Paxeducare’s Blog

Is Sustainability an Oxymoron in Southeast Asia? Or Is This a Westo-Centric View?

My husband and I are now on the last days of a month long sojourn in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. We have left our son, Boyce, who flew back to Mississippi a couple of days ago. We left our daughter, Gretchen, in Mae Sot, Thailand, where she works. Most of the time we have spent in Thailand. Traveling with our two grown children most of the time has been a wonderful treat. Asia seems a feast for all of the senses: loud cars and motorcycles, street noises of all kinds, smells of food frying, odd sewer smells, dirt and dust. Stimulations of sites, bright hues, garish western gear, huge billboards advertising things we “must have”. Taxis of all sorts: tuk tuks (motorcycle taxis), songtows (pick up taxis), bicycle taxis and really new and fresh looking car taxis in Bangkok and Saigon. Energy conservation is ubiquitous, if nothing else to save precious Thai Bhat,  US dollars (used in Cambodia) and Vietnamese Dong. In many guest houses we have stayed in the electricity is connected to the room key: all of it goes off when you leave, including the air conditioning, in those places that have AC. In a couple of places, recycling was important: bins provided for various kinds of items.

                On the other hand, bottled water is a must and what to do with all of the plastic bottles. The locals don’t drink the water either as it can make one sick. Large jugs are provided and replenished. Not so for the tourists. I presume some sort of recycling at the hotels is in order for all of these bottles, but am not sure. The larger issue to me is the carbon emissions: public buses are few, though the train system in Bangkok is good and quite crowded much of the time. After a few minutes of either walking or sitting in Saigon, Chang Mai and Bangkok traffic, I found my lungs filling and the view clouding. Many locals wear face masks a good deal of the time-rather sobering. There is an art to walking and driving any vehicle and, to my surprise, we did not witness any accidents.

                What I find interesting is the seemingly ubiquitous ethos of consumerism, particularly in the larger cities. Seems we in the US do not have a corner on this. Not only local markets that seem to cater to both locals and tourists (evolving I presume from what was once a local market culture) but the advertisements on huge billboards, the very modern, hugely overcrowded Siam mall area of Bangkok. One can choose from thousands of varieties of flip flops, the footwear of choice, everywhere, myriad kinds of shirts, pants, purses, cheap sculptors, snack foods.  Who is buying all of this stuff? While some of us in the West are trying to figure out how to live more simply, it is as if Southeast Asia is moving up and away from once upon a time what we would call simple living to trying to live what we in the US once may have called the American Dream. Truly this is a time of global transition , with some cultural “flip flopping”and it is so interesting to experience this first-hand. What all of this resource use will do the planet gives one pause.

Journey to the Burmese Border of Thailand

Our family has been traveling for a month in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It was wonderful to spend two nights and three days in Mae Sot, Thailand, where our daughter, Gretchen, lives and works. A border town, much of the population of Mae Sot consists of exiles, refugees and migrants from Myanmar (Burma). A river is all that separates the two countries. Though this river crossing is, metaphorically, much wider than a look would indicate. Many of the Burmese in Mae Sot are not there with legal documents, but have escaped the military junta that now rules.

                Gretchen had arranged three site visits to various organizations with which she works. The first was a recently founded school for “post 10” students from Burma, to prepare them for entrance to the school that will, in turn, prepare them for the rigorous entrance examination for most universities in Southeast Asia. Each of these students has their unique story involving their journey to Thailand. Much of this preparation involves learning the English language, as the tests are in English. We were treated like royal guests upon our arrival at this simple school and were able to dialogue with the students who were eager to learn about us, our work and travels. I was able to talk a little about peace education and we chatted about local farming and sustainability. Some students there are involved in growing their own food on the grounds and have established a business growing mushrooms for harvest and sale. These students were some of the most motivated and eager to learn I have seen in my years of teaching, based on the time we spent together. For, in a sense, their very lives may depend on their learning. The teachers are volunteers from other countries, often from the US and other western areas. The two that we met were both retired American teachers, who commit to a period of from 3-6 months at the school.

                The second visit was to a medical clinic in Mae Sot which was founded by a Burmese doctor about 20 years ago to serve the Burmese exiled and refugee community. We were graciously shown around. Typical it was of so many hospital settings one sees in developing countries. Primitive by some standards and yet a caring place and jobs get done. More extensive care needed for patients is done at a local, larger hospital when possible.  A sobering visit to the prosthesis room indicated the list of injuries for which they fit-mostly land mine accidents. Throughout our travels, seeing the legless and handless has been a reminder of the consequences of conflicts in this war ravaged area. And also the consequences, too often, of American foreign policy, particularly in Vietnam and Thailand. Though these injuries we saw in Mae Sot may more likely be a result of war ravaged Burma. Many, many patients and their families waiting to be seen outside. A full OB delivery area which we walked right through, with newborns and their mothers. We declined to view the operating “room”, with its rather thin curtain separating it from the rest of the area and, by our standards, a bit of an unusual invitation.

                The third site visit was to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). Founded by Burmese ex-political prisoners, the organization works to advocate for the conditions and the release of those jailed for conscience, now numbering in the thousands, including many Burmese monks. Our tour guide had been released in 2004 after 5 years, some in solitary. Wonderful work and courageous, given, for instance, that her release was contingent upon the condition she not engage in political work inside Burma. In all of these settings, we were very careful about to never photograph the faces of the Burmese and to be careful generally about what we said about the work. The photo here of the clinic listing of prosthesis injuries does not include the names of the patients, for instance.

