Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 27
About This Presentation
Title:

Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement

Description:

Title: Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement Author: Peter Bergel Last modified by: Peter Bergel Document presentation format: On-screen Show (4:3) – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:161
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 28
Provided by: PeterBe158
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement


1
Building a Better Strategy for the Peace Movement
by Peter Bergel Oregon PeaceWorks
2
Whats the Current Strategy?
  • We depend largely on 3 tactics
  • Education
  • Demonstrations
  • Lobbying/Electoral Work

Lets take an honest look at these tactics.
2
3
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.

3
4
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.

4
5
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.

5
6
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.

6
7
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.

7
8
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.

8
9
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.

10
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.

10
11
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.

11
12
Lets do some visioneering here and now.
  • If peace broke out,
  • what would it look like?

12
13
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

13
14
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.

14
15
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?

15
16
I have GREAT news!
17
This visioning work has already been done! Its
called The Earth Charter
18
And I think youre going to LIKE IT!
19
The Earth Charter
  • Comprehensive
  • Well thought out
  • Inclusive
  • Global in scope
  • Already underway
  • Connected to the United Nations

Look at your copy now
20
Earth Charter Content
  • Preamble
  • Earth, Our Home
  • The Global Situation
  • The Challenges Ahead
  • Universal Responsibility

21
Earth Charter Content
  • Principles
  • Respect and care for the community of life
  • Ecological integrity
  • Social and economic justice
  • Democracy, nonviolence, and peace

22
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.
23
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.

24
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.

25
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.

26
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.

27
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
28
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.
29
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.

29
30
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.

30
31
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.

31
32
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.

33
Contact Oregon PeaceWorks
  • Oregon PeaceWorks
  • 104 Commercial St. NE
  • Salem, OR 97301
  • info_at_oregonpeaceworks.org
  • 503-585-2767 Fax 503-588-0088
  • www.oregonpeaceworks.org
  • To join the Virtual Think Tank, visit
  • www.groups.google.com/group/peace-visioning-think-
    tank

33
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com