December 2003
January 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

From the Editor's Desk

"Valerie Sperling and Sam Diener are thrilled to announce the birth of our baby, Sasha Diener Sperling. Sasha was born on November 26, 2003. We hope, with your help, to raise Sasha in an increasingly peaceful and joyful world."

So reads, in part, the birth announcement we sent out last month. I'm enchanted with the opportunity to learn to care for Sasha, overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work it takes, and amazed at how parents over the ages and across the world have accomplished the sisyphean task of raising a child in consistently caring ways.

Sara Ruddick, in her much-misrepresented work, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace, argues that the practices of nurturance and conflict resolution engaged in by parents (male or female) who attempt to raise children in caring, nonviolent ways can provide the psychological and experiential foundation for building cultures of peace. As I foster, puzzle over, and savor the emerging consciousness of a new child, I also look forward to other new beginnings in the coming year.

Many of the pieces in this issue focus on the challenges and opportunities we face trying to build a movement capable of creating peace during a Presidential election year in the US. In the spirit of the Gold Star parents of US soldiers killed in Vietnam who called for an end to that war, Fernando Suarez writes about the trip he took to Iraq following the death of his son there last spring. Redemptively, he reminds us not only of his family's loss, but the loss felt by thousands of Iraqis as well.

Whoever occupies the White House in 2005, the peace movement needs to expand our reach, diversify our base, mobilize our supporters, and increase resistance in order to change US foreign policy away from militarist interventionism. Roxanne Lawson and Judith McDaniel challenge us to make the conceptual shifts necessary to deepen and diversify the peace movement. United for Peace and Justice, the largest US anti-war coalition, details its ambitious plans to accomplish these goals in 2004.

Before examining the elections of 2004 directly, we thought it vital to provide a modicum of historical perspective. Susan B. Anthony, Emma Goldman, and Fannie Lou Hamer share their dramatically different perspectives on the struggle for the right to vote. We also examine how the 2000 election was stolen in Florida four years ago.

While the memory of the 2000 election is a festering sore, Ralph Nader's candidacies highlight the dilemmas peace advocates face with the system as it exists. Nader recently shocked many Greens by announcing he won't run for President on the Green ticket, but he might run independently. The Florida vote-theft underlines the importance of revamping voting systems, and Vivion Vinson investigates the potential advantages and disadvantages of the new electronic voting schemes. Steven Hill describes efforts to promote Instant Run-off Voting, a system of indicating multiple candidate preferences which could break the strangle-hold of the two-party system on US politics.

Because I remember reading Marty Jezer's pieces in back issues of WIN magazine about the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protests, I began assembling this issue by asking Marty to contribute his ideas about how to confront the Republican Convention in New York City. The RNC Not Welcome Collective provides an alternative perspective. Our back page features an idea to reinforce the backbone of Democrats at the Democratic Convention in Boston and beyond.

Sometimes, when confronting the limited choices of a given Presidential election cycle, we forget to develop the visions necessary to fundamentally transform our society. Michael Albert shares his insights into creating a society based on participatory democracy.

While our attention tends to be riveted by the Iraq crisis, the struggle for human rights, self determination, and peace continues thoughout the world, as highlighted by Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize, the attempts to curtail US hegemony in Asia, and efforts to unseat the increasingly repressive government of Zimbabwe.

Michael True contributes a review of a book which reminds us of the humanity of all sides to a conflict, even one as horrific as the US war against Southeast Asia. Similarly, Martha Yager reminds President Bush, and the rest of us, of the hidden victims of the war on terror: those of us terrorized by homelessness, unemployment, and lack of health care. Yet she also reminds us that we can, as a society, choose to meet these needs, if we invest readily available resources.

It is these ideas and proposals which offer hope that Sasha's world, and the world of all the children around the world, will indeed become both more peaceful and joyful.

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