Southeast Asia December 2011

Southeast Asia December, 2011  Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

 left-Genocide Museum Phnom Penh            Having come from Cambodia to Saigon, embarking from Bangkok 10 days ago, with a stopover in Shanghai from New York, it is interesting experiencing different nationalities, cultures and political and historical environments in each country. The appalling poverty of Cambodia, including countless street children and beggars, is contrasted against the rising of the tourist industry and innumerable local and international NGOs in Cambodia which are feeding the development of many social enterprises. Vietnam, on the other hand, seems “already there” in terms of a much more prevalent middle class, much cleaner streets and upscale shops and buildings  and, to my observation, few beggars. Both countries are emerging from the last many decades of war. The tourism industry has capitalized on this. In Phnom Penh, the 2 main tourist attractions are the Genocide Museum, formerly a school, where the officers under the famed Pol Pot secured their “enemies of the state” before shipping them off to be killed in the countryside, and, secondly, the memorial to the “Killing Fields” outside of town. The latter is deeply spiritual, haunting in its reminder of the horrors of war and what happens when the populace is unable to resist the ravages of a deeply disturbed and paranoid dictator.  

                In Saigon three of the main attractions have to do with what the Vietnamese call the “American War” or the war of American aggression, the concomitant resistance of the Vietnamese and their role as victims of an unwanted war. One of the most vivid reminders of “whose side” is depicted is the tour to the famed Cuchi Tunnels, outside of Saigon, which were built by the Viet Cong, series of disguised and booby trapped tunnels built to repel and resist the American invaders. It was truly fascinating to be visiting the sites of the places featured in my youth on CBS, ABC, NBC news networks during what we Americans call the Vietnamese War. Particularly since my cousin, Richard Threlkeld, was a CBS news correspondent covering the war in Vietnam.We also visited the Reunification Palace and the War Remembrances museum in Saigon, both vivid reminders of the recent past trauma of the country.

                It is the “extreme” nationalism of the current Vietnam that fascinates me. As if, in this particular time in their history, they must glorify the accomplishments in war and the rise of a people united to resist foreign enemies. Ho Chi Minh is considered reverently as the hero and liberator of Vietnam. I have been fascinated by the dominant narrative of Vietnam which is at this point, quite frankly, full of propaganda and lacuna in historical remembrances, all in the name of Vietnamese patriotism. Of course in America we have done and do the same. The films we have witnessed at various sites on our trip remind me of old reels of U.S. World War II propaganda movies. I suppose this sort of thing is true of all countries in the name of nationalism, so many having emerged from the deep wounds of war.  It is as if the patriotism displayed offers no view of other ways of thinking, other perspectives. This is why nationalist thinking can be so dangerous. Nowhere in all of these tourist sites we have visited in Vietnam has there been mention of the thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers who fought willingly alongside the Americans. It is as there was no such thing as 2 sides of a civil war in Vietnam. It is as if this new Vietnam, a unified country now and its people, have difficulty critically evaluating the issues, which include thinking about those who either fought for the south or to whom it mattered little which side was fighting, because so many just wanted to live their lives and make a living in the countryside, not caring whether troops were North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, Americans or Viet Cong.

                As the only Americans on our tour of the tunnels, I felt somewhat conspicuous and, I realized, a little offended as our tour guide and members of the tour laughed as he showed land mines which the Viet Cong cleverly hid to “get Americans”….”and they died, ha ha”.  I discovered some patriotic feelings I didn’t realize I had. It was a vivid reminder of what we have learned in the processes of teaching conflict transformation –it truly does matter your perspective. While sitting quietly at a rest spot on the tour, we chatted with our young guide and, when he learned we are Americans, he apologized for what he said about Americans. He told us his father was severely injured during the war fighting with the North Vietnamese and he hates Americans. He said he tries to tell his father that “the war is over”. I told him that my cousin, an American marine, lost both legs and a good part of his hands while tripping on a land mine as a U. S. marine. We agreed that war is terrible.  For some, wars don’t end. I don’t think this young man meant any harm. He was merely adhering to the narrative his tour guide training had instilled.

                Yet when this kind of narrative continues, I realize how imperative it is to teach the processes and skills of peace, to teach to think critically and to understand these issues from multiple perspectives and our own role that we each have in transforming violence and conflict. My hope is that some years from now, the dominant narrative at the Cuchi Tunnels will not be the glory of a unified Vietnam against the American enemies, but an exposé on the horrors of war and the importance that each of us must place on examining our own lives, to see what within them contains, as 18^th century Quaker John Woolman wrote, “the seeds of war”. This can include narrow mindedness, lust for greed and power, and a willingness to look the other way in the face of injustice and structural violence.  

 

 

An Open Letter About Our Arrest for Civil Disobedience-Tar Sands

Many of you are aware of the issues around the egregious Tar Sands mining in Alberta, Canada and the Keystone XL Pipeline that will carry this crude material to Texas for processing and distribution. For the first time, I am my husband, Bill Upholt, felt called to participate in an action involving civil disobedience and arrest. Following is the letter we sent out to our supporters just after our participation in the action in Washington, DC in late August, 2011. It is hoped that, by publicizing our actions and our reasons and some of the issues involved, we are promoting the continued mission of Pax Educare, which is peace education. In reality, there can be little separation between education and action. I believe there is an inherent relationship between principled action and learning.

September 2011

Dear Friends and Family

 Since many of you have been so supportive of our efforts regarding the Tar Sands Action, we thought we would send out an email to you all, thanking you for supporting us in what we both feel has been a spirit led process to come to the point of civil disobedience. We were both arrested today, transported to the Anacostia DC police station in handcuffs, paid our fine and were released. So it was a pretty easy process as these things go. We had excellent training last night with inspiring talks by Bill Mckibben and Canadian First Nations representatives who are  already being directly affected.  We were very well prepared as a community acting in concert with a common purpose and a peaceful positive approach. The police were, for the most part, very helpful, courteous and friendly. My (Mary Lee)  police wagon driver became interested in what we were doing and we in the van had a very interesting conversation, filling him in. He said “I agree with you!” All about teachable moments. The sense of solidarity among the participants was really wonderful.  We found friends here participating, including Tom Carr, pastor of  First Baptist Church in West Hartford, who was arrested  yesterday, others from CT and Quakers from various parts of the US. Bill and I are both fine.
 
