 June 2002
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
To Remember the Peacemakers
James Richard Bennett, Peace Movement Directory: North American
Organizations, Programs, Museums and Memorials. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2001. 318 pp. $49.95 Michael True is President of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Foundation, which funds travel and graduate study for Third World Women and small research grants for members of IPRA and its affiliates.
The Peace Movement Directory reveals the rich "hidden" history of nonviolence in North America, through artifacts, museums, and institutions inspired by peace activists from William Penn to Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, and Cesar Chavez. A detailed index makes it easy for the reader to identify the figures with the 1400 locations and organizations mentioned and briefly described in the text The entry for the Friends for a Non-Violent World, at the Meridel Le Sueur Center for Peace and Justice in Minneapolis is representative: "Inaugurated 'to build a world of Peace and Justice' through such programs as the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in the community, schools, churches, and prisons. Customized Non-Violence Training; the People Camp, a week-long camp for experiences in cooperation, conflict resolution, consensus building and nonviolence theory and action, the Peace Breakfast: a monthly gathering; the Minnesota Military Tax Resistance Network for expressing conscientious objection to military spending; the Coalition to Demilitarize Our Schools to Resist J-ROTC; Summer Interns; the twice yearly Newsletter." Entries for New England list and describe peace and conflict studies programs in colleges and universities throughout the six-state region, as well as the Peace Abbey and the Peace Pagoda, in Massachusetts; the War Resisters League/New England and St. Martin De Porres Catholic Worker, in Connecticut; the Samantha Reed Smith Statue, Radio Free Maine, and Pax Christi Maine. In the introduction, James Richard Bennett, emeritus professor of English, University of Arkansas, emphasizes the need for extending "a rhetoric of mutual respect, cooperation, and learning," to replace "a rhetoric of violence." In enumerating significant places evoking nonviolent history, he provides a valuable aid to anyone who recognizes that "language--myth, symbolism, imagery" are "the cutting edge of resistance to violence." In this way, the book is a valuable contribution to the goals of the United Nations Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World, 2001-2010.
The Peace Movement Directory deserves a place in school
and public libraries to help young people become familiar with
the history of active peacemaking, particularly in this country,
where images of war and war memorials dominate the imagination
and the landscape. As the editor rightly argues, "the language
of peacemaking has been a long time coming." 
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