
  zones where they are not seen,
• Therefore do not put our issues on the map.

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The Lobbying Tactic
This tactic, as we currently use it, pits our
weakness against our adversaries strength.

• We can never hope to match their money.
• We can never hope to match their army of paid
  lobbyists.
• Without the help of the media, we have little
  clout with most elected officials.

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Other Strategic Problems

• We are not, and really have never been, a peace
  movement. We are almost exclusively an anti-war
  movement.
• Almost everything we devote major resources to is
  negative stop a war, a weapons system, racism,
  nuclear weapons, etc., but what are we for? We
  promote no comprehensive vision.
• We place little emphasis on pointing out the
  flaws in the whole war system.
• We have not been effective in stopping wars once
  they get rolling and we dont plan far enough in
  advance to get ahead of the curve.

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More Strategic Problems

• We criticize the military for pouring resources
  into failed strategies, yet we are doing the same
  thing.
• Most of our tactics are the same ones weve used
  for 50 years. Our opponents have learned to
  neutralize them.
• As a movement, we are not taking advantage of new
  technologies like Facebook and Twitter well or at
  all.

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How Can We Develop a Better Strategy?

• Strategy is a plan for getting from where we are
  to where we want to go.
• This implies that we know where we want to go.
• However, the peace movement indeed, the entire
  progressive movement has no agreed-upon vision
  of what peace would look like if it were to
  break out.
• Thus, a comprehensive peace vision is where we
  need to start.

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Restructuring is Needed

• True compassion is more than flinging a coin to
  a beggar it comes to see that an edifice which
  produces beggars needs restructuring.
• Martin Luther King, Jr.

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How Can We Develop a Comprehensive Peace Vision?

• Start thinking outside the box. Dont be
  limited by the way we did it before.
• Resist impatience and the mentality of crisis.
  Doing the visioning, developing a new strategy
  and implementing it will take time.

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The Goal Sustainable World Community

• We want to work together, even as we work on
  different issues. Our strength is in our
  diversity!
• Thus we need to see how all our issues promote a
  common vision that is defined and agreed upon.
• We need unity of vision, not unity of action.
• A common vision can provide the basis for
  worldwide cooperation with each group still doing
  its own strategizing.

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Lets do some visioneering here and now.

• If peace broke out,
• what would it look like?

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Q If peace broke out, what would it look like?

• Homes dwellings
• Energy sources and distribution
• Farms and food distribution
• Transportation and shipping
• Environmental protection
• Conflict resolution local, regional, global
• Security without war
• Learning and teaching
• Playing and enjoying life
• Business and economics
• Medical care/wellness/healthy lifestyles
• Government
• Justice/crime/human rights/civil liberties
• Media
• Family, Spiritual

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Imagine . . .

• If a majority of groups working to create a
  better world did two things
• Agreed to a comprehensive common vision of the
  world we want to create and live in and used that
  vision to develop its own strategy.
• Agreed to lift up the common vision every time
  they did anything public.

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Transformation!

• The vision would be bubbling up from every corner
  of the country.
• The general public would soon be seeing a unity
  they had no idea existed.
• Many more would want to get involved.
• A sense that YES, WE CAN change the world might
  take hold.
• Dare we risk it?
• What have we got to lose?

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I have GREAT news!
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This visioning work has already been done! Its
called The Earth Charter
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And I think youre going to LIKE IT!
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The Earth Charter

• Comprehensive
• Well thought out
• Inclusive
• Global in scope
• Already underway
• Connected to the United Nations

Look at your copy now
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Earth Charter Content

• Preamble
• Earth, Our Home
• The Global Situation
• The Challenges Ahead
• Universal Responsibility

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Earth Charter Content

• Principles
• Respect and care for the community of life
• Ecological integrity
• Social and economic justice
• Democracy, nonviolence, and peace

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How You Can Participate

• ... in the Earth Charter Initiative

1. Disseminate the Earth Charter and raise
awareness about it among your friends and in your
local community.
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How You Can Participate
... in the Earth Charter Initiative

• 2. Endorse the Earth Charter and encourage the
  organizations to which you belong and your local
  and national governments to use and endorse the
  Earth Charter.

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How You Can Participate
... in the Earth Charter Initiative

• 3. Start an Earth Charter study group and explore
  how to use the Earth Charter and apply its
  principles in your home, work place, and local
  community.

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How You Can Participate
... in the Earth Charter Initiative

• 4. Collaborate with Earth Charter Partners and
  Affiliates and with other organizations that have
  endorsed the Earth Charter in your region.

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How You Can Participate
... in the Earth Charter Initiative

• 5. Make financial contributions or provide other
  resources and needed services in support of Earth
  Charter International and other Earth Charter
  projects.

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How You Can Participate
... in the Earth Charter Initiative

• 6. Consult and follow the Action Guidelines for
  Decentralized Expansion of the Earth Charter
  Initiative, which may be found on the Earth
  Charter website.

www.earthcharterinaction.org
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Brainstorming Project
Hold brainstorming sessions around Oregon asking
the same question and harvesting the responses by
sector. Find a vehicle, such as the Peace Trek
poster of the 1980s, to share the vision.
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Salems MyPeace Project

• Come up with an answer to the
• question If peace broke out,
• what would it look like?
• Express the answer using some form of art.
• Last October, the MyPeace Project presented the
  collective vision to the community through a
  series of events.
• Visit www.mypeaceproject.org for details.

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Brainstorming Project

• Hold brainstorming sessions like this one around
  Oregon asking the same question and harvesting
  responses by sector.
• Find a vehicle to articulate and share the vision.

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Virtual Think Tank

• A working group of visioneers based around the
  country who take on the job of
• reviewing existing and emerging visionary
  materials,
• creating a comprehensive vision,
• shopping the vision around to progressives
  everywhere
• soliciting wide ownership.

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Oregon PeaceWorks View of Peace

• The peace we seek is more than the absence of
  war. It embraces an active, nonviolent approach
  to problems, the understanding that all people
  have a right to share the resources of the earth
  in a sustainable manner, a commitment to fair
  play and a role for every person in the decisions
  that affect their lives.

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Contact Oregon PeaceWorks

• Oregon PeaceWorks
• 104 Commercial St. NE
• Salem, OR 97301
• info_at_oregonpeaceworks.org
• 503-585-2767 Fax [phone]
• www.oregonpeaceworks.org
• To join the Virtual Think Tank, visit
• www.groups.google.com/group/peace-visioning-think-
  tank

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