Bill and I both believe that climate change is one of the biggest challenges and defining issues  of our time, along with the issues of  peak oil extraction and our economic system which is in deep trouble. All three are interrelated. Briefly, the issues around the Tar Sands have to do with the Keystone Energy Company’s XL pipeline, which would bring crude oil extracted from tar sands in the Alberta boreal forest to the Texas Gulf area for processing. It is an extremely energy intensive process to extract, using large amounts of natural gas , very expensive, creates vast pools of wastewater, excavates tons of soil, and climatologists are saying that if we tap into tar sands, we will get tipped into catastrophic climate change. In short, it is an ecological disaster. There have already been numerous problems with spills in the existing pipeline project. For more information you can go to www.tarsandsaction.org. Since it is up to our President and the State Department to provide final approval of the agreement, as the pipeline crosses international boundaries, the sit in is being held at the White House. If you feel so moved, we urge you to register your request with the White House that Obama uphold his campaign promises on the environment and please not sign the agreement. White House phone number is 202-456-1111. You can say that you are urging our President to please not approve the Keystone Pipeline project.

We feel that we are on the cusp of a “revolution” in the use of renewable sources of energy. We don’t’ need to tap into these hard to reach sources of oil and gas. Tapping into tar sands, gas fracking, deep water oil drilling and other extreme approaches to fossil fuel extraction just continues us on a path of  fossil fuel dependence for the foreseeable  future. For the sake of the next generations and the future of our planet, we felt a call to this civil disobedience action. 

 Mary Lee and Bill

Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Dear Friends-in this and subsequent newsletters you will notice that the focus of our content is shifting to increasingly include elements of the concepts of global sustainability. This reflects a deep awareness that we are at a crucial time in the history of our planet.  The mission of Pax Educare, over the past 10 years, has been to focus on the importance of educating both about and, more importantly, for peace.  It has become increasingly clear to me that to insure that our children and grandchildren have a habitable earth in which to live we are called to an expanded concept of peace education to include sustainability. The urgency is upon us.

                The word “sustainability” is one that my fellow board members of the Connecticut Partnership for Sustainability (www.ctpse.org)  and I labor over.  We wonder-do most people understand just what this term means? Does it convey the urgency of the problems before us in ways that can excite others to action? We play with other terminology. The one that I like is one that was shared by fellow board member Emily Bowling, who is the Eco-House Coordinator at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. It is one that was coined by the Permaculture folks http://permacultureprinciples.com/index.php. Imagine a flower with 3 petals, each petal representing one of these three principles: “earth care, people care and fair share”.  Simple enough. Yet, in my recent endeavors to understand more fully the tasks before us, this way of viewing sustainability can also represent a thoroughly integrative and more radical view toward transforming our present society.

                Author Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economics,  (a recommended read), quotes the economist Herman Daly, formerly the World Bank’s Senior Environmental Economist, as saying “anyone who says they understand money hasn’t thought enough about it”. With the old adage in mind that there is nothing like teaching to help one learn something, my husband, Bill Upholt, and I decided to convene and to host, through our Quaker Meeting, a discussion series on ecological economics. The group meets monthly, discussing reading assignments and occasionally viewing movies, the latest one I highly recommend, “The Economics of Happiness” http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/. The film highlights the effects of our economic globalization and makes a powerful case for a movement toward localization. It features Bill McKibben, eco-feminist Vandana Shiva and others in the forefront of this new thinking.

                Humbling it is to realize that I have been a part of an economic system of which I know and understand so little. It makes me eager to learn more, if for nothing than to understand more fully how I might take control over my own production and consumption. I realize how little I have understood of the concept of debt and how our entire banking system would collapse without it. That continued economic growth as we know it rests on the notion that growth and debt are inextricably linked in a cycle. And that because of this, our system continues its growth as some become wealthier and others become more impoverished. There is always someone indebted to someone else. And who becomes the debtor and who the indebted so often is determined by who holds power.

                What excites me is learning more about “no growth” and its possibilities. Author McKibben notes that more monetary wealth does not create more happiness. American happiness peaked in the 1950s, when we as a nation produced and consumed much less than we do today. At the same time, the last few decades have seen a surge in the number of hours Americans are working, less time we are able to devote to family and a huge upward trend in the amount of “things” we consume. As we consider the effects of peak oil (some experts claim we are already on the downward spiral of having extracted as much oil as is easily accessible) we can consider a radically transformed society in which we are not “slaves” to an economy that rests on consumption, which  largely rests on the extraction, production and use of fossil fuel.  This new society will, inevitably, be more local.

                Scottish economist Malcolm Slessner notes that currently about 55% or the energy we consume is required for the processes of economic growth (in Deep Economy).  British economist Lord Nicholas Stern, in a lecture sponsored by the Tufts University Global Development and Environmental Institute, remarked that continued growth as we know it could commit the planet to a warming of 5 degrees Celsius. This would result in a higher average temperature than any time in the last 30 million years. This, in turn, could, in all likelihood, impact where people are able to live and include mass migrations and global warfare. Journalist Mark Hertsgaard, in his new best-selling book Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, makes the case that in the best scenario, our planet’s temperature will rise only 2 degrees Celsius, not 5, still problematic. We should plan for this through policy changes, utilizing mitigation to prevent further rise and adaptability to this new increase, such as the Dutch are doing in relocating residents in low lying areas that are likely to flood due to rising sea levels. Even if we stop emitting carbon now, our planet will still warm up. Adapting to new conditions is therefore not only important but imperative.  Lord Stern notes that, in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, a new industrial revolution will be required, and this can begin in part with a new agricultural system. I believe that this new agricultural system must be based on localization.

