WASHINGTON, DC
Moms across the United States will celebrate Mother’s Day early by giving gifts instead of receiving them. “Peace Pies” will be delivered to more than 150 U.S. Senators and Representatives from 38 states to urge support for landmark legislation that would create a U.S. Department of Peace. The pies (representing the federal budget) will be sliced to show how little money less than 1 percent of the federal discretionary budget would be required to establish the agency. The Peace Alliance, the nonpartisan, non-profit organization leading the growing grassroots movement to create a cabinetlevel Department of Peace and Nonviolence, intentionally chose the Friday before Mother’s Day for its nationwide campaign because of the connection to Julia Ward Howe, the Civil War era poet, activist and author. Howe is probably best known for penning the lyrics to The Battle Hymn of the Republic. After living through the horrors of the U.S. Civil War, Howe’s desire for world peace inspired her to establish a special peace day in 1870. She asked: “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?” “Like Julia Ward Howe, we are calling all women in fact, everyone to stand up for peace,” said Peace Alliance Executive Director Dot Maver. “We have the skills and expertise to start reducing and preventing violence right now,” Maver added. “But we need the infrastructure in place to support this comprehensive all systems’ approach to proactively dealing with violence. A Department of Peace would provide that infrastructure, and at an annual cost of less than what we currently pay for just 1 month of war.” The effort to create departments or ministries of peace, like Howe’s call to women all over the world, is global in nature. Many of our allies, including England, Italy, Israel, Japan and Canada, have citizen groups actively working to create their own departments or ministries of peace. Here in the United States, legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 808, is currently supported by 65 congressional co-sponsors, who will also receive pies thanking them for their support.If passed, the Department of Peace legislation would create a cabinet-level position and new agency to proactively deal with the conditions leading to violence, both internationally and domestically. Domestically, the Department of Peace will research, propose and facilitate practical, field-tested solutions to reduce conflict, providing financial and institutional heft to strengthen and complement our current efforts to deal with all forms of domestic discord and violence. It will promote and facilitate the education of students in grades K-12 on how to resolve conflict nonviolently through peer mediation, and provide training in alternative dispute resolution techniques and nonviolent communication skills. Internationally, the Department will advise the president and Congress on the most innovative techniques to establish and promote peace among nations, and will research and analyze the root causes of war to help prevent conflicts from escalating to the point of violence. It will create a Peace Academy, on par with the Military Service Academies, to build a world-class faculty of peacebuilding experts, many of whom currently live in the United States. They will analyze peacebuilding at the highest level, advise other branches of government, and expand the training of civilian and military peacekeepers. “Julia Ward Howe was a visionary,” Maver said. “The Peace Alliance and each of the 50 individual state campaigns are working to establish a U.S. Department of Peace to help make her dream of a world without war a reality.”
