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The future of the peace movement
By Courtney Brooks | Special to the Vermont Guardian

Posted July 14, 2006

At a recent gathering, organized in part by a Burlington-based group, people from around the country came together to talk about the future of the peace movement in the United States, as well as finding ways to end the war in Iraq.

A key finding from the event is that peace activists and organizations need to find options to offer young people other than joining the military as a “way out,” and that currently those options don’t often exist.

The gathering took place at the Highlander Center in New Market, TN, about 25 miles east of Knoxville, and included Iraq veterans, peace activists, war resisters, and youth from military families. Since 1932, the center has been a host to such gatherings by activists.

Doyle Canning, 26, of Burlington, dreamed up the idea for the peace collaborative with friends at a peace conference in New York city. They chose the Highlander Center, an important center for social and economic justice in Tennessee, because of its literal and symbolic significance.

It is important for young people looking at new strategies to examine what has come before us, Canning said. “We all have different stories and sharing those stories and having the space to do that is crucial and something that we often don’t get marching around,” she said. “We need to stop and talk to each other. We intentionally had a very small group because we wanted that intimacy.”

Canning has worked at Smartmeme in Burlington since late 2003. Smartmeme is a multi-issue strategy organization with an emphasis on “storytelling” as a focus for social change strategy.

“We look at how to build new alliances around shared stories and how do we progressives offer a vision that people can believe in and a story that people want to be a part of creating,” said Canning. One of their programs specifically targetes youth — Strategy, Training and Organizing Resources for Youth (STORY). “Our youth program is really about how we bring the next generation of social change visionaries and organizers some of the tools and wisdom from the different places that we come from,” she said.

The war in Iraq was the focus for the weekend because recruitment centers directly target youth, and the youth of the United States are inheriting the war, said Canning.

“The U.S. is in there for the long haul. They’re building nine bases. This is something that we’re looking at as a long-term movement that we have to build. One of the key findings is that its about relationships, it’s about going deeper, it’s about bringing it to the grassroots level of one on one organizing.

“For young people, an anti-war position is the majority position, and it depends on how people want to express that. But there is a widespread understanding that it was lies that got us to Iraq, and that it is not going well and we are inheriting big problems that are bloody and brutal and unforgivable and we need to make it stop,” Canning said.

While the Collaborative to End the War in Iraq began with Smartmeme, it quickly branched out to include groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, the War Resisters League, and the Student Farmworker Alliance, and brought together youth from all over the country. “We were trying to bring together young veterans, conscientious objectors, younger members of military families speaking out, and also people who are working for immigrant rights, etc., like the case of young immigrants who are targeted by recruitment centers and are offered citizenship as a bonus prize for serving in Iraq,” Canning said.

There were 27 participants and four facilitators at Highlander this weekend, Canning said. Before getting down to business and analyzing and strategizing, they started the “real work” of building relationships, connecting, and finding shared stories. “We spent a lot of time around the campfire, sharing who we are and where we come from and what is our relationship to the war in Iraq. We did a lot of work around understanding racism and how race plays out in our society; being at Highlander was a big piece of that,” Canning said.

Stephen Funk, who attended the meeting, and was the first conscientious objector to the Iraq war, was reminded of an experience of his in Iraq when someone started singing “Imagine” by John Lennon at the campfire.

Someone sent him a postcard that said “Imagine” on the front and the lyrics to the song on the back, and he was reprimanded for humming the tune to himself later. While he was there, the song was a symbol for the peace of a world that he wanted to be a part of, while he was in a horribly oppressive place, Canning said.

Besides spending time around the campfire, they also made banners and other art, had a lot of facilitated conversations, and came out of the experience with many key realizations about the war and the peace movement. One of the key findings of the weekend was that peace activists often aren’t in a position to offer young people other options besides joining the military, Canning said.

“Often that’s about economic opportunities, educational opportunities ... . Also, the military is really offering people a story that they can believe in. Long-term work, we need to make a directory of peace and justice organizations, and communities where we can actually refer young people who are thinking about joining the military to check out as a different vision of how we could live together and what our future could be,” she said.

During the weekend, the participants interviewed each other and wrote in journals with the plan to upload podcasts and blog to share what they had been doing there, as a way to create an ongoing forum, Canning said.

“I think ultimately the vision that we’re looking for and striving for and living for is that culture of compassion and human connection that was co-created this weekend at Highlander. We think there’s a better way to live. This is about de-militarizing our lives and de-militarizing our future and at heart it’s really about non-violence. That is long-term deep work,” Canning said. “And we think the conflict in Iraq and invasion and occupation of Iraq are the most current visible in the mainstream manifestation of a culture that is based on domination and violence and oppression, and that’s not a culture that we want to pass onto our children. I think that’s the big vision in terms of the anti-war movement.”

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