                Our tasks as educators are urgently laid before us. I fervently hope that we can come to a new realization of what wealth is. Wealth as human happiness means wealth in relationships and community. I hope that we might expand our notion of a healthy economy as one encompassing not only markets of production and consumption, but natural and human resources as well. Let us value time with family, the nurturance of children, our interactions with nature. Research by Yale scholar Stephen Kellert has shown that we as humans have an inherent need to affiliate with our natural world and that 90% of an average American’s time is spent indoors. Bill McKibben’s point is that we have substituted oil for people. The antidote  to this is might rest in the knowledge that ten times as many conversations take place at a local farm market as they do at a supermarket.

                We will have to learn to live with risks and the safest way to do this is within community.  We will also need to learn to live with ambiguity and uncertainty. As Quaker author Ed Dreby writes “the problems are ones for which there is no solution within our current framework”. Given that we do not know for certain what will be the impact of our current actions on our future, but realizing we must act as we continue to seek knowledge, here are some suggestions  from the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy http://steadystate.org/.

• Limit our resource use and waste
• Stabilize population growth
• Limit economic inequality-work toward more equal taxation and reducing the enormous gap of salaries between the top and bottom earnings
• Reform the monetary system  (the control of the money supply made public)
• Change how we view progress, taking into account human happiness
• Increase leisure time and reduce employment hours (see the New Economics Foundation http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/21_Hours.pdf )
• Rethink our business models toward more cooperatives
• Reduce our consumption
• Engage policy makers and politicians toward these changes
•  

Best wishes for a Happy Planet.

Mary Lee Morrison

The Great Transition-Are We Ready?

Scientists and economists are predicting that the next 50 years will be one of rapid global change, as we tap out our easily available sources of fossil fuel, end our run on cheap oil. Energy prices are expected to remain high, pending technological breakthroughs in cheaper renewable resources. (Goodwin).  Taken together with global climate change, indications are that our world as we know it currently is not sustainable. Our models for measured economic progress, rewarding continued growth and overreliance on technological solutions to ecological problems, are outmoded. We realize that we cannot continue the unending use of resources and consumption within the realm of our finite planet (K. Boulding, Brown and Garver).  Global inequities in income and wealth will continue to widen under our current economic system. How we deal with the period of time between now and 2050 could determine the future of our world as we know it. Our very way of life could be at stake (F. Shumacher). Fundamental shifts in our values, our beliefs and our actions are needed. (Orr, Nolet). Most importantly for educators, a paradigm shift is needed in the what, why and how we teach. For more information on the Great Transition visit http://www.gtinitiative.org/ and http://www.transitionnetwork.org/  and http://www.transitionus.org/ . What sort of skills will we need for our peoples to insure that, rather than catastrophic changes, we take advantage of fundamental shifts to move forward to a new, better and more hopeful world? One thing seems clear, we will increasingly be relying on each other to build resilience. The best way to do this is within communities.  What are your thoughts? Comments are welcome.

References

Boulding, K. “Earth as Spaceship”, 1965

Brown, P. and Garver, G. Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy, 2009

Edwards, A. The Sustainability Revolution,  2006

Goodwin, Neva R. “A New Economics for the 21^st Century”, 2010

Nolet, V. “Preparing Sustainability Literate Teachers”, 2009

Orr, D. Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World, 1992

Schumacher, F. “The World and the Wholeness of Life”, 1976

The Importance of Community

The concept of community is one I have taken increasing great interest in and hope to do more exploring/research over the next few months. Here is a talk I gave several years ago when I was in the early stages of this interest. The talk was a keynote address at a Teaching Peace Conference in New Hampshire. Enjoy.

Keynote at Teaching Peace Conference

Durham, NH April 14, 2007

Mary Lee Morrison Ph.D.

Pax Educare, Inc., The CT Center for Peace Education

www.paxeducare.org

 

Creating Cultures of Peace:

Relational Strands and the Weaving of Community

 

Good morning. I am delighted to be here with you all and thanks to Melinda for inviting me. I am honored and humbled to be here. In the time I have today, I hope to impart some of my ideas inherent in the concept of community and what I see as some of its necessary components, including networking and dialoguing, caring and compassion, all within the context of peacemaking and building cultures of peace.

I wish to illustrate how networking and peace go hand in hand with the example of how I came to be your speaker today. Several years ago, following the return to graduate school in my mid fifties, I began Pax Educare, Inc., the CT Center for Peace Education, a non profit resource center for the study, research and teaching of peace located in Hartford, CT. Much of the work of the Center is about networking and connecting-helping people find resources to teach peace, bringing people together to dialogue about how to build a more hopeful and sustainable world, and promoting the study and teaching of peace in many educational settings. I learned much of what I now know about the importance of networking and building relationships from Elise Boulding, whose life and work I have had the privilege of studying, first as my doctoral work and then as a published biography. Elise, often called the matriarch of the peace research movement of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, is a consummate networker. Friends and colleagues have joked that her favorite book is her address book. I like to take this to heart for myself.

While researching Elise’s life in the late 1990s, I came across some work done previously by a Lesley College graduate student whose name was Melinda. Melinda’s  research focused on Elise’s feminist spirituality and its influence on her peace work.  I used Melinda’s work extensively as I put together my proposal and subsequently used it as I was writing the dissertation. I felt an immediate, deep and spiritual connection with this author as I read her work, that she was a kindred spirit, never in my wildest notions expecting to meet her in person. I had no idea where she lived nor how to get in touch with her, much as I wished I could.

Fast forward several years. I had almost finished my dissertation and was taking a week-end workshop with Elise Boulding, along with many others, on Imaging a World Without Weapons, her seminal work on futures. The workshop was in Rindge, NH at the Friends Meeting House. I noticed, as I came into the room, a beautiful, dark haired woman talking intently with Elise, and I picked up snippets of the conversation. Someone mentioned a Melinda Salazar being at this workshop. Just by what I was hearing, but mostly intuiting, suddenly I asked myself…..could this be the Melinda? And, as it turned out, it was, indeed Melinda and Elise helped make the connection between us.  What a thrill to finally connect. And who would have thought-in rural NH?

