 November 2003
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, 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. |
From the Editor's Desk "Art is not merely a mirror which reflects the world,
Peacework has been a mirror, and a hammer beating swords into plowshares, for more than thirty years now. In all those years of reflecting, and helping shape, our movements for peace with social justice, Peacework has been led by two intrepid editors, Pat Farren and Patricia Watson. I realize, as I step into my role as Peacework 's third editor, that I have giant shoes to fill. Many of you knew Peacework 's legendary founding editor, Pat Farren, while I only had the opportunity to be one of his fortunate readers. Patricia Watson has built on Pat's legacy with a fierce determination to analyze the world while inspiring us with her gentle wit and carefully wise observations. While she has retired from the editor's desk, Patricia has generously offered to continue to share her years of experience and insight with us as an advisor. I am also glad to report that Sara Burke, Peacework 's Managing Editor, is continuing in her indispensable role. I am grateful to the AFSC for trusting me to build upon these legacies, and to you for sustaining the publication through the decades, financially and otherwise. A magazine only comes alive when it is read and utilized. As a long-term reader of Peacework , I know that this publication has demanded more from us than most, asking us to: discuss its contents, share its insights, resist the injustices it exposes, implement and improve upon the organizing tactics and strategies it describes, and challenge its opinions, perspectives, and conclusions. I hope the magazine will continue to demand all this of us. I ask that you help us live up to these ideals. Peacework drew me to it because even when exposing the worst forms of brutality, it has refused to demonize anyone, and has, whenever possible, pointed out strains of hope. In this issue, such notes of hope are sounded across the country and around the world. Emma Morgan's description of the struggles to preserve her low-income housing community provide us with a model for nonviolently confronting the exploitive behavior of an otherwise respected community leader. Maya Anderson's piece on the Freedom Ride she helped organize describes immigrant workers daring to get on the bus in the face of the federal crackdown on immigrant rights. While I believe we need to confront militarism and human rights abuses wherever they rear their hydra-heads, Zia Mian and Arthur Waskow remind us of the special responsibility - and opportunity - those of us in the US have to confront the most powerful empire in the world, the US empire. With the road map for peace between Palestinians and Israelis disintegrating, we focus especially in this issue on the prophetic voices of Palestinians and Israelis who are brave enough to confront violence within their own communities. By modeling empathetic recognition coupled with strategic analysis of how to build the case for nonviolent alternatives, they point us down a different road altogether. We can also glimpse glimmers of hope emerging: the tattered determination of the Iraqi people to one day live free - of both dictators and occupiers; peace activists determined to exercise free speech; and Afghan women demanding to be heard, seen, recognized, and fully included in society. Finally, Hanan Ashrawi's evocation of the life of Edward Said holds out a special hope for me. My dear friend Jon Cohen, a draft registration and war tax resister, and a leader in the movement to mobilize men to end men's violence against women, also died of leukemia last month. Edward Said challenged those of us who aren't Arabs to recognize the humanity of Palestinians, just as he insisted on recognizing the humanity of Jews. Jon was one of the Jewish activists who, heeding Said's call, traveled to Israel to demonstrate for an end to the occupation and an end to the violence. I didn't always agree with Edward Said, or with Jon for that matter, but they both lived lives of conscience, working passionately for causes they believed in while refusing to demonize their opponents. Ashrawi calls on us not to accept death, but to build on the legacies of those who lived. Their legacies are foundations of hope. It is up to us to pick up our own hammers to build upon them. 
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