So, in a sense, Melinda can take a good deal of credit for the founding of Pax Educare. For without Elise I would not have founded Pax Educare and would not be here today. And without Melinda, I would not have been able to ground my work on Elise. So what goes around comes around. My being here is, in part, a way of saying “thanks” to you, Melinda. I do not believe that these events were all due to pure chance. I believe that there is often another Source at work. We are, indeed, dependent upon one another in so many ways.

These incidents point for me to the power of the inherent role that connections make in peacemaking. I also believe that it was not pure chance that brought together Elise, Melinda and me on that occasion several years ago. Whether we consider ourselves members of a faith community or not, seekers of spiritual truth or not, I do believe in order to sustain ourselves in the hard work of peacebuilding, we must understand that there are powers at work that are, at times, beyond our temporal control. I will talk a bit more on this later.

 Community is central to peacemaking. What do we mean by community? We can talk about community in its various conceptual dimensions. For one thing, there are the communities in which all we live and work. Towns and cities may be communities. Offices may be communities. Schools may be. Families may be. In the age of the internet, we have virtual communities. But the qualifier here to me is “may”. According to the Google search I found, the word “community” has old roots, going back to the Indo-European base mei, meaning “change” or  “exchange.” Apparently this joined with another root, kom, meaning “with,” to produce an Indo-European word kommein: “exchange with”.

So community means sharing, exchanging so that change can happen. And, sharing and exchanging cannot happen without there, of course, being people in relationship to one another. So we cannot separate out the notion of personal connections when we talk about community. Arguably, our notion of what it means to be in relationship is changing, given our modern methods of communication via the Internet.

Building, or constructing communities is another way of thinking about community. This implies an intent, a willingness to seek out others to share and exchange so that change occurs. How do we build community? What has to happen to produce a community? I believe one of the necessary conditions is a willingness to be open and trusting with one another.

Another is time together to build relationships. Time to build trust and get to know one another in more than superficial ways. I have always been suspicious of popular gurus who claim that you can build a community among thousands of people gathered together in a couple of hours. It is just not possible. In our modern, fast-paced culture of today, I mourn the lack of the importance placed on time to sit and dream, time to be with one another, without agendas, without clocks and without deadlines. What has happened to this?

Elise Boulding eloquently writes of the importance of daydreaming, how, as a child, she passed the time sitting in a tree in her backyard. I, too, was a child who loved to sit and ponder. We don’t honor the importance of these kinds of things anymore. My fondest memories are of the times I was with my closest friends as a child, just enjoying being together and laughing together, spending time biking or walking down the road to explore the outskirts of town.

 I remember coming to Melinda’s home some years ago and she made for me a home made cappachino, taking the time to froth by hand the milk. I was so moved I went out and bought my own frother, to try and replicate the love that went into that cup. Perhaps the growth of the coffee shop industry is a metaphor for us of our need to take time to be with one another. And I tried to model this when I began Pax Educare, as a place where the teapot is always on for people to drop by.

Another concept inherent in community is that of caring. We must care for one another. The educational philosopher Nell Noddings distinguishes between caring about and caring for. When we care about someone or something, we are able to do this without actually being “up close and personal”. But Noddings makes the point that in order for communities to flourish, we must care for the individuals involved and this means direct contact, responding to and monitoring ongoing needs. Caring for requires both a short and a long term commitment.

Caring for also means taking care of our world, insuring that the earth will be sustainable so that caring in relationships for can take place.  A sustainable earth  means one that allows humans the ability to take care of our present needs without compromising those needs of future generations. Again, we note the importance of doing this in relationship.

Riane Eisler, David Korten and others have written eloquently of our present Great Turning from a society based on domination theory to one embracing Earth based values and practices.  Korten, founder of the magazine Y.E.S., in his book “The Great Turning”,  mentions two key components involved in this new paradigm. The first is a turning away from our valuing interchanges based on money to those based on relationships. The second is a turning from values based on hierarchical relationships to one of partnering of equals. This is, in many ways, a turn toward a more feminist, holistic inclusiveness and speaks to the importance of gender partnering to build cultures of peace.

The language of the Earth Charter, in its Preamble is compelling. The Earth Charter is a document, born out of a decades-long grass-roots and global process, that stands as a paradigm for our time and has within it the values and principles we need for a sustainable future.  The preamble reads- “We stand at a critical time in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny”. The Earth Charter’s sixteen principles are grouped into four precepts: Respect and Care for the Community of Life, Ecological Integrity, Social and Economic Justice, and Democracy, Nonviolence and Peace. These precepts are the very essence of what it means to educate for peace. To implement these, we must have a change of mind and heart. And we must do it within community and within a network of relationships. The intent must be there but we can never decide ahead of time exactly what our community will look like. The process of building it is as important as the final product.

I teach a course in the social foundations of education at one of the state universities in Connecticut. I enjoy this class very much, partly because I enjoy so much the chance to hear and understand the process by which my students come to understand their own philosophies of education and, in general of their life, why they want to teach and how they will use these ideas in their classrooms and educational settings. We discuss such things as “what is the purpose of education? What is the purpose of schooling? What makes an educated person?” What is the role of the teacher? How can we teach toward a more hopeful and interdependent world?

One day I gave a writing exercise in which each student had to answer for his or her self those questions. Interestingly enough, subject and content area were at the bottom of the list of what these students thought were most important to education. What they felt mattered most was teaching toward understanding, teaching toward helping their students to find their voices, teaching about our increasingly multi-cultural world, helping students listen to their own inner voices. One and all, they were clear that these mattered much more than the teaching of math, history or science as disciplines. It was really interesting and very inspiring to hear. In fact, what we were hearing, I believe, was my students’ conceptions of what it means to teach toward community. And, of the importance of students and teachers in meaningful relationships. It gave me hope.

Communities can be both near and far, small and large, local, national and international. When we deal on an international level, it is important to remember the bumper sticker many of us have seen “think globally and act locally”. So many of us do not have the chance to go off to another continent and do peace work, at least very often. We can be peacebuilders right in our own communities, in our own families, in our places of work. We can create cultures of peace wherever we find ourselves.

So there is an inherent relationship between communities and cultures of peace built upon a foundation of relationships. We know that peace is a dynamic process.  It is more than the absence of violence. It involves issues of equity, justice,  affirmation and openness to risking for change. Peace begins with each one of us, with our relationship with ourselves. The Quaker educator Mary Rose O”Reilly has written amusingly of her own internal struggles to get a “consensus of her internal committees”. This describes so eloquently my own freqent quests to get some sense of inner peace.  But without at least the quest, we cannot hope to work in the external world for social change.

Before we begin to talk about building peace, we need to talk about what violence is and is not,  and how transforming violence is part of peacebuilding. When I do workshops with youth and adults, I often begin with a brainstorming on the queries “what is violence?” “What are the roots of violence?” Always included are notions of injustice, including needs unmet and promises unfulfilled. We need to understand what keeps us from being peaceful. To be peacemakers we must be more than anti war or anti violence. In fact we must move beyond these toward a transformation of our society, building on the principles of peace as well as justice. “Peace is more than rainbows, flowers and bad poetry…it involves hard work”. This is a quote from Robi Damelin. Robi lost her son, an Israeli soldier, to a Palestinian sniper and is now traveling the world with a Palestinian man who lost a brother, killed by the Israelis, both as part of The Parent’s Circle Forum with a message of reconciliation and nonviolence. The group is composed of Israeli and Palestinians, each of whom has lost an immediate relative to the ongoing conflict. It is compelling work.

How do we define Cultures of Peace? We are now just past the mid point of the Decade for a Culture of Nonviolence, a United Nations Declaration In an interesting juxtaposition of events, just prior to September 11, 2001, UNESCO and the United Nations declared the years 2001-2010 the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World. This initiative began with the signatures of all of the living peace Nobel laureates. According to the UNESCO monograph that set the stage for the Decade, adopted in 1995, the purpose of the initiative was to promote activities consistent with the “values, attitudes and modes of behavior based on nonviolence and respect for the fundamental rights of all people. Activities in response to the Culture of Peace initiative have now sprung up throughout the world in celebration of the power of peacebuilding and against so much in our world that stands for a culture of war.

The appeal of the Nobel laureates to the heads of states  to create the Culture of Peace initiative asked that “nonviolence be taught at every level of our societies to make the children of the world aware of the real, and practical meaning and benefits of nonviolence in their daily lives.” Signatories included  Shimon Peres, Aung San Suu Kyi, Elie Weisel, the Dalai Lama and Oscar Arias. The precepts of the Culture of Peace Program include: peace education, sustainable development, equality of women and men, human rights, democratic participation, understanding, tolerance and solidarity, free flow of information and international peace and security. All over the world, there are activities and initiatives in celebration of the Culture of Peace. Most of these are local and grass-roots. Here in the U.S. we seldom hear about these.

We, too can be part of this world wide process of building cultures of peace. We don’t have to travel the world. Peace is possible in our homes and workplaces. Peace is relational, dialogic and happens when we engage in building community.

It is a good reminder that the majority of the time we are peaceful. We engage in our everyday activities without causing violence. We forget this. We can use this knowledge to construct peace wherever we are. In our everyday lives, we go about our business, pretty much nonviolently. I invite you to think about how many times in your daily life, at work, with your family, you enter into negotiations about one thing or another and how few times you are actually engaged in acts of violence.

And of course we know that nonviolent communication is often a key to creating cultures of peace, whether we are talking about ordinary people or high level negotiations between nations and their leaders. Nonviolence involves a mutual process of letting ourselves focus on what is most important at that moment for maximizing the potential for effective communication. This process needs to be based on trust, letting go of fears, and on the expectations that something different than being “stuck” can occur. We as humans are meant to communicate with one another, to try and get our needs met. These needs will, of course, differ at times. This is what often can lead to conflicts. If our sole motive involves compassion, and not trying to change the other person, interesting and sometimes amazing results can happen. But we must give up blame, judgement, demands, guilt, shame or punishment as the motive for communication. We must focus on our own feelings and our own underlying needs. We must let our egos go and our judgement of what we believe is right and open ourselves to hear the other person. This is sometimes quite hard to do. This is why I believe that some sort of spiritual grounding is important, no matter what we may call it.

I am here among educators today. We work in all kinds of settings. We know, of course, that education and schooling are two different concepts. Education is the process by which knowledge, values and skills are transmitted and schooling is where some of this takes place. I emphasize some, because much of what we learn takes place outside of school. In fact, the family is probably the most important educational institution there is. Families are the first educator.

So far we have been discussing the importance of community and its building blocks of relationship and dialoguing, leading to the building of cultures of peace. I am now going to talk just a bit about the concept of Love. Families are the first place in which we learn Love. And the great philosophers of education have recognized this, including John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and, in our more contemporary world, Jane Roland Martin and Nell Noddings. And what it is about the family that schools and other educational institutions can replicate? Basically, it is about giving and receiving love. Nurturing and acceptance go along with this. Love in the classroom is more than sentimental. Love and caring can lead to community building and, in turn, to building cultures of peace. I believe it was this spirit that my students were tapping into. Of course we do not deny that families are also the seat of much violence and despair. But, in Elise Boulding’s words, families are where, at least, the idea or fiction of love is first learned.

Love as a verb means that education and schooling must take into account the necessity of understanding the perils of love, how it can’t thrive unless the darkness of disappointments, anger, misjudgements, hate, bigotry, oppression and injustice are brought into the Light and transformed. I am always amazed at the number of my students who learn for the very first time learn that the richest 2% of the world’s people own half of the world’s wealth, most of which is contained within the U.S. and that 50% of each of our tax dollars here in the U.S. goes to support war. My students learn that Connecticut has the three poorest urban centers in the nation,  Hartford schools hosting over 80% of students on free lunches, within, arguably, the wealthiest state in the union. But then I think back on my own youth, how oblivious I was and I know I must love their ignorance, in order to transform it. Loving it means doing something about it. And it must be done in the context of community and in relationship. Otherwise it is too easy to lose hope.

Daisaku Ikeda, the Buddhist philosopher and founder of the Boston Research Center for the 21^st Century, writes of the nature of true education as bringing forth the very best and good of humanity, to help build what UNESCO calls “the defenses of peace”. And we must love ourselves as we love others, as all of the great spiritual traditions teach us. Without the grounding in some sort of sense of faith and hope, the challenges, the harshness of what we are up against, can too often beat us down and tear us up, thus leading to burn out.

So I close today inviting us to share some of our own thoughts on building communities and cultures of peace. Before doing this, I want to share a few examples of community building I know and have learned about. This may offer some inspiration to realize that in the diversity of these actions in grass-roots peacebuilding, there are many options for inspiring hope. We can think about what we are already doing and what additional steps we can take.

First, let me share a couple of things that are happening in my own local community in Connecticut. The Connecticut Alliance of Concerned Educators, of which I am a member, recently received a grant from the League of Women Voters and is planning a “conversation” , the theme addressing the query “How do we prepare our children for their role in creating a future with a healthy environment, a strong economy, and a just society?”  100 invited participants, representing a diversity in  socio-economic, geographic and ethnic identities, will gather to dialogue on this important topic in June.

My favorite coffee hang out is a few blocks down the road from my office, both of which are located in a primarily Latino neighborhood in Hartford. La Paloma Sabanera, named for a wonderful bird found in Puerto Rico, is a bookstore/café catering to a diverse clientele, but with a focus on Latino art and literature, music and culture. Three years ago Luis Cotto and his sisters decided to open La Paloma as Connecticut’s first Third Place, defined by the author Oldenburg as  “great good places, public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), third places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. Third places host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work. Oldenburg suggests that beer gardens, main streets, pubs, cafés, coffeehouses, post offices, and other third places are the heart of a community’s social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy. They promote social equality by leveling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities”. La Paloma is indeed, such a gathering place and I feel the warmth and spirit each time I buy my fair trade coffee there, check my email and gather with friends and colleages.  My husband and I often go there to see a film, hear poetry or jazz concerts with local artists.

I have taken the following examples from YES magazine, whose mission is “to support people worldwide in building a just, sustainable and compassionate world”. After Katrina, when FEMA and the Red Cross failed to deliver services, medics rode bicycles through the streets of the Algiers neighborhood, offering first aid and comfort, without any large organization or bureaucratic funding. In New York City a group of home health care workers have organized their own cooperative, by-passing workplace conditions which they determined resembled near sweat shop. 950 workers tend to the sick and elderly in the Bronx and upper Manhattan, and are now the owners of their own business.

There is a growing movement of Social Forums, both on the international scene and more locally. Social Forums offer leadership with a “bottoms up” approach, with broad themes defined, but the rest up to the participants One such forum was held recently in Durham, NC in a historic church that had been frequented by Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois.

And so I conclude with a couple of queries? What is your peace story? What is your vision for a more peaceful world? I suggest we begin with our own involvements, considering all that we are already doing and then move into what is possible. In the words of Kenneth Boulding “what exists is possible”.  We must both be grounded in our everyday experiences and move out into new and uncharted territory. Finally, I end with quote from Emily Greene Balch, co-founder, with Jane Addams, of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the third woman in history to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1948 she gave her Nobel Speech and here is an excerpt:

We are not asked to subscribe to any utopia or to believe in a perfect world just around the corner. We are asked to be patient with necessarily slow and groping advance on the road forward, and to be ready for each step ahead as it becomes practicable. We are asked to equip ourselves with courage, hope, readiness for hard work, and to cherish large and generous ideals.”

And she ended with a poem:

Let us be patient with one another,

And even patient with ourselves.

We have a long, long way to go.

So let us hasten along the road,

The road of human tenderness and generosity.

Groping, we may find one another’s hands in the dark

Thank you very much.

Some Jottings on Friendship November 16, 2010

Some Jottings on Friendship

                Most of us can probably count on one hand the number of people by whom we feel truly understood and accepted on the deepest levels. And what a gift this can be, to be as we truly are, in the presence of another, unveiling our souls without judgment and without an expectation of retort. This, is essence, for me is the definition of friendship. I was curious about friendship, so I went to Wikopedia and found these items forming a definition of the word:

1.  a tendency to desire what is best for the other

2.  offering support and empathy

3.  honesty

4.  mutual understanding and compassion

5.  trust

6.  positive reciprocity

                “See how joyfully the presence of a friend worketh upon the intellect”, said Emerson.
“The arrival of a friend tempts thoughts and emotions out of their dark corners, so that instantly he [sic] is rich, eloquent and hopeful by the mere activity of his own mind”. What we experience in true friendship is our own hearts and minds being offered up, not only to our friends, but as importantly, to ourselves, as we enter into communion with those dear to us. We become a better person for the presence of friends.

                With friends, we engage in the responsible tasks inherent in conversation and dialogue. The Latin root word of “responsible” is “respondere”, which means “promise”. (footnote M Yokata, Ikdeda). What a wonderful way to think about our friendships-we promise to uphold the best in them as they do the same for us. These tasks must include active listening. The tendency for us humans is to eschew this and to put our own needs first. “Humans do not take to this naturally, we are basically selfish”. This statement is from the Buddhist educator/philosopher http://www.ikedacenter.org/themes/dialogue_masaoyokota.htm . A harsh judgment from a Buddhist thinker, but, I must say, true to my own experience. I am humbled by the realization of how often I do not engage in the process of active listening and wait, while conversing with a friend, for the chance to jump in with my own judgments, statements or opinions.

                It seems obvious that there is a connection between the tasks inherent in building friendship and world peace. If we believe in the idea that at the core of peacebuilding is relationship and that friendship signifies the highest form of relationship, then it behooves us to do all we can to help teach the art of friendship. The good news is that the tasks inherent are teachable. We can teach dialoguing and we can teach listening. The best time to start is early. That is why I believe that the family is the most important educator and lays the foundation for all future moral learning. Empathy is learned from the everyday modeling that we see, with love at its core, in our best familial interchanges.

Global Initiatives Speak to the Power of Peace Pedagogy

 

Dear Friends-I have here written of two global peace education initiatives which speak to the positive endeavors world wide.The first is a description of the International Institutes on Peace Education (IIPE) held in Cartegena, Colombia in July, to which I was privileged to be invited and to participate. The second is an announcement of the final report on the Decade for a Culture of Peace, written by David Adams and submitted to the Secretary-General of the UN for consideration at the October meeting of the General Assembly.

 

 

The International Institutes on Peace Education,

held in Cartegena, Colombia July 11-17, 2010

 

Mary Lee Morrison

Note-this posting on IIPE has been submitted as an article for publication in the Fall issue of The Peace Chronicle, newsletter of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. Please consult PJSA before citing this material. Thanks.

 

What drives us in the work we do? What sustains us? For some, I suspect it is anger at a system which structurally favors the well to do, profits a war system and fosters an ethos of individualism at all costs. For others, perhaps  a drive to nurture a new way of thinking, with new values with a new generation of students. For me, I find my strength and sustenance not only with these, but also in learning in and building community, sharing experientially new ways of transformative thinking, new endeavors and initiatives and through deep connections with those engaged in the work of changing the world. The International institutes on Peace Education (IIPE), held each year in a different part of the world, has developed the ethos that, as Betty Reardon notes, conversation is at the heart of peace pedagogy. This year the IIPE was held in Cartegena, Colomiba, on the Caribbean coast, a historic city “founded” by the Spaniards in the 1500s and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

The Institute was co-organized by the National Peace Academy (home of the IIPE secretariat) and Fundación Escuelas de Paz in partnership with the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID) , the Colombian National Ministry of Education and a consortium of organizations invested in furthering peace education in Colombia including the Secretariat of Education of Bogotá; UNICEF – Colombia; Plan International; Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana; Universidad de Andes CIFE; Fundación para la Reconciliación; Grupo Bolívar; Educación Esencial; Colegio Nuevo Chile.

IIPE was founded 28 years ago by  esteemed colleague, Betty Reardon, at that time with the collaboration of Teachers College, Columbia University. This year sixty-five participants gathered for a week of intensive “edu-learning” in a 16^th century monastery in the Old City, now a museum and cultural center. There were, true  to IIPE philosophy, no so-called “experts” but a few colleagues called to share their work in intentional plenary sessions, which, in traditional format, are always followed by small group reflection and sharing. The week was complemented with many workshops facilitated by participants sharing their own work. Particularly noteworthy was (and is always) the affirmation of risk taking to share new ideas and ways of thinking. At day’s end and lasting the week, each of us participated in a designated “Reflection Group”, forming close bonds among 8 of us and offering a congenial space for continued conversation and community building.

The theme of this year’s IIPE was “Learning to Read the World from Multiple Perspectives: Peace Education toward Diversity and Inclusion.” And we were a diverse group in country of origin, gender, age and life experience, forming a rich community over the week, like a tapestry. Almost half of the participants were from Colombia, working in many diverse settings, both in formal and informal education, some taking risks through their vocation that may be hard for North Americans to imagine. It gives me much hope when I see so many working at the structural level to change systems, beginning often with the young. The conference was bi-lingual, with simultaneous translation of the plenaries and in as many workshops as possible. As a mono-lingual North American, it was a rich, yet challenging experience for me, needing to rely on others for language and cultural interpretation and was another spur for me to learn more Spanish.

One of the things I really like about IIPE (this was my fourth institute) is that we endeavor  and are encouraged to “check our egos at the door”, coming to each experience with a spirit of openness and humility, to new ideas, to new people and modes of thinking and acting. Such a refresher from our usual, particularly North American, ethos of competitive at all costs (so rampant in academia, I must say). What better way to learn than to take risks. We attempt to model the pedagogy we are learning and espousing. Informal times of sharing are also important, including sharing meals and coffee breaks. And this year’s community field trip was to a school in a more impoverished section of Cartegena, where peace cultures are embedded in every aspect of the pedagogy. We were greeted by the children with a welcome of banners as we entered the school and treated to a festival of music,, song and dance. (see picture ).

One of the goals of IIPE’s is to strengthen and enhance local and regional networks of peace educators, hopefully to move along policies that will reflect inclusive and participatory pedagogy. It was particularly noteworthy that a representative from the Colombian Ministry of Education was a participant for the week of IIPE. For more information on IIPE go to: http://www.i-i-p-e.org/ .

Bulletin of the World Report on a Culture of Peace. Go to http://decade-culture-of-peace.org, the Decade Home Page. David Adams, first Director of the Year of the UNESCO Culture of Peace in 2000, has worked tirelessly over the past 10 years to promote the Culture of Peace and the myriad global educational initiatives. David, a Pax Educare Advisory Board member, is the principle author of this report. He was helped by a cadre of colleagues, many of them young adults, one of whom was a participant with me at the IIPE in Cartegena, Oliver, Rizzi Carlson. I love these world wide connections.

sign in Spanish at the school visited-"It is Not Enough to Speak Peace, We Must Work for ItPlenary in the Beautiful Setting of a 16th Century Monastary